We both laughed, and then went seriously to work constructing the plan whereby we were to step the masts of the _Ghost_ and return to the world. I remembered hazily the physics of my school days, while the last few months had given me practical experience with mechanical purchases. I must say, though, when we walked down to the _Ghost_ to inspect more closely the task before us, that the sight of the great masts lying in the water almost disheartened me. Where were we to begin? If there had been one mast standing, something high up to which to fasten blocks and tackles! But there was nothing. It reminded me of the problem of lifting oneself by one’s boot-straps. I understood the mechanics of levers; but where was I to get a fulcrum? There was the mainmast, fifteen inches in diameter at what was now the butt, still sixty-five feet in length, and weighing, I roughly calculated, at least three thousand pounds. And then came the foremast, larger in diameter, and weighing surely thirty-five hundred pounds. Where was I to begin? Maud stood silently by my side, while I evolved in my mind the contrivance known among sailors as “shears.” But, though known to sailors, I invented it there on Endeavour Island. By crossing and lashing the ends of two spars, and then elevating them in the air like an inverted “V,” I could get a point above the deck to which to make fast my hoisting tackle. To this hoisting tackle I could, if necessary, attach a second hoisting tackle. And then there was the windlass! Maud saw that I had achieved a solution, and her eyes warmed sympathetically. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Clear that raffle,” I answered, pointing to the tangled wreckage overside. Ah, the decisiveness, the very sound of the words, was good in my ears. “Clear that raffle!” Imagine so salty a phrase on the lips of the Humphrey Van Weyden of a few months gone! There must have been a touch of the melodramatic in my pose and voice, for Maud smiled. Her appreciation of the ridiculous was keen, and in all things she unerringly saw and felt, where it existed, the touch of sham, the overshading, the overtone. It was this which had given poise and penetration to her own work and made her of worth to the world. The serious critic, with the sense of humour and the power of expression, must inevitably command the world’s ear. And so it was that she had commanded. Her sense of humour was really the artist’s instinct for proportion. “I’m sure I’ve heard it before, somewhere, in books,” she murmured gleefully. I had an instinct for proportion myself, and I collapsed forthwith, descending from the dominant pose of a master of matter to a state of humble confusion which was, to say the least, very miserable. Her hand leapt out at once to mine. “I’m so sorry,” she said.