pe as far as I was
concerned. He knew more about Madeira now and he no longer condescended
to me....

We regained the water front by a devious route and came down toward the
quay among odorous fishing smacks and tangled nets. Hotter, more
desolate than ever, lay that black griddle of the foreshore on which
Angus Jones was now condemned to wander with me. Nothing moved along
its pebbly waste but heat waves and boiling surf and hopping insects in
clouds.

Off the jetty lay the Siamese tramp, still heaving in the ground swell,
and we came down to the edge to stare across at her. As pariahs before a
vision of paradise we stood and yearned toward that disreputable hulk.

They had almost finished with her cargo. At this moment they held a
clumsy crate balanced over the side in a sling, seeking to lower it upon
a shore boat about the size of a dinghy. The crew swarmed like furious
ants, and a white officer in dirty ducks flailed amid the riot. As the
chain swung we saw the crate was really a clumsy cage in which ramped a
huge and tawny form.

"The circus," I murmured.

"Ha!" said Angus Jones.

"Not the kind of circus you mean," I assured him. "No clowns, no rings,
no shell games. It's a kind of fifth-class traveling menagerie, from
what I hear, backed as a new venture by his excellency the governor
himself. They'll house it in that round barn up the promenade where the
cinema lives, and anon those natives who have the price will sit around
on the benches and tremble and scratch themselves."

"But why should it be thus?" asked Angus Jones.

"Well, those who carry fleas--"

"No, but why should they tremble?"

"This is a far island. No one hereabouts has ever seen any animals more
savage than a goat."

"True," said Angus Jones, with a grimace as if he had bitten into a sour
fruit. "It is their simplicity. I had almost forgot."

Strange that he should have taken the word in defeat and disillusionment
at that moment, for just then the thing happened. There burst a shrill
screaming from the tramp, and its knot of toilers flew apart like bits
of a bomb. Men leaped into the rigging, climbed the spars, shot down the
hatchways. The hanging cage sagged and cracked, and overside flashed,
with an arching spring, some great body all lithe and tawny in the
sunlight. It plunged, and presently reappeared, surging for shore.

* * * * *

I felt suddenly conspicuous on that beach. We stood far from