Rising waters and a fine flying scud that whipped stingingly overthe side had driven most of the passengers on the _Atlantic_ to theshelter of their staterooms or to the warm stuffiness of thelibrary. It was the fifth evening of the voyage. For five daysand four nights the ship had been racing through a placid oceanon her way to Sandy Hook: but in the early hours of thisafternoon the wind had shifted to the north, bringing heavy seas.

　　Darkness had begun to fall now. The sky was a sullen black. Thewhite crests of the rollers gleamed faintly in the dusk, and thewind sang in the ropes.

　　Jimmy and Ann had had the boat-deck to themselves for half anhour. Jimmy was a good sailor: it exhilarated him to fight thewind and to walk a deck that heaved and dipped and shudderedbeneath his feet; but he had not expected to have Ann's companyon such an evening. But she had come out of the saloon entrance,her small face framed in a hood and her slim body shapelessbeneath a great cloak, and joined him in his walk.

　　Jimmy was in a mood of exaltation. He had passed the last fewdays in a condition of intermittent melancholy, consequent on thediscovery that he was not the only man on board the _Atlantic_ whodesired the society of Ann as an alleviation of the tedium of anocean voyage. The world, when he embarked on this venture, hadconsisted so exclusively of Ann and himself that, until the shipwas well on its way to Queenstown, he had not conceived thepossibility of intrusive males forcing their unwelcome attentionson her. And it had added bitterness to the bitter awakening thattheir attentions did not appear to be at all unwelcome. Almostimmediately after breakfast on the very first day, a creature witha small black moustache and shining teeth had descended upon Annand, vocal with surprise and pleasure at meeting her again--heclaimed, damn him!, to have met her before at Palm Beach, BarHarbor, and a dozen other places--had carried her off to play anidiotic game known as shuffle-board. Nor was this an isolatedcase. It began to be borne in upon Jimmy that Ann, whom he hadlooked upon purely in the light of an Eve playing opposite hisAdam in an exclusive Garden of Eden, was an extremely well-knownand popular character. The clerk at the shipping-office had liedabsurdly when he had said that very few people were crossing onthe _Atlantic_ this voyage. The vessel was crammed till its sidesbulged, it was loaded down in utter defiance of the Plimsoll law,with Rollos and Clarences and Dwights and Twombleys who had knownand golfed and ridden and driven and motored and swum and dancedwith Ann for years. A ghastly being entitled Edgar Something orTeddy Something had beaten Jimmy by a short head in the race forthe deck-steward, the prize of which was the placing of hisdeck-chair next to Ann's. Jimmy had been driven from thepromenade deck by the spectacle of this beastly creature lyingswathed in rugs reading best-sellers to her.