Harry was speeding down the Bay of Biscay and singing the fine old sea
song called after it, to the rhythm and music of its billowy surge. The
motion of the boat, the wind in the sails, the "chanties" of the sailors
as they went about their work, and the evident content and happiness
around him made Harry laugh and sing and toss away his cap and let the
fresh salt wind blow on his hot brain in which he fancied the clack and
clamor of the looms still lingered. He thought that a life at sea,
resting or sailing as the mood took him, would be a perfect life if only
Lucy were with him.

Sitting at dinner he very pointedly made the absence of women the great
want in this otherwise perfect existence. The captain earnestly and
strongly denied it. "There is nowhere in the world," he said, "where a
woman is less wanted than on a ship. They interfere with happiness and
comfort in every way. If we had a woman on board tonight, she would be
deathly seasick or insanely frightened. A ship with a woman's name is
just as much as any captain can manage. You would be astonished at the
difference a name can make in a ship. When this yacht belonged to
Colonel Brotherton, she was called the _Dolphin_, and God and angels
know she tried to behave like one, diving and plunging and careering as
if she had fins instead of sails. I was captain of her then and I know
it. Well, your father bought her, and your mother threw a bottle of fine
old port over her bow, and called her the _Martha Hatton_, and she has
been a different ship ever since--ladylike and respectable, no more
butting of the waves, as if she was a ram; she lifts herself on and over
them and goes curtseying into harbor like a duchess."

As they talked the wind rose, and the play of its solemn music in the
rigging of the yacht and in the deep bass of the billows was, as Harry
said, "like a chant of High Mass. I heard one for the sailors leaving