The Call of the East. Thurlow Fraser

your accompaniment, De Vaux?" said the consul, in response to an appealing look from his wife.

      "How good of you, Beauchamp! … By——! … 'Pon my soul, I mean—it is!"

      Purple-faced, perspiring, steadying himself by the piano, The Honourable Lionel Percival Dudley De Vaux sang, in a series of high-toned asthmatic gasps, "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep."

      Then the guests said their farewells and, preceded by natives carrying lanterns, they began to move off into the warm aromatic darkness of the southern night.