objected in particular to the community of property.

That evening the steamer hummed with life, and the clatter of polyglot tongues. Parsee dealers in silver-thread embroideries, German commercial travellers, Madeiran Portuguese, Canario hillmen, and Peninsular Spaniards, moved amidst the straying livestock, while a little group of Anglo-Saxons naturally sat apart upon the hatch. There were, as is usual when Englishmen foregather in a country where wine is cheap, empty bottles scattered about. The engineer from the sister ship and an athletic tourist, stripped, at least as far as was permissible, were wrestling in Cumberland fashion on the hatch, with much delicate manœuvring of their feet and futile clutches at each other's waists. Macallister, who, when he felt inclined, superintended the _Estremedura_'s machinery, alternately encouraged them sardonically and solaced himself with one of the bottles. He was a big, gaunt man, and just then extremely dirty, and when he saw Austin he looked up with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

"I have been waiting for ye anxiously," he said. "Ye may now have the pleasure of lending me five dollars."

"I'm afraid not!" said Austin decisively. "For one thing, I haven't got them. I very seldom have--as you ought to know."

Macallister made a little gesture of resignation. "Well," he said, "ye have always your clothes, and if ye had known us better ye would not have brought so many of them on board the _Estremedura_. I'm half expecting yon Jackson o' Las Palmas, who gave us two dollars for the last white suit, to come round for some more o' them when we get in."

Austin tried the door of his room close by, and was consoled to find it locked, as he had left it.

"They cost me five, and I naturally never saw a peseta of the money. I suppose you kept the Correo buttons?"

"I did not," said Macallister, unabashed. "Ye may observe Miguel, the quartermaster, walking round in them. It was no a bad bargain--a basket o' big grapes an' a watermelon."

Austin bore it patiently. There was, in fact, nothing to be gained by protesting, and he knew that it was useless to expostulate with Macallister when he spoke his own tongue, which was not an invariable custom with him. Then the engineer turned and glanced at the wrestlers, who were still stamping up and down the hatch with feet spread well apart, compassionately."They've been at it the whole o' a 

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