married my poor mother. He sympathizes
with Captain Harris--against me; no father would do that. Look at them
together now! And you take his side, too; oh! I have no patience with
any of you--except poor Mr. Ready in his berth."

"But you are not going."

"Indeed I am. I am tired of you all."

And she was gone with angry tears for which I blamed myself as I fell to
pacing the weather side of the poop--and so often afterwards! So often,
and with such unavailing bitterness!

Senhor Santos and the captain were in conversation by the weather rail.
I fancied poor old Harris eyed me with suspicion, and I wished he had
better cause. The Portuguese, however, saluted me with his customary
courtesy, and I thought there was a grave twinkle in his steady eye.

"Are you in deesgrace also, friend Cole?" he inquired in his all but
perfect English.

"More or less," said I ruefully.

He gave the shrug of his country--that delicate gesture which is done
almost entirely with the back--a subtlety beyond the power of British
shoulders.

"The senhora is both weelful and pivish," said he, mixing the two vowels
which (with the aspirate) were his only trouble with our tongue. "It is
great grif to me to see her growing so unlike her sainted mother!"

He sighed, and I saw his delicate fingers forsake the cigarette they
were rolling to make the sacred sign upon his breast. He was always
smoking one cigarette and making another; as he lit the new one the glow
fell upon a strange pin that he wore, a pin with a tiny crucifix inlaid
in mosaic. So the religious cast of Senhor Santos was brought twice home
to me in the same moment, though, to be sure, I had often been struck
by it before. And it depressed me to think that so sweet a child as Eva
Denison should have spoken harshly of so good a man as her step-father,
simply because he had breadth enough to sympathize with a coarse old
salt like Captain Harris.

I turned in, however, and I cannot say the matter kept me awake in the
separate state-room which was one luxury of our empty saloon. Alas? I
was a heavy sleeper then.

CHAPTER II. THE MYSTERIOUS CARGO

"Wake up, Cole! The ship's on fire!"

It was young Ready's hollow voice, as cool, however, as though he were
telling me I was late for breakfast. I started up and sought him wildly
in the darkness.

"You're joking," was my first thought and utterance; for now he was
lighting my candle, and blowing out the match with a care