“Saved!  Let me have about six, will you?”

“Certainly not,” returned the other.  “I need all I have.”

“Miser!  Then you must help me find some one my size.”

The purser, however, seemed in no mood to go shirt-hunting, and backed out of the door, saying:  “I’ll have a look for your baggage, Mr.—­Anthony, and I’ll see the captain about this ticket, also.  I don’t know whether you’re making fun of me or not, but—­ I’ll look you up later.”

He departed, shaking his head as if this were a form of insanity he had never before encountered.  A moment later Kirk followed him and made a round of the deck, staring at each man he met and mentally estimating the girth of his neck; but it seemed that the male passengers of the Santa Cruz were all of medium size, and he saw no one whose appearance held out the slightest hope.  He did observe one fellow whose neck seemed as large as his own, but the man looked surly and not too cleanly, and Kirk was not yet desperate enough to bring himself to the point of approaching such a fellow for such a favor.  He thought of appealing directly to the captain, but promptly remembered that he was a small, wiry man whose wardrobe could by no possible chance afford him relief.  At last he made his way toward the smoking-room, determined to enlist the help of his new acquaintance, Stein.

Midway aft, he paused.  A girl had emerged from the deck-house ahead of him, whose appearance was sufficiently striking to divert him, momentarily at least, from his quest.  She was well above the usual height, quite slender, yet of an exquisite rounded fulness, while her snug-fitting tailor-made gown showed the marks of a Redfern or a Paquin.  He noted, also, that her stride was springy and athletic and her head well carried.  Feeling that friendly approval with which one recognizes a member of his own kind, Kirk let his eyes follow her, then retraced his way around the deck in the hope of meeting her face to face.

A woman frequently betrays her beauty by the poise of her head, by the turn of her neck, or the lines of her figure, just as truly as by a full glimpse of her features.  Hence it was that Anthony felt a certain pleasurable expectancy as he crossed in front of the deck-house, realizing that she was approaching.  But when they had met and passed he went his way vaguely disappointed.  Instead of a girl, as the first sight of her youthful figure had led him to expect, he had seen a woman of perhaps forty.  There was little in her countenance to reveal her age except a certain settled look that does not go with girlhood, and, while no one could have thought her plain, she was certainly not so handsome as he had imagined from a distance.  Yet the face was attractive.  The eyes were wide-set, gray, and very clear, the mouth large enough to be expressive.  Her hair shone in the morning sun with a delicate bronze lustre like that of a turkey’s wing.  It did not add to the young man’s comfort to realize that her one straight, casual glance in passing had taken him in from his soiled collar to his somewhat extreme patent leathers with the tan tops and pearl buttons.