CHAPTER XII

Back aboard the _Shark_, Paula and Huntington did what Hermione called their "wonderful disappearing act." Bell had lingered in the club to play poker, at which he was very good, and to drink whiskey-and-soda, of which he stood in no need. Cécile retired, and Hermione went into the saloon, where she sat at a gravity writing-table, and after destroying some dozen or more sheets of expensive note-paper, with the _Shark's_ insignia, she gave up her task in disgust and went to her room. Not being in the least sleepy, she curled up in a heap of cushions and tried to interest herself in a French play, but meeting with no success, she flung aside the pamphlet, one of the _Illustration_ supplements, and gave herself up to the topic which so occupied her mind. Needless to say, this was Mr. Applebo.

Unlike Cécile's meditations, which were apt to be self-indulgent, pleasant, and profitless, those of Hermione were swift, ruthless, and followed by prompt and decisive action. Half an hour of concentrated thought and she had extracted from her reflections three opinions and a resolve.

Of these opinions, the first was that Applebo was in love with nobody but himself and his Muse, that he found the situation piquant and amusing, and was having just as much fun out of it as were the "Sharks," which was saying a good deal.

The second opinion was that she, Hermione, had been very violently and dangerously attracted by the peculiar personality of Mr. Applebo, but that she had thoroughly overcome it (_sic_).

The third opinion was that Cécile was also violently and dangerously attracted by the peculiar personality of Mr. Applebo, and was very far from being over it.

And the resolve was that she would write to Mr. Applebo to say that they had had enough of him, and would he kindly clear out!

Action always followed hot on the heels of Hermione's resolutions. She was a mature-minded girl, and found no difficulty in crystallising her thought into words. This was, no doubt, because her thought was a saturated solution and not the dilute, strained-out, indecisive brain-mush of so many of us. Hermione whipped up her writing-pad and indited swiftly the following:--

DEAR MR. APPLEBO:--Permit me to compliment you upon the able way in which you have demonstrated your admirable seamanship. It must be, and no doubt is, a source of great satisfaction to you to prove to us your capacities.

("That will cheer him up, if he has one grain of modesty!" thought Hermione.)

I must tell you, however, that, in the opinion of some of us aboard the _Shark_, the game has now gone quite far enough. We acknowledge your ability to cope with our vessel in soundings or out of them.

My father is planning to sail for Bermuda in two days, and I must request that you do not follow us. Your somewhat peculiar constancy is beginning to excite a little comment outside our immediate circle, and I think it better in many ways that it should be discontinued.

My father is inclined to resent your sending of verses to my sister Cécile, and perhaps it would be better to discontinue this attention also.

Sincerely yours, HERMIONE CHESTER BELL.

Thought Hermione, having completed this hasty epistle, "There! Something tells me that he will read this, and curl up his six-feet-two in a manner to arouse the envy of a chestnut-worm!"

This heartless epistle achieved, Hermione decided for bed, but after undressing and snapping off her light, for the _Shark_ had a dynamo, she found herself still wakeful. Wherefore, she re-illuminated, and attacked the French play with greater interest, other preoccupations being disposed of. This play was one which, had her mother been alive, Hermione would never have been permitted to read. But the maternal vigilance of a Norwegian sailorman can hardly be expected to ransack the lockers of nineteen-year-old young ladies, wherefore Hermione was perusing a somewhat tarnished story, with her red lip contemptuously curled, when the little ship's clock in the saloon rang sharply four bells.

Hermione shoved the play through her port-hole and was about to try for sleep again when she heard a rustling outside her door.

"Hermione..." said a low voice, which she recognised as Cécile's.

"Yes?"

The door opened and Cécile came in. Hermione, glancing with surprise at her sister, was startled at Cécile's pale and tragic beauty. Her shimmering hair was drawn severely back from her broad, low forehead, and hung in two heavy braids well below her waist. Her grey eyes, with their dark, encircling lashes, were like stars, but ringed about in a way that alarmed Hermione. Cécile wore her white, embroidered kimono, which hung straight from her shoulders like the sacrificial robe of a Druidess. There was a bright red spot in either cheek, and her bosom was rising and falling rapidly. Cécile reminded Hermione of Goethe's "Bride of Corinth" ... that is, in appearance.

