Governor
and a brilliant party entered the vice-regal box. You may be sure of all
that vast concourse of people there were none who stared harder then
Beckenham and myself. And it was certainly enough to make any man stare,
for there, sitting on her ladyship's right hand, faultlessly dressed,
was the exact image of the young man by my side. The likeness was so
extraordinary that for a moment I could hardly believe that Beckenham
had not left me to go up and take his seat there. And if I was struck by
the resemblance, you may be sure that he was a dozen times more so.
Indeed, his bewilderment was most comical, and must have struck those
people round us, who were watching, as something altogether
extraordinary. I looked again, and could just discern behind the front
row the smug, self-satisfied face of the tutor Baxter. Then the play
commenced, and we were compelled to turn and give it our attention.

Here I must stop to chronicle one circumstance that throughout the day
had struck me as peculiar. When our vessel arrived at Williamstown, it
so happened that we had travelled up in the train to Melbourne with a
tall, handsome, well-dressed man of about thirty years of age. Whether
he, like ourselves, was a new arrival in the Colony, and only passing
through Melbourne, I cannot say; at any rate he went on to Sydney in the
mail train with us. Then we lost sight of him, only to find him standing
near the public library when we had emerged from it that afternoon, and
now here he was sitting in the stalls of the theatre not half a dozen
chairs from us. Whether this continual companionship was designed or
only accidental, I could not of course say, but I must own that I did
not like the look of it. Could it be possible, I asked myself, that
Nikola, learning our departure for Australia in the _Pescadore_, had
cabled from Port Said to this man to watch us?

The performance over, we left the theatre, and set off for the ferry,
only reaching it just as the boat was casting off. As it was I had to
jump for it, and on reaching the deck should have fallen in a heap but
for a helping hand that was stretched out to me. I looked up to tender
my thanks, when to my surprise I discovered that my benefactor was none
other than the man to whom I have just been referring. His surprise was
even greater than mine, and muttering something about "a close shave,"
he turned and walked quickly aft. My mind was now made up, and I
accordingly reported m