Upon a rock, not fifty feet from her, his back half turned as he poised to dive, there stood a man. A white man, for all the skin of his whole body was golden-brown from long exposure to the open air.... He poised there like some wood god.... Faith had a strange feeling that she had blundered into a secret temple of the woods; that this was the temple's deity. She smiled faintly at her own fancy; smiled.... God has made nothing more beautiful than the human body, whether it be man's or woman's. Faith thought, in the instant that she watched, that this bronzed man of the woods was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.... She had no sense of shame in watching him; she had only joy in the sheer beauty of him, golden-brown against the green. And when, even as she first saw him, he leaped and swung, smooth and straight, high through the air, and turned with arms like arrows to pierce the bosom of the pool, she gasped a little, as one gasps on coming suddenly out upon a mountain top, with the world outspread below.... Then he was gone, with scarce a sound.... She saw for an instant the golden flash of him in the pool's depths.... His brown head broke the water, far across the way.... And he shook back his hair, and passed his hands across his face to clear his eyes.... His eyes opened.... His eyes opened, and he saw her standing there.... There were seconds on end that they remained thus, each held by the other's gaze. Faith could not, for her life, have stirred. The spell of the place was upon her. The man, for all his astonishment, was the first to find his tongue. He called softly across the water: "Good morning, woman...." His voice was so gentle, and at the same time so gay, that Faith was not alarmed. She smiled.... "It's after noon," she said. "Good afternoon--man!" VIII When Faith answered him, the man's face broke in smiles; he told her laughingly: "If you're so familiar with the habits of the sun, you must be a real woman, and not a dream at all.... I'm awake.... I am, am I not?" "I should think you would be," said Faith. "That water must be cold enough to wake any one...." He shook his head. "No, indeed. Just pleasantly cool. Dip your hand in it...." Something led her to obey him; she bent by the pool's sandy brink and dabbled her fingers, while the man, a hundred feet away at the very foot of the waterfall, held his place with the effortless ease of an accustomed swimmer, and watched her. "Wasn't I right?" he challenged. She nodded. "It's delicious...." He said quickly: "You being here means that a ship is in, of course." "Yes." "What ship?" "The _Sally Sims_--whaler...." "The _Sally_! I know the _Sally_," the man cried. "Is Noll Wing still captain?..." "Of course." His eyes were thoughtful. "I'm in luck, woman," he said. "Listen. Will you do a thing for me?" "What do you want me to do?"