whereabouts of the SERAPIS by wireless, entered the harbor, and
Admiral Hardy came to the yacht to call upon the senator, in whose
behalf he had been scouring the Caribbean Seas. Having paid his
respects to that personage, the admiral fell boisterously upon
Marshall.

The two old gentlemen were friends of many years. They had met,
officially and unofficially, in many strange parts of the world. To
each the chance reunion was a piece of tremendous good fortune. And
throughout dinner the guests of Livingstone, already bored with
each other, found in them and their talk of former days new and
delightful entertainment. So much so that when, Marshall having
assured them that the local quarantine regulations did not extend
to a yacht, the men departed for Las Bocas, the women insisted that
he and admiral remain behind.

It was for Marshall a wondrous evening. To foregather with his old
friend whom he had known since Hardy was a mad midshipman, to sit
at the feet of his own charming countrywomen, to listen to their
soft, modulated laughter, to note how quickly they saw that to him
the evening was a great event, and with what tact each contributed
to make it the more memorable; all served to wipe out the months of
bitter loneliness, the stigma of failure, the sense of undeserved
neglect. In the moonlight, on the cool quarter- deck, they sat, in
a half-circle, each of the two friends telling tales out of school,
tales of which the other was the hero or the victim, "inside"
stories of great occasions, ceremonies, bombardments, unrecorded
"shirt-sleeve" diplomacy.

Hardy had helped to open the Suez Canal. Marshall had assisted the