"Cécile!" she cried. "What is the matter? Are you ill?"

The colour flooded the face of Cécile.

"I am off my head, I think!" she answered. "I can't sleep; I can't think! I don't seem to belong to myself!"

"Cécile...!" Hermione crossed the room and dropped on the transome beside her sister, who had sunk down amongst the cushions. "What is it, dear?"

Cécile caught her breath and choked back a sob. Tenderness in Hermione touched her, where in Paula she would have thought nothing of it. She pressed her hands over her eyes, then dropped both arms, and looked intently at her sister.

"Hermione," she said, "are you in love with Harold Applebo?"

Hermione turned to her a very startled face.

"No!" she answered, emphatically.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I am! I never met him but once in my life!"

"Nor I," answered Cécile, and sprang to her feet, "but I am madly, insanely, desperately in love with him! It's silly, I know! It's unreasonable, and unmaidenly ... anything you like. But I can't think of anything but this man! What _is_ it, Hermione? Am I crazy?"

She turned to her sister with a half-sob. Hermione saw that Cécile's hands were clenched so tightly as to drive the finger-nails into the delicate skin. Her face was colourless, except for two crimson spots on either cheek and the red line of her lips.

Hermione was not only startled, but tremendously surprised. She had always thought rather contemptuously of Cécile's possible capacity for deep feeling, and rather pityingly of Paula's, ultimately concluding that she, Hermione, was blessed, or cursed, with all that there was in the family!

"But, my dear," cried Hermione, "you never spoke to him but once!"

"I know it," replied Cécile, wearily. "I'm a crazy fool! It's quite shameless of me, is it not?" She gave a bitter little laugh. "The man has put a spell on me! I can't close my eyes without seeing that yellow mane and those sleepy amber eyes ... and they are not so sleepy, either, when you look closely! It's a possession! What am I to do? And the worst of it is, I know that he has some sort of a tender sentiment for me. Oh, why doesn't he come over here and say so, instead of keeping me on pins and needles with his everlasting verses?"

Hermione looked thoughtfully at her sister. For an instant she was on the point of telling Cécile bluntly that the verses were actually intended for herself. But she was quite aware of her sister's unconscious vanity, and felt that to do so would arouse her undying resentment. So she merely asked:--

"Do you really care for him? Or is it only a sort of infatuation?"

"So far, I don't see how it can be more than infatuation," replied Cécile, frankly; "but I think that I might easily care ... and care a great deal, when I came to know him. You can scarcely be said to be in love with a person you don't know. As it is, I sometimes feel as if I hated him! It is not even an infatuation. I am fascinated, I suppose ... as you sometimes see a bird fascinated by a cat. There is something about his lazy, indifferent, cat-like look and manner that makes me feel at times like whacking him!" She laughed, nervously.

Hermione wrinkled her forehead and contemplated her sister in deep thought. Cécile watched her in that confident anxiety with which a patient might regard a very young but intelligent physician who has just been put in possession of a history of the case. In force of character and what is commonly called "strength," Hermione was easily the senior of the three sisters, for all of her trifling nineteen years of inexperience. Besides her natural intelligence, Hermione had a good deal of theoretic knowledge of the world, its men and women, and the psychology of love, from the reading of books written by folk who should have understood their subject, and had frequently obtained this knowledge at a considerable price. Wherefore, after a few moments of thought, she observed, with all of the aplomb of forty years:--

"When a girl feels as you do toward a man with whom she is not really in love, it is time that he was told to clear out. Once removed from your life, you would very quickly get over it."

Cécile looked dissatisfied.

"But I am not at all sure that I want him out of my life," she said. "I would rather prefer that he came into it. The trouble is, he does neither the one thing nor the other."

"Have you a clear idea of what you _do_ want?" asked Hermione.

"No."

"I have. What you would like would be to keep him dangling about, to be ultimately reduced to the same pulpy substance into which you have converted so many others. It can't be done. He's a different breed of cat."

Cécile shivered. "Uncle Chris told me one day that this would happen to me." She sighed. "What shall I do, Hermione?"

"Nothing," said Hermione. "Leave it to me."

"To you!"

"Yes. I will settle the matter." Hermione's pretty mouth assumed the austerity of a school-marm's.

