Evening star., 1924-07-06

he made us all little uncomfortable.
There is something about the climate
OF that part OF the world that has a
queer effect upon morals. Even a
perfectly innocent, respectable, un-
eventful person like myself wakes up
in the morning with an uneasy con-
viction that he, like the rest, must
have a lurid past and that IL any one
should come up to him furtively and
whisper. They're on old man; you'd
better beat it," he would have to dis
appear. change his name and turn UP
In some remote and unknown spot!
Perhaps those of our passengers to
whom this sensation was chronic,
those of US who had come by it, /
may say more dishonesty. may not
have been so acutely conscious of the
source Of Mr.. Brangwyn's seeming
aioofness. And perhaps in their case
ms aloofness wasn't quite so seeming.
anyway, he made no parade Of
righteousness; gave himself no de-
liberate air Of being a horse of an
other color altogether from the RAM
brown parcel of humanity that gave
tone and color to our passenger list.
when he walked by on deck without
noticing the promoter the effect he
produced was SO simply of having
failed to see him that the promoter
Immediately confded to me that he
knew Brangwyn well: had known him
for years.
Well that's the way we went along
comfortably for a fortnight. Some
times we passed two or three whole
days chugging along over the hot
blue surface of the Pacific that had
ground swell like the roll of an
Oklahoma prairie. Part of the time
we hung idly over the rail, with the
shore line rising and falling as we
swung at anchor watching the un-
willing labors of gangs of natives
who had come out to our side in
lighters. loaded with coffee or ba-
nanas, or mahogany logs, as the case
might be, listening lazily to the deto-
nations of the first officer and the
whistle of his Portuguese boatswain
language for anybody and, appar-
emily, the only one he had.
We gossiped and repeated stories
about each other, getting along, on
the whole, famously. The old doctor
from Indiana struck up a thoroughly
satisfactory acquaintance with the
young lady who was travelling with
the promoter; expounded his ethical
views to her-and they were mighty
good views, although in the present
instance a little out of focus-told
her long stories about his neighbors
and asked her innumerable questions
about life on the west coast.
X
THE political refugees conspired
darkly abaft one of the lifeboats,
the promoter and the coffee planter
swapped rascalities. invariably sue
cessful in the event, before a group
Of admiring casuals; the Atkinsons
played solitaire a deux in their cor
ner. and Mr.. Brangwyn sat in the lee
of the wheelhouse, smoked cigars and
read novels. The French engineer
had taken an unhappy fancy to me,
founded. / think. on the hope that
l should some day make him under
stand why he had to pay more for
the privilege Of leaving a ship at an
intermediate point than it would have
cost him to complete the voyage to
San Francisco. That's about how
things were before the inundation.
The inundation was the family of
Senior Cidaro. They came aboard one
day in box loads, the box being a
sort of improvised elevator swung
over the side by means Of a boom
and tackle and raised and lowered
more or less in accordance with the
enormous rise and fall Of the ground
swell 1t took several loads to get
them all on board, but when 1t was
decided, by themselves, that they
were all there we other passengers
took a sort of rough census of them.
There was Senior Cidaro himself.
You really have to count him, l sup
pose. And then there was Nine. Ci-
daro. who ought to count for half a
dozen, at least. And then the chill
dren. Unfortunately, We weren't
quick enough to count them while
they were all collected in a body.
They flowed apart and spread about
the deck like SO many drops of quick
silver. After that. counting the chill
dren became one of our regular