in the difficult task of reconciling a dapper little man in a gray suit, skipping nimbly into a cab in Pall Mall, with a redoubtable Nimrod who had bagged sixty-one tigers after tracking them into their jungles. And that was the record of five years earlier. Perhaps in the meantime the bold shikari had added dozens to the total. A mighty hunter, Evans, but hard to reconcile with his environment. Seated in the wet, creaking cabin, and watching through a window which opened aft the turmoil of seas leaping venomously at and over the stout bulk of the Southern Cross, Maseden thought of Evans of the Guides, and his cohort of tiger-ghosts. Yet not one tiger among the lot had brought Evans so near death as he, Maseden, was when Steinbaum entered his cell [Pg 99]on that fateful morning, and, in the closest shave Evans was ever favored with, a violent end had not been averted by stranger means. [Pg 99] How would the story of “Madeleine,” Suarez, and Captain Gomez’s boots sound if told in a cosy corner of a Fifth Avenue club? By reason of his position in the fore part of the vessel, Maseden could survey the bridge, chart-house and some part of the promenade deck. The head of the officer on watch was visible above the canvas screen which those who go down to the sea in ships have christened the “devil-dodger.” The officer’s sou’wester was tied on firmly, and the placid expression of the strong, weather-stained face was clearly discernible. For the most part, he looked straight ahead, with an occasional glance back, or over the side into the spume and froth churned up by the ship’s passage. Once in a while he would draw away from the screen and compare the course shown by the compass with that steered by the quartermaster at the wheel. For lack of something better to occupy his mind, Maseden followed each movement of the man on the bridge. Thus, singularly enough, next to the officer himself, and possibly a look-out in the bows, he was the first person on board to become aware of a peril which suddenly beset the Southern Cross. [Pg 100] [Pg 100] What that peril was he could not guess, but he saw that the officer was shouting instructions to the quartermaster, and in the same instant the clang of a bell showed that the engine-room telegraph was in use. Almost immediately the ship’s
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