cing round the
fast crimsoning horizon, paused abruptly, and shading his eyes with his
hand, looked out intently to the westward.

Frere, who found Mrs. Vickers's conversation a little tiresome, and
had been glancing from time to time at the companion, as though in
expectation of someone appearing, noticed the action.

"What is it, Mr. Best?"

"I don't know exactly. It looks to me like a cloud of smoke." And,
taking the glass, he swept the horizon.

"Let me see," said Frere; and he looked also.

On the extreme horizon, just to the left of the sinking sun, rested, or
seemed to rest, a tiny black cloud. The gold and crimson, splashed
all about the sky, had overflowed around it, and rendered a clear view
almost impossible.

"I can't quite make it out," says Frere, handing back the telescope. "We
can see as soon as the sun goes down a little."

Then Mrs. Vickers must, of course, look also, and was prettily affected
about the focus of the glass, applying herself to that instrument with
much girlish giggling, and finally declaring, after shutting one eye
with her fair hand, that positively she "could see nothing but sky, and
believed that wicked Mr. Frere was doing it on purpose."

By and by, Captain Blunt appeared, and, taking the glass from his
officer, looked through it long and carefully. Then the mizentop was
appealed to, and declared that he could see nothing; and at last the sun
went down with a jerk, as though it had slipped through a slit in the
sea, and the black spot, swallowed up in the gathering haze, was seen no
more.

As the sun sank, the relief guard came up the after hatchway, and the
relieved guard prepared to superintend the descent of the convicts. At
this moment Sylvia missed her ball, which, taking advantage of a sudden
lurch of the vessel, hopped over the barricade, and rolled to the feet
of Rufus Dawes, who was still leaning, apparently lost in thought,
against the side.

The bright spot of colour rolling across the white deck caught his eye;
stooping mechanically, he picked up the ball, and stepped forward to
return it. The door of the barricade was open and the sentry--a young
soldier, occupied in staring at the relief guard--did not notice the
prisoner pass through it. In another instant he was on the sacred
quarter-deck.

Heated with the game, her cheeks aglow, her eyes sparkling, her golden
hair afloat, Sylvia had turned to leap after her plaything, but even as
she turned, from unde