poke
slowly, deliberately. It was renunciation on her part.

"I understand, Olga," he said.

She smiled, and shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, but you do not understand!" she cried. "You are so very much
perplexed. It is enough for me that you are perplexed. I am content. I
am the puzzle you will never solve. So! La la! You will never cease to
wonder. Look!"

She pointed her finger at a man who was crossing the Green below them.

"I am a puzzle to zat man also. He thought that he understood."

"Landover? What do you mean?"

A spasm of fury transformed her features. She hissed out the words:

"I did spit in his face last night,--zat is all."

The thirteenth of April, 1918, came on Saturday. Defying superstition,
Ruth selected it as her wedding day. It was a bright, warm autumn day,
bestowed by a gallant sun, and there was great rejoicing over this
evidence of God's approval. It came as a winter's whim, for that night
the skies were black and thunderous; the winds roared savagely between
the lofty walls of Split Mountain and whined across the decks of the
slanting Doraine, snug in the little basin, while out on the boundless
deep the turmoil of hell was raging.

And so began the honeymoon of the stowaway and the lady fair, even as
the "voyage" of the jockey and his bride had begun a fortnight before.
They sat at the Captain's table in the ghostly, dismantled saloon. Above
them hung two brightly burnished lanterns, shedding a mellow light upon
the festal board. Outside, the whistling wind, the swish of the darkened
waters, the rattle of davits and the creak of the straining timbers.

Up from his place at the head of the table rose the gray and gallant
skipper.

"Up, gentlemen," said he, his face aglow. "I give you the health, the
happiness and the never diminishing glory of the governor's lady."

"May she never be less," added the gaunt First Officer, who spent his
days ashore watching the growth of a new Doraine and his nights on board
with the failing master of the older one.

And in the rare old port from the Captain's locker they pledged the
radiant bride.

"A long voyage and a merry one!" cried Mr. Codge, the purser, as he
drained his goblet dry.

Mr. Furman Nicholas Chizler bowed very gravely to the lady on the
Captain's right, and then to the one at his left.

"What care we which way we sail so long as the wind's behind us?" quoth
he.

BOOK THREE

CHAPTER I.

In the far-off Northla