With thoughts tender and grateful, he followed her to strange, hot ports, through hurricanes and tidal waves; he saw her return again and again to the London docks, laden with odorous coffee, mahogany, red rubber, and raw bullion.

He saw sister ships follow in her wake to every port in the South Sea; saw steam packets take the place of the ships with sails; saw the steam packets give way to great ocean liners, each a floating village, each equipped, as no village is equipped, with a giant power house, thousands of electric lamps, suite after suite of silk-lined boudoirs, with the floating harps that vibrate to a love message three hundred miles away, to the fierce call for help from a sinking ship.

But at the main of each great vessel there still flew the same house-flag--the red cross on the field of white--only now in the arms of the cross there nestled proudly a royal crown.
Philip cast a scared glance at the old gentleman, and raced down the corridor to the telephone.
Of all the young Englishmen he knew, Maddox was his best friend and a stock-broker.

In that latter capacity Philip had never before addressed him.

Now he demanded his instant presence at the telephone.
Maddox greeted him genially, but Philip cut him short.
"I want you to act for me," he whispered, "and act quick! I want you to buy for me one thousand shares of the Royal Mail Line, of the Elder-Dempster, and of the Union Castle." He heard Maddox laugh indulgently.
"There's nothing in that yarn of a combine," he called.