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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10446 ***
+THE GREEN FLAG.
+
+ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+THE GREEN FLAG.
+
+CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+
+THE CROXLEY MASTER.
+
+THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR.
+
+THE STRIPED CHEST.
+
+A SHADOW BEFORE.
+
+THE KING OF THE FOXES.
+
+THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS.
+
+THE NEW CATACOMB.
+
+THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE.
+
+A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREEN FLAG
+
+
+When Jack Conolly, of the Irish Shotgun Brigade, the Rory of the Hills
+Inner Circle, and the extreme left wing of the Land League, was
+incontinently shot by Sergeant Murdoch of the constabulary, in a little
+moonlight frolic near Kanturk, his twin-brother Dennis joined the
+British Army. The countryside had become too hot for him; and, as the
+seventy-five shillings were wanting which might have carried him to
+America, he took the only way handy of getting himself out of the way.
+Seldom has Her Majesty had a less promising recruit, for his hot Celtic
+blood seethed with hatred against Britain and all things British.
+The sergeant, however, smiling complacently over his 6 ft. of brawn and
+his 44 in. chest, whisked him off with a dozen other of the boys to the
+depot at Fermoy, whence in a few weeks they were sent on, with the
+spade-work kinks taken out of their backs, to the first battalion of the
+Royal Mallows, at the top of the roster for foreign service.
+
+The Royal Mallows, at about that date, were as strange a lot of men as
+ever were paid by a great empire to fight its battles. It was the
+darkest hour of the land struggle, when the one side came out with
+crow-bar and battering-ram by day, and the other with mask and with
+shot-gun by night. Men driven from their homes and potato-patches found
+their way even into the service of the Government, to which it seemed to
+them that they owed their troubles, and now and then they did wild
+things before they came. There were recruits in the Irish regiments who
+would forget to answer to their own names, so short had been their
+acquaintance with them. Of these the Royal Mallows had their full
+share; and, while they still retained their fame as being one of the
+smartest corps in the army, no one knew better than their officers that
+they were dry-rotted with treason and with bitter hatred of the flag
+under which they served.
+
+And the centre of all the disaffection was C Company, in which Dennis
+Conolly found himself enrolled. They were Celts, Catholics, and men of
+the tenant class to a man; and their whole experience of the British
+Government had been an inexorable landlord, and a constabulary who
+seemed to them to be always on the side of the rent-collector. Dennis
+was not the only moonlighter in the ranks, nor was he alone in having an
+intolerable family blood-feud to harden his heart. Savagery had
+begotten savagery in that veiled civil war. A landlord with an iron
+mortgage weighing down upon him had small bowels for his tenantry.
+He did but take what the law allowed, and yet, with men like Jim Holan,
+or Patrick McQuire, or Peter Flynn, who had seen the roofs torn from
+their cottages and their folk huddled among their pitiable furniture
+upon the roadside, it was ill to argue about abstract law. What matter
+that in that long and bitter struggle there was many another outrage on
+the part of the tenant, and many another grievance on the side of the
+landowner! A stricken man can only feel his own wound, and the rank and
+file of the C Company of the Royal Mallows were sore and savage to the
+soul. There were low whisperings in barrack-rooms and canteens,
+stealthy meetings in public-house parlours, bandying of passwords from
+mouth to mouth, and many other signs which made their officers right
+glad when the order came which sent them to foreign, and better still,
+to active service.
+
+For Irish regiments have before now been disaffected, and have at a
+distance looked upon the foe as though he might, in truth, be the
+friend; but when they have been put face on to him, and when their
+officers have dashed to the front with a wave and halloo, those rebel
+hearts have softened and their gallant Celtic blood has boiled with the
+mad joy of the fight, until the slower Britons have marvelled that they
+ever could have doubted the loyalty of their Irish comrades. So it
+would be again, according to the officers, and so it would not be if
+Dennis Conolly and a few others could have their way.
+
+It was a March morning upon the eastern fringe of the Nubian desert.
+The sun had not yet risen, but a tinge of pink flushed up as far as the
+cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon
+across the horizon. From the coast inland stretched dreary sand-plains,
+dotted over with thick clumps of mimosa scrub and mottled patches of
+thorny bush. No tree broke the monotony of that vast desert. The dull,
+dusty hue of the thickets, and the yellow glare of the sand, were the
+only colours, save at one point, where, from a distance, it seemed that
+a land-slip of snow-white stones had shot itself across a low foot-hill.
+But as the traveller approached he saw, with a thrill, that these were
+no stones, but the bleaching bones of a slaughtered army. With its dull
+tints, its gnarled, viprous bushes, its arid, barren soil, and this
+death streak trailed across it, it was indeed a nightmare country.
+
+Some eight or ten miles inland the rolling plain curved upwards with a
+steeper slope until it ran into a line of red basaltic rock which
+zigzagged from north to south, heaping itself up at one point into a
+fantastic knoll. On the summit of this there stood upon that March
+morning three Arab chieftains--the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas, Moussa
+Wad Aburhegel, who led the Berber dervishes, and Hamid Wad Hussein, who
+had come northward with his fighting men from the land of the Baggaras.
+They had all three just risen from their praying-carpets, and were
+peering out, with fierce, high-nosed faces thrust forwards, at the
+stretch of country revealed by the spreading dawn.
+
+The red rim of the sun was pushing itself now above the distant sea, and
+the whole coast-line stood out brilliantly yellow against the rich deep
+blue beyond. At one spot lay a huddle of white-walled houses, a mere
+splotch in the distance; while four tiny cock-boats, which lay beyond,
+marked the position of three of Her Majesty’s 10,000-ton troopers and
+the admiral’s flagship. But it was not upon the distant town, nor upon
+the great vessels, nor yet upon the sinister white litter which gleamed
+in the plain beneath them, that the Arab chieftains gazed. Two miles
+from where they stood, amid the sand-hills and the mimosa scrub, a great
+parallelogram had been marked by piled-up bushes. From the inside of
+this dozens of tiny blue smoke-reeks curled up into the still morning
+air; while there rose from it a confused deep murmur, the voices of men
+and the gruntings of camels blended into the same insect buzz.
+
+“The unbelievers have cooked their morning food,” said the Baggara
+chief, shading his eyes with his tawny, sinewy hand. “Truly their sleep
+has been scanty; for Hamid and a hundred of his men have fired upon them
+since the rising of the moon.”
+
+“So it was with these others,” answered the Sheik Kadra, pointing with
+his sheathed sword towards the old battle-field. “They also had a day
+of little water and a night of little rest, and the heart was gone out
+of them ere ever the sons of the Prophet had looked them in the eyes.
+This blade drank deep that day, and will again before the sun has
+travelled from the sea to the hill.”
+
+“And yet these are other men,” remarked the Berber dervish. “Well, I
+know that Allah has placed them in the clutch of our fingers, yet it may
+be that they with the big hats will stand firmer than the cursed men of
+Egypt.”
+
+“Pray Allah that it may be so,” cried the fierce Baggara, with a flash
+of his black eyes. “It was not to chase women that I brought 700 men
+from the river to the coast. See, my brother, already they are forming
+their array.”
+
+A fanfare of bugle-calls burst from the distant camp. At the same time
+the bank of bushes at one side had been thrown or trampled down, and the
+little army within began to move slowly out on to the plain. Once clear
+of the camp they halted, and the slant rays of the sun struck flashes
+from bayonet and from gun-barrel as the ranks closed up until the big
+pith helmets joined into a single long white ribbon. Two streaks of
+scarlet glowed on either side of the square, but elsewhere the fringe of
+fighting-men was of the dull yellow khaki tint which hardly shows
+against the desert sand. Inside their array was a dense mass of camels
+and mules bearing stores and ambulance needs. Outside a twinkling clump
+of cavalry was drawn up on each flank, and in front a thin, scattered
+line of mounted infantry was already slowly advancing over the
+bush-strewn plain, halting on every eminence, and peering warily round
+as men might who have to pick their steps among the bones of those who
+have preceded them.
+
+The three chieftains still lingered upon the knoll, looking down with
+hungry eyes and compressed lips at the dark steel-tipped patch.
+“They are slower to start than the men of Egypt,” the Sheik of the
+Hadendowas growled in his beard.
+
+“Slower also to go back, perchance, my brother,” murmured the dervish.
+
+“And yet they are not many--3,000 at the most.”
+
+“And we 10,000, with the Prophet’s grip upon our spear-hafts and his
+words upon our banner. See to their chieftain, how he rides upon the
+right and looks up at us with the glass that sees from afar! It may be
+that he sees this also.” The Arab shook his sword at the small clump of
+horsemen who had spurred out from the square.
+
+“Lo! he beckons,” cried the dervish; “and see those others at the
+corner, how they bend and heave. Ha! by the Prophet, I had thought it.”
+As he spoke, a little woolly puff of smoke spurted up at the corner of
+the square, and a 7 lb. shell burst with a hard metallic smack just over
+their heads. The splinters knocked chips from the red rocks around
+them.
+
+“Bismillah!” cried the Hadendowa; “if the gun can carry thus far, then
+ours can answer to it. Ride to the left, Moussa, and tell Ben Ali to
+cut the skin from the Egyptians if they cannot hit yonder mark.
+And you, Hamid, to the right, and see that 3,000 men lie close in the
+wady that we have chosen. Let the others beat the drum and show the
+banner of the Prophet, for by the black stone their spears will have
+drunk deep ere they look upon the stars again.”
+
+A long, straggling, boulder-strewn plateau lay on the summit of the red
+hills, sloping very precipitously to the plain, save at one point, where
+a winding gully curved downwards, its mouth choked with sand-mounds and
+olive-hued scrub. Along the edge of this position lay the Arab host--a
+motley crew of shock-headed desert clansmen, fierce predatory slave
+dealers of the interior, and wild dervishes from the Upper Nile, all
+blent together by their common fearlessness and fanaticism. Two races
+were there, as wide as the poles apart--the thin-lipped, straight-haired
+Arab and the thick-lipped, curly negro--yet the faith of Islam had bound
+them closer than a blood tie. Squatting among the rocks, or lying
+thickly in the shadow, they peered out at the slow-moving square beneath
+them, while women with water-skins and bags of dhoora fluttered from
+group to group, calling out to each other those fighting texts from the
+Koran which in the hour of battle are maddening as wine to the true
+believer. A score of banners waved over the ragged, valiant crew, and
+among them, upon desert horses and white Bishareen camels, were the
+Emirs and Sheiks who were to lead them against the infidels.
+
+As the Sheik Kadra sprang into his saddle and drew his sword there was a
+wild whoop and a clatter of waving spears, while the one-ended war-drums
+burst into a dull crash like a wave upon shingle. For a moment 10,000
+men were up on the rocks with brandished arms and leaping figures; the
+next they were under cover again, waiting sternly and silently for their
+chieftain’s orders. The square was less than half a mile from the ridge
+now, and shell after shell from the 7 lb. guns were pitching over it.
+A deep roar on the right, and then a second one showed that the Egyptian
+Krupps were in action. Sheik Kadra’s hawk eyes saw that the shells
+burst far beyond the mark, and he spurred his horse along to where a
+knot of mounted chiefs were gathered round the two guns, which were
+served by their captured crews.
+
+“How is this, Ben Ali?” he cried. “It was not thus that the dogs fired
+when it was their own brothers in faith at whom they aimed!”
+
+A chieftain reined his horse back, and thrust a blood-smeared sword into
+its sheath. Beside him two Egyptian artillerymen with their throats cut
+were sobbing out their lives upon the ground. “Who lays the gun this
+time?” asked the fierce chief, glaring at the frightened gunners.
+“Here, thou black-browed child of Shaitan, aim, and aim for thy life.”
+
+It may have been chance, or it may have been skill, but the third and
+fourth shells burst over the square. Sheik Kadra smiled grimly and
+galloped back to the left, where his spearmen were streaming down into
+the gully. As he joined them a deep growling rose from the plain
+beneath, like the snarling of a sullen wild beast, and a little knot of
+tribesmen fell into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead from
+a Gardner. Their comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down into
+the ravine. From all along the crest burst the hard, sharp crackle of
+Remington fire.
+
+The square had slowly advanced, rippling over the low sandhills, and
+halting every few minutes to re-arrange its formation. Now, having made
+sure that there was no force of the enemy in the scrub, it changed its
+direction, and began to take a line parallel to the Arab position.
+It was too steep to assail from the front, and if they moved far enough
+to the right the general hoped that he might turn it. On the top of
+those ruddy hills lay a baronetcy for him, and a few extra hundreds in
+his pension, and he meant having them both that day. The Remington fire
+was annoying, and so were those two Krupp guns; already there were more
+cacolets full than he cared to see. But on the whole he thought it
+better to hold his fire until he had more to aim at than a few hundred
+of fuzzy heads peeping over a razor-back ridge. He was a bulky,
+red-faced man, a fine whist-player, and a soldier who knew his work.
+His men believed in him, and he had good reason to believe in them, for
+he had excellent stuff under him that day. Being an ardent champion of
+the short-service system, he took particular care to work with veteran
+first battalions, and his little force was the compressed essence of an
+army corps.
+
+The left front of the square was formed by four companies of the Royal
+Wessex, and the right by four of the Royal Mallows. On either side the
+other halves of the same regiments marched in quarter column of
+companies. Behind them, on the right was a battalion of Guards, and on
+the left one of Marines, while the rear was closed in by a Rifle
+battalion. Two Royal Artillery 7 lb. screw-guns kept pace with the
+square, and a dozen white-bloused sailors, under their blue-coated,
+tight-waisted officers, trailed their Gardner in front, turning every
+now and then to spit up at the draggled banners which waved over the
+cragged ridge. Hussars and Lancers scouted in the scrub at each side,
+and within moved the clump of camels, with humorous eyes and
+supercilious lips, their comic faces a contrast to the blood-stained men
+who already lay huddled in the cacolets on either side.
+
+The square was now moving slowly on a line parallel with the rocks,
+stopping every few minutes to pick up wounded, and to allow the
+screw-guns and Gardner to make themselves felt. The men looked serious,
+for that spring on to the rocks of the Arab army had given them a vague
+glimpse of the number and ferocity of their foes; but their faces were
+set like stone, for they knew to a man that they must win or they must
+die--and die, too, in a particularly unlovely fashion. But most serious
+of all was the general, for he had seen that which brought a flush to
+his cheeks and a frown to his brow.
+
+“I say, Stephen,” said he to his galloper, “those Mallows seem a trifle
+jumpy. The right flank company bulged a bit when the niggers showed on
+the hill.”
+
+“Youngest troops in the square, sir,” murmured the aide, looking at them
+critically through his eye-glass.
+
+“Tell Colonel Flanagan to see to it, Stephen,” said the general; and the
+galloper sped upon his way. The colonel, a fine old Celtic warrior, was
+over at C Company in an instant.
+
+“How are the men, Captain Foley?”
+
+“Never better, sir,” answered the senior captain, in the spirit that
+makes a Madras officer look murder if you suggest recruiting his
+regiment from the Punjab.
+
+“Stiffen them up!” cried the colonel. As he rode away a colour-sergeant
+seemed to trip, and fell forward into a mimosa bush. He made no effort
+to rise, but lay in a heap among the thorns.
+
+“Sergeant O’Rooke’s gone, sorr,” cried a voice. “Never mind, lads,”
+said Captain Foley. “He’s died like a soldier, fighting for his Queen.”
+
+“Down with the Queen!” shouted a hoarse voice from the ranks.
+
+But the roar of the Gardner and the typewriter-like clicking of the
+hopper burst in at the tail of the words. Captain Foley heard them, and
+Subalterns Grice and Murphy heard them; but there are times when a deaf
+ear is a gift from the gods.
+
+“Steady, Mallows!” cried the captain, in a pause of the grunting
+machine-gun. “We have the honour of Ireland to guard this day.”
+
+“And well we know how to guard it, captin!” cried the same ominous
+voice; and there was a buzz from the length of the company.
+
+The captain and the two subs. came together behind the marching line.
+
+“They seem a bit out of hand,” murmured the captain.
+
+“Bedad,” said the Galway boy, “they mean to scoot like redshanks.”
+
+“They nearly broke when the blacks showed on the hill,” said Grice.
+
+“The first man that turns, my sword is through him,” cried Foley, loud
+enough to be heard by five files on either side of him. Then, in a
+lower voice, “It’s a bitter drop to swallow, but it’s my duty to report
+what you think to the chief, and have a company of Jollies put behind
+us.” He turned away with the safety of the square upon his mind, and
+before he had reached his goal the square had ceased to exist.
+
+In their march in front of what looked like a face of cliff, they had
+come opposite to the mouth of the gully, in which, screened by scrub and
+boulders, 3,000 chosen dervishes, under Hamid Wad Hussein, of the
+Baggaras, were crouching. Tat, tat, tat, went the rifles of three
+mounted infantrymen in front of the left shoulder of the square, and an
+instant later they were spurring it for their lives, crouching over the
+manes of their horses, and pelting over the sandhills with thirty or
+forty galloping chieftains at their heels. Rocks and scrub and mimosa
+swarmed suddenly into life. Rushing black figures came and went in the
+gaps of the bushes. A howl that drowned the shouts of the officers, a
+long quavering yell, burst from the ambuscade. Two rolling volleys from
+the Royal Wessex, one crash from the screw-gun firing shrapnel, and then
+before a second cartridge could be rammed in, a living, glistening black
+wave, tipped with steel, had rolled over the gun, the Royal Wessex had
+been dashed back among the camels, and 1,000 fanatics were hewing and
+hacking in the heart of what had been the square.
+
+The camels and mules in the centre, jammed more and more together as
+their leaders flinched from the rush of the tribesmen, shut out the view
+of the other three faces, who could only tell that the Arabs had got in
+by the yells upon Allah, which rose ever nearer and nearer amid the
+clouds of sand-dust, the struggling animals, and the dense mass of
+swaying, cursing men. Some of the Wessex fired back at the Arabs who
+had passed them, as excited Tommies will, and it is whispered among
+doctors that it was not always a Remington bullet which was cut from a
+wound that day. Some rallied in little knots, stabbing furiously with
+their bayonets at the rushing spearmen. Others turned at bay with their
+backs against the camels, and others round the general and his staff,
+who, revolver in hand, had flung themselves into the heart of it.
+But the whole square was sidling slowly away from the gorge, pushed back
+by the pressure at the shattered corner.
+
+The officers and men at the other faces were glancing nervously to the
+rear, uncertain what was going on, and unable to take help to their
+comrades without breaking the formation.
+
+“By Jove, they’ve got through the Wessex!” cried Grice of the Mallows.
+
+“The divils have hurrooshed us, Ted,” said his brother subaltern,
+cocking his revolver.
+
+The ranks were breaking, and crowding towards Private Conolly, all
+talking together as the officers peered back through the veil of dust.
+The sailors had run their Gardner out, and she was squirting death out
+of her five barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages.
+“Oh, this bloody gun!” shouted a voice. “She’s jammed again.”
+The fierce metallic grunting had ceased, and her crew were straining and
+hauling at the breech.
+
+“This damned vertical feed!” cried an officer.
+
+“The spanner, Wilson!--the spanner! Stand to your cutlasses, boys, or
+they’re into us.” His voice rose into a shriek as he ended, for a
+shovel-headed spear had been buried in his chest. A second wave of
+dervishes lapped over the hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and
+the right front of the line. The sailors were overborne in an instant,
+but the Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the yell of the
+Moslem with an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two hundred of them
+with a single point-blank volley. The howling, leaping crew swerved
+away to the right, and dashed on into the gap which had already been
+made for them.
+
+But C Company had drawn no trigger to stop that fiery rush. The men
+leaned moodily upon their Martinis. Some had even thrown them upon the
+ground. Conolly was talking fiercely to those about him. Captain
+Foley, thrusting his way through the press, rushed up to him with a
+revolver in his hand.
+
+“This is your doing, you villain!” he cried.
+
+“If you raise your pistol, Captin, your brains will be over your coat,”
+said a low voice at his side.
+
+He saw that several rifles were turned on him. The two subs. had
+pressed forward, and were by his side. “What is it, then?” he cried,
+looking round from one fierce mutinous face to another. “Are you
+Irishmen? Are you soldiers? What are you here for but to fight for
+your country?”
+
+“England is no country of ours,” cried several.
+
+“You are not fighting for England. You are fighting for Ireland, and
+for the Empire of which it as part.”
+
+“A black curse on the Impire!” shouted Private McQuire, throwing down
+his rifle. “’Twas the Impire that backed the man that druv me onto the
+roadside. May me hand stiffen before I draw trigger for it.
+
+“What’s the Impire to us, Captain Foley, and what’s the Widdy to us
+ayther?” cried a voice.
+
+“Let the constabulary foight for her.”
+
+“Ay, be God, they’d be better imployed than pullin’ a poor man’s thatch
+about his ears.”
+
+“Or shootin’ his brother, as they did mine.”
+
+“It was the Impire laid my groanin’ mother by the wayside. Her son will
+rot before he upholds it, and ye can put that in the charge-sheet in the
+next coort-martial.”
+
+In vain the three officers begged, menaced, persuaded. The square was
+still moving, ever moving, with the same bloody fight raging in its
+entrails. Even while they had been speaking they had been shuffling
+backwards, and the useless Gardner, with her slaughtered crew, was
+already a good hundred yards from them. And the pace was accelerating.
+The mass of men, tormented and writhing, was trying, by a common
+instinct, to reach some clearer ground where they could re-form. Three
+faces were still intact, but the fourth had been caved in, and badly
+mauled, without its comrades being able to help it. The Guards had met
+a fresh rush of the Hadendowas, and had blown back the tribesmen with a
+volley, and the cavalry had ridden over another stream of them, as they
+welled out of the gully. A litter of hamstrung horses, and haggled men
+behind them, showed that a spearman on his face among the bushes can
+show some sport to the man who charges him. But, in spite of all, the
+square was still reeling swiftly backwards, trying to shake itself clear
+of this torment which clung to its heart. Would it break or would it
+re-form? The lives of five regiments and the honour of the flag hung
+upon the answer.
+
+Some, at least, were breaking. The C Company of the Mallows had lost
+all military order, and was pushing back in spite of the haggard
+officers, who cursed, and shoved, and prayed in the vain attempt to hold
+them. The captain and the subs. were elbowed and jostled, while the men
+crowded towards Private Conolly for their orders. The confusion had not
+spread, for the other companies, in the dust and smoke and turmoil, had
+lost touch with their mutinous comrades. Captain Foley saw that even
+now there might be time to avert a disaster. “Think what you are doing,
+man,” he yelled, rushing towards the ringleader. “There are a thousand
+Irish in the square, and they are dead men if we break.”
+
+The words alone might have had little effect on the old moonlighter.
+It is possible that, in his scheming brain, he had already planned how
+he was to club his Irish together and lead them to the sea. But at that
+moment the Arabs broke through the screen of camels which had fended
+them off. There was a struggle, a screaming, a mule rolled over, a
+wounded man sprang up in a cacolet with a spear through him, and then
+through the narrow gap surged a stream of naked savages, mad with
+battle, drunk with slaughter, spotted and splashed with blood--blood
+dripping from their spears, their arms, their faces. Their yells, their
+bounds, their crouching, darting figures, the horrid energy of their
+spear-thrusts, made them look like a blast of fiends from the pit. And
+were these the Allies of Ireland? Were these the men who were to strike
+for her against her enemies? Conolly’s soul rose up in loathing at the
+thought.
+
+He was a man of firm purpose, and yet at the first sight of those
+howling fiends that purpose faltered, and at the second it was blown to
+the winds. He saw a huge coal-black negro seize a shrieking
+camel-driver and saw at his throat with a knife. He saw a shock-headed
+tribesman plunge his great spear through the back of their own little
+bugler from Mill-street. He saw a dozen deeds of blood--the murder of
+the wounded, the hacking of the unarmed--and caught, too, in a glance,
+the good wholesome faces of the faced-about rear rank of the Marines.
+The Mallows, too, had faced about, and in an instant Conolly had thrown
+himself into the heart of C Company, striving with the officers to form
+the men up with their comrades.
+
+But the mischief had gone too far. The rank and file had no heart in
+their work. They had broken before, and this last rush of murderous
+savages was a hard thing for broken men to stand against. They flinched
+from the furious faces and dripping forearms. Why should they throw
+away their lives for a flag for which they cared nothing? Why should
+their leader urge them to break, and now shriek to them to re-form?
+They would not re-form. They wanted to get to the sea and to safety.
+He flung himself among them with outstretched arms, with words of
+reason, with shouts, with gaspings. It was useless; the tide was beyond
+his control. They were shredding out into the desert with their faces
+set for the coast.
+
+“Bhoys, will ye stand for this?” screamed a voice. It was so ringing,
+so strenuous, that the breaking Mallows glanced backwards. They were
+held by what they saw. Private Conolly had planted his rifle-stock
+downwards in a mimosa bush. From the fixed bayonet there fluttered a
+little green flag with the crownless harp. God knows for what black
+mutiny, for what signal of revolt, that flag had been treasured up
+within the corporal’s tunic! Now its green wisp stood amid the rush,
+while three proud regimental colours were reeling slowly backwards.
+
+“What for the flag?” yelled the private.
+
+“My heart’s blood for it! and mine! and mine!” cried a score of voices.
+“God bless it! The flag, boys--the flag!”
+
+C Company were rallying upon it. The stragglers clutched at each
+other, and pointed. “Here, McQuire, Flynn, O’Hara,” ran the shoutings.
+“Close on the flag! Back to the flag!” The three standards reeled
+backwards, and the seething square strove for a clearer space where they
+could form their shattered ranks; but C Company, grim and
+powder-stained, choked with enemies and falling fast, still closed in on
+the little rebel ensign that flapped from the mimosa bush.
+
+It was a good half-hour before the square, having disentangled itself
+from its difficulties and dressed its ranks, began to slowly move
+forwards over the ground, across which in its labour and anguish it had
+been driven. The long trail of Wessex men and Arabs showed but too
+clearly the path they had come.
+
+“How many got into us, Stephen?” asked the general, tapping his
+snuff-box.
+
+“I should put them down at a thousand or twelve hundred, sir.”
+
+“I did not see any get out again. What the devil were the Wessex
+thinking about? The Guards stood well, though; so did the Mallows.”
+
+“Colonel Flanagan reports that his front flank company was cut off,
+sir.”
+
+“Why, that’s the company that was out of hand when we advanced!”
+
+“Colonel Flanagan reports, sir, that the company took the whole brunt of
+the attack, and gave the square time to re-form.”
+
+“Tell the Hussars to ride forward, Stephen,” said the general, “and try
+if they can see anything of them. There’s no firing, and I fear that
+the Mallows will want to do some recruiting. Let the square take ground
+by the right, and then advance!”
+
+But the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas saw from his knoll that the men
+with the big hats had rallied, and that they were coming back in the
+quiet business fashion of men whose work was before them. He took
+counsel with Moussa the Dervish and Hussein the Baggara, and a woestruck
+man was he when he learned that the third of his men were safe in the
+Moslem Paradise. So, having still some signs of victory to show, he
+gave the word, and the desert warriors flitted off unseen and unheard,
+even as they had come.
+
+A red rock plateau, a few hundred spears and Remingtons, and a plain
+which for the second time was strewn with slaughtered men, was all that
+his day’s fighting gave to the English general.
+
+It was a squadron of Hussars which came first to the spot where the
+rebel flag had waved. A dense litter of Arab dead marked the place.
+Within, the flag waved no longer, but the rifle stood in the mimosa
+bush, and round it, with their wounds in front, lay the Fenian private
+and the silent ranks of the Irishry. Sentiment is not an English
+failing, but the Hussar captain raised his hilt in a salute as he rode
+past the blood-soaked ring.
+
+The British general sent home dispatches to his Government, and so did
+the chief of the Hadendowas, though the style and manner differed
+somewhat in each.
+
+
+
+The Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowa people to Mohammed Ahmed, the chosen of
+Allah, homage and greeting, (began the latter). Know by this that on
+the fourth day of this moon we gave battle to the Kaffirs who call
+themselves Inglees, having with us the Chief Hussein with ten thousand
+of the faithful. By the blessing of Allah we have broken them, and
+chased them for a mile, though indeed these infidels are different from
+the dogs of Egypt, and have slain very many of our men. Yet we hope to
+smite them again ere the new moon be come, to which end I trust that
+thou wilt send us a thousand Dervishes from Omdurman. In token of our
+victory I send you by this messenger a flag which we have taken. By the
+colour it might well seem to have belonged to those of the true faith,
+but the Kaffirs gave their blood freely to save it, and so we think
+that, though small, it is very dear to them.
+
+
+
+
+CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+
+
+                             I
+
+HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT’S CAME HOME.
+
+
+When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end
+by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been
+fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some
+took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce,
+others were absorbed into the fishing fleets, and a few of the more
+reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at
+the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the
+whole human race.
+
+With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they scoured the seas,
+disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in
+for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants
+by their lavishness, and horrified them by their brutalities.
+
+On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above
+all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant
+menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations
+by the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer, and
+dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.
+
+They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that
+discipline and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers,
+both formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an
+account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken
+whim of the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with
+longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell
+into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after
+serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his
+cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and
+salt in front of him. It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his
+calling in the Caribbean Gulf.
+
+Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship _Morning Star_, and yet
+he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the
+falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the
+guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt’s was his final port of
+call, and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old
+England. He had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he
+had left Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red
+pepper, he had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet
+edge of the tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands,
+touching here and there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy
+and outrage.
+
+Captain Sharkey, of the twenty-gun pirate barque, _Happy Delivery_, had
+passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and with
+murdered men. Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim pleasantries
+and of his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main his
+coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with
+death and many things which are worse than death. So nervous was
+Captain Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship, and her full and
+valuable lading, that he struck out to the west as far as Bird’s Island
+to be out of the usual track of commerce. And yet even in those
+solitary waters he had been unable to shake off sinister traces of
+Captain Sharkey.
+
+One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
+ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as
+they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and
+wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon
+transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship.
+He was from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole
+survivor of a schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.
+
+For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath
+a tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late
+captain to be thrown into the boat, “as provisions for the voyage,” but
+the seaman had at once committed it to the deep, lest the temptation
+should be more than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge frame
+until, at the last moment, the _Morning Star_ had found him in that
+madness which is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for
+Captain Scarrow, for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this
+big New Englander was a prize worth having. He vowed that he was the
+only man whom Captain Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.
+
+Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the
+pirate was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the
+seaman’s mind as he watched the agent’s boat shooting out from the
+Custom-house quay.
+
+“I’ll lay you a wager, Morgan,” said he to the first mate, “that the
+agent will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his
+lips.”
+
+“Well, captain, I’ll have you a silver dollar, and chance it,” said the
+rough old Bristol man beside him.
+
+The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
+sprang up the ladder. “Welcome, Captain Scarrow!” he cried. “Have you
+heard about Sharkey?”
+
+The captain grinned at the mate.
+
+“What devilry has he been up to now?” he asked.
+
+“Devilry! You’ve not heard, then? Why, we’ve got him safe under lock
+and key at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be
+hanged to-morrow morning.”
+
+Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken
+up by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through
+the break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the
+front of them with a radiant face turned up to Heaven, for he came of
+the Puritan stock.
+
+“Sharkey to be hanged!” he cried. “You don’t know, Master Agent, if
+they lack a hangman, do you?”
+
+“Stand back!” cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was
+even stronger than his interest at the news. “I’ll pay that dollar,
+Captain Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet.
+How came the villain to be taken?”
+
+“Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and
+they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship.
+So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
+Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
+brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried,
+but our good little Governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it.
+‘He’s my meat,’ said he, ‘and I claim the cooking of it.’ If you can
+stay till to-morrow morning at ten, you’ll see the joint swinging.”
+
+“I wish I could,” said the captain, wistfully, “but I am sadly behind
+time now. I should start with the evening tide.”
+
+“That you can’t do,” said the agent with decision. “The Governor is
+going back with you.”
+
+“The Governor!”
+
+“Yes. He’s had a dispatch from Government to return without delay.
+The fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles
+has been waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains.”
+
+“Well, well!” cried the captain in some perplexity, “I’m a plain seaman,
+and I don’t know much of governors and baronets and their ways. I don’t
+remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it’s in King
+George’s service, and he asks a cast in the _Morning Star_ as far as
+London, I’ll do what I can for him. There’s my own cabin he can have
+and welcome. As to the cooking, it’s lobscouse and salmagundy six days
+in the week; but he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks
+our galley too rough for his taste.”
+
+“You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow,” said the agent.
+“Sir Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague,
+and it is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage.
+Dr. Larousse said that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not
+put fresh life into him. He has a great spirit in him, though, and you
+must not blame him if he is somewhat short in his speech.”
+
+“He may say what he likes, and do what he likes, so long as he does not
+come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship,” said the captain.
+“He is Governor of St. Kitt’s, but I am Governor of the _Morning Star_,
+and, by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to
+my employer, just as he does to King George.”
+
+“He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order
+before he leaves.”
+
+“The early morning tide, then.”
+
+“Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night; and he will follow
+them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt’s
+without seeing Sharkey do the rogue’s hornpipe. His own orders were
+instant, so it may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr.
+Larousse may attend him upon the journey.”
+
+Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations
+which they could for their illustrious passenger. The largest cabin was
+turned out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which
+barrels of fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary
+the plain food of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor’s
+baggage began to arrive--great iron-bound ant-proof trunks, and official
+tin packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested
+the cocked hat or the sword within. And then there came a note, with a
+heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made
+his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in
+the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.
+
+He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun
+to deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some
+difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard that the Governor was
+an eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came
+limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick
+bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails
+like a poodle’s coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large
+green glasses which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from
+it. A fierce beak of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in
+front of him. His ague had caused him to swathe his throat and chin
+with a broad linen cravat, and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown
+secured by a cord round the waist. As he advanced he carried his
+masterful nose high in the air, but his head turned slowly from side to
+side in the helpless manner of the purblind, and he called in a high,
+querulous voice for the captain.
+
+“You have my things?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, Sir Charles.”
+
+“Have you wine aboard?”
+
+“I have ordered five cases, sir.”
+
+“And tobacco?”
+
+“There is a keg of Trinidad.”
+
+“You play a hand at picquet?”
+
+“Passably well, sir.”
+
+“Then anchor up, and to sea!”
+
+There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly
+through the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands.
+The decrepit Governor still limped the deck, with one guiding hand upon
+the quarter rail.
+
+“You are on Government service now, captain,” said he. “They are
+counting the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you. Have you
+all that she will carry?”
+
+“Every inch, Sir Charles.”
+
+“Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, Captain Scarrow,
+that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your
+voyage.”
+
+“I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency’s society,” said the captain.
+“But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted.”
+
+“Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of
+Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out.”
+
+“I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague.”
+
+“Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much.”
+
+“We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon.”
+
+“Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he has a snug business
+amongst the merchants. But hark!” He raised his ring-covered band in
+the air. From far astern there came the low, deep thunder of cannon.
+
+“It is from the island!” cried the captain in astonishment. “Can it be
+a signal for us to put back?”
+
+The Governor laughed. “You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to
+be hanged this morning. I ordered the batteries to salute when the
+rascal was kicking his last, so that I might know of it out at sea.
+There’s an end of Sharkey!”
+
+“There’s an end of Sharkey!” cried the captain; and the crew took up the
+cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at
+the low, purple line of the vanishing land.
+
+It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the
+invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was
+generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial
+and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge
+and so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of
+the deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting
+his conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and
+Governor smoked their long pipes, and drank their claret as three good
+comrades should.
+
+“And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?” asked the captain.
+
+“He is a man of some presence,” said the Governor.
+
+“I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil,” remarked
+the mate.
+
+“Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions,” said the Governor.
+
+“I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his
+eyes,” said Captain Scarrow. “They were of the lightest filmy blue,
+with red-rimmed lids. Was that not so, Sir Charles?”
+
+“Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others!
+But I remember now that the adjutant-general said that he had such an
+eye as you describe, and added that the jury was so foolish as to be
+visibly discomposed when it was turned upon them. It is well for them
+that he is dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and
+if he had laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with
+straw and hung him for a figure-head.”
+
+The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a
+high, neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so
+heartily, for they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who
+sailed the western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be
+their own. Another bottle was broached to drink to a pleasant voyage,
+and the Governor would drink just one other on the top of it, so that
+the seamen were glad at last to stagger off--the one to his watch, and
+the other to his bunk. But when, after his four hours’ spell, the mate
+came down again, he was amazed to see the Governor, in his Ramillies
+wig, his glasses, and his powdering-gown, still seated sedately at the
+lonely table with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.
+
+“I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt’s when he was sick,” said
+he, “and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he
+is well.”
+
+The voyage of the _Morning Star_ was a successful one, and in about
+three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel. From the first
+day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before
+they were halfway across the Atlantic, he was, save only for his eyes,
+as well as any man upon the ship. Those who uphold the nourishing
+qualities of wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night
+passed that he did not repeat the performance of his first one. And yet
+he would be out upon deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the
+best of them, peering about with his weak eyes, and asking questions
+about the sails and the rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of
+the sea. And he made up for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining
+leave from the captain that the New England seaman--he who had been cast
+away in the boat--should lead him about, and, above all, that he should
+sit beside him when he played cards and count the number of the pips,
+for unaided he could not tell the king from the knave.
+
+It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service,
+since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey and the other was his
+avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to
+lend his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all
+respect behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed
+forefinger upon the card which he should play. Between them there was
+little in the pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first
+mate, by the time they sighted the Lizard.
+
+And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the
+high temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark. At a sign of
+opposition or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his
+cravat, his masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent
+angle, and his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulders.
+He cracked it once over the head of the carpenter when the man had
+accidentally jostled him upon the deck. Once, too, when there was some
+grumbling and talk of a mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was
+of opinion that they should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they
+should march forward and set upon them until they had trounced the
+devilment out of them. “Give me a knife and a bucket!” he cried with an
+oath, and could hardly be withheld from setting forth alone to deal with
+the spokesman of the seamen.
+
+Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only
+answerable to himself at St. Kitt’s, killing became murder upon the high
+seas. In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop
+of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met
+a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his
+vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a
+stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had
+never known a voyage pass so pleasantly.
+
+And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island,
+they had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As
+evening fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from
+Winchelsea, with the long, dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front
+of her. Next morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland,
+and Sir Charles might meet the King’s ministers at Westminster before
+the evening. The boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were
+met for a last turn of cards in the cabin, the faithful American still
+serving as eyes to the Governor. There was a good stake upon the table,
+for the sailors had tried on this last night to win their losses back
+from their passenger. Suddenly he threw his cards down, and swept all
+the money into the pocket of his long-flapped silken waistcoat.
+
+“The game’s mine!” said he.
+
+“Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!” cried Captain Scarrow; “you have not
+played out the hand, and we are not the losers.”
+
+“Sink you for a liar!” said the Governor. “I tell you I _have_ played
+out the hand, and that you _are_ a loser.” He whipped off his wig and
+his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a pair
+of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.
+
+“Good God!” cried the mate. “It’s Sharkey!”
+
+The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway
+had put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in
+each of his hands. The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the
+scattered cards in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing
+laugh. “Captain Sharkey is the name, gentlemen,” said he, “and this is
+Roaring Ned Galloway, the quartermaster of the _Happy Delivery_.
+We made it hot, and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and
+him in an oarless boat. You dogs--you poor, fond, water-hearted
+dogs--we hold you at the end of our pistols!”
+
+“You may shoot, or you may not!” cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon
+the breast of his frieze jacket. “If it’s my last breath, Sharkey, I
+tell you that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and
+hell-fire in store for you!”
+
+“There’s a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he’s going to
+make a very pretty death of it!” cried Sharkey. “There’s no one aft
+save the man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you’ll need
+it soon. Is the dinghy astern, Ned?”
+
+“Ay, ay, captain!”
+
+“And the other boats scuttled?”
+
+“I bored them all in three places.”
+
+“Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. You look as if you
+hadn’t quite got your bearings yet. Is there anything you’d like to ask
+me?”
+
+“I believe you’re the devil himself!” cried the captain. “Where is the
+Governor of St. Kitt’s?”
+
+“When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut.
+When I broke prison I learnt from my friends--for Captain Sharkey has
+those who love him in every port--that the Governor was starting for
+Europe under a master who had never seen him. I climbed his verandah,
+and I paid him the little debt that I owed him. Then I came aboard you
+with such of his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide
+these tell-tale eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a governor
+should. Now, Ned, you can get to work upon them.”
+
+“Help! Help! Watch ahoy!” yelled the mate; but the butt of the pirate’s
+pistol crashed down on his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox.
+Scarrow rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his
+mouth, and threw his other arm round his waist.
+
+“No use, Master Scarrow,” said Sharkey. “Let us see you go down on your
+knees and beg for your life.”
+
+“I’ll see you--” cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.
+
+“Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?”
+
+“No; not if you twist it off.”
+
+“Put an inch of your knife into him.”
+
+“You may put six inches, and then I won’t.”
+
+“Sink me, but I like his spirit!” cried Sharkey. “Put your knife in
+your pocket, Ned. You’ve saved your skin, Scarrow, and it’s a pity so
+stout a man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can
+pick up a living. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since
+you have lain at my mercy and lived to tell the story. Tie him up,
+Ned.”
+
+“To the stove, captain?”
+
+“Tut, tut! there’s a fire in the stove. None of your rover tricks, Ned
+Galloway, unless they are called for, or I’ll let you know which of us
+two is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the table.”
+
+“Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!” said the quartermaster.
+“You surely do not mean to let him go?”
+
+“If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still
+for me to command and for you to obey. Sink you for a villain, do you
+dare to question my orders?”
+
+“Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!” said the quartermaster,
+and, lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table. With the
+quick dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spread-eagled hands and feet
+with a rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with
+the long cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of
+St. Kitt’s.
+
+“Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you,” said the pirate.
+“If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had
+your cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand
+with the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small craft about, and
+we shall get one of them. When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a
+smack, when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can
+get a barque, and when he has a barque he’ll soon have a full-rigged
+ship of his own--so make haste into London town, or I may be coming
+back, after all, for the _Morning Star_.”
+
+Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin.
+Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the
+companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the
+stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the
+falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore
+and dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles,
+he rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way
+through the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.
+
+“Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!” he screamed. “Cutlasses and
+pistols! Clear away the long-boat! Clear away the gig! Sharkey, the
+pirate, is in yonder dinghy. Whistle up the larboard watch, bo’sun,
+and tumble into the boats, all hands.”
+
+Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant
+the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once
+more.
+
+“The boats are scuttled!” they cried. “They are leaking like a sieve.”
+
+The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten and outwitted at
+every point. Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor
+the promise of it. The sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away
+lay a fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net. Close to
+them was the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the shining swell.
+
+“They are dead men!” cried the captain. “A shout all together, boys,
+to warn them of their danger.” But it was too late. At that very
+moment the dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat. There were
+two rapid pistol-shots, a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed
+by silence. The clustering fishermen had disappeared. And then,
+suddenly, as the first puffs of a land-breeze came out from the Sussex
+shore, the boom swung out, the mainsail filled, and the little craft
+crept out with her nose to the Atlantic.
+
+
+                             II
+
+THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY WITH STEPHEN CRADDOCK
+
+
+Careening was a very necessary operation for the old pirate. On his
+superior speed he depended both for overhauling the trader and escaping
+the man-of-war. But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities
+unless he periodically--once a year, at the least--cleared his vessel’s
+bottom from the long, trailing plants and crusting barnacles which
+gather so rapidly in the tropical seas. For this purpose he lightened
+his vessel, thrust her into some narrow inlet where she would be left
+high and dry at low water, fastened blocks and tackles to her masts to
+pull her over on to her bilge, and then scraped her thoroughly from
+rudder-post to cut-water.
+
+During the weeks which were thus occupied the ship was, of course,
+defenceless; but, on the other hand, she was unapproachable by anything
+heavier than an empty hull, and the place for careening was chosen with
+an eye to secrecy, so that there was no great danger. So secure did the
+captains feel, that it was not uncommon for them, at such times, to
+leave their ships under a sufficient guard, and to start off in the
+long-boat, either upon a sporting expedition or, more frequently, upon a
+visit to some outlying town, where they burned the heads of the women by
+their swaggering gallantry, or broached pipes of wine in the market
+square, with a threat to pistol all who would not drink with them.
+
+Sometimes they would even appear in cities of the size of Charleston,
+and walk the streets with their clattering side-arms--an open scandal to
+the whole law-abiding colony. Such visits were not always paid with
+impunity. It was one of them, for example, which provoked Lieutenant
+Maynard to hack off Blackbeard’s head, and to spear it upon the end of
+his bowsprit. But, as a rule, the pirate ruffled and bullied and
+drabbed without let or hindrance, until it was time for him to go back
+to his ship once more.
+
+There was one pirate, however, who never crossed even the skirts of
+civilisation, and that was the sinister Sharkey, of the barque _Happy
+Delivery_. It may have been from his morose and solitary temper, or, as
+is more probable, that he knew that his name upon the coast was such
+that outraged humanity would, against all odds, have thrown themselves
+upon him, but never once did he show his face in a settlement.
+
+When his ship was laid up he would leave her under the charge of Ned
+Galloway--her New England quartermaster--and would take long voyages in
+his boat, sometimes, it was said, for the purpose of burying his share
+of the plunder, and sometimes to shoot the wild oxen of Hispaniola,
+which, when dressed and barbecued, provided provisions for his next
+voyage. In the latter case the barque would come round to some
+pre-arranged spot to pick him up, and take on board what he had shot.
+
+There had always been a hope in the islands that Sharkey might be taken
+on one of these occasions; and at last there came news to Kingston which
+seemed to justify an attempt upon him. It was brought by an elderly
+logwood-cutter who had fallen into the pirate’s hands, and in some freak
+of drunken benevolence had been allowed to get away with nothing worse
+than a slit nose and a drubbing. His account was recent and definite.
+The _Happy Delivery_ was careening at Torbec on the south-west of
+Hispaniola. Sharkey, with four men, was buccaneering on the outlying
+island of La Vache. The blood of a hundred murdered crews was calling
+out for vengeance, and now at last it seemed as if it might not call in
+vain.
+
+Sir Edward Compton, the high-nosed, red-faced Governor, sitting in
+solemn conclave with the commandant and the head of the council, was
+sorely puzzled in his mind as to how he should use this chance.
+There was no man-of-war nearer than Jamestown, and she was a clumsy old
+fly-boat, which could neither overhaul the pirate on the seas, nor reach
+her in a shallow inlet. There were forts and artillerymen both at
+Kingston and Port Royal, but no soldiers available for an expedition.
+
+A private venture might be fitted out--and there were many who had a
+blood-feud with Sharkey--but what could a private venture do?
+The pirates were numerous and desperate. As to taking Sharkey and his
+four companions, that, of course, would be easy if they could get at
+them; but how were they to get at them on a large well-wooded island
+like La Vache, full of wild hills and impenetrable jungles? A reward
+was offered to whoever could find a solution, and that brought a man to
+the front who had a singular plan, and was himself prepared to carry it
+out.
+
+Stephen Craddock had been that most formidable person, the Puritan gone
+wrong. Sprung from a decent Salem family, his ill-doing seemed to be a
+recoil from the austerity of their religion, and he brought to vice all
+the physical strength and energy with which the virtues of his ancestors
+had endowed him. He was ingenious, fearless, and exceedingly tenacious
+of purpose, so that when he was still young, his name became notorious
+upon the American coast. He was the same Craddock who was tried for his
+life in Virginia for the slaying of the Seminole Chief, and, though he
+escaped, it was well known that he had corrupted the witnesses and
+bribed the judge.
+
+Afterwards, as a slaver, and even, as it was hinted, as a pirate, he had
+left an evil name behind him in the Bight of Benin. Finally he had
+returned to Jamaica with a considerable fortune, and had settled down to
+a life of sombre dissipation. This was the man, gaunt, austere, and
+dangerous, who now waited upon the Governor with a plan for the
+extirpation of Sharkey. Sir Edward received him with little enthusiasm,
+for in spite of some rumours of conversion and reformation, he had
+always regarded him as an infected sheep who might taint the whole of
+his little flock. Craddock saw the Governor’s mistrust under his thin
+veil of formal and restrained courtesy.
+
+“You’ve no call to fear me, sir,” said he; “I’m a changed man from what
+you’ve known. I’ve seen the light again of late, after losing sight of
+it for many a black year. It was through the ministration of the Rev.
+John Simons, of our own people. Sir, if your spirit should be in need
+of quickening, you would find a very sweet savour in his discourse.”
+
+The Governor cocked his episcopalian nose at him.
+
+“You came here to speak of Sharkey, Master Craddock,” said he.
+
+“The man Sharkey is a vessel of wrath,” said Craddock. “His wicked
+horn has been exalted over long, and it is borne in upon me that if I
+can cut him off and utterly destroy him, it will be a goodly deed, and
+one which may atone for many backslidings in the past. A plan has been
+given to me whereby I may encompass his destruction.”
