CHAPTER VI

I RECEIVE AN INVITATION Garth appeared to be a seaman of no mean order. With the charts spread out before them he and the skipper promptly became immersed in a maze of technicalities. My ignorance of matters nautical is abysmal; and I listened in some bewilderment to talk of winds and tides and channels, of soundings and of reefs. I can reconstruct the scene now--the prelude to so many strange adventures!--as the three of us pored over the chart; the long, low chart-house with its clean smell of paint, the holla…