"The very man!" he cried, jumping up from his basket chair and gripping me warmly by the hand. "I heard you were here, Sir John, and I made sure of seeing you before I started. Now what's all this? Sir Joshua's half out of his mind with worry, the offices are turned upside down, and Seth Pring--confound him!--is as close as an oyster!" I found out that he knew just what Sir Joshua knew, and no more. He was indignant but quite cool, inclined to minimize the whole affair. It seemed to me that to tell him the whole truth would serve no good purpose. Pilot Superintendent Lashmar, whom I was going to send in command of the escort, would, of course, know everything. "Well, I'm sending an escort with you half-way across," I said. "Lashmar will go--you know him?--in No. 1 Patrol Boat. It's heavily armed, and he can shoot straighter than any man in the service. Got his experience in the Great War." "Escort be blowed!" said hearty Captain Swainson. "I can't think what old Pring was about to let himself be held up like that--though, of course, it's just as you wish, Sir John." "I don't suppose there's the least need of it, Swainson. But this business'll make a bit of a noise, and it looks well. Now I'll tell you a secret. I'm engaged to be married! Settled it coming down in the train this morning." "The deuce you are! A thousand congratulations!" "Thanks. What's more, the lady is aboard your ship, and flies to New York with you to-night. I want you to look after her for me." "Can a duck swim? Well, this _is_ news! Now I understand about that escort! But do introduce me, Sir John. It will be more than a pleasure to make the young lady comfortable." We went off to seek Connie, and found her sitting behind one of the multiplex wind-screens on the saloon deck, listening to the music of a piano and violin that came through the open hatch of the palm-court below. I remember that the musicians were playing a selection of old English airs, sweet, plaintive music, and had just got to "The Last Rose of Summer." I'm not emotional, but when I hear that tune to-day--thank goodness, it isn't often!--I go out of the room. At a quarter to nine I stood on the Hoe and watched the _Atlantis_ start for America. Her navigation lights were all turned on; the innumerable port-holes of the huge fusilage made an amber necklace below the immense grey planes.