the mate's face
which daunted him. He glanced at it again furtively as he pulled away
from the square-sterned American schooner which had ridden over the
bar in the twilight of dawn and anchored, spectral and strange, in
Beira Harbor. The mate's face was strong and sunburnt, the face of a
man of lively passions and crude emotions; but as he sat gazing forth
at the little hectic town across the smooth harbor, it had a cast of
profound and desperate unhappiness. Johnny Cos had not words to tell
himself what he saw; he only knew, with awe and a certain amount of
fear, that he moved in the presence of something tragic.

"James," began the captain again.

The mate withdrew his miserable eyes from the scene. "What?"

"There ain't any reason why" began the captain, and paused and Hooked
doubtfully upon the faithful Johnny Cos. "D'you speak English?"

"Yes, sar," replied Johnny, ingratiatingly. "You want good 'otel,
Cap'n? Good, cheap 'otel? I geeve you da card; 'Otel Lisbon, sar. All
cap'n go there."

"No," said the captain shortly. "We can talk better when we get
ashore, James," he added to the mate.

"Ver' good 'otel, Cap'n; ver' cheap" coaxed Johnny Cos. "You want
fruit, Cap'n: mango, banan', coconut, orange, grenadeel, yes? I geeve
you da card, Cap'n ver' cheap!"

"That'll do," said the captain. "I don't want anything. Get a move on
this boat o' yours, will you?"

Johnny Cos sighed and resigned himself to row in silence, only
murmuring at intervals: "'Otel Lisbon; good, ver' good, an' cheap!"
When that murmur, taking courage to grow audible, drew the mate's eye
upon him, he stopped short in the middle of it and murmured no more.

"You c'n wait to take me aboard again," said the captain, when the
wharf was reached; and the two men went slowly together into the
town, along the streets of ankle-deep sand, towards the office of the
consul.

It was an hour later that the loafers on the veranda of the Savoy
Hotel observed their slow approach. They had done whatever business
they had with the consul. They were deep in talk; the captain's
grizzled head was bent toward his shorter companion, and something of
the mate's trouble reflected itself in his hard, strongly-graven
face. In the merciless deluge of sunlight, and upon the openness of
the street, they made a singular grouping; they seemed to be, by
virtue of some matter that engrossed and governed them, aloof and
remote, a target set up by Destiny.

By the steps