FOE'S NARRATIVE.

"Did you know that Farrell had married?… Yes, at San Ramon, a little portless place some way down the coast of Peru. The woman was a Peruvian and owned a banana-strip there, left to her by her first husband, a drunkard, in part-compensation for having ill-used and beaten her.

"When I ran Farrell to earth there, after he'd given me the slip for twelve months and more, this woman had married him and almost made a new man of him. In another month or so I don't doubt she'd have converted him into man enough to tell her all the truth, and let her deliver him.

"As it was, he passed me off for his friend—the ass!… I shipped with them, and we worked down the coast, by fruit-ship and sloop, to Valparaiso, intending for Sydney.… Now at this point I might easily make myself out a calculating villain. Farrell was enamoured to feebleness, and to make love to his Santa was an opportunity cast into my lap by the gods.… But actually, before I could even meditate this simple villainy, I had fallen in love with her because I couldn't help it.

"Now I had never been in love before, and I took the disease pretty severely. And I should say that I took it rather curiously: but you shall judge, for I'll set out the credit side of the account just as plainly as the other.

"I hated the man, as you know: I loved the woman, as I've told you. But—here's the puzzle—strange to say, at that time, and for a long while, these two passions did not conflict or even contend at all, as neither did they help. I couldn't hate Farrell any worse than I did already. If I'd hated him just a little less, I might have killed him, to get him out of the way. But I give you my word, I never thought of shortening the chase in that way. Farrell, you may say, had become necessary to me: by this time I couldn't think of living without him.… Now I know what's crossing your mind. I might have piled up the torture on Farrell, and at the same time have played on that other passion, by setting myself to debauch Santa. No, I'm not complaining. You shall have as bad to condemn before I've done, so you needn't apologise. But, as it happens, I wasn't that sort of blackguard. Moreover, it wouldn't have worked, anyhow. Santa was as good as her name—

"No, damn it! I will clear myself of that!… You'll understand that I loved the woman, and—well, in the old days, as you'll do me the justice to remember, I hated men who played loose among women. As for 'making love' to Santa—oh, I can't explain to you, who never saw her, how utterly that was beyond question on either side.… Almost white she was, with the blood of the Incas in her—blood of Castile, too, belike—and yet all of a woman, with funny rustic ways that turned at any moment to royal.… And she loved Farrell—my God!

"I wonder now if she guessed—guessed at the time, I mean. They say that women always guess; which in these matters is as good as knowing.… But I'm holding up my story."

"The Eurotas went down in something like 36, south latitude, longitude 105 and a half west. That's as near as I make it: that is to say, some three or four hundred miles from any known land save Easter Island, which lay well away north and to windward, for we were down where the main winds set between W. and N. That's as close as I can give it to you. In seafaring matters I leave seamen to their own job, and don't worry about reckonings and day's runs. It's their business to take me, mine to trust their skill. You will own, Roddy, that if fools had only kept their noses out of my job in life, I shouldn't be having to tell you this story.

"Anyhow, Macnaughten—that was the skipper's name—took all the ship's instruments with him on board his own boat, which was the last to quit.

"He was a good man, and I couldn't but admire his behaviour, first and last. The Eurotas went down within half an hour of the first explosion; which had surprised us passengers on deck as we were chatting and watching the sunset. The sea was calm as a pond, with a bank of cloud to northward, all edged with gold on its western fringes.

"I think this calm, resting over sea and sky, may have helped us through the catastrophe. The only irritation I felt was at the slowness of it all, between the moment we knew we were lost and the moment when the vessel went down. Yet every moment between was used to a nicety, almost as if Captain Macnaughten had been preparing for the test. He commanded us, crew and passengers alike. Four stokers had been killed below: another and the engineer officer badly hurt. These two were fetched up while some of us lowered the accommodation-ladder and others swung out the boats on the davits. These two sick men were carried down to the first of the three boats launched. Four women passengers followed; three married, one a spinster. The three husbands were ordered down after them.

"The Eurotas, as I've told you, was a new ship, well found to the last life-buoy. The directors of the Company had lunched on board before she sailed and drunk to her health, having seen that everything answered to advertisement. The boats were staunch, newly painted and smart: the crew as well-picked a lot as the Board could find. So far as I can recall those hurrying minutes, I remember them as being almost intolerably slow. I cannot say how many of them it took before we realised for a certainty that the ship was going down. But I know that as, by order, I went down the ladder to the second boat, I had a sense of irritation at the long time it was taking and the methodical way the skipper was getting out stores and water-breakers and having them hefted down.

"Another thing I must tell you. As I went down the ladder—the ship's bows already beginning to dip steeply—I had a sense of being in no time at all, but in eternity. There around us, spread and placid, stretched the emptiest waste of the Pacific, with God's sun deserting the sky above it, sinking almost as fast as the ship was sinking.

"Santa had wrapped her mantilla over her head. She went down the ladder before me, following Farrell. Our boat was white-painted on thwarts and stern-sheets.… I was keeping my foothold with difficulty, loaded with a water-breaker.… A man took it from me, all in silence. I gripped Farrell's hand and hoiked him on board. There was a great silence hanging, as it seemed, about those last moments.

"We pushed off a little way. The third and last boat was lowered down, and we saw the last half-dozen, with the captain at their heels, tumbling down in a stampede.

"The Eurotas took her plunge just as we heard them unhook from the davit-blocks."