Dan turned to watch the girl as she followed her father from the bridge.  He was certain he had never seen anything so inspiring as Virginia Howland standing braced square to the wind, her trim blue skirt winding and unwinding; her cap in her hand; the wind tossing her heavy hair in myriads of glowing pennons, which beat on the blush-surged cheeks, alternately hiding and disclosing the sparkle of the deep gray eyes or the flash of perfect teeth from between parted lips.

It was a picture upon which he permitted himself to ponder but an instant, however, for the wind was shifting again from the northeast, growling ominously, and the yacht, humping along at a ridiculous speed of six knots, made the situation less satisfactory than it had been.  He spoke to Terry over his shoulder.

“As you see,” he said, “we’re running into some new sort of hell,” and he glanced impatiently at the potential riot ahead.  “Have these men keep the course and look out for things, will you?  I’m going down to the engine-room for a few minutes.”

“Very well, sir,” said the young officer.

Dan found old Jim Arthur, the chief, swearing softly as he moved about his engines with a long-spouted oil can.

“It is beginning to breeze again,” said Dan.  “I’m the new Captain and I came down to tell you I don’t think much of your machinery, and to ask if the shaft will hold out.”

“The shaft’ll hold,” said the engineer.  Then he paused and looked at Dan in supreme disgust.  “Engines!” he snorted.  “I’ve been holdin’ ’em together with my fingers since we left San Domingo.  Cap’n, they’d been fine for a Swiss cuckoo clock.  Why, they’re only held together by gilt paint and polish.  See how old Howland’s had ’em painted—­like a bedizened old maid!  I do believe he’s got ’em perfumed.  Well, they may hold—­”

Dan, who had been glancing about the engine-room, interrupted the engineer’s pessimistic outburst.

“What are your force pumps going for?” he asked.

“Well, it ain’t fur to water no flowers,” said Arthur, beckoning Dan to the shaft tunnel, where a foot and a half of frothy water was rolling to and fro, slushing against the stuffing box, laving the engine-room bulkhead.

Leaking!  Dan’s first impulse was to drop his hands then and there and let the yacht sink or do what she would for all he cared.  He had fought out his fight with a better craft than this and had lost her.  He did not yield to this; in truth, before he could think of yielding there came a second impulse—­to relieve his mind of several hundred accumulated metaphors, to which inclination he surrendered unconditionally, while Arthur, in the face of the verbal torrent, gazed at the source in humble admiration.

“How—­how much is she taking in?” the young man finally gasped.

“About thirty strokes a minute.  I’d ‘a’ whistled up the tube about it before, only I thought you had enough to fill your mind.”