“By Jove, I envy you, Mr. Farnum. Didn't know people bucked into adventures like that these tame days. Think of actually being shanghaied. It's like a novel. My word, the ladies will make a lion of you!”

The Englishman was dragging a steamer trunk from under his bed. It needed no second glance at his frank boyish face to divine him a friend worth having. Fresh-colored and blue-eyed, he looked very much the country gentleman Jeff had read about but never seen. It was perhaps by the gift of race that he carried himself with distinction, though the flat straight back and the good shoulders of the cricketer contributed somewhat, too. Jeff sized him up as a resolute, clean-cut fellow, happily endowed with many gifts of fortune to make him the likable chap he was.

Beauchamp threw out some clothes from a steamer trunk and left the rescued man alone to dress. Ten minutes later he returned.

“Expect you'd like an interview with the barber. I'll take you round. By the way, you'll let me be your banker till you reach Verden?”

“Thank you. Since I must.”

From the barber shop the Englishman took him to the dining saloon. “Awfully sorry you can't sit at our table, Mr. Farnum. It's full up. You're to be at the purser's.”

Jeff let a smile escape into his eyes. “Suits me. I've been at the bos'n's for several weeks.”

“Beastly outrage. We'll want to hear all about it. Miss Frome's tremendously excited. Odd you and she hadn't met before. Didn't know Verden was such a big town.”

“I'm not a society man,” explained Jeff. “And it happens I've been fighting her father politically for years. Miss Frome and Mrs. Van Tyle are about the last people I would be likely to meet.”

From his seat Jeff could see the cousins at the other end of the room. They were seated near the head of the captain's table, and that officer was paying particular attention to them, perhaps because the Bellingham happened to be one of a line of boats owned by Joe Powers, perhaps because both of them were very attractive young women. They were types entirely outside Farnum's very limited experience. The indolence, the sheathed perfection, the soft sensuous allure of the young widow seemed to Jeff a product largely of her father's wealth. But the charm of her cousin, with its sweet and mocking smile, its note of youthful austerity, was born of the fine and gallant spirit in her.

Beauchamp sat beside Miss Frome and the editor observed that they were having a delightful time. He wondered what they could be talking about. What did a man say to bring such a glow and sparkle of life into a girl's face? It came to him with a wistful regret for his stolen youth that never yet had he sat beside a young woman at dinner and entertained her in the gay adequate manner of Lieutenant Beauchamp. James could do it, had done it a hundred times. But he had been sold too long to an urgent world of battle ever to know such delights.