His hands in his pockets, Weldon took a dozen steps in doubtful
silence.

"I'll tell you what we can do, Miss Dent: Harry Carew, one of the
fellows going out with me, had a note of introduction to Colonel
Scott and his wife. He is the pompous old Englishman across the
table. I'll get Carew to introduce us, and perhaps they will let us
go ashore with them."

"But are they going?" she asked irresolutely.

"Surely. We have three hours here. I know Carew's mother well; she
and Mrs. Scott were schoolmates at Madame Prather's in London."

She looked up with sudden interest.

"Madame Prather's? That is where I have been, for the past five
years."

"Then we are all right," Weldon said coolly. "The arrangement is
made. Carew is the only missing link. Excuse me, and I will go in
search of him."

It was high noon when the Dunottar Castle finally weighed anchor at
Funchal and started on her long, unbroken voyage to the southward.
Side by side in the stern, Weldon and Ethel looked back at the blue
harbor dotted with the myriad little boats, at the quaint town
backed with its amphitheatre of sunlit hills and, poised on the
summit, the church where Nossa Senhora do Monte keeps watch and ward
over the town beneath. Ethel's experience was the broader for her
hilarious ride in a bullock-drawn palanquin. Weldon's experience was
more instructive. It taught him that, her hat awry and her yellow
hair loosened about her laughing face, Ethel Dent was tenfold more
attractive than when she made her usual decorous entrance to the
dining-room.

Mrs. Scott had been a willing chaperon and an efficient one.
Nevertheless, as they stood together in the stern, looking out
across the gold-flecked sea, Weldon felt that he had made a long
stride, that morning, towards acquaintance with his companion. And,
even now, the voyage was nearly all before them.

As if in answer to his thoughts, she lifted her eyes to his face.

"Twelve more days!" she said slowly.

"Are you sorry?"

She shook her head.

"Glad and sorry both. I love the sea; but home is at the end of it."

"You live out there?" he asked.

She smiled at the question. "Yes, if out there means Cape Town. At
least, my parents live there."

"How long have you been in England?" he queried, while, abandoning
all pretence of interest in the fast-vanishing town, he turned his
back to the rail in order to face his companion more directly.

"Always, except for one year, six years ago,