"Irish! Irish! My father Irish--from Dundee!"

Here were diving-boys in their own tiny boats, diving for pennies.
They were wonderfully lithe and graceful, with sun-tanned limbs and
dripping black hair.

Here, too, was a huge old man, who was also diving for pennies and
tins of bully-beef. He was fat and sun-browned, and his muscles and
chest were well developed.

"Me dive for bully-beef!" he shouted. "Me dive for bully-beef!"

Never once did he fail to retrieve these tins when they were chucked
overboard.

The tomatoes were very large and ripe, and the tobacco and cigarettes
exceedingly cheap and good. Most of the men got a stock.

The next day we put to sea again.

It was a real voyage of adventure, for here we were, on an unknown
course, sailing under sealed orders, no one knew whither, nor did we
know what would be the climax to this great enterprise.

Would any of us ever return across those blue-green waters? . . . Or
would our bones lie, a few days hence, bleaching on the yellow sands?
. . . Mystery and adventure sailed with us--and each day the heat
increased. The sun blazed from a brazen sky, the shadow of the
halyards and the great ventilators were clear-cut black silhouettes
upon the baking decks.