uddenly away from the sea to the face of the
speaker, as he continued:

"I happened to be on the streets, when wiser folk were in their homes,
just after the battle in Puerto Frio. I found Mr. Robert
Saxon--perhaps the second landscape painter in the world--lying
wounded on a pavement among dead revolutionists, and I helped to carry
him to an _insurrecto_ haunt. He was smuggled unconscious on a ship
sailing for some point in my own land--Havre, I think. _Allons!_ Life
plays pranks with men that make the fairy tales seem feeble!"

Steele had been so astounded that he had found no opportunity to stop
the Frenchman. Now, as he made a sign, M. Herve looked at the girl.
She was sitting quite rigid in her steamer chair, and her lips were
white. Her eyes were on his own, and were entirely steady.

"Will you tell us the whole story, M. Herve?" she asked.

"_Mon dieu!_ I have been indiscreet. I have made a _faux pas_!"

The Frenchman's distress was genuinely deep.

"No," answered the girl. "I must know all the story. I thank you for
telling me."

As Herve told his story, he realized that the woman whom Saxon had
turned back to warn, according to Rodman's sketching, was the woman
sitting before him on the deck of the _Orinoco_.

CHAPTER XV

Captain Harris had been, like Rodman, one of the men who make up the
world's flotsam and jetsam. He, too, had meddled in the affairs of
that unstable belt which lies just above and below the "line." South
and Central American politics and methods were familiar to him. He had
not attained the command of the tramp freighter _Albatross_ without
learning one decisive lesson, that of eliminating curiosity from his
plan of living. He argued that his passenger was an _insurrecto_, and,
once seized in Puerto Frio, could hardly hope to shield himself behind
American citizenship. There had been many men in Puerto Frio when the
captain sailed who would have paid well for passage to any port beyond
the frontier, but to have taken them might have brought complications.
He had been able at some risk to slip two men at most to his vessel
under the curtain of night, and to clear without interference. He had
chosen the man who was his friend, Dr. Cornish, and the man who was
his countryman and helpless. Of course, all the premises upon which
both Rodman and this sea-going man acted were false premises. Had he
been left, Saxon would have been in no danger. He had none the less
been shanghaied