“You don’t appear to have a friend here, Major,” Mavick suggested.

“No; my friends are all foul-weather friends; come a bright day, they are all off like butterflies.  That comes of being constant.”

“That’s no distinction,” Carmen exclaimed; “all men are that till they get what they want.”

“Alas! that women also in these days here become cynical!  It was not so when I was young.  Here’s to the ever young,” and he bowed to Carmen and Miss Tavish.

“He’s been with Ponce de Leon!” cried Miss Tavish.

“He’s the dearest man living, except a few,” echoed Carmen.  “The Major’s health.”

The yellow wine sparkled in the glasses like the sparkling sea, the wind blew softly from the south, the sails in the bay darkened and flashed, and the breakfast, it seemed to go along of itself, and erelong the convives were eating ambrosia and sipping nectar.  Van Dam told a shark story.  Mavick demonstrated its innate improbability.  The Major sang a song—­a song of the forties, with a touch of sentiment.  Jack, whose cheerful voice was a little of the cider-cellar order, and who never sang when he was sad, struck up the latest vaudeville ditty, and Carmen and Miss Tavish joined in the chorus.

“I like the sea,” the Major declared.  They all liked it.  The breakfast lasted a long time, and when they rose from the table Jack said that presently they would take a course round the harbor.  The Major remarked that that would suit him.  He appeared to be ready to go round the world.

While they were preparing to start, Carmen and Jack strolled away to the bow, where she perched herself, holding on by the rigging.  He thought he had never seen her look so pretty as at that moment, in her trim nautical costume, sitting up there, swinging her feet like a girl, and regarding him with half-mocking, half-admiring eyes.

What were they saying?  Heaven only knows.  What nonsense do people so situated usually talk?  Perhaps she was warning him against Miss Tavish.  Perhaps she was protesting that Julia Tavish was a very, very old friend.  To an observer this admirable woman seemed to be on the defensive—­her most alluring attitude.  It was not, one could hear, exactly sober talk; there was laughter and raillery and earnestness mingled.  It might be said that they were good comrades.  Carmen professed to like good comradeship and no nonsense.  But she liked to be confidential.

Till late in the afternoon they cruised about among the islands, getting different points of view of the coast, and especially different points of view of each other, in the freedom of talk and repartee permitted on an excursion.  Before sunset they were out in the open, and could feel the long ocean swell.  The wind had risen a little, and there was a low band of clouds in the south.  The skipper told Mr. Delancy that it would be much fresher with the sinking of the sun, but Jack replied that it wouldn’t amount to anything; the glass was all right.