seed of
mistrust was sown, and it was sown in fertile soil.

Peter ignored the stare, however, until the launch puffed up alongside
the sea-ladder, then he gave the coolie a glance pregnant with
hostility and understanding.

Taking the swaying steps three at a time, Peter hastened to his
stateroom, emerging about five minutes later in a white uniform, the
uniform of the J. C. & J. service, with a little gold at the collar,
bands of gold about the cuffs, and gold emblems of shooting sparks,
indicative of his caste, upon either arm.

He looked for the coolie and found him on the starboard side of the
promenade deck. The subsequent events have already been partly
narrated.

CHAPTER II

The coolie plunged into the water with a weltering splash which sent a
small spiral of spray almost to the deck. For a moment the man in the
water pedaled and flailed, vastly frightened, and gasping, above the
clang of the engine-room telegraph, for a rope. The black side of the
_Persian Gulf_ started to slide away from him.

"You better make for shore!" shouted Peter between megaphonic hands.

Several boatmen were poling in the coolie's direction, but all of them
refrained from slipping within reach of the thrashing hands. A
Javanese boatman can find more amusing and enjoyable scenes than an
angry Chinese coolie flailing about in the water; but he must travel
many miles to find them.

"Swim to the _ma-fou_," Peter encouraged him. He knew there were
sharks in that emerald pond.

His attention then was diverted by a flutter of white at his elbow. He
turned his head. The lonely passenger, a girl, was smiling
mischievously into his face. But in her very dark eyes there was a
blunt question.

"Why did you do that?" she asked in a voice that rang with a low
musical quality. Her voice and her beauty were of the tropics, as were
the features which, molded together, gave form to that beauty; because
her hair and eyes were of a color, dark like walnut, and her olive skin
was like silk under silk, with the rosy color of her youth and fire
showing underneath.

She was rather startling, especially her deep, dark and restless eyes.
It was by sense rather than by anything his eyes could base conclusions
upon that Peter realized her spirited personality, knew instinctively
that radiant and destructive fires burned behind the sombre,
questioning eyes. The full, red lips might have told him this much.

And now these lips wer