"Ah," said Gascoyne. "Well, I think you were right, and again I am much obliged to you. Will you take me to Mrs. Hatherly?"
Austin did so, and coming back flung himself down on the settee in Macallister's room.
"Give me a drink—a long one. I don't know that I ever talked so much at once in my life, and I only hope I didn't make a consummate ass of myself," he said.
"It's no that difficult," said Macallister, reflectively, as he took out a syphon and a bottle of wine. "Ye made excuses for yourself and Jefferson?"
Austin laughed. "No," he said. "I made none for Jefferson. I think I rubbed a few not particularly pleasant impressions into the other man. I felt I had to. It was, of course, a piece of abominable presumption."
Macallister leaned against the bulkhead and regarded him with a sardonic grin.
"I would have liked to have heard ye," he said.
CHAPTER VII
AT THE BULL FIGHT
Austin was writing in the saloon, which was a little cooler than his room, at about eight o'clock that night, while Jacinta and Mrs. Hatherly made ineffectual attempts to read in the ladies' cabin, for the Estremedura was on her way south again, with the trade-wind combers tumbling after her. She rolled with a long, rhythmic swing, and now and then shook and trembled with the jar of her lifted propeller. Muriel Gascoyne was accordingly alone with her father on the deck above. She sat in a canvas chair, while Gascoyne leaned upon the rails in front of her. There was a full moon overhead, and a fantastic panorama of fire-blackened hills, wastes of ash and lava, whirling clouds of sand, black rocks lapped by spouting surf, and bays of deepest indigo, unrolled itself upon one hand. It is, however, probable that neither of the pair saw much of it, for their thoughts were not concerned with the volcanic desolation.