ubmit. It is our duty to
submit to our husbands, captain, as the catechism teaches us."

"Aye, when you've got 'em," thought I, but I nodded my head to the old
lady, and turned to my mistress, who was now speaking to me.

"You'll lunch here; why, yes, captain--you mustn't find us
inhospitable, even if you leave us at once. Mr. Denton, will you please
to tell them that Captain Begg lunches with me--as soon as possible?"

She turned to the yellow man to give him the order; but there was no
mistaking the look which passed between them, saying on her side:
"Allow me to do this," on his, "You will suffer for it afterwards." But
he went up to the veranda of the house right enough, and while he was
bawling to the cook, I spoke the first plain word to Mme. Czerny.

"Mistress," I said, "the ship's there--shall we go or stay?"

I had meant it to be the plain truth between us; on her part the
confession whether she needed me or did not; on mine the will to serve
her whatever might happen to me. To my dying day, I shall never forget
her answer.

"Go," she said, so low that it was little more than a whisper, "but,
oh, for God's sake, Jasper Begg, come back to me again."

I nodded my head and turned the talk. The man Denton, the one with the
yellow beard (rated as Kess Denton on the island), was back at my side
almost before she had finished. The old lady began to talk about
"curling-spikes" and "blue Saint Peters," and how much the anchor
weighed, and all that sort of blarney which she thought ship-shape and
suited to a poor sailor-man's understanding. I told her a story of a
shark that swallowed a missionary and his hymn-book, and always swam
round our ship at service times afterwards--and that kept her thinking
a bit. As for little Dolly Venn, he couldn't keep his eyes off Miss
Ruth--and I didn't wonder, for mine went that way pretty often. Aye,
she had changed, too, in those twelve months that had passed since last
I saw her, the prettiest bride that ever held out a finger for a ring
in the big church at Nice. Her cheeks were all fallen away and flushed
with a colour which was cruelly unhealthy to see. The big blue eyes,
which I used to see full of laughter and a young girl's life, were
ringed round with black, and pitiful when they looked at you. The hair
parted above the forehead, as it always was, and brought down in curls
above her little ears, didn't seem to me so full of golden threads as
it used to be. But it was go