“That’s what I said to Adams, or words to that effect. But I thought we should get it from the look of the sky before I proposed to whistle for it. Now, then,” he continued, “I will be serious, if you like.” “Serious?” “Yes. Didn’t you ask me to be serious just before those seals interrupted you?” “Oh!” she exclaimed, coloring a little. “I don’t think we can go back to that, now.” He did not insist, and she said presently, “I thought the sailors had a superstition about ships that are lucky and unlucky. But you’ve kept your boat.” “I kept her for luck: the lightning never strikes twice in the same place. And I never saw a boat that behaved so well.” “Do you call it behaving well to tip over?” “She behaved well before that. She didn’t tip over outside the reef” “It certainly goes very smoothly,” said the girl. She had in vain recurred to the tragic motive of her coming; she could not revive it; there had been nothing like expiation in this eventless voyage; it had been a pleasure and no penance. She abandoned herself with a weak luxury to the respite from suffering and anxiety; she made herself the good comrade of the young man whom perhaps she even tempted to flatter her farther and farther out of the dreariness in which she had dwelt; and if any woful current of feeling swept beneath, she would not fathom it, but resolutely floated, as one may at such times, on the surface. They laughed together and jested; they talked in the gay idleness of such rare moods. They passed a yacht at anchor, and a young fellow in a white duck cap, leaning over the rail, saluted Libby with the significant gravity which one young man uses towards another whom he sees in a sail-boat with a pretty girl. She laughed at this. “Do you know your friend?” she asked. “Yes. This time I do?” “He fancies you are taking some young lady a sail. What would he say if you were to stop and introduce me to him as Dr. Breen?” “Oh, he knows who you are. It’s Johnson.” “The one whose clothes you came over in, that morning?” “Yes. I suppose you laughed at me.” “I liked your having the courage to do it. But how does he know me?” “I—I described you. He’s rather an old friend.” This also amused her. “I should like to hear how you described me.” “I will tell you sometime. It was an elaborate description. I couldn’t get through with it now before we landed.” The old town had come out of the haze of the distance,—a straggling village of weather-beaten wood and weather-beaten white paint, picturesque, but no longer a vision of gray stone and pale marble. A coal-yard, and a brick locomotive house, and rambling railroad sheds stretched along the water-front. They found their way easily enough through the sparse shipping to the steps at the end of the wooden pier, where Libby dropped the sail and made his boat fast.