+
+The Governor was keenly interested, for there was a grim and practical
+air about the man’s freckled face which showed that he was in earnest.
+After all, he was a seaman and a fighter, and, if it were true that he
+was eager to atone for his past, no better man could be chosen for the
+business.
+
+“This will be a dangerous task, Master Craddock,” said he.
+
+“If I meet my death at it, it may be that it will cleanse the memory of
+an ill-spent life. I have much to atone for.”
+
+The Governor did not see his way to contradict him.
+
+“What was your plan?” he asked.
+
+“You have heard that Sharkey’s barque, the _Happy Delivery_, came from
+this very port of Kingston?”
+
+“It belonged to Mr. Codrington, and it was taken by Sharkey, who
+scuttled his own sloop and moved into her because she was faster,” said
+Sir Edward.
+
+“Yes; but it may be that you have lever heard that Mr. Codrington has a
+sister ship, the _White Rose_, which lies even now in the harbour, and
+which is so like the pirate, that, if it were not for a white paint
+line, none could tell them apart.”
+
+“Ah! and what of that?” asked the Governor keenly, with the air of one
+who is just on the edge of an idea.
+
+“By the help of it this man shall be delivered into our hands.”
+
+“And how?”
+
+“I will paint out the streak upon the _White Rose_, and make it in all
+things like the _Happy Delivery_. Then I will set sail for the Island
+of La Vache, where this man is slaying the wild oxen. When he sees me
+he will surely mistake me for his own vessel which he is awaiting, and
+he will come on board to his own undoing.”
+
+It was a simple plan, and yet it seemed to the Governor that it might be
+effective. Without hesitation he gave Craddock permission to carry it
+out, and to take any steps he liked in order to further the object which
+he had in view. Sir Edward was not very sanguine, for many attempts had
+been made upon Sharkey, and their results had shown that he was as
+cunning as he was ruthless. But this gaunt Puritan with the evil record
+was cunning and ruthless also. The contest of wits between two such men
+as Sharkey and Craddock appealed to the Governor’s acute sense of sport,
+and though he was inwardly convinced that the chances were against him,
+he backed his man with the same loyalty which he would have shown to his
+horse or his cock.
+
+Haste was, above all things, necessary, for upon any day the careening
+might be finished, and the pirates out at sea once more. But there was
+not very much to do, and there were many willing hands to do it, so the
+second day saw the _White Rose_ beating out for the open sea. There
+were many seamen in the port who knew the lines and rig of the pirate
+barque, and not one of them could see the slightest difference in this
+counterfeit. Her white side line had been painted out, her masts and
+yards were smoked, to give them the dingy appearance of the
+weather-beaten rover, and a large diamond-shaped patch was let into her
+foretopsail. Her crew were volunteers, many of them being men who had
+sailed with Stephen Craddock before--the mate, Joshua Hird, an old
+slaver, had been his accomplice in many voyages, and came now at the
+bidding of his chief.
+
+The avenging barque sped across the Caribbean Sea, and, at the sight of
+that patched topsail, the little craft which they met flew left and
+right like frightened trout in a pool. On the fourth evening Point
+Abacou bore five miles to the north and east of them. On the fifth they
+were at anchor in the Bay of Tortoises at the Island of La Vache, where
+Sharkey and his four men had been hunting. It was a well-wooded place,
+with the palms and underwood growing down to the thin crescent of silver
+sand which skirted the shore. They had hoisted the black flag and the
+red pennant, but no answer came from the shore. Craddock strained his
+eyes, hoping every instant to see a boat shoot out to them with Sharkey
+seated in the sheets. But the night passed away, and a day and yet
+another night, without any sign of the men whom they were endeavouring
+to trap. It looked as if they were already gone.
+
+On the second morning Craddock went ashore in search of some proof
+whether Sharkey and his men were still upon the island. What he found
+reassured him greatly. Close to the shore was a boucan of green wood,
+such as was used for preserving the meat, and a great store of barbecued
+strips of ox-flesh was hung upon lines all round it. The pirate ship
+had not taken off her provisions, and therefore the hunters were still
+upon the island.
+
+Why had they not shown themselves? Was it that they had detected that
+this was not their own ship? Or was it that they were hunting in the
+interior of the island, and were not on the look-out for a ship yet?
+Craddock was still hesitating between the two alternatives, when a Carib
+Indian came down with information. The pirates were in the island, he
+said, and their camp was a day’s march from the Sea. They had stolen
+his wife, and the marks of their stripes were still pink upon his brown
+back. Their enemies were his friends, and he would lead them to where
+they lay.
+
+Craddock could not have asked for anything better; so early next
+morning, with a small party armed to the teeth, he set off, under the
+guidance of the Carib. All day they struggled through brushwood and
+clambered over rocks, pushing their way further and further into the
+desolate heart of the island. Here and there they found traces of the
+hunters, the bones of a slain ox, or the marks of feet in a morass, and
+once, towards evening, it seemed to some of them that they heard the
+distant rattle of guns.
+
+That night they spent under the trees, and pushed on again with the
+earliest light. About noon they came to the huts of bark, which, the
+Carib told them, were the camp of the hunters, but they were silent and
+deserted. No doubt their occupants were away at the hunt and would
+return in the evening, so Craddock and his men lay in ambush in the
+brushwood around them. But no one came, and another night was spent in
+the forest. Nothing more could be done, and it seemed to Craddock that
+after the two days’ absence it was time that he returned to his ship
+once more.
+
+The return journey was less difficult, as they had already blazed a path
+for themselves. Before evening they found themselves once more at the
+Bay of Palms, and saw their ship riding at anchor where they had left
+her. Their boat and oars had been hauled up among the bushes, so they
+launched it and pulled out to the barque.
+
+“No luck, then!” cried Joshua Hird, the mate, looking down with a pale
+face from the poop.
+
+“His camp was empty, but he may come down to us yet,” said Craddock,
+with his hand on the ladder.
+
+Somebody upon deck began to laugh. “I think,” said the mate, “that
+these men had better stay in the boat.”
+
+“Why so?”
+
+“If you will come aboard, sir, you will understand it.” He spoke in a
+curious, hesitating fashion.
+
+The blood flushed to Craddock’s gaunt face. “How is this, Master Hird?”
+he cried, springing up the side. “What mean you by giving orders to my
+boat’s crew?”
+
+But as he passed over the bulwarks, with one foot upon the deck and one
+knee upon the rail, a tow-bearded man, whom he had never before observed
+aboard his vessel, grabbed suddenly at his pistol. Craddock clutched at
+the fellow’s wrist, but at the same instant his mate snatched the
+cutlass from his side.
+
+“What roguery is this?” shouted Craddock, looking furiously around him.
+But the crew stood in knots about the deck, laughing and whispering
+amongst themselves without showing any desire to go to his assistance.
+Even in that hurried glance Craddock noticed that they were dressed in
+the most singular manner, with long riding-coats, full-skirted velvet
+gowns and coloured ribands at their knees, more like men of fashion than
+seamen.
+
+As he looked at their grotesque figures he struck his brow with his
+clenched fist to be sure that he was awake. The deck seemed to be much
+dirtier than when he had left it, and there were strange, sun-blackened
+faces turned upon him from every side. Not one of them did he know save
+only Joshua Hird. Had the ship been captured in his absence? Were
+these Sharkey’s men who were around him? At the thought he broke
+furiously away and tried to climb over to his boat, but a dozen hands
+were on him in an instant, and he was pushed aft through the open door
+of his own cabin.
+
+And it was all different to the cabin which he had left. The floor was
+different, the ceiling was different, the furniture was different.
+His had been plain and austere. This was sumptuous and yet dirty, hung
+with rare velvet curtains splashed with wine-stains, and panelled with
+costly woods which were pocked with pistol-marks.
+
+On the table was a great chart of the Caribbean Sea, and beside it, with
+compasses in his hand, sat a clean-shaven, pale-faced man with a fur cap
+and a claret-coloured coat of damask. Craddock turned white under his
+freckles as he looked upon the long, thin high-nostrilled nose and the
+red-rimmed eyes which were turned upon him with the fixed, humorous gaze
+of the master player who has left his opponent without a move.
+“Sharkey!” cried Craddock.
+
+Sharkey’s thin lips opened, and he broke into his high, sniggering
+laugh.
+
+“You fool!” he cried, and, leaning over, he stabbed Craddock’s shoulder
+again and again with his compasses. “You poor, dull-witted fool, would
+you match yourself against me?”
+
+It was not the pain of the wounds, but it was the contempt in Sharkey’s
+voice which turned Craddock into a savage madman. He flew at the
+pirate, roaring with rage, striking, kicking, writhing, foaming.
+It took six men to drag him down on to the floor amidst the splintered
+remains of the table--and not one of the six who did not bear the
+prisoner’s mark upon him. But Sharkey still surveyed him with the same
+contemptuous eye. From outside there came the crash of breaking wood
+and the clamour of startled voices.
+
+“What is that?” asked Sharkey.
+
+“They have stove the boat with cold shot, and the men are in the water.”
+
+“Let them stay there,” said the pirate. “Now, Craddock, you know where
+you are. You are aboard my ship, the _Happy Delivery_, and you lie at
+my mercy. I knew you for a stout seaman, you rogue, before you took to
+this long-shore canting. Your hands then were no cleaner than my own.
+Will you sign articles, as your mate has done, and join us, or shall I
+heave you over to follow your ship’s company?”
+
+“Where is my ship?” asked Craddock.
+
+“Scuttled in the bay.”
+
+“And the hands?”
+
+“In the bay, too.”
+
+“Then I’m for the bay, also.”
+
+“Hock him and heave him over,” said Sharkey.
+
+Many rough hands had dragged Craddock out upon deck, and Galloway, the
+quartermaster, had already drawn his hanger to cripple him, when Sharkey
+came hurrying from his cabin with an eager face. “We can do better with
+the hound!” he cried. “Sink me if it is not a rare plan. Throw him
+into the sail-room with the irons on, and do you come here,
+quartermaster, that I may tell you what I have in my mind.”
+
+So Craddock, bruised and wounded in soul and body, was thrown into the
+dark sail-room, so fettered that he could not stir hand or foot, but his
+Northern blood was running strong in his veins, and his grim spirit
+aspired only to make such an ending as might go some way towards atoning
+for the evil of his life. All night he lay in the curve of the bilge
+listening to the rush of the water and the straining of the timbers
+which told him that the ship was at sea and driving fast. In the early
+morning someone came crawling to him in the darkness over the heap of
+sails.
+
+“Here’s rum and biscuits,” said the voice of his late mate. “It’s at
+the risk of my life, Master Craddock, that I bring them to you.”
+
+“It was you who trapped me and caught me as in a snare!” cried Craddock.
+“How shall you answer for what you have done?”
+
+“What I did I did with the point of a knife betwixt my blade-bones.”
+
+“God forgive you for a coward, Joshua Hird. How came you into their
+hands?”
+
+“Why, Master Craddock, the pirate ship came back from its careening upon
+the very day that you left us. They laid us aboard, and, short-handed
+as we were, with the best of the men ashore with you, we could offer but
+a poor defence. Some were cut down, and they were the happiest. The
+others were killed afterwards. As to me, I saved my life by signing on
+with them.”
+
+“And they scuttled my ship?”
+
+“They scuttled her, and then Sharkey and his men, who had been watching
+us from the brushwood, came off to the ship. His mainyard had been
+cracked and fished last voyage, so he had suspicions of us, seeing that
+ours was whole. Then he thought of laying the same trap for you which
+you had set for him.”
+
+Craddock groaned. “How came I not to see that fished mainyard?” he
+muttered. “But whither are we bound?”
+
+“We are running north and west.”
+
+“North and west! Then we are heading back towards Jamaica.”
+
+“With an eight-knot wind.”
+
+“Have you heard what they mean to do with me?”
+
+“I have not heard. If you would but sign the articles--”
+
+“Enough, Joshua Hird! I have risked my soul too often.”
+
+“As you wish. I have done what I could. Farewell!”
+
+All that night and the next day the _Happy Delivery_ ran before the
+easterly trades, and Stephen Craddock lay in the dark of the sail-room
+working patiently at his wrist-irons. One he had slipped off at the
+cost of a row of broken and bleeding knuckles, but, do what he would, he
+could not free the other, and his ankles were securely fastened.
+From hour to hour he heard the swish of the water, and knew that the
+barque must be driving with all set in front of the trade wind. In that
+case they must be nearly back again to Jamaica by now. What plan could
+Sharkey have in his head, and what use did he hope to make of him?
+Craddock set his teeth, and vowed that if he had once been a villain
+from choice he would, at least, never be one by compulsion.
+
+On the second morning Craddock became aware that sail had been reduced
+in the vessel, and that she was tacking slowly, with a light breeze on
+her beam. The varying slope of the sail-room and the sounds from the
+deck told his practised senses exactly what she was doing. The short
+reaches showed him that she was manoeuvring near shore, and making for
+some definite point. If so, she must have reached Jamaica. But what
+could she be doing there?
+
+And then suddenly there was a burst of hearty cheering from the deck,
+and then the crash of a gun above his head, and then the answering
+booming of guns from far over the water. Craddock sat up and strained
+his ears. Was the ship in action? Only the one gun had been fired, and
+though many had answered, there were none of the crashings which told of
+a shot coming home. Then, if it was not an action, it must be a salute.
+But who would salute Sharkey, the pirate? It could only be another
+pirate ship which would do so. So Craddock lay back again with a groan,
+and continued to work at the manacle which still held his right wrist.
+But suddenly there came the shuffling of steps outside, and he had
+hardly time to wrap the loose links round his free hand, when the door
+was unbolted and two pirates came in.
+
+“Got your hammer, carpenter?” asked one, whom Craddock recognised as the
+big quartermaster.
+
+“Knock off his leg shackles, then. Better leave the bracelets--he’s
+safer with them on.”
+
+With hammer and chisel the carpenter loosened the irons.
+
+“What are you going to do with me?” asked Craddock.
+
+“Come on deck and you’ll see.”
+
+The sailor seized him by the arm and dragged him roughly to the foot of
+the companion. Above him was a square of blue sky cut across by the
+mizzen gaff, with the colours flying at the peak. But it was the sight
+of those colours which struck the breath from Stephen Craddock’s lips.
+For there were two of them, and the British ensign was flying above the
+Jolly Rodger--the honest flag above that of the rogue.
+
+For an instant Craddock stopped in amazement, but a brutal push from the
+pirates behind drove him up the companion ladder. As he stepped out
+upon deck, his eyes turned up to the main, and there again were the
+British colours flying above the red pennant, and all the shrouds and
+rigging were garlanded with streamers.
+
+Had the ship been taken, then? But that was impossible, for there were
+the pirates clustering in swarms along the port bulwarks, and waving
+their hats joyously in the air. Most prominent of all was the renegade
+mate, standing on the foc’sle head, and gesticulating wildly. Craddock
+looked over the side to see what they were cheering at, and then in a
+flash he saw how critical was the moment.
+
+On the port bow, and about a mile off, lay the white houses and forts of
+Port Royal, with flags breaking out everywhere over their roofs.
+Right ahead was the opening of the palisades leading to the town of
+Kingston. Not more than a quarter of a mile off was a small sloop
+working out against the very slight wind. The British ensign was at her
+peak, and her rigging was all decorated. On her deck could be seen a
+dense crowd of people cheering and waving their hats, and the gleam of
+scarlet told that there were officers of the garrison among them.
+
+In an instant, with the quick perception of a man of action, Craddock
+saw through it all. Sharkey, with that diabolical cunning and audacity
+which were among his main characteristics, was simulating the part which
+Craddock would himself have played had he come back victorious. It was
+in _his_ honour that the salutes were firing and the flags flying.
+It was to welcome _him_ that this ship with the Governor, the
+commandant, and the chiefs of the island were approaching. In another
+ten minutes they would all be under the guns of the _Happy Delivery_,
+and Sharkey would have won the greatest stake that ever a pirate played
+for yet.
+
+“Bring him forward,” cried the pirate captain, as Craddock appeared
+between the carpenter and the quartermaster. “Keep the ports closed,
+but clear away the port guns, and stand by for a broadside. Another two
+cable lengths and we have them.”
+
+“They are edging away,” said the boatswain. “I think they smell us.”
+
+“That’s soon set right,” said Sharkey, turning his filmy eyes upon
+Craddock. “Stand there, you--right there, where they can recognise you,
+with your hand on the guy, and wave your hat to them. Quick, or your
+brains will be over your coat. Put an inch of your knife into him, Ned.
+Now, will you wave your hat? Try him again, then. Hey, shoot him! Stop
+him!”
+
+But it was too late. Relying upon the manacles, the quartermaster had
+taken his hands for a moment off Craddock’s arm. In that instant he had
+flung off the carpenter, and, amid a spatter of pistol bullets, had
+sprung the bulwarks and was swimming for his life. He had been hit and
+hit again, but it takes many pistols to kill a resolute and powerful man
+who has his mind set upon doing something before he dies. He was a
+strong swimmer, and, in spite of the red trail which he left in the
+water behind him, he was rapidly increasing his distance from the
+pirate. “Give me a musket!” cried Sharkey, with a savage oath.
+
+He was a famous shot, and his iron nerves never failed him in an
+emergency. The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then
+swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop.
+Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired. With the crack of the
+gun the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a
+gesture of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay.
+Then, as the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an
+impotent broadside, Stephen Craddock, smiling grimly in his death agony,
+sank slowly down to that golden couch which glimmered far beneath him.
+
+
+
+                             III
+
+HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY
+
+
+The Buccaneers were something higher than a mere band of marauders.
+They were a floating republic, with laws, usages, and discipline of
+their own. In their endless and remorseless quarrel with the
+Spaniards they had some semblance of right upon their side.
+Their bloody harryings of the cities of the Main were not more barbarous
+than the inroads of Spain upon the Netherlands--or upon the Caribs in
+these same American lands.
+
+The chief of the Buccaneers, were he English or French, a Morgan or a
+Granmont, was still a responsible person, whose country might
+countenance him, or even praise him, so long as he refrained from any
+deed which might shock the leathery seventeenth-century conscience too
+outrageously. Some of them were touched with religion, and it is still
+remembered how Sawkins threw the dice overboard upon the Sabbath, and
+Daniel pistolled a man before the altar for irreverence.
+
+But there came a day when the fleets of the Buccaneers no longer
+mustered at the Tortugas, and the solitary and outlawed pirate took
+their place. Yet even with him the tradition of restraint and of
+discipline still lingered; and among the early pirates, the Avorys, the
+Englands, and the Robertses, there remained some respect for human
+sentiment. They were more dangerous to the merchant than to the seaman.
+But they in turn were replaced by more savage and desperate men, who
+frankly recognised that they would get no quarter in their war with the
+human race, and who swore that they would give as little as they got.
+Of their histories we know little that is trustworthy. They wrote no
+memoirs and left no trace, save an occasional blackened and
+blood-stained derelict adrift upon the face of the Atlantic.
+Their deeds could only be surmised from the long roll of ships who never
+made their port.
+
+Searching the records of history, it is only here and there in an
+old-world trial that the veil that shrouds them seems for an instant to
+be lifted, and we catch a glimpse of some amazing and grotesque
+brutality behind. Such was the breed of Ned Low, of Gow the Scotchman,
+and of the infamous Sharkey, whose coal-black barque, the _Happy
+Delivery_, was known from the Newfoundland Banks to the mouths of the
+Orinoco as the dark forerunner of misery and of death.
+
+There were many men, both among the islands and on the Main, who had a
+blood feud with Sharkey, but not one who had suffered more bitterly than
+Copley Banks, of Kingston. Banks had been one of the leading sugar
+merchants of the West Indies. He was a man of position, a member of the
+Council, the husband of a Percival, and the cousin of the Governor of
+Virginia. His two sons had been sent to London to be educated, and
+their mother had gone over to bring them back. On their return voyage
+the ship, the _Duchess of Cornwall_, fell into the hands of Sharkey, and
+the whole family met with an infamous death.
+
+Copley Banks said little when he heard the news, but he sank into a
+morose and enduring melancholy. He neglected his business, avoided his
+friends, and spent much of his time in the low taverns of the fishermen
+and seamen. There, amidst riot and devilry, he sat silently puffing at
+his pipe, with a set face and a smouldering eye. It was generally
+supposed that his misfortunes had shaken his wits, and his old friends
+looked at him askance, for the company which he kept was enough to bar
+him from honest men.
+
+From time to time there came rumours of Sharkey over the sea. Sometimes
+it was from some schooner which had seen a great flame upon the horizon,
+and approaching to offer help to the burning ship, had fled away at the
+sight of the sleek, black barque, lurking like a wolf near a mangled
+sheep. Sometimes it was a frightened trader, which had come tearing in
+with her canvas curved like a lady’s bodice, because she had seen a
+patched foretopsail rising slowly above the violet water-line.
+Sometimes it was from a coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama cay
+littered with sun-dried bodies. Once there came a man who had been mate
+of a Guineaman, and who had escaped from the pirate’s hands. He could
+not speak--for reasons which Sharkey could best supply--but he could
+write, and he did write, to the very great interest of Copley Banks.
+For hours they sat together over the map, and the dumb man pointed here
+and there to outlying reefs and tortuous inlets, while his companion sat
+smoking in silence, with his unvarying face and his fiery eyes.
+
+One morning, some two years after his misfortunes, Mr. Copley Banks
+strode into his own office with his old air of energy and alertness.
+The manager stared at him in surprise, for it was months since he had
+shown any interest in business.
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Banks!” said he.
+
+“Good morning, Freeman. I see that _Ruffling Harry_ is in the Bay.”
+
+“Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday.”
+
+“I have other plans for her, Freeman. I have determined upon a slaving
+venture to Whydah.”
+
+“But her cargo is ready, sir.”
+
+“Then it must come out again, Freeman. My mind is made up, and the
+_Ruffling Harry_ must go slaving to Whydah.”
+
+All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to
+clear the ship once more. And then Copley Banks began to make
+preparations for his African voyage. It appeared that he relied upon
+force rather than barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried
+none of those showy trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted
+with eight nine-pounder guns, and racks full of muskets and cutlasses.
+The after-sailroom next the cabin was transformed into a powder
+magazine, and she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer.
+Water and provisions were shipped for a long voyage.
+
+But the preparation of his ship’s company was most surprising. It made
+Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that
+his master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or
+another, he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the
+firm for years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port--men
+whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been
+ashamed to furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known
+to have been present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his
+hideous scarlet disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a
+red afterglow from that great crime. He was first mate, and under him
+was Israel Martin, a little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell
+Davies at the taking of Cape Coast Castle.
+
+The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
+their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
+man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk. His beard had been
+shaved, and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom
+Sharkey had placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his
+experiences to Copley Banks. These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet
+uncommented upon in the town of Kingston. The Commandant of the
+troops--Major Harvey of the Artillery--made serious representations to
+the Governor.
+
+“She is not a trader, but a small warship,” said he.
+
+“I think it would be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the
+vessel.”
+
+“What do you suspect?” asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man,
+broken down with fevers and port wine.
+
+“I suspect,” said the soldier, “that it is Stede Bonnet over again.”
+
+Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious
+character who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in
+his blood, had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the
+Caribbean Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the
+utmost consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been
+accused of being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions
+upon their plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister
+construction.
+
+“Well, Major Harvey,” said he, “I am vastly sorry to do anything which
+may offend my friend Copley Banks, for many a time have my knees been
+under his mahogany, but in face of what you say there is no choice for
+me but to order you to board the vessel and to satisfy yourself as to
+her character and destination.”
+
+So at one in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers,
+paid a surprise visit to the _Ruffling Harry_, with the result that they
+picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the
+moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented
+danger. She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out
+against the north-east trades on a course for the Windward Passage.
+
+When upon the next morning the brig had left Morant Point a mere haze
+upon the Southern horizon, the men were called aft, and Copley Banks
+revealed his plans to them. He had chosen them, he said, as brisk boys
+and lads of spirit, who would rather run some risk upon the sea than
+starve for a living upon the shore. King’s ships were few and weak, and
+they could master any trader who might come their way. Others had done
+well at the business, and with a handy, well-found vessel, there was no
+reason why they should not turn their tarry jackets into velvet coats.
+If they were prepared to sail under the black flag, he was ready to
+command them; but if any wished to withdraw, they might have the gig and
+row back to Jamaica.
+
+Four men out of six-and-forty asked for their discharge, went over the
+ship’s side into the boat, and rowed away amidst the jeers and howlings
+of the crew. The rest assembled aft, and drew up the articles of their
+association. A square of black tarpaulin had the white skull painted
+upon it, and was hoisted amidst cheering at the main.
+
+Officers were elected, and the limits of their authority fixed. Copley
+Banks was chosen captain, but, as there are no mates upon a pirate
+craft, Birthmark Sweetlocks became quartermaster, and Israel Martin the
+boatswain. There was no difficulty in knowing what was the custom of
+the brotherhood, for half the men at least had served upon pirates
+before. Food should be the same for all, and no man should interfere
+with another man’s drink! The captain should have a cabin, but all
+hands should be welcome to enter it when they chose.
+
+All should share and share alike, save only the captain, quartermaster,
+boatswain, carpenter, and master-gunner, who had from a quarter to a
+whole share extra. He who saw a prize first should have the best weapon
+taken out of her. He who boarded her first should have the richest suit
+of clothes aboard of her. Every man might treat his own prisoner, be it
+man or woman, after his own fashion. If a man flinched from his gun,
+the quartermaster should pistol him. These were some of the rules which
+the crew of the _Ruffling Harry_ subscribed by putting forty-two crosses
+at the foot of the paper upon which they had been drawn.
+
+So a new rover was afloat upon the seas, and her name before a year was
+over became as well known as that of the _Happy Delivery_. From the
+Bahamas to the Leewards, and from the Leewards to the Windwards, Copley
+Banks became the rival of Sharkey and the terror of traders. For a long
+time the barque and the brig never met, which was the more singular as
+the _Ruffling Harry_ was for ever looking in at Sharkey’s resorts; but
+at last one day, when she was passing down the inlet of Coxon’s Hole, at
+the east end of Cuba, with the intention of careening, there was the
+_Happy Delivery_, with her blocks and tackle-falls already rigged for
+the same purpose. Copley Banks fired a shotted salute and hoisted the
+green trumpeter ensign, as the custom was among gentlemen of the sea.
+Then he dropped his boat and went aboard.
+
+Captain Sharkey was not a man of a genial mood, nor had he any kindly
+sympathy for those who were of the same trade as himself. Copley Banks
+found him seated astride upon one of the after guns, with his New
+England quartermaster, Ned Galloway, and a crowd of roaring ruffians
+standing about him. Yet none of them roared with quite such assurance
+when Sharkey’s pale face and filmy blue eyes were turned upon him.
+He was in his shirt-sleeves, with his cambric frills breaking through
+his open red satin long-flapped vest. The scorching sun seemed to have
+no power upon his fleshless frame, for he wore a low fur cap, as though
+it had been winter. A many-coloured band of silk passed across his body
+and supported a short, murderous sword, while his broad, brass-buckled
+belt was stuffed with pistols.
+
+“Sink you for a poacher!” he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the
+bulwarks. “I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch
+also! What mean you by fishing in my waters?”
+
+Copley Banks looked at him, and his eyes were like those of a traveller
+who sees his home at last. “I am glad that we are of one mind,” said
+he, “for I am myself of opinion that the seas are not large enough for
+the two of us. But if you will take your sword and pistols and come
+upon a sand-bank with me, then the world will be rid of a damned
+villain, whichever way it goes.”
+
+“Now, this is talking!” said Sharkey, jumping off the gun and holding
+out his hand. “I have not met many who could look John Sharkey in the
+eyes and speak with a full breath. May the devil seize me if I do not
+choose you as a consort! But if you play me false, then I will come
+aboard of you and gut you upon your own poop.”
+
+“And I pledge you the same!” said Copley Banks, and so the two pirates
+became sworn comrades to each other.
+
+That summer they went north as far as the Newfoundland Banks, and
+harried the New York traders and the whale ships from New England.
+It was Copley Banks who captured the Liverpool ship, _House of Hanover_,
+but it was Sharkey who fastened her master to the windlass and pelted
+him to death with empty claret-bottles.
+
+Together they engaged the King’s ship _Royal Fortune_, which had been
+sent in search of them, and beat her off after a night action of five
+hours, the drunken, raving crews fighting naked in the light of the
+battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles
+of every gun. They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and
+then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ready for a long
+cruise down the West Indies.
+
+By this time Sharkey and Copley Banks had become very excellent friends,
+for Sharkey loved a whole-hearted villain, and he loved a man of metal,
+and it seemed to him that the two met in the captain of the _Ruffling
+Harry_. It was long before he gave his confidence to him, for cold
+suspicion lay deep in his character. Never once would he trust himself
+outside his own ship and away from his own men. But Copley Banks came
+often on board the _Happy Delivery_, and joined Sharkey in many of his
+morose debauches, so that at last any lingering misgivings of the latter
+were set at rest. He knew nothing of the evil that he had done to his
+new boon companion, for of his many victims how could he remember the
+woman and the two boys whom he had slain with such levity so long ago!
+When, therefore, he received a challenge to himself and to his
+quartermaster for a carouse upon the last evening of their stay at the
+Caicos Bank he saw no reason to refuse.
+
+A well-found passenger ship had been rifled the week before, so their
+fare was of the best, and after supper five of them drank deeply
+together. There were the two captains, Birthmark Sweetlocks, Ned
+Galloway, and Israel Martin, the old buccaneers-man. To wait upon them
+was the dumb steward, whose head Sharkey split with a glass, because he
+had been too slow in the filling of it. The quartermaster has slipped
+Sharkey’s pistols away from him, for it was an old joke with him to fire
+them cross-handed under the table and see who was the luckiest man.
+It was a pleasantry which had cost his boatswain his leg, so now, when
+the table was cleared, they would coax Sharkey’s weapons away from him
+on the excuse of the heat, and lay them out of his reach.
+
+The captain’s cabin of the _Ruffling Harry_ was in a deck-house upon the
+poop, and a stern-chaser gun was mounted at the back of it. Round shot
+were racked round the wall, and three great hogsheads of powder made a
+stand for dishes and for bottles. In this grim room the five pirates
+sang and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up
+their glasses, and passed the box and the candle round for their
+tobacco-pipes. Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices
+hoarser, the curses and shoutings more incoherent, until three of the
+five had closed their blood-shot eyes, and dropped their swimming heads
+upon the table.
+
+Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had
+drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake
+his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the
+watchful steward, for ever filling up his waning glass. From without
+came the low lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor’s
+chanty from the barque. In the windless tropical night the words came
+clearly to their ears:--
+
+     A trader sailed from Stepney Town,
+   Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!
+     A trader sailed from Stepney Town
+   With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.
+     Ho, the bully Rover Jack,
+   Waiting with his yard aback
+     Out upon the Lowland Sea.
+
+The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks
+glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from
+the shot-rack behind him.
+
+“Captain Sharkey,” said Copley Banks, “do you remember the _Duchess of
+Cornwall_, hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago
+off the Statira Shoal?”
+
+“Curse me if I can bear their names in mind,” said Sharkey. “We did as
+many as ten ships a week about that time.”
+
+“There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. Maybe that will
+bring it back to your mind.”
+
+Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose
+jutting upwards. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing
+laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it.
+“But burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!” he cried. “How came
+you to think of it?”
+
+“It was of interest to me,” said Copley Banks, “for the woman was my
+wife, and the lads were my only sons.”
+
+Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering
+fire which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame.
+He read their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt.
+Then he turned to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round
+him, and in an instant his arms were bound to his side. He fought like
+a wild cat, and screamed for help. “Ned!” he yelled. “Ned! Wake up!
+Here’s damned villainy! Help, Ned!--help!”
+
+But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for
+any voice to wake them. Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey
+was swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and
+helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a
+handkerchief, but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at
+them. The dumb man chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for
+the first time when he saw the empty mouth before him. He understood
+that vengeance, slow and patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him
+at last.
+
+The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat
+elaborate. First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder
+barrels, and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor.
+They piled it round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled
+in a heap of it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun and they triced
+him sitting over the port-hole, with his body about a foot from the
+muzzle. Wriggle as he would he could not move an inch either to the
+right or left, and the dumb man trussed him up with a sailor’s cunning,
+so that there was no chance that he should work free.
+
+“Now, you bloody devil,” said Copley Banks, softly, “you must listen to
+what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will
+hear. You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have
+given all that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as
+well.
+
+“To reach you I have had to sink to your level. For two years I strove
+against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learnt that
+there was no other. I’ve robbed and I have murdered--worse still, I
+have laughed and lived with you--and all for the one end. And now my
+time has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the
+shadow creeping upon you and the devil waiting for you in the shadow.”
+
+Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty
+over the water.
+
+    Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
+  Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending!
+    Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
+    His gold’s on the capstan, his blood’s on his gown,
+      All for bully Rover Jack,
+      Reaching on the weather tack
+    Right across the Lowland Sea.
+
+The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men
+pacing backwards and forwards upon the deck. And yet he was helpless,
+staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to
+utter so much as a groan. Again there came the burst of voices from the
+deck of the barque.
+
+    So it’s up and it’s over to Stornoway Bay,
+  Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with stunsails!
+    It’s off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay,
+    Where the liquor is good and the lasses are gay,
+      Waiting for their bully Jack,
+      Watching for him sailing back,
+    Right across the Lowland Sea.
+
+To the dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own
+fate seem the harsher, but there was no softening in those venomous blue
+eyes. Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had
+sprinkled fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the
+candle and cut it to the length of about an inch. This he placed upon
+the loose powder at the breach of the gun. Thin he scattered powder
+thickly over the floor beneath, so that when the candle fell at the
+recoil it must explode the huge pile in which the three drunkards were
+wallowing.
+
+“You’ve made others look death in the face, Sharkey,” said he; “now it
+has come to be your own turn. You and these swine here shall go
+together!” He lit the candle-end as he spoke, and blew out the other
+lights upon the table. Then he passed out with the dumb man, and locked
+the cabin door upon the outer side. But before he closed it he took an
+exultant look backwards, and received one last curse from those
+unconquerable eyes. In the single dim circle of light that ivory-white
+face, with the gleam of moisture upon the high, bald forehead, was the
+last that was ever seen of Sharkey.
+
+There was a skiff alongside, and in it Copley Banks and the dumb steward
+made their way to the beach, and looked back upon the brig riding in the
+moonlight just outside the shadow of the palm trees. They waited and
+waited watching that dim light which shone through the stem port. And
+then at last there came the dull thud of a gun, and an instant later the
+shattering crash of an explosion. The long, sleek, black barque, the
+sweep of white sand, and the fringe of nodding feathery palm trees
+sprang into dazzling light and back into darkness again. Voices
+screamed and called upon the bay.
+
+Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him, touched his companion
+upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely jungle of
+the Caicos.
+
+
+
+
+THE CROXLEY MASTER
+
+
+                             I
+
+
+Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands,
+in a state of the blackest despondency. Before him was the open ledger
+with the long columns of Dr. Oldacre’s prescriptions. At his elbow lay
+the wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the
+lumps of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of bottles waited to
+be filled. But his spirits were too low for work. He sat in silence
+with his fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands.
+
+Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened
+brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars
+upheld the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank. For six days in the week
+they spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was
+Sunday. Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and
+blasted by the greed of man. There was nothing in the surroundings to
+cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment
+which weighed upon the medical assistant. His trouble was deeper and
+more personal. The winter session was approaching. He should be back
+again at the University completing the last year which would give him
+his medical degree; but, alas! he had not the money with which to pay
+his class fees, nor could he imagine how he could procure it.
+Sixty pounds were wanted to make his career, and it might have been as
+many thousand for any chance there seemed to be of his obtaining it.
+He was roused from his black meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre
+himself, a large, clean-shaven, respectable man, with a prim manner and
+an austere face. He had prospered exceedingly by the support of the
+local Church interest, and the rule of his life was never by word or
+action to run a risk of offending the sentiment which had made him.
+His standard of respectability and of dignity was exceedingly high, and
+he expected the same from his assistants. His appearance and words were
+always vaguely benevolent. A sudden impulse came over the despondent
+student. He would test the reality of this philanthropy.
+
+“I beg your pardon, Dr. Oldacre,” said he, rising from his chair;
+“I have a great favour to ask of you.”
+
+The doctor’s appearance was not encouraging. His mouth suddenly
+tightened, and his eyes fell.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Montgomery?”
+
+“You are aware, sir, that I need only one more session to complete my
+course.”
+
+“So you have told me.”
+
+“It is very important to me, sir.”
+
+“Naturally.”
+
+“The fees, Dr. Oldacre, would amount to about sixty pounds.”
+
+“I am afraid that my duties call me elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery.”
+
+“One moment, sir! I had hoped, sir, that perhaps, if I signed a paper
+promising you interest upon your money, you would advance this sum to
+me. I will pay you back, sir, I really will. Or, if you like, I will
+work it off after I am qualified.”
+
+The doctor’s lips had thinned into a narrow line. His eyes were raised
+again, and sparkled indignantly.
+
+“Your request is unreasonable, Mr. Montgomery. I am surprised that you
+should have made it. Consider, sir, how many thousands of medical
+students there are in this country. No doubt there are many of them who
+have a difficulty in finding their fees. Am I to provide for them all?
+Or why should I make an exception in your favour? I am grieved and
+disappointed, Mr. Montgomery, that you should have put me into the
+painful position of having to refuse you.” He turned upon his heel, and
+walked with offended dignity out of the surgery.
+
+The student smiled bitterly, and turned to his work of making up the
+morning prescriptions. It was poor and unworthy work--work which any
+weakling might have done as well, and this was a man of exceptional
+nerve and sinew. But, such as it was, it brought him his board and one
+pound a week--enough to help him during the summer months and let him
+save a few pounds towards his winter keep. But those class fees!
+Where were they to come from? He could not save them out of his scanty
+wage. Dr. Oldacre would not advance them. He saw no way of earning
+them. His brains were fairly good, but brains of that quality were a
+drug in the market. He only excelled in his strength, and where was he
+to find a customer for that? But the ways of Fate are strange, and his
+customer was at hand.
+
+“Look y’ere!” said a voice at the door. Montgomery looked up, for the
+voice was a loud and rasping one. A young man stood at the
+entrance--a stocky, bull-necked young miner, in tweed Sunday clothes
+and an aggressive neck-tie. He was a sinister-looking figure, with
+dark, insolent eyes, and the jaw and throat of a bulldog.
+
+“Look y’ere!” said he again. “Why hast thou not sent t’ medicine oop as
+thy master ordered?”
+
+Montgomery had become accustomed to the brutal frankness of the northern
+worker. At first it had enraged him, but after a time he had grown
+callous to it, and accepted it as it was meant. But this was something
+different. It was insolence--brutal, overbearing insolence, with
+physical menace behind it.
+
+“What name?” he asked coldly.
+
+“Barton. Happen I may give thee cause to mind that name, yoong man.
+Mak’ oop t’ wife’s medicine this very moment, look ye, or it will be the
+worse for thee.”
+
+Montgomery smiled. A pleasant sense of relief thrilled softly through
+him. What blessed safety-valve was this through which his jangled
+nerves might find some outlet. The provocation was so gross, the insult
+so unprovoked, that he could have none of those qualms which take the
+edge off a man’s mettle. He finished sealing the bottle upon which he
+was occupied, and he addressed it and placed it carefully in the rack.
+“Look here!” said he, turning round to the miner, “your medicine will be
+made up in its turn and sent down to you. I don’t allow folk in the
+surgery. Wait outside in the waiting-room if you wish to wait at all.”
+
+“Yoong man,” said the miner, “thou’s got to mak’ t’ wife’s medicine
+here, and now, and quick, while I wait and watch thee, or else happen
+thou might need some medicine thysel’ before all is over.”
+
+“I shouldn’t advise you to fasten a quarrel upon me.” Montgomery was
+speaking in the hard, staccato voice of a man who is holding himself in
+with difficulty. “You’ll save trouble if you’ll go quietly. If you
+don’t you’ll be hurt. Ah, you would? Take it, then!”
+
+The blows were almost simultaneous--a savage swing which whistled past
+Montgomery’s ear, and a straight drive which took the workman on the
+chin. Luck was with the assistant. That single whizzing uppercut, and
+the way in which it was delivered, warned him that he had a formidable
+man to deal with. But if he had underrated his antagonist, his
+antagonist had also underrated him, and had laid himself open to a fatal
+blow.
+
+The miner’s head had come with a crash against the corner of the surgery
+shelves, and he had dropped heavily on to the ground. There he lay with
+his bandy legs drawn up and his hands thrown abroad, the blood trickling
+over the surgery tiles.
+
+“Had enough?” asked the assistant, breathing fiercely through his nose.
+
+But no answer came. The man was insensible. And then the danger of his
+position came upon Montgomery, and he turned as white as his antagonist.
+A Sunday, the immaculate Dr. Oldacre with his pious connection, a savage
+brawl with a patient; he would irretrievably lose his situation if the
+facts came out. It was not much of a situation, but he could not get
+another without a reference, and Oldacre might refuse him one. Without
+money for his classes, and without a situation--what was to become of
+him? It was absolute ruin.
+
+But perhaps he could escape exposure after all. He seized his
+insensible adversary, dragged him out into the centre of he room,
+loosened his collar, and squeezed the surgery sponge over his face. He
+sat up at last with a gasp and a scowl. “Domn thee, thou’s spoilt my
+neck-tie,” said he, mopping up the water from his breast.
+
+“I’m sorry I hit you so hard,” said Montgomery, apologetically.
+
+“Thou hit me hard! I could stan’ such fly-flappin’ all day. ’Twas this
+here press that cracked my pate for me, and thou art a looky man to be
+able to boast as thou hast outed me. And now I’d be obliged to thee if
+thou wilt give me t’ wife’s medicine.”
+
+Montgomery gladly made it up and handed it to the miner.
+
+“You are weak still,” said he. “Won’t you stay awhile and rest?”
+
+“T’ wife wants her medicine,” said the man, and lurched out at the door.
+
+The assistant, looking after him, saw him rolling, with an uncertain
+step, down the street, until a friend met him, and they walked on arm in
+arm. The man seemed in his rough Northern fashion to bear no grudge,
+and so Montgomery’s fears left him. There was no reason why the doctor
+should know anything about it. He wiped the blood from the floor, put
+the surgery in order, and went on with his interrupted task, hoping that
+he had come scathless out of a very dangerous business.
+
+Yet all day he was aware of a sense of vague uneasiness, which sharpened
+into dismay when, late in the afternoon, he was informed that three
+gentlemen had called and were waiting for him in the surgery.
+A coroner’s inquest, a descent of detectives, an invasion of angry
+relatives--all sorts of possibilities rose to scare him. With tense
+nerves and a rigid face he went to meet his visitors.
+
+They were a very singular trio. Each was known to him by sight; but
+what on earth the three could be doing together, and, above all, what
+they could expect from _him_, was a most inexplicable problem.
+The first was Sorley Wilson, the son of the owner of the Nonpareil
+Coalpit. He was a young blood of twenty, heir to a fortune, a keen
+sportsman, and down for the Easter Vacation from Magdalene College.
+He sat now upon the edge of the surgery table, looking in thoughtful
+silence at Montgomery and twisting the ends of his small, black, waxed
+moustache. The second was Purvis, the publican, owner of the chief
+beer-shop, and well known as the local bookmaker. He was a coarse,
+clean-shaven man, whose fiery face made a singular contrast with his
+ivory-white bald head. He had shrewd, light-blue eyes with foxy lashes,
+and he also leaned forward in silence from his chair, a fat, red hand
+upon either knee, and stared critically at the young assistant. So did
+the third visitor, Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who leaned back, his
+long, thin legs, with their boxcloth riding-gaiters, thrust out in front
+of him, tapping his protruding teeth with his riding-whip, with anxious
+thought in every line of his rugged, bony face. Publican, exquisite,
+and horse-breaker were all three equally silent, equally earnest, and
+equally critical. Montgomery seated in the midst of them, looked from
+one to the other.
+
+“Well, gentlemen?” he observed, but no answer came.
+
+The position was embarrassing.
+
+“No,” said the horse-breaker, at last. “No. It’s off. It’s nowt.”
+
+“Stand oop, lad; let’s see thee standin’.” It was the publican who
+spoke. Montgomery obeyed. He would learn all about it, no doubt, if he
+were patient. He stood up and turned slowly round, as if in front of
+his tailor.
+
+“It’s off! It’s off!” cried the horse-breaker. “Why, mon, the Master
+would break him over his knee.”
+
+“Oh, that be hanged for a yarn!” said the young Cantab. “You can drop
+out if you like, Fawcett, but I’ll see this thing through, if I have to
+do it alone. I don’t hedge a penny. I like the cut of him a great deal
+better than I liked Ted Barton.”
+
+“Look at Barton’s shoulders, Mr. Wilson.”
+
+“Lumpiness isn’t always strength. Give me nerve and fire and breed.
+That’s what wins.”
+
+“Ay, sir, you have it theer--you have it theer!” said the fat, red-faced
+publican, in a thick suety voice. “It’s the same wi’ poops. Get ’em
+clean-bred an’ fine, an’ they’ll yark the thick ’uns--yark ’em out o’
+their skins.”
+
+“He’s ten good pund on the light side,” growled the horse-breaker.
+
+“He’s a welter weight, anyhow.”
+
+“A hundred and thirty.”
+
+“A hundred and fifty, if he’s an ounce.”
+
+“Well, the Master doesn’t scale much more than that.”
+
+“A hundred and seventy-five.”
+
+“That was when he was hog-fat and living high. Work the grease out of
+him and I lay there’s no great difference between them. Have you been
+weighed lately, Mr. Montgomery?”
+
+It was the first direct question which had been asked him. He had stood
+in the midst of them like a horse at a fair, and he was just beginning
+to wonder whether he was more angry or amused.
+
+“I am just eleven stone,” said he.
+
+“I said that he was a welter weight.”
+
+“But suppose you was trained?” said the publican. “Wot then?”
+
+“I am always in training.”
+
+“In a manner of speakin’, no doubt, he _is_ always in trainin’,”
+remarked the horse-breaker. “But trainin’ for everyday work ain’t the
+same as trainin’ with a trainer; and I dare bet, with all respec’ to
+your opinion, Mr. Wilson, that there’s half a stone of tallow on him at
+this minute.”
+
+The young Cantab put his fingers on the assistant’s upper arm, then with
+his other hand on his wrist, he bent the forearm sharply, and felt the
+biceps, as round and hard as a cricket-ball, spring up under his
+fingers.
+
+“Feel that!” said he.
+
+The publican and horse-breaker felt it with an air of reverence. “Good
+lad! He’ll do yet!” cried Purvis.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said Montgomery, “I think that you will acknowledge that I
+have been very patient with you. I have listened to all that you have
+to say about my personal appearance, and now I must really beg that you
+will have the goodness to tell me what is the matter.”
+
+They all sat down in their serious, business-like way.
+
+“That’s easy done, Mr. Montgomery,” said the fat-voiced publican.
+“But before sayin’ anything we had to wait and see whether, in a way of
+speakin’, there was any need for us to say anything at all. Mr. Wilson
+thinks there is. Mr. Fawcett, who has the same right to his opinion,
+bein’ also a backer and one o’ the committee, thinks the other way.”
+
+“I thought him too light built, and I think so now,” said the
+horse-breaker, still tapping his prominent teeth with the metal head of
+his riding-whip. “But happen he may pull through, and he’s a
+fine-made, buirdly young chap, so if you mean to back him, Mr.
+Wilson----”
+
+“Which I do.”
+
+“And you, Purvis?”
+
+“I ain’t one to go back, Fawcett.”
+
+“Well, I’ll stan’ to my share of the purse.”
+
+“And well I knew you would,” said Purvis, “for it would be somethin’ new
+to find Isaac Fawcett as a spoil-sport. Well, then, we will make up the
+hundred for the stake among us, and the fight stands--always supposin’
+the young man is willin’.”
+
+“Excuse all this rot, Mr. Montgomery,” said the University man, in a
+genial voice. “We’ve begun at the wrong end, I know, but we’ll soon
+straighten it out, and I hope that you will see your way to falling in
+with our views. In the first place, you remember the man whom you
+knocked out this morning? He is Barton--the famous Ted Barton.”
+
+“I’m sure, sir, you may well be proud to have outed him in one round,”
+said the publican. “Why, it took Morris, the ten-stone-six champion, a
+deal more trouble than that before he put Barton to sleep. You’ve done
+a fine performance, sir, and happen you’ll do a finer, if you give
+yourself the chance.”
+
+“I never heard of Ted Barton, beyond seeing the name on a medicine
+label,” said the assistant.
+
+“Well, you may take it from me that he’s a slaughterer,” said the
+horse-breaker. “You’ve taught him a lesson that he needed, for it was
+always a word and a blow with him, and the word alone was worth five
+shillin’ in a public court. He won’t be so ready now to shake his nief
+in the face of everyone he meets. However, that’s neither here nor
+there.”
