“Now, Mr. Breitmann,” interposed the admiral pacifically, for he was too keen a sailor not to have noted the chill in the air, “suppose we send off those letters?  Here, I’ll write the names and addresses, and you can finish them up by yourself.  Please call up Captain Flanagan at Swan’s Hotel and tell him to report this afternoon.”  The admiral scribbled out the names of his guests, gathered up the precious documents, and put them into his pocket.  “Come along now, my children; we’ll take the air in the garden and picture the Frenchman’s brig rocking in the harbor.”

“It is all very good of you,” said Fitzgerald, as the trio eyed the yacht from the terrace.

“Nonsense!  The thing remains that all these years you ignored us.”

“I have been, and still am, confoundedly poor.  There is a little; I suppose I could get along in a hut in some country village; but the wandering life has spoiled me for that.”

“Fake pride,” rebuked the girl.

“I suppose it is.”

“Your father had none.  Long after the smash he’d hunt me up for a week’s fishing.  Isn’t she a beauty?” pointing to the yacht.

“She is,” the young man agreed, with his admiration leveled at the lovely profile of the girl.

“Let me see,” began the admiral; “there will be Mr. and Mrs. Coldfield, first-class sailors, both of them.  What’s the name of that singer who is with them?”

“Hildegarde von Mitter.”

“Of the Royal Opera in Munich?” asked Fitzgerald.

“Yes.  Have you met her?  Isn’t she lovely?”

“I have only heard of her.”

“And Arthur Cathewe,” concluded the admiral.

“Cathewe?  That will be fine,” Fitzgerald agreed aloud.  But in his heart he swore he would never forgive Arthur for this trick.  And he knew all the time!  “He’s the best friend I have.  A great hunter, with a reputation which reaches from the Carpathians to the Himalayas, from Abyssinia to the Congo.”

“He is charming and amusing.  Only, he is very shy.”

At four that afternoon Captain Flanagan presented his respects.  The admiral was fond of the old fellow, a friendship formed in the blur of battle-smoke.  He had often been criticized for officering his yacht with such a gruff, rather illiterate man, when gentlemen were to be had for the asking.  But Flanagan was a splendid seaman, and the admiral would not have exchanged him for the smartest English naval-reserve afloat.  There was never a bend in Flanagan’s back; royalty and commonalty were all the same to him.  And those who came to criticize generally remained to admire; for Flanagan was the kind of sailor fast disappearing from the waters, a man who had learned his seamanship before the mast.

“Captain, how long will it take us to reach Funchal in the Madieras?”

“Well, Commodore, give us a decent sea an’ we can make ’er in fourteen days.  But I thought we wus goin’ t’ th’ Banks, sir?”