It was he who balanced her to every wind, meeting all weathers with different cuts of cloth. Having only a distant familiarity with his fellow-officers and not even a speaking acquaintance with the crew, McArliss made her sing her racing song night and day down into the lower latitudes, until one played with the suspicion that he managed the weather, too,--with that same nervous, effective energy. It was all tremendously satisfying to Bellair. He had reacted on the last reaction, and was healed throughout. Worldliness was lost from his mental pictures of Bessie; daily she became more as he wanted her to be. Lot & Company had lost its upstanding and formidable black--was far-off now and dimly pitiable. He had not cared what was ahead; it had been the _Jade_ and the voyage that had called him, but now the Islands and all that watery universe of the Southern Pacific were in prospect, to explore and make his own. Perhaps men were younger there; trade less old and ramified; perhaps they would bring him the new magic of life--so that he could live with zest and be himself.... Always at this part of the dream he would think of Bessie again. She was the cord not yet detached. Sooner or later, he must go back to her. At times he thought that he could not bear to remain very long; sometimes even watching this endless passage of days with strange concern.... But there was a short cut home--straight up the Pacific to San Francisco--and four days across.... Fleury and the Faraway woman had their increasingly fine part in his life. The preacher was always finding some new star, or bidding adieu to some northern constellation. They had chosen the passage through the Straits because of the settled weather. At least, they called it fair-going--wild and rugged though it was, with huge masses of torn cloud, black or grey-black, hurtling past, often as low as the masthead, and all life managed at sick angles. The _Jade_ bowed often and met the screaming blasts with her poles strangely bare, except, perhaps, for a few feet of extra-heavy canvas straining at the mizzen weather-rig.... Stackhouse nudged him one night and a laugh gurgled up from his chest as he pointed forward where McArliss stood in the waist lighting a cigarette. “He will not sleep to-night. He will come to me--and you will never hear such talk as from this silent man. He will look for gompany to-night. One must be bolite.”