+
+Montgomery looked at them in bewilderment.
+
+“For goodness’ sake, gentlemen, tell me what it is you want me to do!”
+he cried.
+
+“We want you to fight Silas Craggs, better known as the Master of
+Croxley.”
+
+“But why?”
+
+“Because Ted Barton was to have fought him next Saturday. He was the
+champion of the Wilson coal-pits, and the other was the Master of the
+iron-folk down at the Croxley smelters. We’d matched our man for a
+purse of a hundred against the Master. But you’ve queered our man, and
+he can’t face such a battle with a two-inch cut at the back of his head.
+There’s only one thing to be done, sir, and that is for you to take his
+place. If you can lick Ted Barton you may lick the Master of Croxley,
+but if you don’t we’re done, for there’s no one else who is in the same
+street with him in this district. It’s twenty rounds, two-ounce gloves,
+Queensberry rules, and a decision on points if you fight to the finish.”
+
+For a moment the absurdity of the thing drove every other thought out of
+Montgomery’s head. But then there came a sudden revulsion. A hundred
+pounds!--all he wanted to complete his education was lying there ready
+to his hand, if only that hand were strong enough to pick it up. He had
+thought bitterly that morning that there was no market for his strength,
+but here was one where his muscle might earn more in an hour than his
+brains in a year. But a chill of doubt came over him. “How can I fight
+for the coal-pits?” said he. “I am not connected with them.”
+
+“Eh, lad, but thou art!” cried old Purvis. “We’ve got it down in
+writin’, and it’s clear enough ‘Anyone connected with the coal-pits.’
+Doctor Oldacre is the coal-pit club doctor; thou art his assistant.
+What more can they want?”
+
+“Yes, that’s right enough,” said the Cantab. “It would be a very
+sporting thing of you, Mr. Montgomery, if you would come to our help
+when we are in such a hole. Of course, you might not like to take the
+hundred pounds; but I have no doubt that, in the case of your winning,
+we could arrange that it should take the form of a watch or piece of
+plate, or any other shape which might suggest itself to you. You see,
+you are responsible for our having lost our champion, so we really feel
+that we have a claim upon you.”
+
+“Give me a moment, gentlemen. It is very unexpected. I am afraid the
+doctor would never consent to my going--in fact, I am sure that he would
+not.”
+
+“But he need never know--not before the fight, at any rate. We are not
+bound to give the name of our man. So long as he is within the weight
+limits on the day of the fight, that is all that concerns anyone.”
+
+The adventure and the profit would either of them have attracted
+Montgomery. The two combined were irresistible. “Gentlemen,” said he,
+“I’ll do it!”
+
+The three sprang from their seats. The publican had seized his right
+hand, the horse-dealer his left, and the Cantab slapped him on the back.
+
+“Good lad! good lad!” croaked the publican. “Eh, mon, but if thou yark
+him, thou’ll rise in one day from being just a common doctor to the
+best-known mon ’twixt here and Bradford. Thou art a witherin’ tyke,
+thou art, and no mistake; and if thou beat the Master of Croxley,
+thou’ll find all the beer thou want for the rest of thy life waiting for
+thee at the ‘Four Sacks.’”
+
+“It is the most sporting thing I ever heard of in my life,” said young
+Wilson. “By George, sir, if you pull it off, you’ve got the
+constituency in your pocket, if you care to stand. You know the
+out-house in my garden?”
+
+“Next the road?”
+
+“Exactly. I turned it into a gymnasium for Ted Barton. You’ll find all
+you want there: clubs, punching ball, bars, dumb-bells, everything.
+Then you’ll want a sparring partner. Ogilvy has been acting for Barton,
+but we don’t think that he is class enough. Barton bears you no grudge.
+He’s a good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers. He
+looked upon you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you
+now. He is quite ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come
+any hour you will name.”
+
+“Thank you; I will let you know the hour,” said Montgomery; and so the
+committee departed jubilant upon their way.
+
+The medical assistant sat for a time in the surgery turning it over a
+little in his mind. He had been trained originally at the University by
+the man who had been middle-weight champion in his day. It was true
+that his teacher was long past his prime, slow upon his feet, and stiff
+in his joints, but even so he was still a tough antagonist; but
+Montgomery had found at last that he could more than hold his own with
+him. He had won the University medal, and his teacher, who had trained
+so many students, was emphatic in his opinion that he had never had one
+who was in the same class with him. He had been exhorted to go in for
+the Amateur Championships, but he had no particular ambition in that
+direction. Once he had put on the gloves with Hammer Tunstall in a
+booth at a fair and had fought three rattling rounds, in which he had
+the worst of it, but had made the prize fighter stretch himself to the
+uttermost. There was his whole record, and was it enough to encourage
+him to stand up to the Master of Croxley? He had never heard of the
+Master before, but then he had lost touch of the ring during the last
+few years of hard work. After all, what did it matter? If he won,
+there was the money, which meant so much to him. If he lost, it would
+only mean a thrashing. He could take punishment without flinching, of
+that he was certain. If there were only one chance in a hundred of
+pulling it off, then it was worth his while to attempt it.
+
+Dr. Oldacre, new come from church, with an ostentatious Prayer-book in
+his kid-gloved hand, broke in upon his meditation.
+
+“You don’t go to service, I observe, Mr. Montgomery” said he, coldly.
+
+“No, sir; I have had some business to detain me.”
+
+“It is very near to my heart that my household should set a good
+example. There are so few educated people in this district that a great
+responsibility devolves upon us. If we do not live up to the highest,
+how can we expect these poor workers to do so? It is a dreadful thing
+to reflect that the parish takes a great deal more interest in an
+approaching glove fight than in their religious duties.”
+
+“A glove fight, sir?” said Montgomery, guiltily.
+
+“I believe that to be the correct term. One of my patients tells me
+that it is the talk of the district. A local ruffian, a patient of
+ours, by the way, matched against a pugilist over at Croxley.
+I cannot understand why the law does not step in and stop so degrading
+an exhibition. It is really a prize fight.”
+
+“A glove fight, you said.”
+
+“I am informed that a 2oz. glove is an evasion by which they dodge the
+law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere. They contend
+for a sum of money. It seems dreadful and almost incredible--does it
+not?--to think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our
+peaceful home. But you will realise, Mr. Montgomery, that while there
+are such influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we
+should live up to our highest.”
+
+The doctor’s sermon would have had more effect if the assistant had not
+once or twice had occasion to test his highest, and come upon it at
+unexpectedly humble elevations. It is always so particularly easy to
+“compound for sins we’re most inclined to by damning those we have no
+mind to.” In any case, Montgomery felt that of all the men concerned in
+such a fight--promoters, backers, spectators--it is the actual fighter
+who holds the strongest and most honourable position. His conscience
+gave him no concern upon the subject. Endurance and courage are
+virtues, not vices, and brutality is, at least, better than effeminacy.
+
+There was a little tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where
+Montgomery got his bird’s-eye and also his local information, for the
+shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of
+the district. The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in
+a casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard of the Master of
+Croxley.
+
+“Heard of him! Heard of him!” the little man could hardly articulate in
+his astonishment. “Why, sir, he’s the first mon o’ the district, an’
+his name’s as well known in the West Riding as the winner o’ t’ Derby.
+But Lor,’ sir,”--here he stopped and rummaged among a heap of papers.
+“They are makin’ a fuss about him on account o’ his fight wi’ Ted
+Barton, and so the _Croxley Herald_ has his life an’ record, an’ here it
+is, an’ thou canst read it for thysel’.”
+
+The sheet of the paper which he held up was a lake of print around an
+islet of illustration. The latter was a coarse wood-cut of a pugilist’s
+head and neck set in a cross-barred jersey. It was a sinister but
+powerful face, the face of a debauched hero, clean-shaven, strongly
+eye-browed, keen-eyed, with huge, aggressive jaw, and an animal dewlap
+beneath it. The long, obstinate cheeks ran flush up to the narrow,
+sinister eyes. The mighty neck came down square from the ears and
+curved outwards into shoulders, which had lost nothing at the hands of
+the local artist. Above was written “Silas Craggs,” and beneath,
+“The Master of Croxley.”
+
+“Thou’ll find all about him there, sir,” said the tobacconist. “He’s a
+witherin’ tyke, he is, and we’re proud to have him in the county. If he
+hadn’t broke his leg he’d have been champion of England.”
+
+“Broke his leg, has he?”
+
+“Yes, and it set badly. They ca’ him owd K, behind his back, for that
+is how his two legs look. But his arms--well, if they was both stropped
+to a bench, as the sayin’ is, I wonder where the champion of England
+would be then.”
+
+“I’ll take this with me,” said Montgomery; and putting the paper into
+his pocket he returned home.
+
+It was not a cheering record which he read there. The whole history of
+the Croxley Master was given in full, his many victories, his few
+defeats.
+
+   Born in 1857 (said the provincial biographer), Silas Craggs, better
+   known in sporting circles as the Master of Croxley, is now in his
+   fortieth year.
+
+“Hang it, I’m only twenty-three!” said Montgomery to himself, and read
+on more cheerfully.
+
+   Having in his youth shown a surprising aptitude for the game, he
+   fought his way up among his comrades, until he became the
+   recognised champion of the district and won the proud title which
+   he still holds. Ambitious of a more than local fame, he secured a
+   patron, and fought his first fight against Jack Barton, of
+   Birmingham, in May 1880, at the old Loiterers’ Club. Craggs,
+   who fought at ten stone-two at the time, had the better of fifteen
+   rattling rounds, and gained an award on points against the Midlander.
+   Having disposed of James Dunn, of Rotherhithe, Cameron, of Glasgow,
+   and a youth named Fernie, he was thought so highly of by the fancy
+   that he was matched against Ernest Willox, at that time
+   middle-weight champion of the North of England, and defeated him in a
+   hard-fought battle, knocking him out in the tenth round after a
+   punishing contest. At this period it looked as if the very highest
+   honours of the ring were within the reach of the young Yorkshireman,
+   but he was laid upon the shelf by a most unfortunate accident. The
+   kick of a horse broke his thigh, and for a year he was compelled to
+   rest himself. When he returned to his work the fracture had set
+   badly, and his activity was much impaired. It was owing to this
+   that he was defeated in seven rounds by Willox, the man whom he had
+   previously beaten, and afterwards by James Shaw, of London, though
+   the latter acknowledged that he had found the toughest customer of
+   his career. Undismayed by his reverses, the Master adapted the
+   style of his fighting to his physical disabilities and resumed his
+   career of victory--defeating Norton (the black), Hobby Wilson, and
+   Levi Cohen, the latter a heavy-weight. Conceding two stone, he
+   fought a draw with the famous Billy McQuire, and afterwards, for
+   a purse of fifty pounds, he defeated Sam Hare at the Pelican Club,
+   London. In 1891 a decision was given against him upon a foul when
+   fighting a winning fight against Jim Taylor, the Australian middle
+   weight, and so mortified was he by the decision, that he withdrew
+   from the ring. Since then he has hardly fought at all save to
+   accommodate any local aspirant who may wish to learn the difference
+   between a bar-room scramble and a scientific contest. The latest
+   of these ambitious souls comes from the Wilson coal-pits, which have
+   undertaken to put up a stake of 100 pounds and back their local
+   champion. There are various rumours afloat as to who their
+   representative is to be, the name of Ted Barton being freely
+   mentioned; but the betting, which is seven to one on the Master
+   against any untried man, is a fair reflection of the feeling of
+   the community.
+
+Montgomery read it over twice, and it left him with a very serious face.
+No light matter this which he had undertaken; no battle with a
+rough-and-tumble fighter who presumed upon a local reputation.
+The man’s record showed that he was first-class--or nearly so. There
+were a few points in his favour, and he must make the most of them.
+There was age--twenty-three against forty. There was an old ring
+proverb that “Youth will be served,” but the annals of the ring offer a
+great number of exceptions. A hard veteran full of cool valour and
+ring-craft, could give ten or fifteen years and a beating to most
+striplings. He could not rely too much upon his advantage in age.
+But then there was the lameness; that must surely count for a great
+deal. And, lastly, there was the chance that the Master might underrate
+his opponent, that he might be remiss in his training, and refuse to
+abandon his usual way of life, if he thought that he had an easy task
+before him. In a man of his age and habits this seemed very possible.
+Montgomery prayed that it might be so. Meanwhile, if his opponent were
+the best man who ever jumped the ropes into a ring, his own duty was
+clear. He must prepare himself carefully, throw away no chance, and do
+the very best that he could. But he knew enough to appreciate the
+difference which exists in boxing, as in every sport, between the
+amateur and the professional. The coolness, the power of hitting, above
+all the capability of taking punishment, count for so much. Those
+specially developed, gutta-percha-like abdominal muscles of the hardened
+pugilist will take without flinching a blow which would leave another
+man writhing on the ground. Such things are not to be acquired in a
+week, but all that could be done in a week should be done.
+
+The medical assistant had a good basis to start from. He was 5ft. 11
+ins.--tall enough for anything on two legs, as the old ring men used to
+say--lithe and spare, with the activity of a panther, and a strength
+which had hardly yet ever found its limitations. His muscular
+development was finely hard, but his power came rather from that higher
+nerve-energy which counts for nothing upon a measuring tape. He had the
+well-curved nose and the widely opened eye which never yet were seen
+upon the face of a craven, and behind everything he had the driving
+force, which came from the knowledge that his whole career was at stake
+upon the contest. The three backers rubbed their hands when they saw
+him at work punching the ball in the gymnasium next morning; and
+Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who had written to Leeds to hedge his bets,
+sent a wire to cancel the letter, and to lay another fifty at the market
+price of seven to one.
+
+Montgomery’s chief difficulty was to find time for his training without
+any interference from the doctor. His work took him a large part of the
+day, but as the visiting was done on foot, and considerable distances
+had to be traversed, it was a training in itself. For the rest, he
+punched the swinging ball and worked with the dumb-bells for an hour
+every morning and evening, and boxed twice a day with Ted Barton in the
+gymnasium, gaining as much profit as could be got from a rushing,
+two-handed slogger. Barton was full of admiration for his cleverness
+and quickness, but doubtful about his strength. Hard hitting was the
+feature of his own style, and he exacted it from others.
+
+“Lord, sir, that’s a turble poor poonch for an eleven-stone man!” he
+would cry. “Thou wilt have to hit harder than that afore t’ Master will
+know that thou art theer. All, thot’s better, mon, thot’s fine!” he
+would add, as his opponent lifted him across the room on the end of a
+right counter. “Thot’s how I likes to feel ’em. Happen thou’lt pull
+through yet.” He chuckled with joy when Montgomery knocked him into a
+corner. “Eh, mon, thou art coming along grand. Thou hast fair yarked
+me off my legs. Do it again, lad, do it again!”
+
+The only part of Montgomery’s training which came within the doctor’s
+observation was his diet, and that puzzled him considerably.
+
+“You will excuse my remarking, Mr. Montgomery, that you are becoming
+rather particular in your tastes. Such fads are not to be encouraged in
+one’s youth. Why do you eat toast with every meal?”
+
+“I find that it suits me better than bread, sir.”
+
+“It entails unnecessary work upon the cook. I observe, also, that you
+have turned against potatoes.”
+
+“Yes, sir; I think that I am better without them.”
+
+“And you no longer drink your beer?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“These causeless whims and fancies are very much to be deprecated, Mr.
+Montgomery. Consider how many there are to whom these very potatoes and
+this very beer would be most acceptable.”
+
+“No doubt, sir, but at present I prefer to do without them.”
+
+They were sitting alone at lunch, and the assistant thought that it
+would be a good opportunity of asking leave for the day of the fight.
+
+“I should be glad if you could let me have leave for Saturday, Dr.
+Oldacre.”
+
+“It is very inconvenient upon so busy a day.”
+
+“I should do a double day’s work on Friday so as to leave everything in
+order. I should hope to be back in the evening.”
+
+“I am afraid I cannot spare you, Mr. Montgomery.”
+
+This was a facer. If he could not get leave he would go without it.
+
+“You will remember, Dr. Oldacre, that when I came to you it was
+understood that I should have a clear day every month. I have never
+claimed one. But now there are reasons why I wish to have a holiday
+upon Saturday.”
+
+Dr. Oldacre gave in with a very bad grace. “Of course, if you insist
+upon your formal rights, there is no more to be said, Mr. Montgomery,
+though I feel that it shows a certain indifference to my comfort and the
+welfare of the practice. Do you still insist?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Very good. Have your way.”
+
+The doctor was boiling over with anger, but Montgomery was a valuable
+assistant--steady, capable, and hardworking--and he could not afford to
+lose him. Even if he had been prompted to advance those class fees, for
+which his assistant had appealed, it would have been against his
+interests to do so, for he did not wish him to qualify, and he desired
+him to remain in his subordinate position, in which he worked so hard
+for so small a wage. There was something in the cool insistence of the
+young man, a quiet resolution in his voice as he claimed his Saturday,
+which aroused his curiosity.
+
+“I have no desire to interfere unduly with your affairs, Mr. Montgomery,
+but were you thinking of having a day in Leeds upon Saturday?”
+
+“No, sir.
+
+“In the country?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You are very wise. You will find a quiet day among the wild flowers a
+very valuable restorative. Have you thought of any particular
+direction?”
+
+“I am going over Croxley way.”
+
+“Well, there is no prettier country when once you are past the
+iron-works. What could be more delightful than to lie upon the Fells,
+basking in the sunshine, with perhaps some instructive and elevating
+book as your companion? I should recommend a visit to the ruins of St.
+Bridget’s Church, a very interesting relic of the early Norman era.
+By the way, there is one objection which I see to your going to Croxley
+on Saturday. It is upon that date, as I am informed, that that
+ruffianly glove fight takes place. You may find yourself molested by
+the blackguards whom it will attract.”
+
+“I will take my chance of that, sir,” said the assistant.
+
+On the Friday night, which was the last night before the fight,
+Montgomery’s three backers assembled in the gymnasium and inspected
+their man as he went through some light exercises to keep his muscles
+supple. He was certainly in splendid condition, his skin shining with
+health, and his eyes with energy and confidence. The three walked round
+him and exulted.
+
+“He’s simply ripping!” said the undergraduate.
+
+“By gad, you’ve come out of it splendidly. You’re as hard as a pebble,
+and fit to fight for your life.”
+
+“Happen he’s a trifle on the fine side,” said the publican. “Runs a bit
+light at the loins, to my way of thinkin’.”
+
+“What weight to-day?”
+
+“Ten stone eleven,” the assistant answered.
+
+“That’s only three pund off in a week’s trainin’,” said the
+horse-breaker. “He said right when he said that he was in condition.
+Well, it’s fine stuff all there is of it, but I’m none so sure as there
+is enough.” He kept poking his finger into Montgomery as if he were one
+of his horses. “I hear that the Master will scale a hundred and sixty
+odd at the ring-side.”
+
+“But there’s some of that which he’d like well to pull off and leave
+behind wi’ his shirt,” said Purvis. “I hear they’ve had a rare job to
+get him to drop his beer, and if it had not been for that great
+red-headed wench of his they’d never ha’ done it. She fair scratted the
+face off a potman that had brought him a gallon from t’ ‘Chequers.’
+They say the hussy is his sparrin’ partner, as well as his sweetheart,
+and that his poor wife is just breakin’ her heart over it. Hullo, young
+’un, what do you want?”
+
+The door of the gymnasium had opened and a lad, about sixteen, grimy and
+black with soot and iron, stepped into the yellow glare of the oil lamp.
+Ted Barton seized him by the collar.
+
+“See here, thou yoong whelp, this is private, and we want noan o’ thy
+spyin’!”
+
+“But I maun speak to Mr. Wilson.”
+
+The young Cantab stepped forward.
+
+“Well, my lad, what is it?”
+
+“It’s aboot t’ fight, Mr. Wilson, sir. I wanted to tell your mon
+somethin’ aboot t’ Maister.”
+
+“We’ve no time to listen to gossip, my boy. We know all about the
+Master.”
+
+“But thou doan’t, sir. Nobody knows but me and mother, and we thought
+as we’d like thy mon to know, sir, for we want him to fair bray him.”
+
+“Oh, you want the Master fair brayed, do you? So do we. Well, what
+have you to say?”
+
+“Is this your mon, sir?”
+
+“Well, suppose it is?”
+
+“Then it’s him I want to tell aboot it. T’ Maister is blind o’ the left
+eye.”
+
+“Nonsense!”
+
+“It’s true, sir. Not stone blind, but rarely fogged. He keeps it
+secret, but mother knows, and so do I. If thou slip him on the left
+side he can’t cop thee. Thou’ll find it right as I tell thee. And mark
+him when he sinks his right. ’Tis his best blow, his right upper-cut.
+T’ Maister’s finisher, they ca’ it at t’ works. It’s a turble blow when
+it do come home.”
+
+“Thank you, my boy. This is information worth having about his sight,”
+said Wilson. “How came you to know so much? Who are you?”
+
+“I’m his son, sir.”
+
+Wilson whistled.
+
+“And who sent you to us?”
+
+“My mother. I maun get back to her again.”
+
+“Take this half-crown.”
+
+“No, sir, I don’t seek money in comin’ here. I do it--”
+
+“For love?” suggested the publican.
+
+“For hate!” said the boy, and darted off into the darkness.
+
+“Seems to me t’ red-headed wench may do him more harm than good, after
+all,” remarked the publican. “And now, Mr. Montgomery, sir, you’ve done
+enough for this evenin’, an’ a nine-hours’ sleep is the best trainin’
+before a battle. Happen this time to-morrow night you’ll be safe back
+again with your 100 pound in your pocket.”
+
+
+                             II
+
+
+Work was struck at one o’clock at the coal-pits and the iron-works, and
+the fight was arranged for three. From the Croxley Furnaces, from
+Wilson’s Coal-pits, from the Heartsease Mine, from the Dodd Mills, from
+the Leverworth Smelters the workmen came trooping, each with his
+fox-terrier or his lurcher at his heels. Warped with labour and twisted
+by toil, bent double by week-long work in the cramped coal galleries or
+half-blinded with years spent in front of white-hot fluid metal, these
+men still gilded their harsh and hopeless lives by their devotion to
+sport. It was their one relief, the only thing which could distract
+their minds from sordid surroundings, and give them an interest beyond
+the blackened circle which enclosed them. Literature, art, science, all
+these things were beyond their horizon; but the race, the football
+match, the cricket, the fight, these were things which they could
+understand, which they could speculate upon in advance and comment upon
+afterwards. Sometimes brutal, sometimes grotesque, the love of sport is
+still one of the great agencies which make for the happiness of our
+people. It lies very deeply in the springs of our nature, and when it
+has been educated out, a higher, more refined nature may be left, but it
+will not be of that robust British type which has left its mark so
+deeply on the world. Every one of these raddled workers, slouching with
+his dog at his heels to see something of the fight, was a true unit of
+his race.
+
+It was a squally May day, with bright sunbursts and driving showers.
+Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting his medicine made
+up.
+
+“The weather seems so very unsettled, Mr. Montgomery,” remarked the
+doctor, “that I am inclined to think that you had better postpone your
+little country excursion until a later date.”
+
+“I am afraid that I must go to-day, sir.”
+
+“I have just had an intimation that Mrs. Potter, at the other side of
+Angleton, wishes to see me. It is probable that I shall be there all
+day. It will be extremely inconvenient to leave the house empty so
+long.”
+
+“I am very sorry, sir, but I must go,” said the assistant, doggedly.
+
+The doctor saw that it would be useless to argue, and departed in the
+worst of bad tempers upon mission. Montgomery felt easier now that he
+was gone. He went up to his room, and packed his running-shoes, his
+fighting-drawers, and his cricket sash into a hand-bag. When he came
+down, Mr. Wilson was waiting for him in the surgery. “I hear the doctor
+has gone.”
+
+“Yes; he is likely to be away all day.”
+
+“I don’t see that it matters much. It’s bound to come to his ears by
+to-night.”
+
+“Yes; it’s serious with me, Mr. Wilson. If I win, it’s all right.
+I don’t mind telling you that the hundred pounds will make all the
+difference to me. But if I lose, I shall lose my situation, for, as you
+say, I can’t keep it secret.”
+
+“Never mind. We’ll see you through among us. I only wonder the doctor
+has not heard, for it’s all over the country that you are to fight the
+Croxley Champion. We’ve had Armitage up about it already. He’s the
+Master’s backer, you know. He wasn’t sure that you were eligible.
+The Master said he wanted you whether you were eligible or not.
+Armitage has money on, and would have made trouble if he could. But I
+showed him that you came within the conditions of the challenge, and he
+agreed that it was all right. They think they have a soft thing on.”
+
+“Well, I can only do my best,” said Montgomery.
+
+They lunched together; a silent and rather nervous repast, for
+Montgomery’s mind was full of what was before him, and Wilson had
+himself more money at stake than he cared to lose.
+
+Wilson’s carriage and pair were at the door, the horses with blue and
+white rosettes at their ears, which were the colours of the Wilson
+Coal-pits, well known, on many a football field. At the avenue gate a
+crowd of some hundred pit-men and their wives gave a cheer as the
+carriage passed. To the assistant it all seemed dream-like and
+extraordinary--the strangest experience of his life, but with a thrill
+of human action and interest in it which made it passionately absorbing.
+He lay back in the open carriage and saw the fluttering handkerchiefs
+from the doors and windows of the miners’ cottages. Wilson had pinned a
+blue and white rosette upon his coat, and everybody knew him as their
+champion. “Good luck, sir! good luck to thee!” they shouted from the
+roadside. He felt that it was like some unromantic knight riding down
+to sordid lists, but there was something of chivalry in it all the same.
+He fought for others as well as for himself. He might fail from want of
+skill or strength, but deep in his sombre soul he vowed that it should
+never be for want of heart.
+
+Mr. Fawcett was just mounting into his high-wheeled, spidery dogcart,
+with his little bit of blood between the shafts. He waved his whip and
+fell in behind the carriage. They overtook Purvis, the tomato-faced
+publican, upon the road, with his wife in her Sunday bonnet. They also
+dropped into the procession, and then, as they traversed the seven miles
+of the high road to Croxley, their two-horsed, rosetted carriage became
+gradually the nucleus of a comet with a loosely radiating tail.
+From every side-road came the miners’ carts, the humble, ramshackle
+traps, black and bulging, with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued,
+open-hearted partisans. They trailed for a long quarter of a mile
+behind them--cracking, whipping, shouting, galloping, swearing.
+Horsemen and runners were mixed with the vehicles. And then suddenly a
+squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were having their annual training
+in those parts, clattered and jingled out of a field, and rode as an
+escort to the carriage. Through the dust-clouds round him Montgomery
+saw the gleaming brass helmets, the bright coats, and the tossing heads
+of the chargers, the delighted brown faces of the troopers. It was more
+dream-like than ever.
+
+And then, as they approached the monstrous, uncouth line of
+bottle-shaped buildings which marked the smelting-works of Croxley,
+their long, writhing snake of dust was headed off by another but longer
+one which wound across their path. The main road into which their own
+opened was filled by the rushing current of traps. The Wilson
+contingent halted until the others should get past. The iron-men
+cheered and groaned, according to their humour, as they whirled past
+their antagonist. Rough chaff flew back and forwards like iron nuts and
+splinters of coal. “Brought him up, then!” “Got t’ hearse for to fetch
+him back?” “Where’s t’ owd K-legs?” “Mon, mon, have thy photograph
+took--’twill mind thee of what thou used to look!” “He fight?--he’s
+nowt but a half-baked doctor!” “Happen he’ll doctor thy Croxley
+Champion afore he’s through wi’t.”
+
+So they flashed at each other as the one side waited and the other
+passed. Then there came a rolling murmur swelling into a shout, and a
+great brake with four horses came clattering along, all streaming with
+salmon-pink ribbons. The driver wore a white hat with pink rosette, and
+beside him, on the high seat, were a man and a woman-she with her arm
+round his waist. Montgomery had one glimpse of them as they flashed
+past; he with a furry cap drawn low over his brow, a great frieze coat
+and a pink comforter round his throat; she brazen, red-headed,
+bright-coloured, laughing excitedly. The Master, for it was he, turned
+as he passed, gazed hard at Montgomery, and gave him a menacing,
+gap-toothed grin. It was a hard, wicked face, blue-jowled and craggy,
+with long, obstinate cheeks and inexorable eyes. The brake behind was
+full of patrons of the sport-flushed iron-foremen, heads of departments,
+managers. One was drinking from a metal flask, and raised it to
+Montgomery as he passed; and then the crowd thinned, and the Wilson
+cortege with their dragoons swept in at the rear of the others.
+
+The road led away from Croxley, between curving green hills, gashed and
+polluted by the searchers for coal and iron. The whole country had been
+gutted, and vast piles of refuse and mountains of slag suggested the
+mighty chambers which the labour of man had burrowed beneath. On the
+left the road curved up to where a huge building, roofless and
+dismantled, stood crumbling and forlorn, with the light shining through
+the windowless squares.
+
+“That’s the old Arrowsmith’s factory. That’s where the fight is to be,”
+said Wilson. “How are you feeling now?”
+
+“Thank you, I was never better in my life,” Montgomery answered.
+
+“By Gad, I like your nerve!” said Wilson, who was himself flushed and
+uneasy. “You’ll give us a fight for our money, come what may.
+That place on the right is the office, and that has been set aside as
+the dressing and weighing room.”
+
+The carriage drove up to it amidst the shouts of the folk upon the
+hillside. Lines of empty carriages and traps curved down upon the
+winding road, and a black crowd surged round the door of the ruined
+factory. The seats, as a huge placard announced, were five shillings,
+three shillings, and a shilling, with half-price for dogs. The takings,
+deducting expenses, were to go to the winner, and it was already evident
+that a larger stake than a hundred pounds was in question. A babel of
+voices rose from the door. The workers wished to bring their dogs in
+free. The men scuffled. The dogs barked. The crowd was a whirling,
+eddying pool surging with a roar up to the narrow cleft which was its
+only outlet.
+
+The brake, with its salmon-coloured streamers and four reeking horses,
+stood empty before the door of the office; Wilson, Purvis, Fawcett and
+Montgomery passed in.
+
+There was a large, bare room inside with square, clean patches upon the
+grimy walls, where pictures and almanacs had once hung. Worn linoleum
+covered the floor, but there was no furniture save some benches and a
+deal table with an ewer and a basin upon it. Two of the corners were
+curtained off. In the middle of the room was a weighing-chair.
+A hugely fat man, with a salmon tie and a blue waistcoat with bird’s-eye
+spots, came bustling up to them. It was Armitage, the butcher and
+grazier, well known for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal
+patron of sport in the Riding. “Well, well,” he grunted, in a thick,
+fussy, wheezy voice, “you have come, then. Got your man? Got your man?”
+
+“Here he is, fit and well. Mr. Montgomery, let me present you to Mr.
+Armitage.”
+
+“Glad to meet you, sir. Happy to make your acquaintance. I make bold
+to say, sir, that we of Croxley admire your courage, Mr. Montgomery, and
+that our only hope is a fair fight and no favour, and the best man win.
+That’s our sentiments at Croxley.”
+
+“And it is my sentiment, also,” said the assistant.
+
+“Well, you can’t say fairer than that, Mr. Montgomery. You’ve taken a
+large contrac’ in hand, but a large contrac’ may be carried through,
+sir, as anyone that knows my dealings could testify. The Master is
+ready to weigh in!”
+
+“So am I.”
+
+“You must weigh in the buff.” Montgomery looked askance at the tall,
+red-headed woman who was standing gazing out of the window.
+
+“That’s all right,” said Wilson. “Get behind the curtain and put on
+your fighting kit.”
+
+He did so, and came out the picture of an athlete, in white, loose
+drawers, canvas shoes, and the sash of a well-known cricket club round
+his waist. He was trained to a hair, his skin gleaming like silk, and
+every muscle rippling down his broad shoulders and along his beautiful
+arms as he moved them. They bunched into ivory knobs, or slid into
+long, sinuous curves, as he raised or lowered his hands.
+
+“What thinkest thou o’ that?” asked Ted Barton, his second, of the woman
+in the window.
+
+She glanced contemptuously at the young athlete. “It’s but a poor
+kindness thou dost him to put a thread-paper yoong gentleman like yon
+against a mon as is a mon. Why, my Jock would throttle him wi’ one hond
+lashed behind him.”
+
+“Happen he may--happen not,” said Barton. “I have but twa pund in the
+world, but it’s on him, every penny, and no hedgin’. But here’s t’
+Maister, and rarely fine he do look.”
+
+The prize-fighter had come out from his curtain, a squat, formidable
+figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted
+leg. His skin had none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery’s,
+but was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled
+black hair which thatched his mighty breast. His weight bore no
+relation to his strength, for those huge shoulders and great arms, with
+brown, sledge-hammer fists, would have fitted the heaviest man that ever
+threw his cap into a ring. But his loins and legs were slight in
+proportion. Montgomery, on the other hand, was as symmetrical as a
+Greek statue. It would be an encounter between a man who was specially
+fitted for one sport, and one who was equally capable of any. The two
+looked curiously at each other: a bulldog, and a high-bred clean-limbed
+terrier, each full of spirit.
+
+“How do you do?”
+
+“How do?” The Master grinned again, and his three jagged front teeth
+gleamed for an instant. The rest had been beaten out of him in twenty
+years of battle. He spat upon the floor. “We have a rare fine day
+for’t.”
+
+“Capital,” said Montgomery.
+
+“That’s the good feelin’ I like,” wheezed the fat butcher. “Good lads,
+both of them!--prime lads!--hard meat an’ good bone. There’s no
+ill-feelin’.”
+
+“If he downs me, Gawd bless him!” said the Master.
+
+“An’ if we down him, Gawd help him!” interrupted the woman.
+
+“Haud thy tongue, wench!” said the Master, impatiently. “Who art thou
+to put in thy word? Happen I might draw my hand across thy face.”
+
+The woman did not take the threat amiss. “Wilt have enough for thy hand
+to do, Jock,” said she. “Get quit o’ this gradely man afore thou turn
+on me.”
+
+The lovers’ quarrel was interrupted by the entrance of a newcomer, a
+gentleman with a fur-collared overcoat and a very shiny top-hat--a
+top-hat of a degree of glossiness which is seldom seen five miles from
+Hyde Park. This hat he wore at the extreme back of his head, so that
+the lower surface of the brim made a kind of frame for his high, bald
+forehead, his, keen eyes, his rugged and yet kindly face. He bustled in
+with the quiet air of possession with which the ring master enters the
+circus.
+
+“It’s Mr. Stapleton, the referee from London,” said Wilson.
+
+“How do you do, Mr. Stapleton? I was introduced to you at the big fight
+at the Corinthian Club in Piccadilly.”
+
+“Ah! I dare say,” said the other, shaking hands. “Fact is, I’m
+introduced to so many that I can’t undertake to carry their names.
+Wilson, is it? Well, Mr. Wilson, glad to see you. Couldn’t get a fly
+at the station, and that’s why I’m late.”
+
+“I’m sure, sir,” said Armitage, “we should be proud that anyone so well
+known in the boxing world should come down to our little exhibition.”
+
+“Not at all. Not at all. Anything in the interests of boxin’. All
+ready? Men weighed?”
+
+“Weighing now, sir.”
+
+“Ah! Just as well that I should see it done. Seen you before,
+Craggs. Saw you fight your second battle against Willox. You had
+beaten him once, but he came back on you. What does the indicator
+say?--163lbs.--two off for the kit--161lbs. Now, my lad, you jump. My
+goodness, what colours are you wearing?”
+
+“The Anonymi Cricket Club.”
+
+“What right have you to wear them? I belong to the club myself.”
+
+“So do I.”
+
+“You an amateur?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And you are fighting for a money prize?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I suppose you know what you are doing? You realise that you’re a
+professional pug from this onwards, and that if ever you fight again--”
+
+“I’ll never fight again.”
+
+“Happen you won’t,” said the woman, and the Master turned a terrible eye
+upon her.
+
+“Well, I suppose you know your own business best. Up you jump. One
+hundred and fifty-one, minus two, 149--12lbs. difference, but youth and
+condition on the other scale. Well, the sooner we get to work the
+better, for I wish to catch the seven o’clock express at Hellifield.
+Twenty three-minute rounds, with one-minute intervals, and Queensberry
+rules. Those are the conditions, are they not?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Very good, then--we may go across.”
+
+The two combatants had overcoats thrown over their shoulders, and the
+whole party, backers, fighters, seconds, and the referee filed out of
+the room. A police inspector was waiting for them in the road. He had
+a note-book in his hand--that terrible weapon which awes even the
+London cabman.
+
+“I must take your names, gentlemen, in case it should be necessary to
+proceed for breach of peace.”
+
+“You don’t mean to stop the fight?” cried Armitage, in a passion of
+indignation. “I’m Mr. Armitage, of Croxley, and this is Mr. Wilson, and
+we’ll be responsible that all is fair and as it should be.”
+
+“I’ll take the names in case it should be necessary to proceed,” said
+the inspector, impassively.
+
+“But you know me well.”
+
+“If you was a dook or even a judge it would be all the same,” said the
+inspector. “It’s the law, and there’s an end. I’ll not take upon
+myself to stop the fight, seeing that gloves are to be used, but I’ll
+take the names of all concerned. Silas Craggs, Robert Montgomery,
+Edward Barton, James Stapleton, of London. Who seconds Silas Craggs?”
+
+“I do,” said the woman. “Yes, you can stare, but it’s my job, and no
+one else’s. Anastasia’s the name--four a’s.”
+
+“Craggs?”
+
+“Johnson--Anastasia Johnson. If you jug him you can jug me.”
+
+“Who talked of juggin’, ye fool?” growled the Master. “Coom on, Mr.
+Armitage, for I’m fair sick o’ this loiterin’.”
+
+The inspector fell in with the procession, and proceeded, as they walked
+up the hill, to bargain in his official capacity for a front seat, where
+he could safeguard the interests of the law, and in his private
+capacity to lay out thirty shillings at seven to one with Mr. Armitage.
+Through the door they passed, down a narrow lane walled with a dense
+bank of humanity, up a wooden ladder to a platform, over a rope which
+was slung waist-high from four corner-stakes, and then Montgomery
+realised that he was in that ring in which his immediate destiny was to
+be worked out. On the stake at one corner there hung a blue-and-white
+streamer. Barton led him across, the overcoat dangling loosely from his
+shoulders, and he sat down on a wooden stool. Barton and another man,
+both wearing white sweaters, stood beside him. The so-called ring was a
+square, twenty feet each way. At the opposite angle was the sinister
+figure of the Master, with his red-headed woman and a rough-faced friend
+to look after him. At each corner were metal basins, pitchers of water,
+and sponges.
+
+During the hubbub and uproar of the entrance Montgomery was too
+bewildered to take things in. But now there was a few minutes’ delay,
+for the referee had lingered behind, and so he looked quietly about him.
+It was a sight to haunt him for a lifetime. Wooden seats had been built
+in, sloping upwards to the tops of the walls. Above, instead of a
+ceiling, a great flight of crows passed slowly across a square of grey
+cloud. Right up to the topmost benches the folk were banked--broadcloth
+in front, corduroys and fustian behind; faces turned everywhere upon
+him. The grey reek of the pipes filled the building, and the air was
+pungent with the acrid smell of cheap, strong tobacco. Everywhere among
+the human faces were to be seen the heads of the dogs. They growled and
+yapped from the back benches. In that dense mass of humanity, one could
+hardly pick out individuals, but Montgomery’s eyes caught the brazen
+gleam of the helmets held upon the knees of the ten yeomen of his
+escort. At the very edge of the platform sat the reporters, five of
+them--three locals and two all the way from London. But where was the
+all-important referee? There was no sign of him, unless he were in the
+centre of that angry swirl of men near the door.
+
+Mr. Stapleton had stopped to examine the gloves which were to be used,
+and entered the building after the combatants. He had started to come
+down that narrow lane with the human walls which led to the ring.
+But already it had gone abroad that the Wilson champion was a gentleman,
+and that another gentleman had been appointed as referee. A wave of
+suspicion passed through the Croxley folk. They would have one of their
+own people for a referee. They would not have a stranger. His path was
+stopped as he made for the ring. Excited men flung themselves in front
+of him; they waved their fists in his face and cursed him. A woman
+howled vile names in his ear. Somebody struck at him with an umbrella.
+“Go thou back to Lunnon. We want noan o’ thee. Go thou back!” they
+yelled.
+
+Stapleton, with his shiny hat cocked backwards, and his large, bulging
+forehead swelling from under it, looked round him from beneath his bushy
+brows. He was in the centre of a savage and dangerous mob. Then he
+drew his watch from his pocket and held it dial upwards in his palm.
+
+“In three minutes,” said he, “I will declare the fight off.”
+
+They raged round him. His cool face and that aggressive top-hat
+irritated them. Grimy hands were raised. But it was difficult,
+somehow, to strike a man who was so absolutely indifferent.
+
+“In two minutes I declare the fight off.”
+
+They exploded into blasphemy. The breath of angry men smoked into his
+placid face. A gnarled, grimy fist vibrated at the end of his nose.
+“We tell thee we want noan o’ thee. Get thou back where thou com’st
+from.”
+
+“In one minute I declare the fight off.”
+
+Then the calm persistence of the man conquered the swaying, mutable,
+passionate crowd.
+
+“Let him through, mon. Happen there’ll be no fight after a’.”
+
+“Let him through.”
+
+“Bill, thou loomp, let him pass. Dost want the fight declared off?”
+
+“Make room for the referee!--room for the Lunnon referee!”
+
+And half pushed, half carried, he was swept up to the ring. There were
+two chairs by the side of it, one for him and one for the timekeeper.
+He sat down, his hands on his knees, his hat at a more wonderful angle
+than ever, impassive but solemn, with the aspect of one who appreciates
+his responsibilities.
+
+Mr. Armitage, the portly butcher, made his way into the ring and held up
+two fat hands, sparkling with rings, as a signal for silence.
+
+“Gentlemen!” he yelled. And then in a crescendo shriek, “Gentlemen!”
+
+“And ladies!” cried somebody, for, indeed, there was a fair sprinkling
+of women among the crowd. “Speak up, owd man!” shouted another. “What
+price pork chops?” cried somebody at the back. Everybody laughed, and
+the dogs began to bark. Armitage waved his hands amidst the uproar as
+if he were conducting an orchestra. At last the babel thinned into
+silence.
+
+“Gentlemen,” he yelled, “the match is between Silas Craggs, whom we
+call the Master of Croxley, and Robert Montgomery, of the Wilson
+Coal-pits. The match was to be under eleven-eight. When they were
+weighed just now, Craggs weighed eleven-seven, and Montgomery ten-nine.
+The conditions of the contest are--the best of twenty three-minute
+rounds with two-ounce gloves. Should the fight run to its full length,
+it will, of course, be decided upon points. Mr. Stapleton, the
+well-known London referee, has kindly consented to see fair play.
+I wish to say that Mr. Wilson and I, the chief backers of the two men,
+have every confidence in Mr. Stapleton, and that we beg that you will
+accept his rulings without dispute.”
+
+He then turned from one combatant to the other, with a wave of his hand.
+
+
+                             III
+
+
+“Montgomery--Craggs!” said he.
+
+A great hush fell over the huge assembly. Even the dogs stopped
+yapping; one might have thought that the monstrous room was empty.
+The two men had stood up, the small white gloves over their hands.
+They advanced from their corners and shook hands, Montgomery gravely,
+Craggs with a smile. Then they fell into position. The crowd gave a
+long sigh--the intake of a thousand excited breaths. The referee tilted
+his chair on to its back legs, and looked moodily critical from the one
+to the other.
+
+It was strength against activity--that was evident from the first.
+The Master stood stolidly upon his K leg. It gave him a tremendous
+pedestal; one could hardly imagine his being knocked down. And he could
+pivot round upon it with extraordinary quickness; but his advance or
+retreat was ungainly. His frame, however, was so much larger and
+broader than that of the student, and his brown, massive face looked so
+resolute and menacing that the hearts of the Wilson party sank within
+them. There was one heart, however, which had not done so. It was that
+of Robert Montgomery.
+
+Any nervousness which he may have had completely passed away now that he
+had his work before him. Here was something definite--this hard-faced,
+deformed Hercules to beat, with a career as the price of beating him.
+He glowed with the joy of action; it thrilled through his nerves.
+He faced his man with little in-and-out steps, breaking to the left,
+breaking to the right, feeling his way, while Craggs, with a dull,
+malignant eye, pivoted slowly upon his weak leg, his left arm half
+extended, his right sunk low across the mark. Montgomery led with his
+left, and then led again, getting lightly home each time. He tried
+again, but the Master had his counter ready, and Montgomery reeled back
+from a harder blow than he had given. Anastasia, the woman, gave a
+shrill cry of encouragement, and her man let fly his right. Montgomery
+ducked under it, and in an instant the two were in each other’s arms.
+
+“Break away! Break away!” said the referee.
+
+The Master struck upwards on the break, and shook Montgomery with the
+blow. Then it was “time.” It had been a spirited opening round.
+The people buzzed into comment and applause. Montgomery was quite
+fresh, but the hairy chest of the Master was rising and falling.
+The man passed a sponge over his head while Anastasia flapped the towel
+before him. “Good lass! good lass!” cried the crowd, and cheered her.
+
+The men were up again, the Master grimly watchful, Montgomery as alert
+as a kitten. The Master tried a sudden rush, squattering along with his
+awkward gait, but coming faster than one would think. The student
+slipped aside and avoided him. The Master stopped, grinned, and shook
+his head. Then he motioned with his hand as an invitation to
+Montgomery to come to him. The student did so and led with his left,
+but got a swinging right counter in the ribs in exchange. The heavy
+blow staggered him, and the Master came scrambling in to complete his
+advantage; but Montgomery, with his greater activity, kept out of danger
+until the call of “time.” A tame round, and the advantage with the
+Master.
+
+“T’ Maister’s too strong for him,” said a smelter to his neighbour.
+
+“Ay; but t’other’s a likely lad. Happen we’ll see some sport yet.
+He can joomp rarely.”
+
+“But t’ Maister can stop and hit rarely. Happen he’ll mak’ him joomp
+when he gets his nief upon him.”
+
+They were up again, the water glistening upon their faces. Montgomery
+led instantly, and got his right home with a sounding smack upon the
+master’s forehead. There was a shout from the colliers, and “Silence!
+Order!” from the referee. Montgomery avoided the counter, and scored
+with his left. Fresh applause, and the referee upon his feet in
+indignation.
+
+“No comments, gentlemen, if _you_ please, during the rounds.”
+
+“Just bide a bit!” growled the Master.
+
+“Don’t talk--fight!” said the referee, angrily.
+
+Montgomery rubbed in the point by a flush hit upon the mouth, and the
+Master shambled back to his corner like an angry bear, having had all
+the worst of the round.
+
+“Where’s thot seven to one?” shouted Purvis, the publican. “I’ll take
+six to one!”
+
+There were no answers.
+
+“Five to one!”
+
+There were givers at that. Purvis booked them in a tattered notebook.
+
+Montgomery began to feel happy. He lay back with his legs outstretched,
+his back against the corner-post, and one gloved hand upon each rope.
+What a delicious minute it was between each round. If he could only
+keep out of harm’s way, he must surely wear this man out before the end
+of twenty rounds. He was so slow that all his strength went for
+nothing.
+
+“You’re fightin’ a winnin’ fight--a winnin’ fight,” Ted Barton whispered
+in his ear. “Go canny; tak’ no chances; you have him proper.”
+
+But the Master was crafty. He had fought so many battles with his
+maimed limb that he knew how to make the best of it. Warily and slowly
+he manoeuvred round Montgomery, stepping forward and yet again forward
+until he had imperceptibly backed him into his corner. The student
+suddenly saw a flash of triumph upon the grim face, and a gleam in the
+dull, malignant eyes. The Master was upon him. He sprang aside and was
+on the ropes. The Master smashed in one of his terrible upper-cuts, and
+Montgomery half broke it with his guard. The student sprang the other
+way and was against the other converging rope. He was trapped in the
+angle. The Master sent in another with a hoggish grunt which spoke of
+the energy behind it. Montgomery ducked, but got a jab from the left
+upon the mark. He closed with his man.
+
+“Break away! Break away!” cried the referee. Montgomery disengaged,
+and got a swinging blow on the ear as he did so. It had been a damaging
+round for him, and the Croxley people were shouting their delight.
+“Gentlemen, I will _not_ have this noise!” Stapleton roared. “I have
+been accustomed to preside at a well-conducted club, and not at a
+bear-garden.” This little man, with the tilted hat and the bulging
+forehead, dominated the whole assembly. He was like a head-master among
+his boys. He glared round him, and nobody cared to meet his eye.
+Anastasia had kissed the Master when he resumed his seat.
+
+“Good lass. Do’t again!” cried the laughing crowd, and the angry Master
+shook his glove at her, as she flapped her towel in front of him.
+Montgomery was weary and a little sore, but not depressed. He had
+learned something. He would not again be tempted into danger.
