truth, I forgot myself! A gentleman like you will overlook that, I
know." As he made these apologies, Ricardo extended his hand. "Let me
steady you, sir."

Slowly Mr. Jones unfolded himself in all his slenderness, rocked,
staggered, and caught Ricardo's shoulder. His henchman assisted him
to the pipe, which went on gushing a clear stream of water, sparkling
exceedingly against the black piles and the gloom under the jetty.

"Catch hold, sir," Ricardo advised solicitously. "All right?"

He stepped back, and, while Mr. Jones revelled in the abundance of
water, he addressed himself to Heyst with a sort of justificatory
speech, the tone of which, reflecting his feelings, partook of purring
and spitting. They had been thirty hours tugging at the oars, he
explained, and they had been more than forty hours without water, except
that the night before they had licked the dew off the gunwales.

Ricardo did not explain to Heyst how it happened. At that precise moment
he had no explanation ready for the man on the wharf, who, he guessed,
must be wondering much more at the presence of his visitors than at
their plight.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The explanation lay in the two simple facts that the light winds and
strong currents of the Java Sea had drifted the boat about until they
partly lost their bearings; and that by some extra-ordinary mistake
one of the two jars put into the boat by Schomberg's man contained salt
water. Ricardo tried to put some pathos into his tones. Pulling for
thirty hours with eighteen-foot oars! And the sun! Ricardo relieved
his feelings by cursing the sun. They had felt their hearts and lungs
shrivel within them. And then, as if all that hadn't been trouble
enough, he complained bitterly, he had had to waste his fainting
strength in beating their servant about the head with a stretcher. The
fool had wanted to drink sea water, and wouldn't listen to reason.
There was no stopping him otherwise. It was better to beat him into
insensibility than to have him go crazy in the boat, and to be obliged
to shoot him. The preventive, administered with enough force to brain
an elephant, boasted Ricardo, had to be applied on two occasions--the
second time all but in sight of the jetty.

"You have seen the beauty," Ricardo went on expansively, hiding his lack
of some sort of probable story under this loquacity. "I had to hammer
him away from the spout. Opened afresh all the old broken spots on his
head. You saw ho