"Good night!" said Larry and took himself out to the deck hammock he had insisted upon having slung for him, refusing the captain's importunities to use his own cabin. And it was with extremely mixed emotions as to his compliment that I watched him go. Superstitious. I, whose pride was my scientific devotion to fact and fact alone! Superstitious--and this from a man who believed in banshees and ghostly harpers and Irish wood nymphs and no doubt in leprechauns and all their tribe! Half laughing, half irritated, and wholly happy in even the part promise of Larry O'Keefe's comradeship on my venture, I arranged a couple of pillows, stretched myself out on two chairs and took up my vigil beside Olaf Huldricksson. CHAPTER IX A Lost Page of Earth When I awakened the sun was streaming through the cabin porthole. Outside a fresh voice lilted. I lay on my two chairs and listened. The song was one with the wholesome sunshine and the breeze blowing stiffly and whipping the curtains. It was Larry O'Keefe at his matins: The little red lark is shaking his wings, Straight from the breast of his love he springs Larry's voice soared. His wings and his feathers are sunrise red, He hails the sun and his golden head, Good morning, Doc, you are long abed. This last was a most irreverent interpolation, I well knew. I opened my door. O'Keefe stood outside laughing. The Suwarna, her engines silent, was making fine headway under all sail, the Brunhilda skipping in her wake cheerfully with half her canvas up. The sea was crisping and dimpling under the wind. Blue and white was the world as far as the eye could reach. Schools of little silvery green flying fish broke through the water rushing on each side of us; flashed for an instant and were gone. Behind us gulls hovered and dipped. The shadow of mystery had retreated far over the rim of this wide awake and beautiful world and if, subconsciously, I knew that somewhere it was brooding and waiting, for a little while at least I was consciously free of its oppression. "How's the patient?" asked O'Keefe. He was answered by Huldricksson himself, who must have risen just as I left the cabin. The Norseman had slipped on a pair of pajamas and, giant torso naked under the sun, he strode out upon us. We all of us looked at him a trifle anxiously. But Olaf's madness had left him. In his eyes was much sorrow, but the berserk rage was gone. He spoke straight to me: "You said last night we follow?" I nodded. "It is where?" he asked again. "We go first to Ponape and from there to Metalanim Harbour--to the Nan-Matal. You know the place?" Huldricksson bowed--a white gleam as of ice showing in his blue eyes. "It is there?" he asked. "It is there that we must first search," I answered. "Good!" said Olaf Huldricksson. "It is good!" He looked at Da Costa inquiringly and the little Portuguese, following his thought, answered his unspoken question. "We should be at Ponape tomorrow morning early, Olaf."