ver get rid of them altogether. Well, well,
what shall we talk about?"

"I will take pity on you, Doctor. I will walk on ahead with Rabda and
her father, and Mr. Bathurst can then tell you his story."

"That will be the best plan, my dear. Now then, Bathurst, fire away," he
said, when the others had gone on thirty or forty yards ahead.

"Well, Doctor, you remember that you were forward talking to the young
Zemindar, and I was sitting aft by the side of Miss Hannay, when they
opened fire?"

"I should think I do remember it," the Doctor said, "and I am not likely
to forget it if I live to be a hundred. Well, what about that?"

"I jumped overboard," Bathurst said, laying his hand impressively
upon the Doctor's shoulder. "I gave a cry, I know I did, and I jumped
overboard."

The Doctor looked at him in astonishment.

"Well, so did I, like a shot. But what do you say it in that tone for?
Of course you jumped overboard. If you hadn't you would not be here
now."

"You don't understand me, Doctor," Bathurst said gloomily. "I was
sitting there next to Isobel Hannay--the woman I loved. We were talking
in low tones, and I don't know why, but at that moment the mad thought
was coming into my mind that, after all, she cared for me, that in spite
of the disgrace I had brought upon myself, in spite of being a coward,
she might still be mine; and as I was thinking this there came the
crash of a cannon. Can it be imagined possible that I jumped up like
a frightened hare, and without a thought of her, without a thought of
anything in my mad terror, jumped overboard and left her behind to her
fate? If it had not been that as soon as I recovered my senses--I was
hit on the head just as I landed, and knew nothing of what happened
until I found myself in the bushes with young Wilson by my side--the
thought occurred to me that I would rescue her or die in the attempt, I
would have blown out my brains."

"But, bless my heart, Bathurst," the Doctor said earnestly, "what else
could you have done? Why, I jumped overboard without stopping to think,
and so did everyone else who had power to do so, no doubt. What good
could you have done if you had stayed? What good would it have done to
the girl if you had been killed? Why, if you had been killed, she would
now be lying mangled and dead with the others in that ghastly prison.
You take too morbid a view of this matter altogether."

"There was no reason why you should not have jumped over