"Huh...!" growled Bell. "I can't take a fool bet like that! It's not within the bounds of nautical possibility that a little tub like that should have overhauled us through that head chop! Then that nor'wester was just our meat! All we could pack under our four lowers. What's the matter with you?" "All right," said Hermione, coolly; "then take me on at odds." "I'll give you ten to one ... just to teach you a lesson!" snapped her father. "Done with you. Ten dollars to a hundred...." And Hermione made a note of the bet, and compelled her father to sign it, he muttering deep-sea blessings. Wherefore one may picture the scene which followed when, at about four of a lovely August afternoon, the _Shark_ came bowling into the little harbour of Marblehead to find the _Daffodil_ lying serenely at anchor off the Yacht Club. For an instant Bell was deprived of speech, through sheer astonishment, not unmixed with awe. When they had last sighted the yawl off Cape Charles, she had still sixty miles to do against a strong tide before ever she fetched Old Point. By that time the tide would have begun to flow again, so that by the time that Applebo had learned their next port, and taken the water and stores of which he must have been in need after more than a week at sea, he would have had another thirty miles of head wind and tide, or a six-hour delay. Thereafter was to be considered the easterly blow ... the thing was obviously impossible! Then, like a flash, came the true solution. Bell slapped his fat thigh and let out a roar like a bull cachalot. "That's it, by the jumpin' John Rogers! The scoundrel sneaked up inside!" "Of course he did!" cried Hermione. "Why the dickens wouldn't he? That's the reason I made my bet!" "Huh ... h'm ... hough...!" Bell went off like a badly-made firework. "And you have the nerve to expect me to pay a bet like that? When he tows behind a jackass for miles! Why not load his brute of a yawl on a flat-car and be done with it! I won't pay!" [Illustration: "And you have the nerve to expect me to pay a bet like that?"] "Yes, you will, old boy!" said Hermione. "We bet on his being here; not on how he came!" The others sided with her. Bell appealed to Wood, counting on support from a son-in-law elect. "You are stung," said that young man. "All that you have got to do now is to pay up." Which Bell did, lamenting piteously. "To-morrow," said he, "I must run into Boston to see the lawyers. The day after that we make a run for Bermuda ... or St. Paul, or Tristan d'Acunha ... I don't care where. But I'll lose that yaller-crested gillyflower if I have to lead him through the Northwest Passage!" * * * * * *