“By Jove!” he cried, “I can see Sir Arthur Deane, and a girl who looks like his daughter.  There’s that infernal scamp, Ventnor, too.”

The big man brushed the servant out of his way, and brandished the telescope as though it were a bludgeon.

“The dirty beggar!  He drove my lad to misery and death, yet he has come back safe and sound.  Wait till I meet him.  I’ll—­”

“Now, Anstruther!  Remember your promise.  I will deal with Lord Ventnor.  My vengeance has first claim.  What!  By the jumping Moses, I do believe—­Yes.  It is.  Anstruther!  Your nephew is sitting next to the girl!”

The telescope fell on the stones with a crash.  The giant’s rubicund face suddenly blanched.  He leaned on his friend for support.

“You are not mistaken,” he almost whimpered.  “Look again, for God’s sake, man.  Make sure before you speak.  Tell me!  Tell me!”

“Calm yourself, Anstruther.  It is Robert, as sure as I’m alive.  Don’t you think I know him, my poor disgraced friend, whom I, like all the rest, cast off in his hour of trouble?  But I had some excuse.  There!  There!  I didn’t mean that, old fellow.  Robert himself will be the last man to blame either of us.  Who could have suspected that two people—­one of them, God help me! my wife—­would concoct such a hellish plot!”

The boat glided gracefully alongside the steps of the quay, and Playdon sprang ashore to help Iris to alight.  What happened immediately afterwards can best be told in his own words, as he retailed the story to an appreciative audience in the ward-room.

“We had just landed,” he said, “and some of the crew were pushing the coolies out of the way, when two men jumped down the steps, and a most fiendish row sprang up.  That is, there was no dispute or wrangling, but one chap, who, it turned out, was Colonel Costobell, grabbed Ventnor by the shirt front, and threatened to smash his face in if he didn’t listen then and there to what he had to say.  I really thought about interfering, until I heard Colonel Costobell’s opening words.  After that I would gladly have seen the beggar chucked into the harbor.  We never liked him, did we?”

“Ask no questions, Pompey, but go ahead with the yarn,” growled the first lieutenant.

“Well, it seems that Mrs. Costobell is dead.  She got enteric a week after the Orient sailed, and was a goner in four days.  Before she died she owned up.”

He paused, with a base eye to effect.  Not a man moved a muscle.

“All right,” he cried.  “I will make no more false starts.  Mrs. Costobell begged her husband’s forgiveness for her treatment of him, and confessed that she and Lord Ventnor planned the affair for which Anstruther was tried by court-martial.  It must have been a beastly business, for Costobell was sweating with rage, though his words were icy enough.  And you ought to have seen Ventnor’s face when he heard of the depositions, sworn to and