knowledged with a lack of cordiality that failed
to ruffle him. He had hung up his overcoat and installed himself facing
me, and was now making preparations for lighting a fat cigar.

"Well," he commented, with a chuckle of raillery, after this operation,
"the last time I saw you you were in a pretty tight corner, eh? You
can't say it was my fault, either; I'd have put you wise if you'd
listened. But you weren't taking any--you knew better than I did--and
you strafed me, as the Dutchies say, to the kaiser's taste."

"Good advice seldom gets much thanks, I believe," was my grumpy comment,
which he unexpectedly chose to accept as an apology and with a large,
fine, generous gesture to blow away.

"That's all right," he declared. "I'm not holding it against you. We've
all got to learn. Next time you won't be so easy caught, I guess. It
makes a man do some thinking when he gets a dose like you did; and those
chaps at Gibraltar certainly gave you a rough deal!"

"On the contrary," I differed shortly,--I wasn't hunting
sympathy,--"considering all the circumstances, I think they were
extremely fair."

"Not to shoot you on sight? Well, maybe." He was grinning. "But I guess
you weren't hunting for a chance to spend two days cooped up in a cabin
that measured six feet by five."

"It had advantages. One of them was solitude," I responded dryly. "And
it was less unpleasant than being relegated to a six-by-three grave. See
here, I don't enjoy this subject! Suppose we drop it. The fact is, I've
never understood why you came to my rescue on that occasion, you didn't
owe me any civility, you know, and you had to--well--we'll say draw on
your imagination when you claimed you saw what I threw overboard that
night."

"Sure, I lied like a trooper," he admitted placidly. "Glad to do it. You
didn't break any bones when you strafed me, and anyhow, I felt sorry for
you. It always goes against me to see a fellow being played!"

Thanks to my determined coolness, the conversation lapsed. I buried
myself in the Paris "Herald," but found I could not read. Simmering with
wrath, I lived again the ill-starred voyage his words recalled to
me, breathed the close smothering air of the cabin that had held me
prisoner, tasted the knowledge that I was watched like any thief. An
armed sailor had stood outside my door by day and by night; and a dozen
times I had longed to fling open that frail partition, seize the man by
the collar, and hurl him far a