'At present,' she replied, 'we have had little conversation. He says, however, that he sent me a telegram from Bombay, telling me not to start as the _Briseus_ was coming down here. He only came-to an hour ago, however,' she went on, while a ravishing blush swept over her face, 'and we--we--have had so much to----' 'Spare her, Fagg,' said Pooley, with a laugh, and passing the claret at the same time. 'Spare her. Suppose you woke up one fine afternoon and found your sweetheart bending over you in your berth and whispering all sorts of endearing things in your ears, as well as kiss----' 'Uncle!' cried Bella, while Mrs. Pooley touched her husband's arm reprovingly with her forefinger, and Mr. Fagg hid his face behind the vase of brilliant Cape gooseberries on the table. 'Uncle!' Whereon the bluff, good-natured sailor desisted, and began to speculate on the blindness with which the rescued negroes were attacked, and on that attack being, as he imagined, a recent one. 'They capture these poor wretches inland,' he went on musingly, 'in the big lake region as often as not; but, as far as I have ever heard, blindness is not one of their afflictions. Moreover, these Arab owners and captains wouldn't buy blind slaves, either for selling farther north, or for using as sailors in their dhows. Therefore, I take it, this blindness must have come on them since they were shipped. That's strange, isn't it?' while, as he spoke, he rose, and went to his neat mahogany bookcase which was securely fastened to one of the saloon's bulkheads, and took down the two medical works he possessed--the one dealing with all general human complaints to which our flesh is heir, and the other with tropical diseases more especially. Yet neither under the heading of 'Eye,' nor 'Blindness,' nor 'Optics,' could he find aught that bore upon the subject; nor, in his book on tropical complaints, could he discover any information that might enlighten him as to why the four negroes should be so stricken. He spoke again, however, after turning over the leaves of these erudite volumes a second time, saying: 'Fever, I know, sometimes produces blindness as an after-effect, yet--well, we have all seen these fellows, and there's no fever in them, I should say. Oh, deuce take this confusion of tongues!' he exclaimed irritably; 'if it did not exist we could find out so much from the sufferers themselves. Bella, our only hope is in you and your patient. If Lieutenant Bampfyld can't tell us something, we shall never know who these men and the woman are, where they came from, what is the matter with them, and to whom the dhow belonged. Can he speak anything but English, child?' 'He knows some Hindustani,' Bella replied; 'and, I think he said, some words of Swahili. He has taken up Eastern languages in the Service, which was one of the reasons for his being appointed to the _Briseus_. He may be some help. At least he can tell us how he came on board that horrid ship.'