ack-eyed maid, the black-eyed
maid had been twisting him round her finger, and perhaps imitating his
love-making for the gratification of her soldier-lover. It was not a
pleasant thought; and yet, strange to say, the idea of Sarah's treachery
did not make him dislike her. There is a sort of love--if love it can be
called--which thrives under ill-treatment. Nevertheless, he cursed with
some appearance of disgust.

Vickers met them at the door. "Pine, Blunt has the fever. Mr. Best found
him in his cabin groaning. Come and look at him."

The commander of the Malabar was lying on his bunk in the betwisted
condition into which men who sleep in their clothes contrive to get
themselves. The doctor shook him, bent down over him, and then loosened
his collar. "He's not sick," he said; "he's drunk! Blunt! wake up!
Blunt!"

But the mass refused to move.

"Hallo!" says Pine, smelling at the broken tumbler, "what's this? Smells
queer. Rum? No. Eh! Laudanum! By George, he's been hocussed!"

"Nonsense!"

"I see it," slapping his thigh. "It's that infernal woman! She's
drugged him, and meant to do the same for"--(Frere gave him an imploring
look)--"for anybody else who would be fool enough to let her do it.
Dawes was right, sir. She's in it; I'll swear she's in it."

"What! my wife's maid? Nonsense!" said Vickers.

"Nonsense!" echoed Frere.

"It's no nonsense. That soldier who was shot, what's his name?--Miles,
he--but, however, it doesn't matter. It's all over now." "The men will
confess before morning," says Vickers, "and we'll see." And he went off
to his wife's cabin.

His wife opened the door for him. She had been sitting by the child's
bedside, listening to the firing, and waiting for her husband's return
without a murmur. Flirt, fribble, and shrew as she was, Julia Vickers
had displayed, in times of emergency, that glowing courage which women
of her nature at times possess. Though she would yawn over any book
above the level of a genteel love story; attempt to fascinate, with
ludicrous assumption of girlishness, boys young enough to be her sons;
shudder at a frog, and scream at a spider, she could sit throughout a
quarter of an hour of such suspense as she had just undergone with as
much courage as if she had been the strongest-minded woman that ever
denied her sex. "Is it all over?" she asked.

"Yes, thank God!" said Vickers, pausing on the threshold. "All is safe
now, though we had a narrow escape, I believe. How