Jude, having been fetched out of the galley, the canvas boat was got overboard.

Ratcliffe had offered to shed Pap’s suit and return in his pajamas as he had come, but Tyler vetoed the idea. The far-seeing Satan, who had snaffled a careen and clean up, not to speak of a main boom and spare canvas, out of Thelusson, had an object in view.

“It’s no trouble,” said he. “You take the dinghy, and we’ll take the boat and fetch the duds back. It’s late in the mornin’ for you to be boarding your ship in them colored things.”

One of the big fish caught that morning was dropped into the boat as a “present for the yacht,” and they started.

The accommodation ladder was down and Simmons and a quartermaster received Ratcliffe. As he went up the side he heard Tyler shouting to Simmons something about the fish. There was no sign of Skelton on deck, for which he was thankful, then he dived below to change.

Now “Pap’s” suit had been constructed for a man of over six feet and broad in proportion and a man, moreover, who liked his clothes loose and easy. On Ratcliffe they recalled the vesture of Dr. Jekyll on Mr. Hyde. The saloon door was closed. He opened it, and found himself face to face with Skelton, who was sitting at one end of the saloon table reading from a book, while Strangways the captain, Norton the first officer, Prosser the steward, and sundry others ranged according to their degree sat at attention.

It was Sunday morning. He had forgotten that fact, and there was no drawing back. He reached his cabin, mumbling apologies to the dead silence which seemed crystallized round Skelton, closed the door, and stuffed his head among the pillows of his bunk to stifle his laughter, then he undressed and dressed.

As he dressed he could hear through the open port the voice of Tyler from alongside. The voice was pitched in a conversational key; it was saying something about a lick of white paint. He was talking evidently to Simmons.

Then, fully dressed, with the bundle of clothes and the canvas shoes under his arm, Ratcliffe peeped into the saloon. The service was over and the saloon was empty. He reached the deck. It was deserted save for a few hands forward and Simmons.

Then he came down the accommodation ladder to the stage, and handed the clothes over to Satan.

A drum of white paint and a coil of spare rope were in the boat close to Jude, and Satan was saying to Simmons something about a spare ax.

“Well, if you haven’t got one, there’s no more to be said,” finished Satan; then to Ratcliffe, “See you ashore, maybe.”

Jude grinned kindly, and they pushed off, the boat a strake lower in the water with their loot.

The fat-faced Simmons watched them with the appearance of a man just released from mesmerism.

“That chap would talk the hat off one’s head,” said he. “I’ll have h—l to pay with Norton over that paint; most likely I’ll have to put my hand in my own pocket for it. But he’s a decent chap, that fellow, but sharp—the way he landed me with that fish for a bait!”

“He’s all there,” said Ratcliffe.

“So’s the boy,” said Simmons. “Come alongside after you’d gone, to say you were staying to breakfast with them. Told him to mind and not damage the paint. Let out like a bargee at me—and Sir William Skelton listening!”

“Where’s Sir William now, Simmons? He wasn’t in the saloon when I’d finished dressing.”

“I expect he’s in his cabin,” said Simmons.

Ratcliffe got a book and, taking his seat under the double awning sheltering the quarterdeck, tried to read. He had chosen a History of the West Indies, the same book most likely from which Skelton had “cadged” his information of the night before. The printed page was dull, however, compared to the spoken word, and he found himself wondering how it was that Skelly could have warmed him up so to all this stuff and yet be such an angular stick-in-the-mud in ordinary life. What made him such a superior person? What made him at thirty look forty, sometimes fifty, and what made him, Ratcliffe, fear Skelly sometimes, just as a schoolboy fears a master?

He guessed he was in for a wigging now for cutting breakfast and appearing like a guy before the officers, and he knew instinctively the form the wigging would take,—a chilly manner and studious avoidance of the subject, that would be all,—Christchurch on a wet Sunday for forty-eight hours, with the Oxford voice and the Oxford manner accentuated and thrown in.

At this moment Sir William Skelton, Bart., came on deck,—a tall, thin man, clean shaved, like a serious-minded butler in a yachting suit of immaculate white drill. His breeding lay chiefly in his eyes: they were half-veiled by heavy lids. He had an open mother-of-pearl-handled penknife in his hand.

