“Dirty weather” is simply an unpleasant episode in the routine of a voyage. He regards it much as the average city man views wind and rain—displeasing additions to life’s minor worries, but not to be considered as affecting the daily task.

In a modern, well-found steamship such negative faith is fully justified, and the ship’s company of the Southern Cross went about their several duties as methodically as though the vessel were roped securely alongside a pier in the North River.

The center of the forecastle held a roomy [Pg 97]compartment in which meals were served for the crew, and Maseden took refuge there as soon as he was dressed. He obtained an early cup of coffee, and derived some comfort from the fact, communicated by the half-caste sailor he had saved from the falling pulley, that about the same time next day they would sight the Evangelistas light, and soon thereafter be in the land-locked water of the Straits of Magellan.

[Pg 97]

He realized, of course, that sight or sound of either Madge Gray or her sister was hardly to be expected during the next twenty-four hours. In fact, he might not see them again before Buenos Ayres was reached.

On the whole, it would be better so, he decided. A thrilling and most dramatic incident in a life not otherwise noteworthy for its vicissitudes would close when he was safe on board a homeward-bound mail steamer. After that would come some small experience of a court of law.

For the rest, if he contrived to cheat the newspapers of the full details, he would actually risk his repute as a veracious citizen if he told the plain truth about one day’s history in the Republic of San Juan.

Once, in his teens, when in London during a never-to-be-forgotten European tour, a friend of his father’s pointed out a small, alert man, [Pg 98]dressed in gray tweeds, who was hailing a cab in Pall Mall, and said:

[Pg 98]

“Look, Alec! That is Evans of the Guides. I met him five years ago in Lucknow, and even at that date he had killed his sixty-first tiger on foot and alone. He never shoots stripes any other way. He says it isn’t quite sporting to tackle the brute from the comparative safety of a howdah or a machan—a platform rigged in a tree, you know.”

Philip Alexander Maseden, aged sixteen, neither knew nor cared what a machan was. His faculties were absorbed 

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