She gave a glance at one of the quarter-boats, an eighteen-foot gig fitted with a centre-board. "'Fraid it can't be done," remarked Peter, with a laugh. "Stopping vessels in mid-ocean for the purpose of giving lady passengers a spin in one of the boats isn't usual. Might work it when we arrive at Bulonga. You're fond of sailing, I notice." "I love it," declared the girl enthusiastically. "Do you?" "Yes, rather," agreed Peter; "so long as there's not too much of it." "There never could be too much as far as I am concerned," protested Olive. "What do you mean by too much?" "Well, for instance, a two-hundred mile run in a boat of about that size," replied the Wireless Officer, indicating the centre-board gig. "I tried that sort of thing once, but the boat never reached her destination." "Tell me about it," commanded Miss Baird. "Were you single-handed?" "No," replied Peter. "There were three fellows and a girl. We got wrecked." For nearly three-quarters of an hour Olive listened intently to Mostyn's account of the escape from the pirate island in the North Pacific; the narrator with his natural modesty touching but lightly upon his share of the desperate enterprise. "And where is the girl now?" inquired Olive. "She married my chum Burgoyne," replied Peter. "I had a letter from him when we were at Cape Town. Burgoyne is a jolly lucky fellow." "We had a sailing-boat of our own once," said Olive, her mind going back to those far-off days before she had a stepmother to make things unpleasant for her. "I used to sail quite a lot on the Tamar when we lived at Saltash." "Bless my soul!" exclaimed Peter to himself. "I felt certain I'd seen her before, but I couldn't for the life of me say where." For a few moments he remained silent, making a mental calculation. "Was it in 1913?" he inquired. "Didn't you have a bright, varnished boat with a teak topstrake and a red standing lugsail? And you were about eight or nine then. You used to have your hair bobbed, and wore a white jersey and a scarlet stocking cap?" "However did you know that?" asked Olive in astonishment. "Because we had a yacht moored just above the red powder hulks. My father held an appointment at Keyham Dockyard, you see; and whenever he had a home billet he kept a yacht or boat of some sort. Sailing was his favourite pastime." But Olive was paying scant heed to the description of Mostyn _pere_ as set forth by Mostyn _fils_. Her thoughts too were flying back to those halcyon days before the war. "I believe I remember you," she said at length. "Weren't you on board a white yawl of about six tons, with a green boot-top and rather a high cabin top?" "That was the _Spindrift_, my pater's yacht," declared Peter. "And----"