+
+For three rounds the honours were fairly equal. The student’s hitting
+was the quicker, the Master’s the harder. Profiting by his lesson,
+Montgomery kept himself in the open, and refused to be herded into a
+corner. Sometimes the Master succeeded in rushing him to the
+side-ropes, but the younger man slipped away, or closed and then
+disengaged. The monotonous “Break away! Break away!” of the referee
+broke in upon the quick, low patter of rubber-soled shoes, the dull thud
+of the blows, and the sharp, hissing breath of two tired men.
+
+The ninth round found both of them in fairly good condition.
+Montgomery’s head was still singing from the blow that he had in the
+corner, and one of his thumbs pained him acutely and seemed to be
+dislocated. The Master showed no sign of a touch, but his breathing was
+the more laboured, and a long line of ticks upon the referee’s paper
+showed that the student had a good show of points. But one of this
+iron-man’s blows was worth three of his, and he knew that without the
+gloves he could not have stood for three rounds against him. All the
+amateur work that he had done was the merest tapping and flapping when
+compared to those frightful blows, from arms toughened by the shovel and
+the crowbar.
+
+It was the tenth round, and the fight was half over. The betting now
+was only three to one, for the Wilson champion had held his own much
+better than had been expected. But those who knew the ring-craft as
+well as the staying power of the old prize-fighter knew that the odds
+were still a long way in his favour.
+
+“Have a care of him!” whispered Barton, as he sent his man up to the
+scratch. “Have a care! He’ll play thee a trick, if he can.”
+
+But Montgomery saw, or imagined he saw, that his antagonist was tiring.
+He looked jaded and listless, and his hands drooped a little from their
+position. His own youth and condition were beginning to tell.
+He sprang in and brought off a fine left-handed lead. The Master’s
+return lacked his usual fire. Again Montgomery led, and again he got
+home. Then he tried his right upon the mark, and the Master guarded it
+downwards.
+
+“Too low! Too low! A foul! A foul!” yelled a thousand voices.
+
+The referee rolled his sardonic eyes slowly round. “Seems to me this
+buildin’ is chock-full of referees,” said he. The people laughed and
+applauded, but their favour was as immaterial to him as their anger.
+“No applause, please! This is not a theatre!” he yelled.
+
+Montgomery was very pleased with himself. His adversary was evidently
+in a bad way. He was piling on his points and establishing a lead.
+He might as well make hay while the sun shone. The Master was looking
+all abroad. Montgomery popped one upon his blue jowl and got away
+without a return. And then the Master suddenly dropped both his hands
+and began rubbing his thigh. Ah! that was it, was it? He had muscular
+cramp.
+
+“Go in! Go in!” cried Teddy Barton.
+
+Montgomery sprang wildly forward, and the next instant was lying half
+senseless, with his neck nearly broken, in the middle of the ring.
+
+The whole round had been a long conspiracy to tempt him within reach of
+one of those terrible right-hand upper-cuts for which the Master was
+famous. For this the listless, weary bearing, for this the cramp in the
+thigh. When Montgomery had sprung in so hotly he had exposed himself to
+such a blow as neither flesh nor blood could stand. Whizzing up from
+below with a rigid arm, which put the Master’s eleven stone into its
+force, it struck him under the jaw; he whirled half round, and fell a
+helpless and half-paralysed mass. A vague groan and murmur,
+inarticulate, too excited for words, rose from the great audience.
+With open mouths and staring eyes they gazed at the twitching and
+quivering figure.
+
+“Stand back! Stand right back!” shrieked the referee, for the Master
+was standing over his man ready to give him the _coup-de-grace_ as he
+rose.
+
+“Stand back, Craggs, this instant!” Stapleton repeated.
+
+The Master sank his hands sulkily and walked backwards to the rope with
+his ferocious eyes fixed upon his fallen antagonist. The timekeeper
+called the seconds. If ten of them passed before Montgomery rose to his
+feet, the fight was ended. Ted Barton wrung his hands and danced about
+in an agony in his corner.
+
+As if in a dream--a terrible nightmare--the student could hear the voice
+of the timekeeper--three--four--five--he got up on his hand--six--
+seven--he was on his knee, sick, swimming, faint, but resolute to rise.
+Eight--he was up, and the Master was on him like a tiger, lashing
+savagely at him with both hands. Folk held their breath as they watched
+those terrible blows, and anticipated the pitiful end--so much more
+pitiful where a game but helpless man refuses to accept defeat.
+
+Strangely automatic is the human brain. Without volition, without
+effort, there shot into the memory of this bewildered, staggering,
+half-stupefied man the one thing which could have saved him--that blind
+eye of which the Master’s son had spoken. It was the same as the other
+to look at, but Montgomery remembered that he had said that it was the
+left. He reeled to the left side, half felled by a drive which lit upon
+his shoulder. The Master pivoted round upon his leg and was at him in
+an instant.
+
+“Yark him, lad! Yark him!” screamed the woman.
+
+“Hold your tongue!” said the referee.
+
+Montgomery slipped to the left again and yet again, but the Master was
+too quick and clever for him. He struck round and got him full on the
+face as he tried once more to break away. Montgomery’s knees weakened
+under him, and he fell with a groan on the floor. This time he knew
+that he was done. With bitter agony he realised, as he groped blindly
+with his hands, that he could not possibly raise himself. Far away and
+muffled he heard, amid the murmurs of the multitude, the fateful voice
+of the timekeeper counting off the seconds.
+
+“One--two--three--four--five--six--”
+
+“Time!” said the referee.
+
+Then the pent-up passion of the great assembly broke loose. Croxley
+gave a deep groan of disappointment. The Wilsons were on their feet,
+yelling with delight. There was still a chance for them. In four more
+seconds their man would have been solemnly counted out. But now he had
+a minute in which to recover. The referee looked round with relaxed
+features and laughing eyes. He loved this rough game, this school for
+humble heroes, and it was pleasant to him to intervene as a _Deus ex
+machina_ at so dramatic a moment. His chair and his hat were both
+tilted at an extreme angle; he and the timekeeper smiled at each other.
+Ted Barton and the other second had rushed out and thrust an arm each
+under Montgomery’s knee, the other behind his loins, and so carried him
+back to his stool. His head lolled upon his shoulder, but a douche of
+cold water sent a shiver through him, and he started and looked round
+him.
+
+“He’s a’ right!” cried the people round. “He’s a rare brave lad.
+Good lad! Good lad!” Barton poured some brandy into his mouth.
+The mists cleared a little, and he realised where he was and what he had
+to do. But he was still very weak, and he hardly dared to hope that he
+could survive another round.
+
+“Seconds out of the ring!” cried the referee. “Time!”
+
+The Croxley Master sprang eagerly off his stool.
+
+“Keep clear of him! Go easy for a bit,” said Barton, and Montgomery
+walked out to meet his man once more.
+
+He had had two lessons--the one when the Master got him into his corner,
+the other when he had been lured into mixing it up with so powerful an
+antagonist. Now he would be wary. Another blow would finish him; he
+could afford to run no risks. The Master was determined to follow up
+his advantage, and rushed at him, slogging furiously right and left.
+But Montgomery was too young and active to be caught. He was strong
+upon his legs once more, and his wits had all come back to him. It was
+a gallant sight--the line-of-battleship trying to pour its overwhelming
+broadside into the frigate, and the frigate manoeuvring always so as to
+avoid it. The Master tried all his ring-craft. He coaxed the student
+up by pretended inactivity; he rushed at him with furious rushes
+towards the ropes. For three rounds he exhausted every wile in trying
+to get at him. Montgomery during all this time was conscious that his
+strength was minute by minute coming back to him. The spinal jar from
+an upper-cut is overwhelming, but evanescent. He was losing all sense
+of it beyond a great stiffness of the neck. For the first round after
+his downfall he had been content to be entirely on the defensive, only
+too happy if he could stall off the furious attacks of the Master.
+In the second he occasionally ventured upon a light counter. In the
+third he was smacking back merrily where he saw an opening. His people
+yelled their approval of him at the end of every round. Even the
+iron-workers cheered him with that fine unselfishness which true sport
+engenders. To most of them, unspiritual and unimaginative, the sight of
+this clean-limbed young Apollo, rising above disaster and holding on
+while consciousness was in him to his appointed task, was the greatest
+thing their experience had ever known.
+
+But the Master’s naturally morose temper became more and more murderous
+at this postponement of his hopes. Three rounds ago the battle had been
+in his hands; now it was all to do over again. Round by round his man
+was recovering his strength. By the fifteenth he was strong again in
+wind and limb. But the vigilant Anastasia saw something which
+encouraged her.
+
+“That bash in t’ ribs is telling on him, Jock,” she whispered.
+“Why else should he be gulping t’ brandy? Go in, lad, and thou hast him
+yet.”
+
+Montgomery had suddenly taken the flask from Barton’s hand, and had a
+deep pull at the contents. Then, with his face a little flushed, and
+with a curious look of purpose, which made the referee stare hard at
+him, in his eyes, he rose for the sixteenth round.
+
+“Game as a pairtridge!” cried the publican, as he looked at the hard-set
+face.
+
+“Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!” cried the iron-men to their Master.
+And then a hum of exultation ran through their ranks as they realised
+that their tougher, harder, stronger man held the vantage, after all.
+Neither of the men showed much sign of punishment. Small gloves crush
+and numb, but they do not cut. One of the Master’s eyes was even more
+flush with his cheek than Nature had made it. Montgomery had two or
+three livid marks upon his body, and his face was haggard, save for that
+pink spot which the brandy had brought into either cheek. He rocked a
+little as he stood opposite his man, and his hands drooped as if he felt
+the gloves to be an unutterable weight. It was evident that he was
+spent and desperately weary. If he received one other blow it must
+surely be fatal to him. If he brought one home, what power could there
+be behind it, and what chance was there of its harming the colossus in
+front of him? It was the crisis of the fight. This round must decide
+it. “Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!” the iron-men whooped. Even the
+savage eyes of the referee were unable to restrain the excited crowd.
+
+Now, at last, the chance had come for Montgomery. He had learned a
+lesson from his more experienced rival. Why should he not play his own
+game upon him? He was spent, but not nearly so spent as he pretended.
+That brandy was to call up his reserves, to let him have strength to
+take full advantage of the opening when it came. It was thrilling and
+tingling through his veins at the very moment when he was lurching and
+rocking like a beaten man. He acted his part admirably. The Master
+felt that there was an easy task before him, and rushed in with ungainly
+activity to finish it once for all. He slap-banged away left and right,
+boring Montgomery up against the ropes, swinging in his ferocious blows
+with those animal grunts which told of the vicious energy behind them.
+
+But Montgomery was too cool to fall a victim to any of those murderous
+upper-cuts. He kept out of harm’s way with a rigid guard, an active
+foot, and a head which was swift to duck. And yet he contrived to
+present the same appearance of a man who is hopelessly done. The
+Master, weary from his own shower of blows, and fearing nothing from so
+weak a man, dropped his hand for an instant, and at that instant
+Montgomery’s right came home.
+
+It was a magnificent blow, straight, clean, crisp, with the force of the
+loins and the back behind it. And it landed where he had meant it to--
+upon the exact point of that blue-grained chin. Flesh and blood could
+not stand such a blow in such a place. Neither valour nor hardihood can
+save the man to whom it comes. The Master fell backwards, flat,
+prostrate, striking the ground with so simultaneous a clap that it was
+like a shutter falling from a wall. A yell, which no referee could
+control, broke from the crowded benches as the giant went down. He lay
+upon his back, his knees a little drawn up, his huge chest panting.
+He twitched and shook, but could not move. His feet pawed convulsively
+once or twice. It was no use. He was done. “Eight--nine--ten!” said
+the timekeeper, and the roar of a thousand voices, with a deafening
+clap like the broadside of a ship, told that the Master of Croxley was
+the Master no more.
+
+Montgomery stood half dazed, looking down at the huge, prostrate figure.
+He could hardly realise that it was indeed all over. He saw the referee
+motion towards him with his hand. He heard his name bellowed in triumph
+from every side. And then he was aware of someone rushing towards him;
+he caught a glimpse of a flushed face and an aureole of flying red hair,
+a gloveless fist struck him between the eyes, and he was on his back in
+the ring beside his antagonist, while a dozen of his supporters were
+endeavouring to secure the frantic Anastasia. He heard the angry
+shouting of the referee, the screaming of the furious woman, and the
+cries of the mob. Then something seemed to break like an over-stretched
+banjo string, and he sank into the deep, deep, mist-girt abyss of
+unconsciousness.
+
+The dressing was like a thing in a dream, and so was a vision of the
+Master with the grin of a bulldog upon his face, and his three teeth
+amiably protruded. He shook Montgomery heartily by the hand.
+
+“I would have been rare pleased to shake thee by the throttle, lad, a
+short while syne,” said he. “But I bear no ill-feeling again’ thee.
+It was a rare poonch that brought me down--I have not had a better
+since my second fight wi’ Billy Edwards in ’89. Happen thou might think
+o’ goin’ further wi’ this business. If thou dost, and want a trainer,
+there’s not much inside t’ ropes as I don’t know. Or happen thou might
+like to try it wi’ me old style and bare knuckles. Thou hast but to
+write to t’ iron-works to find me.”
+
+But Montgomery disclaimed any such ambition. A canvas bag with his
+share--190 sovereigns--was handed to him, of which he gave ten to the
+Master, who also received some share of the gate-money. Then, with
+young Wilson escorting him on one side, Purvis on the other, and Fawcett
+carrying his bag behind, he went in triumph to his carriage, and drove
+amid a long roar, which lined the highway like a hedge for the seven
+miles, back to his starting-point.
+
+“It’s the greatest thing I ever saw in my life. By George, it’s
+ripping!” cried Wilson, who had been left in a kind of ecstasy by the
+events of the day. “There’s a chap over Barnsley way who fancies
+himself a bit. Let us spring you on him, and let him see what he can
+make of you. We’ll put up a purse--won’t we, Purvis? You shall never
+want a backer.”
+
+“At his weight,” said the publican, “I’m behind him, I am, for twenty
+rounds, and no age, country, or colour barred.”
+
+“So am I,” cried Fawcett; “middle-weight champion of the world, that’s
+what he is--here, in the same carriage with us.”
+
+But Montgomery was not to be beguiled.
+
+“No; I have my own work to do now.”
+
+“And what may that be?”
+
+“I’ll use this money to get my medical degree.”
+
+“Well, we’ve plenty of doctors, but you’re the only man in the Riding
+that could smack the Croxley Master off his legs. However, I suppose
+you know your own business best. When you’re a doctor, you’d best come
+down into these parts, and you’ll always find a job waiting for you at
+the Wilson Coal-pits.”
+
+Montgomery had returned by devious ways to the surgery. The horses were
+smoking at the door, and the doctor was just back from his long journey.
+Several patients had called in his absence, and he was in the worst of
+tempers.
+
+“I suppose I should be glad that you have come back at all,
+Mr. Montgomery!” he snarled. “When next you elect to take a holiday, I
+trust it will not be at so busy a time.”
+
+“I am sorry, sir, that you should have been inconvenienced.”
+
+“Yes, sir, I have been exceedingly inconvenienced.” Here, for the first
+time, he looked hard at the assistant. “Good Heavens, Mr. Montgomery,
+what have you been doing with your left eye?”
+
+It was where Anastasia had lodged her protest. Montgomery laughed.
+
+“It is nothing, sir,” said he.
+
+“And you have a livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that
+my representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition.
+How did you receive these injuries?”
+
+“Well, sir, as you know, there was a little glove-fight to-day over at
+Croxley.”
+
+“And you got mixed up with that brutal crowd?”
+
+“I _was_ rather mixed up with them.”
+
+“And who assaulted you?”
+
+“One of the fighters.”
+
+“Which of them?”
+
+“The Master of Croxley.”
+
+“Good Heavens! Perhaps you interfered with him?”
+
+“Well, to tell the truth, I did a little.”
+
+“Mr. Montgomery, in such a practice as mine, intimately associated as it
+is with the highest and most progressive elements of our small
+community, it is impossible--”
+
+But just then the tentative bray of a cornet-player searching for his
+key-note jarred upon their ears, and an instant later the Wilson
+Colliery brass band was in full cry with, “See the Conquering Hero
+Comes,” outside the surgery window. There was a banner waving, and a
+shouting crowd of miners.
+
+“What is it? What does it mean?” cried the angry doctor.
+
+“It means, sir, that I have, in the only way which was open to me,
+earned the money which is necessary for my education. It is my duty,
+Dr. Oldacre, to warn you that I am about to return to the University,
+and that you should lose no time in appointing my successor.”
+
+
+
+
+THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR
+
+It was in the days when the German armies had broken their way across
+France, and when the shattered forces of the young Republic had been
+swept away to the north of the Aisne and to the south of the Loire.
+Three broad streams of armed men had rolled slowly but irresistibly from
+the Rhine, now meandering to the north, now to the south, dividing,
+coalescing, but all uniting to form one great lake round Paris. And
+from this lake there welled out smaller streams--one to the north, one
+southward, to Orleans, and a third westward to Normandy. Many a German
+trooper saw the sea for the first time when he rode his horse girth-deep
+into the waves at Dieppe.
+
+Black and bitter were the thoughts of Frenchmen when they saw this weal
+of dishonour slashed across the fair face of their country. They had
+fought and they had been overborne. That swarming cavalry, those
+countless footmen, the masterful guns--they had tried and tried to make
+head against them. In battalions their invaders were not to be beaten,
+but man to man, or ten to ten, they were their equals. A brave
+Frenchman might still make a single German rue the day that he had left
+his own bank of the Rhine. Thus, unchronicled amid the battles and the
+sieges, there broke out another war, a war of individuals, with foul
+murder upon the one side and brutal reprisal on the other.
+
+Colonel von Gramm, of the 24th Posen Infantry, had suffered severely
+during this new development. He commanded in the little Norman town of
+Les Andelys, and his outposts stretched amid the hamlets and farmhouses
+of the district round. No French force was within fifty miles of him,
+and yet morning after morning he had to listen to a black report of
+sentries found dead at their posts, or of foraging parties which had
+never returned. Then the colonel would go forth in his wrath, and
+farmsteadings would blaze and villages tremble; but next morning there
+was still that same dismal tale to be told. Do what he might, he could
+not shake off his invisible enemies. And yet it should not have been so
+hard, for, from certain signs in common, in the plan and in the deed, it
+was certain that all these outrages came from a single source.
+
+Colonel von Gramm had tried violence, and it had failed. Gold might be
+more successful. He published it abroad over the countryside that
+500frs. would be paid for information. There was no response. Then
+800frs. The peasants were incorruptible. Then, goaded on by a murdered
+corporal, he rose to a thousand, and so bought the soul of Francois
+Rejane, farm labourer, whose Norman avarice was a stronger passion than
+his French hatred.
+
+“You say that you know who did these crimes?” asked the Prussian
+colonel, eyeing with loathing the blue-bloused, rat-faced creature
+before him.
+
+“Yes, colonel.”
+
+“And it was--?”
+
+“Those thousand francs, colonel--”
+
+“Not a sou until your story has been tested. Come! Who is it who has
+murdered my men?”
+
+“It is Count Eustace of Chateau Noir.”
+
+“You lie!” cried the colonel, angrily. “A gentleman and a nobleman
+could not have done such crimes.”
+
+The peasant shrugged his shoulders. “It is evident to me that you do
+not know the count. It is this way, colonel. What I tell you is the
+truth, and I am not afraid that you should test it. The Count of
+Chateau Noir is a hard man, even at the best time he was a hard man.
+But of late he has been terrible. It was his son’s death, you know.
+His son was under Douay, and he was taken, and then in escaping from
+Germany he met his death. It was the count’s only child, and indeed we
+all think that it has driven him mad. With his peasants he follows the
+German armies. I do not know how many he has killed, but it is he who
+cut the cross upon the foreheads, for it is the badge of his house.”
+
+It was true. The murdered sentries had each had a saltire cross slashed
+across their brows, as by a hunting-knife. The colonel bent his stiff
+back and ran his forefinger over the map which lay upon the table.
+
+“The Chateau Noir is not more than four leagues,” he said.
+
+“Three and a kilometre, colonel.”
+
+“You know the place?”
+
+“I used to work there.”
+
+Colonel von Gramm rang the bell.
+
+“Give this man food and detain him,” said he to the sergeant.
+
+“Why detain me, colonel? I can tell you no more.”
+
+“We shall need you as guide.”
+
+“As guide? But the count? If I were to fall into his hands?
+Ah, colonel--”
+
+The Prussian commander waved him away. “Send Captain Baumgarten to me
+at once,” said he.
+
+The officer who answered the summons was a man of middle-age,
+heavy-jawed, blue-eyed, with a curving yellow moustache, and a brick-red
+face which turned to an ivory white where his helmet had sheltered it.
+He was bald, with a shining, tightly stretched scalp, at the back of
+which, as in a mirror, it was a favourite mess-joke of the subalterns to
+trim their moustaches. As a soldier he was slow, but reliable and
+brave. The colonel could trust him where a more dashing officer might
+be in danger.
+
+“You will proceed to Chateau Noir to-night, captain,” said he. “A guide
+has been provided. You will arrest the count and bring him back.
+If there is an attempt at rescue, shoot him at once.”
+
+“How many men shall I take, colonel?”
+
+“Well, we are surrounded by spies, and our only chance is to pounce upon
+him before he knows that we are on the way. A large force will attract
+attention. On the other hand, you must not risk being cut off.”
+
+“I might march north, colonel, as if to join General Goeben. Then I
+could turn down this road which I see upon your map, and get to Chateau
+Noir before they could hear of us. In that case, with twenty men--”
+
+“Very good, captain. I hope to see you with your prisoner to-morrow
+morning.”
+
+It was a cold December night when Captain Baumgarten marched out of Les
+Andelys with his twenty Poseners, and took the main road to the north
+west. Two miles out he turned suddenly down a narrow, deeply rutted
+track, and made swiftly for his man. A thin, cold rain was falling,
+swishing among the tall poplar trees and rustling in the fields on
+either side. The captain walked first with Moser, a veteran sergeant,
+beside him. The sergeant’s wrist was fastened to that of the French
+peasant, and it had been whispered in his ear that in case of an
+ambush the first bullet fired would be through his head. Behind them
+the twenty infantrymen plodded along through the darkness with their
+faces sunk to the rain, and their boots squeaking in the soft, wet clay.
+They knew where they were going, and why, and the thought upheld them,
+for they were bitter at the loss of their comrades. It was a cavalry
+job, they knew, but the cavalry were all on with the advance, and,
+besides, it was more fitting that the regiment should avenge its own
+dead men.
+
+It was nearly eight when they left Les Andelys. At half-past eleven
+their guide stopped at a place where two high pillars, crowned with some
+heraldic stonework, flanked a huge iron gate. The wall in which it had
+been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered
+above the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base. The
+Prussians made their way round it and advanced stealthily, under the
+shadow of a tunnel of oak branches, up the long avenue, which was still
+cumbered by the leaves of last autumn. At the top they halted and
+reconnoitred.
+
+The black chateau lay in front of them. The moon had shone out between
+two rain-clouds, and threw the old house into silver and shadow. It was
+shaped like an L, with a low arched door in front, and lines of small
+windows like the open ports of a man-of-war. Above was a dark roof,
+breaking at the corners into little round overhanging turrets, the whole
+lying silent in the moonshine, with a drift of ragged clouds blackening
+the heavens behind it. A single light gleamed in one of the lower
+windows.
+
+The captain whispered his orders to his men. Some were to creep to the
+front door, some to the back. Some were to watch the east, and some the
+west. He and the sergeant stole on tiptoe to the lighted window.
+
+It was a small room into which they looked, very meanly furnished.
+An elderly man, in the dress of a menial, was reading a tattered paper
+by the light of a guttering candle. He leaned back in his wooden chair
+with his feet upon a box, while a bottle of white wine stood with a
+half-filled tumbler upon a stool beside him. The sergeant thrust his
+needle-gun through the glass, and the man sprang to his feet with a
+shriek.
+
+“Silence, for your life! The house is surrounded, and you cannot
+escape. Come round and open the door, or we will show you no mercy when
+we come in.”
+
+“For God’s sake, don’t shoot! I will open it! I will open it!”
+He rushed from the room with his paper still crumpled up in his hand.
+An instant later, with a groaning of old locks and a rasping of bars,
+the low door swung open, and the Prussians poured into the stone-flagged
+passage.
+
+“Where is Count Eustace de Chateau Noir?”
+
+“My master! He is out, sir.”
+
+“Out at this time of night? Your life for a lie!”
+
+“It is true, sir. He is out!”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“I do not know.”
+
+“Doing what?”
+
+“I cannot tell. No, it is no use your cocking your pistol, sir. You
+may kill me, but you cannot make me tell you that which I do not know.”
+
+“Is he often out at this hour?”
+
+“Frequently.”
+
+“And when does he come home?”
+
+“Before daybreak.”
+
+Captain Baumgarten rasped out a German oath. He had had his journey
+for nothing, then. The man’s answers were only too likely to be true.
+It was what he might have expected. But at least he would search the
+house and make sure. Leaving a picket at the front door and another at
+the back, the sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of
+them--his shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the
+old tapestries and the low, oak-raftered ceilings. They searched the
+whole house, from the huge stone-flagged kitchen below to the
+dining-hall on the second floor, with its gallery for musicians, and
+its panelling black with age, but nowhere was there a living creature.
+Up above, in an attic, they found Marie, the elderly wife of the
+butler; but the owner kept no other servants, and of his own presence
+there was no trace.
+
+It was long, however, before Captain Baumgarten had satisfied himself
+upon the point. It was a difficult house to search. Thin stairs, which
+only one man could ascend at a time, connected lines of tortuous
+corridors. The walls were so thick that each room was cut off from its
+neighbour. Huge fireplaces yawned in each, while the windows were 6ft.
+deep in the wall. Captain Baumgarten stamped with his feet, tore down
+curtains, and struck with the pommel of his sword. If there were secret
+hiding-places, he was not fortunate enough to find them.
+
+“I have an idea,” said he, at last, speaking in German to the sergeant.
+“You will place a guard over this fellow, and make sure that he
+communicates with no one.”
+
+“Yes, captain.”
+
+“And you will place four men in ambush at the front and at the back. It
+is likely enough that about daybreak our bird may return to the nest.”
+
+“And the others, captain?”
+
+“Let them have their suppers in the kitchen. The fellow will serve you
+with meat and wine. It is a wild night, and we shall be better here
+than on the country road.”
+
+“And yourself, captain?”
+
+“I will take my supper up here in the dining-hall. The logs are laid
+and we can light the fire. You will call me if there is any alarm.
+What can you give me for supper--you?”
+
+“Alas, monsieur, there was a time when I might have answered, ‘What you
+wish!’ but now it is all that we can do to find a bottle of new claret
+and a cold pullet.”
+
+“That will do very well. Let a guard go about with him, sergeant, and
+let him feel the end of a bayonet if he plays us any tricks.”
+
+Captain Baumgarten was an old campaigner. In the Eastern provinces, and
+before that in Bohemia, he had learned the art of quartering himself
+upon the enemy. While the butler brought his supper he occupied himself
+in making his preparations for a comfortable night. He lit the
+candelabrum of ten candles upon the centre table. The fire was already
+burning up, crackling merrily, and sending spurts of blue, pungent smoke
+into the room. The captain walked to the window and looked out.
+The moon had gone in again, and it was raining heavily. He could hear
+the deep sough of the wind, and see the dark loom of the trees, all
+swaying in the one direction. It was a sight which gave a zest to his
+comfortable quarters, and to the cold fowl and the bottle of wine which
+the butler had brought up for him. He was tired and hungry after his
+long tramp, so he threw his sword, his helmet, and his revolver-belt
+down upon a chair, and fell to eagerly upon his supper. Then, with his
+glass of wine before him and his cigar between his lips, he tilted his
+chair back and looked about him.
+
+He sat within a small circle of brilliant light which gleamed upon his
+silver shoulder-straps, and threw out his terra-cotta face, his heavy
+eyebrows, and his yellow moustache. But outside that circle things were
+vague and shadowy in the old dining-hall. Two sides were oak-panelled
+and two were hung with faded tapestry, across which huntsmen and dogs
+and stags were still dimly streaming. Above the fireplace were rows of
+heraldic shields with the blazonings of the family and of its alliances,
+the fatal saltire cross breaking out on each of them.
+
+Four paintings of old seigneurs of Chateau Noir faced the fireplace, all
+men with hawk noses and bold, high features, so like each other that
+only the dress could distinguish the Crusader from the Cavalier of the
+Fronde. Captain Baumgarten, heavy with his repast, lay back in his
+chair looking up at them through the clouds of his tobacco smoke, and
+pondering over the strange chance which had sent him, a man from the
+Baltic coast, to eat his supper in the ancestral hall of these proud
+Norman chieftains. But the fire was hot, and the captain’s eyes were
+heavy. His chin sank slowly upon his chest, and the ten candles gleamed
+upon the broad, white scalp.
+
+Suddenly a slight noise brought him to his feet. For an instant it
+seemed to his dazed senses that one of the pictures opposite had walked
+from its frame. There, beside the table, and almost within arm’s length
+of him, was standing a huge man, silent, motionless, with no sign of
+life save his fierce-glinting eyes. He was black-haired, olive-skinned,
+with a pointed tuft of black beard, and a great, fierce nose, towards
+which all his features seemed to run. His cheeks were wrinkled like a
+last year’s apple, but his sweep of shoulder, and bony, corded hands,
+told of a strength which was unsapped by age. His arms were folded
+across his arching chest, and his mouth was set in a fixed smile.
+
+“Pray do not trouble yourself to look for your weapons,” he said, as the
+Prussian cast a swift glance at the empty chair in which they had been
+laid. “You have been, if you will allow me to say so, a little
+indiscreet to make yourself so much at home in a house every wall of
+which is honeycombed with secret passages. You will be amused to hear
+that forty men were watching you at your supper. Ah! what then?”
+
+Captain Baumgarten had taken a step forward with clenched fists.
+The Frenchman held up the revolver which he grasped in his right hand,
+while with the left he hurled the German back into his chair.
+
+“Pray keep your seat,” said he. “You have no cause to trouble about
+your men. They have already been provided for. It is astonishing with
+these stone floors how little one can hear what goes on beneath.
+You have been relieved of your command, and have now only to think of
+yourself. May I ask what your name is?”
+
+“I am Captain Baumgarten of the 24th Posen Regiment.”
+
+“Your French is excellent, though you incline, like most of your
+countrymen, to turn the ‘p’ into a ‘b.’ I have been amused to hear them
+cry ‘_Avez bitie sur moi!_’ You know, doubtless, who it is who addresses
+you.”
+
+“The Count of Chateau Noir.”
+
+“Precisely. It would have been a misfortune if you had visited my
+chateau and I had been unable to have a word with you. I have had to do
+with many German soldiers, but never with an officer before. I have
+much to talk to you about.”
+
+Captain Baumgarten sat still in his chair. Brave as he was, there was
+something in this man’s manner which made his skin creep with
+apprehension. His eyes glanced to right and to left, but his weapons
+were gone, and in a struggle he saw that he was but a child to this
+gigantic adversary. The count had picked up the claret bottle and held
+it to the light.
+
+“Tut! tut!” said he. “And was this the best that Pierre could do for
+you? I am ashamed to look you in the face, Captain Baumgarten. We must
+improve upon this.”
+
+He blew a call upon a whistle which hung from his shooting-jacket.
+The old manservant was in the room in an instant.
+
+“Chambertin from bin 15!” he cried, and a minute later a grey bottle,
+streaked with cobwebs, was carried in as a nurse bears an infant.
+The count filled two glasses to the brim.
+
+“Drink!” said he. “It is the very best in my cellars, and not to be
+matched between Rouen and Paris. Drink, sir, and be happy! There are
+cold joints below. There are two lobsters, fresh from Honfleur. Will
+you not venture upon a second and more savoury supper?”
+
+The German officer shook his head. He drained the glass, however, and
+his host filled it once more, pressing him to give an order for this or
+that dainty.
+
+“There is nothing in my house which is not at your disposal. You have
+but to say the word. Well, then, you will allow me to tell you a story
+while you drink your wine. I have so longed to tell it to some
+German officer. It is about my son, my only child, Eustace, who was
+taken and died in escaping. It is a curious little story, and I think
+that I can promise you that you will never forget it.
+
+“You must know, then, that my boy was in the artillery--a fine young
+fellow, Captain Baumgarten, and the pride of his mother. She died
+within a week of the news of his death reaching us. It was brought by a
+brother officer who was at his side throughout, and who escaped while my
+lad died. I want to tell you all that he told me.
+
+“Eustace was taken at Weissenburg on the 4th of August. The prisoners
+were broken up into parties, and sent back into Germany by different
+routes. Eustace was taken upon the 5th to a village called Lauterburg,
+where he met with kindness from the German officer in command.
+This good colonel had the hungry lad to supper, offered him the best he
+had, opened a bottle of good wine, as I have tried to do for you, and
+gave him a cigar from his own case. Might I entreat you to take one
+from mine?”
+
+The German again shook his head. His horror of his companion had
+increased as he sat watching the lips that smiled and the eyes that
+glared.
+
+“The colonel, as I say, was good to my boy. But, unluckily, the
+prisoners were moved next day across the Rhine into Ettlingen.
+They were not equally fortunate there. The officer who guarded them was
+a ruffian and a villain, Captain Baumgarten. He took a pleasure in
+humiliating and ill-treating the brave men who had fallen into his
+power. That night, upon my son answering fiercely back to some taunt of
+his, he struck him in the eye, like this!”
+
+The crash of the blow rang through the hall. The German’s face fell
+forward, his hand up, and blood oozing through his fingers. The count
+settled down in his chair once more.
+
+“My boy was disfigured by the blow, and this villain made his appearance
+the object of his jeers. By the way, you look a little comical yourself
+at the present moment, captain, and your colonel would certainly say
+that you had been getting into mischief. To continue, however, my boy’s
+youth and his destitution--for his pockets were empty--moved the pity of
+a kind-hearted major, and he advanced him ten Napoleons from his own
+pocket without security of any kind. Into your hands, Captain
+Baumgarten, I return these ten gold pieces, since I cannot learn the
+name of the lender. I am grateful from my heart for this kindness shown
+to my boy.
+
+“The vile tyrant who commanded the escort accompanied the prisoners to
+Durlack, and from there to Carlsruhe. He heaped every outrage upon my
+lad, because the spirit of the Chateau Noirs would not stoop to turn
+away his wrath by a feigned submission. Ay, this cowardly villain,
+whose heart’s blood shall yet clot upon this hand, dared to strike my
+son with his open hand, to kick him, to tear hairs from his moustache--
+to use him thus--and thus--and thus!”
+
+The German writhed and struggled. He was helpless in the hands of this
+huge giant whose blows were raining upon him. When at last, blinded and
+half-senseless, he staggered to his feet, it was only to be hurled back
+again into the great oaken chair. He sobbed in his impotent anger and
+shame.
+
+“My boy was frequently moved to tears by the humiliation of his
+position,” continued the count. “You will understand me when I say that
+it is a bitter thing to be helpless in the hands of an insolent and
+remorseless enemy. On arriving at Carlsruhe, however, his face, which
+had been wounded by the brutality of his guard, was bound up by a young
+Bavarian subaltern who was touched by his appearance. I regret to see
+that your eye is bleeding so. Will you permit me to bind it with my
+silk handkerchief?”
+
+He leaned forward, but the German dashed his hand aside.
+
+“I am in your power, you monster!” he cried; “I can endure your
+brutalities, but not your hypocrisy.”
+
+The count shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I am taking things in their order, just as they occurred,” said he.
+“I was under vow to tell it to the first German officer with whom I
+could talk _tete-a-tete_. Let me see, I had got as far as the young
+Bavarian at Carlsruhe. I regret extremely that you will not permit me
+to use such slight skill in surgery as I possess. At Carlsruhe, my lad
+was shut up in the old caserne, where he remained for a fortnight.
+The worst pang of his captivity was that some unmannerly curs in the
+garrison would taunt him with his position as he sat by his window in
+the evening. That reminds me, captain, that you are not quite situated
+upon a bed of roses yourself, are you now? You came to trap a wolf, my
+man, and now the beast has you down with his fangs in your throat.
+A family man, too, I should judge, by that well-filled tunic. Well, a
+widow the more will make little matter, and they do not usually remain
+widows long. Get back into the chair, you dog!
+
+“Well, to continue my story--at the end of a fortnight my son and his
+friend escaped. I need not trouble you with the dangers which they ran,
+or with the privations which they endured. Suffice it that to disguise
+themselves they had to take the clothes of two peasants, whom they
+waylaid in a wood. Hiding by day and travelling by night, they had got
+as far into France as Remilly, and were within a mile--a single mile,
+captain--of crossing the German lines when a patrol of Uhlans came right
+upon them. Ah! it was hard, was it not, when they had come so far and
+were so near to safety?” The count blew a double call upon his whistle,
+and three hard-faced peasants entered the room.
+
+“These must represent my Uhlans,” said he. “Well, then, the captain in
+command, finding that these men were French soldiers in civilian dress
+within the German lines, proceeded to hang them without trial or
+ceremony. I think, Jean, that the centre beam is the strongest.”
+
+The unfortunate soldier was dragged from his chair to where a noosed
+rope had been flung over one of the huge oaken rafters which spanned the
+room. The cord was slipped over his head, and he felt its harsh grip
+round his throat. The three peasants seized the other end, and looked
+to the count for his orders. The officer, pale, but firm, folded his
+arms and stared defiantly at the man who tortured him.
+
+“You are now face to face with death, and I perceive from your lips
+that you are praying. My son was also face to face with death, and he
+prayed, also. It happened that a general officer came up, and he heard
+the lad praying for his mother, and it moved him so--he being himself
+a father--that he ordered his Uhlans away, and he remained with his
+aide-de-camp only, beside the condemned men. And when he heard all the
+lad had to tell--that he was the only child of an old family, and that
+his mother was in failing health--he threw off the rope as I throw off
+this, and he kissed him on either cheek, as I kiss you, and he bade him
+go, as I bid you go, and may every kind wish of that noble general,
+though it could not stave off the fever which slew my son, descend now
+upon your head.”
+
+And so it was that Captain Baumgarten, disfigured, blinded, and
+bleeding, staggered out into the wind and the rain of that wild
+December dawn.
+
+
+
+
+THE STRIPED CHEST
+
+
+“What do you make of her, Allardyce?” I asked.
+
+My second mate was standing beside me upon the poop, with his short,
+thick legs astretch, for the gale had left a considerable swell behind
+it, and our two quarter-boats nearly touched the water with every roll.
+He steadied his glass against the mizzen-shrouds, and he looked long and
+hard at this disconsolate stranger every time she came reeling up on to
+the crest of a roller and hung balanced for a few seconds before
+swooping down upon the other side. She lay so low in the water that I
+could only catch an occasional glimpse of a pea-green line of bulwark.
+She was a brig, but her mainmast had been snapped short off some 10ft.
+above the deck, and no effort seemed to have been made to cut away the
+wreckage, which floated, sails and yards, like the broken wing of a
+wounded gull upon the water beside her. The foremast was still
+standing, but the foretopsail was flying loose, and the headsails were
+streaming out in long, white pennons in front of her. Never have I seen
+a vessel which appeared to have gone through rougher handling. But we
+could not be surprised at that, for there had been times during the last
+three days when it was a question whether our own barque would ever see
+land again. For thirty-six hours we had kept her nose to it, and if the
+_Mary Sinclair_ had not been as good a seaboat as ever left the Clyde,
+we could not have gone through. And yet here we were at the end of it
+with the loss only of our gig and of part of the starboard bulwark.
+It did not astonish us, however, when the smother had cleared away, to
+find that others had been less lucky, and that this mutilated brig
+staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky, had been
+left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the terror
+which is past. Allardyce, who was a slow and methodical Scotchman,
+stared long and hard at the little craft, while our seamen lined the
+bulwark or clustered upon the fore shrouds to have a view of the
+stranger. In latitude 20 degrees and longitude 10 degrees, which were
+about our bearings, one becomes a little curious as to whom one meets,
+for one has left the main lines of Atlantic commerce to the north.
+For ten days we had been sailing over a solitary sea.
+
+“She’s derelict, I’m thinking,” said the second mate.
+
+I had come to the same conclusion, for I could see no signs of life
+upon her deck, and there was no answer to the friendly wavings from our
+seamen. The crew had probably deserted her under the impression that
+she was about to founder.
+
+“She can’t last long,” continued Allardyce, in his measured way.
+“She may put her nose down and her tail up any minute. The water’s
+lipping up to the edge of her rail.”
+
+“What’s her flag?” I asked.
+
+“I’m trying to make out. It’s got all twisted and tangled with the
+halyards. Yes, I’ve got it now, clear enough. It’s the Brazilian flag,
+but it’s wrong side up.”
+
+She had hoisted a signal of distress, then, before her people had
+abandoned her. Perhaps they had only just gone. I took the mate’s
+glass and looked round over the tumultuous face of the deep blue
+Atlantic, still veined and starred with white lines and spoutings of
+foam. But nowhere could I see anything human beyond ourselves.
+
+“There may be living men aboard,” said I.
+
+“There may be salvage,” muttered the second mate.
+
+“Then we will run down upon her lee side, and lie to.” We were not more
+than a hundred yards from her when we swung our foreyard aback, and
+there we were, the barque and the brig, ducking and bowing like two
+clowns in a dance.
+
+“Drop one of the quarter-boats,” said I. “Take four men, Mr. Allardyce,
+and see what you can learn of her.”
+
+But just at that moment my first officer, Mr. Armstrong, came on deck,
+for seven bells had struck, and it was but a few minutes off his watch.
+It would interest me to go myself to this abandoned vessel and to see
+what there might be aboard of her. So, with a word to Armstrong, I
+swung myself over the side, slipped down the falls, and took my place in
+the sheets of the boat.
+
+It was but a little distance, but it took some time to traverse, and so
+heavy was the roll that often when we were in the trough of the sea, we
+could not see either the barque which we had left or the brig which we
+were approaching. The sinking sun did not penetrate down there, and it
+was cold and dark in the hollows of the waves, but each passing billow
+heaved us up into the warmth and the sunshine once more. At each of
+these moments, as we hung upon a white-capped ridge between the two dark
+valleys, I caught a glimpse of the long, pea-green line, and the nodding
+foremast of the brig, and I steered so as to come round by her stern, so
+that we might determine which was the best way of boarding her. As we
+passed her we saw the name _Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria_ painted across
+her dripping counter.
+
+“The weather side, sir,” said the second mate. “Stand by with the
+boat-hook, carpenter!” An instant later we had jumped over the
+bulwarks, which were hardly higher than our boat, and found ourselves
+upon the deck of the abandoned vessel. Our first thought was to provide
+for our own safety in case--as seemed very probable--the vessel should
+settle down beneath our feet. With this object two of our men held on
+to the painter of the boat, and fended her off from the vessel’s side,
+so that she might be ready in case we had to make a hurried retreat.
+The carpenter was sent to find out how much water there was, and whether
+it was still gaming, while the other seaman, Allardyce and myself, made
+a rapid inspection of the vessel and her cargo.
+
+The deck was littered with wreckage and with hen-coops, in which the
+dead birds were washing about. The boats were gone, with the exception
+of one, the bottom of which had been stove, and it was certain that the
+crew had abandoned the vessel. The cabin was in a deck-house, one side
+of which had been beaten in by a heavy sea. Allardyce and I entered it,
+and found the captain’s table as he had left it, his books and papers--
+all Spanish or Portuguese--scattered over it, with piles of cigarette
+ash everywhere. I looked about for the log, but could not find it.
+
+“As likely as not he never kept one,” said Allardyce. “Things are
+pretty slack aboard a South American trader, and they don’t do more than
+they can help. If there was one it must have been taken away with him
+in the boat.”
+
+“I should like to take all these books and papers,” said I. “Ask the
+carpenter how much time we have.”
+
+His report was reassuring. The vessel was full of water, but some of
+the cargo was buoyant, and there was no immediate danger of her sinking.
+Probably she would never sink, but would drift about as one of those
+terrible unmarked reefs which have sent so many stout vessels to the
+bottom.
+
+“In that case there is no danger in your going below, Mr. Allardyce,”
+said I. “See what you can make of her and find out how much of her
+cargo may be saved. I’ll look through these papers while you are gone.”
+
+The bills of lading, and some notes and letters which lay upon the desk,
+sufficed to inform me that the Brazilian brig _Nossa Sehnora da
+Vittoria_ had cleared from Bahia a month before. The name of the
+captain was Texeira, but there was no record as to the number of the
+crew. She was bound for London, and a glance at the bills of lading was
+sufficient to show me that we were not likely to profit much in the way
+of salvage. Her cargo consisted of nuts, ginger, and wood, the latter
+in the shape of great logs of valuable tropical growths. It was these,
+no doubt, which had prevented the ill-fated vessel from going to the
+bottom, but they were of such a size as to make it impossible for us to
+extract them. Besides these, there were a few fancy goods, such as a
+number of ornamental birds for millinery purposes, and a hundred cases
+of preserved fruits. And then, as I turned over the papers, I came upon
+a short note in English, which arrested my attention.
+
+   It is requested (said the note) that the various old Spanish
+   and Indian curiosities, which came out of the Santarem
+   collection, and which are consigned to Prontfoot & Neuman
+   of Oxford Street, London, should be put in some place where
+   there may be no danger of these very valuable and unique articles
+   being injured or tampered with. This applies most particularly
+   to the treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, which must on
+   no account be placed where anyone can get at it.
+
+The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez! Unique and valuable articles!
+Here was a chance of salvage after all. I had risen to my feet with the
+paper in my hand when my Scotch mate appeared in the doorway.
+
+“I’m thinking all isn’t quite as it should be aboard of this ship,
+sir,” said he. He was a hard-faced man, and yet I could see that he had
+been startled.
+
+“What’s the matter?”
+
+“Murder’s the matter, sir. There’s a man here with his brains beaten
+out.”
+
+“Killed in the storm?” said I.
+
+“May be so, sir, but I’ll be surprised if you think so after you have
+seen him.”
+
+“Where is he, then?”
+
+“This way, sir; here in the maindeck house.”
+
+There appeared to have been no accommodation below in the brig, for
+there was the after-house for the captain, another by the main hatchway,
+with the cook’s galley attached to it, and a third in the forecastle for
+the men. It was to this middle one that the mate led me. As you
+entered, the galley, with its litter of tumbled pots and dishes, was
+upon the right, and upon the left was a small room with two bunks for
+the officers. Then beyond there was a place about 12ft. square, which
+was littered with flags and spare canvas. All round the walls were a
+number of packets done up in coarse cloth and carefully lashed to the
+woodwork. At the other end was a great box, striped red and white,
+though the red was so faded and the white so dirty that it was only
+where the light fell directly upon it that one could see the colouring.
+The box was, by subsequent measurement, 4ft. 3ins. in length, 3ft. 2ins.
+in height, and 3ft. across--considerably larger than a seaman’s chest.
+But it was not to the box that my eyes or my thoughts were turned as I
+entered the store-room. On the floor, lying across the litter of
+bunting, there was stretched a small, dark man with a short, curling
+beard. He lay as far as it was possible from the box, with his feet
+towards it and his head away. A crimson patch was printed upon the
+white canvas on which his head was resting, and little red ribbons
+wreathed themselves round his swarthy neck and trailed away on to the
+floor, but there was no sign of a wound that I could see, and his face
+was as placid as that of a sleeping child. It was only when I stooped
+that I could perceive his injury, and then I turned away with an
+exclamation of horror. He had been pole-axed; apparently by some person
+standing behind him. A frightful blow had smashed in the top of his
+head and penetrated deeply into his brains. His face might well be
+placid, for death must have been absolutely instantaneous, and the
+position of the wound showed that he could never have seen the person
+who had inflicted it.
+
+“Is that foul play or accident, Captain Barclay?” asked my second mate,
+demurely.
+
+“You are quite right, Mr. Allardyce. The man has been murdered--struck
+down from above by a sharp and heavy weapon. But who was he, and why
+did they murder him?”
+
+“He was a common seaman, sir,” said the mate. “You can see that if you
+look at his fingers.” He turned out his pockets as he spoke and brought
+to light a pack of cards, some tarred string, and a bundle of Brazilian
+tobacco.
+
+“Hello, look at this!” said he.
+
+It was a large, open knife with a stiff spring blade which he had picked
+up from the floor. The steel was shining and bright, so that we could
+not associate it with the crime, and yet the dead man had apparently
+held it in his hand when he was struck down, for it still lay within his
+grasp.
+
+“It looks to me, sir, as if he knew he was in danger and kept his knife
+handy,” said the mate. “However, we can’t help the poor beggar now.
+I can’t make out these things that are lashed to the wall. They seem
+to be idols and weapons and curios of all sorts done up in old sacking.”
+
+“That’s right,” said I. “They are the only things of value that we are
+likely to get from the cargo. Hail the barque and tell them to send the
+other quarter-boat to help us to get the stuff aboard.”
