"But where?"—this more to herself.
"Hiding, maybe," I ventured, taking a facetious squint about.
"Hiding?" she asked, in mild surprise.
"Er—playing a trick on us! He's a funny old dog at tricks!"
"Funny old dog?" She drew slightly away from me. "Do you mean my father, Mr.—er?"
"Jack," I prompted, more than ever embarrassed and wishing the ocean would come up and swallow me; for I realized, alas, that my gods, by whom I was reasonably well remembered in so far as concerned physique, had been shamelessly remiss in their bestowal of brains.
"Jack?" she slowly repeated. "What an odd name!"
This made me feel queer.
"Where do you live," I asked, "that you think it's an odd name? The States are crawling with Jacks! It's even the Democratic emblem!"
Her perplexity was fast approaching alarm when we heard a muffled report above, followed by a trembling of the yacht. Someone called an order that sounded far away in the wind.