"Old idiot! Why couldn't he leave her at home? Women are in the way at
these times. Soldiers have no business with wives."

"That's why you never married, I suppose?"

Hyde did not answer his question, but got up and left his comrade
abruptly, to re-enter the guard-room.




CHAPTER VI.

ON DANGEROUS GROUND.


The _Arcadia_, Lord Lydstone's yacht, was a fine three-masted schooner
of a couple of hundred tons. She was lying far out in the bay, amidst
a crowd of shipping of every kind--coal-hulks, black and grimy; H.M.S.
_Samarang_, receiving-ship, and home of the captain of the port;
British vessels, steamers and sailing-ships, of every rig; foreign
craft of every aspect native to its waters: zebecques, faluchas, and
polaccas, with their curved spars and heavy lateen sails.

A fleet of small boats surrounded the yacht, native boats of curious
build, and manned by dark-skinned natives of the Rock, in nondescript
attire--a noisy, pushing, quarrelsome lot, eager to do business,
gesticulating wildly, and jabbering loudly in many strange tongues.
Here was a pure Spaniard, with a red sash round his waist, and a
velvet cap, round as a cartwheel, on his head, with a boatful of