Jerome braced himself and stared out. Occasionally a wave would slap against the glass. He had let the fishing boats go without him. Now he was at sea!  
He was bewildered, then scared, then more scared. Yet underneath it all a queer little wisp of daring insinuated itself—something almost akin to self-congratulation; and the whimsical query leapt: “Has the whole business of Oaks-Ferguson’s been a dream, and did I go to sea after all?”
 
The first terrible and confusing instant behind him, panic was dominant again, and he reeled away to explore his dilemma. Jerking open the door of the tiny cabin, which appeared to be nothing more nor less than a supply closet, he emerged into a stuffy corridor and groped his way toward a flight of steps ahead which led up into daylight. As Jerome groped toward the light it may be intimated that his mental complex was one which must defy the most patient attempt at analysis. When he came out at last on deck, the whole awful, wonderful, terrifying truth flared up like a rocket: this was the Skipping Goone, and he was launched, along with the rest, on Xenophon Curry’s great world tour.
 
As for its being the Skipping Goone, there could be no shadow of doubt; for here, as in a vision, with lurid sunset in their still excited faces, were all his new theatrical friends. He beheld at once a throng and each separate face. There stood Xenophon Curry in his Palm Beach suit and gay adornments, like an amazed exotic potentate, gazing at him with dropped jaw. There was the comedian, who always treated him with such irreproachable respect, gazing[78] too. And there, with a sun-tinted sail behind her, looking, he thought, just like some radiant goddess, was Lili. She wasn’t beaming now, simply gazing like the rest. There was a space of perfectly blank silence, as Jerome stood there before them. It was decidedly an awful moment.
 
Curry was the first to break through. “Good Lord, boy!” he cried, making futile gestures and taking almost equally futile steps toward the very substantial looking apparition.
 
Next to break through were two singers, Tony and Alfredo, who amazed everybody by suddenly beginning to hurl Italian at each other in torrents. Jerome, of course, couldn’t understand a word they said, although, even in the midst of all the confusion, he felt somehow certain that what they were hurling directly concerned this startling mystery of which he had so abruptly become the centre.
 
Curry was grasping his arm. “How did you get aboard?” he cried, a look of honest amazement supreme, now, in his so warmly expressive face.
 
“I don’t know, sir,” replied Jerome in a rather weak and husky voice.
 
Genuine pandemonium set in. It was almost a riot. But gradually, as some semblance of law and order returned, Tony Riforto was made out adjuring Alfredo Manuele with the full solemnity of a wagging forefinger:
 
“You’ve got to help me think, I tell you! How can you expect me to figure the whole thing out myself?”
 
“Figure what?” voices demanded.
 
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Curry, “I begin to see—you took him in tow—yes, it was you two—at Girardin’s—in the confusion of closing—what then?”
 
“What then?” spluttered Alfredo. He seemed to grasp at a ray of hope. “There was a cab!”
 
“T............