* * * * * * *
For some time Ross had seemed to try my credulity high.
"Do you mean to tell me," I cried, "that Lady Norah repeated to you the words of the most trivial conversations, minute details that caught her eye, vague impressions that darted across her brain?"
"Of course not," said Ross calmly, "but she told me enough to let me fill them in with certainty. You surely don't demand the 'or words to that effect' of the metropolitan police at each moment.
* * * * * * *
"The cattle dealer," he continued placidly, "who, for many days had been awaiting the boat's arrival, had driven two oxen knee-deep into the water. A couple of deck-hands tumbled, laughing and talking, into the ship's dinghy and paddled towards them.
Norah, whose attention was as easily caught by life's activities as any errand boy's, left the bargaining crowd to watch the boat's return.
Horns, muzzles, humps alone visible out of the water, the beasts swam tied to either rowlock. Supporting the head of one, its owner hung over the gunwale. The other less favoured ox submerged each time the slight swell struck him and, as he rose again above the surface, snorted stentorianly.
A cable, paid out from the ship, at a second attempt was noosed over one pair of wide horns. The firemen bent to the capstan, answering the long-drawn chant of their capitao 'oo-ère' with a staccato 'wére.' Slowly the derrick lifted the heavy beast by his horns into the air where he hung grotesquely, pawing and patient. A signal was given and the beam swung inboard, the ox slipping a little as his hoofs met the unfamiliar plates of the deck.
The second beast was more truculent. No sooner had he touched deck and felt his horns free of the noose than, lunging forward, he tossed one of the ship's goats into the hold. The crew laughed delightedly. The ox stood, his feelings outraged, scraping the deck with his hoof and swaying his lowered head.