You can understand now why
I am so bitter against my relations to-day: there are too many of them
about."
"I suppose that is what's brought our Mr. Wilders here to-day--to meet
his cousin."
"And his brother; for they are on board Lord Lydstone's yacht."
"They! How many of them?"
"General Wilders has his wife with him, I believe, accompanying him to
the East."
"Old idiot! Why couldn't he leave her at home? Women are in the way at
these times. Soldiers have no business with wives."
"That's why you never married, I suppose?"
Hyde did not answer his question, but got up and left his comrade
abruptly, to re-enter the guard-room.
CHAPTER VI.
ON DANGEROUS GROUND.
The _Arcadia_, Lord Lydstone's yacht, was a fine three-masted schooner
of a couple of hundred tons. She was lying far out in the bay, amidst
a crowd of shipping of every kind--coal-hulks, black and grimy; H.M.S.
_Samarang_, receiving-ship, and home of the captain of the port;
British vessels, steamers and sailing-ships, of every rig; foreign
craft of every aspect native to its waters: zebecques, faluchas, and
polaccas, with their curved spars and heavy lateen sails.
A fleet of small boats surrounded the yacht, native boats of curious
build, and manned by dark-skinned natives of the Rock, in nondescript
attire--a noisy, pushing, quarrelsome lot, eager to do business,
gesticulating wildly, and jabbering loudly in many strange tongues.
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