"And this is the young woman who is guilty of the delay," he
concluded my introduction to his daughter. "Margaret, this is Mr.
Pathurst."

Her gloved hand promptly emerged from the fox-skins to meet mine, and
I found myself looking into a pair of gray eyes bent steadily and
gravely upon me. It was discomfiting, that cool, penetrating,
searching gaze. It was not that it was challenging, but that it was
so insolently business-like. It was much in the very way one would
look at a new coachman he was about to engage. I did not know then
that she was to go on the voyage, and that her curiosity about the
man who was to be a fellow-passenger for half a year was therefore
only natural. Immediately she realized what she was doing, and her
lips and eyes smiled as she spoke.

As we moved on to enter the tug's cabin I heard Possum's shivering
whimper rising to a screech, and went forward to tell Wada to take
the creature in out of the cold. I found him hovering about my
luggage, wedging my dressing-case securely upright by means of my
little automatic rifle. I was startled by the mountain of luggage
around which mine was no more than a fringe. Ship's stores, was my
first thought, until I noted the number of trunks, boxes, suit-cases,
and parcels and bundles of all sorts. The initials on what looked
suspiciously like a woman's hat trunk caught my eye--"M.W." Yet
Captain West's first name was Nathaniel. On closer investigation I
did find several "N.W's." but everywhere I could see "M.W's." Then I
remembered that he had called her Margaret.

I was too angry to return to the cabin, and paced up and down the
cold deck biting my lips with vexation. I had so expressly