ng that his alleged motive had
been the overcrowding of my boat, but he looked rather sick when Grue
went aboard his boat.

As for me, I hoisted sail with something so near a chuckle that it
surprised me; and I looked at Evelyn Grey to see whether she had noticed
the unseemly symptom.

Apparently she had not. She sat forward, her eyes fixed soulfully upon
the moon. Had I been dedicated to any profession except a scientific
one--but let that pass.

Grue in Kemper's sail-boat led, and my boat followed out into the silvery
and purple dusk, now all sparkling under the high lustre of the moon.

Dimly I saw vast rafts of wild duck part and swim leisurely away to port
and starboard, leaving a glittering lane of water for us to sail through;
into the scintillant night from the sea sprang mullet, silvery,
quivering, falling back into the wash with a splash.

Here and there in the moonlight steered ominous black triangles, circling
us, leading us, sheering across bow and flashing wake, all phosphorescent
with lambent sea-fire--the fins of great sharks.

"You need have no fear," said I to the pretty waitress.

She said nothing.

"Of course if you _are_ afraid," I added, "perhaps you might care to
change your seat."

There was room in the stern where I sat.

"Do you think there is any danger?" she asked.

"From sharks?"

"Yes."

"Reaching up and biting you?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I don't really suppose there is," I said, managing to convey the
idea, I am ashamed to say, that the catastrophe was a possibility.

She came over and seated herself beside me. I was very much ashamed of
myself, but I could not repress a triumphant glance ahead at the other
boat, where Kemper sat huddled forward, evidently bored to extinction.

Every now and then I could see him turn and crane his neck as though in
an effort to distinguish what was going on in our boat.

There was nothing going on, absolutely nothing. The moon was magnificent;
and I think the pretty waitress must have been a little tired, for her
head drooped and nodded at moments, even while I was talking to her about
a specimen of _Euplectilla speciosa_ on which I had written a monograph.
So she must have been really tired, for the subject was interesting.

"You won't incommode my operations with sheet and tiller," I said to her
kindly, "if you care to rest your head against my shoulder."

Evidently she was very tired, for she did so, and closed her eyes.

After a whil