Flappers and Philosophers





The Offshore Pirate




I


This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as
colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the
irises of children's eyes. From the western half of the sky the
sun was shying little golden disks at the sea--if you gazed
intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip
until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was
collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling
sunset. About half-way between the Florida shore and the golden
collar a white steam-yacht, very young and graceful, was riding
at anchor and under a blue-and-white awning aft a yellow-haired
girl reclined in a wicker settee reading The Revolt of the
Angels, by Anatole France.

She was about nineteen, slender and supple, with a spoiled
alluring mouth and quick gray eyes full of a radiant curiosity.