+
+While he was away I examined this curious plunder which had come into
+our possession. The curiosities were so wrapped up that I could only
+form a general idea as to their nature, but the striped box stood in a
+good light where I could thoroughly examine it. On the lid, which was
+clamped and cornered with metal-work, there was engraved a complex coat
+of arms, and beneath it was a line of Spanish which I was able to
+decipher as meaning, “The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, Knight
+of the Order of Saint James, Governor and Captain-General of Terra Firma
+and of the Province of Veraquas.” In one corner was the date, 1606, and
+on the other a large white label, upon which was written in English,
+“You are earnestly requested, upon no account, to open this box.”
+The same warning was repeated underneath in Spanish. As to the lock, it
+was a very complex and heavy one of engraved steel, with a Latin motto,
+which was above a seaman’s comprehension. By the time I had finished
+this examination of the peculiar box, the other quarter-boat with Mr.
+Armstrong, the first officer, had come alongside, and we began to carry
+out and place in her the various curiosities which appeared to be the
+only objects worth moving from the derelict ship. When she was full I
+sent her back to the barque, and then Allardyce and I, with the
+carpenter and one seaman, shifted the striped box, which was the only
+thing left, to our boat, and lowered it over, balancing it upon the two
+middle thwarts, for it was so heavy that it would have given the boat a
+dangerous tilt had we placed it at either end. As to the dead man, we
+left him where we had found him. The mate had a theory that, at the
+moment of the desertion of the ship, this fellow had started
+plundering, and that the captain, in an attempt to preserve discipline,
+had struck him down with a hatchet or some other heavy weapon.
+It seemed more probable than any other explanation, and yet it did not
+entirely satisfy me either. But the ocean is full of mysteries, and we
+were content to leave the fate of the dead seaman of the Brazilian brig
+to be added to that long list which every sailor can recall.
+
+The heavy box was slung up by ropes on to the deck of the _Mary
+Sinclair_, and was carried by four seamen into the cabin, where, between
+the table and the after-lockers, there was just space for it to stand.
+There it remained during supper, and after that meal the mates remained
+with me, and discussed over a glass of grog the event of the day.
+Mr. Armstrong was a long, thin, vulture-like man, an excellent seaman,
+but famous for his nearness and cupidity. Our treasure-trove had
+excited him greatly, and already he had begun with glistening eyes to
+reckon up how much it might be worth to each of us when the shares of
+the salvage came to be divided.
+
+“If the paper said that they were unique, Mr. Barclay, then they may be
+worth anything that you like to name. You wouldn’t believe the sums
+that the rich collectors give. A thousand pounds is nothing to them.
+We’ll have something to show for our voyage, or I am mistaken.”
+
+“I don’t think that,” said I. “As far as I can see, they are not very
+different from any other South American curios.”
+
+“Well, sir, I’ve traded there for fourteen voyages, and I have never
+seen anything like that chest before. That’s worth a pile of money,
+just as it stands. But it’s so heavy that surely there must be
+something valuable inside it. Don’t you think that we ought to open it
+and see?”
+
+“If you break it open you will spoil it, as likely as not,” said the
+second mate.
+
+Armstrong squatted down in front of it, with his head on one side, and
+his long, thin nose within a few inches of the lock.
+
+“The wood is oak,” said he, “and it has shrunk a little with age. If I
+had a chisel or a strong-bladed knife I could force the lock back
+without doing any damage at all.”
+
+The mention of a strong-bladed knife made me think of the dead seaman
+upon the brig.
+
+“I wonder if he could have been on the job when someone came to
+interfere with him,” said I.
+
+“I don’t know about that, sir, but I am perfectly certain that I could
+open the box. There’s a screwdriver here in the locker. Just hold the
+lamp, Allardyce, and I’ll have it done in a brace of shakes.”
+
+“Wait a bit,” said I, for already, with eyes which gleamed with
+curiosity and with avarice, he was stooping over the lid. “I don’t see
+that there is any hurry over this matter. You’ve read that card which
+warns us not to open it. It may mean anything or it may mean nothing,
+but somehow I feel inclined to obey it. After all, whatever is in it
+will keep, and if it is valuable it will be worth as much if it is
+opened in the owner’s offices as in the cabin of the _Mary Sinclair_.”
+
+The first officer seemed bitterly disappointed at my decision.
+
+“Surely, sir, you are not superstitious about it,” said he, with a
+slight sneer upon his thin lips. “If it gets out of our own hands, and
+we don’t see for ourselves what is inside it, we may be done out of our
+rights; besides--”
+
+“That’s enough, Mr. Armstrong,” said I, abruptly. “You may have every
+confidence that you will get your rights, but I will not have that box
+opened to-night.”
+
+“Why, the label itself shows that the box has been examined by
+Europeans,” Allardyce added. “Because a box is a treasure-box is no
+reason that it has treasures inside it now. A good many folk have had a
+peep into it since the days of the old Governor of Terra Firma.”
+
+Armstrong threw the screwdriver down upon the table and shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+“Just as you like,” said he; but for the rest of the evening, although
+we spoke upon many subjects, I noticed that his eyes were continually
+coming round, with the same expression of curiosity and greed, to the
+old striped box.
+
+And now I come to that portion of my story which fills me even now with
+a shuddering horror when I think of it. The main cabin had the rooms of
+the officers round it, but mine was the farthest away from it at the end
+of the little passage which led to the companion. No regular watch was
+kept by me, except in cases of emergency, and the three mates divided
+the watches among them. Armstrong had the middle watch, which ends at
+four in the morning, and he was relieved by Allardyce. For my part I
+have always been one of the soundest of sleepers, and it is rare for
+anything less than a hand upon my shoulder to arouse me.
+
+And yet I was aroused that night, or rather in the early grey of the
+morning. It was just half-past four by my chronometer when something
+caused me to sit up in my berth wide awake and with every nerve
+tingling. It was a sound of some sort, a crash with a human cry at the
+end of it, which still jarred on my ears. I sat listening, but all was
+now silent. And yet it could not have been imagination, that hideous
+cry, for the echo of it still rang in my head, and it seemed to have
+come from some place quite close to me. I sprang from my bunk, and,
+pulling on some clothes, I made my way into the cabin. At first I saw
+nothing unusual there. In the cold, grey light I made out the
+red-clothed table, the six rotating chairs, the walnut lockers, the
+swinging barometer, and there, at the end, the big striped chest. I was
+turning away, with the intention of going upon deck and asking the
+second mate if he had heard anything, when my eyes fell suddenly upon
+something which projected from under the table. It was the leg of a
+man--a leg with a long sea-boot upon it. I stooped, and there was a
+figure sprawling upon his face, his arms thrown forward and his body
+twisted. One glance told me that it was Armstrong, the first officer,
+and a second that he was a dead man. For a few moments I stood gasping.
+Then I rushed on to the deck, called Allardyce to my assistance, and
+came back with him into the cabin.
+
+Together we pulled the unfortunate fellow from under the table, and as
+we looked at his dripping head we exchanged glances, and I do not know
+which was the paler of the two.
+
+“The same as the Spanish sailor,” said I.
+
+“The very same. God preserve us! It’s that infernal chest! Look at
+Armstrong’s hand!”
+
+He held up the mate’s right hand, and there was the screwdriver which he
+had wished to use the night before.
+
+“He’s been at the chest, sir. He knew that I was on deck and you were
+asleep. He knelt down in front of it, and he pushed the lock back with
+that tool. Then something happened to him, and he cried out so that you
+heard him.”
+
+“Allardyce,” I whispered, “what _could_ have happened to him?”
+
+The second mate put his hand upon my sleeve and drew me into his cabin.
+
+“We can talk here, sir, and we don’t know who may be listening to us in
+there. What do you suppose is in that box, Captain Barclay?”
+
+“I give you my word, Allardyce, that I have no idea.”
+
+“Well, I can only find one theory which will fit all the facts. Look at
+the size of the box. Look at all the carving and metal-work which may
+conceal any number of holes. Look at the weight of it; it took four men
+to carry it. On top of that, remember that two men have tried to open
+it, and both have come to their end through it. Now, sir, what can it
+mean except one thing?”
+
+“You mean there is a man in it?”
+
+“Of course there is a man in it. You know how it is in these South
+American States, sir. A man may be president one week and hunted like a
+dog the next--they are for ever flying for their lives. My idea is that
+there is some fellow in hiding there, who is armed and desperate, and
+who will fight to the death before he is taken.”
+
+“But his food and drink?”
+
+“It’s a roomy chest, sir, and he may have some provisions stowed away.
+As to his drink, he had a friend among the crew upon the brig who saw
+that he had what he needed.”
+
+“You think, then, that the label asking people not to open the box was
+simply written in his interest?”
+
+“Yes, sir, that is my idea. Have you any other way of explaining the
+facts?”
+
+I had to confess that I had not.
+
+“The question is what we are to do?” I asked.
+
+“The man’s a dangerous ruffian, who sticks at nothing. I’m thinking it
+wouldn’t be a bad thing to put a rope round the chest and tow it
+alongside for half an hour; then we could open it at our ease. Or if we
+just tied the box up and kept him from getting any water maybe that
+would do as well. Or the carpenter could put a coat of varnish over it
+and stop all the blow-holes.”
+
+“Come, Allardyce,” said I, angrily. “You don’t seriously mean to say
+that a whole ship’s company are going to be terrorised by a single man
+in a box. If he’s there, I’ll engage to fetch him out!” I went to my
+room and came back with my revolver in my hand. “Now, Allardyce,” said
+I, “do you open the lock, and I’ll stand on guard.”
+
+“For God’s sake, think what you are doing, sir!” cried the mate. “Two
+men have lost their lives over it, and the blood of one not yet dry upon
+the carpet.”
+
+“The more reason why we should revenge him.”
+
+“Well, sir, at least let me call the carpenter. Three are better than
+two, and he is a good stout man.”
+
+He went off in search of him, and I was left alone with the striped
+chest in the cabin. I don’t think that I’m a nervous man, but I kept
+the table between me and this solid old relic of the Spanish Main.
+In the growing light of morning the red and white striping was beginning
+to appear, and the curious scrolls and wreaths of metal and carving
+which showed the loving pains which cunning craftsmen had expended upon
+it. Presently the carpenter and the mate came back together, the former
+with a hammer in his hand.
+
+“It’s a bad business, this, sir,” said he, shaking his head, as he
+looked at the body of the mate. “And you think there’s someone hiding
+in the box?”
+
+“There’s no doubt about it,” said Allardyce, picking up the screwdriver
+and setting his jaw like a man who needs to brace his courage.
+“I’ll drive the lock back if you will both stand by. If he rises let
+him have it on the head with your hammer, carpenter. Shoot at once,
+sir, if he raises his hand. Now!”
+
+He had knelt down in front of the striped chest, and passed the blade of
+the tool under the lid. With a sharp snick the lock flew back. “Stand
+by!” yelled the mate, and with a heave he threw open the massive top of
+the box. As it swung up we all three sprang back, I with my pistol
+levelled, and the carpenter with the hammer above his head. Then, as
+nothing happened, we each took a step forward and peeped in. The box
+was empty.
+
+Not quite empty either, for in one corner was lying an old yellow
+candlestick, elaborately engraved, which appeared to be as old as the
+box itself. Its rich yellow tone and artistic shape suggested that it
+was an object of value. For the rest there was nothing more weighty or
+valuable than dust in the old striped treasure-chest.
+
+“Well, I’m blessed!” cried Allardyce, staring blankly into it.
+“Where does the weight come in, then?”
+
+“Look at the thickness of the sides, and look at the lid. Why, it’s
+five inches through. And see that great metal spring across it.”
+
+“That’s for holding the lid up,” said the mate. “You see, it won’t lean
+back. What’s that German printing on the inside?”
+
+“It means that it was made by Johann Rothstein of Augsburg, in 1606.”
+
+“And a solid bit of work, too. But it doesn’t throw much light on what
+has passed, does it, Captain Barclay? That candlestick looks like gold.
+We shall have something for our trouble after all.”
+
+He leant forward to grasp it, and from that moment I have never doubted
+as to the reality of inspiration, for on the instant I caught him by the
+collar and pulled him straight again. It may have been some story of
+the Middle Ages which had come back to my mind, or it may have been that
+my eye had caught some red which was not that of rust upon the upper
+part of the lock, but to him and to me it will always seem an
+inspiration, so prompt and sudden was my action.
+
+“There’s devilry here,” said I. “Give me the crooked stick from the
+corner.”
+
+It was an ordinary walking-cane with a hooked top. I passed it over the
+candlestick and gave it a pull. With a flash a row of polished steel
+fangs shot out from below the upper lip, and the great striped chest
+snapped at us like a wild animal. Clang came the huge lid into its
+place, and the glasses on the swinging rack sang and tinkled with the
+shock. The mate sat down on the edge of the table and shivered like a
+frightened horse.
+
+“You’ve saved my life, Captain Barclay!” said he.
+
+So this was the secret of the striped treasure-chest of old Don Ramirez
+di Leyra, and this was how he preserved his ill-gotten gains from the
+Terra Firma and the Province of Veraquas. Be the thief ever so cunning
+he could not tell that golden candlestick from the other articles of
+value, and the instant that he laid hand upon it the terrible spring was
+unloosed and the murderous steel pikes were driven into his brain, while
+the shock of the blow sent the victim backward and enabled the chest to
+automatically close itself. How many, I wondered, had fallen victims to
+the ingenuity of the mechanic of Ausgburg? And as I thought of the
+possible history of that grim striped chest my resolution was very
+quickly taken.
+
+“Carpenter, bring three men, and carry this on deck.”
+
+“Going to throw it overboard, sir?”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Allardyce. I’m not superstitious as a rule, but there are
+some things which are more than a sailor can be called upon to stand.”
+
+“No wonder that brig made heavy weather, Captain Barclay, with such a
+thing on board. The glass is dropping fast, sir, and we are only just
+in time.”
+
+So we did not even wait for the three sailors, but we carried it out,
+the mate, the carpenter, and I, and we pushed it with our own hands over
+the bulwarks. There was a white spout of water, and it was gone. There
+it lies, the striped chest, a thousand fathoms deep, and if, as they
+say, the sea will some day be dry land, I grieve for the man who finds
+that old box and tries to penetrate into its secret.
+
+
+
+
+A SHADOW BEFORE
+
+
+The 15th of July, 1870, found John Worlington Dodds a ruined gamester of
+the Stock Exchange. Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man. And yet
+he had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish
+townlet of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter
+of the sum which he had earned during the single day that he was
+within its walls. There is a romance of finance yet to be written, a
+story of huge forces which are for ever waxing and waning, of bold
+operations, of breathless suspense, of agonised failure, of deep
+combinations which are baffled by others still more subtle. The mighty
+debts of each great European Power stand like so many columns of
+mercury, for ever rising and falling to indicate the pressure upon each.
+He who can see far enough into the future to tell how that ever-varying
+column will stand to-morrow is the man who has fortune within his grasp.
+
+John Worlington Dodds had many of the gifts which lead a speculator to
+success. He was quick in observing, just in estimating, prompt and
+fearless in acting. But in finance there is always the element of luck,
+which, however one may eliminate it, still remains, like the blank at
+roulette, a constantly present handicap upon the operator. And so it
+was that Worlington Dodds had come to grief. On the best advices he had
+dabbled in the funds of a South American Republic in the days before
+South American Republics had been found out. The Republic defaulted,
+and Dodds lost his money. He had bulled the shares of a Scotch railway,
+and a four months’ strike had hit him hard. He had helped to underwrite
+a coffee company in the hope that the public would come along upon the
+feed and gradually nibble away some of his holding, but the political
+sky had been clouded and the public had refused to invest. Everything
+which he had touched had gone wrong, and now, on the eve of his
+marriage, young, clear-headed, and energetic, he was actually a bankrupt
+had his creditors chosen to make him one. But the Stock Exchange is an
+indulgent body. What is the case of one to-day may be that of another
+to-morrow, and everyone is interested in seeing that the stricken man is
+given time to rise again. So the burden of Worlington Dodds was
+lightened for him; many shoulders helped to bear it, and he was able to
+go for a little summer tour into Ireland, for the doctors had ordered
+him rest and change of air to restore his shaken nervous system. Thus
+it was that upon the 15th of July, 1870, he found himself at his
+breakfast in the fly-blown coffee-room of the “George Hotel” in the
+market square of Dunsloe. It is a dull and depressing coffee-room, and
+one which is usually empty, but on this particular day it was as crowded
+and noisy as that of any London hotel. Every table was occupied, and a
+thick smell of fried bacon and of fish hung in the air. Heavily booted
+men clattered in and out, spurs jingled, riding-crops were stacked in
+corners, and there was a general atmosphere of horse. The conversation,
+too, was of nothing else. From every side Worlington Dodds heard of
+yearlings, of windgalls, of roarers, of spavins, of cribsuckers, of a
+hundred other terms which were as unintelligible to him as his own
+Stock Exchange jargon would have been to the company. He asked the
+waiter for the reason of it all, and the waiter was an astonished man
+that there should be any man in this world who did not know it.
+
+“Shure it’s the Dunsloe horse fair, your honour--the greatest
+horse-fair in all Oireland. It lasts for a wake, and the folk come from
+far an’ near--from England an’ Scotland an’ iverywhere. If you look out
+of the winder, your honour, you’ll see the horses, and it’s asy your
+honour’s conscience must be, or you wouldn’t slape so sound that the
+creatures didn’t rouse you with their clatter.”
+
+Dodds had a recollection that he had heard a confused murmur, which had
+interwoven itself with his dreams--a sort of steady rhythmic beating and
+clanking--and now, when he looked through the window, he saw the cause
+of it. The square was packed with horses from end to end--greys, bays,
+browns, blacks, chestnuts--young ones and old, fine ones and coarse,
+horses of every conceivable sort and size. It seemed a huge function
+for so small a town, and he remarked as much to the waiter.
+
+“Well, you see, your honour, the horses don’t live in the town, an’ they
+don’t vex their heads how small it is. But it’s in the very centre of
+the horse-bradin’ districts of Oireland, so where should they come to be
+sould if it wasn’t to Dunsloe?” The waiter had a telegram in his hand,
+and he turned the address to Worlington Dodds. “Shure I niver heard
+such a name, sorr. Maybe you could tell me who owns it?”
+
+Dodds looked at the envelope. Strellenhaus was the name. “No, I don’t
+know,” said he. “I never heard it before. It’s a foreign name.
+Perhaps if you were--”
+
+But at that moment a little round-faced, ruddy-cheeked gentleman, who
+was breakfasting at the next table, leaned forward and interrupted him.
+
+“Did you say a foreign name, sir?” said he.
+
+“Strellenhaus is the name.”
+
+“I am Mr. Strellenhaus--Mr. Julius Strellenhaus, of Liverpool. I was
+expecting a telegram. Thank you very much.”
+
+He sat so near that Dodds, without any wish to play the spy, could not
+help to some extent overlooking him as he opened the envelope.
+The message was a very long one. Quite a wad of melon-tinted paper came
+out from the tawny envelope. Mr. Strellenhaus arranged the sheets
+methodically upon the table-cloth in front of him, so that no eye but
+his own could see them. Then he took out a note-book, and, with an
+anxious face, he began to make entries in it, glancing first at the
+telegram and then at the book, and writing apparently one letter or
+figure at a time. Dodds was interested, for he knew exactly what the
+man was doing. He was working out a cipher. Dodds had often done it
+himself. And then suddenly the little man turned very pale, as if the
+full purport of the message had been a shock to him. Dodds had done
+that also, and his sympathies were all with his neighbors. Then the
+stranger rose, and, leaving his breakfast untasted, he walked out of the
+room.
+
+“I’m thinkin’ that the gintleman has had bad news, sorr,” said the
+confidential waiter.
+
+“Looks like it,” Dodds answered; and at that moment his thoughts were
+suddenly drawn off into another direction.
+
+The boots had entered the room with a telegram in his hand. “Where’s
+Mr. Mancune?” said he to the waiter.
+
+“Well, there are some quare names about. What was it you said?”
+
+“Mr. Mancune,” said the boots, glancing round him. “Ah, there he is!”
+and he handed the telegram to a gentleman who was sitting reading the
+paper in a corner.
+
+Dodds’s eyes had already fallen upon this man, and he had wondered
+vaguely what he was doing in such company. He was a tall, white-haired,
+eagle-nosed gentleman, with a waxed moustache and a carefully pointed
+beard--an aristocratic type which seemed out of its element among the
+rough, hearty, noisy dealers who surrounded him. This, then, was Mr.
+Mancune, for whom the second telegram was intended.
+
+As he opened it, tearing it open with a feverish haste, Dodds could
+perceive that it was as bulky as the first one. He observed also, from
+the delay in reading it, that it was also in some sort of cipher.
+The gentleman did not write down any translation of it, but he sat for
+some time with his nervous, thin fingers twitching amongst the hairs of
+his white beard, and his shaggy brows bent in the deepest and most
+absorbed attention whilst he mastered the meaning of it. Then he sprang
+suddenly to his feet, his eyes flashed, his cheeks flushed, and in his
+excitement he crumpled the message up in his hand. With an effort he
+mastered his emotion, put the paper into his pocket, and walked out of
+the room.
+
+This was enough to excite a less astute and imaginative man than
+Worlington Dodds. Was there any connection between these two messages,
+or was it merely a coincidence? Two men with strange names receive two
+telegrams within a few minutes of each other, each of considerable
+length, each in cipher, and each causing keen emotion to the man who
+received it. One turned pale. The other sprang excitedly to his feet.
+It might be a coincidence, but it was a very curious one. If it was not
+a coincidence, then what could it mean? Were they confederates who
+pretended to work apart, but who each received identical orders from
+some person at a distance? That was possible, and yet there were
+difficulties in the way. He puzzled and puzzled, but could find no
+satisfactory solution to the problem. All breakfast he was turning it
+over in his mind.
+
+When breakfast was over he sauntered out into the market square, where
+the horse sale was already in progress. The yearlings were being sold
+first--tall, long-legged, skittish, wild-eyed creatures, who had run
+free upon the upland pastures, with ragged hair and towsie manes, but
+hardy, inured to all weathers, and with the makings of splendid hunters
+and steeplechasers when corn and time had brought them to maturity.
+They were largely of thoroughbred blood, and were being bought by
+English dealers, who would invest a few pounds now on what they might
+sell for fifty guineas in a year, if all went well. It was legitimate
+speculation, for the horse is a delicate creature, he is afflicted with
+many ailments, the least accident may destroy his value, he is a certain
+expense and an uncertain profit, and for one who comes safely to
+maturity several may bring no return at all. So the English
+horse-dealers took their risks as they bought up the shaggy Irish
+yearlings. One man with a ruddy face and a yellow overcoat took them by
+the dozen, with as much _sang froid_ as if they had been oranges,
+entering each bargain in a bloated note-book. He bought forty or fifty
+during the time that Dodds was watching him.
+
+“Who is that?” he asked his neighbour, whose spurs and gaiters showed
+that he was likely to know.
+
+The man stared in astonishment at the stranger’s ignorance.
+“Why, that’s Jim Holloway, the great Jim Holloway,” said he; then,
+seeing by the blank look upon Dodds’s face that even this information
+had not helped him much, he went into details. “Sure he’s the head of
+Holloway & Morland, of London,” said he. “He’s the buying partner, and
+he buys cheap; and the other stays at home and sells, and he sells dear.
+He owns more horses than any man in the world, and asks the best money
+for them. I dare say you’ll find that half of what are sold at the
+Dunsloe fair this day will go to him, and he’s got such a purse that
+there’s not a man who can bid against him.”
+
+Worlington Dodds watched the doings of the great dealer with interest.
+He had passed on now to the two-year-olds and three-year-olds,
+full-grown horses, but still a little loose in the limb and weak in the
+bone. The London buyer was choosing his animals carefully, but having
+chosen them, the vigour of his competition drove all other bidders out
+of it. With a careless nod he would run the figure up five pounds at a
+time, until he was left in possession of the field. At the same time he
+was a shrewd observer, and when, as happened more than once, he believed
+that someone was bidding against him simply in order to run him up, the
+head would cease suddenly to nod, the note-book would be closed with a
+snap, and the intruder would be left with a purchase which he did not
+desire upon his hands. All Dodds’s business instincts were aroused by
+the tactics of this great operator, and he stood in the crowd watching
+with the utmost interest all that occurred.
+
+It is not to buy young horses, however, that the great dealers come
+to Ireland, and the real business of the fair commenced when the four
+and five-year-olds were reached; the full-grown, perfect horses,
+at their prime, and ready for any work or any fatigue. Seventy
+magnificent creatures had been brought down by a single breeder, a
+comfortable-looking, keen-eyed, ruddy-cheeked gentleman who stood
+beside the salesman and whispered cautions and precepts into his ear.
+
+“That’s Flynn of Kildare,” said Dodds’s informant. “Jack Flynn has
+brought down that string of horses, and the other large string over
+yonder belongs to Tom Flynn, his brother. The two of them together
+are the two first breeders in Ireland.” A crowd had gathered in
+front of the horses. By common consent a place had been made for Mr.
+Holloway, and Dodds could catch a glimpse of his florid face and yellow
+covert-coat in the front rank. He had opened his note-book, and was
+tapping his teeth reflectively with his pencil as he eyed the horses.
+
+“You’ll see a fight now between the first seller and the first buyer in
+the country,” said Dodds’s acquaintance. “They are a beautiful string,
+anyhow. I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t average five-and-thirty
+pound apiece for the lot as they stand.”
+
+The salesman had mounted upon a chair, and his keen, clean-shaven face
+overlooked the crowd. Mr. Jack Flynn’s grey whiskers were at his elbow,
+and Mr. Holloway immediately in front.
+
+“You’ve seen these horses, gentlemen,” said the salesman, with a
+backward sweep of his hand towards the line of tossing heads and
+streaming manes. “When you know that they are bred by Mr. Jack Flynn,
+at his place in Kildare, you will have a guarantee of their quality.
+They are the best that Ireland can produce, and in this class of horse
+the best that Ireland can produce are the best in the world, as every
+riding man knows well. Hunters or carriage horses, all warranted sound,
+and bred from the best stock. There are seventy in Mr. Jack Flynn’s
+string, and he bids me say that if any wholesale dealer would make one
+bid for the whole lot, to save time, he would have the preference over
+any purchaser.”
+
+There was a pause and a whisper from the crowd in front, with some
+expressions of discontent. By a single sweep all the small dealers had
+been put out of it. It was only a long purse which could buy on such a
+scale as that. The salesman looked round him inquiringly.
+
+“Come, Mr. Holloway,” said he, at last. “You didn’t come over here for
+the sake of the scenery. You may travel the country and not see such
+another string of horses. Give us a starting bid.”
+
+The great dealer was still rattling his pencil upon his front teeth.
+“Well,” said he, at last, “they _are_ a fine lot of horses, and I won’t
+deny it. They do you credit, Mr. Flynn, I am sure. All the same I
+didn’t mean to fill a ship at a single bid in this fashion. I like to
+pick and choose my horses.”
+
+“In that case Mr. Flynn is quite prepared to sell them in smaller lots,”
+said the salesman. “It was rather for the convenience of a wholesale
+customer that he was prepared to put them all up together. But if no
+gentleman wishes to bid--”
+
+“Wait a minute,” said a voice. “They are very fine horses, these, and I
+will give you a bid to start you. I will give you twenty pounds each
+for the string of seventy.”
+
+There was a rustle as the crowd all swayed their heads to catch a
+glimpse of the speaker. The salesman leaned forward. “May I ask your
+name, sir?”
+
+“Strellenhaus--Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool.”
+
+“It’s a new firm,” said Dodds’s neighbour. “I thought I knew them all,
+but I never heard of him before.”
+
+The salesman’s head had disappeared, for he was whispering with the
+breeder. Now he suddenly straightened himself again. “Thank you for
+giving us a lead, sir,” said he. “Now, gentlemen, you have heard the
+offer of Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool. It will give us a base to start
+from. Mr. Strellenhaus has offered twenty pounds a head.”
+
+“Guineas,” said Holloway.
+
+“Bravo, Mr. Holloway! I knew that you would take a hand. You are not
+the man to let such a string of horses pass away from you. The bid is
+twenty guineas a head.”
+
+“Twenty-five pounds,” said Mr. Strellenhaus.
+
+“Twenty-six.”
+
+“Thirty.”
+
+It was London against Liverpool, and it was the head of the trade
+against an outsider. Still, the one man had increased his bids by fives
+and the other only by ones. Those fives meant determination and also
+wealth. Holloway had ruled the market so long that the crowd was
+delighted at finding someone who would stand up to him.
+
+“The bid now stands at thirty pounds a head,” said the salesman.
+“The word lies with you, Mr. Holloway.”
+
+The London dealer was glancing keenly at his unknown opponent, and he
+was asking himself whether this was a genuine rival, or whether it was a
+device of some sort--an agent of Flynn’s perhaps--for running up the
+price. Little Mr. Strellenhaus, the same apple-faced gentleman whom
+Dodds had noticed in the coffee-room, stood looking at the horses with
+the sharp, quick glances of a man who knows what he is looking for.
+
+“Thirty-one,” said Holloway, with the air of a man who has gone to his
+extreme limit.
+
+“Thirty-two,” said Strellenhaus, promptly.
+
+Holloway grew angry at this persistent opposition. His red face flushed
+redder still.
+
+“Thirty-three!” he shouted.
+
+“Thirty-four,” said Strellenhaus.
+
+Holloway became thoughtful, and entered a few figures in his note-book.
+There were seventy horses. He knew that Flynn’s stock was always of the
+highest quality. With the hunting season coming on he might rely upon
+selling them at an average of from forty-five to fifty. Some of them
+might carry a heavy weight, and would run to three figures. On the
+other hand, there was the feed and keep of them for three months, the
+danger of the voyage, the chance of influenza or some of those other
+complaints which run through an entire stable as measles go through a
+nursery. Deducting all this, it was a question whether at the present
+price any profit would be left upon the transaction. Every pound that
+he bid meant seventy out of his pocket. And yet he could not submit to
+be beaten by this stranger without a struggle. As a business matter it
+was important to him to be recognised as the head of his profession.
+He would make one more effort, if he sacrificed his profit by doing so.
+
+“At the end of your rope, Mr. Holloway?” asked the salesman, with the
+suspicion of a sneer.
+
+“Thirty-five,” cried Holloway gruffly.
+
+“Thirty-six,” said Strellenhaus.
+
+“Then I wish you joy of your bargain,” said Holloway. “I don’t buy at
+that price, but I should be glad to sell you some.”
+
+Mr. Strellenhaus took no notice of the irony. He was still looking
+critically at the horses. The salesman glanced round him in a
+perfunctory way.
+
+“Thirty-six pounds bid,” said he. “Mr. Jack Flynn’s lot is going to Mr.
+Strellenhaus of Liverpool, at thirty-six pounds a head. Going--going--”
+
+“Forty!” cried a high, thin, clear voice.
+
+A buzz rose from the crowd, and they were all on tiptoe again, trying to
+catch a glimpse of this reckless buyer. Being a tall man, Dodds could
+see over the others, and there, at the side of Holloway, he saw the
+masterful nose and aristocratic beard of the second stranger in the
+coffee-room. A sudden personal interest added itself to the scene.
+He felt that he was on the verge of something--something dimly seen--
+which he could himself turn to account. The two men with strange names,
+the telegrams, the horses--what was underlying it all? The salesman was
+all animation again, and Mr. Jack Flynn was sitting up with his white
+whiskers bristling and his eyes twinkling. It was the best deal which
+he had ever made in his fifty years of experience.
+
+“What name, sir?” asked the salesman.
+
+“Mr. Mancune.”
+
+“Address?”
+
+“Mr. Mancune of Glasgow.”
+
+“Thank you for your bid, sir. Forty pounds a head has been bid by Mr.
+Mancune of Glasgow. Any advance upon forty?”
+
+“Forty-one,” said Strellenhaus.
+
+“Forty-five,” said Mancune.
+
+The tactics had changed, and it was the turn of Strellenhaus now to
+advance by ones, while his rival sprang up by fives. But the former was
+as dogged as ever.
+
+“Forty-six,” said he.
+
+“Fifty!” cried Mancune.
+
+It was unheard of. The most that the horses could possibly average at a
+retail price was as much as these men were willing to pay wholesale.
+
+“Two lunatics from Bedlam,” whispered the angry Holloway. “If I was
+Flynn I would see the colour of their money before I went any further.”
+
+The same thought had occurred to the salesman. “As a mere matter of
+business, gentlemen,” said he, “it is usual in such cases to put down a
+small deposit as a guarantee of _bona fides_. You will understand how I
+am placed, and that I have not had the pleasure of doing business with
+either of you before.”
+
+“How much?” asked Strellenhaus, briefly.
+
+“Should we say five hundred?”
+
+“Here is a note for a thousand pounds.”
+
+“And here is another,” said Mancune.
+
+“Nothing could be more handsome, gentlemen,” said the salesman. “It’s a
+treat to see such a spirited competition. The last bid was fifty pounds
+a head from Mancune. The word lies with you, Mr. Strellenhaus.”
+
+Mr. Jack Flynn whispered something to the salesman. “Quite so! Mr.
+Flynn suggests, gentlemen, that as you are both large buyers, it would,
+perhaps, be a convenience to you if he was to add the string of Mr. Tom
+Flynn, which consists of seventy animals of precisely the same quality,
+making one hundred and forty in all. Have you any objection, Mr.
+Mancune?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“And you, Mr. Strellenhaus?”
+
+“I should prefer it.”
+
+“Very handsome! Very handsome indeed!” murmured the salesman. “Then I
+understand, Mr. Mancune, that your offer of fifty pounds a head extends
+to the whole of these horses?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+A long breath went up from the crowd. Seven thousand pounds at one
+deal. It was a record for Dunsloe.
+
+“Any advance, Mr. Strellenhaus?”
+
+“Fifty-one.”
+
+“Fifty-five.”
+
+“Fifty-six.”
+
+“Sixty.”
+
+They could hardly believe their ears. Holloway stood with his mouth
+open, staring blankly in front of him. The salesman tried hard to look
+as if such bidding and such prices were nothing unusual. Jack Flynn of
+Kildare smiled benignly and rubbed his hands together. The crowd
+listened in dead silence.
+
+“Sixty-one,” said Strellenhaus. From the beginning he had stood without
+a trace of emotion upon his round face, like a little automatic figure
+which bid by clockwork. His rival was of a more excitable nature. His
+eyes were shining, and he was for ever twitching at his beard.
+
+“Sixty-five,” he cried.
+
+“Sixty-six.”
+
+“Seventy.”
+
+But the clockwork had run down. No answering bid came from Mr.
+Strellenhaus.
+
+“Seventy bid, sir.”
+
+Mr. Strellenhaus shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I am buying for another, and I have reached his limit,” said he.
+“If you will permit me to send for instructions--”
+
+“I am afraid, sir, that the sale must proceed.”
+
+“Then the horses belong to this gentleman.” For the first time he
+turned towards his rival, and their glances crossed like sword-blades.
+“It is possible that I may see the horses again.”
+
+“I hope so,” said Mr. Mancune; and his white, waxed moustache gave a
+feline upward bristle.
+
+So, with a bow, they separated. Mr. Strellenhaus walked, down to the
+telegraph-office, where his message was delayed because Mr. Worlington
+Dodds was already at the end of the wires, for, after dim guesses and
+vague conjecture, he had suddenly caught a clear view of this coming
+event which had cast so curious a shadow before it in this little Irish
+town. Political rumours, names, appearances, telegrams, seasoned horses
+at any price, there could only be one meaning to it. He held a secret,
+and he meant to use it.
+
+Mr. Warner, who was the partner of Mr. Worlington Dodds, and who was
+suffering from the same eclipse, had gone down to the Stock Exchange,
+but had found little consolation there, for the European system was in a
+ferment, and rumours of peace and of war were succeeding each other with
+such rapidity and assurance that it was impossible to know which to
+trust. It was obvious that a fortune lay either way, for every rumour
+set the funds fluctuating; but without special information it was
+impossible to act, and no one dared to plunge heavily upon the strength
+of newspaper surmise and the gossip of the street. Warner knew that an
+hour’s work might resuscitate the fallen fortunes of himself and his
+partner, and yet he could not afford to make a mistake. He returned to
+his office in the afternoon, half inclined to back the chances of peace,
+for of all war scares not one in ten comes to pass. As he entered the
+office a telegram lay upon the table. It was from Dunsloe, a place of
+which he had never heard, and was signed by his absent partner.
+The message was in cipher, but he soon translated it, for it was short
+and crisp.
+
+“I am a bear of everything German and French. Sell, sell, sell, keep on
+selling.”
+
+For a moment Warner hesitated. What could Worlington Dodds know at
+Dunsloe which was not known in Throgmorton Street? But he remembered
+the quickness and decision of his partner. He would not have sent such
+a message without very good grounds. If he was to act at all he must
+act at once, so, hardening his heart, he went down to the house, and,
+dealing upon that curious system by which a man can sell what he has not
+got, and what he could not pay for if he had it, he disposed of heavy
+parcels of French and German securities. He had caught the market in
+one of its little spasms of hope, and there was no lack of buying until
+his own persistent selling caused others to follow his lead, and so
+brought about a reaction. When Warner returned to his offices it took
+him some hours to work out his accounts, and he emerged into the streets
+in the evening with the absolute certainty that the next settling-day
+would leave him either hopelessly bankrupt or exceedingly prosperous.
+
+It all depended upon Worlington Dodds’s information. What could he
+possibly have found out at Dunsloe?
+
+And then suddenly he saw a newspaper boy fasten a poster upon a
+lamp-post, and a little crowd had gathered round it in an instant.
+One of them waved his hat in the air; another shouted to a friend across
+the street. Warner hurried up and caught a glimpse of the poster
+between two craning heads--
+
+           “FRANCE DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY.”
+
+“By Jove!” cried Warner. “Old Dodds was right, after all.”
+
+
+
+
+THE KING OF THE FOXES
+
+
+It was after a hunting dinner, and there were as many scarlet coats as
+black ones round the table. The conversation over the cigars had
+turned, therefore, in the direction of horses and horsemen, with
+reminiscences of phenomenal runs where foxes had led the pack from end
+to end of a county, and been overtaken at last by two or three limping
+hounds and a huntsman on foot, while every rider in the field had been
+pounded. As the port circulated the runs became longer and more
+apocryphal, until we had the whips inquiring their way and failing to
+understand the dialect of the people who answered them. The foxes, too,
+became more eccentric, and we had foxes up pollard willows, foxes which
+were dragged by the tail out of horses’ mangers, and foxes which had
+raced through an open front door and gone to ground in a lady’s
+bonnet-box. The master had told one or two tall reminiscences, and when
+he cleared his throat for another we were all curious, for he was a bit
+of an artist in his way, and produced his effects in a _crescendo_
+fashion. His face wore the earnest, practical, severely accurate
+expression which heralded some of his finest efforts.
+
+“It was before I was master,” said he. “Sir Charles Adair had the
+hounds at that time, and then afterwards they passed to old Lathom, and
+then to me. It may possibly have been just after Lathom took them over,
+but my strong impression is that it was in Adair’s time. That would be
+early in the seventies--about seventy-two, I should say.
+
+“The man I mean has moved to another part of the country, but I daresay
+that some of you can remember him. Danbury was the name--Walter
+Danbury, or Wat Danbury, as the people used to call him. He was the son
+of old Joe Danbury, of High Ascombe, and when his father died he came
+into a very good thing, for his only brother was drowned when the _Magna
+Charta_ foundered, so he inherited the whole estate. It was but a few
+hundred acres, but it was good arable land, and those were the great
+days of farming. Besides, it was freehold, and a yeoman farmer without
+a mortgage was a warmish man before the great fall in wheat came.
+Foreign wheat and barbed wire--those are the two curses of this country,
+for the one spoils the farmer’s work and the other spoils his play.
+
+“This young Wat Danbury was a very fine fellow, a keen rider, and a
+thorough sportsman, but his head was a little turned at having come,
+when so young, into a comfortable fortune, and he went the pace for a
+year or two. The lad had no vice in him, but there was a hard-drinking
+set in the neighbourhood at that time, and Danbury got drawn in among
+them; and, being an amiable fellow who liked to do what his friends were
+doing, he very soon took to drinking a great deal more than was good for
+him. As a rule, a man who takes his exercise may drink as much as he
+likes in the evening, and do himself no very great harm, if he will
+leave it alone during the day. Danbury had too many friends for that,
+however, and it really looked as if the poor chap was going to the bad,
+when a very curious thing happened which pulled him up with such a
+sudden jerk that he never put his hand upon the neck of a whisky bottle
+again.
+
+“He had a peculiarity which I have noticed in a good many other men,
+that though he was always playing tricks with his own health, he was
+none the less very anxious about it, and was extremely fidgety if ever
+he had any trivial symptom. Being a tough, open-air fellow, who was
+always as hard as a nail, it was seldom that there was anything amiss
+with him; but at last the drink began to tell, and he woke one morning
+with his hands shaking and all his nerves tingling like over-stretched
+fiddle-strings. He had been dining at some very wet house the night
+before, and the wine had, perhaps, been more plentiful than choice; at
+any rate, there he was, with a tongue like a bath towel and a head that
+ticked like an eight-day clock. He was very alarmed at his own
+condition, and he sent for Doctor Middleton, of Ascombe, the father of
+the man who practises there now.
+
+“Middleton had been a great friend of old Danbury’s, and he was very
+sorry to see his son going to the devil; so he improved the occasion by
+taking his case very seriously, and lecturing him upon the danger of his
+ways. He shook his head and talked about the possibility of _delirium
+tremens_, or even of mania, if he continued to lead such a life.
+Wat Danbury was horribly frightened.
+
+“‘Do you think I am going to get anything of the sort?’ he wailed.
+
+“‘Well, really, I don’t know,’ said the doctor gravely. ‘I cannot
+undertake to say that you are out of danger. Your system is very much
+out of order. At any time during the day you might have those grave
+symptoms of which I warn you.’
+
+“‘You think I shall be safe by evening?’
+
+“‘If you drink nothing during the day, and have no nervous symptoms
+before evening, I think you may consider yourself safe,’ the doctor
+answered. A little fright would, he thought, do his patient good, so he
+made the most of the matter.
+
+“‘What symptoms may I expect?’ asked Danbury.
+
+“‘It generally takes the form of optical delusions.’
+
+“‘I see specks floating all about.’
+
+“‘That is mere biliousness,’ said the doctor soothingly, for he saw that
+the lad was highly strung, and he did not wish to overdo it.
+‘I daresay that you will have no symptoms of the kind, but when they do
+come they usually take the shape of insects, or reptiles, or curious
+animals.’
+
+“‘And if I see anything of the kind?’
+
+“‘If you do, you will at once send for me;’ and so, with a promise of
+medicine, the doctor departed.
+
+“Young Wat Danbury rose and dressed and moped about the room feeling
+very miserable and unstrung, with a vision of the County Asylum for ever
+in his mind. He had the doctor’s word for it that if he could get
+through to evening in safety he would be all right; but it is not very
+exhilarating to be waiting for symptoms, and to keep on glancing at your
+bootjack to see whether it is still a bootjack or whether it has begun
+to develop antennae and legs. At last he could stand it no longer, and
+an overpowering longing for the fresh air and the green grass came over
+him. Why should he stay indoors when the Ascombe Hunt was meeting
+within half a mile of him? If he was going to have these delusions
+which the doctor talked of, he would not have them the sooner nor the
+worse because he was on horseback in the open. He was sure, too, it
+would ease his aching head. And so it came about that in ten minutes he
+was in his hunting-kit, and in ten more he was riding out of his
+stable-yard with his roan mare ‘Matilda’ between his knees. He was a
+little unsteady in his saddle just at first, but the farther he went the
+better he felt, until by the time he reached the meet his head was
+almost clear, and there was nothing troubling him except those haunting
+words of the doctor’s about the possibility of delusions any time before
+nightfall.
+
+“But soon he forgot that also, for as he came up the hounds were thrown
+off, and they drew the Gravel Hanger, and afterwards the Hickory Copse.
+It was just the morning for a scent--no wind to blow it away, no water
+to wash it out, and just damp enough to make it cling. There was a
+field of forty, all keen men and good riders, so when they came to the
+Black Hanger they knew that there would be some sport, for that’s a
+cover which never draws blank. The woods were thicker in those days
+than now, and the foxes were thicker also, and that great dark
+oak-grove was swarming with them. The only difficulty was to make them
+break, for it is, as you know, a very close country, and you must coax
+them out into the open before you can hope for a run.
+
+“When they came to the Black Hanger the field took their positions along
+the cover-side wherever they thought that they were most likely to get a
+good start. Some went in with the hounds, some clustered at the ends of
+the drives, and some kept outside in the hope of the fox breaking in
+that direction. Young Wat Danbury knew the country like the palm of his
+hand, so he made for a place where several drives intersected, and there
+he waited. He had a feeling that the faster and the farther he galloped
+the better he should be, and so he was chafing to be off. His mare,
+too, was in the height of fettle and one of the fastest goers in the
+county. Wat was a splendid lightweight rider--under ten stone with his
+saddle--and the mare was a powerful creature, all quarters and
+shoulders, fit to carry a lifeguardsman; and so it was no wonder that
+there was hardly a man in the field who could hope to stay with him.
+There he waited and listened to the shouting of the huntsman and the
+whips, catching a glimpse now and then in the darkness of the wood of a
+whisking tail, or the gleam of a white-and-tan side amongst the
+underwood. It was a well-trained pack, and there was not so much as a
+whine to tell you that forty hounds were working all round you.
+
+“And then suddenly there came one long-drawn yell from one of them, and
+it was taken up by another, and another, until within a few seconds the
+whole pack was giving tongue together and running on a hot scent.
+Danbury saw them stream across one of the drives and disappear upon the
+other side, and an instant later the three red coats of the hunt
+servants flashed after them upon the same line. He might have made a
+shorter cut down one of the other drives, but he was afraid of heading
+the fox, so he followed the lead of the huntsman. Right through the
+wood they went in a bee-line, galloping with their faces brushed by
+their horses’ manes as they stooped under the branches.
+
+“It’s ugly going, as you know, with the roots all wriggling about in the
+darkness, but you can take a risk when you catch an occasional glimpse
+of the pack running with a breast-high scent; so in and out they dodged
+until the wood began to thin at the edges, and they found themselves in
+the long bottom where the river runs. It is clear going there upon
+grassland, and the hounds were running very strong about two hundred
+yards ahead, keeping parallel with the stream. The field, who had come
+round the wood instead of going through, were coming hard over the
+fields upon the left; but Danbury, with the hunt servants, had a clear
+lead, and they never lost it.
+
+“Two of the field got on terms with them--Parson Geddes on a big
+seventeen-hand bay which he used to ride in those days, and Squire
+Foley, who rode as a feather-weight, and made his hunters out of cast
+thoroughbreds from the Newmarket sales; but the others never had a
+look-in from start to finish, for there was no check and no pulling, and
+it was clear cross-country racing from start to finish. If you had
+drawn a line right across the map with a pencil you couldn’t go
+straighter than that fox ran, heading for the South Downs and the sea,
+and the hounds ran as surely as if they were running to view, and yet
+from the beginning no one ever saw the fox, and there was never a hallo
+forrard to tell them that he had been spied. This, however, is not so
+surprising, for if you’ve been over that line of country you will know
+that there are not very many people about.
+
+“There were six of them then in the front row--Parson Geddes, Squire
+Foley, the huntsman, two whips, and Wat Danbury, who had forgotten all
+about his head and the doctor by this time, and had not a thought for
+anything but the run. All six were galloping just as hard as they could
+lay hoofs to the ground. One of the whips dropped back, however, as
+some of the hounds were tailing off, and that brought them down to five.
+Then Foley’s thoroughbred strained herself, as these slim-legged,
+dainty-fetlocked thoroughbreds will do when the going is rough, and he
+had to take a back seat. But the other four were still going strong,
+and they did four or five miles down the river flat at a rasping pace.
+It had been a wet winter, and the waters had been out a little time
+before, so there was a deal of sliding and splashing; but by the time
+they came to the bridge the whole field was out of sight, and these four
+had the hunt to themselves.
+
+“The fox had crossed the bridge--for foxes do not care to swim a chilly
+river any more than humans do--and from that point he had streaked away
+southward as hard as he could tear. It is broken country, rolling
+heaths, down one slope and up another, and it’s hard to say whether the
+up or the down is the more trying for the horses. This sort of
+switchback work is all right for a cobby, short-backed, short-legged
+little horse, but it is killing work for a big, long-striding hunter
+such as one wants in the Midlands. Anyhow, it was too much for Parson
+Geddes’ seventeen-hand bay, and though he tried the Irish trick--for he
+was a rare keen sportsman--of running up the hills by his horse’s head,
+it was all to no use, and he had to give it up. So then there were only
+the huntsman, the whip, and Wat Danbury--all going strong.
