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know quite all about it: in woolly gloves one cannot control a rope. Even with the usual turn on the cleat, the rope behaved as it did with the Sandy, and flew out with inexorable swiftness, loosening the sail too soon. The large blocks at the clew of the sail waved wildly about, seemingly intent on braining the surprised M'Leod, who was managing the jib.

"Haul it in!" yelled Jack, adding, to steady my nerves, "You'll kill the man in a moment."

But M'Leod had fought as well as dived, and now at this 1 unexpected aerial attack had thrown himself on his face on deck.

the

"Haul!" shouted Jack; but though I hauled with all my til being, the rope slipped in nightmare fashion through my woolly helpless paws. When roused, Jack's voice would drown even the Stock Exchange, far less bring up the nimble Wullie and a scared and almost-hurried Don. The former at once seized the lee foresail sheet, and hauled the block back from its man-slaughtering outbreak, while I thankfully gave up my useless efforts. Humbly and sincerely I apologised to M'Leod; but "Lord bless you, ma'am" he laughed, "I've sailed with ladies before and taught a sight of boys, and I'm not killed yet even by the Boche !"

We anchored about tea-time near the house our future passenger was staying in. They

VOL. CCXVI.—NO. MCCCVIII.

had watched us making our zig-zag approach as we beat into the loch, and were now standing on a little landingstage, waiting for us to go ashore. Jack had not meant to go with me on the errand of picking up Juanita, but as a sort of reception seemed preparing, I thought something more than myself should be received. He groaned and assented, and dutifully went to fetch more presentable shoes than he honoured us with. Unfortunately, M'Leod seemed to have an argument with the anchor-winch just then, and, like all his class, proceeded to get the upper hand of it with a large heavy wrench. At the sound of the blows on its obstinate but defenceless head, Jack leapt on deck with one shoe in his hand and the other on his foot, and ran forward to the rescue of his pet winch. Anything to do with the anchor or the winch invariably produced a good deal of profanity in the old days of complete equality and no crew, but the language on board nowadays would gratify even Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B. So it was with surprise, tinged with awe, that the Don and I heard violent expletives rend the air. The hammering certainly stopped. The kneeling M'Leod was gazing, petrified, at his explosive skipper, who, clasping his unshod foot in his hand, was hopping about the deck, impelled by an agony now too deep even for oaths! The Don was most concerned, and it

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was he, not the sympathetic wife, who ran forward, and inquired intelligently, "Have you hurt yourself, old man! Jack looked at him. He did not answer, "by silence sanctifying, not concealing, the grief that must have sway."

When speech returned, Jack announced he was not going ashore" that blarsted lead for the staysail sheet" had about broken his toe, he thought. So the Don went with me when the dinghy was ready to take us ashore. He was inclined to be a little hurt at Jack's ungrateful reception of his wellmeant sympathy.

"Some sorrows are too deep for words," I reminded him, "and a jammed toe is certainly one of them -you wouldn't really like polite inquiries yourself at such a moment."

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This he would not admit. "I cannot believe that wellmeant inquiries would ever make me angry.”

"Then you are not typically human," was all I could say.

The Don, whether very human or not, is always the little gentleman, and scrambled out of the dinghy, meaning to help me up the steps, left Unfortuslimy by the tide.

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Oh, Mr Stuart ! Are you hurt?" came in sincerely sympathetic inquiry from Juanita.

But answer there came none, and this was scarcely odd, because the Don really is quite human.

Juanita was a very different guest from Miss Keatly of bitter memory, or even from Bridgit: Miss Keatly depreciated everything; Bridgit took most things with cheerful indifference; but Juanita was rapturously and indiscriminatingly enthusiastic. She pleased Jack by admiring our gleaming white paint; then minimised the effect by equally admiring the " delicious unusual shade of our newly varnished wood, which had taken on that 66 delicious" but misplaced bloom that varnish persists in doing

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nately I had tactlessly jumped out ahead of him, while he scrambled, and was already was already if it gets wet while drying! shaking hands at the top. I turned to introduce the Don, who had just arrived, but just as he stepped forward with polite empressement, bent at the angle of his usual little

In spite of hitting her head in every doorway, she extolled the palatial height of our " ceilings "-though lack of headroom is Skeletta's chief defect. Altogether, Juanita was deter

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mined to admire, even though unable to appreciate, her new surroundings, and what can guest do more ?

For her first night we lay at anchor just round the corner, that the inevitable discomforts of boat-life to one unaccustomed to them might be broken to her gently. Wullie's dinner, M'Leod's pipes, and a spectacular sunset did nothing to prepare her for those occasions when all things do not so completely work together for good.

"How romantic and soulsatisfying a life like this is!" Juanita exclaimed throatily as we sat smoking on deck after dinner.

"One does feel rather soulful when well-fed," I admitted; even Jack is looking at the stars as though he saw them."

Jack heard his name, though, as usual, little else.

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"Yes," he said, almost as "soulfully "as Juanita ; that is something like coffee."

