“Due south now, ladies!” cried Dr. Christobal cheerily. “We have rounded Cape Cardones. We practically follow the seventy-sixth degree until we approach Evangelistas Island. Thus far we are in the open sea. Then we pick our way through the Straits discovered by that daring Portuguese, Fernando de Magallanes, to whose memory I always drink heartily once we are clear of the Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins. I never pass through that gloomy defile without marveling at his courage, and thinking that he deserved a better fate than murder at the hands of some painted savage in the Philippines. Peace be to his ashes!” And the doctor lifted his glass of red wine with a quasi-masonic ritual which lent solemnity to his discourse. “You are a long way ahead of your toast,” said Isobel. “Just as Magellan was ahead of his times,” was the rejoinder. “Yet he was a man of leisurely habit,” put in Elsie, who found Dr. Christobal’s old-world manners full of charm and repose. “How so?” said he, puzzled, for the worthy Portuguese navigator was notoriously a swashbuckler. “Otherwise he never could have christened any unhappy promontory by such a long-winded name,” she explained. “Perhaps he met a contrary wind in that region,” said Christobal, laughing. “Monsieur de Poincilit here, were he in a very bad temper, might exclaim, ‘Mille diables!’ Why should not our excellent Fernando rail against the almost inconceivable fickleness which could be displayed by eleven times as many young ladies?” “I came out last time on the _Orellana_, and I don’t even remember passing such a place,” said Isobel. She was a Chilean born and bred, but she always affected European vagueness as to the topography of South America. Dr. Christobal knew this weakness of hers; he also remembered her beautiful half-caste mother, from whom Isobel inherited her flashing eyes, her purple-red lips, and a skin in which the exquisite flush of terra-cotta on her checks merged into the delicate pallor of forehead and neck. But, being a tactful man, he only answered: “Your English sailors, my dear, who gruffly dubbed the adjacent point ‘Cape Dungeness,’ have shortened Magellan’s mouthful into ‘Cape Virgins.’—Yet, Ursula was a British saint, and her memory ought to be revered, if only because it keeps alive a classic pun.” A born raconteur, he paused. “Go right ahead, doctor,” came a voice from the lower end of the table. “Well, the story runs that Princess Ursula fled from Britain to Rome to escape marriage with a pagan—” “How odd!” interrupted Isobel, and Elsie alone understood the drift of her comment.