Mr. Dodge, the self-confident, the experienced, the ubiquitous, was first to "show up." The outer reefs of the California coast do not tend toward placidity. Even Dodge did not care to count the hours since he had begun to feel "sleepy" and had sought his cabin. Mr. Todd next met the sun. To be more accurate, it was a fog, where only a small bright spot, rubbed as in the centre of a tarnished tray, indicated our chief luminary. Todd's cap was pulled very low, his ulster collar very high. His hands disappeared utterly into large pockets. He walked with the jerky directness of a marionette toward the smoking-room. On the third day, when the sun actually shone and the pewter sky was undergoing a gradual transformation into blue enamel, Mr. Todd was able to sit on deck,--he still remained noticeably near the smoking-room,--and to enjoy unprintable yarns from fellow-smokers. Missionary children began to gambol around the promenade deck, and over the feet of swathed and flaccid mortals, lately exhumed, all with the blinking regard of insects suddenly disclosed beneath a garden stone. Dodge, for a wonder, was not in sight. Mr. Todd had his back toward the main-deck exit from the salon, when one of the group about him thumped a knee, stared up, crying, "By G--, look at that!" and called loudly upon his Maker to witness that the sight was fair. Out to the deck had blown a golden apparition,--a tall, slim girl with yellow hair crushed under a wide and most unsailor-like hat of yellow sea-poppies. Her skirts and the rest of her were silken browns and yellows. She made straight for the group, rustling like a small eddy in a heap of autumn-leaves. Todd turned a few inches. At the expression on his face a third convive nudged the speaker. "Oh, er--beg ten thousand pardons--didn't have an idea--" mumbled the crimson one. "Neither did I," said Todd, enigmatically, as he rose. "Oh, dearest of dads," they heard a fresh voice cry. "Now isn't this a world with the top off? I feel like a bunk caterpillar turned into a butterfly." Pierre followed his three emancipated comrades, immediately after "tiffin," as the midday meal hereafter must be called. He was, as usual, immaculate in attire, but bore an air of citric melancholy. Next arose, in all her might, Mrs. Cyrus Carton Todd. In her aggressive costume of starched piqué, fortified by gold lorgnettes and an air carefully adapted from certain acknowledged "grandes dames" of Washington, she took immediate possession of the Captain, the best deck chair, and the passenger list. As wife of a senator and lady of the new American minister to Japan, she was accepted at once, without demur, reigning Empress of the voyage. Sportive infants, oblivious of comfortably extended limbs of lesser mortals, skirted those of Mrs. Todd. Silent Chinese "boys," dispensing beef-tea and gruel, swung pigtails aside from her austere garments. Of the party Yuki alone now abode in the mysterious seclusion of her stateroom.