"Oh, only four or five probably," laughed her father, "and even those usually are scattered twenty-five or fifty miles apart. Oh, of course, now and then," he admitted in all honesty, "some gay Northern houseboat comes floating by. But mostly--somehow, all that part of the land, or rather of the water, seems inhabited by people who have made mistakes--made real mistakes, I mean--argued not wisely but too well with their mothers-in-law, or overdrawn their bank accounts with the butt of a pistol rather than with the point of a pen, or had a bit of 'rough play' somewhere upstate with an over-sensitive sheriff. We're going to have, for instance, a 'Lost Man' for a cook. Nice distinguished looking old city-spoken derelict who can't remember who he is, so most happily for him he can't remember what _his_ mistake was. And on the next key just below us, twenty miles or so, there's an outlaw who killed two revenue officers 'up North in Alabama' [103] somewhere. And inland just behind us there's a rather good-looking woman who's gone batty on the subject of red. Can't bear red, it seems, and has come down there to wallow her nerves in the all-green jungle." Big and dark and blue, Daphne widened her eyes to her father's. "You're not fooling _any_, Old-Dad?" she asked. "Not fooling any," said her father. Blackly for an instant the heavy lashes shadowed down across the delicately tinted cheeks. Then quite abruptly a real smile flashed from eyes to lips. "Oh, Old-Dad!" cried Daphne. "_Would_ you mind if I touched your--beautiful hair?" "Oh, shucks!" dodged her father. But Daphne's little hands had already reached their goal. "Oh, Old-Dad--how soft!" she gloated. "How white! How _thick_! But, oh goodness--isn't it _hot_?" "On the contrary," smiled her father with a slightly twisted eyebrow. "On the contrary--it is an Ice Cap prescribed by Fate for [104] what has doubtless been an over-feverish youth." Solemnly for an instant Daphne considered the answer. "Which being interpreted?" she questioned. With a little sharp catch of his breath her father caught her suddenly back to his breast. "Which being interpreted," he laughed, "means: 'Didn't want to be a freak, Had no hunch to sing or speak, Couldn't be clever if he tried, So have it dyed! _Oh_, have it dyed!----'" [105] PART II [106] I [107] "EVERY man, once in his lifetime," gloated Jaffrey Bretton, "has craved the adventurous experience of being marooned on a coral island with a beautiful lady!" From eyes that brooded only too soberly on the bright tropic scene all around her, Daphne shot back a faintly amused and frankly deprecatory smile. "Oh, of course I meant an unrelated 'beautiful lady,'" murmured her father. As swiftly as it had come the faint smile vanished again. Shrugging the hot salt and sand from his blue-jersied shoulders her father gathered his bare brown knees into the curve of his bare brown arms and surveyed her suddenly with a most ferocious frown.