“Good advice seldom gets much thanks, I believe,” was my grumpy comment, which he unexpectedly chose to accept as an apology and with a large, fine, generous gesture to blow away.

“That’s all right,” he declared.  “I’m not holding it against you.  We’ve all got to learn.  Next time you won’t be so easy caught, I guess.  It makes a man do some thinking when he gets a dose like you did; and those chaps at Gibraltar certainly gave you a rough deal!”

“On the contrary,” I differed shortly,—­I wasn’t hunting sympathy,—­“considering all the circumstances, I think they were extremely fair.”

“Not to shoot you on sight?  Well, maybe.”  He was grinning.  “But I guess you weren’t hunting for a chance to spend two days cooped up in a cabin that measured six feet by five.”

“It had advantages.  One of them was solitude,” I responded dryly.  “And it was less unpleasant than being relegated to a six-by-three grave.  See here, I don’t enjoy this subject!  Suppose we drop it.  The fact is, I’ve never understood why you came to my rescue on that occasion, you didn’t owe me any civility, you know, and you had to—­well—­we’ll say draw on your imagination when you claimed you saw what I threw overboard that night.”

“Sure, I lied like a trooper,” he admitted placidly.  “Glad to do it.  You didn’t break any bones when you strafed me, and anyhow, I felt sorry for you.  It always goes against me to see a fellow being played!”

Thanks to my determined coolness, the conversation lapsed.  I buried myself in the Paris “Herald,” but found I could not read.  Simmering with wrath, I lived again the ill-starred voyage his words recalled to me, breathed the close smothering air of the cabin that had held me prisoner, tasted the knowledge that I was watched like any thief.  An armed sailor had stood outside my door by day and by night; and a dozen times I had longed to fling open that frail partition, seize the man by the collar, and hurl him far away.

Glancing out at the landscape, I saw that Turin lay back of us and that our track was winding through dark chestnut forests toward the heights.  Confound Van Blarcom’s reminiscences and the thoughts they had set stirring!  In ambush behind my paper I gloomily relived the past.

Our ship, following sealed instructions, had changed her course at Gibraltar, conveying us by way of the Spanish coast to Genoa instead of Naples.  From my port-hole I had gazed glumly on blue skies and bright, blue waters, purple hills, and white-walled cities, and fishing boats with patched, gaudy sails and dark-complexioned crews.  Then Genoa rose from the sea, tier after tier of pink and green and orange houses and shimmering groves of olive trees; and I was summoned to the salon, to face the captain of the port, the chief of the police of the city, and their bedizened suites.