Some one slumbered audibly in Major Ayers’ room. It was Major Ayers himself, and Fairchild closed the door and went on, struck anew with that strange atmosphere which the yacht seemed to have gained overnight. The saloon was empty also, and a broken meal offended his temporarily refined sensibilities with partially emptied cups and cold soiled plates. But still no sound, no human sound, save Major Ayers and the Semitic man in slumber’s strophe and antistrophe. He stood in the door of the saloon and groaned again. Then he took his splitting head on deck.
Here he blinked in the light, shutting his eyes against it while hot brass hammers beat against his eyeballs. Three men dangled their legs over the edge of the quay and regarded him, and he opened his eyes again and saw the three men.
“Good morning,” he said. “What town’s this? Mandeville?”
The three men looked at him. After a time one said:
“Mandeville? Mandeville what?”
“What town is it, then?” he asked, but as he spoke awareness came to him and looking about he saw a steel bridge and a trolley on the bridge, and further still, a faint mauve smudge on the sky, and in the other direction the flag that floated above the yacht club, languorous in a faint breeze. The three men sat and swung their legs and watched him. Presently one of them said:
“Your party went off and left you.”
“Looks like it,” Fairchild agreed. “Do you know if they said anything about sending a car back for us?”
“No, she ain’t going to send back to-day,” the man answered. Fairchild cleared his aching eyes: it was the captain. “Trolley track over yonder a ways,” he called after Fairchild as he turned and descended the companionway.
