you going?"

"Yes, I shall go"--he was finally at peace about it. "I've got my
telegram."

"Oh your telegram!"--I ventured a little to jeer.

"That charming girl's your telegram."

He gave me a look, but in the dusk I couldn't make out very well what it
conveyed. Then he bent over his mother, kissing her. "My news isn't
particularly satisfactory. I'm going for _you_."

"Oh you humbug!" she replied. But she was of course delighted.




CHAPTER II


People usually spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing themselves
into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either so excessive
or so inadequate, wondering how they can pass so many days in such a hole
and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who appear in comparison
rare men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as became an old
sailor, and so, it seemed, were Miss Mavis's, for when I mounted to the
deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone, in the stern of
the ship, her eyes on the dwindling continent. It dwindled very fast for
so big a place. I accosted her, having had no conversation with her amid