Free of the saloon hatch and not seeing Ratcliffe, he stopped dead like a pointer before game and called out “Quartermaster!”

A quartermaster came running aft.

Some raffle had been left on the scupper by the companionway, a fathom or so of old rope rejected by Tyler as not being the quality he was “wantin’.”

He ordered it to be taken forrard, then he saw Ratcliffe and nodded.

“’Morning,” said Skelton.

He walked to the rail and stood with his hand on it for a moment, looking at the island and the Sarah Tyler.

Jude and Satan were at work on something aft. In a minute it became apparent what they were doing. They were rigging an awning in imitation of the Dryad’s, an impudent affair made out of old canvas brown with weather and patched from wear.

It was like seeing a beggar woman raising a parasol.

Skelton sniffed; then he turned and, leaning with his back against the bulwarks, began attending to his left little fingernail with the penknife.

“Ratcliffe,” said Skelton suddenly and apparently addressing his little finger, “I wish you wouldn’t!” He spoke mildly, in a vaguely pained voice. It was as though Ratcliffe had acted in some way like a bounder; more, and, wonderfully, he actually made Ratcliffe feel as though he had acted in some way like a bounder. He was Ratcliffe’s host; that gave an extra weight to the words. The whole thing was horrible.

“Wouldn’t what?” said Ratcliffe.

Skelton had been rather hit in his proprieties by a man going off his boat in pajamas and remaining away to breakfast on board a thing like the Sarah Tyler in his pajamas; but the real cause of offense was “Pap’s” suit suddenly appearing at Sunday morning prayers. The chief steward had grinned.

Skelton, though a good sailor, an excellent shipmaster, and as brave as a man need be, was a highly nervous individual. A general service on deck for the whole crew was beyond him: he compromised by conducting a short service in the saloon. Even that was a tax on him. The entrance of Ratcliffe in that extraordinary get-up had joggled his nervous system. “If you can’t understand, I can’t explain,” said Skelton. “If our cases had been reversed, I should have apologized. However, it doesn’t matter.”

“Look here, Skelly!” said Ratcliffe. “I’m most awfully sorry if I have jumped on your corns, and I’ll apologize as much as you want, but the fact of the matter is we don’t seem to hit it off exactly, do we? You are the best of good people, but we have different temperaments. If those other fellows had come along on the cruise, it would have mixed matters more. We want to be mixed up in a big party more, you and I, if we want to get on together.”

“I told you before we started I disliked crowds,” said Skelton, “and that only Satherthwaite and Magnus were coming. Then, when they failed, you said it didn’t matter, that we should be freer and more comfortable alone.”

“I know,” said Ratcliffe. “It was my mistake, and besides I didn’t want to put you off the cruise.”

“Oh, you would not have put me off. I should have started alone. I am dependent on no one for society.”

“I believe you would have been happier alone.”

“Perhaps,” said Skelton with tight lips.

“Well then, shove me ashore, somewhere.”

“That is talking nonsense!” said Skelton.

Ratcliffe had risen and was leaning over the rail beside the other. His eyes were fixed on the Sarah Tyler, the disreputable Sarah, and as he looked at her Jude and Satan suddenly seemed to him real live free human beings and Skelton as being not entirely alive nor, for all his wealth, free.

It was Skelton who gave the Tylers a nimbus, extra color, fascination, especially Jude. There was a lot of fascination about Jude, even without the background of Skelton.

“It’s not talking nonsense a bit,” said he, “and, if you can trundle along the rest of the cruise alone, I’ll drop you here.”

“Drop you on this island?”

“No—I’d like to go for a cruise with those chaps—I mean that chap in the mud barge over there. He asked me, any time I wanted to.”

“Are you in earnest?”

“Of course I am. It would be no end of a picnic, and I want to shove round these seas. I can get a boat back from Havana.”

Skelton felt that this was the washerwoman of Barbados over again,—irresponsibility—bad form. He was, under his courteousness as a host, heartily sick of Ratcliffe and his ways and outlook. A solitary by inclination, he would not at all have objected to finishing this cruise by himself. All the same, he strongly objected to the idea just put before him.

What made him object? Was he insulted that the Dryad should be turned down in favor of the frowzy, disreputable-looking Sarah Tyler, that the companionship of the Tylerites should be preferred to his? Did some vague instinct tell him they were the better people to be with if one wanted to have a good time? Was high conventionality outraged as though, walking down Piccadilly with Ratcliffe, the latter were to seize the arm of a dustman?

