Fitzgerald waited with an impatience which often choked him.  A secret agent had not so adroitly joined this expedition for the pleasure of seeing a treasure dug up from some reluctant grave.  What was he after?  If indeed Breitmann was directly concerned, if he knew of the treasure’s existence, of what benefit now would be his knowledge?  A share in the finding at most.  And was Breitmann one who was conditioned of such easy stuff that he would rather be sure and share than to strike out for all the treasure and all the risks?  The more he gave his thought to Breitmann the more that gentleman retracted into the fog, as it were.  On several occasions he had noticed signs of a preoccupation, of suppressed excitement, of silence and moroseness.  Fitzgerald could join certain squares of the puzzle, but this led forward scarce a step.  Breitmann had entered the employ of the admiral for the very purpose for which M. Ferraud had journeyed sundrily into the cellar and beaten futilely on the chimney.  It resolved to one thing, and that was the secretary had arrived too late.  He was sure that Breitmann had no suspicion regarding M. Ferraud.  But for a casual glance at the little man’s hands, neither would he have had any.  He determined to prod M. Ferraud.  He was well trained in repression; so, while he often lost patience, there was never any external sign of it.  Besides, there was another affair which over-shadowed it and at times engulfed it.

Love.  The cross-tides of sense and sentiment made a pretty disturbance.  And still further, there was another counter-tide.  Love does not necessarily make a young man keen-sighted, but it generally highly develops his talent for suspicion.  By subtle gradations, Breitmann had shifted in Fitzgerald’s mind from a possible friend to a probable rival.  Breitmann did not now court his society when the smoking bouts came round, or when the steward brought the whisky and soda after the ladies had retired.  Breitmann was moody, and whatever variance his moods had, they retained the gray tone.  This Fitzgerald saw and dilated upon; and it rankled when he thought that this hypothetical adventurer had rights, level and equal to his, always supposing he had any.

In this state of mind he drooped idly over the rail as the yacht drew out of the bay, the evening of the second day.  The glories of the southern sunset lingered and vanished, a-begging, without his senses being roused by them; and long after the sea, chameleon-like, changed from rose to lavender, from lavender to gray, the mountains yet jealously clung to their vivid aureolas of phantom gold.  Fitzgerald saw nothing but writing on the water.

“Well, my boy,” said Cathewe, lounging affectionately against Fitzgerald, “here we are, rolled over again.”

“What?”

Cathewe described a circle with his finger lazily.

“Oh!” said Fitzgerald, listless.  “Another day more or less, crowded into the past, doesn’t matter.”