Ever since that knowledge was impressed upon him he had not lost a season of rest there, away from the hurly-burly of New York, away from the heat of Gotham, which is infinitely greater than among the islands—but, above all, away from people.
This particular day had been one of exceptional beauty, and the evening promised to excel it. The ocean was as nearly calm as it ever is, and only the long, heavy rollers, which seafaring men have named “dead swells,” suggested that such things as violent storms ever visited that portion of the world.
And these swells were so far apart, so regular in their motion and so devoid of even a ripple to mar their mirror-like aspect, that the yacht seemed scarcely to feel them at all, but met them and sailed over them with the grace and ease of a living thing.
Seated under the awning on the after-deck were four people, three of whom were women, for Maxwell Kane had left men out of his plans for that trip. He liked to take his annual trip to Bermuda without men of his own class around him; and so it happened that the passengers aboard his yacht numbered merely his wife, his wife’s sister, who was Miss Bessie Harlan, and Mrs. Starkweather, who was their mother.
“I do not see why you do not make directly for New York, Max,” his wife had said to him when the anchor was weighed, and all preparations were made for their start, and he had replied that Newport News was nearer, and that he was going to North Carolina himself for the early shooting. “From there,” he added, “you and Bessie, with your mother, can return home by rail, if you like, or you can remain on the yacht and go where you please.”
And now they were six hours out from Hamilton; the sun had dropped out of sight, and the evening was upon them. Bessie Harlan left the low wicker chair in which she had been seated and walked forward along the deck. Suddenly she paused and shaded her eyes with one hand, while she gazed steadily at some object she had discovered off the starboard bow.
“Max, come here,” she called, and her brother-in-law rose lazily from his chair and strolled over beside her.
“Hello!” he said, before she could call his attention to the object which had attracted her. “You have discovered a sail, haven’t you?”