"The girl must have been a fool!" said Sam bitterly. "The chance of a
life-time and she missed it. Where are my pyjamas?"

"I haven't seen your pyjamas. She talked to me about this elephant gun,
and explained its mechanism. You can imagine how she soothed my aching
heart. My heart, if you recollect, was aching at the moment--quite
unnecessarily if I had only known--because it was only a couple of days
since my engagement to Wilhelmina Bennett had been broken off. Well, we
parted at Sixty-sixth Street, and, strange as it may seem, I forgot all
about her."

"Do it again!"

"Tell it again?"

"Good heavens, no! Forget all about her again."

"Nothing," said Eustace Hignett gravely, "could make me do that. Our
souls have blended. Our beings have called to one another from their
deepest depths, saying ... There are your pyjamas, over in the
corner ... saying, 'You are mine!' How could I forget her after that?
Well, as I was saying, we parted. Little did I know that she was
sailing on this very boat! But just now she came to me as I writhed on
deck...."

"Did you writhe?" asked Sam with a flicker of moody interest.

"I certainly did."

"That's good!"