the wrong line and
might have made things awkward. In fact, the situation needed a lighter
touch than mine. All the same, when I saw the fellow was bullying you--"

"You butted in?" Barbara suggested, smiling, although her heart beat.

"Like a bull moose," said Lister with a frown. "I ought to have kept
cool, used caution, and frozen him off by a few short arguments. You can
picture Cartwright's putting across the job! After all, however, I don't
know the arguments I could have used, and I remembered how the fellow
had injured you--"

He saw Barbara's color rise, and stopped for a moment. It looked as if
he had not used much caution now.

"Since I thought you in Africa, I don't understand how you arrived," she
began.

"The thing's not very strange," said Lister. "I saw your name in a
visitors' list and meant to ask for you in the morning. Then I ran up
against Shillito, who didn't know me, and when he got on board the steam
tram, I hired a _tartana_. Thought he might mean trouble and I'd better
come along--"

"Well," he resumed, "I'm sorry I handled the job clumsily, since I might
have hurt you worse; but I hated the fellow on my own account and saw
red. Perhaps it was lucky I was able to throw him down the steps,
because I expect neither of us meant to quit until the other was knocked
out." He paused and added, with a laugh: "Now I'm cool, I think the
chances were I got knocked out. Last time we met he threw me off the
car; I reckon my luck has turned!"

Barbara studied him and was moved by pity and some other emotions. He
was very thin and his face was pinched. He looked as if he were
exhausted by the work she had sent him to do. Barbara admitted that she
had sent him. Before Cartwright planned the salvage undertaking she had
declared he would find Lister the man for an awkward job.

"You ran some risk for my sake, and I must acknowledge a fresh debt,"
she said. "I would sooner be your debtor than another's, but sometimes
I'm embarrassed. You see, I owe you so much."

"You have paid all by letting me know you," Lister declared.

She was quiet for a few moments, and then asked: "Are you making much
progress at the wreck?"

"Our progress is slow, but we are getting there," Lister replied, and
seeing her interest, narrated his and Brown's struggles, and his long
voyage with a short crew on board the tug.

The story was moving and Barbara's eyes sparkled. Lister had borne much
and done all that flesh and bl