Mrs. Travers spoke first.

“How unnaturally quiet!  It is like a desert of land and water without a living soul.”

“One man at least dwells in it,” said d’Alcacer, lightly, “and if he is to be believed there are other men, full of evil intentions.”

“Do you think it is true?” Mrs. Travers asked.

Before answering d’Alcacer tried to see the expression of her face but the obscurity was too profound already.

“How can one see a dark truth on such a dark night?” he said, evasively.  “But it is easy to believe in evil, here or anywhere else.”

She seemed to be lost in thought for a while.

“And that man himself?” she asked.

After some time d’Alcacer began to speak slowly.  “Rough, uncommon, decidedly uncommon of his kind.  Not at all what Don Martin thinks him to be.  For the rest—­mysterious to me.  He is your countryman after all—­”

She seemed quite surprised by that view.

“Yes,” she said, slowly.  “But you know, I can not—­what shall I say?—­imagine him at all.  He has nothing in common with the mankind I know.  There is nothing to begin upon.  How does such a man live?  What are his thoughts?  His actions?  His affections?  His—­”

“His conventions,” suggested d’Alcacer.  “That would include everything.”

Mr. Travers appeared suddenly behind them with a glowing cigar in his teeth.  He took it between his fingers to declare with persistent acrimony that no amount of “scoundrelly intimidation” would prevent him from having his usual walk.  There was about three hundred yards to the southward of the yacht a sandbank nearly a mile long, gleaming a silvery white in the darkness, plumetted in the centre with a thicket of dry bushes that rustled very loud in the slightest stir of the heavy night air.  The day after the stranding they had landed on it “to stretch their legs a bit,” as the sailing-master defined it, and every evening since, as if exercising a privilege or performing a duty, the three paced there for an hour backward and forward lost in dusky immensity, threading at the edge of water the belt of damp sand, smooth, level, elastic to the touch like living flesh and sweating a little under the pressure of their feet.

This time d’Alcacer alone followed Mr. Travers.  Mrs. Travers heard them get into the yacht’s smallest boat, and the night-watchman, tugging at a pair of sculls, pulled them off to the nearest point.  Then the man returned.  He came up the ladder and she heard him say to someone on deck: 

“Orders to go back in an hour.”

His footsteps died out forward, and a somnolent, unbreathing repose took possession of the stranded yacht.

VI