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 paid a visit
to the KEARSARGE at Marseilles in '65--George Dewey was our second
officer--and you were bowing and backing away from her, and you backed
into an open hatch, and she said 'my French isn't up to it' what was it
she said?"

"I didn't hear it," said Marshall; "I was too far down the hatch."

"Do you mean the old KEARSARGE?" asked Mrs. Cairns