+
+“But the country got worse and worse and the hills were steeper and more
+thickly covered in heather and bracken. The horses were over their
+hocks all the time, and the place was pitted with rabbit-holes; but the
+hounds were still streaming along, and the riders could not afford to
+pick their steps. As they raced down one slope, the hounds were always
+flowing up the opposite one, until it looked like that game where the
+one figure in falling makes the other one rise.
+
+“But never a glimpse did they get of the fox, although they knew very
+well that he must be only a very short way ahead for the scent to be so
+strong. And then Wat Danbury heard a crash and a thud at his elbow, and
+looking round he saw a pair of white cords and top-boots kicking out of
+a tussock of brambles. The whip’s horse had stumbled, and the whip was
+out of the running. Danbury and the huntsman eased down for an instant;
+and then, seeing the man staggering to his feet all right, they turned
+and settled into their saddles once more.
+
+“Joe Clarke, the huntsman, was a famous old rider, known for five
+counties round; but he reckoned upon his second horse, and the second
+horses had all been left many miles behind. However, the one he was
+riding was good enough for anything with such a horseman upon his back,
+and he was going as well as when he started. As to Wat Danbury, he was
+going better. With every stride his own feelings improved, and the mind
+of the rider had its influence upon the mind of the horse. The stout
+little roan was gathering its muscular limbs under it, and stretching to
+the gallop as if it were steel and whale-bone instead of flesh and
+blood. Wat had never come to the end of its powers yet, and to-day he
+had such a chance of testing them as he had never had before.
+
+“There was a pasture country beyond the heather slopes, and for several
+miles the two riders were either losing ground as they fumbled with
+their crop-handles at the bars of gates, or gaining it again as they
+galloped over the fields. Those were the days before this accursed wire
+came into the country, and you could generally break a hedge where you
+could not fly it, so they did not trouble the gates more than they could
+help. Then they were down in a hard lane, where they had to slacken
+their pace, and through a farm where a man came shouting excitedly after
+them; but they had no time to stop and listen to him, for the hounds
+were on some ploughland, only two fields ahead. It was sloping upwards,
+that ploughland, and the horses were over their fetlocks in the red,
+soft soil.
+
+“When they reached the top they were blowing badly, but a grand valley
+sloped before them, leading up to the open country of the South Downs.
+Between, there lay a belt of pine-woods, into which the hounds were
+streaming, running now in a long, straggling line, and shedding one here
+and one there as they ran. You could see the white-and-tan dots here
+and there where the limpers were tailing away. But half the pack were
+still going well, though the pace and distance had both been
+tremendous--two clear hours now without a check.
+
+“There was a drive through the pine-wood--one of those green, slightly
+rutted drives where a horse can get the last yard out of itself, for the
+ground is hard enough to give him clean going and yet springy enough to
+help him. Wat Danbury got alongside of the huntsman and they galloped
+together with their stirrup-irons touching, and the hounds within a
+hundred yards of them.
+
+“‘We have it all to ourselves,’ said he.
+
+“‘Yes, sir, we’ve shook on the lot of ’em this time,’ said old Joe
+Clarke. ‘If we get this fox it’s worth while ’aving ’im skinned an’
+stuffed, for ’e’s a curiosity ’e is.’
+
+“‘It’s the fastest run I ever had in my life!’ cried Danbury.
+
+“‘And the fastest that ever I ’ad, an’ that means more,’ said the old
+huntsman. ‘But what licks me is that we’ve never ’ad a look at the
+beast. ’E must leave an amazin’ scent be’ind ’im when these ’ounds can
+follow ’im like this, and yet none of us have seen ’im when we’ve ’ad a
+clear ’alf mile view in front of us.’
+
+“‘I expect we’ll have a view of him presently,’ said Danbury; and in his
+mind he added, ‘at least, I shall,’ for the huntsman’s horse was gasping
+as it ran, and the white foam was pouring down it like the side of a
+washing-tub.
+
+“They had followed the hounds on to one of the side tracks which led out
+of the main drive, and that divided into a smaller track still, where
+the branches switched across their faces as they went, and there was
+barely room for one horse at a time. Wat Danbury took the lead, and he
+heard the huntsman’s horse clumping along heavily behind him, while his
+own mare was going with less spring than when she had started. She
+answered to a touch of his crop or spur, however, and he felt that there
+was something still left to draw upon. And then he looked up, and there
+was a heavy wooden stile at the end of the narrow track, with a lane of
+stiff young saplings leading down to it, which was far too thick to
+break through. The hounds were running clear upon the grassland on the
+other side, and you were bound either to get over that stile or lose
+sight of them, for the pace was too hot to let you go round.
+
+“Well, Wat Danbury was not the lad to flinch, and at it he went full
+split, like a man who means what he is doing. She rose gallantly to it,
+rapped it hard with her front hoof, shook him on to her withers,
+recovered herself, and was over. Wat had hardly got back into his
+saddle when there was a clatter behind him like the fall of a woodstack,
+and there was the top bar in splinters, the horse on its belly, and the
+huntsman on hands and knees half a dozen yards in front of him.
+Wat pulled up for an instant, for the fall was a smasher; but he saw old
+Joe spring to his feet and get to his horse’s bridle. The horse
+staggered up, but the moment it put one foot in front of the other, Wat
+saw that it was hopelessly lame--a slipped shoulder and a six weeks’
+job. There was nothing he could do, and Joe was shouting to him not to
+lose the hounds, so off he went again, the one solitary survivor of the
+whole hunt. When a man finds himself there, he can retire from
+fox-hunting, for he has tasted the highest which it has to offer.
+I remember once when I was out with the Royal Surrey--but I’ll tell you
+that story afterwards.
+
+“The pack, or what was left of them, had got a bit ahead during this
+time; but he had a clear view of them on the downland, and the mare
+seemed full of pride at being the only one left, for she was stepping
+out rarely and tossing her head as she went. They were two miles over
+the green shoulder of a hill, a rattle down a stony, deep-rutted country
+lane, where the mare stumbled and nearly came down, a jump over a 5ft.
+brook, a cut through a hazel copse, another dose of heavy ploughland, a
+couple of gates to open, and then the green, unbroken Downs beyond.
+
+“‘Well,’ said Wat Danbury to himself, ‘I’ll see this fox run into or I
+shall see it drowned, for it’s all clear going now between this and the
+chalk cliffs which line the sea.’ But he was wrong in that, as he
+speedily discovered. In all the little hollows of the downs at that
+part there are plantations of fir-woods, some of which have grown to a
+good size. You do not see them until you come upon the edge of the
+valleys in which they lie. Danbury was galloping hard over the short,
+springy turf when he came over the lip of one of these depressions, and
+there was the dark clump of wood lying in front of and beneath him.
+There were only a dozen hounds still running, and they were just
+disappearing among the trees. The sunlight was shining straight upon
+the long olive-green slopes which curved down towards this wood, and
+Danbury, who had the eyes of a hawk, swept them over this great expanse;
+but there was nothing moving upon it. A few sheep were grazing far up
+on the right, but there was no other sight of any living creature.
+He was certain then that he was very near to the end, for either the fox
+must have gone to ground in the wood or the hounds’ noses must be at his
+very brush. The mare seemed to know also what that great empty sweep of
+countryside meant, for she quickened her stride, and a few minutes
+afterwards Danbury was galloping into the fir-wood.
+
+“He had come from bright sunshine, but the wood was very closely
+planted, and so dim that he could hardly see to right or to left out of
+the narrow path down which he was riding. You know what a solemn,
+churchyardy sort of place a fir-wood is. I suppose it is the absence of
+any undergrowth, and the fact that the trees never move at all. At any
+rate a kind of chill suddenly struck Wat Danbury, and it flashed through
+his mind that there had been some very singular points about this run--
+its length and its straightness, and the fact that from the first find
+no one had ever caught a glimpse of the creature. Some silly talk which
+had been going round the country about the king of the foxes--a sort of
+demon fox, so fast that it could outrun any pack, and so fierce that
+they could do nothing with it if they overtook it--suddenly came back
+into his mind, and it did not seem so laughable now in the dim fir-wood
+as it had done when the story had been told over the wine and cigars.
+The nervousness which had been on him in the morning, and which he had
+hoped that he had shaken off, swept over him again in an overpowering
+wave. He had been so proud of being alone, and yet he would have given
+10 pounds now to have had Joe Clarke’s homely face beside him. And
+then, just at that moment, there broke out from the thickest part of the
+wood the most frantic hullabaloo that ever he had heard in his life.
+The hounds had run into their fox.
+
+“Well, you know, or you ought to know, what your duty is in such a case.
+You have to be whip, huntsman, and everything else if you are the first
+man up. You get in among the hounds, lash them off, and keep the brush
+and pads from being destroyed. Of course, Wat Danbury knew all about
+that, and he tried to force his mare through the trees to the place
+where all this hideous screaming and howling came from, but the wood was
+so thick that it was impossible to ride it. He sprang off, therefore,
+left the mare standing, and broke his way through as best he could with
+his hunting-lash ready over his shoulder.
+
+“But as he ran forward he felt his flesh go cold and creepy all over.
+He had heard hounds run into foxes many times before, but he had never
+heard such sounds as these. They were not the cries of triumph, but of
+fear. Every now and then came a shrill yelp of mortal agony. Holding
+his breath, he ran on until he broke through the interlacing branches,
+and found himself in a little clearing with the hounds all crowding
+round a patch of tangled bramble at the further end.
+
+“When he first caught sight of them the hounds were standing in a
+half-circle round this bramble patch, with their backs bristling and
+their jaws gaping. In front of the brambles lay one of them with his
+throat torn out, all crimson and white-and-tan. Wat came running out
+into the clearing, and at the sight of him the hounds took heart again,
+and one of them sprang with a growl into the bushes. At the same
+instant, a creature the size of a donkey jumped on to its feet, a huge
+grey head, with monstrous glistening fangs and tapering fox jaws, shot
+out from among the branches, and the hound was thrown several feet into
+the air, and fell howling among the cover. Then there was a clashing
+snap, like a rat-trap closing, and the howls sharpened into a scream and
+then were still.
+
+“Danbury had been on the look-out for symptoms all day, and now he had
+found them. He looked once more at the thicket, saw a pair of savage
+red eyes fixed upon him, and fairly took to his heels. It might only be
+a passing delusion, or it might be the permanent mania of which the
+doctor had spoken, but anyhow, the thing to do was to get back to bed
+and to quiet, and to hope for the best.
+
+“He forgot the hounds, the hunt, and everything else in his desperate
+fears for his own reason. He sprang upon his mare, galloped her madly
+over the downs, and only stopped when he found himself at a country
+station. There he left his mare at the inn, and made back for home as
+quickly as steam would take him. It was evening before he got there,
+shivering with apprehension, and seeing those red eyes and savage teeth
+at every turn. He went straight to bed and sent for Dr. Middleton.
+
+“‘I’ve got ’em, doctor,’ said he. ‘It came about exactly as you said--
+strange creatures, optical delusions, and everything. All I ask you now
+is to save my reason.’ The doctor listened to his story, and was
+shocked as he heard it.
+
+“‘It appears to be a very clear case,’ said he. ‘This must be a lesson
+to you for life.’
+
+“‘Never a drop again if I only come safely through this,’ cried Wat
+Danbury.
+
+“‘Well, my dear boy, if you will stick to that it may prove a blessing
+in disguise. But the difficulty in this case is to know where fact ends
+and fancy begins. You see, it is not as if there was only one delusion.
+There have been several. The dead dogs, for example, must have been one
+as well as the creature in the bush.’
+
+“‘I saw it all as clearly as I see you.’
+
+“‘One of the characteristics of this form of delirium is that what you
+see is even clearer than reality. I was wondering whether the whole run
+was not a delusion also.’
+
+“Wat Danbury pointed to his hunting boots still lying upon the floor,
+necked with the splashings of two counties.
+
+“‘Hum! that looks very real, certainly. No doubt, in your weak state,
+you over-exerted yourself and so brought this attack upon yourself.
+Well, whatever the cause, our treatment is clear. You will take the
+soothing mixture which I will send to you, and we shall put two leeches
+upon your temples to-night to relieve any congestion of the brain.’
+
+“So Wat Danbury spent the night in tossing about and reflecting what a
+sensitive thing this machinery of ours is, and how very foolish it is to
+play tricks with what is so easily put out of gear and so difficult to
+mend. And so he repeated and repeated his oath that this first lesson
+should be his last, and that from that time forward he would be a sober,
+hard-working yeoman as his father had been before him. So he lay,
+tossing and still repentant, when his door flew open in the morning and
+in rushed the doctor with a newspaper crumpled up in his hand.
+
+“‘My dear boy,’ he cried, ‘I owe you a thousand apologies. You’re the
+most ill-used lad and I the greatest numskull in the county. Listen to
+this!’ And he sat down upon the side of the bed, flattened out his
+paper upon his knee, and began to read.
+
+“The paragraph was headed, ‘Disaster to the Ascombe Hounds,’ and it went
+on to say that four of the hounds, shockingly torn and mangled, had been
+found in Winton Fir Wood upon the South Downs. The run had been so
+severe that half the pack were lamed; but the four found in the wood
+were actually dead, although the cause of their extraordinary injuries
+was still unknown.
+
+“‘So, you see,’ said the doctor, looking up, ‘that I was wrong when I
+put the dead hounds among the delusions.’
+
+“‘But the cause?’ cried Wat.
+
+“‘Well, I think we may guess the cause from an item which has been
+inserted just as the paper went to press:--
+
+   “Late last night, Mr. Brown, of Smither’s Farm, to the
+   east of Hastings, perceived what he imagined to be an enormous
+   dog worrying one of his sheep. He shot the creature, which
+   proves to be a grey Siberian wolf of the variety known as
+   _Lupus Giganticus_. It is supposed to have escaped from some
+   travelling menagerie.
+
+“That’s the story, gentlemen, and Wat Danbury stuck to his good
+resolutions, for the fright which he had cured him of all wish to run
+such a risk again; and he never touches anything stronger than
+lime-juice--at least, he hadn’t before he left this part of the country,
+five years ago next Lady Day.”
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS
+
+
+There was only the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that
+great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the
+bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole
+Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders
+which studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was
+beating down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims
+of the pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a
+blast-furnace. It had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were
+no larger than themselves.
+
+“Whew!” cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead, “you’d pay five shillings
+for this at the hummums.”
+
+“Precisely,” said Scott. “But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in
+a Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and
+a whole Christmas-treeful of things dangling from you. The hot-house at
+Kew is excellent as a conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon
+the horizontal bar. I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and a halt
+until evening.”
+
+Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward.
+Everywhere were the same black burned rocks and deep orange sand.
+At one spot only an intermittent line appeared to have been cut through
+the rugged spurs which ran down to the river. It was the bed of the old
+railway, long destroyed by the Arabs, but now in process of
+reconstruction by the advancing Egyptians. There was no other sign of
+man’s handiwork in all that desolate scene.
+
+“It’s palm trees or nothing,” said Scott.
+
+“Well, I suppose we must; and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the
+force up. What _would_ our editors say if we were late for the action?”
+
+“My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn’t need to be told that no sane
+modern general would ever attack until the Press is up.”
+
+“You don’t mean that?” said young Anerley. “I thought we were looked
+upon as an unmitigated nuisance.”
+
+“‘Newspaper correspondents and travelling gentlemen, and all that tribe
+of useless drones’--being an extract from Lord Wolseley’s ‘Soldier’s
+Pocket-Book,’” cried Scott. “We know all about _that_, Anerley;” and he
+winked behind his blue spectacles. “If there was going to be a battle
+we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up. I’ve been
+in fifteen, and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a
+reporter’s table.”
+
+“That’s very well; but the enemy may be less considerate,” said
+Mortimer.
+
+“They are not strong enough to force a battle.”
+
+“A skirmish, then?”
+
+“Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear. In that case we are just
+where we should be.”
+
+“So we are! What a score over Reuter’s man up with the advance!
+Well, we’ll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms.”
+
+There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies.
+Reuter’s was thirty miles ahead; two evening pennies upon camels were
+twenty miles behind. And among them they represented the eyes and ears
+of the public--the great silent millions and millions who had paid for
+everything, and who waited so patiently to know the result of their
+outlay.
+
+They were remarkable men these body-servants of the Press; two of them
+already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first
+campaign, and full of deference for his famous comrades.
+
+This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was
+Mortimer, of the _Intelligence_--tall, straight, and hawk-faced, with
+khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund, and
+a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled by
+the mosquito and the sand-fly. The other--small, quick, mercurial, with
+blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch for ever flicking in
+his left hand--was Scott, of the _Courier_, who had come through more
+dangers and brought off more brilliant _coups_ than any man in the
+profession, save the eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to
+take the field. They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and
+it was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship
+lay. Each dovetailed into the other. The strength of each was in the
+other’s weakness. Together they formed a perfect unit. Mortimer was
+Saxon--slow, conscientious, and deliberate; Scott was Celtic--quick,
+happy-go-lucky, and brilliant. Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the
+more attractive. Mortimer was the deeper thinker, Scott the brighter
+talker. By a curious coincidence, though each had seen much of warfare,
+their campaigns had never coincided. Together they covered all recent
+military history. Scott had done Plevna, the Shipka, the Zulus, Egypt,
+Suakim; Mortimer had seen the Boer War, the Chilian, the Bulgaria and
+Servian, the Gordon relief, the Indian frontier, Brazilian rebellion,
+and Madagascar. This intimate personal knowledge gave a peculiar
+flavour to their talk. There was none of the second-hand surmise and
+conjecture which form so much of our conversation; it was all concrete
+and final. The speaker had been there, had seen it, and there was an
+end of it.
+
+In spite of their friendship there was the keenest professional rivalry
+between the two men. Either would have sacrificed himself to help his
+companion, but either would also have sacrificed his companion to help
+his paper. Never did a jockey yearn for a winning mount as keenly as
+each of them longed to have a full column in a morning edition whilst
+every other daily was blank. They were perfectly frank about the
+matter. Each professed himself ready to steal a march on his neighbour,
+and each recognised that the other’s duty to his employer was far higher
+than any personal consideration.
+
+The third man was Anerley, of the _Gazette_--young, inexperienced, and
+rather simple-looking. He had a droop of the lip, which some of his
+more intimate friends regarded as a libel upon his character, and his
+eyes were so slow and so sleepy that they suggested an affectation.
+A leaning towards soldiering had sent him twice to autumn manoeuvres,
+and a touch of colour in his descriptions had induced the proprietors of
+the _Gazette_ to give him a trial as a war-special. There was a
+pleasing diffidence about his bearing which recommended him to his
+experienced companions, and if they had a smile sometimes at his
+guileless ways, it was soothing to them to have a comrade from whom
+nothing was to be feared. From the day that they left the
+telegraph-wire behind them at Sarras, the man who was mounted upon a
+15-guinea 13-4 Syrian was delivered over into the hands of the owners of
+the two fastest polo-ponies that ever shot down the Ghezireh ground.
+The three had dismounted and led their beasts under the welcome shade.
+In the brassy, yellow glare every branch above threw so black and solid
+a shadow that the men involuntarily raised their feet to step over
+them.
+
+“The palm makes an excellent hat-rack,” said Scott, slinging his
+revolver and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which
+bristle from the trunk. “As a shade tree, however, it isn’t an
+unqualified success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means
+to ends something a little less flimsy could not have been devised for
+the tropics.”
+
+“Like the banyan in India.”
+
+“Or the fine hardwood trees in Ashantee, where a whole regiment could
+picnic under the shade.”
+
+“The teak tree isn’t bad in Burmah, either. By Jove, the baccy has all
+come loose in the saddle-bag! That long-cut mixture smokes rather hot
+for this climate. How about the baggles, Anerley?”
+
+“They’ll be here in five minutes.”
+
+Down the winding path which curved among the rocks the little train of
+baggage-camels was daintily picking its way. They came mincing and
+undulating along, turning their heads slowly from side to side with the
+air of a self-conscious woman. In front rode the three Berberee
+body-servants upon donkeys, and behind walked the Arab camel-boys.
+They had been travelling for nine long hours, ever since the first
+rising of the moon, at the weary camel-drag of two and a half miles an
+hour, but now they brightened, both beasts and men, at the sight of the
+grove and the riderless horses. In a few minutes the loads were
+unstrapped, the animals tethered, a fire lighted, fresh water carried up
+from the river, and each camel-boy provided with his own little heap of
+tibbin laid in the centre of the table-cloth, without which no well-bred
+Arabian will condescend to feed. The dazzling light without, the
+subdued half-tones within, the green palm-fronds outlined against the
+deep blue sky, the flitting, silent-footed Arab servants, the crackling
+of sticks, the reek of a lighting fire, the placid supercilious heads of
+the camels, they all come back in their dreams to those who have known
+them.
+
+Scott was breaking eggs into a pan and rolling out a love-song in his
+rich, deep voice. Anerley, with his head and arms buried in a deal
+packing-case, was working his way through strata of tinned soups, bully
+beef, potted chicken, and sardines to reach the jams which lay beneath.
+The conscientious Mortimer, with his notebook upon his knee, was jotting
+down what the railway engineer had told him at the line-end the day
+before. Suddenly he raised his eyes and saw the man himself on his
+chestnut pony, dipping and rising over the broken ground.
+
+“Hullo! Here’s Merryweather!”
+
+“A pretty lather his pony is in! He’s had her at that hand-gallop for
+hours, by the look of her. Hullo, Merryweather, hullo!”
+
+The engineer, a small, compact man with a pointed red beard, had made as
+though he would ride past their camp without word or halt. Now he
+swerved, and easing his pony down to a canter, he headed her towards
+them.
+
+“For God’s sake, a drink!” he croaked. “My tongue is stuck to the roof
+of my mouth.”
+
+Mortimer ran with the water-bottle, Scott with the whisky-flask, and
+Anerley with the tin pannikin. The engineer drank until his breath
+failed him.
+
+“Well, I must be off,” said he, striking the drops from his red
+moustache.
+
+“Any news?”
+
+“A hitch in the railway construction. I must see the general.
+It’s the devil not having a telegraph.”
+
+“Anything we can report?” Out came three notebooks.
+
+“I’ll tell you after I’ve seen the general.”
+
+“Any dervishes?”
+
+“The usual shaves. Hud-up, Jinny! Good-bye!”
+
+With a soft thudding upon the sand, and a clatter among the stones the
+weary pony was off upon her journey once more.
+
+“Nothing serious, I suppose?” said Mortimer, staring after him.
+
+“Deuced serious,” cried Scott. “The ham and eggs are burned! No--it’s
+all right--saved, and done to a turn! Pull the box up, Anerley.
+Come on, Mortimer, stow that notebook! The fork is mightier than the
+pen just at present. What’s the matter with you, Anerley?”
+
+“I was wondering whether what we have just seen was worth a telegram.”
+
+“Well, it’s for the proprietors to say if it’s worth it. Sordid money
+considerations are not for us. We must wire about something just to
+justify our khaki coats and our putties.”
+
+“But what is there to say?”
+
+Mortimer’s long, austere face broke into a smile over the youngster’s
+innocence. “It’s not quite usual in our profession to give each other
+tips,” said he. “However, as my telegram is written, I’ve no objection
+to your reading it. You may be sure that I would not show it to you if
+it were of the slightest importance.”
+
+Anerley took up the slip of paper and read:--
+
+   Merryweather obstacles stop journey confer general stop nature
+   difficulties later stop rumours dervishes.
+
+“This is very condensed,” said Anerley, with wrinkled brows.
+
+“Condensed!” cried Scott. “Why, it’s sinfully garrulous. If my old man
+got a wire like that his language would crack the lamp-shades. I’d cut
+out half this; for example, I’d have out ‘journey,’ and ‘nature,’ and
+‘rumours.’ But my old man would make a ten-line paragraph of it for all
+that.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Well, I’ll do it myself just to show you. Lend me that stylo.” He
+scribbled for a minute in his notebook. “It works out somewhat on these
+lines”:--
+
+   Mr. Charles H. Merryweather, the eminent railway engineer,
+   who is at present engaged in superintending the construction
+   of the line from Sarras to the front, has met with considerable
+   obstacles to the rapid completion of his important task--
+
+“Of course the old man knows who Merryweather is, and what he is about,
+so the word ‘obstacles’ would suggest all that to him.”
+
+   He has to-day been compelled to make a journey of forty
+   miles to the front, in order to confer with the general upon
+   the steps which are necessary in order to facilitate the work.
+   Further particulars of the exact nature of the difficulties
+   met with will be made public at a later date. All is quiet
+   upon the line of communications, though the usual persistent
+   rumours of the presence of dervishes in the Eastern desert
+   continue to circulate.--_Our own correspondent_.
+
+“How’s that?” cried Scott, triumphantly, and his white teeth gleamed
+suddenly through his black beard. “That’s the sort of flapdoodle for
+the dear old public.”
+
+“Will it interest them?”
+
+“Oh, everything interests them. They want to know all about it; and
+they like to think that there is a man who is getting a hundred a month
+simply in order to tell it to them.”
+
+“It’s very kind of you to teach me all this.”
+
+“Well, it is a little unconventional, for, after all, we are here to
+score over each other if we can. There are no more eggs, and you must
+take it out in jam. Of course, as Mortimer says, such a telegram as
+this is of no importance one way or another, except to prove to the
+office that we _are_ in the Soudan, and not at Monte Carlo. But when it
+comes to serious work it must be every man for himself.”
+
+“Is that quite necessary?”
+
+“Why, of course it is.”
+
+“I should have thought if three men were to combine and to share their
+news, they would do better than if they were each to act for himself,
+and they would have a much pleasanter time of it.”
+
+The two older men sat with their bread-and-jam in their hands, and an
+expression of genuine disgust upon their faces.
+
+“We are not here to have a pleasant time,” said Mortimer, with a flash
+through his glasses. “We are here to do our best for our papers.
+How can they score over each other if we do not do the same? If we all
+combine we might as well amalgamate with Reuter at once.”
+
+“Why, it would take away the whole glory of the profession!” cried
+Scott. “At present the smartest man gets his stuff first on the wires.
+What inducement is there to be smart if we all share and share alike?”
+
+“And at present the man with the best equipment has the best chance,”
+remarked Mortimer, glancing across at the shot-silk polo ponies and the
+cheap little Syrian grey. “That is the fair reward of foresight and
+enterprise. Every man for himself, and let the best man win.”
+
+“That’s the way to find who the best man is. Look at Chandler.
+He would never have got his chance if he had not played always off his
+own bat. You’ve heard how he pretended to break his leg, sent his
+fellow-correspondent off for the doctor, and so got a fair start for the
+telegraph-office.”
+
+“Do you mean to say that was legitimate?”
+
+“Everything is legitimate. It’s your wits against my wits.”
+
+“I should call it dishonourable.”
+
+“You may call it what you like. Chandler’s paper got the battle and the
+other’s didn’t. It made Chandler’s name.”
+
+“Or take Westlake,” said Mortimer, cramming the tobacco into his pipe.
+“Hi, Abdul, you may have the dishes! Westlake brought his stuff down by
+pretending to be the Government courier, and using the relays of
+Government horses. Westlake’s paper sold half a million.”
+
+“Is that legitimate also?” asked Anerley, thoughtfully.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Well, it looks a little like horse-stealing and lying.”
+
+“Well, _I_ think I should do a little horse-stealing and lying if I
+could have a column to myself in a London daily. What do you say,
+Scott?”
+
+“Anything short of manslaughter.”
+
+“And I’m not sure that I’d trust you there.”
+
+“Well, I don’t think I should be guilty of newspaper-man-slaughter.
+That I regard as a distinct breach of professional etiquette. But if
+any outsider comes between a highly charged correspondent and an
+electric wire, he does it at his peril. My dear Anerley, I tell you
+frankly that if you are going to handicap yourself with scruple you may
+just as well be in Fleet Street as in the Soudan. Our life is
+irregular. Our work has never been systematised. No doubt it will be
+some day, but the time is not yet. Do what you can and how you can, and
+be first on the wires; that’s my advice to you; and also, that when next
+you come upon a campaign you bring with you the best horse that money
+can buy. Mortimer may beat me or I may beat Mortimer, but at least we
+know that between us we have the fastest ponies in the country. We have
+neglected no chance.”
+
+“I am not so certain of that,” said Mortimer, slowly. “You are aware,
+of course, that though a horse beats a camel on twenty miles, a camel
+beats a horse on thirty.”
+
+“What, one of those camels?” cried Anerley in astonishment. The two
+seniors burst out laughing.
+
+“No, no, the real high-bred trotter--the kind of beast the dervishes
+ride when they make their lightning raids.”
+
+“Faster than a galloping horse?”
+
+“Well, it tires a horse down. It goes the same gait all the way, and it
+wants neither halt nor drink, and it takes rough ground much better than
+a horse. They used to have long distance races at Halfa, and the camel
+always won at thirty.”
+
+“Still, we need not reproach ourselves, Scott, for we are not very
+likely to have to carry a thirty-mile message. They will have the field
+telegraph next week.”
+
+“Quite so. But at the present moment--”
+
+“I know, my dear chap; but there is no motion of urgency before the
+house. Load baggles at five o’clock; so you have just three hours
+clear. Any sign of the evening pennies?”
+
+Mortimer swept the northern horizon with his binoculars. “Not in sight
+yet.”
+
+“They are quite capable of travelling during the heat of the day.
+Just the sort of thing evening pennies _would_ do. Take care of your
+match, Anerley. These palm groves go up like a powder magazine if you
+set them alight. Bye-bye.” The two men crawled under their
+mosquito-nets and sank instantly into the easy sleep of those whose
+lives are spent in the open.
+
+Young Anerley stood with his back against a palm tree and his briar
+between his lips, thinking over the advice which he had received.
+After all, they were the heads of the profession, these men, and it was
+not for him, the newcomer, to reform their methods. If they served
+their papers in this fashion, then he must do the same. They had at
+least been frank and generous in teaching him the rules of the game.
+If it was good enough for them it was good enough for him.
+
+It was a broiling afternoon, and those thin frills of foam round the
+black, glistening necks of the Nile boulders looked delightfully cool
+and alluring. But it would not be safe to bathe for some hours to come.
+The air shimmered and vibrated over the baking stretch of sand and rock.
+There was not a breath of wind, and the droning and piping of the
+insects inclined one for sleep. Somewhere above a hoopoe was calling.
+Anerley knocked out his ashes, and was turning towards his couch, when
+his eye caught something moving in the desert to the south. It was a
+horseman riding towards them as swiftly as the broken ground would
+permit. A messenger from the army, thought Anerley; and then, as he
+watched, the sun suddenly struck the man on the side of the head, and
+his chin flamed into gold. There could not be two horsemen with beards
+of such a colour. It was Merryweather, the engineer, and he was
+returning. What on earth was he returning for? He had been so keen to
+see the general, and yet he was coming back with his mission
+unaccomplished. Was it that his pony was hopelessly foundered?
+It seemed to be moving well. Anerley picked up Mortimer’s binoculars,
+and a foam-bespattered horse and a weary koorbash-cracking man came
+cantering up the centre of the field. But there was nothing in his
+appearance to explain the mystery of his return. Then as he watched
+them they dipped into a hollow and disappeared. He could see that it
+was one of those narrow khors which led to the river, and he waited,
+glass in hand, for their immediate reappearance. But minute passed
+after minute and there was no sign of them. That narrow gully appeared
+to have swallowed them up. And then with a curious gulp and start he
+saw a little grey cloud wreathe itself slowly from among the rocks and
+drift in a long, hazy shred over the desert. In an instant he had torn
+Scott and Mortimer from their slumbers.
+
+“Get up, you chaps!” he cried. “I believe Merryweather has been shot by
+dervishes.”
+
+“And Reuter not here!” cried the two veterans, exultantly clutching at
+their notebooks. “Merryweather shot! Where? When? How?”
+
+In a few words Anerley explained what he had seen.
+
+“You heard nothing?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Well, a shot loses itself very easily among rocks. By George, look at
+the buzzards!”
+
+Two large brown birds were soaring in the deep blue heaven. As Scott
+spoke they circled down and dropped into the little khor.
+
+“That’s good enough,” said Mortimer, with his nose between the leaves of
+his book. “‘Merryweather headed dervishes stop return stop shot
+mutilated stop raid communications.’ How’s that?”
+
+“You think he was headed off?”
+
+“Why else should he return?”
+
+“In that case, if they were out in front of him and others cut him off,
+there must be several small raiding parties.”
+
+“I should judge so.”
+
+“How about the ‘mutilated’?”
+
+“I’ve fought against Arabs before.”
+
+“Where are you off to?”
+
+“Sarras.”
+
+“I think I’ll race you in,” said Scott.
+
+Anerley stared in astonishment at the absolutely impersonal way in which
+these men regarded the situation. In their zeal for news it had
+apparently never struck them that they, their camp, and their servants
+were all in the lion’s mouth. But even as they talked there came the
+harsh, importunate rat-tat-tat of an irregular volley from among the
+rocks, and the high, keening whistle of bullets over their heads.
+A palm spray fluttered down amongst them. At the same instant the six
+frightened servants came running wildly in for protection.
+
+It was the cool-headed Mortimer who organised the defence, for Scott’s
+Celtic soul was so aflame at all this “copy” in hand and more to come
+that he was too exuberantly boisterous for a commander. The other, with
+his spectacles and his stern face, soon had the servants in hand.
+“_Tali henna! Egri!_ What the deuce are you frightened about? Put the
+camels between the palm trunks. That’s right. Now get the knee-tethers
+on them. _Quies_! Did you never hear bullets before? Now put the
+donkeys here. Not much--you don’t get my polo-pony to make a zareba
+with. Picket the ponies between the grove and the river out of danger’s
+way. These fellows seem to fire even higher than they did in ’85.”
+
+“That’s got home, anyhow,” said Scott, as they heard a soft, splashing
+thud like a stone in a mud-bank.
+
+“Who’s hit, then?”
+
+“The brown camel that’s chewing the cud.” As he spoke the creature, its
+jaw still working, laid its long neck along the ground and closed its
+large dark eyes.
+
+“That shot cost me 15 pounds,” said Mortimer, ruefully. “How many of
+them do you make?”
+
+“Four, I think.”
+
+“Only four Bezingers, at any rate; there may be some spearmen.”
+
+“I think not; it is a little raiding-party of rifle-men. By the way,
+Anerley, you’ve never been under fire before, have you?”
+
+“Never,” said the young pressman, who was conscious of a curious feeling
+of nervous elation.
+
+“Love and poverty and war, they are all experiences necessary to make a
+complete life. Pass over those cartridges. This is a very mild baptism
+that you are undergoing, for behind these camels you are as safe as if
+you were sitting in the back room of the Authors’ Club.”
+
+“As safe, but hardly as comfortable,” said Scott. “A long glass of hock
+and seltzer would be exceedingly acceptable. But oh, Mortimer, what a
+chance! Think of the general’s feelings when he hears that the first
+action of the war has been fought by the Press column. Think of Reuter,
+who has been stewing at the front for a week! Think of the evening
+pennies just too late for the fun. By George, that slug brushed a
+mosquito off me!”
+
+“And one of the donkeys is hit.”
+
+“This is sinful. It will end in our having to carry our own kits to
+Khartoum.”
+
+“Never mind, my boy, it all goes to make copy. I can see the
+headlines--‘Raid on Communications’: ‘Murder of British Engineer’:
+‘Press Column Attacked.’ Won’t it be ripping?”
+
+“I wonder what the next line will be,” said Anerley.
+
+“‘Our Special Wounded’!” cried Scott, rolling over on to his back.
+“No harm done,” he added, gathering himself up again; “only a chip off
+my knee. This is getting sultry. I confess that the idea of that back
+room at the Authors’ Club begins to grow upon me.”
+
+“I have some diachylon.”
+
+“Afterwards will do. We’re having a ’appy day with Fuzzy on the rush.
+I wish he _would_ rush.”
+
+“They’re coming nearer.”
+
+“This is an excellent revolver of mine if it didn’t throw so devilish
+high. I always aim at a man’s toes if I want to stimulate his
+digestion. O Lord, there’s our kettle gone!” With a boom like a
+dinner-gong a Remington bullet had passed through the kettle, and a
+cloud of steam hissed up from the fire. A wild shout came from the
+rocks above.
+
+“The idiots think that they have blown us up. They’ll rush us now, as
+sure as fate; then it will be our turn to lead. Got your revolver,
+Anerley?”
+
+“I have this double-barrelled fowling-piece.”
+
+“Sensible man! It’s the best weapon in the world at this sort of
+rough-and-tumble work. What cartridges?”
+
+“Swan-shot.”
+
+“That will do all right. I carry this big bore double-barrelled pistol
+loaded with slugs. You might as well try to stop one of these fellows
+with a pea-shooter as with a service revolver.”
+
+“There are ways and means,” said Scott. “The Geneva Convention does not
+hold south of the first cataract. It’s easy to make a bullet mushroom
+by a little manipulation of the tip of it. When I was in the broken
+square at Tamai--”
+
+“Wait a bit,” cried Mortimer, adjusting his glasses. “I think they are
+coming now.”
+
+“The time,” said Scott, snapping up his watch, “being exactly seventeen
+minutes past four.”
+
+Anerley had been lying behind a camel staring with an interest which
+bordered upon fascination at the rocks opposite. Here was a little
+woolly puff of smoke, and there was another one, but never once had they
+caught a glimpse of the attackers. To him there was something weird and
+awesome in these unseen, persistent men who, minute by minute, were
+drawing closer to them. He had heard them cry out when the kettle was
+broken, and once, immediately afterwards, an enormously strong voice had
+roared something which had set Scott shrugging his shoulders.
+
+“They’ve got to take us first,” said he, and Anerley thought his nerve
+might be better if he did not ask for a translation.
+
+The firing had begun at a distance of some 100 yards, which put it out
+of the question for them, with their lighter weapons, to make any reply
+to it. Had their antagonists continued to keep that range the defenders
+must either have made a hopeless sally or tried to shelter themselves
+behind their zareba as best they might on the chance that the sound
+might bring up help. But, luckily for them, the African has never taken
+kindly to the rifle, and his primitive instinct to close with his enemy
+is always too strong for his sense of strategy. They were drawing in,
+therefore, and now, for the first time, Anerley caught sight of a face
+looking at them from over a rock. It was a huge, virile, strong-jawed
+head of a pure negro type, with silver trinkets gleaming in the ears.
+The man raised a great arm from behind the rock, and shook his Remington
+at them.
+
+“Shall I fire?” asked Anerley.
+
+“No, no; it is too far. Your shot would scatter all over the place.”
+
+“It’s a picturesque ruffian,” said Scott. “Couldn’t you kodak him,
+Mortimer? There’s another!” A fine-featured brown Arab, with a black,
+pointed beard, was peeping from behind another boulder. He wore the
+green turban which proclaimed him hadji, and his face showed the keen,
+nervous exultation of the religious fanatic.
+
+“They seem a piebald crowd,” said Scott.
+
+“That last is one of the real fighting Baggara,” remarked Mortimer.
+“He’s a dangerous man.”
+
+“He looks pretty vicious. There’s another negro!”
+
+“Two more! Dingas, by the look of them. Just the same chaps we get our
+own black battalions from. As long as they get a fight they don’t mind
+who it’s for; but if the idiots had only sense enough to understand,
+they would know that the Arab is their hereditary enemy, and we their
+hereditary friends. Look at the silly juggins, gnashing his teeth at
+the very men who put down the slave trade!”
+
+“Couldn’t you explain?”
+
+“I’ll explain with this pistol when he comes a little nearer. Now sit
+tight, Anerley. They’re off!”
+
+They were indeed. It was the brown man with the green turban who headed
+the rush. Close at his heels was the negro with the silver ear-rings--
+a giant of a man, and the other two were only a little behind. As they
+sprang over the rocks one after the other, it took Anerley back to the
+school sports when he held the tape for the hurdle-race. It was
+magnificent, the wild spirit and abandon of it, the flutter of the
+chequered galabeeahs, the gleam of steel, the wave of black arms, the
+frenzied faces, the quick pitter-patter of the rushing feet. The
+law-abiding Briton is so imbued with the idea of the sanctity of human
+life that it was hard for the young pressman to realise that these men
+had every intention of killing him, and that he was at perfect liberty
+to do as much for them. He lay staring as if this were a show and he a
+spectator.
+
+“Now, Anerley, now! Take the Arab!” cried somebody.
+
+He put up the gun and saw the brown fierce face at the other end of the
+barrel. He tugged at the trigger, but the face grew larger and fiercer
+with every stride. Again and again he tugged. A revolver-shot rang out
+at his elbow, then another one, and he saw a red spot spring out on the
+Arab’s brown breast. But he was still coming on.
+
+“Shoot, you ass, shoot!” screamed Scott.
+
+Again he strained unavailingly at the trigger. There were two more
+pistol-shots, and the big negro had fallen and risen and fallen again.
+
+“Cock it, you fool!” shouted a furious voice; and at the same instant,
+with a rush and flutter, the Arab bounded over the prostrate camel and
+came down with his bare feet upon Anerley’s chest. In a dream he seemed
+to be struggling frantically with someone upon the ground, then he was
+conscious of a tremendous explosion in his very face, and so ended for
+him the first action of the war.
+
+“Good-bye, old chap. You’ll be all right. Give yourself time.” It was
+Mortimer’s voice, and he became dimly conscious of a long, spectacled
+face, and of a heavy hand upon his shoulder.
+
+“Sorry to leave you. We’ll be lucky now if we are in time for the
+morning editions.” Scott was tightening his girth as he spoke.
+
+“We’ll put in our wire that you have been hurt, so your people will know
+why they don’t hear from you. If Reuter or the evening pennies come up,
+don’t give the thing away. Abbas will look after you, and we’ll be back
+to-morrow afternoon. Bye-bye!”
+
+Anerley heard it all, though he did not feel energy enough to answer.
+Then, as he watched two sleek, brown ponies with their yellow-clad
+riders dwindling among the rocks, his memory cleared suddenly, and he
+realised that the first great journalistic chance of his life was
+slipping away from him. It was a small fight, but it was the first of
+the war, and the great public at home were all athirst for news.
+They would have it in the _Courier_; they would have it in the
+_Intelligence_, and not a word in the _Gazette_. The thought brought
+him to his feet, though he had to throw his arm round the stem of the
+palm tree to steady his swimming head. There was a big black man lying
+where he had fallen, his huge chest pocked with bullet-marks, every
+wound rosetted with its circle of flies. The Arab was stretched out
+within a few yards of him, with two hands clasped over the dreadful
+thing which had been his head. Across him was lying Anerley’s
+fowling-piece, one barrel discharged, the other at half cock.
+
+“Scott effendi shoot him your gun,” said a voice. It was Abbas, his
+English-speaking body-servant.
+
+Anerley groaned at the disgrace of it. He had lost his head so
+completely that he had forgotten to cock his gun; and yet he knew that
+it was not fear but interest which had so absorbed him. He put his hand
+up to his head and felt that a wet handkerchief was bound round his
+forehead.
+
+“Where are the two other dervishes?”
+
+“They ran away. One got shot in arm.”
+
+“What’s happened to me?”
+
+“Effendi got cut on head. Effendi catch bad man by arms, and Scott
+effendi shot him. Face burn very bad.”
+
+Anerley became conscious suddenly that there was a pringling about his
+skin and an overpowering smell of burned hair under his nostrils. He
+put his hand to his moustache. It was gone. His eyebrows too?
+He could not find them. His head, no doubt, was very near to the
+dervish’s when they were rolling upon the ground together, and this was
+the effect of the explosion of his own gun. Well, he would have time to
+grow some more hair before he saw Fleet Street again. But the cut,
+perhaps, was a more serious matter. Was it enough to prevent him
+getting to the telegraph-office at Sarras? The only way was to try and
+see. But there was only that poor little Syrian grey of his. There it
+stood in the evening sunshine, with a sunk head and a bent knee, as if
+its morning’s work was still heavy upon it. What hope was there of
+being able to do thirty-five miles of heavy going upon that? It would
+be a strain upon the splendid ponies of his companions--and they were
+the swiftest and most enduring in the country. The most enduring?
+There was one creature more enduring, and that was a real trotting
+camel. If he had had one he might have got to the wires first after
+all, for Mortimer had said that over thirty miles they have the better
+of any horse. Yes, if he had only had a real trotting camel! And then
+like a flash came Mortimer’s words, “It is the kind of beast that the
+dervishes ride when they make their lightning raids.”
+
+The beasts the dervishes ride! What had these dead dervishes ridden?
+In an instant he was clambering up the rocks, with Abbas protesting at
+his heels. Had the two fugitives carried away all the camels, or had
+they been content to save themselves? The brass gleam from a litter of
+empty Remington cases caught his eye, and showed where the enemy had
+been crouching. And then he could have shouted for joy, for there, in
+the hollow, some little distance off, rose the high, graceful white neck
+and the elegant head of such a camel as he had never set eyes upon
+before--a swanlike, beautiful creature, as far from the rough, clumsy
+baggles as the cart-horse is from the racer.
+
+The beast was kneeling under the shelter of the rocks with its waterskin
+and bag of doora slung over its shoulders, and its forelegs tethered
+Arab fashion with a rope around the knees. Anerley threw his leg over
+the front pommel while Abbas slipped off the cord. Forward flew
+Anerley towards the creature’s neck, then violently backwards, clawing
+madly at anything which might save him, and then, with a jerk which
+nearly snapped his loins, he was thrown forward again. But the camel
+was on its legs now, and the young pressman was safely seated upon one
+of the fliers of the desert. It was as gentle as it was swift, and it
+stood oscillating its long neck and gazing round with its large brown
+eyes, whilst Anerley coiled his legs round the peg and grasped the
+curved camel-stick which Abbas had handed up to him. There were two
+bridle-cords, one from the nostril and one from the neck, but he
+remembered that Scott had said that it was the servant’s and not the
+house-bell which had to be pulled, so he kept his grasp upon the lower.
+Then he touched the long, vibrating neck with his stick, and in an
+instant Abbas’ farewell seemed to come from far behind him, and the
+black rocks and yellow sand were dancing past on either side.
+
+It was his first experience of a trotting camel, and at first the
+motion, although irregular and abrupt, was not unpleasant. Having no
+stirrup or fixed point of any kind, he could not rise to it, but he
+gripped as tightly as he could with his knee, and he tried to sway
+backwards and forwards as he had seen the Arabs do. It was a large,
+very concave Makloofa saddle, and he was conscious that he was bouncing
+about on it with as little power of adhesion as a billiard-ball upon a
+tea-tray. He gripped the two sides with his hands to hold himself
+steady. The creature had got into its long, swinging, stealthy trot,
+its sponge-like feet making no sound upon the hard sand. Anerley leaned
+back with his two hands gripping hard behind him, and he whooped the
+creature on. The sun had already sunk behind the line of black volcanic
+peaks, which look like huge slag-heaps at the mouth of a mine.
+The western sky had taken that lovely light green and pale pink tint
+which makes evening beautiful upon the Nile, and the old brown river
+itself, swirling down amongst the black rocks, caught some shimmer of
+the colours above. The glare, the heat, and the piping of the insects
+had all ceased together. In spite of his aching head, Anerley could
+have cried out for pure physical joy as the swift creature beneath him
+flew along with him through that cool, invigorating air, with the virile
+north wind soothing his pringling face.
+
+He had looked at his watch, and now he made a swift calculation of times
+and distances. It was past six when he had left the camp. Over broken
+ground it was impossible that he could hope to do more than seven miles
+an hour--less on bad parts, more on the smooth. His recollection of the
+track was that there were few smooth and many bad. He would be lucky,
+then, if he reached Sarras anywhere from twelve to one. Then the
+messages took a good two hours to go through, for they had to be
+transcribed at Cairo. At the best he could only hope to have told his
+story in Fleet Street at two or three in the morning. It was possible
+that he might manage it, but the chances seemed enormously against him.
+About three the morning edition would be made up, and his chance gone
+for ever. The one thing clear was that only the first man at the wires
+would have any chance at all, and Anerley meant to be first if hard
+riding could do it. So he tapped away at the bird-like neck, and the
+creature’s long, loose limbs went faster and faster at every tap.
+Where the rocky spurs ran down to the river, horses would have to go
+round, while camels might get across, so that Anerley felt that he was
+always gaining upon his companions.
+
+But there was a price to be paid for the feeling. He had heard of men
+who had burst when on camel journeys, and he knew that the Arabs swathe
+their bodies tightly in broad cloth bandages when they prepare for a
+long march. It had seemed unnecessary and ridiculous when he first
+began to speed over the level track, but now, when he got on the rocky
+paths, he understood what it meant. Never for an instant was he at the
+same angle. Backwards, forwards he swung, with a tingling jar at the
+end of each sway, until he ached from his neck to his knees. It caught
+him across the shoulders, it caught him down the spine, it gripped him
+over the loins, it marked the lower line of his ribs with one heavy,
+dull throb. He clutched here and there with his hand to try and ease
+the strain upon his muscles. He drew up his knees, altered his seat,
+and set his teeth with a grim determination to go through with it should
+it kill him. His head was splitting, his flayed face smarting, and
+every joint in his body aching as if it were dislocated. But he forgot
+all that when, with the rising of the moon, he heard the clinking of
+horses’ hoofs down upon the track by the river, and knew that, unseen by
+them, he had already got well abreast of his companions. But he was
+hardly halfway, and the time already eleven.
