came back. I am now longing for a few words with the man who, I understand, is coming down to purchase some more at an equally alarming sacrifice."

Jacinta laughed, but she also looked at him with a little gleam in her eyes. "Don't you think it's rather a pity you--are--the _Estremedura_'s sobrecargo?"

"Well," said Austin, reflectively, "I won't pretend to misunderstand you, but the trouble is that I don't quite see what else I could be. I cannot dig, and I'm not sure that it would be very pleasant to go round borrowing odd dollars from my friends, even if they were disposed to lend them to me, which is scarcely probable. Most of them would, naturally, tell me to look at them, and see what I might have been if I'd had their diligence and probity. Besides, I have time to paint little pictures which rash tourists buy occasionally, and the life one leads here has its compensations."The *Estremedura*'s whistle hooted just then, and as Jacinta looked
round a lordly four-masted ship, carrying everything to her royals,
swept up out of the night. She was driving down the trade-breeze a good
twelve knots an hour, and the foam flew up in cascades as her bows went
down, swirled in a broad, snowy smother along the slender streak of
rushing hull. Above it four tapered spires of sailcloth swung back
against the moonlight at every stately roll, and she showed as an
exquisite cameo cut in ebony on a ground of silver and blue. Still, it
was not the colour that formed the strength of that picture, but the
suggestion of effort and irresistible force that was stamped on it. She
drove by majestically, showing a breadth of wet plates that flashed in a
leeward roll, and Jacinta's eyes rested on the bent figure high on the
lifted poop grappling with her wheel.

"Ah!" she said. "I suppose it's sometimes brutal, but that is man's
work, isn't it?"

Austin laughed again, though there was a faint warmth in his cheek. "Of
course, I see the inference," he said. "Still, it really isn't necessary
for everybody to hold a big vessel's wheel, and I would a good deal
sooner you said something nice to me. Nobody likes to be told the truth
about themselves, you know, and I understand now why folks threw big
stones at the goat-skinned prophets long ago."

"Well," said Jacinta, "we will talk of somebody else. I wonder if you

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