"What will you do?"

"I will request his resignation."

"Do you think that he will obey?"

"Of course. He is a gentleman, and he has assured us right along that whenever we got tired of him we had only to say the word. I will say it."

Cécile looked at her sister doubtfully. Hermione, returning the glance, observed that Cécile's eyelids were heavy. It was evident that she was feeling the reaction of her outburst and would now sleep. The recital of her woes had relieved the pressure within. But she was not entirely content with Hermione's solution.

"Do you think that he is in love with me, Hermione?" she asked, with an odd shyness.

"No. He is in love with nobody but himself. This thing amuses him. He is a natural-born seafarer with a soft streak in him, and nothing pleases him more than to sail around and lead a hard life and write mushy verse. He sent me fathoms of the same sort of harmless slush before transferring his delicate attentions to you. I chucked them back at him. Now go to bed."

Cécile arose, wearily.

"I knew that he had sent you verses," she said, "but I thought that maybe he had got our names mixed up."

The irony of this almost extorted a true statement of the case from Hermione. But she saw that Cécile had plainly had enough emotion for one séance.

"Go to bed, dear," said she. "It's nearly five bells. Papa must be making a night of it. You will sleep now, I am sure."

Cécile kissed her, then drifted, like a very lovely and dishevelled ghost, out into the dim-lit corridor.

A few hours later, when Hermione went on deck for her morning row, the fog was so dense that it gave her an impression of being under water, and very soapy water at that. Heldstrom, who never appeared to sleep, greeted her with a shake of the head.

"Not this morning, yoong lady," said he. "Go back to bed."

"Oh, please..." begged Hermione. "I love to row around in the fog."

Heldstrom assumed an expression of severity.

"Und I love not to haf you!" said he. "Vat if you r'row str'raight out to sea, and keep on Growing? Vat vould your fadder say to me for losing der skiff?"

Hermione laughed. "You are not very flattering to yourself as a teacher, Uncle Chris," said she. "If I were to do a landlubber trick like that, I'd deserve to get lost! What do you take me for, a Sunday picknicker? Give me a dory-compass."

Heldstrom was evidently shaken. He took tremendous pride in Hermione's nautical abilities.

"You are forever saying that I'm a better sailor than anybody aboard," said Hermione. "Now prove it. You have sent the dinghy ashore...." She glanced at the boat-boom.

Heldstrom grinned. "That proves nodding. If a square-head gets lost who gifs a hang? Dere are plenty more. Und dinghys, too. But dere iss only von Hermione in all der vorld."

Hermione saw that the old sailor was weakening fast. She slipped to his side, threw one arm over his shoulder, and raising herself on tiptoes, dropped a light kiss on the weather-beaten cheek.

"Please, Uncle Chris," she whispered, "or I'll think that all you say about my seamanship is just a bluff!"

Christian Heldstrom threw up his great arms like a drowning man.

"By Jingo!" growled he, "vat's der use? Take your boat. Take all der boats...." He turned to the grinning and delighted quartermaster. "Miss Hermione's skiff!" said he, gruffly.

He himself placed the dory-compass in the sternsheets.

"Der landing bears sout'east by sout'," said Heldstrom. "So we bear from der landing ... what?"

"Nor'east by nothe..." said Hermione, with a laugh. "Would you like to hear me say my letters?"

"You try to sass me? Ven you hear _dong ... dong ... dong ... dong_ ... steady like dis on der ship's bell, that iss we."

"And when you hear _bang!_ and a square-foot of paint off the ship's side," laughed Hermione, "that am I...!"

"Off wit' you...!" growled Heldstrom, and made a feint to dash at her. Hermione's light oars took the water, and her laugh came back, merry though muffled, as she slipped like a wraith into the fog. There was really no danger, as traffic was at a standstill and one could tell by the swell when opposite an entrance leading out to sea.

Hermione was wearing a green flannel shirtwaist and her green plaid homespun skirt. Hunting-green and deep shades of crimson were Hermione's colours, just as the yellow tones belonged to Applebo. This morning her colour-scheme extended even to her tam, while the reflection of the drab-grey water in her violet eyes did its best to carry out the prevailing tone. The only alien note was the crimson ribbon, wound like a fillet about her black hair, which she wore twisted around her pretty head, as tightly as she could draw it.

So dense was the fog that Hermione rowed slowly, fearful of bumping some of the many craft at anchor. From time to time she glanced at her compass, and occasionally she twisted about on the thwart and tried to pierce the opacity which appeared to hang like a soft, fleecy blanket directly before the bow of her skiff. Once she heard the chug-chug of a motor-boat, apparently approaching, but at her musical hail it sheered off and she heard voices talking loudly, against the din of the engine.

"If I don't look out," thought Hermione, "I will run slap into the _Daffodil_. She is hung up squarely in my course to the landing."

At the thought of this possibility it occurred to Hermione that, were she to run onto the yawl, she might leave her note in person, with perhaps a few supplementary words. This practical idea, while not particularly discreet, gave her a decided thrill. The heavy fog would prevent her call from being observed, and in any case she would conduct the interview from her skiff.

Wherefore, when Hermione estimated that she must be very close aboard the yawl, she rested on her oars and tried to stare into the enveloping fog. There was not a breath of air, and the moisture was not chill, but warm and humid like steam. It was so thick as to be almost palpable, following any motion in swirls, and making one's breathing slightly laborious. The little harbour was full of yachts, and from all sides there came to the girl's ears the muffled and random sounds of the floating community; a snatch of song, the creak and whine of blocks, the splash of a packing-box most slovenly thrown overboard, a laugh, the chunk-a-chunk of oars, and the hail of a voice calling out to locate the vessel sought. Hermione felt herself to be in a mystic, sightless, and elusive world.

She altered her course slightly, and took a dozen strokes, then rested again. She was looking and listening when suddenly, out of the fog and spoken almost in her ear, there came a resonant bass, which announced to any who might wish to hear:--

"_Her eyes are blue as the violet's hue, Her voice is a carol of bliss, Her teeth are pearls from the deep-sea worlds, Her mouth is the throne of a kiss._

"To take her hand is to ... to ... to ..." (sudden changing of the recitative tone) "to ... oh, dammit ... what is it to take her hand? Hanged if I haven't forgot ... hand, sand, fanned, land ... damned ... oh, poison! What is it to take her hand...?"

"Fresh, cheeky, presumptuous, and undesired...!" supplied Hermione, invisible in the fog. "You might take her painter, though, if you don't mind interrupting the lecture in anatomy!"

She heard a gasp and the sound of something which evidently dropped upon the deck, then bounced overboard, for there was a tiny splash.

"Oh, wap!" complained the resonant voice. "There goes my fountain-pen...." The tone changed to one of invocation. "Cécile, is it thou or thy spirit out there in the mist?"

"Neither!" snapped Hermione. "Look out ...!"

The high freeboard of the yawl rose suddenly before her bow; she held water with one oar, and the skiff came rubbing gently alongside. There was the scuffle of feet above her, and Hermione glanced up to see a figure in flannels and sweater, looming titanesque through the white fog.

"Cécile...!" said the rich voice.

"Take the painter," replied Hermione. "No, I'm not going aboard. It would be stretching my elastic conventionality too far to visit a young man aboard his boat at seven-thirty of a foggy morning. I have a note for you and a few words to add to it."

Applebo caught a turn with the painter and dropped into a primitive crouching position on the yawl's deck. Hermione observed that his face had assumed its sleepy look, while the voice took on the lazy drawl which she so well remembered. His eyes, which looked yellower than ever in the colourless fog, blinked at Hermione almost with appreciation. Their swift scrutiny passed from her green tam to her costume of the same colour, vivid against the white mist.

"You look like an emerald packed in cotton," he observed.

"Always a poet. Am I all green?"

"No; you are set with rubies, coral, and a pair of rare sapphires. To fancy your being poetic also! You seem to be such a practical maid. I don't know whether I am glad or sorry."

"What are you talking about?"

"Your verses, of course. I wear them here." He laid his hand over his heart. "Just at this moment, however, they are below. Unfortunately, a sweater has no pockets. I was deeply touched, Cécile, and have already mailed you the answer. But, if you do not mind, I might point out certain technical errors ..."

"What are you driving at, anyway?" Hermione demanded.

"Don't be piqued. Art should come before personal vanity. There are a few errors ... of a trifling sort. That is nothing. I make them myself. But there are also one or two ... eh ... banalities...."

