d it out again.
"But you have your secrets, rather clumsily guarded, to be sure--"

"What secrets?" I cried out, goaded almost beyond endurance.

He seemed to deprecate the vigour of my retort and lifted a
cautioning hand. "Do you want every one on board to hear this
conversation?" At that moment the smoke-wrapped cone of Lakalatcha
was cleft by a sheet of flame, and we confronted each other in a
sort of blood-red dawn.

"There is no reason why we should quarrel," he went on, after
darkness had enveloped us again. "But there are times which call
for plain speaking. Major Stanleigh is probably hardly aware of just
what he said to me under a little artful questioning. It seems that
a lady who--shall we say, whom we both have the honour of knowing?
--is in love. Love, mark you. It is always interesting to see that
flower bud twice from the same stalk. However, one naturally defers
to a lady, especially when one is very much in her way. _Place aux
dames_, eh? Exit poor Farquharson! You must admit that his was an
altruistic soul. Well, she has her freedom--if only to barter it for
a new bondage. Shall we drink to the happy future of that romance?"

He lifted to me his glass with ironical invitation, while I sat
aghast and speechless, my heart pounding against my ribs. This
intolerable colloquy could not last forever. I deliberated what I
should do if we were surprised. At the sound of a footfall or the
soft creak of a plank I felt that I might lose all control and leap
up and brain him with the heavy bottle in my grasp. I had an insane
desire to spring at his throat and throttle his infamous bravado,
tumble him overboard and annihilate the last vestige of his existence.

"Come, Captain," he urged, "you, too, have shared in smoothing the
path for these lovers. Shall we not drink to their happy union?"

A feeling of utter loathing went over me. I set my glass down.
"It would be a more serviceable compliment to the lady in question
if I strangled you on the spot," I muttered, boldly.

"But you are forgetting that I am already dead." He threw his head
back as if vastly amused, then lurched forward and held out his
glass a little unsteadily to be refilled.

He gave me a quick, evil look. "Besides, the noise might disturb
your passengers."

I could feel a cold perspiration suddenly breaking out upon my body.
Either the fellow had obtained an inkling of the truth in some
incredible way, or was blindly on the track of it,