“And not too soon either!” snapped the captain.

The yacht throbbed more violently; the swirling increased furiously.  The captain stared over the rail.  Then, after an interval, he stamped on the deck in disgust.

“Shut off!” he yelled.  “It’s no good.”

The yacht ceased to throb.  The swirling came to an end, and the thin white foam faded into flat sombre water.  Whereupon Captain Wyatt turned back to the wheel, which, in his extreme haste, he had passed by.

“You’ve run her on to the sand, sir,” said he to Mr. Gilman, respectfully but still accusingly.

“Oh, no!  Impossible!” Mr. Gilman defended himself, pained by the charge.

“She’s hard on, anyhow, sir.  And many a good yacht’s left her bones on this Buxey.”

“But you gave me the course,” protested Mr. Gilman, with haughtiness.

Captain Wyatt bent down and looked at the binnacle.  He was contentedly aware that the compass of a yacht hard aground cannot lie and cannot be made to lie.  The camera can lie; the speedometer of an automobile after an accident can lie—­or can conceal the truth and often does, but the compass of a yacht aground is insusceptible to any blandishment; it shows the course at the moment of striking and nothing will persuade it to alter its evidence.

“What course did I give you, sir?” asked Captain Wyatt.

And as Mr. Gilman hesitated in his reply, the skipper pointed silently to the compass.

“Where’s the chart?  Let me see the chart,” said Mr. Gilman with sudden majesty.

The chart in its little brass frame was handy.  Mr. Gilman examined it in a hostile manner; one might say that he cross-examined it, and with it the horizon.  “Ah!” he muttered at length, peering at the print under the chart, “‘Corrected 1906.’  Out of date.  Pity they don’t re-issue these charts oftener.”

His observations had no relation whatever to the matter in hand; considered as a contribution to the unravelling of the matter in hand they were merely idiotic.  Nevertheless, such were the exact words he uttered, and he appeared to get great benefit and solace from them.  They somehow enabled him to meet, quite satisfactorily, the gaze of his guests who had now gathered in the vicinity of the wheel.

Audrey alone showed a desire to move away from the wheel.  The fact was that the skipper had glanced at her in a peculiar way and his eyes had seemed to say, with disdain:  “Women!  Women again!” Nothing but that!  The implications, however, were plain.  Audrey may have been discountenanced by the look in the captain’s eyes, but at the same time she had an inward pride, because it was undeniable that Mr. Gilman, owing to his extreme and agitated interest in herself, had put the yacht off the course and was thereby imperilling numerous lives.  Audrey liked that.  And she exonerated Mr. Gilman, and she hated the captain for daring to accuse him, and she mysteriously nursed the wounded dignity of Mr. Gilman far better than he could nurse it himself.