Who knows? But he bitterly and strongly objected. And how and in what words did he show his objection and anger?

“Then go, my dear fellow, go!” said he as though with all the good will in the world.

“Right!” said Ratcliffe. “But are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Mind! Why should I mind?”

“One portmanteau full of stuff will do me,” said Ratcliffe, “and I have nearly a hundred and fifty in ready money and a letter of credit on the Lyonnaise at Havana for five hundred. I’ll trundle my stuff over if you’ll lend me a boat, and be back for luncheon. You’ll be off this evening, I suppose, and I can stay aboard here till you get the anchor up. It’s possible I might pick you up at Havana on the way back; but don’t worry about that. Of course all this depends on whether that fellow will take me. I’ll take the portmanteau with me and ask.”

He did not in the least see what was going on in Skelton’s mind.

“You will take your things with you in a boat, and if this—gentleman refuses to take you, what then?”

“I’ll come back.”

“Now I want to be quite clear with you, Ratcliffe,” said Skelton. “If you leave my ship like that—for nothing—at a whim and for disreputable chance acquaintances—absolute scowbankers—the worst sort—I want to be clear with you—quite, absolutely definite—I must ask you not to come back!”

“Well, I’m hanged!” said Ratcliffe, suddenly blazing out. “First you say go and then you say don’t! Of course that’s enough: you’ve practically fired me off your boat.”

“Do not twist my words,” said the other. “That is a subtle form of prevarication I can’t stand.”

“I think we had better stop this,” said Ratcliffe. “I’m going! If I don’t see you again. I’ll say goodby.”

“And please understand,” said the other, who was rather white about the mouth, “please understand—”

“Oh, I know,” said Ratcliffe. “Goodby!”

He dived below to the saloon and rang for his bedroom steward.

Burning with anger and irritation and a feeling that he had been sat upon by Skelton, snubbed, sneered at, and altogether outrageously used, he could not trust himself to do his own packing. He sat on his bunkside while the steward stuffed a portmanteau with necessaries, and as he sat the thought came to him of what would happen were Tyler to refuse to take him. He would have to take refuge on Palm Island. It was a comic opera sort of idea; yet, such was the state of his mind, he actually entertained it.

Skelton was no longer “Skelly,” but “that beast Skelton.” Then he tipped the steward and the chief steward, telling them that he was going for a cruise in that “yawl over there.” On deck he met Norton and Simmons and told them the same tale. Skelton had vanished to his cabin. He told the first and second officers that he had said goodby to his host and asked for a boat to be lowered.

“I’ll pick you up most likely at Havana,” said he to gloze the matter over. “I expect I’ll have a good time, but rather rough. I want to do some fishing.”

The whole thing seemed like a dream and not a particularly pleasant one. Embarked on this business now, he almost wished himself done with it. The yacht was comfortable, the cooking splendid; to satisfy any want, one had only to touch a bell. There were no bells on board the Sarah Tyler. A lavatory and a sort of bathroom invented by “Pap” were the only conveniences, and the bath was impracticable. It was “Pap’s” only failure, for the sea-cock connecting it with the outer ocean was so arranged or constituted that as likely as not it would let in the Caribbean before you could “stop it off.”

If Skelton now, at the last moment, had asked Ratcliffe to come down and have an interview, things might have been smoothed over, but Skelton was not the sort of man to make advances; neither, in his way, was Ratcliffe.

Meanwhile, Simmons was directing the lowering of a boat. The companionway was still down. The luggage was put in, and Simmons, seated by Ratcliffe in the stern seats, took the yoke lines. Not a sign of Skelton, not even a face at a porthole!

“Give way!” shouted Simmons. As they drew up to the Sarah Tyler, Ratcliffe saw Satan leaning over the rail and watching them. Jude was nowhere visible.

“Hullo!” said Ratcliffe as they came alongside. “I’ve come back.”

“I was half-expectin’ you,” said Satan with a grin.

“Will you take me for that cruise right off?”

“Sure! That your dunnage?”

“Yes.”

Satan stepped to the cabin companionway and shouted down it.

“Jude!”

“Hullo!” came Jude’s voice.

“He’s come back!”