the young fellow's hand.
"Once more welcome to life! What a wonder! Another escape. You are a
second Orlando--almost a Don Quixote. And where are your two Sancho
Panzas?"

"You here!" was Thurstane's grim response, and he did not take the
proffered hand.

"Come!" implored Coronado, stepping toward the waist of the vessel and
away from the cabin. "This way, if you please," he urged, beckoning
earnestly. "I have a word to say to you in private."

Not a tone of this conversation had been heard below. Before the boat had
touched the side the crew were laboring at the noisy windlass with their
shouts of "Yo heave ho! heave and pawl! heave hearty ho!" while the mate
was screaming from the knight-heads, "Heave hearty, men--heave hearty.
Heave and raise the dead. Heave and away."

Amid this uproar Coronado continued: "You won't shake hands with me,
Lieutenant Thurstane. As a gentleman, speaking to another gentleman, I ask
an explanation."

Thurstane hesitated; he had ugly suspicions enough, but no proofs; and if
he could not prove guilt, he must not charge it.

"Is it because we abandoned you?" demanded Coronado. "We had reason. We
heard that you were dead. The muleteers reported Apaches. I feared for the
safety of the ladies. I pushed on. You, a gentleman and an officer--what
else would you have advised?"

"Let it go," growled Thurstane. "Let that pass. I won't talk of it--nor of
other things. But," and here he seemed to shake with emotion, "I want
nothing more to do with you--you nor your family. I have had suffering
enough."

"Ah, it is with _her_ that you quarrel rather than with me," inferred
Coronado impudently, for he had recovered his self-possession. "Certainly,
my poor Lieutenant! You have reason. But remember, so has she. She is
enormously rich and can have any one. That is the way these women
understand life."

"You will oblige me by saying not another word on that subject," broke in
Thurstane savagely. "I got her letter dismissing me, and I accepted my
fate without a word, and I mean never to see her again. I hope that
satisfies you."

"My dear Lieutenant," protested Coronado, "you seem to intimate that I
influenced her decision. I beg you to believe, on my word of honor as a
gentleman, that I never urged her in any way to write that letter."

"Well--no matter--I don't care," replied the young fellow in a voice like
one long sob. "I don't care whether you did or not. The moment she could
write it, n