+
+All day the needles had been ticking away without intermission in the
+little corrugated iron hut which served as a telegraph station at
+Sarras. With its bare walls and its packing-case seats, it was none the
+less for the moment one of the vital spots upon the earth’s surface, and
+the crisp, importunate ticking might have come from the world-old clock
+of Destiny. Many august people had been at the other end of those
+wires, and had communed with the moist-faced military clerk. A French
+Premier had demanded a pledge, and an English marquis had passed on the
+request to the General in command, with a question as to how it would
+affect the situation. Cipher telegrams had nearly driven the clerk out
+of his wits, for of all crazy occupations the taking of a cipher
+message, when you are without the key to the cipher, is the worst.
+Much high diplomacy had been going on all day in the innermost chambers
+of European chancellories, and the results of it had been whispered into
+this little corrugated-iron hut. About two in the morning an enormous
+despatch had come at last to an end, and the weary operator had opened
+the door, and was lighting his pipe in the cool, fresh air, when he saw
+a camel plump down in the dust, and a man, who seemed to be in the last
+stage of drunkenness, come rolling towards him.
+
+“What’s the time?” he cried, in a voice which appeared to be the only
+sober thing about him.
+
+It was on the clerk’s lips to say that it was time that the questioner
+was in his bed, but it is not safe upon a campaign to be ironical at the
+expense of khaki-clad men. He contented himself, therefore, with the
+bald statement that it was after two. But no retort that he could have
+devised could have had a more crushing effect. The voice turned drunken
+also, and the man caught at the door-post to uphold him.
+
+“Two o’clock! I’m done after all!” said he. His head was tied up in a
+bloody handkerchief, his face was crimson, and he stood with his legs
+crooked as if the pith had all gone out of his back. The clerk began to
+realise that something out of the ordinary was in the wind.
+
+“How long does it take to get a wire to London?”
+
+“About two hours.”
+
+“And it’s two now. I could not get it there before four.”
+
+“Before three.”
+
+“Four.”
+
+“No, three.”
+
+“But you said two hours.”
+
+“Yes, but there’s more than an hour’s difference in longitude.”
+
+“By Heaven, I’ll do it yet!” cried Anerley, and staggering to a
+packing-case, he began the dictation of his famous despatch.
+
+And so it came about that the _Gazette_ had a long column, with
+headlines like an epitaph, when the sheets of the _Intelligence_ and the
+_Courier_ were as blank as the faces of their editors. And so, too, it
+happened that when two weary men, upon two foundered horses, arrived
+about four in the morning at the Sarras post-office, they looked at each
+other in silence and departed noiselessly, with the conviction that
+there are some situations with which the English language is not capable
+of dealing.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW CATACOMB
+
+
+“Look here, Burger,” said Kennedy, “I do wish that you would confide in
+me.”
+
+The two famous students of Roman remains sat together in Kennedy’s
+comfortable room overlooking the Corso. The night was cold, and they
+had both pulled up their chairs to the unsatisfactory Italian stove
+which threw out a zone of stuffiness rather than of warmth.
+
+Outside under the bright winter stars lay the modern Rome, the long,
+double chain of the electric lamps, the brilliantly lighted _cafes_, the
+rushing carriages, and the dense throng upon the footpaths. But inside,
+in the sumptuous chamber of the rich young English archaeologist, there
+was only old Rome to be seen. Cracked and time-worn friezes hung upon
+the walls, grey old busts of senators and soldiers with their fighting
+heads and their hard, cruel faces peered out from the corners. On the
+centre table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments, and ornaments,
+there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths of
+Caracalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was
+exhibited in Berlin.
+
+Amphorae hung from the ceiling, and a litter of curiosities strewed the
+rich red Turkey carpet. And of them all there was not one which was not
+of the most unimpeachable authenticity, and of the utmost rarity and
+value; for Kennedy, though little more than thirty, had a European
+reputation in this particular branch of research, and was, moreover,
+provided with that long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap
+to the student’s energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose,
+gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often
+been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an
+incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in
+sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high,
+white forehead, its aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensuous
+mouth, was a fair index of the compromise between strength and weakness
+in his nature.
+
+Of a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger. He came of a
+curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust
+qualities of the North mingling strangely with the softer graces of the
+South. Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above
+them rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow
+curls lying round it. His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his
+companion had frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman
+busts which peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber.
+Under its bluff German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian
+subtlety, but the smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one
+understood that this was only an indication of his ancestry, with no
+actual bearing upon his character.
+
+In age and in reputation he was on the same level as his English
+companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous.
+Twelve years before he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived
+ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded
+to him by the University of Bonn.
+
+Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and
+singlemindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of
+fame, until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was
+every reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the Chair
+of the greatest of German Universities. But the singleness of purpose
+which had brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant
+Englishman, had caused him in everything outside their work to stand
+infinitely below him. He had never found a pause in his studies in
+which to cultivate the social graces. It was only when he spoke of his
+own subject that his face was filled with life and soul. At other times
+he was silent and embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in
+larger subjects, and impatient of that small talk which is the
+conventional refuge of those who have no thoughts to express.
+
+And yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared
+to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different
+rivals. The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own
+studies each was the only one of the younger men who had knowledge and
+enthusiasm enough to properly appreciate the other. Their common
+interests and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been
+attracted by the other’s knowledge. And then gradually something had
+been added to this. Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and
+simplicity of his rival, while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the
+brilliancy and vivacity which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman
+society. I say “had,” because just at the moment the young Englishman
+was somewhat under a cloud.
+
+A love affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had
+indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked
+many of his friends. But in the bachelor circles of students and
+artists in which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of
+honour in such matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of
+shoulders shrugged over the flight of two and the return of one, the
+general sentiment was probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy
+rather than of reprobation.
+
+“Look here, Burger,” said Kennedy, looking hard at the placid face of
+his companion, “I do wish that you would confide in me.”
+
+As he spoke he waved his hand in the direction of a rug which
+lay upon the floor.
+
+On the rug stood a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wicker-work
+which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of
+objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn
+papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have
+seemed to have come straight from a dustman’s bin, but which a
+specialist would have speedily recognized as unique of their kind.
+
+The pile of odds and ends in the flat wicker-work basket supplied
+exactly one of those missing links of social development which are of
+such interest to the student. It was the German who had brought them
+in, and the Englishman’s eyes were hungry as he looked at them.
+
+“I won’t interfere with your treasure-trove, but I should very much like
+to hear about it,” he continued, while Burger very deliberately lit a
+cigar. “It is evidently a discovery of the first importance. These
+inscriptions will make a sensation throughout Europe.”
+
+“For every one here there are a million there!” said the German. “There
+are so many that a dozen savants might spend a lifetime over them, and
+build up a reputation as solid as the Castle of St. Angelo.”
+
+Kennedy was thinking with his fine forehead wrinkled and his fingers
+playing with his long, fair moustache.
+
+“You have given yourself away, Burger!” said he at last. “Your words
+can only apply to one thing. You have discovered a new catacomb.”
+
+“I had no doubt that you had already come to that conclusion from an
+examination of these objects.”
+
+“Well, they certainly appeared to indicate it, but your last remarks
+make it certain. There is no place except a catacomb which could
+contain so vast a store of relics as you describe.”
+
+“Quite so. There is no mystery about that. I _have_ discovered a new
+catacomb.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Ah, that is my secret, my dear Kennedy! Suffice it that it is so
+situated that there is not one chance in a million of anyone else coming
+upon it. Its date is different from that of any known catacomb, and it
+has been reserved for the burial of the highest Christians, so that the
+remains and the relics are quite different from anything which has ever
+been seen before. If I was not aware of your knowledge and of your
+energy, my friend, I would not hesitate, under the pledge of secrecy, to
+tell you everything about it. But as it is I think that I must
+certainly prepare my own report of the matter before I expose myself to
+such formidable competition.”
+
+Kennedy loved his subject with a love which was almost a mania--a love
+which held him true to it, amidst all the distractions which come to a
+wealthy and dissipated young man. He had ambition, but his ambition was
+secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which
+concerned the old life and history of the city. He yearned to see this
+new underworld which his companion had discovered.
+
+“Look here, Burger,” said he, earnestly, “I assure you that you can
+trust me most implicitly in the matter. Nothing would induce me to put
+pen to paper about anything which I see until I have your express
+permission. I quite understand your feeling, and I think it is most
+natural, but you have really nothing whatever to fear from me. On the
+other hand, if you don’t tell me I shall make a systematic search, and I
+shall most certainly discover it. In that case, of course, I should
+make what use I liked of it, since I should be under no obligation to
+you.”
+
+Burger smiled thoughtfully over his cigar.
+
+“I have noticed, friend Kennedy,” said he, “that when I want information
+over any point you are not always so ready to supply it.”
+
+“When did you ever ask me anything that I did not tell you? You
+remember, for example, my giving you the material for your paper about
+the temple of the Vestals.”
+
+“Ah, well, that was not a matter of much importance. If I were to
+question you upon some intimate thing, would you give me an answer, I
+wonder! This new catacomb is a very intimate thing to me, and I should
+certainly expect some sign of confidence in return.”
+
+“What you are driving at I cannot imagine,” said the Englishman, “but if
+you mean that you will answer my question about the catacomb if I answer
+any question which you may put to me, I can assure you that I will
+certainly do so.”
+
+“Well, then,” said Burger, leaning luxuriously back in his settee, and
+puffing a blue tree of cigar-smoke into the air, “tell me all about your
+relations with Miss Mary Saunderson.”
+
+Kennedy sprang up in his chair and glared angrily at his impassive
+companion.
+
+“What the devil do you mean?” he cried. “What sort of a question is
+this? You may mean it as a joke, but you never made a worse one.”
+
+“No, I don’t mean it as a joke,” said Burger, simply. “I am really
+rather interested in the details of the matter. I don’t know much about
+the world and women and social life and that sort of thing, and such an
+incident has the fascination of the unknown for me. I know you, and I
+knew her by sight--I had even spoken to her once or twice. I should
+very much like to hear from your own lips exactly what it was which
+occurred between you.”
+
+“I won’t tell you a word.”
+
+“That’s all right. It was only my whim to see if you would give up a
+secret as easily as you expected me to give up my secret of the new
+catacomb. You wouldn’t, and I didn’t expect you to. But why should you
+expect otherwise of me? There’s St. John’s clock striking ten. It is
+quite time that I was going home.”
+
+“No, wait a bit, Burger,” said Kennedy; “this is really a ridiculous
+caprice of yours to wish to know about an old love affair which has
+burned out months ago. You know we look upon a man who kisses and tells
+as the greatest coward and villain possible.”
+
+“Certainly,” said the German, gathering up his basket of curiosities,
+“when he tells anything about a girl which is previously unknown, he
+must be so. But in this case, as you must be aware, it was a public
+matter which was the common talk of Rome, so that you are not really
+doing Miss Mary Saunderson any injury by discussing her case with me.
+But still, I respect your scruples; and so good night!”
+
+“Wait a bit, Burger,” said Kennedy, laying his hand upon the other’s
+arm; “I am very keen upon this catacomb business, and I can’t let it
+drop quite so easily. Would you mind asking me something else in
+return--something not quite so eccentric this time?”
+
+“No, no; you have refused, and there is an end of it,” said Burger, with
+his basket on his arm. “No doubt you are quite right not to answer, and
+no doubt I am quite right also--and so again, my dear Kennedy, good
+night!”
+
+The Englishman watched Burger cross the room, and he had his hand on the
+handle of the door before his host sprang up with the air of a man who
+is making the best of that which cannot be helped. “Hold on, old
+fellow,” said he. “I think you are behaving in a most ridiculous
+fashion, but still, if this is your condition, I suppose that I must
+submit to it. I hate saying anything about a girl, but, as you say, it
+is all over Rome, and I don’t suppose I can tell you anything which you
+do not know already. What was it you wanted to know?”
+
+The German came back to the stove, and, laying down his basket, he sank
+into his chair once more. “May I have another cigar?” said he. “Thank
+you very much! I never smoke when I work, but I enjoy a chat much more
+when I am under the influence of tobacco. Now, as regards this young
+lady, with whom you had this little adventure. What in the world has
+become of her?”
+
+“She is at home with her own people.”
+
+“Oh, really--in England?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What part of England--London?”
+
+“No, Twickenham.”
+
+“You must excuse my curiosity, my dear Kennedy, and you must put it down
+to my ignorance of the world. No doubt it is quite a simple thing to
+persuade a young lady to go off with you for three weeks or so, and then
+to hand her over to her own family at--what did you call the place?”
+
+“Twickenham.”
+
+“Quite so--at Twickenham. But it is something so entirely outside my
+own experience that I cannot even imagine how you set about it. For
+example, if you had loved this girl your love could hardly disappear in
+three weeks, so I presume that you could not have loved her at all. But
+if you did not love her why should you make this great scandal which has
+damaged you and ruined her?”
+
+Kennedy looked moodily into the red eye of the stove. “That’s a logical
+way of looking at it, certainly,” said he. “Love is a big word, and it
+represents a good many different shades of feeling. I liked her, and--
+well, you say you’ve seen her--you know how charming she can look.
+But still I am willing to admit, looking back, that I could never have
+really loved her.”
+
+“Then, my dear Kennedy, why did you do it?”
+
+“The adventure of the thing had a great deal to do with it.”
+
+“What! You are so fond of adventures!”
+
+“Where would the variety of life be without them? It was for an
+adventure that I first began to pay my attentions to her. I’ve chased a
+good deal of game in my time, but there’s no chase like that of a pretty
+woman. There was the piquant difficulty of it also, for, as she was the
+companion of Lady Emily Rood it was almost impossible to see her alone.
+On the top of all the other obstacles which attracted me, I learned from
+her own lips very early in the proceedings that she was engaged.”
+
+“Mein Gott! To whom?”
+
+“She mentioned no names.”
+
+“I do not think that anyone knows that. So that made the adventure more
+alluring, did it?”
+
+“Well, it did certainly give a spice to it. Don’t you think so?”
+
+“I tell you that I am very ignorant about these things.”
+
+“My dear fellow, you can remember that the apple you stole from your
+neighbour’s tree was always sweeter than that which fell from your own.
+And then I found that she cared for me.”
+
+“What--at once?”
+
+“Oh, no, it took about three months of sapping and mining. But at last
+I won her over. She understood that my judicial separation from my wife
+made it impossible for me to do the right thing by her--but she came all
+the same, and we had a delightful time, as long as it lasted.”
+
+“But how about the other man?”
+
+Kennedy shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose it is the survival of the
+fittest,” said he. “If he had been the better man she would not have
+deserted him. Let’s drop the subject, for I have had enough of it!”
+
+“Only one other thing. How did you get rid of her in three weeks?”
+
+“Well, we had both cooled down a bit, you understand. She absolutely
+refused, under any circumstances, to come back to face the people she
+had known in Rome. Now, of course, Rome is necessary to me, and I was
+already pining to be back at my work--so there was one obvious cause of
+separation. Then, again, her old father turned up at the hotel in
+London, and there was a scene, and the whole thing became so unpleasant
+that really--though I missed her dreadfully at first--I was very glad to
+slip out of it. Now, I rely upon you not to repeat anything of what I
+have said.”
+
+“My dear Kennedy, I should not dream of repeating it. But all that you
+say interests me very much, for it gives me an insight into your way of
+looking at things, which is entirely different from mine, for I have
+seen so little of life. And now you want to know about my new catacomb.
+There’s no use my trying to describe it, for you would never find it by
+that. There is only one thing, and that is for me to take you there.”
+
+“That would be splendid.”
+
+“When would you like to come?”
+
+“The sooner the better. I am all impatience to see it.”
+
+“Well, it is a beautiful night--though a trifle cold. Suppose we start
+in an hour. We must be very careful to keep the matter to ourselves.
+If anyone saw us hunting in couples they would suspect that there was
+something going on.”
+
+“We can’t be too cautious,” said Kennedy. “Is it far?”
+
+“Some miles.”
+
+“Not too far to walk?”
+
+“Oh, no, we could walk there easily.”
+
+“We had better do so, then. A cabman’s suspicions would be aroused if
+he dropped us both at some lonely spot in the dead of the night.”
+
+“Quite so. I think it would be best for us to meet at the Gate of the
+Appian Way at midnight. I must go back to my lodgings for the matches
+and candles and things.”
+
+“All right, Burger! I think it is very kind of you to let me into this
+secret, and I promise you that I will write nothing about it until you
+have published your report. Good-bye for the present! You will find me
+at the Gate at twelve.”
+
+The cold, clear air was filled with the musical chimes from that city of
+clocks as Burger, wrapped in an Italian overcoat, with a lantern hanging
+from his hand, walked up to the rendezvous. Kennedy stepped out of the
+shadow to meet him.
+
+“You are ardent in work as well as in love!” said the German, laughing.
+
+“Yes; I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour.”
+
+“I hope you left no clue as to where we were going.”
+
+“Not such a fool! By Jove, I am chilled to the bone! Come on, Burger,
+let us warm ourselves by a spurt of hard walking.”
+
+Their footsteps sounded loud and crisp upon the rough stone paving of
+the disappointing road which is all that is left of the most famous
+highway of the world. A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop,
+and a few carts of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only
+things which they met. They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up
+through the darkness upon each side of them, until they had come as far
+as the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, and saw against a rising moon the
+great circular bastion of Cecilia Metella in front of them. Then Burger
+stopped with his hand to his side. “Your legs are longer than mine, and
+you are more accustomed to walking,” said he, laughing. “I think that
+the place where we turn off is somewhere here. Yes, this is it, round
+the corner of the trattoria. Now, it is a very narrow path, so perhaps
+I had better go in front, and you can follow.” He had lit his lantern,
+and by its light they were enabled to follow a narrow and devious track
+which wound across the marshes of the Campagna. The great Aqueduct of
+old Rome lay like a monstrous caterpillar across the moonlit landscape,
+and their road led them under one of its huge arches, and past the
+circle of crumbling bricks which marks the old arena. At last Burger
+stopped at a solitary wooden cowhouse, and he drew a key from his
+pocket.
+
+“Surely your catacomb is not inside a house!” cried Kennedy.
+
+“The entrance to it is. That is just the safeguard which we have
+against anyone else discovering it.”
+
+“Does the proprietor know of it?”
+
+“Not he. He had found one or two objects which made me almost certain
+that his house was built on the entrance to such a place. So I rented
+it from him, and did my excavations for myself. Come in, and shut the
+door behind you.”
+
+It was a long, empty building, with the mangers of the cows along one
+wall. Burger put his lantern down on the ground, and shaded its light
+in all directions save one by draping his overcoat round it. “It might
+excite remark if anyone saw a light in this lonely place,” said he.
+“Just help me to move this boarding.” The flooring was loose in the
+corner, and plank by plank the two savants raised it and leaned it
+against the wall. Below there was a square aperture and a stair of old
+stone steps which led away down into the bowels of the earth.
+
+“Be careful!” cried Burger, as Kennedy, in his impatience,
+hurried down them. “It is a perfect rabbits’-warren below, and if
+you were once to lose your way there, the chances would be a hundred
+to one against your ever coming out again. Wait until I bring the
+light.”
+
+“How do you find your own way if it is so complicated?”
+
+“I had some very narrow escapes at first, but I have gradually learned
+to go about. There is a certain system to it, but it is one which a
+lost man, if he were in the dark, could not possibly find out. Even now
+I always spin out a ball of string behind me when I am going far into
+the catacomb. You can see for yourself that it is difficult, but every
+one of these passages divides and subdivides a dozen times before you go
+a hundred yards.” They had descended some twenty feet from the level of
+the byre, and they were standing now in a square chamber cut out of the
+soft tufa. The lantern cast a flickering light, bright below and dim
+above, over the cracked brown walls. In every direction were the black
+openings of passages which radiated from this common centre.
+
+“I want you to follow me closely, my friend,” said Burger. “Do not
+loiter to look at anything upon the way, for the place to which I will
+take you contains all that you can see, and more. It will save time for
+us to go there direct.” He led the way down one of the corridors, and
+the Englishman followed closely at his heels. Every now and then the
+passage bifurcated, but Burger was evidently following some secret marks
+of his own, for he neither stopped nor hesitated. Everywhere along the
+walls, packed like the berths upon an emigrant ship, lay the Christians
+of old Rome. The yellow light flickered over the shrivelled features of
+the mummies, and gleamed upon rounded skulls and long, white arm-bones
+crossed over fleshless chests. And everywhere as he passed Kennedy
+looked with wistful eyes upon inscriptions, funeral vessels, pictures,
+vestments, utensils, all lying as pious hands had placed them so many
+centuries ago. It was apparent to him, even in those hurried, passing
+glances, that this was the earliest and finest of the catacombs,
+containing such a storehouse of Roman remains as had never before come
+at one time under the observation of the student. “What would happen if
+the light went out?” he asked, as they hurried on.
+
+“I have a spare candle and a box of matches in my pocket. By the way,
+Kennedy, have you any matches?”
+
+“No; you had better give me some.”
+
+“Oh, that is all right. There is no chance of our separating.”
+
+“How far are we going? It seems to me that we have walked at least a
+quarter of a mile.”
+
+“More than that, I think. There is really no limit to the tombs--at
+least, I have never been able to find any. This is a very difficult
+place, so I think that I will use our ball of string.” He fastened one
+end of it to a projecting stone and he carried the coil in the breast of
+his coat, paying it out as he advanced. Kennedy saw that it was no
+unnecessary precaution, for the passages had become more complexed and
+tortuous than ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors.
+But these all ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of
+tufa topped with a slab of marble at one end of it. “By Jove!” cried
+Kennedy in an ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble. “It
+is a Christian altar--probably the first one in existence. Here is the
+little consecration cross cut upon the corner of it. No doubt this
+circular space was used as a church.”
+
+“Precisely,” said Burger. “If I had more time I should like to show you
+all the bodies which are buried in these niches upon the walls, for they
+are the early popes and bishops of the Church, with their mitres, their
+croziers, and full canonicals. Go over to that one and look at it!”
+Kennedy went across, and stared at the ghastly head which lay loosely on
+the shredded and mouldering mitre.
+
+“This is most interesting,” said he, and his voice seemed to boom
+against the concave vault. “As far as my experience goes, it is unique.
+Bring the lantern over, Burger, for I want to see them all.” But the
+German had strolled away, and was standing in the middle of a yellow
+circle of light at the other side of the hall.
+
+“Do you know how many wrong turnings there are between this and the
+stairs?” he asked. “There are over two thousand. No doubt it was one
+of the means of protection which the Christians adopted. The odds are
+two thousand to one against a man getting out, even if he had a light;
+but if he were in the dark it would, of course, be far more difficult.”
+
+“So I should think.”
+
+“And the darkness is something dreadful. I tried it once for an
+experiment. Let us try it again!” He stooped to the lantern, and in an
+instant it was as if an invisible hand was squeezed tightly over each of
+Kennedy’s eyes. Never had he known what such darkness was. It seemed
+to press upon him and to smother him. It was a solid obstacle against
+which the body shrank from advancing. He put his hands out to push it
+back from him. “That will do, Burger,” said he, “let’s have the light
+again.”
+
+But his companion began to laugh, and in that circular room the sound
+seemed to come from every side at once. “You seem uneasy, friend
+Kennedy,” said he.
+
+“Go on, man, light the candle!” said Kennedy, impatiently.
+
+“It’s very strange, Kennedy, but I could not in the least tell by the
+sound in which direction you stand. Could you tell where I am?”
+
+“No; you seem to be on every side of me.”
+
+“If it were not for this string which I hold in my hand I should not
+have a notion which way to go.”
+
+“I dare say not. Strike a light, man, and have an end of this
+nonsense.”
+
+“Well, Kennedy, there are two things which I understand that you are
+very fond of. The one is adventure, and the other is an obstacle to
+surmount. The adventure must be the finding of your way out of this
+catacomb. The obstacle will be the darkness and the two thousand wrong
+turns which make the way a little difficult to find. But you need not
+hurry, for you have plenty of time, and when you halt for a rest now and
+then, I should like you just to think of Miss Mary Saunderson, and
+whether you treated her quite fairly.”
+
+“You devil, what do you mean?” roared Kennedy. He was running
+about in little circles and clasping at the solid blackness with
+both hands.
+
+“Good-bye,” said the mocking voice, and it was already at some distance.
+“I really do not think, Kennedy, even by your own showing that you did
+the right thing by that girl. There was only one little thing which you
+appeared not to know, and I can supply it. Miss Saunderson was engaged
+to a poor, ungainly devil of a student, and his name was Julius Burger.”
+There was a rustle somewhere--the vague sound of a foot striking a
+stone--and then there fell silence upon that old Christian church--a
+stagnant heavy silence which closed round Kennedy and shut him in like
+water round a drowning man.
+
+
+Some two months afterwards the following paragraph made the round of the
+European Press:--
+
+
+   One of the most interesting discoveries of recent years is
+   that of the new catacomb in Rome, which lies some distance to the
+   east of the well-known vaults of St. Calixtus. The finding of this
+   important burial-place, which is exceedingly rich in most
+   interesting early Christian remains, is due to the energy and
+   sagacity of Dr. Julius Burger, the young German specialist, who is
+   rapidly taking the first place as an authority upon ancient Rome.
+   Although the first to publish his discovery, it appears that a less
+   fortunate adventurer had anticipated Dr. Burger. Some months ago
+   Mr. Kennedy, the well-known English student, disappeared suddenly
+   from his rooms in the “Corso”, and it was conjectured that his
+   association with a recent scandal had driven him to leave Rome. It
+   appears now that he had in reality fallen a victim to that fervid
+   love of archaeology which had raised him to a distinguished place
+   among living scholars. His body was discovered in the heart of the
+   new catacomb, and it was evident from the condition of his feet and
+   boots that he had tramped for days through the tortuous corridors
+   which make these subterranean tombs so dangerous to explorers. The
+   deceased gentleman had, with inexplicable rashness, made his way
+   into this labyrinth without, as far as can be discovered, taking
+   with him either candles or matches, so that his sad fate was the
+   natural result of his own temerity. What makes the matter more
+   painful is that Dr. Julius Burger was an intimate friend of the
+   deceased. His joy at the extraordinary find which he has been so
+   fortunate as to make has been greatly marred by the terrible fate
+   of his comrade and fellow-worker.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE
+
+
+It was in the days when the tide of Mahdism, which had swept in such a
+flood from the great Lakes and Darfur to the confines of Egypt, had at
+last come to its full, and even begun, as some hoped, to show signs of a
+turn. At its outset it had been terrible. It had engulfed Hicks’s
+army, swept over Gordon and Khartoum, rolled behind the British forces
+as they retired down the river, and finally cast up a spray of raiding
+parties as far north as Assouan. Then it found other channels to east
+and west, to Central Africa and to Abyssinia, and retired a little on
+the side of Egypt. For ten years there ensued a lull, during which the
+frontier garrisons looked out upon those distant blue hills of Dongola.
+Behind the violet mists which draped them lay a land of blood and
+horror. From time to time some adventurer went south towards those
+haze-girt mountains, tempted by stories of gum and ivory, but none ever
+returned. Once a mutilated Egyptian and once a Greek woman, mad with
+thirst and fear, made their way to the lines. They were the only
+exports of that country of darkness. Sometimes the sunset would turn
+those distant mists into a bank of crimson, and the dark mountains would
+rise from that sinister reek like islands in a sea of blood. It seemed
+a grim symbol in the southern heaven when seen from the fort-capped
+hills by Wady Halfa. Ten years of lust in Khartoum, ten years of silent
+work in Cairo, and then all was ready, and it was time for civilisation
+to take a trip south once more, travelling as her wont is in an armoured
+train. Everything was ready, down to the last pack-saddle of the last
+camel, and yet no one suspected it, for an unconstitutional Government
+has its advantage. A great administrator had argued, and managed, and
+cajoled; a great soldier had organised and planned, and made piastres do
+the work of pounds. And then one night these two master spirits met and
+clasped hands, and the soldier vanished away upon some business of his
+own. And just at that very time, Bimbashi Hilary Joyce, seconded from
+the Royal Mallow Fusiliers, and temporarily attached to the Ninth
+Soudanese, made his first appearance in Cairo.
+
+Napoleon had said, and Hilary Joyce had noted, that great reputations
+are only to be made in the East. Here he was in the East with four tin
+cases of baggage, a Wilkinson sword, a Bond’s slug-throwing pistol, and
+a copy of “Green’s Introduction to the Study of Arabic.” With such a
+start, and the blood of youth running hot in his veins, everything
+seemed easy. He was a little frightened of the general; he had heard
+stories of his sternness to young officers, but with tact and suavity he
+hoped for the best. So, leaving his effects at “Shepherd’s Hotel,” he
+reported himself at headquarters. It was not the general, but the head
+of the Intelligence Department who received him, the chief being still
+absent upon that business which had called him. Hilary Joyce found
+himself in the presence of a short, thick-set officer, with a gentle
+voice and a placid expression which covered a remarkably acute and
+energetic spirit. With that quiet smile and guileless manner he had
+undercut and outwitted the most cunning of Orientals. He stood, a
+cigarette between his fingers, looking at the newcomer. “I heard that
+you had come. Sorry the chief isn’t here to see you. Gone up to the
+frontier, you know.”
+
+“My regiment is at Wady Halfa. I suppose, sir, that I should report
+myself there at once?”
+
+“No; I was to give you your orders.” He led the way to a map upon the
+wall, and pointed with the end of his cigarette. “You see this place.
+It’s the Oasis of Kurkur--a little quiet, I am afraid, but excellent
+air. You are to get out there as quick as possible. You’ll find a
+company of the Ninth, and half a squadron of cavalry. You will be in
+command.”
+
+Hilary Joyce looked at the name, printed at the intersection of two
+black lines without another dot upon the map for several inches around
+it. “A village, sir?”
+
+“No, a well. Not very good water, I’m afraid, but you soon get
+accustomed to natron. It’s an important post, as being at the junction
+of two caravan routes. All routes are closed now, of course, but still
+you never know who _might_ come along them.”
+
+“We are there, I presume, to prevent raiding?”
+
+“Well, between you and me, there’s really nothing to raid. You are
+there to intercept messengers. They must call at the wells. Of course
+you have only just come out, but you probably understand already enough
+about the conditions of this country to know that there is a great deal
+of disaffection about, and that the Khalifa is likely to try and keep in
+touch with his adherents. Then, again, Senoussi lives up that way”--he
+waved his cigarette to the westward--“the Khalifa might send a message
+to him along that route. Anyhow, your duty is to arrest everyone coming
+along, and get some account of him before you let him go. You don’t
+talk Arabic, I suppose?”
+
+“I am learning, sir.”
+
+“Well, well, you’ll have time enough for study there. And you’ll have a
+native officer, Ali something or other, who speaks English, and can
+interpret for you. Well, good-bye--I’ll tell the chief that you
+reported yourself. Get on to your post now as quickly as you can.”
+
+Railway to Baliani, the post-boat to Assouan, and then two days on a
+camel in the Libyan desert, with an Ababdeh guide, and three
+baggage-camels to tie one down to their own exasperating pace.
+However, even two and a half miles an hour mount up in time, and at
+last, on the third evening, from the blackened slag-heap of a hill which
+is called the Jebel Kurkur, Hilary Joyce looked down upon a distant
+clump of palms, and thought that this cool patch of green in the midst
+of the merciless blacks and yellows was the fairest colour effect that
+he had ever seen. An hour later he had ridden into the little camp, the
+guard had turned out to salute him, his native subordinate had greeted
+him in excellent English, and he had fairly entered into his own.
+It was not an exhilarating place for a lengthy residence. There was one
+large, bowl-shaped, grassy depression sloping down to the three pits of
+brown and brackish water. There was the grove of palm trees also,
+beautiful to look upon, but exasperating in view of the fact that Nature
+has provided her least shady trees on the very spot where shade is
+needed most. A single wide-spread acacia did something to restore the
+balance. Here Hilary Joyce slumbered in the heat, and in the cool he
+inspected his square-shouldered, spindle-shanked Soudanese, with their
+cheery black faces and their funny little pork-pie forage caps.
+Joyce was a martinet at drill, and the blacks loved being drilled, so
+the Bimbashi was soon popular among them. But one day was exactly like
+another. The weather, the view, the employment, the food--everything
+was the same. At the end of three weeks he felt that he had been there
+for interminable years. And then at last there came something to break
+the monotony.
+
+One evening, as the sun was sinking, Hilary Joyce rode slowly down the
+old caravan road. It had a fascination for him, this narrow track,
+winding among the boulders and curving up the nullahs, for he
+remembered how in the map it had gone on and on, stretching away into
+the unknown heart of Africa. The countless pads of innumerable camels
+through many centuries had beaten it smooth, so that now, unused and
+deserted, it still wound away, the strangest of roads, a foot broad, and
+perhaps two thousand miles in length. Joyce wondered as he rode how
+long it was since any traveller had journeyed up it from the south, and
+then he raised his eyes, and there was a man coming along the path.
+For an instant Joyce thought that it might be one of his own men, but a
+second glance assured him that this could not be so. The stranger was
+dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab, and not in the close-fitting
+khaki of a soldier. He was very tall, and a high turban made him seem
+gigantic. He strode swiftly along, with head erect, and the bearing of
+a man who knows no fear.
+
+Who could he be, this formidable giant coming out of the unknown?
+The precursor possibly of a horde of savage spearmen. And where could
+he have walked from? The nearest well was a long hundred miles down the
+track. At any rate the frontier post of Kurkur could not afford to
+receive casual visitors. Hilary Joyce whisked round his horse, galloped
+into camp, and gave the alarm. Then, with twenty horsemen at his back,
+he rode out again to reconnoitre. The man was still coming on in spite
+of these hostile preparations. For an instant he hesitated when first
+he saw the cavalry, but escape was out of the question, and he advanced
+with the air of one who makes the best of a bad job. He made no
+resistance, and said nothing when the hands of two troopers clutched at
+his shoulders, but walked quietly between their horses into camp.
+Shortly afterwards the patrol came in again. There were no signs of any
+dervishes. The man was alone. A splendid trotting camel had been found
+lying dead a little way down the track. The mystery of the stranger’s
+arrival was explained. But why, and whence, and whither?--these were
+questions for which a zealous officer must find an answer.
+
+Hilary Joyce was disappointed that there were no dervishes. It would
+have been a great start for him in the Egyptian army had he fought a
+little action on his own account. But even as it was, he had a rare
+chance of impressing the authorities. He would love to show his
+capacity to the head of the Intelligence, and even more to that grim
+Chief who never forgot what was smart, or forgave what was slack.
+The prisoner’s dress and bearing showed that he was of importance.
+Mean men do not ride pure-bred trotting camels. Joyce sponged his head
+with cold water, drank a cup of strong coffee, put on an imposing
+official tarboosh instead of his sun-helmet, and formed himself into a
+court of inquiry and judgment under the acacia tree. He would have
+liked his people to have seen him now, with his two black orderlies in
+waiting, and his Egyptian native officer at his side. He sat behind a
+camp-table, and the prisoner, strongly guarded, was led up to him.
+The man was a handsome fellow, with bold grey eyes and a long black
+beard.
+
+“Why!” cried Joyce, “the rascal is making faces at me.” A curious
+contraction had passed over the man’s features, but so swiftly that it
+might have been a nervous twitch. He was now a model of Oriental
+gravity. “Ask him who he is, and what he wants?” The native officer
+did so, but the stranger made no reply, save that the same sharp spasm
+passed once more over his face. “Well, I’m blessed!” cried Hilary
+Joyce. “Of all the impudent scoundrels! He keeps on winking at me.
+Who are you, you rascal? Give an account of yourself! D’ye hear?”
+But the tall Arab was as impervious to English as to Arabic.
+The Egyptian tried again and again. The prisoner looked at Joyce with
+his inscrutable eyes, and occasionally twitched his face at him, but
+never opened his mouth. The Bimbashi scratched his head in
+bewilderment.
+
+“Look here, Mahomet Ali, we’ve got to get some sense out of this fellow.
+You say there are no papers on him?”
+
+“No, sir; we found no papers.”
+
+“No clue of any kind?”
+
+“He has come far, sir. A trotting camel does not die easily. He has
+come from Dongola, at least.”
+
+“Well, we must get him to talk.”
+
+“It is possible that he is deaf and dumb.”
+
+“Not he. I never saw a man look more all there in my life.”
+
+“You might send him across to Assouan.”
+
+“And give someone else the credit? No, thank you. This is my bird.
+But how are we going to get him to find his tongue?”
+
+The Egyptian’s dark eyes skirted the encampment and rested on the cook’s
+fire. “Perhaps,” said he, “if the Bimbashi thought fit--” He looked at
+the prisoner and then at the burning wood.
+
+“No, no; it wouldn’t do. No, by Jove, that’s going too far.”
+
+“A very little might do it.”
+
+“No, no. It’s all very well here, but it would sound just awful if ever
+it got as far as Fleet Street. But, I say,” he whispered, “we might
+frighten him a bit. There’s no harm in that.”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Tell them to undo the man’s galabeeah. Order them to put a horseshoe
+in the fire and make it red-hot.” The prisoner watched the proceedings
+with an air which had more of amusement than of uneasiness. He never
+winced as the black sergeant approached with the glowing shoe held upon
+two bayonets.
+
+“Will you speak now?” asked the Bimbashi, savagely. The prisoner smiled
+gently and stroked his beard.
+
+“Oh, chuck the infernal thing away!” cried Joyce, jumping up in a
+passion. “There’s no use trying to bluff the fellow. He knows we won’t
+do it. But I _can_ and I _will_ flog him, and you can tell him from me
+that if he hasn’t found his tongue by to-morrow morning I’ll take the
+skin off his back as sure as my name’s Joyce. Have you said all that?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Well, you can sleep upon it, you beauty, and a good night’s rest may it
+give you!” He adjourned the Court, and the prisoner, as imperturbable
+as ever, was led away by the guard to his supper of rice and water.
+Hilary Joyce was a kind-hearted man, and his own sleep was considerably
+disturbed by the prospect of the punishment which he must inflict next
+day. He had hopes that the mere sight of the koorbash and the thongs
+might prevail over his prisoner’s obstinacy. And then, again, he
+thought how shocking it would be if the man proved to be really dumb
+after all. The possibility shook him so that he had almost determined
+by daybreak that he would send the stranger on unhurt to Assouan.
+And yet what a tame conclusion it would be to the incident! He lay upon
+his angareeb still debating it when the question suddenly and
+effectively settled itself. Ali Mahomet rushed into his tent.
+
+“Sir,” he cried, “the prisoner is gone!”
+
+“Gone!”
+
+“Yes, sir, and your own best riding camel as well. There is a slit cut
+in the tent, and he got away unseen in the early morning.”
+
+The Bimbashi acted with all energy. Cavalry rode along every track;
+scouts examined the soft sand of the wadys for signs of the fugitive,
+but no trace was discovered. The man had utterly disappeared. With a
+heavy heart, Hilary Joyce wrote an official report of the matter and
+forwarded it to Assouan. Five days later there came a curt order from
+the chief that he should report himself there. He feared the worst from
+the stern soldier, who spared others as little as he spared himself.
+And his worst forebodings were realised. Travel-stained and weary, he
+reported himself one night at the general’s quarters. Behind a table
+piled with papers and strewn with maps the famous soldier and his Chief
+of Intelligence were deep in plans and figures. Their greeting was a
+cold one.
+
+“I understand, Captain Joyce,” said the general, “that you have allowed
+a very important prisoner to slip through your fingers.”
+
+“I am sorry, sir.”
+
+“No doubt. But that will not mend matters. Did you ascertain anything
+about him before you lost him?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“How was that?”
+
+“I could get nothing out of him, sir.”
+
+“Did you try?”
+
+“Yes, sir; I did what I could.”
+
+“What did you do?”
+
+“Well, sir, I threatened to use physical force.”
+
+“What did he say?”
+
+“He said nothing.”
+
+“What was he like?”
+
+“A tall man, sir. Rather a desperate character, I should think.”
+
+“Any way by which we could identify him?”
+
+“A long black beard, sir. Grey eyes. And a nervous way of twitching
+his face.”
+
+“Well, Captain Joyce,” said the general, in his stern, inflexible voice,
+“I cannot congratulate you upon your first exploit in the Egyptian army.
+You are aware that every English officer in this force is a picked man.
+I have the whole British army from which to draw. It is necessary,
+therefore, that I should insist upon the very highest efficiency.
+It would be unfair upon the others to pass over any obvious want of zeal
+or intelligence. You are seconded from the Royal Mallows, I
+understand?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“I have no doubt that your colonel will be glad to see you fulfilling
+your regimental duties again.”
+
+Hilary Joyce’s heart was too heavy for words. He was silent.
+
+“I will let you know my final decision to-morrow morning.”
+
+Joyce saluted and turned upon his heel.
+
+“You can sleep upon that, you beauty, and a good night’s rest may it
+give you!”
+
+Joyce turned in bewilderment. Where had those words been used before?
+Who was it who had used them? The general was standing erect. Both he
+and the Chief of the Intelligence were laughing. Joyce stared at the
+tall figure, the erect bearing, the inscrutable grey eyes.
+
+“Good Lord!” he gasped.
+
+“Well, well, Captain Joyce, we are quits!” said the general, holding out
+his hand. “You gave me a bad ten minutes with that infernal red-hot
+horseshoe of yours. I’ve done as much for you. I don’t think we can
+spare you for the Royal Mallows just yet awhile.”
+
+“But, sir; but--!”
+
+“The fewer questions the better, perhaps. But of course it must seem
+rather amazing. I had a little private business with the Kabbabish.
+It must be done in person. I did it, and came to your post in my
+return. I kept on winking at you as a sign that I wanted a word with
+you alone.”
+
+“Yes, yes. I begin to understand.”
+
+“I couldn’t give it away before all those blacks, or where should I have
+been the next time I used my false beard and Arab dress? You put me in
+a very awkward position. But at last I had a word alone with your
+Egyptian officer, who managed my escape all right.”
+
+“He! Mahomet Ali!”
+
+“I ordered him to say nothing. I had a score to settle with you.
+But we dine at eight, Captain Joyce. We live plainly here, but I think
+I can do you a little better than you did me at Kurkur.”
+
+
+
+A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE
+
+
+There are many folk who knew Alphonse Lacour in his old age. From about
+the time of the Revolution of ’48 until he died in the second year of
+the Crimean War he was always to be found in the same corner of the Cafe
+de Provence, at the end of the Rue St. Honore, coming down about nine in
+the evening, and going when he could find no one to talk with. It took
+some self-restraint to listen to the old diplomatist, for his stories
+were beyond all belief, and yet he was quick at detecting the shadow of
+a smile or the slightest little raising of the eyebrows. Then his huge,
+rounded back would straighten itself, his bulldog chin would project,
+and his r’s would burr like a kettledrum. When he got as far as, “Ah,
+monsieur r-r-r-rit!” or “Vous ne me cr-r-r-royez pas donc!” it was quite
+time to remember that you had a ticket for the opera.
+
+There was his story of Talleyrand and the five oyster-shells, and there
+was his utterly absurd account of Napoleon’s second visit to Ajaccio.
+Then there was that most circumstantial romance (which he never ventured
+upon until his second bottle had been uncorked) of the Emperor’s escape
+from St. Helena--how he lived for a whole year in Philadelphia, while
+Count Herbert de Bertrand, who was his living image, personated him at
+Longwood. But of all his stories there was none which was more
+notorious than that of the Koran and the Foreign Office messenger. And
+yet when Monsieur Otto’s memoirs were written it was found that there
+really was some foundation for old Lacour’s incredible statement.
+
+“You must know, monsieur,” he would say, “that I left Egypt after
+Kleber’s assassination. I would gladly have stayed on, for I was
+engaged in a translation of the Koran, and between ourselves I had
+thoughts at the time of embracing Mahometanism, for I was deeply struck
+by the wisdom of their views about marriage. They had made an
+incredible mistake, however, upon the subject of wine, and this was what
+the Mufti who attempted to convert me could never get over. Then when
+old Kleber died and Menou came to the top, I felt that it was time for
+me to go. It is not for me to speak of my own capacities, monsieur, but
+you will readily understand that the man does not care to be ridden by
+the mule. I carried my Koran and my papers to London, where Monsieur
+Otto had been sent by the First Consul to arrange a treaty of peace; for
+both nations were very weary of the war, which had already lasted ten
+years. Here I was most useful to Monsieur Otto on account of my
+knowledge of the English tongue, and also, if I may say so, on account
+of my natural capacity. They were happy days during which I lived in
+the square of Bloomsbury. The climate of monsieur’s country is, it must
+be confessed, detestable. But then what would you have? Flowers grow
+best in the rain. One has but to point to monsieur’s fellow
+country-women to prove it.
+
+“Well, Monsieur Otto, our Ambassador, was kept terribly busy over that
+treaty, and all of his staff were worked to death. We had not Pitt to
+deal with, which was, perhaps, as well for us. He was a terrible man
+that Pitt, and wherever half a dozen enemies of France were plotting
+together, there was his sharp-pointed nose right in the middle of them.
+The nation, however, had been thoughtful enough to put him out of
+office, and we had to do with Monsieur Addington. But Milord Hawkesbury
+was the Foreign Minister, and it was with him that we were obliged to do
+our bargaining.
+
+“You can understand that it was no child’s play. After ten years of war
+each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the
+other, or to the other’s allies. What was to be given back, and what
+was to be kept? Is this island worth that peninsula? If we do this at
+Venice, will you do that at Sierra Leone? If we give up Egypt to the
+Sultan, will you restore the Cape of Good Hope, which you have taken
+from our allies the Dutch? So we wrangled and wrestled, and I have seen
+Monsieur Otto come back to the Embassy so exhausted that his secretary
+and I had to help him from his carriage to his sofa. But at last things
+adjusted themselves, and the night came round when the treaty was to be
+finally signed. Now, you must know that the one great card which we
+held, and which we played, played, played at every point of the game,
+was that we had Egypt. The English were very nervous about our being
+there. It gave us a foot at each end of the Mediterranean, you see.
+And they were not sure that that wonderful little Napoleon of ours might
+not make it the base of an advance against India. So whenever Lord
+Hawkesbury proposed to retain anything, we had only to reply, ‘In _that_
+case, of course, we cannot consent to evacuate Egypt,’ and in this way
+we quickly brought him to reason. It was by the help of Egypt that we
+gained terms which were remarkably favourable, and especially that we
+caused the English to consent to give up the Cape of Good Hope. We did
+not wish your people, monsieur, to have any foothold in South Africa,
+for history has taught us that the British foothold of one half-century
+is the British Empire of the next. It is not your army or your navy
+against which we have to guard, but it is your terrible younger son and
+your man in search of a career. When we French have a possession across
+the seas, we like to sit in Paris and to felicitate ourselves upon it.
+With you it is different. You take your wives and your children, and
+you run away to see what kind of place this may be, and after that we
+might as well try to take that old Square of Bloomsbury away from you.
+
+“Well, it was upon the first of October that the treaty was finally to
+be signed. In the morning I was congratulating Monsieur Otto upon the
+happy conclusion of his labours. He was a little pale shrimp of a man,
+very quick and nervous, and he was so delighted now at his own success
+that he could not sit still, but ran about the room chattering and
+laughing, while I sat on a cushion in the corner, as I had learned to do
+in the East. Suddenly, in came a messenger with a letter which had been
+forwarded from Paris. Monsieur Otto cast his eye upon it, and then,
+without a word, his knees gave way, and he fell senseless upon the
+floor. I ran to him, as did the courier, and between us we carried him
+to the sofa. He might have been dead from his appearance, but I could
+still feel his heart thrilling beneath my palm. ‘What is this, then?’ I
+asked.
+
+“‘I do not know,’ answered the messenger. ‘Monsieur Talleyrand told me
+to hurry as never man hurried before, and to put this letter into the
+hands of Monsieur Otto. I was in Paris at midday yesterday.’
+
+“I know that I am to blame, but I could not help glancing at the letter,
+picking it out of the senseless hand of Monsieur Otto. My God! the
+thunderbolt that it was! I did not faint, but I sat down beside my
+chief and I burst into tears. It was but a few words, but they told us
+that Egypt had been evacuated by our troops a month before. All our
+treaty was undone then, and the one consideration which had induced our
+enemies to give us good terms had vanished. In twelve hours it would
+not have mattered. But now the treaty was not yet signed. We should
+have to give up the Cape. We should have to let England have Malta.
+Now that Egypt was gone we had nothing left to offer in exchange.
+
+“But we are not so easily beaten, we Frenchmen. You English misjudge us
+when you think that because we show emotions which you conceal, that we
+are therefore of a weak and womanly nature. You cannot read your
+histories and believe that. Monsieur Otto recovered his senses
+presently, and we took counsel what we should do.
