Chelubai and Bottiger in the middle of an enterprise. The difficulty was that we could devise no feasible plan. Every morning we met each other with hopeful faces expecting that one of us had hit upon a scheme; every morning we were disappointed. Then it was my luck to find the way. I was considering the methods we had followed in our other operations, how the loneliness of the town and country had alike served us, when it occurred to me of a sudden that we had utterly neglected our Island Heritage, the sea. In a very short time I saw my way to repairing this inexcusable neglect by carrying out our bargain with Honest John Driver. Chelubai was a yachtsman of the first order; he had gained a thorough knowledge of seamanship, trading in schooners about the Eastern Seas, and only last summer he had imparted much of that knowledge to Bottiger and myself during a two months' cruise up and down the West coast. It was not the time of year, or hardly yet the time of year for yachting, but we must lure Gutermann out on a premature,week-end cruise, and protract it for ten days. I wired to Chelubai to come to me at once, and he was with us very soon after breakfast. With his usual quickness he saw the advantages of the scheme and approved it. Two hours later he was off to Yarmouth to hire and equip a yacht.
It chanced that I was alone when Gutermann
