After all, if any questions of priority were to arise, the pretty waitress was _my_ discovery. And in the scientific world it is an inflexible rule that he who first discovers any particular specimen of any species whatever is first entitled to describe and comment upon that specimen without interference or unsolicited advice from anybody. Maybe there was in my eye something that expressed as much. For when Kemper caught my cold gaze fixed upon him he winced and looked away like a reproved setter dog who knew better. Which also, for the moment, put an end to the rather gay and frivolous line of small talk which he had again begun with the pretty waitress. I was exceedingly surprised at Professor William Henry Kemper, D.F. As we approached the campfire the loathsome odour of frying mullet saluted my nostrils. Kemper, glancing at Grue, said aside to me: "That's an odd-looking fellow. What is he? Minorcan?" "Oh, just a beachcomber. I don't know what he is. He strikes me as dirty--though he can't be so, physically. I don't like him and I don't know why. And I wish we'd engaged somebody else to guide us." Toward dawn something awoke me and I sat up in my blanket under the moon. But my leg had not been pulled. Kemper snored at my side. In her little dog-tent the pretty waitress probably was fast asleep. I knew it because the string she had tied to one of her ornamental ankles still lay across the ground convenient to my hand. In any emergency I had only to pull it to awake her. A similar string, tied to my ankle, ran parallel to hers and disappeared under the flap of her tent. This was for her to pull if she liked. She had never yet pulled it. Nor I the other. Nevertheless I truly felt that these humble strings were, in a subtler sense, ties that bound us together. No wonder Kemper's behaviour had slightly irritated me. I looked up at the silver moon; I glanced at Kemper's unlovely bulk, swathed in a blanket; I contemplated the dog-tent with, perhaps, that slight trace of sentiment which a semi-tropical moon is likely to inspire even in a jellyfish. And suddenly I remembered Grue and looked for him. He was accustomed to sleep in his boat, but I did not see him in either of the boats. Here and there were a few lumpy shadows in the moonlight, but none of them was Grue lying prone on the ground. Where the devil had he gone? Cautiously I untied my ankle string, rose in my pajamas, stepped into my slippers, and walked out through the moonlight. There was nothing to hide Grue, no rocks or vegetation except the solitary palm on the back-bone of the reef. I walked as far as the tree and looked up into the arching fronds. Nobody was up there. I could see the moonlit sky through the fronds. Nor was Grue lying asleep anywhere on the other side of the coral ridge.