"Banalities...!"

"Let me point them out. I am sure that you will agree with me...."

Applebo plunged into his companionway, leaving Hermione completely mystified. A moment later he emerged, holding a piece of note-paper which Hermione was quick to recognise as the _Shark's_. To her amazement and disgust, she saw that this was covered by Cécile's stylish penmanship.

"I will read it through," said Applebo, "and then point out to you what I mean."

In his deep, sonorous voice he proceeded to read as follows:--

TO A PILOT-FISH

_The billows flee from the shriek of the wind And the scud from the lash of the gale, But the "Shark" swims away and naught behind But one poor little tossing sail. Tell me, surges, ere you go, Should a Pilot-fish be treated so?_

_The sky-line darkens as night draws near, From the sea strikes the East Wind's chill, For the sturdy "Shark" there is naught to fear, But how for the "Daffodil"? Tell me, moon, from your heights above, Sails the "Daffodil" to the Port of Love?_

_Is it for Love that my viking roves, Or doth he despise the shore? Shall we meet in the Port of Missing Loves, Or shall we meet no more? Tell me, breezes, ere you part, Can true love warm a fish's heart?_

"Do you mean to tell me," cried Hermione, "that Cécile actually wrote and sent you that slush?"

"Eh ... what...?" Applebo appeared startled out of his habitual repose. His yellow eyes opened very wide. "What do you mean? Cécile?"

"Oh!" cried Hermione. "You make me sick! Both of you! If possible you make me the sicker ... because you began the whole silly business! In the first place, if you must pose as an enamoured swain, and bombard innocent folk with sickening slop, why don't you take the trouble to recognise your inamorata when you see her? I am not Cécile. I never was Cécile. Cécile is my sister ... the one who went with papa to thank you for helping me. I am Hermione!"

Applebo stared and his lean jaw dropped. He sank into a sort of heap upon the dripping deck. Mouth and eyes were generously open, and he stared at the angry beauty in the boat with an expression of such utter imbecility that Hermione lost her temper. She wished that Cécile could have seen him.

"You look like a fool!" she snapped.

Applebo gulped and shut his mouth.

"I have the perfect right!" he answered, sepulchrally. "But why didn't you tell me?"

Hermione's chin went into the air. "I suppose that when you told me in your naïve way that you were in love with Hermione, I should have put my finger in my mouth, dropped my shy head, plucked bashfully at the hem of my high-water bathing skirt, and murmured, 'I am it!'"

Applebo groaned as one in pain.

"Do you mind if I say what I think of myself?" he asked.

"Not in the least. I might even help."

"I am a blithering ass, idiot, fool, dolt, imbecile, chump, ninny lump, and I ought to put my head in a bag and jump overboard. A hydrocephalic child cutting out paper-dolls on the floor of an asylum is a font of intelligence compared to me."

"You are letting yourself off easily," observed Hermione.

"I shall die of this. And so your sister must have been receiving the verses intended for you!"

"Every mail adds to her vocabulary of soul-talk," replied Hermione.

Applebo looked very ill. All of the feline drowsiness had been swept from his face, leaving it of an actually human intelligence.

"I shall never write another poem!" said he, with solemnity.

"When you talk like that," said Hermione, "you make me believe that there is still hope for you. But there is still more that you must do. That is why I am here."

"What must I do?" asked Applebo, hopefully. "I promise to do it."

"Stop following us about."

The face of the poet fell. For a moment he regarded Hermione in gloomy silence.

"As bad as that?" he asked. "Very well. I have promised. I will start for New York as soon as the weather clears, lay up the _Daffodil_, and go into outlawry. Perhaps later, when I have done my penance, you may graciously permit me to meet your charming family in the conventional way." He looked at her eagerly.

Hermione dropped her eyes. "I will consider it," she answered.

"Are you offended with me?" asked Applebo.

"Not offended exactly," said Hermione, looking at him frankly. "But you have made an awful lot of trouble. Poor Cécile thinks that you are madly in love with her. Of course, she does not return the sentiment, but it has worked on her romantic sensibilities apparently to the point of inspiring the stuff that you just read. When she finds out that your delicate attentions were intended all of the time for my humble self, I'm sure I don't know what will happen."

