f he refused to discuss the subject any longer.
Mackay looked at the sea and sighed; he was sorry that he had provoked
Mr. Heron's wrath by his question. But he found afterwards that it
contributed to form a kind of silent understanding between him and
Percival. It was a sort of relief to both of them, occasionally to
exchange short, sharp sentences of doubt or discouragement, which
neither of them breathed in the ear of the others. Percival divined
quickly enough, that the steerage passenger was not a man of Thomas
Jackson's class. As the hoarseness left his voice, and the disfiguring
redness disappeared from his face, Percival distinguished signs of
refinement and culture which he wondered at himself for not perceiving
earlier. But there was nothing remarkable in his having made a mistake
about Mackay's station in life. The man had come on board the _Arizona_
in a state of wretched suffering: his face had been scorched, his hair
and beard singed, his clothes, as well as his person, blackened by dust
and smoke. Then his clothes were those of a working-man, and his speech
had been rendered harsh to the ear from the hoarseness of his voice. But
he gradually regained his strength as he lay in the fresh air and the
sunshine, and returning health gave back to him the quiet energy and
cheerfulness to which Jackson had borne testimony. He was a great
favourite with the men, who, in their rough way, made a sort of pet of
him, and brought him offerings of the daintiest food that they could
find. And his hands were not idle. He wove baskets and plaited hats of
cocoa-nut fibre with his long white fingers, which were very unlike
those of the working-man that he professed to be. Percival Heron was
often struck by the appearance of that hand. It was one of unusual
beauty--the sort of hand that Titian or Vandyke loved to draw: long,
finely-shaped, full of quiet power, and fuller, perhaps, of a subtle
sort of refinement, which seems to express itself in the form of
tapering fingers with filbert nails and a well-turned wrist. It was not
the hand of a working-man, not even of a skilled artizan, whose hand is
often delicately sensitive: it was a gentleman's hand, and as such it
piqued Percival's curiosity. But Mackay was of a reserved disposition,
and did not offer any information about himself.

One day when rain was falling in sheets and torrents, as it did
sometimes upon the Rocas Reef, Percival turned into the log hut for
shelter. Ma