Thus attended, they were on their way back to the yacht.

With a few long, elegant strokes, Errington and Lorimer soon brought their boat alongside, and their friends gladly jumped into it, delighted to be free of the company of the wooden-faced mariner they had so reluctantly hired, and who now, on receiving his fee, paddled awkwardly away in his ill-constructed craft, without either a word of thanks or salutation.

Errington began to apologize at once for his long absence, giving as a reason for it, the necessity he found himself under of making a call on some persons of importance in the neighborhood, whom he had, till now, forgotten.
"My good Phil-eep!" cried Duprez, in his cheery sing song accent, "why apologize?
We have amused ourselves! Our dear Sandy has a vein of humor that is astonishing! We have not wasted our time.

No! We have made Mr.
Dyceworthy our slave; we have conquered him; we have abased him! He is what we please,--he is for all gods or for no god,--just as we pull the string! In plain words, _mon cher_, that amiable religious is drunk!" "Drunk!" cried Errington and Lorimer together.

"Jove! you don't mean it ?" Macfarlane looked up with a twinkle of satirical humor in his deep-set grey eyes.
"Ye see," he said seriously, "the Lacrima, or Papist wine as he calls it, was strong--we got him to take a good dose o't--a vera feir dose indeed.