Applebo stared at her wildly.

"Good Heavens!" he gasped. "Then she must never know! Oh, what an awful mess!"

Hermione, watching him with more intentness than her supercilious expression betrayed, saw an entirely new and unknown Applebo. All of the indolent pose was swept away in the rush of sincere and honest regret for what had occurred. The poet, thus revealed in his true nature, became a very normal and penitent young man. Hermione was conscious of a sudden rush of liking for him, he was so sincerely sorry.

"What shall I do?" he asked. "Simply clear out? That's the hardest of all. Perhaps if I were to go over and meet your sister and let her see what an ordinary, every-day sort of ass I am, it might do some good. I'll do whatever you tell me to."

Hermione gave him a pitying smile.

"You need not feel so tragic about it," said she. "Cécile does not really care, of course..." She watched him narrowly. Applebo's face expressed relief.

"Of course she doesn't," he replied. "I can see just how it is; she was rather taken by the romantic idea of my rotting around in the wet, just to be near. Her verses show it. Or maybe she was just trying to get a rise out of me," he added, most unpoetically.

"No," said Hermione, "she was a little touched. It will do her no harm, and might even do her some good. She has been a bit of a flirt, I'm afraid. You really haven't done anything so terrible...." Hermione found herself getting a little bored with the subject of Cécile.

Said Applebo: "I would rather set fire to my tub, and sail her straight to sea ... as my forbears used to do, than give unhappiness to any living soul. That is the beginning and end of my religion ... at least of the negative side of it. To think that I should have given you this trouble! If you will accept her as a gift, I will present you with the _Daffodil_ here and now, and shoulder my kit, and clear out on foot. I have never been so sorry."

Hermione was, for the instant, tempted to close with this extravagant offer, just to see what would happen. But a glance at Applebo's face told her. He was undeniably in earnest. Hermione began to feel sorry for him.

"It is not as bad as that," said she. "Once you are gone, Cécile will soon forget about you. Next time you play at knight-errant, take my advice and identify your damsels. Now I must go. Good-bye."

Applebo gave her a hopeless look. "Good-bye," he answered, in a dull voice, and threw off the turns of the painter. Hermione handled her oars. For some reason she felt a disinclination to pull off into the fog, leaving him there, unhappy, alone, forsaken. It seemed so dreary an end to their peculiar association. She thought of the many weeks that the little yawl had so bravely and blithely followed them through rain and gale and fog and calm.

Her skiff drifted clear of the yawl's side. Hermione looked back at Applebo. He was sitting disconsolately on the sodden deck, back bent, shoulders hunched, his hands clasped in front of his knees.

"Good-bye," repeated Hermione, more gently.

"Good-bye," said Applebo, in a sepulchral tone, and without moving.

Hermione thought that he might at least have got on his feet. She dipped her oars for a lusty stroke, then did not take it. It seemed quite impossible to leave him there in that state of dejection. If he had been sleepily and blinkingly inscrutable in his habitual way, Hermione would not have cared. But the feline pose had been ruthlessly torn away, leaving only the direct, childish nature underneath. There was plenty of the maternal in Hermione, and Applebo, at that moment, seemed to her a big, unhappy little boy.

"I wonder if I can find my way back to the _Shark_..." she said, uncertainly.

"I'll send the Finn with you if you will wait a few minutes. He has gone ashore to mail a poem to Cécile."

Hermione bit her lip. Applebo slightly roused himself and reached for the blade of the oar which she extended to him.

"Before I go," said Hermione, "would you mind telling me your real reason for following us about? I am not such a fool as to think that it was because of a sentimental attraction to one of us girls" ... she laughed ... "when you did not so much as know us apart. Was there any other reason?"

Applebo's eyes narrowed. He gave her an intent look.

"Why do you ask? Curiosity?"

"No. Interest."

"That is better. Well, then, I will tell you. I am only too glad to be able to tell you and to ask your advice. But if you are really enough interested to care to hear all about it, you are in for the story of my life."

"I want to hear it," said Hermione, "but I haven't a great deal of time. When we hear the _Shark's_ bell, I will have to go."

