r it. And then,
with "ex-Minister" on his visiting cards, and a sense of duty well
performed, for the rest of his life he could join the other expatriates
in Paris.

Just before dinner, the cruiser RALEIGH having discovered the
whereabouts of the SERAPIS by wireless, entered the harbor, and Admiral
Hardy came to the yacht to call upon the senator, in whose behalf he
had been scouring the Caribbean Seas. Having paid his respects to that
personage, the admiral fell boisterously upon Marshall.

The two old gentlemen were friends of many years. They had met,
officially and unofficially, in many strange parts of the world. To
each the chance reunion was a piece of tremendous good fortune. And
throughout dinner the guests of Livingstone, already bored with each
other, found in them and their talk of former days new and delightful
entertainment. So much so that when, Marshall having assured them that
the local quarantine regulations did not extend to a yacht, the men
departed for Las Bocas, the women insisted that he and admiral remain
behind.

It was for Marshall a wondrous evening. To foregather with his old
friend whom he had known since Hardy was a mad midshipman, to sit at
the feet of his own charming countrywomen, to listen to their soft,
modulated laughter, to note how quickly they saw that to him the evening
was a great event, and with what tact each contributed to make it the
more memorable; all served to wipe out the months of bitter loneliness,
the stigma of failure, the sense of undeserved neglect. In the
moonlight, on the cool quarter-deck, they sat, in a half-circle, each
of the two friends telling tales out of school, tales of which the
other was the hero or the victim, "inside" stories of great occasions,
ceremonies, bombardments, unrecorded "shirt-sleeve" diplomacy.

Hardy had helped to open the Suez Canal. Marshall had assisted the Queen
of Madagascar to escape from the French invaders. On the Barbary Coast
Hardy had chased pirates. In Edinburgh Marshall had played chess with
Carlyle. He had seen Paris in mourning in the days of the siege, Paris
in terror in the days of the Commune; he had known Garibaldi, Gambetta,
the younger Dumas, the creator of Pickwick.

"Do you remember that time in Tangier," the admiral urged, "when I was a
midshipman, and got into the bashaw's harem?"

"Do you remember how I got you out?" Marshall replied grimly.

"And," demanded Hardy, "do you remember when Adelina Patti pai