The history of Captain Magnus was obscure.  It was certain that he had his captain’s papers, though how he had mastered the science of navigation sufficiently to obtain them was a problem.  Though he held a British navigator’s license, he did not appear to be an Englishman.  None of us ever knew, I think, from what country he originally came.  His rough, mumbling, unready speech might have been picked up in any of the seaports of the English-speaking world.  His manners smacked of the forecastle, and he was altogether so difficult to classify that I used to toy with the theory that he had murdered the real Captain Magnus for his papers and was masquerading in his character.

The captain, as Mr. Vane had remarked, was Miss Browne’s own find.  Before the objections of Mr. Shaw—­evidently a Negative Influence from the beginning—­had caused her to abandon the scheme.  Miss Browne had planned to charter a vessel in New York and sail around the Horn to the island.  While nursing this project she had formed an extensive acquaintance with persons frequenting the New York water-front, among whom was Captain Magnus.  As I heard her remark, he was the one nautical character whom she found sympathetic, by which I judge that the others were skeptical and rude.  Being sympathetic, Captain Magnus found it an easy matter to attach himself to the expedition—­or perhaps it was Violet who annexed him.  I don’t know which.

Mr. Vane used to view the remarkable gastronomic feats of Captain Magnus with the innocent and quite unscornful curiosity of a little boy watching the bears in the zoo.  Evidently he felt that a horizon hitherto bounded mainly by High Staunton Manor was being greatly enlarged.  I knew now that the Honorable Cuthbert’s father was a baron, and that he was the younger of two sons, and that the elder was an invalid, so that the beautiful youth was quite certain in the long run to be Lord Grasmere.  I had remained stolid under this information, feelingly imparted by Aunt Jane.  I had refused to ask questions about High Staunton Manor.  For already there was a vast amount of superfluous chaperoning being done.  I couldn’t speak to the b. y.—­which is short for beautiful youth—­without Violet’s cold gray eye being trained upon us.  And Aunt Jane grew flustered directly, and I could see her planning an embroidery design of coronets, or whatever is the proper headgear of barons, for my trousseau.  Mr. Tubbs had essayed to be facetious on the matter, but I had coldly quenched him.

But Mr. Shaw was much the worst.  My most innocent remark to the beautiful youth appeared to rouse suspicion in his self-constituted guardian.  If he did not say in so many words, Beware, dear lad, she’s stringing you! or whatever the English of that is, it was because nobody could so wound the faith in the b. y.’s candid eyes.  But to see the fluttering, anxious wing the Scotchman tried to spread over that babe of six-feet-two you would have thought me a man-eating tigress.  And I laughed, and flaunted my indifference in his sober face, and went away with bitten lips to the hammock they had swung for me among the palms—­