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The weather was fair, the trade wind blowing fresh from the eastward and raising somewhat of a sea. At about 12.40 the third-class cruiser Isabel III. came out, and, steaming under the Morro until she was abreast of the batteries, commenced edging out toward us, firing at such a long range that her shots were ineffective.

The girl turned away her own and walked towards the piano, stopping on the way, however, to push forward a little table set forth with a steaming tea-urn and cups, matches and a tray, and to lift to its farther edge a bowl of heavy-scented violets. Her every motion was full of ministry, as devoid of fuss.

The smell of the steaming mud, the decaying vegetation, and the nameless evils hidden deeper in this water-rotted land was an added torment. The boy shook a large red ant from its grip in the flesh of his hand and wiped the streaming perspiration from his face. It was then that the canoe floated almost of its own volition into a dead and distorted strip of country.

A joyous confusion of talk rose above the clinking of spoons and plates, as the heavy cups of steaming tea were passed and the sugar- bowl went the rounds; there was no milk, and no girl at Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's thought lemon in tea anything but a wretched affectation.

Then an evening came when he could scarcely drag himself to the bunk-house for supper. It had rained all day and the building was overheated by a glowing stove and filled with the smell of rank tobacco and steaming clothes. Charnock could not eat the roughly served food, and for a time sat slack and limp, with the sweat upon his face, and his arms on the table.

In the course of his remarks, father mentioned the fact that on Monday, the evening that the robbery was committed, Jacobs had borrowed Pacer to go to the Junction, but had come in with the horse steaming, and looking as if he had been driven a much longer distance than that. Father said that when he got done, Jacobs had sunk down all in a heap on the stable floor with his hands over his face.

When, after sunset, and the fields were silent, he rode past the cabins, coal-black figures, new from the slave deck, still seamed at wrist and ankle, mowed and jabbered at him from over their bowls of steaming food; others, who had forgotten the jungle and the slaver, answered, when he spoke to them, in strange English; others, born in Virginia, and remembering when he used to ride that way with his father, laughed, called him "Marse Duke," and agreed with him that the crop was looking mighty well.

The road was "brushed out" by little bushes set along at regular intervals. Away off on the distant perspective a dot was advancing. It resolved itself into horse and sleigh. Puffs of vapor from the steaming animal indicated the urgent precipitancy of its speed. "I reckon that'll be Colonel Gideon Ward!" called the man who had just observed the team.

Old Gretel met me and wept over me, as if I was not already sufficiently moist. The chef came running out to say that breakfast would be ready for me when I desired it; Blatchford felt of my coat sleeve and told me that I was quite wet; Hawkes had two large, steaming toddies waiting for us in the vestibule, apparently fearing that we could get no farther without the aid of a stimulant.

Rodman chuckled to himself; he had a steaming glass of whisky before him and sipped it delicately. The ringing continued for a quarter of an hour, then five minutes passed, and no sound came. Rodman stepped lightly to the front door, listened, heard nothing, unlocked and opened.