"Very well," answered Wood, always obliging. Captain Bell raised his fat, throaty voice. "Away ... dinghy..." he called to the quartermaster on duty. CHAPTER II While Captain Bell, Cécile, and Huntington Wood were idly discussing the manœuvres of the Pilot-fish, and different members of the crew were engaged in settling their bets, there was one person aboard the schooner who was taking measures to put an end to the peculiar devotion of Mr. Harold Applebo, poet. In her roomy cabin below, Miss Hermione Bell had heard the exclamations which announced the sighting of the Pilot-fish. The port-hole over her bunk commanded a view of the harbour-mouth, and resting on brackets overhead was a big, battered old-fashioned telescope. Hermione threw down her book, reached up for the glass, and took a dead rest on the brass rim of the port-hole, when the _Daffodil_ sprang to meet her vision, swimming unsteadily in the vivid reflection of the sun. Once the yawl was clear of the glare, Hermione was able to examine her in detail. The first object to catch her eye was a figure squatting in a toad-like way up forward, and which, even as she looked, scrambled upright, as though in obedience to an order, and began to clear the anchor. Hermione observed that the man's body was disproportionately wide for its height, that his head resembled a deck-swab, and that the legs were very bowed. "The Finn..." she muttered. "What a brute! He looks like a sea-spider." Passing from the Finn, she tried to distinguish the figure at the wheel, but all that was visible above the high coaming was a mop of reddish-yellow hair and one big, bare shoulder. As though conscious that he were under scrutiny, Applebo kept his face persistently turned away, and Hermione had learned by experience that when he was presently forced to go about, he would shift himself to the other side of the cockpit, keeping his back to the _Shark_. The wheel of the yawl was placed very low and almost hidden by the high coaming. "Hang him!" Hermione burst out, and closed the telescope with a vicious snap.