g up the fire. And I saw Grue climbing about
among the mangroves over the water in a most uncanny way; and two
snake-birds sat watching him, and they never moved.

"He didn't seem to see them; his back was toward them. And then, all at
once, he leaped backward at them where they sat on a mangrove, and he got
one of them by the neck--"

[Illustration: "Climbing about among the mangroves above the
water."]

"What!"

The girl nodded.

"By the neck," she repeated, "and down they went into the water. And what
do you suppose happened?"

"I can't imagine," said I with a grimace.

"Well, Grue went under, still clutching the squirming, flapping bird; and
he _stayed_ under."

"Stayed under the _water_?"

"Yes, longer than any sponge diver I ever heard of. And I was becoming
frightened when the bloody bubbles and feathers began to come up--"

"_What_ was he doing under water?"

"He must have been tearing the bird to pieces. Oh, it was quite
unpleasant, I assure you, Mr. Smith. And when he came up and looked
at me out of those very vitreous eyes he resembled something horridly
amphibious.... And I felt rather sick and dizzy."

"He's got to stop that sort of thing!" I said angrily. "Snake-birds are
harmless and I won't have him killing them in that barbarous fashion.
I've warned him already to let birds alone. I don't know how he catches
them or why he kills them. But he seems to have a mania for doing it--"

I was interrupted by Grue's soft and rather pleasant voice from the
water's edge, announcing a sail on the horizon. He did not turn when
speaking.

The next moment I made out the sail and focussed my glasses on it.

"It's Professor Kemper," I announced presently.

"I'm so glad," remarked Evelyn Grey.

I don't know why it should have suddenly occurred to me, apropos of
nothing, that Billy Kemper was unusually handsome. Or why I should
have turned and looked at the pretty waitress--except that she was,
perhaps, worth gazing upon from a purely non-scientific point of view. In
fact, to a man not entirely absorbed in scientific research and not
passionately and irrevocably wedded to his profession, her violet-blue
eyes and rather sweet mouth might have proved disturbing.

As I was thinking about this she looked up at me and smiled.

"It's a good thing," I thought to myself, "that I am irrevocably wedded
to my profession." And I gazed fixedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

* * * *