ng of other
things, heard dully, as from a great distance, the drone of the
Gujarati's voice. He was talking more freely and continuously than was
usual with him; ordinarily his manner was morose; he was a man of few
words, and those not too carefully chosen. So prolonged was the
monotonous murmur, however, that Desmond by and by found himself
wondering what was the subject of his lengthy discourse; he even strained
his ears to catch, if it might be, some fragments of it; but nothing came
into distinctness out of the low-pitched tone.

Occasionally it was broken by the voice of one of the others; now and
again there was a brief interval of silence; then the Gujarati began
again. Desmond's thoughts were once more diverted to his own strange
fate. Little more than a year before, he had been a boy, with no more
experience than was to be gained within the narrow circuit of a country
farm. What a gamut of adventure he had run through since then! He smiled
as he thought that none of the folks at Market Drayton would recognize,
in the muscular, strapping, suntanned seaman, the slim boy of Wilcote
Grange. His imagination had woven many a chain of incident, and set him
in many a strange place; but never had it presented a picture of himself
in command of as mixed a crew as was ever thrown together, navigating
unknown waters without chart or compass, a fugitive from the chains of an
Eastern despot.

His quick fancy was busy even now. He felt that it was not for nothing he
had been brought into his present plight; and at the back of his mind was
the belief, founded on his strong wish and hope, that the magnetism of
Clive's personality, which he had felt so strongly at Market Drayton, was
still influencing his career.

At midnight Fuzl Khan relieved him at the wheel, and he turned in. His
sleep was troubled. It was a warm night--unusually warm for the time of
year. There were swarms of cockroaches and rats on board; the cockroaches
huge beasts, three times the size of those that overran the kitchen at
home; the rats seeming as large as the rabbits he had been wont to shoot
on the farm. They scurried about with their little restless noises, which
usually would have had no power to break his sleep; but now they worried
him. He scared them into silence for a moment by striking upon the floor;
but the rustle and clipper clapper immediately began again.

After vain efforts to regain his sleep, he at length rose and went on