or a devilish pretty girl,
eh?"

"A good many fellows can't, apparently, for this one. Directly she
appears on the scene they go at her like flies at a honey pot. There's
the doctor, and the fourth brass-button man--er, I beg his pardon, the
fourth 'officer,'--and Swaynston, and yourself, and Heaven knows how
many more. And one gets hold of a cushion--which she doesn't want;
another a wrap--of which the same holds good; two of you strive to rend
a deck-chair limb from limb in your eagerness to dump it down on the
very last spot in the ship where she desires to sit, what time you are
all scowling at each other as though there was not room for any given
two of you in the same world. I don't want to hurt your feelings,
Holmes, but, upon my word, it's the most d---- ridiculous spectacle on
earth."

"I don't see why it should be," was the half-snuffy rejoinder. "There's
nothing ridiculous in common civility."

"No, only to see you all treading on each other's heels to do _konza_ to
a woman who's nearly losing her life trying not to laugh at the crowd of
you."

"Hallo! what's this?" sung out Holmes, not sorry for an excuse to change
the subject. "Why, you used a Zulu word, Stanninghame, and yet you say
you never were in South Africa before."

"Well, and then? I've once or twice known fellows use a Greek word who
had never been near the land of Socrates in their lives."

"Still, that's different. Every fellow learns Greek at school, but no
fellow learns Zulu, eh?"

"You can't swear to that. Well, never mind. Perhaps I have been mugging
it up as a preliminary to coming out here. Note, however, Holmes, that I
used the word advisedly. _Konza_ does not mean to show civility, but to
do homage, and that of a tolerably abject kind--in fact, to knuckle
under."

"All the same, I believe you have been out here before," went on Holmes,
staring at him with a new interest. "Only you're such a mysterious chap
that you won't let on."

"Have it so, if you will. Only, aren't you rather drawing a red herring
across the trail, Holmes? We were talking about Miss Ormskirk."

"Um--yes, so we were. But, have you talked to her at all, Stanninghame?
I believe even you would be fetched if you did."

"H'm--well, I'd better leave it alone then, hadn't I, seeing that I
undertook this voyage not for love, but for money? What's her name, by
the way?"

Holmes stared. "Her name," he began---- "Oh--er--I see; her other name?
By Jove! it's an o