“There seems to be a singular absence of bonny girrls on board,” replied the Scot, twisting his erect forelock reflectively. “Have you asked the English girl?” suggested a tall, rawboned New Englander. “Which English girrl?” demanded the Scot. “Listen to him--which! Why, that one over there, you owl.” The Scotchman's eyes followed the gesture toward a group of children surrounding a tall girl who stood by the rail on the leeward side. She was facing into the wind toward the smoking-room door. “Eh, mon,” said the Scot, “till now I'd only seen the back of yon young woman,” and he promptly strode down the deck to ask, and receive, the promise of a song. Stefan Byrd, after a silent breakfast eaten late to avoid his table companions, had just come on deck. It had been misty earlier, but now the sun was beginning to break through in sudden glints of brightness. The deck was still damp, however, and the whole prospect seemed to the emerging Stefan cheerless in the extreme. His eyes swept the gray, huddled shapes upon the chairs, the knots of gossiping men, the clumsy, tramping youths, with the same loathing that the whole voyage had hitherto inspired in him. The forelocked Scot, tweed cap in hand, was crossing the deck. “There goes the brute, busy with his infernal concert,” he thought, watching balefully. Then he actually seemed to point, like a dog, limbs fixed, eyes set, his face, with its salient nose, thrust forward. The Scot was speaking to a tall, bareheaded girl, about whom half a dozen nondescript children crowded. She was holding herself against the wind, and from her long, clean limbs her woolen dress was whipped, rippling. The sun had gleamed suddenly, and under the shaft of brightness her hair shone back a golden answer. Her eyes, hardly raised to those of the tall Scotchman, were wide, gray, and level--the eyes of Pallas Athene; her features, too, were goddess-like. One hand upon the bulwarks, she seemed, even as she listened, to be poised for flight, balancing to the sway of the ship. Stefan exhaled a great breath of joy. There was something beautiful upon the ship, after all. He found and lit a cigarette, and squaring his shoulders to the deckhouse wall, leaned back the more comfortably to indulge what he took to be his chief mission--the art of perceiving beauty.