up the low coral beach, with its mound of whitewashed coal
ready for supply, the deserted huts for the sailors, and the flagless
flagstaff.

Next day there was no Haliotis--only a little proa rocking in the warm
rain at the mouth of the harbour, whose crew watched with hungry eyes
the smoke of a gunboat on the horizon.

Months afterwards there were a few lines in an English newspaper to the
effect that some gunboat of some foreign Power had broken her back
at the mouth of some far-away harbour by running at full speed into a
sunken wreck.

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

PART I

I have done one braver thing
Than all the worthies did;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is to keep that hid.

The Undertaking.

"Is it officially declared yet?"

"They've gone as far as to admit 'extreme local scarcity,' and they've
started relief-works in one or two districts, the paper says."

"That means it will be declared as soon as they can make sure of the men
and the rolling-stock. Shouldn't wonder if it were as bad as the '78
Famine."

"'Can't be," said Scott, turning a little in the long cane chair.

"We've had fifteen-anna crops in the north, and Bombay and Bengal report
more than they know what to do with. They'll be able to check it before
it gets out of hand. It will only be local."

Martyn picked the "Pioneer" from the table, read through the telegrams
once more, and put up his feet on the chair-rests. It was a hot, dark,
breathless evening, heavy with the smell of the newly watered Mall. The
flowers in the Club gardens were dead and black on their stalks, the
little lotus-pond was a circle of caked mud, and the tamarisk-trees were
white with the dust of weeks. Most of the men were at the band-stand
in the public gardens--from the Club verandah you could hear the native
Police band hammering stale waltzes--or on the polo-ground, or in the
high-walled fives-court, hotter than a Dutch oven. Half a dozen grooms,
squatted at the heads of their ponies, waited their masters' return.
From time to time a man would ride at a foot-pace into the Club
compound, and listlessly loaf over to the whitewashed barracks beside
the main building. These were supposed to be chambers. Men lived in
them, meeting the same white faces night after night at dinner, and
drawing out their office-work till the latest possib