stanchion. "How can there be?"

He laughed--as we pitched into a thousand foot blow-out--that red man
laughed beneath his inflated hood!

"Look!" he said. "We must clear those refugees with a high lift."

The Mark Boat was below and a little to the sou'west of us, fluctuating
in the centre of her distraught galaxy. The air was thick with moving
lights at every level. I take it most of them were trying to lie head to
wind, but, not being hydras, they failed. An under-tanked Moghrabi boat
had risen to the limit of her lift, and, finding no improvement, had
dropped a couple of thousand. There she met a superb wulli-wa, and was
blown up spinning like a dead leaf. Instead of shutting off she went
astern and, naturally, rebounded as from a wall almost into the Mark
Boat, whose language (our G. C. took it in) was humanly simple.

"If they'd only ride it out quietly it 'ud be better," said George in
a calm, while we climbed like a bat above them all. "But some
skippers--will navigate without enough lift. What does that Tad-boat
think she is doing, Tim?"

"Playin' kiss in the ring," was Tim's unmoved reply. A Trans-Asiatic
Direct liner had found a smooth and butted into it full power. But there
was a vortex at the tail of that smooth, so the T. A. D. was flipped out
like a pea from off a finger-nail, braking madly as she fled down and
all but over-ending.

"Now I hope she's satisfied," said Tim. "I'm glad I'm not a
Mark Boat... Do I want help?" The General Communicator dial had caught
his ear. "George, you may tell that gentleman with my love--love,
remember, George--that I do not want help. Who is the officious
sardine-tin?"

"A Rimouski drogher on the look-out for a tow."

"Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. This postal packet isn't being towed
at present."

"Those droghers will go anywhere on a chance of salvage," George
explained. "We call' em kittiwakes."

A long-beaked, bright steel ninety-footer floated at ease for one
instant within hail of us, her slings coiled ready for rescues, and
a single hand in her open tower. He was smoking. Surrendered to the
insurrection of the airs through which we tore our way, he lay in
absolute peace. I saw the smoke of his pipe ascend untroubled ere his
boat dropped, it seemed, like a stone in a well.

We had just cleared the Mark Boat and her disorderly neighbours when the
storm ended as suddenly as it had begun. A shooting-star to northward
filled the sky with the green bl