By noon he remembered that in his hurry to get off he had made no definite provision with Jean about telegrams from, but only for messages to her. All that was arranged in the note, but he had torn up the note. With that leisurely appreciation of unpleasant facts which is so natural to the sanguine, and so incomprehensible by the anxious temperament, it occurred to him in the course of the afternoon that his wife had seemed much less well than usual when he bade her good-by; in fact, that he had never seen her look precisely as she did that morning. He began to acknowledge distinctly to himself that he wished he knew how she was. He grew definitely uneasy as the early autumn twilight dulled the color of the water and the horizon of the distant shore. They were well on the Shoals now, for the breeze was stiff, and the yacht ran at a spanking pace. The wind was not going down with the sun, but rose strongly. The landsman began to be a little seasick, which somehow added to his moral discomfort. "How can I get a telegram off?" he asked abruptly, much in the tone in which he would have called for a district messenger in the court-house. "Oh, I might tap a cable for you, I suppose," returned his host, with twitching mustache. "Look here," added Romer. "What is it--_mal de mer_? or nostalgia? Do you want to be put ashore?" "Not at all," replied Avery, with the pugnacity which men are accustomed to mistake for high ethical obligations to their own sex. "I only want to get a message to my wife. You see, I promised her." "We 'll run into Wood's Hole in the morning, by all means," said Romer cordially. "It's a great place for ducks, anyhow, off there." "Oh--ducks?" repeated Avery stupidly. He had forgotten that they came to kill ducks. "We 're goin' to have a breeze o' wind," observed one of the crew, who was lowering the jib-topsail. "I'd like to take the dispatch myself, when we get there, if I may," the seasick lawyer hazarded, somewhat timidly. But next morning, when the Dream dropped anchor off Wood's Hole, and the tender was lowered, he was flat in his berth. He could not take the dispatch, and a detail of two from the crew bounced off with it, pounding over the choppy sea. The frail and fashionable tender looked like one of the little Florida shells that are sold by the quart; there was now a considerable sea; the yacht herself was pretty wet. Romer was in excellent spirits. "We might get a duck or two before breakfast, if it isn't too rough," he suggested. "Sorry you 're laid up." "Oh--_ducks_?" repeated Avery again. He wished he could have a chance to forget that he had left his wife too ill to lift her head, and had come wallowing out here to kill ducks. "I can't remember that a duck ever did me any harm," he said savagely, aloud.