A TRANSIENT GUEST.
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THE GRAND DUKE'S RUBIES.
A MAID OF MODERN ATHENS.
FAUSTA.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Since the Koenig Wilhelm, of the Dutch East India Service, leftBatavia, the sky had been torpidly blue, that suffocating indigo whichseems so neighborly that the traveller fancies were he a trifle tallerhe could touch it with the ferule of his stick. When night came, thestars would issue from their ambush and stab it through and through, butthe glittering cicatrices which they made left it bluer even, morepersistent than before. And now, as the ship entered the harbor, therewas a cruelty about it that exulted and defied. The sun, too, seemed tomenace; on every bit of brass it placed a threat, and in the lap of thewaters there was an understanding and a pact. Beyond, to the right, wasone long level stretch of sand on which the breakers fawned withrecurrent surge and swoon. Behind it were the green ramparts of aforest; to the left were the bungalows and booths of Siak; while in thedistance, among the hills and intervales, where but a few years beforenatives lurked beneath the monstrous lilies and clutched their kriss infierce surmise, a locomotive had left a trail of smoke.
"Sumatra, too, has gone the way of the world," thought one who loungedon deck.
He was a good-looking young fellow, browner far than he had been when heleft New York, and he was garbed in a fashion which would have attractedthe notice of the most apathetic habitué of Narragansett Pier. Savefor a waistband of yellow silk, he was clad wholly in that dead whitewhich is known as fromage à la crême. Had his cork hat been decoratedwith a canary bird's feather, you would have said a prince stepped froma fairy tale. At his heels was a fox terrier, which he had christenedZut. When he wished to be emphatic, however, Zut was elongated into ZutAlors.
"The general's compliments, sir, and are you ready?"
It was the polyglot steward addressing him, with that deference which isborn of tips.
Tancred Ennever—the only son of Furman Ennever, who, as every oneknows, is head and front of the steadiest house in Wall Street—turnedand nodded. "Got my traps up?" he asked, and without waiting for areply sauntered across the deck. He had met the general—Petrus vanLier, Consul of the Netherlands to Siak—at the Government House atBatavia, and although the trip which he had outlined for himselfconsisted, for the moment at least, in making direct for that sultryhole which is known as Singapore, yet the general had so represented thecharms