wont to say that if he decided to turn pirate he believed
that Larpent would continue at his post without the smallest change of
front. To raise a protest of any sort would have been absolutely foreign
to his nature. He was made to go straight ahead, to do his duty without
question and with perfect self-reliance.

On the present occasion, having cruised from port to port in the
Mediterranean for nearly six weeks, it was certainly no ill news to him
to hear that Saltash had at last had enough. The weather was perfect, too
perfect for a man of his bull-dog instincts. He was thoroughly tired of
the endless spring sunshine and of the chattering, fashionable crowds
that Saltash was wont to assemble on the yacht. He was waiting with an
iron patience for the word that should send them forth over the great
Atlantic rollers, with the ocean spray bursting over their bows and the
sting of the ocean wind in their faces. That was the sort of life that
appealed to him. He had no use for civilization; the froth of society had
no attraction for him. He preferred a deeper draught.

Saltash was thoroughly cosmopolitan in his tastes; he liked amusement,
but he abhorred boredom. He declared that for him it was the root of all
evil. He was never really wicked unless he was bored. And then--_que
voulez-vous_? He did not guide the star of destiny.

"Yes," he said, after a thoughtful silence, "we will certainly put to sea
to-morrow--unless--" he turned his head and threw a merry grin at his
companion--"unless Fortune has any tricks up her sleeve for me, for I am
going ashore for one more fling to-night."

Larpent smoked on immovably, his blue-grey eyes staring out to the vivid
sky-line, his sunburnt face quite imperturbable.

"We shall be ready to start as soon as you come aboard, my lord," he
said.

"Good!" said Saltash lightly. "I may be late, or--more probably--very
early. Leave the gangway for me! I'll let you know when I'm aboard."

He got up as if he moved on springs and leaned against the rail, looking
down quizzically at the man who sat stolidly smoking in the deck-chair.
No two people could have formed a stronger contrast--the yacht's captain,
fair-bearded, with the features of a Viking--the yacht's owner, dark,
alert, with a certain French finesse about him that gave a strange charm
to a personality that otherwise might have been merely fantastic.

Suddenly he laughed. "Do you know, Larpent, I often think to myself what
odd