There was a little silence, after which Percival spoke again.

"Are you keeping count of the days? How long is it since we landed?"

"Sixteen days."

"Is that all? I thought it had been longer."

"You were anxious to get to your journey's end, I suppose," said the steerage passenger, after a little hesitation.

"Aren't we all anxious? Do we want to stay here for ever?" And then there was another pause, which ended by Percival's saying, in a tone of subdued irritation: "There are few of our party that have the same reasons that I have for wishing myself on the way back to England."

"You are not going to stay in South America, then?"

"Not I. There is someone I want to find; that's all."

"A man?"

"Yes, a man. I thought that he had sailed in the _Falcon_; but I suppose I was mistaken."

"And if you don't find him?"

"I must hunt the world over until I do. I won't go back to England without him, if he's alive."

"Friend or enemy?" said Mackay, fixing his eyes on Percival's face with a look of interest. At any other time Percival might have resented the question: here, in the log hut, with a tempest roaring and the rain streaming outside, and the great stormy sea as a barrier between the dwellers on the island and the rest of the civilised world, such questions and answers seemed natural enough.

"Enemy," said Percival, sharply. It was evident that some hidden sense of wrong had sprung suddenly to the light, and perhaps amazed him by its strength, for he began immediately to explain away his answer. "Hum! not that exactly. But not a friend."

"And you want to do him an injury!" said Mackay, with grave consideration.

"No, I don't," said Percival, angrily, as if replying to a suggestion that had been made a thousand times before, and flinging out his arm with a reckless, agitated gesture. "I want to do him a service--confound him!"

There was a silence. Percival lay with his outstretched hand clenched and his eyes fixed gloomily on the opposite wall: Mackay turned away his head. Presently, however, he spoke in a low but distinct tone.

"What is the service you propose doing me, Mr. Heron?"

"Doing you? Good Heavens! You! What do you mean?"

"I suppose that my face is a good deal disfigured at present," said the steerage passenger, passing his hand lightly over his thick, brown beard; "but when it is better, you will probably recognise me easily enough. But, perhaps, I am mistaken. I thought for a moment that you were in search of a man called Stretton, who was formerly a tutor to your step-brothers."

Percival was standing erect by this time in the middle of the floor. His hands were thrust into his pockets: his deep chest heaved: the bronzed pallor of his face had turned to a dusky red. He did not answer the words spoken to him; but after a few seconds of silence, in which the eyes of the two men met and told each other a good deal, he strode to the doorway, pushed aside the plank which served for a door, and went out into the storm. He did not feel the rain beating upon his head: he did not hear the thunder, nor see the forked lightning that played without intermission in the darkened sky; he was conscious only of the intolerable fact that he was shut up in a narrow corner of the earth, in daily, almost hourly, companionship with the one man for whom he felt something not unlike fierce hatred. And in spite of his resolution to act generously for Elizabeth's sake, the hatred flamed up again when he found himself so suddenly thrust, as it were, into Brian Luttrell's presence.

When he had walked for some time and got thoroughly wet through, it occurred to him that he was acting more like a child than a grown man; and he turned his face as impetuously towards the huts as he had lately turned his back upon them. He found plenty to do when the rain ceased.

The fire had for the first time gone out, and the patience of Jackson could not now be taxed, because he was lying on his back in the stupor of fever. Percival set one of the men to work with two sticks; but the wood was nearly all damp, and it was a weary business, even when two dry morsels were found, to get them to light. However, it was better than having nothing to do. Want of employment was one of their chief trials.

The men could not always be catching fish and snaring birds. They were thinking of building a small boat; but Jackson's illness deprived them of the help of one who had more practical knowledge of such matters than any of the others, and threw a damp over their spirits as well.

Jackson's illness seemed to give Percival a pretext for absenting himself from the hut in which the so-called Mackay lay. He had, just at first, an invincible repugnance to meeting him again; he could not make up his mind how Brian Luttrell would expect to be treated, and he was almost morbidly sensitive about the mistake that he had made respecting "the steerage passenger." At night he stayed with Jackson, and sent the other men to sleep in Mackay's hut. But in the morning an absolute necessity arose for him to speak to his enemy.

Jackson was sensible, though extremely weak, when the daylight came: and his first remark was an anxious one concerning the state of his comrade's broken leg. "Will you look after it a bit, sir?" he said, wistfully, to Heron.

"I'll do my best. Don't bother yourself," said Percival, cheerfully. And accordingly he presented himself at an early hour in the other sleeping-place, and addressed Brian in a very matter of fact tone.

"Your leg must be seen to this morning. I shall make a poor substitute for Jackson, I'm afraid; but I think I shall do it better than Pollard or Fenwick."

"I've no doubt of that," said the man with the brown beard and bright, quick eyes. "Thank you."

And that was all that passed between them.

It was wonderful to see the determined, unsparing way in which Percival worked that day. His energy never flagged. He was a little less good-tempered than usual; the upright black line in his forehead was very marked, and his utterances were not always amiable. But he succeeded in his object; he made himself so thoroughly tired that he slept as soon as his head touched his hard pillow, and did not wake until the sun was high in the heaven. The men showed a good deal of consideration for him. Fenwick watched by the sick man, and Pollard and Barry bestirred themselves to get ready the morning meal, and to attend to the wants of their two helpless companions.

It was not until evening that Brian found an opportunity to say to Percival:--

"What did you want to find me for?"

"Can't you let the matter rest until we are off this ---- island?" said Percival, losing control of that hidden fierceness for a moment.

And Brian answered rather coldly:--"As you please."

Percival waited awhile, and then said, more deliberately:--

"I'll tell you before long. There is no hurry, you see"--with a sort of grim humour--"there is no post to catch, no homeward-bound mail steamer in the harbour. We cannot give each other the slip now."

"Do you mean that I gave you the slip?" said Brian, to whom Percival's tone was charged with offence.

"I mean that Brian Luttrell would not have been allowed to leave England quite so easily as Mr. Stretton was. But I won't discuss it just now.

You'll excuse my observing that I think I would drop the 'Mackay' if I were you. It will hurt nobody here if you are called Luttrell; and--I hate disguises."

"The name Luttrell is as much a disguise as any other," said Brian, shortly. "But you may use it if you choose."

He was hardly prepared, however, for the round eyes with which the lad Barry regarded him when he next entered the log hut, nor for the awkward way in which he gave a bashful smile and pulled the front lock of his hair when Brian spoke to him.

"What are you doing that for?" he said, quickly.

"Well, sir, it's Mr. Heron's orders," said Barry.

"What orders?"

"That we're to remember you're a gentleman, sir. Gone steerage in a bit of a freak; but now you've told him you'd prefer to be called by your proper name. Mr. Luttrell, that is."

"I'm no more a gentleman than you are," said Brian, abruptly. "Call me Mackay at once as you used to do."

Barry shook his head with a knowing look. "Daren't sir. Mr. Heron is a gentleman that will have his own way. And he said you had a big estate in Scotland, sir; and lots of money."

"What other tales did he tell you?" said Brian, throwing back his head restlessly.

"Well, I don't know, sir. Only he told us that we'd better nurse you up as well as we could before we left the island, and that there was one at home as would give money to see you alive and well. A lady, I think he meant."

"What insane folly!" muttered Brian to himself. "Look here, Barry," he added aloud, "Mr. Heron was making jokes at your expense and mine. He meant nothing of the kind; I haven't a penny in the world, and I'm on the way to the Brazils to earn my living as a working-man. Now do you understand?"