pinching his lower lip between finger and thumb. He had an idea. To achieve anything, one had to be eternally prepared for just such unexpected predicaments. Here he was, with an invisible commander and an invisible horizon. And down in a cabin below him was Evanthia Solaris, a distinct and formidable problem. He was going to marry her. He saw his destiny, almost for the first time in his life, as a ball which he could take in his hand and throw. And the direction and distance depended entirely upon his own strength, his own skill, his own fortitude. He was going to marry her. And he saw another thing for the first time--that marriage was of no significance in itself for a man. What he is, brain and sinew, character and desire, is all that counts. He saw this because he had left the old life behind beyond the fog. Back there, marriage was a contrivance for the hamstringing and debasing of men, a mere device for the legal comfort and security of women who were too lazy or incompetent or too undesirable to secure it for themselves. Ahead he had a strange premonition that he was going to have a novel experience. He was. He was aroused by the helmsman reaching out and striking four soft blows on the little bronze bell hanging by the awning-spar over the binnacle. Six o'clock. And the young Jew, in a huge apron and a high astrakhan cap he had picked up somewhere, came slowly up the bridge ladder. "Captain," said Mr. Spokesly, making a number of motions to signify knocking at a door and calling somebody out. "Savvy?" The frightened creature, who was quite unable to comprehend the extraordinary phenomenon of the fog on the sea, and who regarded Mr. Spokesly, moreover, as a species of demi-god, raised his remarkable face as though in supplication, and backed down again. It was evident to him that his employer had consigned him to some distant place of torment from which he could never return. Yet even in his timid heart there was hope. Already he had given his allegiance to that beautiful and haughty creature whose cabin it was his trembling joy and pride to put in order. His ears were alert at all times to catch the sharp clapping sound of her hands when she needed him, and then he flew below. She would speak to him in his native tongue, which was Spanish, and ravish his soul with words he could understand, instead of the terrifying gutturals of those powerful Franks who walked to and fro on the top of the tower above them and gave incomprehensible commands. "Fear not," she assured him. "When the ship reaches the port, thou shalt go with me as my servant. The lieutenant shall give thee money as wages when he is my husband." "Merciful Madama, what port? Whither do we go? Is it beyond the clouds?"