ncovered and stood aside while Madame Hayle and a cabin
maid passed down on their way back to the immigrants' deck. By the time
the roof was reached the boat was close inshore. The captain had begun
to direct her landing. The engine bells were jingling. Tall torch
baskets were blazing on the lower-deck guards, and another burial
awaited only the running out of the big stage. Now it hurried ashore, a
weirdly solemn pageant. The seven, looking down upon it, regained a more
becoming composure. When the swift task was done, the torches quenched,
and the boat again under way and her movements in control of the pilot,
they once more looked for the captain. His chair was empty, but his room
was bright and its door ajar. Within, however, was only the wholly
uninspiring figure of Hugh, at a table, where he was just beginning to
write. He rose and seemed sedately to count his visitors.

"We are looking for the captain," said the senator.

"He's down on the after lower deck, sir."

"Oh!" The bushy brows of the inquirer lifted. "Will you send for him? We
can't very well go down there."

"That's true, sir," said Hugh, feeling the irony, "unless you wish to
help." He looked from one to another, but none of the seven wished to
help.

"Do you mean to say," broke in the general, "ththat we can't sssee ththe
captain of ththis boat unless we nurse the cholera?"

"No, sir, I don't mean that, though he's very much occupied. If you will
state your business to me I will send for him unless I can attend to it
myself."

"Why, my young friend," said the senator, "does that strike you as due
courtesy to a delegation like this?"

"No, sir, ordinarily it would not be, sir. But my father--I am the
captain's son--knowing you were coming and what you were coming for,
waited for you as long as he could. Just now he is extremely busy, sir,
doing what he can--short-handed--for the sick and dying." The captain's
son, in spite of himself, began to warm up. "Those hundreds of people
down yonder, sir, are homeless, friendless, dumb--you may say--and in
his personal care. He has left me here to see that your every proper
wish has every attention. Gentlemen, will you please be seated?" He
resumed his own chair and at top speed began again to write.

It was a performance not pleasant for any one. He felt himself culpably
too full of the resentful conviction that this ferment, whose ultimate
extent nobody could predict, was purely of those Hayle twins'