Mr. Spokesly was startled to see how close the _Kalkis_ was in shore, opposite the house. Without a glass he could see the balcony and the window within which Mrs. Dainopoulos lay watching the sunlight on the sea. As he came nearer to the ship, however, sitting in the row boat with the trembling young Hebrew beside him, he became preoccupied with her lines. And indeed to a seafaring man the _Kalkis_ was a problem. She resembled nothing so much as the broken-down blood animal whom one discovers hauling a cab. Mr. Spokesly could see she had been a yacht. Her once tall masts were cut to stumps and a smooth-rivetted funnel at the same graceful rake was full of degrading dinges. A singularly shapely hull carried amidships a grotesque abortion in the form of a super-imposed upper bridge, and the teak deck forward was broken by a square hatchway. All the scuttles along her sides, once gleaming brass and crystal, were blind with dead-lights and painted over. Another hatch had been made where the owner's skylight had been and a friction-winch screamed and scuttered on the once spotless poop. As Mr. Spokesly once phrased it later, it was like meeting some girl, whose family you knew, on the streets. A lighter lay alongside loaded with sacks and cases, and the friction-winch shrieked and jerked the sling into the air as a gang of frowzy Greeks hooked them on. They came round her bows to reach the gangway and Mr. Spokesly gave way to a feeling of bitterness for a moment as he looked up at the gracile sprit stem from which some utilitarian had sawed the bowsprit and carefully tacked over the stump a battered piece of sheet-copper. It affected him like the mutilation of a beautiful human body. What tales she could tell! Now he saw the mark of her original name showing up in rows of puttied screw-holes on the flare of the bow. _Carmencita._ She must have been a saucy little craft, her snowy gangway picked out with white ropes and polished brass stanchions. And now only a dirty ladder hung there. Leaving the little Jew to get up as best he could, Mr. Spokesly climbed on deck and strode forward. He was curious to see what sort of mate it could be who came into port with a ship like this. His professional pride was nauseated. He kicked a bucket half full of potato peelings out of the doorway and entered the deck-house.