"It is mysterious—almost terrifying," the girl said in a low voice.
"So it is," the captain rejoined in his brisk way. "I've felt it oft and again when I was pacin' my own quarter on a moonless night—for a sailin' ship is never lighted like a steamer. I've looked off over the water and wondered what was under it, and imagined more monsters than ever lived back in those early ages that the scientific books tell us about."
"But you never expected a submarine to bob up out of the sea," the girl suggested.
"Not much!" he chuckled. "Once I thought I saw a sea serpent."
"Really! And what was it?"
"A school of porpoises chasing each other, head to tail. And maybe we won't see anything more excitin' than that this trip."
It was not until the following day that Belinda met Frank Sanderson. The submarine scare of the first evening at sea was all but forgotten in the morning sunshine and with the Belle o' Perth plowing through a perfectly placid sea.
The calm was not sufficient, however, to tempt Aunt Roberta on deck—or even out of her stateroom.
"An absolutely horizontal posture for forty-eight or sixty hours after leaving port is the only safeguard against mal de mer," the Frenchwoman declared. "How you can be so reckless I do not see, Belinda. It is almost a crime for a woman to possess such robust health."
So, after breakfasting with Aunt Roberta in the stateroom, Belinda sought the deck alone, and under the pilotage of a deck steward found her chair in the lee of a forward house. It was a sheltered situation in all weathers and there were few other passengers in view when she settled herself comfortably in it.