Under the Southern Cross

In the same spirit in which a solicitous mamma or benevolent middle-aged friend will sometimes draw forth from the misty past some youthful misdeed, and set the faded picture up before a girl's eyes, framed in fiery retribution--for an object lesson and a terrible example--so will I, benevolent, if not middle-aged, put before the eyes of my sisters a certain experience of mine. I expect my little act of self-abasement for the instruction of my sex to have this merit: the picture I will show you is not dim with age, and not cut and cramped to fit the frame of a special case. The colours are hardly dry, and both picture and tale are quite unvarnished.

I am a plain American girl of twenty. I am not so plain, as I come to think of it, as one or two others I know--not being distinguished even by unusual or commanding ugliness. I spent last winter in San Francisco with relatives, and intended returning home as I came--overland. But the invalid friend who was asked to chaperon me back to New York, was advised by her physicians to take the trip by sea via Panama, for health's sake, and I was easily induced to change my arrangements and bear her company.

It was on a sunny April morning that our friends met us at the wharf of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company to bid us God-speed on our month's voyage from the Golden Gate to the harbour of New York.

Fruits and flowers, boxes of salted almonds and Maskey's best bonbons, as well as books, from Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" to the latest novels, were showered upon us, with the understanding that it was to be a long and tedious voyage, and we should need all the comfort obtainable to support existence, with the knowledge that if we survived, we might be the better for the journey. The signal for visitors to leave the ship had been given, and Major Sanford, turning to go, stood face to face with a tall, foreign-looking young man, who smiled with quick recognition, showing small white teeth like a woman's.

"You raimembair me, Major?"

Major Sanford did "raimembair," and, turning to me, presented "Baron de Bach."

"--he knows all our good friends, was here four years ago on his way round the world in his steam yacht--glad to think you'll have such good company. Good-bye!" And Major Sanford was the last to run down the gangway. How little he knew what entertainment he was providing in coupling my farewell to him with "hail" to Baron de Bach!

Slowly we moved away from the dense crowd that covered the wharf. In the cloud of fluttering handkerchiefs, our friends' faces grew dim and slowly faded; the fair city at our Western portal looked like dreamland in a haze.

"You air not sorry dthat you go?" says a voice over my shoulder.

"No," I say, without turning; "I'm always glad of a change. You must have had a good time in that yacht of yours, going where you liked, and getting up steam the moment you had seen enough."

"Yes," says the new acquaintance meditatively, coming forward to the side of the vessel where I can see his face, "_Mais je suis tres fatigue._ I am glad dthat I now go home."

"You are young to be tired." I look sideways at the boyish face. He is German, I think to myself, making a mental note of his complexion, strangely fair for a yachtsman the eyes--heavily fringed blue eyes--the full-lipped, sensuous mouth, shapely of its kind, shadowed by a curling blond moustache.

"You are going home round Robin Hood's barn, aren't you?"

"Robeen Hoohd? Pardon, vill you tell me who is he en francais?"

"No, I'm not proud of my French, and if mistakes must be made I would rather you made them. I meant isn't this a curious way to go to Germany, if you are tired of travel and in haste to get home?"

"I lif not in Jhermany, how could you dthink----"

"Oh, I fancied the name was German, and----"

"Yes--yes, dthe name, but----"

"And you look a little German."

"Ah, mademoiselle, look at me more, I am in nodthing like Jhermans."

I could see the tall young stranger was a bit distressed that his Teutonic cast betrayed him.

"My fadthur was Jherman--my modthur is Castilian, my home is Lima, I am Peruvian, but I am educate in France. I am cosmopolite. And you--air Frainch?"

"I wonder where Mrs. Steele is?" I say, and turn away to find my friend standing at the stern, with the tears streaming down her handsome, care-worn face, and her great hollow eyes fixed on the fading outlines of the San Franciscan harbour. The Baron has followed, but I turn my back and devote myself to diverting Mrs. Steele.

"We must arrange our stateroom before we are ill," she says presently, in a state of hopeful anticipation, and we retire to No. 49 in the Steamship San Miguel, which all who have taken this journey know to be the best double room on the "crack" steamer of the line. We put up hangers, divide pockets and racks, and prepare for a three weeks' occupancy. Having finished our work, we go to the stern to get a whiff of the stiff breeze blowing from the southeast. The air is sweet and sun-laden, the rhythmic rise and fall of the little steamer seems a bit of caressing pastime between ship and sea--"the whole world is shining and exultant," think I, "and the contagion reaches me."

"Mademoiselle ees fery happy for somedthing," says the Baron's deep, low voice.

"Yes, I'm always happy, but especially just now. Mrs. Steele--Baron de Bach, a friend of Major Sanford."

For half an hour the young Peruvian devotes himself making a good impression on Mrs. Steele. He carries her chair about until a place is discovered sufficiently sheltered from the sun and yet not too cold; he puts all our wraps and rugs on and about "Madame," who watches him with quiet amusement until I ask:

"And now, pray, what am I to do for a rug?"

"You need not a rug; you vill valk dthe deck, vill you not?"

To tell the truth, walking the deck is much more in my line than being swathed and pinioned in a chair, but----

"Yes, my dear, it will do you good--bring me a book, and then you may explore if you like."

So Madame is left with her French romance, and up and down in the sunshine I walk with our new acquaintance at my side.

"You air not Frainch?" he asks with a scrutinising side glance out of his fine eyes.

"I am happy to say that I am an American, and so are my ancestors for three hundred years."

"Naixt to dthe Frainch, dthe American ladies air most beautiful, charmante and clevair, but you haf chic, and more dthings; you might be angry I vould say. Vhen I stood at dthe ship and see you coming abord du San Miguel I vas so happy, for I haf fear for a dull voyage."

"H'm! You fancy then I may entertain you?"

"_Mademoiselle!_"

Very reproachful is the droop of the long lashes.

"It ess my gude hope ve may be friends, and if I succeed to amuse you, I am content a present."

"And what office do you aspire to in the future? Shall you instruct, perhaps?"