reposing on the firewood.
This enabled me to gain a clear view of a face with a sharp nose, some
tufts of light-coloured hair on cheeks and chin, and a pair of small,
muddy-looking eyes. He stood there as though he were listening to
something.

All of a sudden he stepped firmly to the sally-port, swiftly unlashed
from the iron top-rail a mop, and threw it overboard. Then he set about
unlashing a second article of the same species.

"Hi!" I shouted to him. "What are you doing there?"

With a start the man turned round, clapped a hand to his forehead to
discover my whereabouts, and replied softly and rapidly, and with a
stammer in his voice:

"How is that your business? Get away with you!"

Upon this I approached him, for I was astonished and amused at his
impudence.

"For what you have done the sailors will make you pay right enough," I
remarked.

He tucked up the sleeves of his pea-jacket as though he were preparing
for a fight. Then, stamping his foot upon the slippery grating, he
muttered:

"I perceived the mop to have come untied, and to be in danger of
falling into the water through the vibration. Upon that I tried to
secure it, and failed, for it slipped from my hands as I was doing so."

"But," I remarked in amazement, "my belief is that you WILLFULLY untied
the mop, to throw it overboard!"

"Come, come!" he retorted. "Why should I have done that? What an
extraordinary thing it would have been to do! How could it have been
possible?"

Here he dodged me with a dexterous movement, and, rearranging his
sleeves, walked away. The length of the pea-jacket made his legs look
absurdly short, and caused me to notice that in his gait there was a
tendency to shuffle and hesitate.

Returning to my retreat, I stretched myself upon the firewood once
more, inhaled its resinous odour, and fell to listening to the
slow-moving dialogue of some of the passengers around me.

"Ah, good sir," a gruff, sarcastic voice began at my side--but
instantly a yet gruffer voice intervened with:

"Well?"

"Oh, nothing, except that to ask a question is easy, and to answer it
may be difficult."

"True."

From the ravines a mist was spreading over the river.

* * * * *

At length night fell, and as folk relapsed into slumber the babel of
tongues became stilled. The car, as it grew used to the boisterous roar
of the engines and the measured rhythm of the paddle-wheels, did not at
first notice the