t. "Do you know anything about sailing a
boat?"

"No," said the other; "but----"

Scott pushed on and left him. In the church, his heart leaped at sight
of a man in the clothes of a Portuguese man-o'-war's-man, asleep by a
pillar--a little swarthy weed of a man. He woke him with a kick, only
to learn, after further kicks, that the man was a stoker and knew as
little about boats as himself. At the door of a confessional lay
another man in the same uniform. A kick failed to wake him, and Scott
bent to shake him. But the hand he stretched out recoiled; the plague
had been before him.

In that time men knew no difference between day and night, for death
knew none, and the traffic of the close, twisted streets never lulled.
The blatant cafes were ablaze with lamps, and in them the tables were
crowded and the fiddles raved and jeered. In one Scott found a chair
to rest in, and sat awhile with liquor before him. He had carried his
search from the shore to the bush, through all the town, and to no
end. Now, mingled with his resolution there was something of
desperation. He sat heavily in thought, his glass in his hand; and
while he brooded, unheeding, the cafe roared and clattered about him.
To his right, a group of white-clad officers chatted over a languid
game of cards; at his left, a forlorn man sang dolorously to himself.
Others were behind. From these last, as he sat, a word reached him
which woke him from his preoccupation like a thrust of a knife. He sat
without moving, straining his ears.

"De ole captain, he die," said some one; "but hees boat, she lie on de
mud now."

"An' ye know where she is?" demanded another voice, a deeper one.

"Yais," the first speaker replied. He had a voice that purred in
undertones, the true voice of a conspirator.

There was a sound of a fist on the table. "Good for you," said the
deeper voice. "We'll get away by noon, then."

Scott carried his glass to his lips and drained it; then he rose
deliberately in his place and commenced to thread his way out between
the tables. He had to pause to pay the waiter for his drink when he
was a yard or two away; he gave the man an English sovereign, and
thus, while change was procured, he could stand and look at the owners
of the voices. They paid him no attention; he was unsuspected. One of
the men he knew, a tall Italian with a heavy, brutal face, a
knife-fighter of notoriety and a bully. The other was a square, humpy
man, half of whose fa