It was Ostend, on top of the owner’s original offer to Audrey, that had brought about the suggestion of a dance.  They had coasted up round Gris-Nez from Boulogne to Ostend, and had reached the harbour there barely in time to escape from the worst of a tempest that had already begun to produce in the minds of sundry passengers a grave doubt whether yachting was, after all, the most delightful of pursuits.  Some miles before the white dome of the Kursaal was sighted the process of moral decadence had set in, and passengers were lying freely to each other, and boastfully lying, just as though somebody had been accusing them of some dreadful crime of cowardice or bad breeding instead of merely inquiring about the existence of physical symptoms over which they admittedly had no control whatever.  The security of a harbour, with a railway station not fifty yards from the yacht’s bowsprit, had restored them, by dint of calming secret fears, to their customary condition of righteousness and rectitude.  Several days of gusty rainstorms had elapsed at Ostend, and the passengers had had the opportunity to study the method of managing a yacht, and to visit the neighbourhood.  The one was as wondrous as the other.  They found letters and British and French newspapers on their plates at breakfast.  And the first object they had seen on the quay, and the last object they saw there, was the identical large limousine which they had left on the quay at Boulogne.  It would have taken them to Ghent but for the owner’s powerful objection to their eating any meal off the yacht.  Seemingly he had a great and sincere horror of local viands and particularly of local water.  He was their slave; they might demand anything from him; he was the very symbol of hospitality and chivalry, but somehow they could not compass a meal away from the yacht.  Similarly, he would have them leave the Kursaal not later than ten o’clock, when the evening had not veritably begun.  They did not clearly understand by what means he imposed his will, but he imposed it.

The departure from Ostend was accomplished after the glass had begun to rise, but before it had finished rising, and there were apprehensions in the saloon and out of it, when the spectacle of the open sea, and the feel of it under the feet, showed that, as of old, water was still unstable.  The process of moral decadence would have set in once more but for the prudence and presence of mind of Audrey, who had laid in a large stock of the specific which had been of such notable use to herself and Miss Ingate on previous occasions.  Praising openly its virtues, confessing frankly her own weakness and preaching persuasively her own faith, she had distributed the nostrum, and in about a quarter of an hour had established a justifiable confidence.  Mr. Gilman alone would not partake, and indeed she had hardly dared to offer the thing to so experienced a sailor.  The day had favoured her.  The sea grew steadily more tranquil, and after skirting the Belgian and French