r you, my dear d'Alcacer, could not induce me to
submit to such a bare-faced attempt at extortion," affirmed Mr. Travers
with uncompromising virtue. "The man wanted to force his services
upon me, and then put in a heavy claim for salvage. That is the whole
secret--you may depend on it. I detected him at once, of course." The
eye-glass glittered perspicuously. "He underrated my intelligence; and
what a violent scoundrel! The existence of such a man in the time we
live in is a scandal."

D'Alcacer retired, and, full of vague forebodings, tried in vain for
hours to interest himself in a book. Mr. Travers walked up and down
restlessly, trying to persuade himself that his indignation was based
on purely moral grounds. The glaring day, like a mass of white-hot iron
withdrawn from the fire, was losing gradually its heat and its glare
in a richer deepening of tone. At the usual time two seamen, walking
noiselessly aft in their yachting shoes, rolled up in silence the
quarter-deck screens; and the coast, the shallows, the dark islets and
the snowy sandbanks uncovered thus day after day were seen once more
in their aspect of dumb watchfulness. The brig, swung end on in the
foreground, her squared yards crossing heavily the soaring symmetry of
the rigging, resembled a creature instinct with life, with the power of
springing into action lurking in the light grace of its repose.

A pair of stewards in white jackets with brass buttons appeared on deck
and began to flit about without a sound, laying the table for dinner on
the flat top of the cabin skylight. The sun, drifting away toward
other lands, toward other seas, toward other men; the sun, all red in a
cloudless sky raked the yacht with a parting salvo of crimson rays that
shattered themselves into sparks of fire upon the crystal and silver
of the dinner-service, put a short flame into the blades of knives, and
spread a rosy tint over the white of plates. A trail of purple, like a
smear of blood on a blue shield, lay over the sea.

On sitting down Mr. Travers alluded in a vexed tone to the necessity of
living on preserves, all the stock of fresh provisions for the passage
to Batavia having been already consumed. It was distinctly unpleasant.

"I don't travel for my pleasure, however," he added; "and the belief
that the sacrifice of my time and comfort will be productive of some
good to the world at large would make up for any amount of privations."

Mrs. Travers and d'Alcace