I came to hate the ocean, implacable, threatening; an insensate monster, boundless, merciless, always waiting, waiting, waiting for us down there below. I imagined that it knew that at last it would get us.

Perry had some books aboard; and I read a little, but my state of mind was such that I could not concentrate on what I was reading. I thought about my past life and tried not to think of the future. I thought a great deal about Daisy Juke. I recalled the disappointment I had felt when I had smelled liquor on her breath the last time that I had seen her. Of course I know that there are lots of perfectly respectable girls who take a drink occasionally, but it was something that our little crowd had never gone in for. It wasn't that we had any moral scruples against it; we just didn't do it. I remember in particular that Daisy used to say that inasmuch as the Lord hadn't given her any more brains than she needed it seemed silly to befuddle what she did have. Drink had caused a lot of suffering in her father's family, and she was very much opposed to it.

I wondered if Frank Adams had changed, too. He never wanted to be around with fellows who drank, because they bored and embarrassed him; and I had heard him say a dozen times that he would never marry a girl who drank. But perhaps he had changed; a great many of us do after we leave college and quite often without moral betterment.

And now Frank and Daisy were to marry! It hurt me a lot, for somehow I had never given up hope that someday--oh, what's the use? What chance could a dumb cop have had against Frank Adams? He had always beaten me out in everything worthwhile all our lives. I was never jealous of him nor ever bitter; I admired him too much, and he was my best friend. Whatever he won he deserved to win. But it sometimes seemed a little unfair that one fellow got everything and another nothing through no acquired virtue or fault of either, but just because the ancestors of one had happened to marry the right people and the ancestors of the other had not just a matter of chromosomes. Chromosomes and the ocean! They are much alike; you can't change them, and you can't beat them.

It was early morning of the sixth day that time motor froze. We had considerable altitude, and it wouldn't be long until the sun warmed up the gas and checked our descent; so we were not particularly apprehensive. Perry went aft and commenced to tear the motor down to see what was wrong. There was room for only one man to work on it; so I couldn't help him any. I sat in the control room and looked down at the old devil rolling beneath us. We were settling toward those endless swells rolling on their senseless way incessantly just as they had for perhaps a billion years, just as they would for other billions of years, rolling over the bones of millions of men as they would roll over our bones . . . forever.

Hanging in the east, a hand span above the sea, the new sun was tempering the chill of the early morning air; already it was appreciably warmer, and with the rising temperature in the gas bag our rate of descent was lessening. Presently it would stop, or so I thought; but it didn't. We continued to drop very slowly.

The morning passed. Several times I walked back to see how Perry was getting along, but he was in no mood to be civil. Perry was one of those people who cannot be crossed and retain his equilibrium. When things were running smoothly, Perry's disposition was more or less tranquil; but when anything went wrong-blooey!-he went right up in the sir and exploded like an aerial bomb.

He was that way now-the engine had crossed him; he said it had broken down to spite him, and he blamed me.

Lots of otherwise sane people are illogical like that when things go wrong; only, Perry exaggerated it.

We were drifting along with a steady breeze about a hundred feet above the surface of the ocean, and we were still descending. I called his attention to our danger. He was leaning out of a small porthole at the stern which gave access to the motor, and at my words he drew himself back into the cabin and faced me.