Breakfast followed, a merry, easy meal, lasting about an hour and a half, after which I would sail the _Scandal_ round to the farther anchorage; while my guest, in the teeth of all polite convention, cheerfully washed up the cups and plates. Then came the great event of the day, our race round the island for the Kerrin Cup. This trophy had been presented by Astarte herself on the morning after my arrival. She had brought it over to breakfast with her--a painful atrocity in green and white and gold, bearing a purple label announcing that it was "A present from Strathpeffer." "We must have a prize, you see," she had explained; "and I've been wanting to get rid of this ever since I stole it." "It's hardly an inducement to pulling out one's best sailing," I objected, eyeing it with a slight shudder. All the same, we most decidedly did pull out our best sailing; and the Kerrin Cup changed hands with spirited frequency. Astarte won it the first day, I wrested it from her on the second, only, however, to lose it finally and for good on the last morning. She sailed her little three-tonner with wonderful skill and daring; and, seasoned as I am at handling small boats, I found I was up against an opponent whose education was every bit as complete as my own. It was all very jolly, but I think the evenings were the best part. We always had supper outside the hut, to which I had transferred about half the contents of my hamper. With the aid of these and Astarte's dazzling skill with the "Primus," we used to fare as sumptuously as Dives, and I warrant with much better appetite than that hardly treated capitalist. And when supper was over, and the things washed up, we would lie round the wood fire that we always made and discuss the morning's race, and sailing generally, and any other pleasing topic that happened to roll up. And later on, when we had exchanged enough wisdom, we used to sing songs to each other, accompanying ourselves on the banjo which a thoughtful Providence had inspired me to ship on board the _Scandal_. My own repertoire is confined to strenuous efforts such as _Rolling Down to Rio_ and _Drake's Drum_. But Astarte had a charming voice--a deep, sorrowful contralto--and she used to sing sad little songs about love and death, which always seem to me the two best things to make music out of. Besides, they were in such delightful contrast to her own splendid joy in life. It was only on the night before she went away that I found out how fond I was of her. She was lying on the grass, her chin in her hand, and her grey eyes staring thoughtfully into the fire, as she listened to my description of some impossible place in the ends of the earth which I had once visited. Anything about the ends of the earth seemed to appeal to her with peculiar force.