Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE GASTON DE PARIS OLD Ponting was right in all his particulars, except one. The owner of the Gaston de Paris was not a king, only a prince. Prince Selm, a gentleman like his Highness of Monaco with a passion for the deep sea and its exploration. The Holy Roman Empire had given his great grandfather the title of prince, and estates in Thuringia gave him money enough to do what he pleased, an unfortunate marriage gave him a distaste for High Civilization, and his scientific bent and passion for the sea ? inherited with a strain of old Norse blood ? did the rest. He had chosen well. Cards, women and wine, pleasure and the glittering things of life, all these betray one, but the sea, though she may kill, never leaves a man broken, never destroys his soul. But Eugene Henry William of Selm for all this sea passion might have remained a landsman, for the simple reason that he was one of those thorough souls for whom Life and an Object are synonymous terms. In other words he would never have made a yachtsman, a creature shifting from Keil to Cowes and Cowes to Naples according to season, a cup gatherer and club-house haunter. But Exploration gave him the incentive and the Musee Oceanographique of Monaco his inspiration, limitless wealth supplied the means. The Gaston de Paris built by Yiguard of Toulon was an ocean going steam yacht of twelve hundred and fifty tons with engines by Conturier of Nantes and everything of the latest from Conturier’s twin- action centrifugal bilge pumps to the last thing in sea valves. She was reckoned by those who knew her the finest sea-going yacht in the world and she was certainly the chef-d'oeuvre of Lafiette, Viguard’s chief designer. Lafiette was more than a designer, he was a creator, the sea was in his blood giving him…