Juanita gave the politest of little shrugs and the faintest of sighs. I wished I could be bothered being tactful and metaphysical; "the meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind." But, instead, the devil prompted me to quote Stevenson's remarks that he was sure that food was much more generally entertaining than scenery, and that to detect the flavour of an olive was quite as meritorious as finding beauty in the colours of the sunset. th

The Don accepted the challenge, as I knew he would.

"There I venture to disagree with R. L. S.," he began, and with Juanita's devout assent to this, they were happily launched out into that satisfactory and safe kind of argument which has both speakers on the same side.

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Darling," said Jack, with such a world of emotion in his voice that I hoped Juanita would hear and count it to him for righteousness, darling, do have some more coffee!"

Before we got up next morning, and while the sun poured through the skylights, Juanita was already wondering why any one lived in houses, and spoke bitterly of "the ghastly mess so-called civilisation had created by making a nation of simple seafaring men-the descendants of Vikings, or was it Danes 1-live huddled in slums, &c., &c.

I did murmur something about the rather unsound economic position of people like ourselves, unless we occasionally returned to the "slums " but the question was perhaps better answered for her when we were getting under way while we dressed-at least she was reduced to silence.

There was a good sailing breeze, and even Wullie's admirably cooked kippers have a certain penetrating odour. Jack takes that sort of weakness as a reflection on Skeletta, but I was sorry for Juanita, and the Don, with much concern, found that "mal-de-mer is indeed distressing."

"Less so for some people if you call it mal-au-cœur," I laughed. The Don refused me even a smile, and murmured some platitude about jesting at wounds.

I wondered inwardly if Skeletta was off again on one of her notorious match-making efforts. She is quite unconscionable about it; propinquity is all she asks, and gives never a thought to congruity. The Don and Juanita would be a helpless combination indeed! Would the ... talk... that they're so rich in light the fire in the kitchen?" But perhaps there is still a foundation of plain Joanna in Juanita, and she could "turn the spit "which neither "the little god of love nor the little Don would ever be good at.

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"there's practically nothing between you and Ireland, and with this wind there's bound to be a bit of a jabble, as I said."

Fresh air and brandy now both failed completely, and when we had carried below what remained of Juanita, Jack was again left in undisturbed possession of the deck. He is not really brutal; merely unimaginative.

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We had the jabble' right enough. As the Don and I both love steering, we each urged the other to do so, and thus took it in turn apparently merely to oblige. Jack, of course, sat below, ostensibly engaged in the intricacies of navigation, but possibly with intervals for mental relaxation with a novel, or complete rest in sleep. The orew sat aft, where there was still some dry deck, and added to the picturesqueness of the scene in their white duck trousers, blue jerseys, and betasselled scarlet caps. Our late "collapsible " crews reserved the ample trousseaux we had provided for

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feeling more than usually tui-
tional, and thought it was high
time we made an anchorage
ourselves, instead of depending
on him. The Don was called
below and instructed, and re-
appeared anon with chart, com-
passes, rulers, and books sidling
from his arms, and an expres-
sion of mystification and gloom
on his face. The Don's cherubic
rosy face, with his wide-open
short-sighted eyes and large
specs, always looks like a pre-
maturely aged child's; but when
Jack thrusts these half-under-
stood and wholly dreaded re-
sponsibilities on him, he looks
so worried, lost, but conscien-
tious, that I find it difficult not
to pat him and say, "There,
there, dearie, it will all come
right quite soon." I don't say
anything of the kind, for under
that air of over-worry there
is a quite firm stratum of self-
confidence, and this quality he
exercises at my expense, and
the diffidence he keeps for
Jack.

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"This place seems a regular archipelago of islands," I greeted him. Have you got it quite clear which way we go?",

The Don's look of concentrated worry remained, but I knew I had touched the underlying dogmatism.

the hedgehogs at the duchess's croquet - party, who unrolled when wanted for the game, they roll up when wanted for reference. At one time we tried keeping them folded, but the very soundings that were wanted invariably vanished into the interstices of the cracked fold.

We began again. But as I have said before, the chiefone of the chief!-disadvantages of a sailing-boat is that she won't stand still, and while the Don scrabbled with the chart and got in the way of the tiller, we were skimming along in a quite unknown channel. When the chart was unfolded, the pages of the sailing directions had blown over, and we wasted some minutes trying to identify land which did not exist before we realised it.

"That must be Scotasay now," I said, "and we must get the highest part of it in line with Mhic Mhac Mas Something, but where on earth is Mhic Mhac etcetera ?!'

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"There's something about the Free Church," the Don muttered, flicking the pages back against the wind, which still seemed to think blowing them over was the game."Yes, here it is; but it is not of immediate use all it says is that within the Free Church the loch narrows. The Don continued musingly : Very odd; I have noticed Even the charts on the White that effect on many people Knight's boat have a resem-within' other Churches. It blance to wonderland, for, like is an interesting comment on

The thing seems comparatively simple," he remarked, and was just going to show me the simplicity of it when the chart rolled up with a click.

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