They had crossed the Line. The night was windless hot--almost suffocating below. Bellair gave it up, a little after midnight, and went on deck, moving forward out of the smell of paint, for the heat had bubbled the lead on the cabin planking. A few first magnitude stars glinted in the fumy sky. The anchor chains and the big hook itself made a radiator not to be endured--better the smell of paint than that. Captain McArliss moved past with a cigar and suggested jerkily that a hammock was swung aft by the binnacle. Bellair thanked him and went there, but did not lie down. Close to the rail he could smell the deep and it refreshed him. Left alone in this hard-won ease, his thoughts turned back to New York. ... It was like a ghost at the companionway--a faint grey luminosity. She came toward him without a sound, the child in her arms. Something of the strangeness prevented him speaking until she was near, and then he spoke softly in fear lest she be frightened: “It is I, Bellair----” If she were startled, she did not let him know. He offered the deckchair he had occupied, or the hammock, as she chose. “I would not have disturbed you,” she said. “I think it is cooler close to the rail,” he suggested. “The little one is very brave. Is he awake?” “Yes----” “I don’t know why I said ‘he,’--the fact is, I didn’t know,” he laughed. “You were right,” she answered, sitting down. “He seems to have so much to study and contemplate. It passes the time for him, and then he is very well and he likes the sea.” “He has been to sea before?” “Yes, we came up from Auckland on a steamer when he was _ver-ee_ little, but he liked it, and did so well. It was harder for him in New York, although he didn’t complain----” Bellair laughed. “Now that I have taken your seat--won’t you get another?” she asked. “Or the hammock?” “If you don’t mind I should be very glad to get another chair----” Bellair found himself hurrying to the waist, for there was always a lesser seat by the great cane throne.... He could not see her face in that utter night, but sometimes when he had forgotten for a moment, there seemed the faintest grey haze about her face and shoulders, but never when he looked sharply; and the curve of her back as her body fitted to the child in her lap, hushed him queerly within, so that he listened to his own commonplace words, as one would hear the remarks of another. “Do you suppose he would come to me?” the man asked. “I think he would be very glad,” she said.