As we moved on to enter the tug’s cabin I heard Possum’s shivering whimper rising to a screech, and went forward to tell Wada to take the creature in out of the cold.  I found him hovering about my luggage, wedging my dressing-case securely upright by means of my little automatic rifle.  I was startled by the mountain of luggage around which mine was no more than a fringe.  Ship’s stores, was my first thought, until I noted the number of trunks, boxes, suit-cases, and parcels and bundles of all sorts.  The initials on what looked suspiciously like a woman’s hat trunk caught my eye—“M.W.”  Yet Captain West’s first name was Nathaniel.  On closer investigation I did find several “N.W’s.” but everywhere I could see “M.W’s.”  Then I remembered that he had called her Margaret.

I was too angry to return to the cabin, and paced up and down the cold deck biting my lips with vexation.  I had so expressly stipulated with the agents that no captain’s wife was to come along.  The last thing under the sun I desired in the pet quarters of a ship was a woman.  But I had never thought about a captain’s daughter.  For two cents I was ready to throw the voyage over and return on the tug to Baltimore .

By the time the wind caused by our speed had chilled me bitterly, I noticed Miss West coming along the narrow deck, and could not avoid being struck by the spring and vitality of her walk.  Her face, despite its firm moulding, had a suggestion of fragility that was belied by the robustness of her body.  At least, one would argue that her body must be robust from her fashion of movement of it, though little could one divine the lines of it under the shapelessness of the furs.