The Crusade of the Excelsior | Page 7

exactly," he said, coloring; "but I'd have lashed you to
some spar, or made a raft, and got you ashore on some island."
"And poor Mrs. Markham and Mrs. Brimmer--you'd have left them to
the boats and the Lascars, I suppose?" smiled Miss Keene.
"Oh, somebody would have looked after Mrs. Markham; and Mrs.
Brimmer wouldn't have gone with anybody that wasn't well connected.
But what's the use of talking?" he added ruefully. "Nothing has
happened, and nothing is going to happen. You will see yourself in San
Francisco, even if you don't see ME there. You're going to a rich
brother, Miss Keene, who has friends of his own, and who won't care to
know a poor fellow whom you tolerated on the passage, but who don't
move in Mrs. Brimmer's set, and whom Mr. Banks wouldn't indorse
commercially."
"Ah, you don't know my brother, Mr. Brace."
"Nor do you, very well, Miss Keene. You were saying, only last night,
you hardly remembered him."
The young girl sighed.
"I was very young when he went West," she said explanatorily; "but I
dare say I shall recall him. What I meant is, that he will be very glad to
know that I have been so happy here, and he will like all those who
have made me so."
"Then you have been happy?"
"Yes; very." She had withdrawn her eyes, and was looking vaguely
towards the companion-way. "Everybody has been so kind to me."

"And you are grateful to all?"
"Yes."
"Equally?"
The ship gave a sudden forward plunge. Miss Keene involuntarily
clutched the air with her little hand, that had been resting on the settee
between them, and the young man caught it in his own.
"Equally?" he repeated, with an assumed playfulness that half veiled
his anxiety. "Equally--from the beaming Senor Perkins, who smiles on
all, to the gloomy Mr. Hurlstone, who smiles on no one?"
She quickly withdrew her hand, and rose. "I smell the breakfast," she
said laughingly. "Don't be horrified, Mr. Brace, but I'm very hungry."
She laid the hand she had withdrawn lightly on his arm. "Now help me
down to the cabin."

CHAPTER II.
ANOTHER PORTENT.
The saloon of the Excelsior was spacious for the size of the vessel, and
was furnished in a style superior to most passenger- ships of that epoch.
The sun was shining through the sliding windows upon the fresh and
neatly arranged breakfast-table, but the presence of the ominous
"storm-racks," and partitions for glass and china, and the absence of the
more delicate passengers, still testified to the potency of the Gulf of
California. Even those present wore an air of fatigued discontent, and
the conversation had that jerky interjectional quality which belonged to
people with a common grievance, but a different individual experience.
Mr. Winslow had been unable to shave. Mrs. Markham, incautiously
and surreptitiously opening a port-hole in her state-room for a whiff of
fresh air while dressing, had been shocked by the intrusion of the
Pacific Ocean, and was obliged to summon assistance and change her

dress. Jack Crosby, who had attired himself for tropical shore-going in
white ducks and patent leathers, shivered in the keen northwest Trades,
and bewailed the cheap cigars he had expected to buy at Mazatlan. The
entrance of Miss Keene, who seemed to bring with her the freshness
and purity of the dazzling outer air, stirred the younger men into some
gallant attention, embarrassed, however, by a sense of self-reproach.
Senor Perkins alone retained his normal serenity. Already seated at the
table between the two fair-headed children of Mrs. Brimmer, he was
benevolently performing parental duties in her absence, and gently
supervising and preparing their victuals even while he carried on an
ethnological and political discussion with Mrs. Markham.
"Ah, my dear lady," continued the Senor, as he spread a hot biscuit
with butter and currant jelly for the youngest Miss Brimmer, "I am
afraid that, with the fastidiousness of your sex, you allow your refined
instincts against a race who only mix with ours in a menial capacity to
prejudice your views of their ability for enlightened self-government.
That may be true of the aborigines of the Old World--like our friends
the Lascars among the crew"--
"They're so snaky, dark, and deceitful-looking," interrupted Mrs.
Markham.
"I might differ from you there, and say that the higher blonde types like
the Anglo-Saxon--to say nothing of the wily Greeks--were the deceitful
races: it might be difficult for any of us to say what a sly and deceitful
man should be like"--
"Oor not detheitful--oor a dood man," interpolated the youngest Miss
Brimmer, fondly regarding the biscuit.
"Thank you, Missie," beamed the Senor; "but to return: our Lascar
friends, Mrs. Markham, belong to an earlier Asiatic type of civilization
already decayed or relapsed