"Mr. Bridge," she said, holding up her father's sextant, "will you please point out to me the Magellan Clouds and the Coal Sacks?" "Why, certainly," said Bridge, all his shyness vanishing. "Come around to the lee quarter, Miss Munson. I've noticed you before with the sextant. Studying navigation?" "Yes, as I can. Father has tutored me, and I've got as far as meridian observations and chronometer time; but I want to go farther, and father is a bad teacher. He's somewhat cross, and, Mr. Bridge, do you know I think I'm going beyond him!" She smiled a little roguishly. "That ought to be easy," answered Bridge. "You are young, with a fresh mind. It is hard for men to study." "But so easy to do other things--to command ships, to fight, to shoot, to ride horses, to swim. I'm a swimmer, though it took me years to learn. I swam a mile once." "You can beat me," answered Bridge simply. "I cannot swim at all." "I am ambitious," she said, "to do what men do. My present fad is navigation. I shall never be satisfied until I have an ocean license." "It is a great force in you, Miss Munson," said Bridge earnestly. "It is rare in women; but men feel it now and then. It gripped me seven years ago, and lifted me from the forecastle to the cabin. Do you remember?" "What?" she asked. "The man on lookout in the _Umbria_, on the night you came forward, when you thought I had called to you? Remember, it was foggy, and your father came after you." "Was that you?" she asked. "Oh, now I understand. Oh, Mr. Bridge! No, I don't understand. I thought I knew you then, and I have thought since I came aboard that I knew you, that I had met you somewhere; but father--" "Never mind, Miss Munson. These things are inexplicable. I thought, as the years went on, that it was a certain, curious sort of praise of myself, from an old lady I saw with your father that day, when I was aft scrubbing paintwork." "My grandmother. She died last year." "I thought it was her good opinion of me," went on Bridge earnestly; "but now I know it was your visit on the forecastle. Miss Munson, you were then the exact duplicate of a little girl who died at thirteen--a little girl that I worshipped as one of God's angels, and who went to the angels. Her name was Zenie. I have read of reincarnation. I wonder if it is possible that her soul returned--in you." The girl stiffened and drew back, while her eyes opened in the old wonder of the night on the forecastle. Bridge, looking forward, went on gravely: