“And this is the young woman who is guilty of the delay,” he concluded my introduction to his daughter. “Margaret, this is Mr. Pathurst.” Her gloved hand promptly emerged from the fox-skins to meet mine, and I found myself looking into a pair of gray eyes bent steadily and gravely upon me. It was discomfiting, that cool, penetrating, searching gaze. It was not that it was challenging, but that it was so insolently business-like. It was much in the very way one would look at a new coachman he was about to engage. I did not know then that she was to go on the voyage, and that her curiosity about the man who was to be a fellow-passenger for half a year was therefore only natural. Immediately she realized what she was doing, and her lips and eyes smiled as she spoke. As we moved on to enter the tug’s cabin I heard Possum’s shivering whimper rising to a screech, and went forward to tell Wada to take the creature in out of the cold. I found him hovering about my luggage, wedging my dressing-case securely upright by means of my little automatic rifle. I was startled by the mountain of luggage around which mine was no more than a fringe. Ship’s stores, was my first thought, until I noted the number of trunks, boxes, suit-cases, and parcels and bundles of all sorts. The initials on what looked suspiciously like a woman’s hat trunk caught my eye—“M.W.” Yet Captain West’s first name was Nathaniel. On closer investigation I did find several “N.W’s.” but everywhere I could see “M.W’s.” Then I remembered that he had called her Margaret. I was too angry to return to the cabin, and paced up and down the cold deck biting my lips with vexation. I had so expressly stipulated with the agents that no captain’s wife was to come along. The last thing under the sun I desired in the pet quarters of a ship was a woman. But I had never thought about a captain’s daughter. For two cents I was ready to throw the voyage over and return on the tug to Baltimore. By the time the wind caused by our speed had chilled me bitterly, I noticed Miss West coming along the narrow deck, and could not avoid being struck by the spring and vitality of her walk. Her face, despite its firm moulding, had a suggestion of fragility that was belied by the robustness of her body. At least, one would argue that her body must be robust from her fashion of movement of it, though little could one divine the lines of it under the shapelessness of the furs. I turned away on my heel and fell moodily to contemplating the mountain of luggage. A huge packing-case attracted my attention, and I was staring at it when she spoke at my shoulder. “That’s what really caused the delay,” she said. “What is it?” I asked incuriously. “Why, the _Elsinore’s_ piano, all renovated. When I made up my mind to come, I telegraphed Mr. Pike—he’s the mate, you know. He did his best. It was the fault of the piano house. And while we waited to-day I gave them a piece of my mind they’ll not forget in a hurry.”