“That’s so,” exclaimed Brace, eager to share Miss Keene’s sentiments; “and he’s so good to those outlandish niggers in the crew.  I don’t see how the captain could get on with the crew without him; he’s the only one who can talk their gibberish and keep them quiet.  I’ve seen him myself quietly drop down among them when they were wrangling.  In my opinion,” continued the young fellow, lowering his voice somewhat ostentatiously, “you’ll find out when we get to port that he’s stopped the beginning of many a mutiny among them.”

“I reckon they’d make short work of a man like him,” said Winslow, whose superciliousness was by no means lessened by the community of sentiment between Miss Keene and Brace.  “I reckon, his political reforms, and his poetical high-falutin’ wouldn’t go as far in the forecastle among live men as it does in the cabin with a lot of women.  You’ll more likely find that he’s been some sort of steward on a steamer, and he’s working his passage with us.  That’s where he gets that smooth, equally-attentive-to-anybody sort of style.  The way he skirmished around Mrs. Brimmer and Mrs. Markham with a basin the other day when it was so rough convinced me.  It was a little too professional to suit my style.”

“I suppose that was the reason why you went below so suddenly,” rejoined Brace, whose too sensitive blood was beginning to burn in his cheeks and eyes.

“It’s a shame to stay below this morning,” said Miss Keene, instinctively recognizing the cause of the discord and its remedy.  “I’m going on deck again—­if I can manage to get there.”

The three gentlemen sprang to accompany her; and, in their efforts to keep their physical balance and hers equally, the social equilibrium was restored.

By noon, however, the heavy cross-sea had abated, and the Excelsior bore west.  When she once more rose and fell regularly on the long rhythmical swell of the Pacific, most of the passengers regained the deck.  Even Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb ventured from their staterooms, and were conveyed to and installed in some state on a temporary divan of cushions and shawls on the lee side.  For even in this small republic of equal cabin passengers the undemocratic and distinction-loving sex had managed to create a sham exclusiveness.  Mrs. Brimmer, as the daughter of a rich Bostonian, the sister of a prominent lawyer, and the wife of a successful San Francisco merchant, who was popularly supposed to be part-owner of the Excelsior, was recognized, and alternately caressed and hated as their superior.  A majority of the male passengers, owning no actual or prospective matrimonial subjection to those charming toad-eaters, I am afraid continued to enjoy a mild and debasing equality among themselves, mitigated only by the concessions of occasional gallantry.  To them, Mrs. Brimmer was a rather pretty, refined, well-dressed woman, whose languid pallor, aristocratic spareness, and utter fastidiousness did not, however, preclude a certain nervous intensity which occasionally lit up her weary eyes with a dangerous phosphorescence, under their brown fringes.  Equally acceptable was Miss Chubb, her friend and traveling companion; a tall, well-bred girl, with faint salmon-pink hair and complexion, that darkened to a fiery brown in her shortsighted eyes.