e mark. The serang said she was English, too, though I don't believe
much in that. One-tenth English would probably be more near the truth.
The odds are she'll be Eurasian, and those snuff-and-butter colored
ladies, when they get amongst people blacker than themselves, always try
to ignore their own lick of the tar-brush."

"Fat, is she?"

"The serang said she-was a big buffalo bull of a woman, with a terror of
a temper. I don't know what's Mr. Wenlock's business, sir; but whether
he wants to start a dry-goods agency, or merely to arrange for smuggling
in some rifles, he'd better make up his mind to square her first and
foremost. She will have a finger in every pie. She's as curious as a
monkey, too, and there's no doing anything without letting her know. And
when she says a thing, it's got to be done."

"Is she the head chief's favorite wife, then?"

"That's the funny part of it: she isn't married. These Orientals always
get husbands early as a general thing, and you'd have thought that in
her juvenile days, before she got power, they'd have married her to some
one about the town, whether she liked it or not. But it seems they
didn't, because she said she'd certainly poison any man if they sent her
into his zenana. And later on, when she came to be boss, she still kept
to spinsterhood. Guess there wasn't any man about the place white enough
to suit her taste."

"H'm. What you've told me seems to let daylight on to things."

"Beg pardon, sir?"

Captain Kettle put his hand kindly on Murray's shoulder. "Don't ask me
to explain now, my lad, but when the joke comes you shall share the
laugh. There's a young man on this ship (I don't mind telling you in
confidence) whose ways I don't quite like, and I think he's going to get
a lesson."

He went out then under the awnings of the bridge deck, and told Wenlock
that he would probably be able to earn his fee for helping on the
marriage, and Wenlock confidently thought that he quite understood the
situation.

"Skipper's a bit of a methody," thought Mr. Hugh Wenlock, "but his
principles don't go very deep when there are fifty sovereigns to be
earned. Well, he's a useful man, and if he gets me snugly married to
that little girl, he'll be cheap at the price."

The _Parakeet's_ voyage to Dunkhot was not swift. Eight-and-a-half knots
was her most economical pace for coal consumption, and at that gait she
steamed. With a reputation to make with his new owners, and two and
a