ey were drawing
towards dinner, and the afternoon was wearing stale.

"I did so want that idol," she said plaintively. She had the childish
quality of voice, the insipidity of intonation, which is best
appreciated in steamboat saloons. "Oh, Mr. Dawson, don't you think
you could get it back for me?"

"I'm frightfully sorry," said the contrite Dawson. "I'll go back at
once. You don't know when the ship goes, do you?"

Another of Miss Paterson's cavaliers assured him that he had some
hours yet. "The steward told me so," he added authoritatively.

"Then I'll go at once," said Dawson, hating him.

"Mind, don't lose the boat," Miss Paterson called after him.

He went swiftly back up the wide main street in which they had spent
the day. Lamps were beginning to shine everywhere, and the dull peace
of the place was broken by a new life. Those that dwell in darkness
were going abroad now, and the small saloons were filling. Dawson
noted casually that evening was evidently the lively time of
Mozambique. He passed men of a type he had missed during the day, men
of all nationalities, by their faces, and every shade of color. They
were lounging on the sidewalk in knots of two or three, sitting at
the little tables outside the saloons, or lurking at the entrances of
narrow alleys that ran aside from the main street every few paces.
All were clad in thin white suits, and some wore knives in full
sight, while there was that about them that would lead even the most
innocent and conventional second-class passenger to guess at a weapon
concealed somewhere. Some of them looked keenly at Dawson as he
passed along; and although he met their eyes impassively, he--even
he--was conscious of an implied estimate in their glance, as though
they classified him with a look. Once he stepped aside to let a woman
pass. She was large, flamboyantly southern and calm. She lounged
along, a cloak over her left arm, her head thrown back, a cigarette
between her wide, red lips. She, too, looked at Dawson--looked down
at him with a superb lazy nonchalance, laughed a little, and walked
on. The loungers on the sidewalk laughed too, but rather with her
than at Dawson.

"I seem rather out of it here," he told himself patiently, and was
glad to enter the wide portals of Lazarus' Hotel. A grand, swarthy
Greek, magnificent in a scarlet jacket and gold braid, pulled open
the door for him, and heard his mission smilingly.

"A brass-a image," he repeated. "Sir,