Miss Kate O'Neill was seated in a Madeira chair which stood on the floor of a big green surf boat, and the gleaming Krooboys perched on the gunwales paddled with more than their usual industry. The headman, who straddled at the steering oar in the stern, wore a tail-coat of an extremely sporting cut and pattern and a woven grass skullcap in honor of the occasion. And all this pomp and circumstance was uninvited. But somehow people had the knack of offering special service and deference to Miss O'Neill. The only other woman on the _M'poso_, the austere wife of a Benin trader, looked over the steamer's rail in gloomy disapproval. These were no modes for Coast wear. A billowy grass-green muslin dress that no Krooboy laundry-man could wash twice without spoiling; neat, narrow pipe-clayed shoes with no thickness of sole, and ridiculous heels; a pale green felt hat, actually insulted by a feather in its band; and final absurdity of all, a parasol, a flimsy thing of silk, and ribbon, and effervescent chiffon, which would be absolutely ruined by a splash of rain, instead of the big sensible white cotton affair, with the dark green lining, which all ordinary people know is the standard wear on that torrid Coast. "Faugh," said the trader's wife, "and Captain Image says she's one of the smartest business women in the world to-day, and that fat, greedy purser would propose to her in the next five minutes if he thought he'd a cat's chance of being accepted. They think her good-looking, too, I'll be bound, just because she wears those unsuitable clothes, and has pink color in her cheeks. Well, the clothes will be whisps of rag by this day week and"--the poor woman sighed here--"the Coast will get the color and the plumpness out of her face, and make her as lean and yellow as the rest of us in a month." "You're a good, kind man," Miss O'Neill was saying to a very smiling Captain Image, "and I know I did tell the bedroom steward to have my big trunks got up on deck; but, you see, I'm a woman, and therefore it's my prerogative to be able to change my mind without being openly abused for it. So I want you, please, to be very nice and let me stay on the _M'poso_ a little longer."