"Miss Barbara Fairfax," mused the mate. "Nice name. Curious only one piece of mail should come for her—and second class, too." He picked up a thin package from the table, folded in dark paper. This had been made sodden by the rain; now it parted and a flat, black disk of hard rubber slipped from it and rolled across the floor.
"Blamed if it isn't a phonograph record," he said, as he picked it up. "It's out of the wrapper now—let's try it." He set it in place and rewound the spring, and the saloon filled with a chorus of chirps and tinklings from quivering catgut smitten by ivory plectrons.
"Samisen!" said the captain. "I've heard 'em in the tea-houses. Give me a fiddle for mine, any day."
The yacht's cabin-boy entered. "The dinghy's coming, sir," he said. "Lady and gentleman aboard of her."
The captain got up hastily, put out a hand and stopped the machine. "Take away those dishes, and be quick about it," he ordered. "Mr. Rogers, pipe up the men."
He hurried on deck and watched the bobbing craft approach. Under the rising wind the sea was lifting rapidly and the dinghy buried its nose in the spray. Presently he was giving a helping hand to the visitors at the break in the rail, looking into a pair of brown eyes that he thought were the saddest he had ever seen, and replying to a voice that was saying:
"I am Miss Fairfax, Captain Hart, and this is my uncle, Bishop Randolph."
The train which brought Barbara and the bishop from Tokyo had crawled for miles along what seemed a narrow ribbon laid on a yellow floor. The steady, continuous downpour had flooded the rice-fields and the landscape was a waste of turbid freshet, the rivers deep and swollen torrents. At one bridge a small army of workmen were dumping loads of stone about a pier-head and shoring-up the track with heavy timbers. The train crossed this at a snail's pace, that inspired anxiety.
"I'm not an engineer," the bishop had said, "but I prophesy this bridge won't be safe to-morrow unless the water falls."