"I think you have won the sweepstakes, Miss White," Macleod said. "Your
enemy has lost eight minutes."

She was not thinking of sweepstakes. She seemed to have been greatly
frightened by the accident.

"It would have been so dreadful to see a man drowned before your
eyes--in the midst of a mere holiday excursion."

"Drowned?" he cried. "There? If a sailor lets himself get drowned in
this water, with all these boats about, he deserves it."

"But there are many sailors who cannot swim at all."

"More shame for them," said he.

"Why, Sir Keith," said Mrs. Ross, laughing, "do you think that all
people have been brought up to an amphibious life like yourself? I
suppose in your country, what with the rain and the mist, you seldom
know whether you are on sea or shore."

"That is quite true," said he, gravely. "And the children are all born
with fins. And we can hear the mermaids singing all day long. And when
we want to go anywhere, we get on the back of a dolphin."

But he looked at Gertrude White. What would she say about that far land
that she had shown such a deep interest in? There was no raillery at all
in her low voice as she spoke.

"I can very well understand," she said, "how the people there fancied