rass, and
laid the tiffin. Then the talk flowed on, the feast made a tiny clatter
of jollity in the slumbering noon, in the silence of an ocean and a
continent. And when at last the visitors clambered down the iron side,
they went victorious with Spanish wine.

"Mind ye," shouted Captain Kneebone, from the rail, "that don't half
exhaust the subjeck o' lott'ries! Why, luck"--He shook both fists aloft,
triumphantly, as if they had been full of money. "Just ye wait. I've a
tip from Calcutta that--Never mind. Bar sells, when that fortch'n comes,
my boy, the half's yours! Home we go, remember that!"

The sampan drew away. Sweeping his arm violently, to threaten the coast
of China and the whole range of his vision,--

"You're the one man," he roared, "that makes all this mess--worth a
cowrie!"

Heywood laughed, waved his helmet, and when at last he turned, sat
looking downward with a queer smile.

"Illusions!" he chuckled. "What would a chap ever do without 'em? Old
Kneebone there: his was always that--a fortune in a lottery, and then
Home! Illusions! And he's no fool, either. Good navigator. Decent old
beggar." He waved his helmet again, before stretching out to sleep. "Do
you know, I believe--he _would_ take me."

The clinkered hills, quivering in the west, sank gradually into the
heated blur above the plains. As gradually, the two men sank
into dreams.

Furious, metallic cries from the Pretty Lily woke them, in the blue
twilight. She had moored her sampan alongside a flight of stone steps,
up which, vigorously, with a bamboo, she now prodded her husband. He
contended, snarling, but mounted; and when Heywood's silver fell
jingling into her palm, lighted his lantern and scuffed along, a
churlish guide. At the head of the slimy stairs, Heywood rattled a
ponderous gate in a wall, and shouted. Some one came running, shot
bolts, and swung the door inward. The lantern showed the tawny, grinning
face of a servant, as they passed into a small garden, of dwarf orange
trees pent in by a lofty, whitewashed wall.

"These grounds are yours, Hackh," said Heywood. "Your predecessor's boy;
and there"--pointing to a lonely barrack that loomed white over the
stunted grove--"there's your house. You draw the largest in the station.
A Portuguese nunnery, it was, built years ago. My boys are helping set
it to rights; but if you don't mind, I'd like you to stay on at my
beastly hut until this--this business takes a turn. Plenty of time.