a trail of smoke.

"Sumatra, too, has gone the way of the world," thought one who lounged
on deck.

He was a good-looking young fellow, browner far than he had been when he
left New York, and he was garbed in a fashion which would have attracted
the notice of the most apathetic _habitue_ of Narragansett Pier. Save
for a waistband of yellow silk, he was clad wholly in that dead white
which is known as _fromage a la creme_. Had his cork hat been decorated
with a canary bird's feather, you would have said a prince stepped from
a fairy tale. At his heels was a fox terrier, which he had christened
Zut. When he wished to be emphatic, however, Zut was elongated into Zut
Alors.

"The general's compliments, sir, and are you ready?"

It was the polyglot steward addressing him, with that deference which is
born of tips.

Tancred Ennever--the only son of Furman Ennever, who, as every one
knows, is head and front of the steadiest house in Wall Street--turned
and nodded. "Got my traps up?" he asked, and without waiting for a
reply sauntered across the deck. He had met the general--Petrus van
Lier, Consul of the Netherlands to Siak--at the Government House at
Batavia, and although the trip which he had outlined for himself
consisted, for the moment at least, in making direct for that sultry
hole which is known as Singapore, yet the general had so represented the
charms and pleasures of Sumatra that he had consented to become his
guest. In extending the invitation the general may have had an ulterior
motive, but in that case he let no inkling of it escape.

And now, as Tancred crossed the deck, the general stretched his hand. He
was a man whose fiftieth birthday would never be feted again. He had the
dormant eyes of his race, those eyes in which apathy is a screen to
vigilance, and his chin had the tenacity of a rock. His upper lip was
furnished with a cavalry moustache of indistinctest gray, the ends
upturned and fierce. In stature he was short and slim. It should be
added that he was bald.

Though the ship had barely halted, already it was surrounded by prahus
and sampans, the indigenous varieties of skiff, and among them one there
was so trim it might have come from a man-of-war. In the bow a
fluttering pennon proclaimed it a belonging of the Dutch. The coxswain
had already saluted, and sat awaiting the orders of his chief.

The general motioned with a finger, the coxswain touched his forehead,
and in a moment the boat was