"Then I'll make it short," said Applebo. "Do you remember my telling you that day at Shoal Harbour that my mother was a cousin to the King of Sweden? She married a Norwegian boat-builder; a good enough man, of a very respectable family. Her family made an awful row about it, and tried to have the marriage annulled, for she was almost royalty. The two left Norway and went to America. They were not happy, and shortly after I was born they separated. My mother would not return to Norway, but lived in Brooklyn, supported by a small annuity she had from a brother. My father enlisted in the United States Navy."

Hermione, listening, absorbed in this tale, let her eyes rest on the face of the narrator. She wondered that she had ever thought it feline and baffling.

"When I was ten years old," said Applebo, "my mother died. An uncle of hers, named Applebo, who had come to America years before, made me his heir. He was an old man and died not long ago. I was sent to school, and afterwards to college. In the vacations I always went to sea, usually on sailing ships. It was on a ship that I met a man, the captain, who had known my father and who told me all about the affair, not knowing who I was. He told me that my father had left the Navy and was the sailing-master of a yacht, and that the yacht was the _Shark_."

Hermione's oars dropped from her hands. She gripped the gunnel of her skiff.

"Uncle Chris Heldstrom?" she gasped.

Applebo nodded. "There seems to be no doubt that he is my father," he said, "although he too has taken a different name. There goes your oar...." He sprang to his feet, whipped a boat-hook from its slings, and rescued the oar.

Hermione watched him dumbly, but her thoughts were revolving fast. She had often suspected some romance in the life of Heldstrom, from slight things let fall now and then. Like a flash there occurred to her mind Heldstrom's remarks after seeing Applebo the day they had undertaken to swim out to the schooner. "An echo..." Heldstrom had said, of the young man. Again, it was only the night before that Captain Bell had commented on a certain resemblance between Heldstrom and Applebo, and this Hermione had been quick to appreciate.

Her heart beat furiously and she felt the blood rushing into her cheeks. Applebo was rather pale. He had secured the oar and returned it to her.

"But why have you not declared yourself?" cried Hermione.

"Stop to think. The situation is extremely delicate. To begin with, he left my mother before I was born. I believe that their separation was conditional to her receiving this annuity, and they were very poor. I am rather a sensitive person and I find it embarrassing to go up to a strange, stern-looking man and inform him that he is my father."

Hermione gave a nervous, excited laugh.

"He might not care to admit the relationship," said Applebo, "and then think what a fool I would feel! And yet, I am certainly drawn to him. I have been following the _Shark_ for no other reason ... up to some time ago. Heldstrom seldom goes ashore, so I have not seen him many times. It seemed better not to act hastily. For all I know, he might be the very last person whom I would care to claim as a parent. I have been horribly perplexed."

"Then you needn't be!" cried Hermione. "Let me tell you that Christian Heldstrom is as splendid a man as ever lived. I don't know anything about his early life, but I know this much, that no kinder, braver, truer-hearted sailor ever walked a deck! And he is no common man! He is a gentleman! I don't know what your mother may have been like, but I hope, for your sake, that you inherit your father's traits!"

Applebo stared at her with shining eyes.

"You make me happier than I can say!" he cried. "But I have not worried about that aspect of the case. The question is, would he care to acknowledge me?"

"Anybody might be glad to acknowledge you if you would chuck your silly, mocking pose!" retorted Hermione. "Why do you not stand out in your true nature instead of blinking at people like a cat?"

Applebo smiled. "A sort of shield," said he. "It puzzles people, who might otherwise consider me an ass."

"Not always. But the question is, what are you going to do?"

"That is exactly what I have been trying to decide for the last three months. What would you advise?"

Hermione hesitated. Applebo watched her, with an expression which the casual observer would not have ascribed entirely to his interest in an unknown parent. Hermione, in that moment, was very lovely. The romantic excitement of the situation had brought her warm soul into her face, which was radiant in the colourless light.

About them swirled the fog, thicker than before. It beaded Hermione's dark eyebrows and softened her brilliant cheeks. She was thinking deeply, when out of the mist came the distant _dong ... dong ... dong_ ... of a ship's bell, patient and monotonous, muffled and lifeless of note, yet with an insistence, partly anxious, partly peremptory.

Hermione looked at Applebo and smiled.

"What a situation!" said she. "Yonder is your father ... striking the bell to guide me home!"