We rounded them at about three cables’ length and stood due south, giving sheet again.  Southward from the neck of the peninsula this western side of the Island differed surprisingly from the other.  Here were no cliffs, but a flat shore and long stretches of beach, gradually shelving up to green bush, with here a palmetto grove and there a lagoon of still water within the outer barrier of sand.  Mr. Jack Rogers had relieved me at the helm, and with the Captain’s permission I had stepped below to the saloon, where Plinny was waiting to give me breakfast, and persuaded the good soul not only to let me carry it on deck and eat it there, but to postpone washing-up for a while and accompany me.  To this she would by no means consent until I had brought her the Captain’s leave.

“You may take her my leave,” said he, with a sudden flush on his face, “and my apologies for having neglected to request the honour of her company.  The fact is,” he added, with a hard glance at me, “Miss Plinlimmon’s sense of discipline is so rare a thing that I am always forgetting to do justice to it.  Were it possible to find a whole crew so conscientious I would undertake to sail to the North Pole.”

I conveyed this answer to Plinny, and it visibly gratified her.  She retired at once to the ladies’ cabin to indue her poke-bonnet with coquelicot trimmings.  Her apron she retained, observing that on an expedition of this sort one should never be taken at unawares, and that when at Rome you should do as the Romans did.  “By which, my dear Harry,” she explained, “you are not to understand me to refer to their Papist observances, such as kissing a man’s toe.  Were such a request proffered to me even at the cannon’s mouth, I trust my courage would find an answer.  ‘No, no,’ I would say,

     “’I will not bow within the House of Rimmon: 
       Yours faithfully, Amelia Plinlimmon.’”

As we reached the head of the companion-ladder Captain Branscome, who was standing just aft of the wheel, behind Mr. Rogers’s shoulder, and scanning the shore through his glass, made a motion to step forward and hand her on deck.  This was ever his courteous way, and I turned a moment later in some surprise, to find that, instead of closing the glass, he had lifted it, and was holding it again to his eye, at the same time keeping his right shoulder turned to us.

While we looked, he lowered it and made his bow, yet with something of a preoccupied air.

“Good morning, ma’am.  You are very welcome on deck, and I trust that Harry conveyed the apology I sent by him.”

“I beg you will not mention it, sir.  It is true that I suffered from the curiosity which outspoken critics have called the bane of my sex; yet, believe me, I was far from accusing you, knowing how many responsibilities must weigh on the captain of an expedition, even though it fare as prosperously as ours.”

“True, ma’am,” Captain Branscome tapped his spyglass absent-mindedly, and seemed on the point of lifting it again.  “Though, with your permission, I will add ‘D.V.’”