CHAPTER VII.
DUSK, AND SO ON Dusk on the tropic seas is a ceremony performed with reverence, as if the rising moon were a priestess come among her silver vessels.
Shadows like phantom sails dip through the dark and lie idle where unseen crafts with unexplained cargoes weigh anchor in mid-air.

One almost hears the water cunningly lap upon their invisible sides.
To Little Cawthorne, lying luxuriously in a hammock on the deck of _The Aloha_, fancies like these crowded pleasantly, and slipped away or were merged in snatches of remembered songs.

His hands were clasped behind his head, one foot was tapping the deck to keep the hammock in motion while strange compounds of tune and time broke aimlessly from his lips.
"Meet me by moonlight alone, And then I will tell you a tale.
Must be told in the moonlight alone In the grove at the end of the vale" he caroled contentedly.
Amory, the light of his pipe cheerfully glowing, lay at full length in a steamer chair.

_The Aloha_ was bounding briskly forward, a solitary speck on the bosom of darkening purple, and the men sitting in the companionship of silence, which all the world praises and seldom attains, had been engaging in that most entertaining of pastimes, the comparison of present comfort with past toil.

Little Cawthorne's satisfaction flowered in speech.
"Two weeks ago to-night," he said, running his hands through his grey curls, "I took the night desk when Ellis was knocked out.