“A Mexican with a knife, miss,” he answered, moistening his parched lips and clearing hip throat.  “It was just a fight.  After I got the knife away, he tried to bite off my nose.”

Baldly as he had stated it, in his eyes was a rich vision of that hot, starry night at Salina Cruz, the white strip of beach, the lights of the sugar steamers in the harbor, the voices of the drunken sailors in the distance, the jostling stevedores, the flaming passion in the Mexican’s face, the glint of the beast-eyes in the starlight, the sting of the steel in his neck, and the rush of blood, the crowd and the cries, the two bodies, his and the Mexican’s, locked together, rolling over and over and tearing up the sand, and from away off somewhere the mellow tinkling of a guitar.  Such was the picture, and he thrilled to the memory of it, wondering if the man could paint it who had painted the pilot-schooner on the wall.  The white beach, the stars, and the lights of the sugar steamers would look great, he thought, and midway on the sand the dark group of figures that surrounded the fighters.  The knife occupied a place in the picture, he decided, and would show well, with a sort of gleam, in the light of the stars.  But of all this no hint had crept into his speech.  “He tried to bite off my nose,” he concluded.

“Oh,” the girl said, in a faint, far voice, and he noticed the shock in her sensitive face.

He felt a shock himself, and a blush of embarrassment shone faintly on his sunburned cheeks, though to him it burned as hotly as when his cheeks had been exposed to the open furnace-door in the fire-room.  Such sordid things as stabbing affrays were evidently not fit subjects for conversation with a lady.  People in the books, in her walk of life, did not talk about such things—­perhaps they did not know about them, either.

There was a brief pause in the conversation they were trying to get started.  Then she asked tentatively about the scar on his cheek.  Even as she asked, he realized that she was making an effort to talk his talk, and he resolved to get away from it and talk hers.

“It was just an accident,” he said, putting his hand to his cheek.  “One night, in a calm, with a heavy sea running, the main-boom-lift carried away, an’ next the tackle.  The lift was wire, an’ it was threshin’ around like a snake.  The whole watch was tryin’ to grab it, an’ I rushed in an’ got swatted.”

“Oh,” she said, this time with an accent of comprehension, though secretly his speech had been so much Greek to her and she was wondering what a lift was and what swatted meant.

“This man Swineburne,” he began, attempting to put his plan into execution and pronouncing the i long.

“Who?”

“Swineburne,” he repeated, with the same mispronunciation.  “The poet.”

“Swinburne,” she corrected.

“Yes, that’s the chap,” he stammered, his cheeks hot again.  “How long since he died?”