Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/185

Rh seemed ill at ease, every once in a while casting a troubled glance at the sea.

Not being given to eaves-dropping any more than to other forms of inordinate curiosity, he would have passed on, but the object which they were studying caught his attention. It was an old oil-painting. Strange, he thought, when that was just the thing that had sent him here. The flames leaped up a little and even at that distance he thought the painting familiar, though all he could detect was that it was a marine.

"Curious," he said, then "impossible," but he felt in his pockets as if searching for some object that was precious and so always carefully carried. He found it,—a yellow paper, a rough chart of some sort, very old, and yellow, and crinkled. The outlines upon it strangely resembled the lines on the back of the painting on the Huntington wall. He hid in the lee of a rock close at hand, again catching enough of this conversation to piece out a suspicious, if not absolutely incriminating, case.

The callow youth was talking or rather trying to

"You go to Hell, Mac"—Mac—something the listener couldn't be sure— "Th' ol' man don't give me Aileen, I take her—just like that—you shign up crew here—mos' dishtingshd crew"—he drunkenly waved his arms to take in the group—"an we'll sail away to lil ole islan'—'n spade up iron men in ches'—have funny lil fairy tale all 'r own."

And now the girl was talking, scarcely in the musical tones of the Carmen she resembled, though it is conceivable that the Bizet lady could have acquired the same raucous voice and gesture, had she been transplanted to this catarrhal belt.