LITMIR.BIZ

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promise of her lithe figure and small, darkling face.

      "Am I?" said Miss Gregory. "Why?"

      "You ought to know," said the other. "I saw you takin' stock of us all at dinner. We're not your kind. Perhaps we don't want to be, either; but there it is. Your place is a cabin on a German boat, with stewardesses and a drawing-room."

      Miss Gregory smiled patiently. "You're very kind," she said. "But I think I can manage without the drawing-room, at a pinch."

      The tall woman laughed. "That's one for me, I suppose?" she answered. "Still, if anything happens to you, don't say I didn't tell you. This coast ain't like any other place. You can go blunderin' about the world for years as safe as if you were in jail, and then find trouble waitin' for you here. What do you think of the lot you saw at dinner?"

      "I was interested," said Miss Gregory. "It was rather curious."

      "Curious!" She stared. "Curious. Yes. They don't look much, I suppose, to a stranger. Lord! it's pleasant to meet a real lady now and again, but it's like talkin' to a baby. There isn't one of those men that wouldn't screw himself up to murder you, if it was worth his while. You can believe me; I know."

      "Do you? You live on the Coast?"

      The tall woman nodded. "I don't run to visiting cards," she said; "but my name's Ducane—Miss Ducane." She paused. "I'm an actress," she added. "Everybody knows me."

      Miss Gregory, as it happened, did run to cards, and the introduction was completed in form.

      "Well," said Miss Ducane, "you don't lose by this. I'll see you're not bothered. Those fellows don't take any chances with me."

      She looked over her shoulder at a group of them on the other side of the deck. It was easy to understand her boast. She moved like a whip-lash; she had all the trenchant menace of a naked blade. She seemed to personify the Coast of which she had spoken, its tropical opulence, its tradition of violence, its quality of a lost soul.

      "I believe," said Miss Gregory, "that there's a man forward who is English. I saw him this afternoon. He looked rather——"

      "Him!" Miss Ducane interrupted scornfully. "That deck passenger, you mean? You don't want to have anything to do with him. When a man travels among the niggers, he's dead."

      "Is he English?" persisted Miss Gregory.

      "Oh, he might be—goodness knows." Miss Ducane declined to be interested in the matter. "He keeps where he belongs, at the other end of the ship," she said. "Let him stop there."

      She yawned luxuriously. "I'll be going below," she said. "This is when I get my sleep. Ashore I don't seem to get much. Good night."

      Miss Gregory bade her good night, and saw her stride across to the companion-stairs like a gaunt wraith. The group of men turned to watch her go. The night seemed tame and empty for her absence, and it was not long before Miss Gregory followed her example.

      She made an attempt next morning upon the white man forward. From the poop, where she walked before breakfast, she could see him seated on the forecastle-head. He was gazing seaward, with his chin in his hands. Something in the attitude of the man heightened his solitude and made it suddenly pathetic. Miss Gregory did not hesitate. She picked her way among the natives about the fore hatch, and was at his side before he heard her coming. He looked up at her with a start of annoyance, but rose to his feet and lifted his shabby hat in grudging salute.

      "It's a fine morning," said Miss Gregory.

      "Yes," he replied.

      He was tall and lean. His sharp face was graven with the lines of hard living; a pallor that was eloquent of fevers showed through the tan upon it. He wore the thin white clothes which all Europeans affect in those parts, even those who travel with natives; but he was English to the finger-tips, with the voice and accent of the cleanly bred. Stranger things may happen to a man on the Coast than to fall through the shifting levels of respectability to the stable bottom upon which the natives have their plane. A hundred things may thrust him down: a tender conscience may be as heavy a burden as drink; a fastidious temper may ruin a man as effectually as gambling. But the bottom is always the bottom, and his brows knitted in a scowl as she looked him over.

      "You get the wind here," remarked Miss Gregory, as perfunctorily as she could. The morning breeze was not yet stilled by the sun; it blew freshly on her face.

      "Yes," he said again; "it's a good place to be alone in. I won't interrupt your pleasure in it."

      He swung about forthwith, but Miss Gregory cried out: "Oh, please!"

      He turned. He really was a master of the art of declining an acquaintance. There was a chill directness about him which Miss Gregory recognized as part of the armory of the higher civilization. The brutality of indifference is the crown of the age.

      "Nor my own, then," he said briefly. His nod was a bow, in its way—the equivalent of a bow, anyway. And then Miss Gregory saw his back as he descended the ladder and disappeared from her sight. From the bridge, the officer of the watch surveyed the transaction with eyes of interest.

      Miss Gregory laughed. She was getting her money's worth. Introduced to Miss Ducane, and snubbed, cut, flattened, by a deck passenger, all within twenty-four hours.

      "I ought to be able to get some character into my next book," was her reflection.

      It occurred to her at intervals in the next few days, while the Henriqueta lumbered on her way. Little by little, Miss Gregory began to make acquaintances among her companions, and found character enough to dramatize a dictionary. Those sunburnt, still men, with the stealthy eyes, had no word to say that was not an illumination. One of them professed himself concerned with the ivory trade; he was difficult to understand till it flashed upon her that his ivory was black, and alive. A great, blond German, with a manner of almost imbecile good humor, bored her for a while, until, at one small port where they called, a platoon of dusty little soldiers boarded the Henriqueta and took him ashore to answer a charge of murder. Miss Gregory saw him go down the ladder to the boat with his hands chained behind him, and noted that his features still wore the foolish smile that had irritated her. It began to be bewildering. At her side, Miss Ducane, pale and nonchalant, pointed the moral.

      "They'll never be able to keep him," she assured Miss Gregory, in her tired voice. "Max is worth ten of 'em; he'll escape in a day or two. And you and he was talkin' poetry, eh?"

      "He seemed fond of it," admitted Miss Gregory. "He knew fathoms by heart."

      "Did he?" Miss Ducane seemed impressed. "And he's one of the cleanest shots you ever saw. Who'd have thought of old Max goin' in for poetry?"

      Miss Gregory agreed with her. "Who indeed?" she echoed.

      "It only shows you," pursued Miss Ducane, "it's not safe to judge by appearances. That's what you've got to remember, my dear. A knife in your stocking isn't ladylike, perhaps; but sometimes it's a great comfort."

      "Have—have you got one there?" demanded Miss Gregory. Miss Ducane shook her head composedly. "A knife's no use to me," she replied; "I've got a weak wrist."

      Miss Gregory blinked and swallowed; character was accumulating a little too rapidly. Miss Ducane continued to gaze tranquilly after the boat in which the fat, amiable face of Max was still discernible amid a huddle of shabby uniforms.

      It was two nights later that Miss Gregory was awaked by her bed bouncing under her. The Henriqueta was not fitted with electric lights; she leaped from the edge of her bunk to the unsteady deck in darkness. Her nerves were good, but it took some moments to command them. She had gone to sleep in silent weather; now there was a thrashing of water in her ears, and other noises thereto—a roaring jar from the engine-room, and queer, shrill voices joined in a Babel of panic. She was thrown to the floor the next minute by a shock that seemed to wrench the whole ship. She crawled on hands and knees to the matches, and made a light; then, with deft haste and all the quick skill of an old campaigner, she slipped into such clothes as came to hand. Through the partition she could hear a man blubbering; even in the urgency of that moment, she frowned disapproval

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