"I'm going to cry," said the young lady, with conviction, "all the way over." "You'll be a cheerful little shipmate!" "Don't you concern yourself about that," she retorted. "After the pilot leaves, you needn't have me on your mind at all." "Thank you. Well, suppose you join me over in yonder secluded corner of the deck in about two hours. Is there anybody on board that knows you?" "How do I know? There might be." "Then stay out of the way, and keep muffled up as you are now. Your own mother wouldn't recognize you through that veil. In fact I don't suppose I'd know you myself, but for your voice." "Oh, I don't always whisper. But if I try to talk out loud my throat gets funny and I want to c-c-cry--" "Quit it! Stop. Brace up, now. We'll bluff the thing through somehow. Just leave it to me and don't worry." "And now," queried the Tyro of himself, as he watched the forlorn little figure out of sight, "what have I let myself in for this time?" With a view to gathering information about the functions, habits, and capacities of a pilot-boat, he started down to the office and was seized upon the companionway by a grizzled and sunbaked man of fifty who greeted him joyously. "Sandy! Is it yourself? Well met to you!" "Hello, Dr. Alderson," returned the young man with warmth. "Going over? What luck for me!" "Why? Need a chaperon?" "A cicerone, anyway. It's my first trip, and I don't know a soul aboard." "Oh, you'll know plenty before we're over. A maiden voyager is a sort of pet aboard ship, particularly if he's an unattached youth. My first was thirty years ago. This is my twenty-seventh." "You must know all about ships, then. Tell me about the pilot." "What about him? He's usually a gay old salt who hasn't been out of sight of land for--" "That isn't what I want to know. Does he take people back with him?" "Hello! What's this? Don't want to back out already, do you?" "No. It isn't I." "Somebody want to go back? That's easily arranged." "No. They don't want to go back. Not if they can help it. But could word be got to the pilot to take any one off?" "Oh, yes. If it were sent in time. A telegram to Quarantine would get him, up to an hour or so after we cast off. What's the mystery, Sandy?" "Tell you later. Thanks, ever so much." "I'll have you put at my table," called the other after him, as he descended the broad companionway. So the pilot-boat scheme was feasible, then. If the unknown weeper's father had prompt notice--from the disciple of Terpsichore, for example--he might get word to the pilot and institute a search. Meditating upon the appearance and behavior of the dock-dancer, the Tyro decided that he'd go to any lengths to see the thing through just for the pleasure of frustrating him. "Though what on earth he wants to marry her for, _I_ don't see," he thought. "She ought to marry an undertaker."