“Playin' kiss in the ring,” was Tim's unmoved reply. A Trans-Asiatic Direct liner had found a smooth and butted into it full power. But there was a vortex at the tail of that smooth, so the T. A. D. was flipped out like a pea from off a finger-nail, braking madly as she fled down and all but over-ending. “Now I hope she's satisfied,” said Tim. “I'm glad I'm not a Mark Boat... Do I want help?” The General Communicator dial had caught his ear. “George, you may tell that gentleman with my love--love, remember, George--that I do not want help. Who is the officious sardine-tin?” “A Rimouski drogher on the look-out for a tow.” “Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. This postal packet isn't being towed at present.” “Those droghers will go anywhere on a chance of salvage,” George explained. “We call' em kittiwakes.” A long-beaked, bright steel ninety-footer floated at ease for one instant within hail of us, her slings coiled ready for rescues, and a single hand in her open tower. He was smoking. Surrendered to the insurrection of the airs through which we tore our way, he lay in absolute peace. I saw the smoke of his pipe ascend untroubled ere his boat dropped, it seemed, like a stone in a well. We had just cleared the Mark Boat and her disorderly neighbours when the storm ended as suddenly as it had begun. A shooting-star to northward filled the sky with the green blink of a meteorite dissipating itself in our atmosphere. Said George: “That may iron out all the tensions.” Even as he spoke, the conflicting winds came to rest; the levels filled; the laterals died out in long, easy swells; the air-ways were smoothed before us. In less than three minutes the covey round the Mark Boat had shipped their power-lights and whirred away upon their businesses. “What's happened?” I gasped. The nerve-store within and the volt-tingle without had passed: my inflators weighed like lead. “God, He knows!” said Captain George soberly “That old shooting-star's skin-friction has discharged the different levels. I've seen it happen before. Phew: What a relief!” We dropped from ten to six thousand and got rid of our clammy suits. Tim shut off and stepped out of the Frame. The Mark Boat was coming up behind us. He opened the colloid in that heavenly stillness and mopped his face. “Hello, Williams!” he cried. “A degree or two out o' station, ain't you?” “May be,” was the answer from the Mark Boat. “I've had some company this evening.” “So I noticed. Wasn't that quite a little draught?” “I warned you. Why didn't you pull out north? The east-bound packets have.” “Me? Not till I'm running a Polar consumptives' sanatorium boat. I was squinting through a colloid before you were out of your cradle, my son.” “I'd be the last man to deny it,” the captain of the Mark Boat replies softly. “The way you handled her just now--I'm a pretty fair judge of traffic in a volt-hurry--it was a thousand revolutions beyond anything even I've ever seen.”