elect of Freya?

It was now afternoon, the sun being behind the two vessels as they
headed for the harbour. "The beetle's little joke shall soon be

over," thought Jasper, without any great animosity. As a seaman
well acquainted with that part of the world, a casual glance was

enough to tell him what was being done. "Hallo," he thought, "he
is going through Spermonde Passage. We shall be rounding Tamissa

reef presently." And again he returned to the contemplation of his
brig, that main-stay of his material and emotionalexistence which

would be soon in his hands again. On a sea, calm like a millpond,
a heavy smooth ripple undulated and streamed away from her bows,

for the powerful Neptun was towing at great speed, as if for a
wager. The Dutch gunner appeared on the forecastle of the Bonito,

and with him a couple of men. They stood looking at the coast, and
Jasper lost himself in a loverlike trance.

The deep-toned blast of the gunboat's steam-whistle made him
shudder by its unexpectedness. Slowly he looked about. Swift as

lightning he leaped from where he stood, bounding forward along the
deck.

"You will be on Tamissa reef!" he yelled.
High up on the bridge Heemskirk looked back over his shoulder

heavily; two seamen were spinning the wheel round, and the Neptun
was already swinging rapidly away from the edge of the pale water

over the danger. Ha! just in time. Jasper turned about instantly
to watch his brig; and, even before he realised that - in

obedience, it appears, to Heemskirk's orders given beforehand to
the gunner - the tow-rope had been let go at the blast of the

whistle, before he had time to cry out or to move a limb, he saw
her cast adrift and shooting across the gunboat's stern with the

impetus of her speed. He followed her fine, gliding form with eyes
growing big with incredulity, wild with horror. The cries on board

of her came to him only as a dreadful and confused murmur through
the loud thumping of blood in his ears, while she held on. She ran

upright in a terrible display of her gift of speed, with an
incomparable air of life and grace. She ran on till the smooth

level of water in front of her bows seemed to sink down suddenly as
if sucked away; and, with a strange, violent tremor of her mast-

heads she stopped, inclined her lofty spars a little, and lay
still. She lay still on the reef, while the Neptun, fetching a

wide circle, continued at full speed up Spermonde Passage, heading
for the town. She lay still, perfectly still, with something ill-

omened and unnatural in her attitude. In an instant the subtle
melancholy of things touched by decay had fallen on her in the

sunshine; she was but a speck in the brilliant emptiness of space,
already lonely, already desolate.

"Hold him!" yelled a voice from the bridge.
Jasper had started to run to his brig with a headlongimpulse, as a

man dashes forward to pull away with his hands a living, breathing,
loved creature from the brink of destruction. "Hold him! Stick to

him!" vociferated the lieutenant at the top of the bridge-ladder,
while Jasper struggled madly without a word, only his head emerging

from the heaving crowd of the Neptun's seamen, who had flung
themselves upon him obediently. "Hold - I would not have that

fellow drown himself for anything now!"
Jasper ceased struggling.

One by one they let go of him; they fell back gradually farther and
farther, in attentive silence, leaving him standing unsupported in

a widened, clear space, as if to give him plenty of room to fall
after the struggle. He did not even sway perceptibly. Half an

hour later, when the Neptun anchored in front of the town, he had
not stirred yet, had moved neither head nor limb as much as a

hair's breadth. Directly the rumble of the gunboat's cable had
ceased, Heemskirk came down heavily from the bridge.

"Call a sampan" he said, in a gloomy tone, as he passed the sentry
at the gangway, and then moved on slowly towards the spot where

Jasper, the object of many awed glances, stood looking at the deck,
as if lost in a brown study. Heemskirk came up close, and stared

at him thoughtfully, with his fingers over his lips. Here he was,
the favouredvagabond, the only man to whom that infernal girl was

likely to tell the story. But he would not find it funny. The
story how Lieutenant Heemskirk - No, he would not laugh at it. He

looked as though he would never laugh at anything in his life.
Suddenly Jasper looked up. His eyes, without any other expression

but bewilderment, met those of Heemskirk, observant and sombre.
"Gone on the reef!" he said, in a low, astounded tone. "On-the-

reef!" he repeated still lower, and as if attending inwardly to the
birth of some awful and amazingsensation.

"On the very top of high-water, spring tides," Heemskirk struck in,
with a vindictive, exulting violence which flashed and expired. He

paused, as if weary, fixing upon Jasper his arrogant eyes, over
which secret disenchantment, the unavoidable shadow of all passion,

seemed to pass like a saddening cloud. "On the very top," he
repeated, rousing himself in fiercereaction to snatch his laced

cap off his head with a horizontal, derisive flourish towards the
gangway. "And now you may go ashore to the courts, you damned

Englishman!" he said.
CHAPTER VI

The affair of the brig Bonito was bound to cause a sensation in
Makassar, the prettiest, and perhaps the cleanest-looking of all

the towns in the Islands; which however knows few occasions for
excitement. The "front," with its special population, was soon

aware that something had happened. A steamer towing a sailing
vessel had been observed far out to sea for some time, and when the

steamer came in alone, leaving the other outside, attention was
aroused. Why was that? Her masts only could be seen - with furled

sails - remaining in the same place to the southward. And soon the
rumour ran all along the crowded seashore street that there was a

ship on Tamissa reef. That crowd interpreted the appearance
correctly. Its cause was beyond their penetration, for who could

associate a girl nine hundred miles away with the stranding of a
ship on Tamissa reef, or look for the remote filiation of that

event in the psychology of at least three people, even if one of
them, Lieutenant Heemskirk, was at that very moment passing amongst

them on his way to make his verbal report?
No; the minds on the "front" were not competent for that sort of

investigation, but many hands there - brown hands, yellow hands,
white hands - were raised to shade the eyes gazing out to sea. The

rumour spread quickly. Chinese shopkeepers came to their doors,
more than one white merchant, even, rose from his desk to go to the

window. After all, a ship on Tamissa was not an everyday
occurrence. And presently the rumour took a more definite shape.

An English trader - detained on suspicion at sea by the Neptun -
Heemskirk was towing him in to test a case, and by some strange

accident -
Later on the name came out. "The Bonito - what! Impossible! Yes

- yes, the Bonito. Look! You can see from here; only two masts.
It's a brig. Didn't think that man would ever let himself be

caught. Heemskirk's pretty smart, too. They say she's fitted out
in her cabin like a gentleman's yacht. That Allen is a sort of

gentleman too. An extravagant beggar."
A young man entered smartly Messrs. Mesman Brothers' office on the

"front," bubbling with some further information.
"Oh, yes; that's the Bonito for certain! But you don't know the

story I've heard just now. The fellow must have been feeding that
river with firearms for the last year or two. Well, it seems he

has grown so reckless from long impunity that he has actually dared
to sell the very ship's rifles this time. It's a fact. The rifles

are not on board. What impudence! Only, he didn't know that there