to stop rowing. The tug's mooring ropes splashed,
her propeller throbbed, and she swung away from the wall.

She was rusty and dingy; the screens along her bridge were cracked and
burned by the sun. The boat at her rail was blackened by soot, and when
she rolled the weed streamed down from her water-line. She looked very
small and overloaded by the stack of coal on deck. The wash round her
stern got whiter, ripples ran back from her bows, and when she steamed
near Cartwright's boat, her whistle shrieked. Cartwright stood up and
waved; Learmont, on the bridge, touched his cap, but for a few moments
Barbara fixed her eyes on _Terrier's_ deckhouse. Then she blushed and
her heart beat, for she saw Lister at the door of the engine-room. He
saw her and smiled.

The tug's whistle was drowned by a deeper blast. A big liner, painted
black from water-line to funnel-top, was coming out, and Cartwright's
boat lay between her and the tug. Barbara gave the great ship a careless
glance and then started, for she read the name at the bow. This was the
Havana boat.

Studying the groups of passengers at the rails, she thought she saw a
face she knew. The face got distinct, and when the liner's lofty side
towered above the boat, Shillito, looking down, lifted his cap and bowed
with ironical politeness. Barbara turned her head and tried for calm
while she watched the tug.

Lister had not gone. Barbara knew he would not go so long as he could
see the boat, and standing up, with her hand on Cartwright's shoulder,
she waved her handkerchief. Lister's hand went to his cap, but he was
getting indistinct and _Terrier_ had begun to plunge on the long swell
outside the wall. She steered for open sea, the big black liner followed
the coast, and presently Cartwright signed the men to pull. Then he
looked at Barbara and smiled, for he knew she had seen Shillito.

"Things do sometimes happen like that!" he said. "I think the fellow has
gone for good, but the other will come back."

CHAPTER IX

LISTER MAKES GOOD

_Arcturus'_ holds were empty and a long row of oil puncheons occupied
the beach, but the men who had dragged the goods from the water were
exhausted by heavy toil in the scorching sun, and some were sick. The
divers had bolted on plates to cover the holes in the vessel's bilge
before one fell ill and his mate's nerve went. The heat and poisonous
vapors from the swamps had broken his health, and he got a bad jar one
day his air-pi