“I must show you the whole of that letter,” he cried, “and the others which are tied up in the same bundle. You will see me blush, I admit, but it will not be from a sense of perfidy. But there is one thing you have forgotten, Elsie—” and his voice dropped to a tense whisper again—“In telling me your secret, which is no secret, you have given me my answer. Your heart must have crept out a little way to meet mine, dear, or my sister’s words would not have perplexed you. So that is why you have avoided me during the past few days! But there! Now, indeed, I am not acting quite fairly. It is unfair to ask you to confess when I want you to wait until we win clear of our present difficulties before you decide whether or not you can find it to your liking to make a poor sailor-man happy.” Joey was a highly accommodating dog under certain conditions. He had curled up so complacently that Elsie found she could hold him quite easily with one arm. So the other went out in the darkness until it rested timidly on her lover’s disengaged shoulder. “It is easy to confess that which is already known,” she murmured. “Whether we are fated to live one day or fifty years, it will be all the same to me, dear.” She lifted her face again to his, and would have returned the kisses he gave her were it not that they lost their one-sided character this time. It was an odd place for love-making, this darkened nook on the deck of a disabled and beleaguered ship. But a man and a woman reck little of time or locality when the call of love’s spring-time sounds in their ears. That magic summons can be heard but once, and it is well with the world, for those two at least, while its ecstasy floods the soul. There was a chance that Joey might have been partly suffocated—though, to all appearance, he meant to die a willing martyr—had not Suarez leaned over the upper rail, and asked, in his grating accents, if he heard the señor captain’s voice below. Elsie, all tremulous and rosy, and profoundly thankful for the darkness, withdrew herself from Courtenay’s embrace and answered the Argentine. “Ah,” said Suarez, “I am glad you are there too, señorita. Will you tell him that I am very hungry, and that I have not been relieved at the proper time. I have been waiting half an hour or more.” “There!” cried the captain, squeezing Elsie’s arm, “that comes of using so many unnecessary explanations. I ought to have adopted the recognized Jack Tar method and just grabbed you round the waist without ceremony. I wonder where Boyle is. He and Christobal take the first watch, and it must be two bells, or later. I will hunt them up. Good-by, sweetheart. Meet you at supper in ten minutes.”