enings which one gets only at sea
and in the warmer latitudes. The sky was alive with myriads of twinkling
and palpitating stars, which seemed to come and go, like sparks on a
fire-back, as one gazed upward into the vast depths and tried to
place them. They played hide-and-seek with one another and with the
innumerable meteors which shot recklessly every now and again across the
field of the firmament, leaving momentary furrows of light behind them.
Beneath, the sea sparkled almost like the sky, for every turn of the
screw churned up the scintillating phosphorescence in the water, so that
countless little jets of living fire seemed to flash and die away at the
summit of every wavelet. A tall, spare man in a picturesque cloak, and
with long, lank, white hair, leant over the taffrail, gazing at the
numberless flashing lights of the surface. As he gazed, he talked on in
his clear, rapt voice to a stranger by his side. The voice and the ring
of enthusiasm were unmistakable. "Oh, no," he was saying, as we stole up
behind him, "that hypothesis, I venture to assert, is no longer tenable
by the light of recent researches. Death and decay have nothing to do
directly with the phosphorescence of the sea, though they have a little
indirectly. The light is due in the main to numerous minute living
organisms, most of them bacilli, on which I once made several close
observations and crucial experiments. They possess organs which may be
regarded as miniature bull's-eye lanterns. And these organs--"

"What a lovely evening, Hubert!" Hilda said to me, in an apparently
unconcerned voice, as the Professor reached this point in his
exposition.

Sebastian's voice quavered and stammered for a moment. He tried just at
first to continue and complete his sentence: "And these organs," he
went on, aimlessly, "these bull's-eyes that I spoke about, are so
arranged--so arranged--I was speaking on the subject of crustaceans, I
think--crustaceans so arranged--" then he broke down utterly and turned
sharply round to me. He did not look at Hilda--I think he did not dare;
but he faced me with his head down and his long, thin neck protruded,
eyeing me from under those overhanging, penthouse brows of his. "You
sneak!" he cried, passionately. "You sneak! You have dogged me by false
pretences. You have lied to bring this about! You have come aboard under
a false name--you and your accomplice!"

I faced him in turn, erect and unflinching. "Professor Sebastia