any imminent danger to the harmony of the evening was averted.
Don Ramon Ramirez, the Alcalde, a youngish man of evident distinction,
sat next to Miss Keene, and monopolized her conversation with a certain
curiosity that was both grave and childish in its frank trustfulness.
Some of his questions were so simple and incompatible with his apparent
intelligence that she unconsciously lowered her voice in answering them,
in dread of the ridicule of her companions. She could not resist the
impression, which repeatedly obtruded upon her imagination, that
the entire population of Todos Santos were a party of lost children,
forgotten by their parents, and grown to man and womanhood in utter
ignorance of the world.

The Commander had, half informally, drunk the health of Captain Bunker,
without rising from his seat, when, to Miss Keene's alarm, Captain
Bunker staggered to his feet. He had been drinking freely, as usual; but
he was bent on indulging a loquacity which his discipline on shipboard
had hitherto precluded, and which had, perhaps, strengthened his
solitary habit. His speech was voluble and incoherent, complimentary and
tactless, kindly and aggressive, courteous and dogmatic. It was left
to Senor Perkins to translate it to the eye and ear of his host without
incongruity or offense. This he did so admirably as to elicit not only
the applause of the foreigners who did not understand English, but of
his own countrymen who did not understand Spanish.

"I feel," said Senor Perkins, in graceful peroration, "that I have
done poor justice to the eloquence of this gallant sailor. My unhappy
translation cannot offer you that voice, at times trembling with
generous emotion, and again inaudible from excessive modesty in the
presence of this illustrious assembly--those limbs that waver and bend
under the undulations of the chivalrous sentiment which carries him away
as if he were still on that powerful element he daily battles with and
conquers."

But when coffee and sweets were reached, the crowning triumph of Senor
Perkins' oratory was achieved. After an impassioned burst of enthusiasm
towards his hosts in their own tongue, he turned towards his own party
with bland felicity.

"And how is it with us, dear friends? We find ourselves not in the
port we were seeking; not in the goal of our ambition, the haven of our
hopes; but on the shores of the decaying past. 'Ever drifting' on one of
those--

'Shifti