He had reached in his own way, the exact point that Fleury had set out with. He was determined to act. He had ceased to talk.... Just then looking up from his laughing reverie, he saw a star. It was ahead, not high, very brilliant and golden. It had only escaped a moment between the flying black figures of the night, but more brilliant for that. It was vast and familiar--the meaning tried the throat and struck at his heart with strange suffering.... Yes, the _Suwarrow_ was lifting the southern stars. There could be no doubt. He had looked at that mighty sun too often from the open boat to mistake. Fleury had said if it were as near to earth as our sun, this little planet would be dried to a cinder in ten seconds. It was the great golden ball, _Canopus_.... A hand was placed softly in his. Bellair was startled. He had been far away, yet the gladness was instant, as he turned down to the face of Davy Acton. “She’s better,” the boy said. “I’ve been trying to get her to come up on deck. She told me to ask you, if you thought it best.” “Sure, Davy--I’ll go with you to get her.” 2 He had seen very little of Mrs. Acton during the voyage. Sailing was not her feat, but the lady was winsome after her fast. Bellair had found her very brave, and there had not been such an opportunity to tell her so, as this night. He wanted enough light to see her face, and enough air to keep her above any qualm. They found a cane-table, on the lee-side, toward America, the light of a cabin passage upon it. Bellair ordered an innocuous drink for Davy and himself, and whispered along a pint of champagne, having heard it spoken well of as an antidote for those emerging from the sickness of the sea. “... It’s a little charged, cidery sort of a drink--just made for people convalescent from the first days out of ’Frisco,” he said. She drank with serene confidence, and leaned back to regard the glass and the two. “It’s not unlike a wine I drank long ago,” she observed, and her eyes warmed with the memory. “A wine?” he said. “Just so, but it’s no crutch for the poor, I should say, by the way it comes----” She pointed to the service-tub, which, unfortunately, was of silver. “They like to keep it cold,” Bellair suggested. “It would need ice to keep that cold,” she replied. There was a lyrical lilt to her words that he had not known before; in fact he hadn’t quite known Mrs. Acton before. She was lifted from the stratum of the submerged. She had her hands, her health, and the days now and ahead were novel in aspect. A little seasickness was nothing to one who had met the City, and for years prevented it from taking her boy. The heart for adventure was not dead within her.... In fact, Bellair, surveying the little plump white creature in new black, with a sparkle in her eye, her hand upon the thin stem of a glass, entered upon a pleasant passage.