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The small dory to which I clung, caught in some mysterious current, floated at the very extremity of its slender towline, and in consequence the sloop appeared little more than a mere smudge, when my eyes endeavored to discover its outlines. Evidently the bloody work had been completed, for now all was silent on board. I could not even detect the sound of a footstep on the deck.

But when he turned back to come to the table the candlelight fell upon a face that was grimy and scratched. His rosy lips were blackened with heat, the smoke of gun-powder. Dirt and rust tarnished the lustre of his short beard. His shirt collar and cuffs were crumpled; the blue silken tie hung down his breast like a rag; a greasy smudge crossed his white brow.

A smoky fire called a "smudge" will sometimes keep the pests away from the neighbourhood of the tent or if we build it in the tent will drive them out, but the remedy is almost as bad as the disease. As a rule they will only be troublesome at night and the net over our bed will enable us to sleep in peace.

We'll camp here, George, and see if we can't get rid of the 'skeeters." They built smudge fires of green wood and on the lee side of these another one of dry sticks. Dud made coffee upon this and cooked bacon to eat with the fresh bread they had taken from the oven of Holt.

The outmost tip of that chain was only a distant smudge lying low on the water. "The largest ... that one with trees." Shann whistled. Since the night of the storm the wolverines were again more amenable to the very light discipline he tried to keep. Perhaps the fury of that elemental burst had tightened the bond between men and animals, both alien to this world.

"What people?" asked Helen, turning deliberately in the automobile seat to look in the direction indicated by Ruth. "Where? People?" joined in Tom, who was tinkering with the mechanism of the automobile and had a smudge of grease across his face. "Right over the fields yonder," Ruth explained, carefully balancing the pail of berries. "Can't you see them, Helen?"

"I'm perfectly sure he is a nice clean man," declared Grace, "for there wasn't a smudge on that little note, and I have noticed since that the paper is a fine quality. Oh, I am perfectly sure he is a very nice young man," and the bright-eyed, pink-cheeked girl laughed at her own deductions. "But Mrs. Johnston's wash?" Madaline reminded her. "What about that?"

Framed in the open door-way the last crimson of the sky, fading to Paler tints, rose above the vague masses of the forest,-a column resting upon its base. The Mosquitos began to arrive in their legions, and the humming of innumerable wings filled the low clearing with continuous sound. "Telesphore," directed the father, "make us a smudge. Take the old tin pail."

Four hours later six powerful black oarsmen rowed a boat containing two passengers and practically no luggage out across the huge lazy swells of the Caribbean toward a smudge of black smoke. "Look!" cried that one of the passengers who wore huge goggles. "There goes the flag!"

"But you can't get along all morning without food," he said. She looked away from him toward the shore of the mainland where the towers of "Wake-Robin" made a gray smudge against the trees. "Oh, yes, I can," she said shortly.