"After all..." said Applebo to his barometer, "the old coot was only carried into breaking water by his devotion to Hermione. What he thought, I'm sure I don't know ... nothing very bad, or he would not have left me alive. It was apparently that I had been enticing her from the path of conventional behaviour. Dammit! I wish I knew what he really _did_ think! I'll go to sea and dope it out under way. The narrow environs of this puddle constrict my intellectual flight." He raised his voice, and the Finn came squattering aft. "Get the anchor," said Applebo. "We are going to sea." Twenty minutes later the _Daffodil_ stole wraith-like through the entrance and laid a course across Massachusetts Bay for Cape Cod. The wind was steady, if light, and its direction enabled Applebo to make a broad reach for the Cape. In the middle of the afternoon the fog blew off, while the breeze freshened, hauling steadily to east, then east by south. At dark Applebo sighted the Highlands Light and, soon afterwards, Race Point, and, as the wind was beginning to haul ahead and the general aspect of the weather was unpromising, he decided to run into Provincetown. This he did, dropping anchor in the midst of a fleet of fishermen who were trailing in, one after the other, as the night advanced. At two o'clock in the morning Applebo was awakened by the hum of his main rigging, the hiss of driving rain, and the short, angry slapping of little waves against the bow of the yawl. "Good thing we ran in..." he thought, contentedly, and went to sleep again. Two hours later he was again awakened, this time by a clanking and clattering up forward. "The Finn is giving her the other anchor," he thought. "Must be blowing up...." At seven in the morning, when he awoke, Applebo shoved his tawny head up through the hatch, to find that it was blowing a southeasterly gale. Crowded close on all sides was the fishing fleet, many other vessels having run in for shelter during the night. Fine, staunch schooners they were, with the big spars and sleek lines of yachts. Applebo slipped on his bathing-suit and took a dive overboard, to the unconcealed amusement of the crew of an adjacent smack. Finding himself the target for many witticisms, Applebo decided to shorten the range and swam alongside, when, finding a sea-ladder down, he climbed sleepily aboard and blinked at the jovial crew. "How's fishing?" asked Applebo, hauling his long, wet body over the rail. The men regarded him with that swift yet searching scrutiny peculiar to their kind. Finding him a "college feller" and locating him at once aboard the _Daffodil_, there seemed to be nothing strange in his wandering half-naked through the wind and rain. "Fishin's all right," replied an elderly man, who appeared to be the captain of the vessel, "but the weathure ain't. You off'n the ketch yander?" "Yes. She may not look it, but she is my yacht." The captain gave her a keen, assaying glance.