"There was a girl,--I knew her well,--a girl in Zanzibar--
A bulgeous man of science said you bet her avatar
Was Egypt's Cleopatra--and from off a man-o'-war
I met her first--and O, her eyes! A blazing polar star!
From which you couldn't head away no more than you could fly--
Gypsy one of Zanzy! For you who wouldn't die!"

It was one of those fine days in the Gulf of Mexico. Abreast of the ship
the Florida reefs, low-crested, ragged, and white, loomed above the
smooth sea.

Kieran contemplated the line of reefs; presently he leaned over the
taffrail and stared down at the whirling propeller; from the screws his
gaze shifted to the whirling water above and about them, and thence to
the tow in their wake. He put his head to one side, studied the
spectacle of the straining hawser and the wallowing barge on the end of
it, as if it were a mysterious problem.

"Oh-h, shucks!" He sighed and came suddenly out of his reverie, looked
up at the sky, turned wearily inboard, and sat himself on one of the
towing bitts.

The passenger, from the other towing bitt, asked what it was.

"I was just thinking that some of us are tied to the end of a string,
just like that barge, and we don't know it any more than she does, and
no more able to help ourselves than she can--sometimes."

"I never looked at a towing barge in that light before," said the
passenger, and lit a cigar. He made no offer of one to Kieran, because