, overtopped by the stalwart
sailors, who had abandoned Manuel to crowd, bare-armed, bare-chested,
pushing, and craning their necks, round us.

She said, "I can trust you; it is my duty to trust you, and this is now
my home."

It was like a definite pronouncement of faith--and of a line of policy.
She seemed, for that moment, quite apart from my love, a thing very
much above me and mine; closed up in an immense grief, but quite
whole-souledly determined to go unflinchingly into a new life, breaking
quietly with all her past for the sake of the traditions of all that
past.

The sailors fell back to make way for us. It was only by the touch
of her hand on my arm that I had any hope that she trusted me, me
personally, and apart from the commands of the dead Carlos; the dead
father, and the great weight of her dead traditions that could be never
anything any more for her--except a memory. Ah, she stood it very well;
her head was erect and proud. The cabin door opened, and a rigid female
figure with dry outlines, and a smooth head, stood out with severe
simplicity against the light of the cabin door. The light falling on
Seraphina seemed to show her for the first time. A lamentable voice
bellowed:

"Senorita!... Senorita!" and then, in an insinuating, heart-breaking
tone, "Senorita!..."

She walked quietly past the figure of the woman, and disappeared in
the brilliant light of the cabin. The door closed. I remained standing
there. Manuel, at her disappearance, raised his voice to a tremendous,
incessant yell of despair, as if he expected to make her hear.

"_Senorita... proteccion del opprimido; oh, hija de piedad...
Senorita_."

His lamentable noise brought half the ship round us; the sailors fell
back before the mate, Sebright, walking at the elbow of a stout man in
loose trousers and jacket. They stopped.

"An unexpected meeting, Captain Williams," was all I found to say to
him. He had a constrained air, and shook hands in awkward silence.

"How do you do?" he said hurriedly. After a moment he added, with a
sort of confused, as if official air, "I hope, Kemp, you'll be able to
explain satisfactorily..."

I said, rather off-handedly, "Why, the two men I killed ought to be
credentials enough for all immediate purposes!"

"That isn't what I meant," he said. He spoke rather with a mumble,
and apologetically. It was difficult to see in him any trace of the
roystering Williams who had roared toasts to my health i