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Scotch mist soon drove everybody from the deck. And as for that Dunkeld, she is a flat-bottomed punt, and going up light as she was, she rolled very heavily. It almost seemed as though she would go right over, but she never did. It was quite impossible to walk about, so I stood near the engines where it was warm, and amused myself with watching the pendulum, e which was fixed opposite to me, swinging slowly backwards and forwards as the vessel rolled, and marking the angle she touched at each lurch.
    “That pendulum’s wrong; it is not properly weighted,” suddenly said a voice at my shoulder, somewhat testily. Looking round I saw the naval officer I had noticed when the passengers came aboard.
    “Indeed, now what makes you think so?” I asked.
    “Think so. I don’t think at all. Why there”—as she righted herself after a roll—“if the ship had really rolled to the degree that thing pointed to then she would never have rolled again, that’s all. But it is just like these merchant skippers, they always are so confoundedly careless.”
    Just then the dinner-bell rang, and I was not sorry, for it is a dreadful thing to have to listen to an officer of the Royal Navy when he gets on to that subject. I only know one worse thing, and that is to hear a merchant skipper express his candid opinion of officers of the Royal Navy.
    Captain Good and I went down to dinner together, and there we found Sir Henry Curtis already seated. He and Captain Good sat together, and I sat opposite to them. The captain and I soon got into talk about shooting and what not; he asking me many questions, and I answering as well as I could. Presently he got on to elephants.
    “Ah, sir,” called out somebody who was sitting near me, “you’ve got to the right man for that; Hunter Quatermain should be able to tell you about elephants if anybody can.”
    Sir Henry, who had been sitting quite quiet listening to our talk, started visibly.
    “Excuse me, sir,” he said, leaning forward across the table, and speaking in a low, deep voice, a very suitable voice it seemed to me, to come out of those great lungs. “Excuse me, sir, but is your name Allan Quatermain?”
    I said it was.
    The big man made no further remark, but I heard him mutter “fortunate” into his beard.
    Presently dinner came to an end, and as we were leaving the saloon Sir Henry came up and asked me if I would come into his cabin and smoke a pipe. I accepted, and he led the way to the Dunkeld deck cabin, and a very good cabin it was. It had been two cabins, but when Sir Garnet 7 or one of those big swells went down the coast in the Dunkeld, they had knocked away the partition and never put it up again. There was a sofa in the cabin, and a little table in front of it. Sir Henry sent the steward for a bottle of whisky, and the three of us sat down and lit our pipes.
    “Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry Curtis, when the steward had brought the whisky and lit the lamp, “the year before last about this time you were, I believe, at a place called Bamangwato, to the north of the Transvaal.”
    “I was,” I answered, rather surprised that this gentleman should be so well acquainted with my movements, which were not, so far as I was aware, considered of general interest.
    “You were trading there, were you not?” put in Captain Good, in his quick way.
    “I was. I took up a wagon load of goods, and made a camp outside the settlement, and stopped till I had sold them.”
    Sir Henry was sitting opposite to me in a Madeira chair, 8 his arms leaning on the table. He now looked up, fixing his large grey eyes full upon my face. There was a curious anxiety in them I thought.
    “Did you happen to meet a man called Neville there?”
    “Oh, yes; he outspanned f alongside of me for a fortnight to rest his oxen before going on to the interior. I had a letter from a lawyer a few months back asking me if I knew what had become of him, which I answered to the best of my ability at the