Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/385

 Yerba Buena, but to folks and to mariners it is Goat Island. James was folks; the captain was a mariner. Mrs. Harrington might have been esthetic.

"She draws too much to go nosin' round in there," replied the captain reluctantly, and explained his reluctance with a mixture of emphasis and the picturesque, by adding, "Behind the Goat it's shoal from hell to breakfast."

"She said it," replied James truculently; and stood by to see the helm shift.

"In she goes then, dod gast her!" muttered the captain.

"So much calmer in here under the sheltering lee of Yerba Buena," chirped Miss Gwendolyn Briggs, another quarter of an hour later.

"Why, to be sure," assented the hostess, as with a provident air she surveyed her contented and consuming guests who were ranged like a circling frieze upon the seat of Pullman plush which ran round the luxurious cabin, with James and his two assistants serving from the long table in the center.

It has been hinted that Mrs. Harrington was inclined to stoutness. She was also inclined to Russian caviar. Having seen her guests abundantly supplied, she lifted to her lips a triangle of toast, thickly spread with the Romanof confection. James stood before her, supporting a plate upon which were more triangles of toast and more caviar in a frilled and corrugated carton.

But quite abruptly Mrs. Harrington, who was proper as well as expert in all her food-taking manners, did an unaccountable thing. She turned the toast sidewise and smeared the caviar across her wide cheek almost from the corner of her mouth to her ear. At the same moment James himself did an even more unaccountable thing. He lurched forward, decorated his mistress's