"Let us go out and get the steward to arrange our chairs on deck," said Mrs. Daventry. She put Cynthia's outburst down, not to any guess at the true reason of their flight, but to a young girl's moment of emotion. The steamer put into Montevideo, and Santos, and Rio, and glided northward along the woods and white sands of Brazil. It passed one morning into the narrows of the Cape Verde Islands, and there was dressed from stem to stern with flags. Cynthia asked the reason of the first officer, who was leaning beside her on the rail, and for answer he pointed northward to a small black ship which was coming down toward them, and handed to her his binocular. "That's the _Perhaps_, bound for the South," he said; and he saw the girl's face flush red. She put the glasses to her eyes, and gazed for a long while at the boat. The _Perhaps_ was a full-rigged ship, with auxiliary steam, broad in the beam, with strong, rounded bows. She had the trade-wind behind her, and came lumbering down the channel with every sail set upon her yards. "But she's so small," cried Cynthia. "She has to be small," replied the first officer. "Length's no use for her work. Look at us! We should crack like a filbert in the ice-pack. She won't." "But she's out for three years," said Cynthia. "There'll be a relief ship with fresh stores, no doubt. And there are not many of them on board, twenty-nine all told." Cynthia looked again, and held the glasses to her eyes until the boats drew level. She could make out small figures upon the bridge and deck; she saw answering signals break out in answer to their own good wishes; and then the name in new gold letters came out upon the black stern beneath the counter. "Thank you," she said as she handed back the glasses. But her eyes were still fixed upon that full-rigged ship lumbering heavily to the unknown South. "I am very glad to have seen the _Perhaps_," she said slowly. The first officer looked at her curiously. There was a quiver of emotion in her voice. "Perhaps you have friends on board," he said. "If you have, I envy them." "No," she said slowly. "I know no one on board. But I am glad to have seen the ship, for I was interested in it in a part of my life which is now over." The first officer was about to smile. Here was a remarkably pretty girl of seventeen or so, talking about a part of her life which was over! But the big, dark-blue eyes swept round and rested gravely on his face, and he bowed to her with a fitting solemnity. Cynthia exaggerated, no doubt, taking herself seriously as young girls will. But the shock of that last night in the estancia had wrought a revolution in her thoughts. Though James Challoner no longer seemed to grip her hand, she walked in the chill shadow of his presence. Nor did that shadow quite lift even when she had landed in England.