ethumbed volume over which he had struggled so hard. The old man
skimmed through its pages, nodding his head from time to time and
mumbling in a satisfied way. Then, like a man driving in a nail, he
pounded Eric with question after question. He seemed to be asking them
from the book, but Eric knew that none of the problems had their origin
in it, for they dealt with the work he had been doing in the little
cottage by the sea. Yet to almost every one the boy returned a correct
answer, or at least, one which was correct in its approach. For two long
hours the puzzle-maker questioned him, without ever a minute's let up.
At the end of it, Eric was as limp as a rag. At last the old man laid
down the book.

"When your examination is?" he asked.

"Next June," the boy replied.

"You can pass him now."

Eric stared at the old man with wild surprise in his gaze and with a
down-dropped jaw.

"But I haven't even started on the second half of the book," he said.
"And I've got to do it all!"

"You pass him now," was the quiet answer. "The second part--you have
done him, too. Learn rules, if you like. No matter. You know him. See!"

He showed the very last set of examples in the book and Eric recognized
problems of the kind he had been doing, all unwitting to himself.

"Mathematics not to learn," he said, "he is to think. You now can think.
To know a rule, to do sum--bah! he is nothing! To know why a rule and
because a sum--he is much. You do him."

In the few remaining visits that Eric paid the puzzle-maker, he found
the old man's words to be quite true. Having learned the inside of
mathematics, its actual workings seemed reasonable. The clew gave Eric
the sense of exploring a new world of thought instead of being lost in a
tangled wilderness.

Meantime, he had become absolutely expert in every detail of the
station. His particular delight was the capsize drill. The keeper had
got the crew trained down to complete the whole performance within fifty
seconds from the time he gave the order. The boat had to be capsized,
every man underneath the boat. Then they had to clamber on the upturned
boat, right it again, and be seated on the thwarts with oars ready to
pull before the fiftieth second was past. It was quick work, and
although only a drill, was as exciting as the lad could wish. Two or
three times, one of the men, who wasn't quite as quick as the rest, got
"waterlogged" and the crew had to help him up. When that occurre