+
+“‘It is useless to go on, Alphonse,’ said he. ‘This Englishman will
+laugh at me when I ask him to sign.’
+
+“‘Courage!’ I cried; and then a sudden thought coming into my head--‘How
+do we know that the English will have news of this? Perhaps they may
+sign the treaty before they know of it.’
+
+“Monsieur Otto sprang from the sofa and flung himself into my arms.
+
+“‘Alphonse,’ he cried, ‘you have saved me! Why should they know about
+it? Our news has come from Toulon to Paris, and thence straight to
+London. Theirs will come by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar. At
+this moment it is unlikely that anyone in Paris knows of it, save only
+Talleyrand and the First Consul. If we keep our secret, we may still
+get our treaty signed.’
+
+“Ah! monsieur, you can imagine the horrible uncertainty in which we
+spent the day. Never, never shall I forget those slow hours during
+which we sat together, starting at every distant shout, lest it should
+be the first sign of the rejoicing which this news would cause in
+London. Monsieur Otto passed from youth to age in a day. As for me, I
+find it easier to go out and meet danger than to wait for it. I set
+forth, therefore, towards evening. I wandered here, and wandered there.
+I was in the fencing-rooms of Monsieur Angelo, and in the salon-de-boxe
+of Monsieur Jackson, and in the club of Brooks, and in the lobby of the
+Chamber of Deputies, but nowhere did I hear any news. Still, it was
+possible that Milord Hawkesbury had received it himself just as we had.
+He lived in Harley Street, and there it was that the treaty was to be
+finally signed that night at eight. I entreated Monsieur Otto to drink
+two glasses of Burgundy before he went, for I feared lest his haggard
+face and trembling hands should rouse suspicion in the English
+minister.
+
+“Well, we went round together in one of the Embassy’s carriages about
+half-past seven. Monsieur Otto went in alone; but presently, on excuse
+of getting his portfolio, he came out again, with his cheeks flushed
+with joy, to tell me that all was well.
+
+“‘He knows nothing,’ he whispered. ‘Ah, if the next half-hour were
+over!’
+
+“‘Give me a sign when it is settled,’ said I.
+
+“‘For what reason?’
+
+“‘Because until then no messenger shall interrupt you. I give you my
+promise--I, Alphonse Lacour.’
+
+“He clasped my hand in both of his.
+
+“‘I shall make an excuse to move one of the candles on to the table in
+the window,’ said he, and hurried into the house, whilst I was left
+waiting beside the carriage.
+
+“Well, if we could but secure ourselves from interruption for a single
+half-hour the day would be our own. I had hardly begun to form my plans
+when I saw the lights of a carriage coming swiftly from the direction of
+Oxford Street. Ah! if it should be the messenger! What could I do?
+I was prepared to kill him--yes, even to kill him--rather than at this
+last moment allow our work to be undone. Thousands die to make a
+glorious war. Why should not one die to make a glorious peace?
+What though they hurried me to the scaffold? I should have sacrificed
+myself for my country. I had a little curved Turkish knife strapped to
+my waist. My hand was on the hilt of it when the carriage which had
+alarmed me so rattled safely past me.
+
+“But another might come. I must be prepared. Above all, I must not
+compromise the Embassy. I ordered our carriage to move on, and I
+engaged what you call a hackney coach. Then I spoke to the driver, and
+gave him a guinea. He understood that it was a special service.
+
+“‘You shall have another guinea if you do what you are told,’ said I.
+
+“‘All right, master,’ said he, turning his slow eyes upon me without a
+trace of excitement or curiosity.
+
+“‘If I enter your coach with another gentleman, you will drive up and
+down Harley Street, and take no orders from anyone but me. When I get
+out, you will carry the other gentleman to Watier’s Club, in Bruton
+Street.’
+
+“‘All right, master,’ said he again.
+
+“So I stood outside Milord Hawkesbury’s house, and you can think how
+often my eyes went up to that window in the hope of seeing the candle
+twinkle in it. Five minutes passed, and another five. Oh, how slowly
+they crept along! It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a
+white fog crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the
+dim oil-lamps. I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my
+ears were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the
+rumble of wheels. It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of
+Harley, even upon a sunny day. The houses are solid and very
+respectable over yonder, but there is nothing of the feminine about
+them. It is a city to be inhabited by males. But on that raw night,
+amid the damp and the fog, with the anxiety gnawing at my heart, it
+seemed the saddest, weariest spot in the whole wide world. I paced up
+and down slapping my hands to keep them warm, and still straining my
+ears. And then suddenly out of the dull hum of the traffic down in
+Oxford Street I heard a sound detach itself, and grow louder and louder,
+and clearer and clearer with every instant, until two yellow lights came
+flashing through the fog, and a light cabriolet whirled up to the door
+of the Foreign Minister. It had not stopped before a young fellow
+sprang out of it and hurried to the steps, while the driver turned his
+horse and rattled off into the fog once more.
+
+“Ah, it is in the moment of action that I am best, monsieur. You, who
+only see me when I am drinking my wine in the Cafe de Provence, cannot
+conceive the heights to which I rise. At that moment, when I knew that
+the fruits of a ten years’ war were at stake, I was magnificent. It was
+the last French campaign and I the general and army in one.
+
+“‘Sir,” said I, touching him upon the arm, ‘are you the messenger for
+Lord Hawkesbury?’
+
+“‘Yes,’ said he.
+
+“‘I have been waiting for you half an hour,’ said I. ‘You are to follow
+me at once. He is with the French Ambassador.’
+
+“I spoke with such assurance that he never hesitated for an instant.
+When he entered the hackney coach and I followed him in, my heart gave
+such a thrill of joy that I could hardly keep from shouting aloud.
+He was a poor little creature, this Foreign Office messenger, not much
+bigger than Monsieur Otto, and I--monsieur can see my hands now, and
+imagine what they were like when I was seven-and-twenty years of age.
+
+“Well, now that I had him in my coach, the question was what I should do
+with him. I did not wish to hurt him if I could help it.
+
+“‘This is a pressing business,’ said he. ‘I have a despatch which I
+must deliver instantly.’
+
+“Our coach had rattled down Harley Street now, in accordance with my
+instruction, it turned and began to go up again.
+
+“‘Hullo!’ he cried. ‘What’s this?’
+
+“‘What then?’ I asked.
+
+“‘We are driving back. Where is Lord Hawkesbury?’
+
+“‘We shall see him presently.’
+
+“‘Let me out!’ he shouted. ‘There’s some trickery in this. Coachman,
+stop the coach! Let me out, I say!’
+
+“I dashed him back into his seat as he tried to turn the handle of the
+door. He roared for help. I clapped my palm across his mouth. He made
+his teeth meet through the side of it. I seized his own cravat and
+bound it over his lips. He still mumbled and gurgled, but the noise was
+covered by the rattle of our wheels. We were passing the minister’s
+house, and there was no candle in the window.
+
+“The messenger sat quiet for a little, and I could see the glint of his
+eyes as he stared at me through the gloom. He was partly stunned, I
+think, by the force with which I had hurled him into his seat. And also
+he was pondering, perhaps, what he should do next. Presently he got his
+mouth partly free from the cravat.
+
+“‘You shall have my watch and my purse if you will let me go,’ said he.
+
+“‘Sir,’ said I, ‘I am as honourable a man as you are yourself.’
+
+“‘Who are you, then?’
+
+“‘My name is of no importance.’
+
+“‘What do you want with me?’
+
+“‘It is a bet.’
+
+“‘A bet? What d’you mean? Do you understand that I am on the
+Government service, and that you will see the inside of a gaol for
+this?’
+
+“‘That is the bet. That is the sport, said I.’
+
+“‘You may find it poor sport before you finish,’ he cried. ‘What is
+this insane bet of yours then?’
+
+“‘I have bet,’ I answered, ‘that I will recite a chapter of the Koran to
+the first gentleman whom I should meet in the street.’
+
+“I do not know what made me think of it, save that my translation was
+always running in my head. He clutched at the door-handle, and again I
+had to hurl him back into his seat.
+
+“‘How long will it take?’ he gasped.
+
+“‘It depends on the chapter,’ I answered.
+
+“‘A short one, then, and let me go!’
+
+“‘But is it fair?’ I argued. ‘When I say a chapter, I do not mean the
+shortest chapter, but rather one which should be of average length.’
+
+“‘Help! help! help!’ he squealed, and I was compelled again to adjust
+his cravat.
+
+“‘A little patience,’ said I, ‘and it will soon be over. I should like
+to recite the chapter which would be of most interest to yourself. You
+will confess that I am trying to make things as pleasant as I can for
+you?’
+
+“He slipped his mouth free again.
+
+“‘Quick, then, quick!’ he groaned.
+
+“‘The Chapter of the Camel?’ I suggested.
+
+“‘Yes, yes.’
+
+“‘Or that of the Fleet Stallion?’
+
+“‘Yes, yes. Only proceed!’
+
+“We had passed the window and there was no candle. I settled down to
+recite the Chapter of the Stallion to him. Perhaps you do not know your
+Koran very well, monsieur? Well, I knew it by heart then, as I know it
+by heart now. The style is a little exasperating for anyone who is in a
+hurry. But, then, what would you have? The people in the East are
+never in a hurry, and it was written for them. I repeated it all with
+the dignity and solemnity which a sacred book demands, and the young
+Englishman he wriggled and groaned.
+
+“‘When the horses, standing on three feet and placing the tip of their
+fourth foot upon the ground, were mustered in front of him in the
+evening, he said, I have loved the love of earthly good above the
+remembrance of things on high, and have spent the time in viewing these
+horses. Bring the horses back to me. And when they were brought back
+he began to cut off their legs and--’
+
+“It was at this moment that the young Englishman sprang at me. My God!
+how little can I remember of the next few minutes! He was a boxer, this
+shred of a man. He had been trained to strike. I tried to catch him by
+the hands. Pac, pac, he came upon my nose and upon my eye. I put down
+my head and thrust at him with it. Pac, he came from below. But ah!
+I was too much for him. I hurled myself upon him, and he had no place
+where he could escape from my weight. He fell flat upon the cushions
+and I seated myself upon him with such conviction that the wind flew
+from him as from a burst bellows.
+
+“Then I searched to see what there was with which I could tie him. I
+drew the strings from my shoes, and with one I secured his wrists, and
+with another his ankles. Then I tied the cravat round his mouth again,
+so that he could only lie and glare at me. When I had done all this,
+and had stopped the bleeding of my own nose, I looked out of the coach
+and ah, monsieur, the very first thing which caught my eyes was that
+candle--that dear little candle--glimmering in the window of the
+minister. Alone, with these two hands, I had retrieved the capitulation
+of an army and the loss of a province. Yes, monsieur, what Abercrombie
+and 5,000 men had done upon the beach at Aboukir was undone by me,
+single-handed, in a hackney coach in Harley Street.
+
+“Well, I had no time to lose, for at any moment Monsieur Otto might be
+down. I shouted to my driver, gave him his second guinea, and allowed
+him to proceed to Watier’s. For myself, I sprang into our Embassy’s
+carriage, and a moment later the door of the minister opened. He had
+himself escorted Monsieur Otto downstairs, and now so deep was he in
+talk that he walked out bareheaded as far as the carriage. As he stood
+there by the open door, there came the rattle of wheels, and a man
+rushed down the pavement.
+
+“‘A despatch of great importance for Milord Hawkesbury!’ he cried.
+
+“I could see that it was not my messenger, but a second one. Milord
+Hawkesbury caught the paper from his hand, and read it by the light of
+the carriage lamp. His face, monsieur, was as white as this plate,
+before he had finished.
+
+“‘Monsieur Otto,’ he cried, ‘we have signed this treaty upon a false
+understanding. Egypt is in our hands.’
+
+“‘What!’ cried Monsieur Otto. ‘Impossible!’
+
+“‘It is certain. It fell to Abercrombie last month.’
+
+“‘In that case,’ said Monsieur Otto, ‘it is very fortunate that the
+treaty is signed.’
+
+“‘Very fortunate for you, sir,’ cried Milord Hawkesbury, as he turned
+back to the house.
+
+“Next day, monsieur, what they call the Bow Street runners were after
+me, but they could not run across salt water, and Alphonse Lacour was
+receiving the congratulations of Monsieur Talleyrand and the First
+Consul before ever his pursuers had got as far as Dover.”
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10446 ***
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+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>
+     The Green Flag | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
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+  <body>
+    <div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10446 ***</div>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE GREEN FLAG
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Arthur Conan Doyle
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> THE GREEN FLAG </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> CAPTAIN SHARKEY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE CROXLEY MASTER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE STRIPED CHEST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> A SHADOW BEFORE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> THE KING OF THE FOXES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> THE NEW CATACOMB </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE GREEN FLAG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Jack Conolly, of the Irish Shotgun Brigade, the Rory of the Hills
+      Inner Circle, and the extreme left wing of the Land League, was
+      incontinently shot by Sergeant Murdoch of the constabulary, in a little
+      moonlight frolic near Kanturk, his twin-brother Dennis joined the British
+      Army. The countryside had become too hot for him; and, as the seventy-five
+      shillings were wanting which might have carried him to America, he took
+      the only way handy of getting himself out of the way. Seldom has Her
+      Majesty had a less promising recruit, for his hot Celtic blood seethed
+      with hatred against Britain and all things British. The sergeant, however,
+      smiling complacently over his 6 ft. of brawn and his 44 in. chest, whisked
+      him off with a dozen other of the boys to the depot at Fermoy, whence in a
+      few weeks they were sent on, with the spade-work kinks taken out of their
+      backs, to the first battalion of the Royal Mallows, at the top of the
+      roster for foreign service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Royal Mallows, at about that date, were as strange a lot of men as
+      ever were paid by a great empire to fight its battles. It was the darkest
+      hour of the land struggle, when the one side came out with crow-bar and
+      battering-ram by day, and the other with mask and with shot-gun by night.
+      Men driven from their homes and potato-patches found their way even into
+      the service of the Government, to which it seemed to them that they owed
+      their troubles, and now and then they did wild things before they came.
+      There were recruits in the Irish regiments who would forget to answer to
+      their own names, so short had been their acquaintance with them. Of these
+      the Royal Mallows had their full share; and, while they still retained
+      their fame as being one of the smartest corps in the army, no one knew
+      better than their officers that they were dry-rotted with treason and with
+      bitter hatred of the flag under which they served.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the centre of all the disaffection was C Company, in which Dennis
+      Conolly found himself enrolled. They were Celts, Catholics, and men of the
+      tenant class to a man; and their whole experience of the British
+      Government had been an inexorable landlord, and a constabulary who seemed
+      to them to be always on the side of the rent-collector. Dennis was not the
+      only moonlighter in the ranks, nor was he alone in having an intolerable
+      family blood-feud to harden his heart. Savagery had begotten savagery in
+      that veiled civil war. A landlord with an iron mortgage weighing down upon
+      him had small bowels for his tenantry. He did but take what the law
+      allowed, and yet, with men like Jim Holan, or Patrick McQuire, or Peter
+      Flynn, who had seen the roofs torn from their cottages and their folk
+      huddled among their pitiable furniture upon the roadside, it was ill to
+      argue about abstract law. What matter that in that long and bitter
+      struggle there was many another outrage on the part of the tenant, and
+      many another grievance on the side of the landowner! A stricken man can
+      only feel his own wound, and the rank and file of the C Company of the
+      Royal Mallows were sore and savage to the soul. There were low whisperings
+      in barrack-rooms and canteens, stealthy meetings in public-house parlours,
+      bandying of passwords from mouth to mouth, and many other signs which made
+      their officers right glad when the order came which sent them to foreign,
+      and better still, to active service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Irish regiments have before now been disaffected, and have at a
+      distance looked upon the foe as though he might, in truth, be the friend;
+      but when they have been put face on to him, and when their officers have
+      dashed to the front with a wave and halloo, those rebel hearts have
+      softened and their gallant Celtic blood has boiled with the mad joy of the
+      fight, until the slower Britons have marvelled that they ever could have
+      doubted the loyalty of their Irish comrades. So it would be again,
+      according to the officers, and so it would not be if Dennis Conolly and a
+      few others could have their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a March morning upon the eastern fringe of the Nubian desert. The
+      sun had not yet risen, but a tinge of pink flushed up as far as the
+      cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon across
+      the horizon. From the coast inland stretched dreary sand-plains, dotted
+      over with thick clumps of mimosa scrub and mottled patches of thorny bush.
+      No tree broke the monotony of that vast desert. The dull, dusty hue of the
+      thickets, and the yellow glare of the sand, were the only colours, save at
+      one point, where, from a distance, it seemed that a land-slip of
+      snow-white stones had shot itself across a low foot-hill. But as the
+      traveller approached he saw, with a thrill, that these were no stones, but
+      the bleaching bones of a slaughtered army. With its dull tints, its
+      gnarled, viprous bushes, its arid, barren soil, and this death streak
+      trailed across it, it was indeed a nightmare country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some eight or ten miles inland the rolling plain curved upwards with a
+      steeper slope until it ran into a line of red basaltic rock which
+      zigzagged from north to south, heaping itself up at one point into a
+      fantastic knoll. On the summit of this there stood upon that March morning
+      three Arab chieftains&mdash;the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas, Moussa Wad
+      Aburhegel, who led the Berber dervishes, and Hamid Wad Hussein, who had
+      come northward with his fighting men from the land of the Baggaras. They
+      had all three just risen from their praying-carpets, and were peering out,
+      with fierce, high-nosed faces thrust forwards, at the stretch of country
+      revealed by the spreading dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red rim of the sun was pushing itself now above the distant sea, and
+      the whole coast-line stood out brilliantly yellow against the rich deep
+      blue beyond. At one spot lay a huddle of white-walled houses, a mere
+      splotch in the distance; while four tiny cock-boats, which lay beyond,
+      marked the position of three of Her Majesty’s 10,000-ton troopers and the
+      admiral’s flagship. But it was not upon the distant town, nor upon the
+      great vessels, nor yet upon the sinister white litter which gleamed in the
+      plain beneath them, that the Arab chieftains gazed. Two miles from where
+      they stood, amid the sand-hills and the mimosa scrub, a great
+      parallelogram had been marked by piled-up bushes. From the inside of this
+      dozens of tiny blue smoke-reeks curled up into the still morning air;
+      while there rose from it a confused deep murmur, the voices of men and the
+      gruntings of camels blended into the same insect buzz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The unbelievers have cooked their morning food,” said the Baggara chief,
+      shading his eyes with his tawny, sinewy hand. “Truly their sleep has been
+      scanty; for Hamid and a hundred of his men have fired upon them since the
+      rising of the moon.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So it was with these others,” answered the Sheik Kadra, pointing with his
+      sheathed sword towards the old battle-field. “They also had a day of
+      little water and a night of little rest, and the heart was gone out of
+      them ere ever the sons of the Prophet had looked them in the eyes. This
+      blade drank deep that day, and will again before the sun has travelled
+      from the sea to the hill.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And yet these are other men,” remarked the Berber dervish. “Well, I know
+      that Allah has placed them in the clutch of our fingers, yet it may be
+      that they with the big hats will stand firmer than the cursed men of
+      Egypt.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Pray Allah that it may be so,” cried the fierce Baggara, with a flash of
+      his black eyes. “It was not to chase women that I brought 700 men from the
+      river to the coast. See, my brother, already they are forming their
+      array.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fanfare of bugle-calls burst from the distant camp. At the same time the
+      bank of bushes at one side had been thrown or trampled down, and the
+      little army within began to move slowly out on to the plain. Once clear of
+      the camp they halted, and the slant rays of the sun struck flashes from
+      bayonet and from gun-barrel as the ranks closed up until the big pith
+      helmets joined into a single long white ribbon. Two streaks of scarlet
+      glowed on either side of the square, but elsewhere the fringe of
+      fighting-men was of the dull yellow khaki tint which hardly shows against
+      the desert sand. Inside their array was a dense mass of camels and mules
+      bearing stores and ambulance needs. Outside a twinkling clump of cavalry
+      was drawn up on each flank, and in front a thin, scattered line of mounted
+      infantry was already slowly advancing over the bush-strewn plain, halting
+      on every eminence, and peering warily round as men might who have to pick
+      their steps among the bones of those who have preceded them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three chieftains still lingered upon the knoll, looking down with
+      hungry eyes and compressed lips at the dark steel-tipped patch. “They are
+      slower to start than the men of Egypt,” the Sheik of the Hadendowas
+      growled in his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Slower also to go back, perchance, my brother,” murmured the dervish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And yet they are not many&mdash;3,000 at the most.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And we 10,000, with the Prophet’s grip upon our spear-hafts and his words
+      upon our banner. See to their chieftain, how he rides upon the right and
+      looks up at us with the glass that sees from afar! It may be that he sees
+      this also.” The Arab shook his sword at the small clump of horsemen who
+      had spurred out from the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Lo! he beckons,” cried the dervish; “and see those others at the corner,
+      how they bend and heave. Ha! by the Prophet, I had thought it.” As he
+      spoke, a little woolly puff of smoke spurted up at the corner of the
+      square, and a 7 lb. shell burst with a hard metallic smack just over their
+      heads. The splinters knocked chips from the red rocks around them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bismillah!” cried the Hadendowa; “if the gun can carry thus far, then
+      ours can answer to it. Ride to the left, Moussa, and tell Ben Ali to cut
+      the skin from the Egyptians if they cannot hit yonder mark. And you,
+      Hamid, to the right, and see that 3,000 men lie close in the wady that we
+      have chosen. Let the others beat the drum and show the banner of the
+      Prophet, for by the black stone their spears will have drunk deep ere they
+      look upon the stars again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long, straggling, boulder-strewn plateau lay on the summit of the red
+      hills, sloping very precipitously to the plain, save at one point, where a
+      winding gully curved downwards, its mouth choked with sand-mounds and
+      olive-hued scrub. Along the edge of this position lay the Arab host&mdash;a
+      motley crew of shock-headed desert clansmen, fierce predatory slave
+      dealers of the interior, and wild dervishes from the Upper Nile, all blent
+      together by their common fearlessness and fanaticism. Two races were
+      there, as wide as the poles apart&mdash;the thin-lipped, straight-haired
+      Arab and the thick-lipped, curly negro&mdash;yet the faith of Islam had
+      bound them closer than a blood tie. Squatting among the rocks, or lying
+      thickly in the shadow, they peered out at the slow-moving square beneath
+      them, while women with water-skins and bags of dhoora fluttered from group
+      to group, calling out to each other those fighting texts from the Koran
+      which in the hour of battle are maddening as wine to the true believer. A
+      score of banners waved over the ragged, valiant crew, and among them, upon
+      desert horses and white Bishareen camels, were the Emirs and Sheiks who
+      were to lead them against the infidels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Sheik Kadra sprang into his saddle and drew his sword there was a
+      wild whoop and a clatter of waving spears, while the one-ended war-drums
+      burst into a dull crash like a wave upon shingle. For a moment 10,000 men
+      were up on the rocks with brandished arms and leaping figures; the next
+      they were under cover again, waiting sternly and silently for their
+      chieftain’s orders. The square was less than half a mile from the ridge
+      now, and shell after shell from the 7 lb. guns were pitching over it. A
+      deep roar on the right, and then a second one showed that the Egyptian
+      Krupps were in action. Sheik Kadra’s hawk eyes saw that the shells burst
+      far beyond the mark, and he spurred his horse along to where a knot of
+      mounted chiefs were gathered round the two guns, which were served by
+      their captured crews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How is this, Ben Ali?” he cried. “It was not thus that the dogs fired
+      when it was their own brothers in faith at whom they aimed!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A chieftain reined his horse back, and thrust a blood-smeared sword into
+      its sheath. Beside him two Egyptian artillerymen with their throats cut
+      were sobbing out their lives upon the ground. “Who lays the gun this
+      time?” asked the fierce chief, glaring at the frightened gunners. “Here,
+      thou black-browed child of Shaitan, aim, and aim for thy life.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may have been chance, or it may have been skill, but the third and
+      fourth shells burst over the square. Sheik Kadra smiled grimly and
+      galloped back to the left, where his spearmen were streaming down into the
+      gully. As he joined them a deep growling rose from the plain beneath, like
+      the snarling of a sullen wild beast, and a little knot of tribesmen fell
+      into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead from a Gardner. Their
+      comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down into the ravine. From all
+      along the crest burst the hard, sharp crackle of Remington fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The square had slowly advanced, rippling over the low sandhills, and
+      halting every few minutes to re-arrange its formation. Now, having made
+      sure that there was no force of the enemy in the scrub, it changed its
+      direction, and began to take a line parallel to the Arab position. It was
+      too steep to assail from the front, and if they moved far enough to the
+      right the general hoped that he might turn it. On the top of those ruddy
+      hills lay a baronetcy for him, and a few extra hundreds in his pension,
+      and he meant having them both that day. The Remington fire was annoying,
+      and so were those two Krupp guns; already there were more cacolets full
+      than he cared to see. But on the whole he thought it better to hold his
+      fire until he had more to aim at than a few hundred of fuzzy heads peeping
+      over a razor-back ridge. He was a bulky, red-faced man, a fine
+      whist-player, and a soldier who knew his work. His men believed in him,
+      and he had good reason to believe in them, for he had excellent stuff
+      under him that day. Being an ardent champion of the short-service system,
+      he took particular care to work with veteran first battalions, and his
+      little force was the compressed essence of an army corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The left front of the square was formed by four companies of the Royal
+      Wessex, and the right by four of the Royal Mallows. On either side the
+      other halves of the same regiments marched in quarter column of companies.
+      Behind them, on the right was a battalion of Guards, and on the left one
+      of Marines, while the rear was closed in by a Rifle battalion. Two Royal
+      Artillery 7 lb. screw-guns kept pace with the square, and a dozen
+      white-bloused sailors, under their blue-coated, tight-waisted officers,
+      trailed their Gardner in front, turning every now and then to spit up at
+      the draggled banners which waved over the cragged ridge. Hussars and
+      Lancers scouted in the scrub at each side, and within moved the clump of
+      camels, with humorous eyes and supercilious lips, their comic faces a
+      contrast to the blood-stained men who already lay huddled in the cacolets
+      on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The square was now moving slowly on a line parallel with the rocks,
+      stopping every few minutes to pick up wounded, and to allow the screw-guns
+      and Gardner to make themselves felt. The men looked serious, for that
+      spring on to the rocks of the Arab army had given them a vague glimpse of
+      the number and ferocity of their foes; but their faces were set like
+      stone, for they knew to a man that they must win or they must die&mdash;and
+      die, too, in a particularly unlovely fashion. But most serious of all was
+      the general, for he had seen that which brought a flush to his cheeks and
+      a frown to his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I say, Stephen,” said he to his galloper, “those Mallows seem a trifle
+      jumpy. The right flank company bulged a bit when the niggers showed on the
+      hill.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Youngest troops in the square, sir,” murmured the aide, looking at them
+      critically through his eye-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Tell Colonel Flanagan to see to it, Stephen,” said the general; and the
+      galloper sped upon his way. The colonel, a fine old Celtic warrior, was
+      over at C Company in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How are the men, Captain Foley?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Never better, sir,” answered the senior captain, in the spirit that makes
+      a Madras officer look murder if you suggest recruiting his regiment from
+      the Punjab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stiffen them up!” cried the colonel. As he rode away a colour-sergeant
+      seemed to trip, and fell forward into a mimosa bush. He made no effort to
+      rise, but lay in a heap among the thorns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sergeant O’Rooke’s gone, sorr,” cried a voice. “Never mind, lads,” said
+      Captain Foley. “He’s died like a soldier, fighting for his Queen.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Down with the Queen!” shouted a hoarse voice from the ranks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the roar of the Gardner and the typewriter-like clicking of the hopper
+      burst in at the tail of the words. Captain Foley heard them, and
+      Subalterns Grice and Murphy heard them; but there are times when a deaf
+      ear is a gift from the gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Steady, Mallows!” cried the captain, in a pause of the grunting
+      machine-gun. “We have the honour of Ireland to guard this day.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And well we know how to guard it, captin!” cried the same ominous voice;
+      and there was a buzz from the length of the company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain and the two subs. came together behind the marching line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They seem a bit out of hand,” murmured the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bedad,” said the Galway boy, “they mean to scoot like redshanks.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They nearly broke when the blacks showed on the hill,” said Grice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The first man that turns, my sword is through him,” cried Foley, loud
+      enough to be heard by five files on either side of him. Then, in a lower
+      voice, “It’s a bitter drop to swallow, but it’s my duty to report what you
+      think to the chief, and have a company of Jollies put behind us.” He
+      turned away with the safety of the square upon his mind, and before he had
+      reached his goal the square had ceased to exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In their march in front of what looked like a face of cliff, they had come
+      opposite to the mouth of the gully, in which, screened by scrub and
+      boulders, 3,000 chosen dervishes, under Hamid Wad Hussein, of the
+      Baggaras, were crouching. Tat, tat, tat, went the rifles of three mounted
+      infantrymen in front of the left shoulder of the square, and an instant
+      later they were spurring it for their lives, crouching over the manes of
+      their horses, and pelting over the sandhills with thirty or forty
+      galloping chieftains at their heels. Rocks and scrub and mimosa swarmed
+      suddenly into life. Rushing black figures came and went in the gaps of the
+      bushes. A howl that drowned the shouts of the officers, a long quavering
+      yell, burst from the ambuscade. Two rolling volleys from the Royal Wessex,
+      one crash from the screw-gun firing shrapnel, and then before a second
+      cartridge could be rammed in, a living, glistening black wave, tipped with
+      steel, had rolled over the gun, the Royal Wessex had been dashed back
+      among the camels, and 1,000 fanatics were hewing and hacking in the heart
+      of what had been the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The camels and mules in the centre, jammed more and more together as their
+      leaders flinched from the rush of the tribesmen, shut out the view of the
+      other three faces, who could only tell that the Arabs had got in by the
+      yells upon Allah, which rose ever nearer and nearer amid the clouds of
+      sand-dust, the struggling animals, and the dense mass of swaying, cursing
+      men. Some of the Wessex fired back at the Arabs who had passed them, as
+      excited Tommies will, and it is whispered among doctors that it was not
+      always a Remington bullet which was cut from a wound that day. Some
+      rallied in little knots, stabbing furiously with their bayonets at the
+      rushing spearmen. Others turned at bay with their backs against the
+      camels, and others round the general and his staff, who, revolver in hand,
+      had flung themselves into the heart of it. But the whole square was
+      sidling slowly away from the gorge, pushed back by the pressure at the
+      shattered corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officers and men at the other faces were glancing nervously to the
+      rear, uncertain what was going on, and unable to take help to their
+      comrades without breaking the formation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By Jove, they’ve got through the Wessex!” cried Grice of the Mallows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The divils have hurrooshed us, Ted,” said his brother subaltern, cocking
+      his revolver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ranks were breaking, and crowding towards Private Conolly, all talking
+      together as the officers peered back through the veil of dust. The sailors
+      had run their Gardner out, and she was squirting death out of her five
+      barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages. “Oh, this bloody
+      gun!” shouted a voice. “She’s jammed again.” The fierce metallic grunting
+      had ceased, and her crew were straining and hauling at the breech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This damned vertical feed!” cried an officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The spanner, Wilson!&mdash;the spanner! Stand to your cutlasses, boys, or
+      they’re into us.” His voice rose into a shriek as he ended, for a
+      shovel-headed spear had been buried in his chest. A second wave of
+      dervishes lapped over the hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and the
+      right front of the line. The sailors were overborne in an instant, but the
+      Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the yell of the Moslem with
+      an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two hundred of them with a single
+      point-blank volley. The howling, leaping crew swerved away to the right,
+      and dashed on into the gap which had already been made for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But C Company had drawn no trigger to stop that fiery rush. The men leaned
+      moodily upon their Martinis. Some had even thrown them upon the ground.
+      Conolly was talking fiercely to those about him. Captain Foley, thrusting
+      his way through the press, rushed up to him with a revolver in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This is your doing, you villain!” he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If you raise your pistol, Captin, your brains will be over your coat,”
+      said a low voice at his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw that several rifles were turned on him. The two subs. had pressed
+      forward, and were by his side. “What is it, then?” he cried, looking round
+      from one fierce mutinous face to another. “Are you Irishmen? Are you
+      soldiers? What are you here for but to fight for your country?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “England is no country of ours,” cried several.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are not fighting for England. You are fighting for Ireland, and for
+      the Empire of which it as part.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A black curse on the Impire!” shouted Private McQuire, throwing down his
+      rifle. “’Twas the Impire that backed the man that druv me onto the
+      roadside. May me hand stiffen before I draw trigger for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What’s the Impire to us, Captain Foley, and what’s the Widdy to us
+      ayther?” cried a voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Let the constabulary foight for her.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay, be God, they’d be better imployed than pullin’ a poor man’s thatch
+      about his ears.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Or shootin’ his brother, as they did mine.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It was the Impire laid my groanin’ mother by the wayside. Her son will
+      rot before he upholds it, and ye can put that in the charge-sheet in the
+      next coort-martial.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain the three officers begged, menaced, persuaded. The square was
+      still moving, ever moving, with the same bloody fight raging in its
+      entrails. Even while they had been speaking they had been shuffling
+      backwards, and the useless Gardner, with her slaughtered crew, was already
+      a good hundred yards from them. And the pace was accelerating. The mass of
+      men, tormented and writhing, was trying, by a common instinct, to reach
+      some clearer ground where they could re-form. Three faces were still
+      intact, but the fourth had been caved in, and badly mauled, without its
+      comrades being able to help it. The Guards had met a fresh rush of the
+      Hadendowas, and had blown back the tribesmen with a volley, and the
+      cavalry had ridden over another stream of them, as they welled out of the
+      gully. A litter of hamstrung horses, and haggled men behind them, showed
+      that a spearman on his face among the bushes can show some sport to the
+      man who charges him. But, in spite of all, the square was still reeling
+      swiftly backwards, trying to shake itself clear of this torment which
+      clung to its heart. Would it break or would it re-form? The lives of five
+      regiments and the honour of the flag hung upon the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some, at least, were breaking. The C Company of the Mallows had lost all
+      military order, and was pushing back in spite of the haggard officers, who
+      cursed, and shoved, and prayed in the vain attempt to hold them. The
+      captain and the subs. were elbowed and jostled, while the men crowded
+      towards Private Conolly for their orders. The confusion had not spread,
+      for the other companies, in the dust and smoke and turmoil, had lost touch
+      with their mutinous comrades. Captain Foley saw that even now there might
+      be time to avert a disaster. “Think what you are doing, man,” he yelled,
+      rushing towards the ringleader. “There are a thousand Irish in the square,
+      and they are dead men if we break.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words alone might have had little effect on the old moonlighter. It is
+      possible that, in his scheming brain, he had already planned how he was to
+      club his Irish together and lead them to the sea. But at that moment the
+      Arabs broke through the screen of camels which had fended them off. There
+      was a struggle, a screaming, a mule rolled over, a wounded man sprang up
+      in a cacolet with a spear through him, and then through the narrow gap
+      surged a stream of naked savages, mad with battle, drunk with slaughter,
+      spotted and splashed with blood&mdash;blood dripping from their spears,
+      their arms, their faces. Their yells, their bounds, their crouching,
+      darting figures, the horrid energy of their spear-thrusts, made them look
+      like a blast of fiends from the pit. And were these the Allies of Ireland?
+      Were these the men who were to strike for her against her enemies?
+      Conolly’s soul rose up in loathing at the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a man of firm purpose, and yet at the first sight of those howling
+      fiends that purpose faltered, and at the second it was blown to the winds.
+      He saw a huge coal-black negro seize a shrieking camel-driver and saw at
+      his throat with a knife. He saw a shock-headed tribesman plunge his great
+      spear through the back of their own little bugler from Mill-street. He saw
+      a dozen deeds of blood&mdash;the murder of the wounded, the hacking of the
+      unarmed&mdash;and caught, too, in a glance, the good wholesome faces of
+      the faced-about rear rank of the Marines. The Mallows, too, had faced
+      about, and in an instant Conolly had thrown himself into the heart of C
+      Company, striving with the officers to form the men up with their
+      comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the mischief had gone too far. The rank and file had no heart in their
+      work. They had broken before, and this last rush of murderous savages was
+      a hard thing for broken men to stand against. They flinched from the
+      furious faces and dripping forearms. Why should they throw away their
+      lives for a flag for which they cared nothing? Why should their leader
+      urge them to break, and now shriek to them to re-form? They would not
+      re-form. They wanted to get to the sea and to safety. He flung himself
+      among them with outstretched arms, with words of reason, with shouts, with
+      gaspings. It was useless; the tide was beyond his control. They were
+      shredding out into the desert with their faces set for the coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bhoys, will ye stand for this?” screamed a voice. It was so ringing, so
+      strenuous, that the breaking Mallows glanced backwards. They were held by
+      what they saw. Private Conolly had planted his rifle-stock downwards in a
+      mimosa bush. From the fixed bayonet there fluttered a little green flag
+      with the crownless harp. God knows for what black mutiny, for what signal
+      of revolt, that flag had been treasured up within the corporal’s tunic!
+      Now its green wisp stood amid the rush, while three proud regimental
+      colours were reeling slowly backwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What for the flag?” yelled the private.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My heart’s blood for it! and mine! and mine!” cried a score of voices.
+      “God bless it! The flag, boys&mdash;the flag!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      C Company were rallying upon it. The stragglers clutched at each other,
+      and pointed. “Here, McQuire, Flynn, O’Hara,” ran the shoutings. “Close on
+      the flag! Back to the flag!” The three standards reeled backwards, and the
+      seething square strove for a clearer space where they could form their
+      shattered ranks; but C Company, grim and powder-stained, choked with
+      enemies and falling fast, still closed in on the little rebel ensign that
+      flapped from the mimosa bush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a good half-hour before the square, having disentangled itself from
+      its difficulties and dressed its ranks, began to slowly move forwards over
+      the ground, across which in its labour and anguish it had been driven. The
+      long trail of Wessex men and Arabs showed but too clearly the path they
+      had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How many got into us, Stephen?” asked the general, tapping his snuff-box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should put them down at a thousand or twelve hundred, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I did not see any get out again. What the devil were the Wessex thinking
+      about? The Guards stood well, though; so did the Mallows.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Colonel Flanagan reports that his front flank company was cut off, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, that’s the company that was out of hand when we advanced!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Colonel Flanagan reports, sir, that the company took the whole brunt of
+      the attack, and gave the square time to re-form.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Tell the Hussars to ride forward, Stephen,” said the general, “and try if
+      they can see anything of them. There’s no firing, and I fear that the
+      Mallows will want to do some recruiting. Let the square take ground by the
+      right, and then advance!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas saw from his knoll that the men with
+      the big hats had rallied, and that they were coming back in the quiet
+      business fashion of men whose work was before them. He took counsel with
+      Moussa the Dervish and Hussein the Baggara, and a woestruck man was he
+      when he learned that the third of his men were safe in the Moslem
+      Paradise. So, having still some signs of victory to show, he gave the
+      word, and the desert warriors flitted off unseen and unheard, even as they
+      had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A red rock plateau, a few hundred spears and Remingtons, and a plain which
+      for the second time was strewn with slaughtered men, was all that his
+      day’s fighting gave to the English general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a squadron of Hussars which came first to the spot where the rebel
+      flag had waved. A dense litter of Arab dead marked the place. Within, the
+      flag waved no longer, but the rifle stood in the mimosa bush, and round
+      it, with their wounds in front, lay the Fenian private and the silent
+      ranks of the Irishry. Sentiment is not an English failing, but the Hussar
+      captain raised his hilt in a salute as he rode past the blood-soaked ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The British general sent home dispatches to his Government, and so did the
+      chief of the Hadendowas, though the style and manner differed somewhat in
+      each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowa people to Mohammed Ahmed, the chosen of
+      Allah, homage and greeting, (began the latter). Know by this that on the
+      fourth day of this moon we gave battle to the Kaffirs who call themselves
+      Inglees, having with us the Chief Hussein with ten thousand of the
+      faithful. By the blessing of Allah we have broken them, and chased them
+      for a mile, though indeed these infidels are different from the dogs of
+      Egypt, and have slain very many of our men. Yet we hope to smite them
+      again ere the new moon be come, to which end I trust that thou wilt send
+      us a thousand Dervishes from Omdurman. In token of our victory I send you
+      by this messenger a flag which we have taken. By the colour it might well
+      seem to have belonged to those of the true faith, but the Kaffirs gave
+      their blood freely to save it, and so we think that, though small, it is
+      very dear to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+    </h2>
+<p class="center big">
+                             I
+</p>
+    <h3>
+      HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT’S CAME HOME.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end
+      by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been
+      fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some
+      took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce,
+      others were absorbed into the fishing fleets, and a few of the more
+      reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at
+      the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the whole
+      human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they scoured the seas,
+      disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in
+      for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants by
+      their lavishness, and horrified them by their brutalities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above
+      all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant
+      menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations by
+      the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer, and
+      dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that discipline
+      and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers, both
+      formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an account
+      to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken whim of
+      the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with longer
+      stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell into their
+      hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after serving as boon
+      companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his cabin table with
+      his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and salt in front of him.
+      It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his calling in the Caribbean
+      Gulf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship <i>Morning Star</i>, and
+      yet he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the
+      falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the
+      guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt’s was his final port of call,
+      and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old England. He
+      had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he had left
+      Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red pepper, he
+      had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet edge of the
+      tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands, touching here and
+      there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy and outrage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey, of the twenty-gun pirate barque, <i>Happy Delivery</i>,
+      had passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and
+      with murdered men. Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim
+      pleasantries and of his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main
+      his coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with
+      death and many things which are worse than death. So nervous was Captain
+      Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship, and her full and valuable lading,
+      that he struck out to the west as far as Bird’s Island to be out of the
+      usual track of commerce. And yet even in those solitary waters he had been
+      unable to shake off sinister traces of Captain Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
+      ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as
+      they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and
+      wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon
+      transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship. He was
+      from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole survivor of a
+      schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath a
+      tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late captain
+      to be thrown into the boat, “as provisions for the voyage,” but the seaman
+      had at once committed it to the deep, lest the temptation should be more
+      than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge frame until, at the
+      last moment, the <i>Morning Star</i> had found him in that madness which
+      is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for Captain Scarrow,
+      for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this big New Englander was
+      a prize worth having. He vowed that he was the only man whom Captain
+      Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the pirate
+      was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the seaman’s
+      mind as he watched the agent’s boat shooting out from the Custom-house
+      quay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll lay you a wager, Morgan,” said he to the first mate, “that the agent
+      will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his lips.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, captain, I’ll have you a silver dollar, and chance it,” said the
+      rough old Bristol man beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
+      sprang up the ladder. “Welcome, Captain Scarrow!” he cried. “Have you
+      heard about Sharkey?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain grinned at the mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What devilry has he been up to now?” he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Devilry! You’ve not heard, then? Why, we’ve got him safe under lock and
+      key at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be hanged
+      to-morrow morning.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken up
+      by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through the
+      break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the front of
+      them with a radiant face turned up to Heaven, for he came of the Puritan
+      stock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sharkey to be hanged!” he cried. “You don’t know, Master Agent, if they
+      lack a hangman, do you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stand back!” cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was even
+      stronger than his interest at the news. “I’ll pay that dollar, Captain
+      Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet. How came
+      the villain to be taken?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and
+      they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship.
+      So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
+      Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
+      brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried, but
+      our good little Governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it. ‘He’s my
+      meat,’ said he, ‘and I claim the cooking of it.’ If you can stay till
+      to-morrow morning at ten, you’ll see the joint swinging.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I wish I could,” said the captain, wistfully, “but I am sadly behind time
+      now. I should start with the evening tide.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That you can’t do,” said the agent with decision. “The Governor is going
+      back with you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The Governor!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes. He’s had a dispatch from Government to return without delay. The
+      fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles has been
+      waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, well!” cried the captain in some perplexity, “I’m a plain seaman,
+      and I don’t know much of governors and baronets and their ways. I don’t
+      remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it’s in King George’s
+      service, and he asks a cast in the <i>Morning Star</i> as far as London,
+      I’ll do what I can for him. There’s my own cabin he can have and welcome.
+      As to the cooking, it’s lobscouse and salmagundy six days in the week; but
+      he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks our galley too
+      rough for his taste.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow,” said the agent. “Sir
+      Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague, and it
+      is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage. Dr. Larousse said
+      that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not put fresh life into
+      him. He has a great spirit in him, though, and you must not blame him if
+      he is somewhat short in his speech.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He may say what he likes, and do what he likes, so long as he does not
+      come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship,” said the captain. “He
+      is Governor of St. Kitt’s, but I am Governor of the <i>Morning Star</i>,
+      and, by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to
+      my employer, just as he does to King George.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order
+      before he leaves.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The early morning tide, then.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night; and he will follow
+      them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt’s without
+      seeing Sharkey do the rogue’s hornpipe. His own orders were instant, so it
+      may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr. Larousse may
+      attend him upon the journey.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations which
+      they could for their illustrious passenger. The largest cabin was turned
+      out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which barrels of
+      fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary the plain food
+      of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor’s baggage began to
+      arrive&mdash;great iron-bound ant-proof trunks, and official tin
+      packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested the
+      cocked hat or the sword within. And then there came a note, with a
+      heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made
+      his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in
+      the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun to
+      deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some
+      difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard that the Governor was an
+      eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came
+      limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick
+      bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails like a
+      poodle’s coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large green glasses
+      which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from it. A fierce beak
+      of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in front of him. His ague
+      had caused him to swathe his throat and chin with a broad linen cravat,
+      and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown secured by a cord round the
+      waist. As he advanced he carried his masterful nose high in the air, but
+      his head turned slowly from side to side in the helpless manner of the
+      purblind, and he called in a high, querulous voice for the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You have my things?” he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, Sir Charles.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Have you wine aboard?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have ordered five cases, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And tobacco?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There is a keg of Trinidad.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You play a hand at picquet?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Passably well, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then anchor up, and to sea!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly through
+      the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands. The decrepit
+      Governor still limped the deck, with one guiding hand upon the quarter
+      rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are on Government service now, captain,” said he. “They are counting
+      the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you. Have you all that she
+      will carry?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Every inch, Sir Charles.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, Captain Scarrow,
+      that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your
+      voyage.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency’s society,” said the captain.
+      “But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of
+      Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he has a snug business
+      amongst the merchants. But hark!” He raised his ring-covered band in the
+      air. From far astern there came the low, deep thunder of cannon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is from the island!” cried the captain in astonishment. “Can it be a
+      signal for us to put back?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor laughed. “You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to be
+      hanged this morning. I ordered the batteries to salute when the rascal was
+      kicking his last, so that I might know of it out at sea. There’s an end of
+      Sharkey!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There’s an end of Sharkey!” cried the captain; and the crew took up the
+      cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at the
+      low, purple line of the vanishing land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the
+      invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was
+      generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial
+      and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge and
+      so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of the
+      deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting his
+      conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and Governor
+      smoked their long pipes, and drank their claret as three good comrades
+      should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?” asked the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He is a man of some presence,” said the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil,” remarked
+      the mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions,” said the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his
+      eyes,” said Captain Scarrow. “They were of the lightest filmy blue, with
+      red-rimmed lids. Was that not so, Sir Charles?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others! But
+      I remember now that the adjutant-general said that he had such an eye as
+      you describe, and added that the jury was so foolish as to be visibly
+      discomposed when it was turned upon them. It is well for them that he is
+      dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and if he had
+      laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with straw and
+      hung him for a figure-head.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a high,
+      neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so heartily, for
+      they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who sailed the
+      western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be their own.
+      Another bottle was broached to drink to a pleasant voyage, and the
+      Governor would drink just one other on the top of it, so that the seamen
+      were glad at last to stagger off&mdash;the one to his watch, and the other
+      to his bunk. But when, after his four hours’ spell, the mate came down
+      again, he was amazed to see the Governor, in his Ramillies wig, his
+      glasses, and his powdering-gown, still seated sedately at the lonely table
+      with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt’s when he was sick,” said he,
+      “and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he is
+      well.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voyage of the <i>Morning Star</i> was a successful one, and in about
+      three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel. From the first
+      day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before they
+      were halfway across the Atlantic, he was, save only for his eyes, as well
+      as any man upon the ship. Those who uphold the nourishing qualities of
+      wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night passed that he did
+      not repeat the performance of his first one. And yet he would be out upon
+      deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the best of them, peering
+      about with his weak eyes, and asking questions about the sails and the
+      rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of the sea. And he made up
+      for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining leave from the captain that
+      the New England seaman&mdash;he who had been cast away in the boat&mdash;should
+      lead him about, and, above all, that he should sit beside him when he
+      played cards and count the number of the pips, for unaided he could not
+      tell the king from the knave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service,
+      since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey and the other was his
+      avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to lend
+      his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all respect
+      behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed forefinger
+      upon the card which he should play. Between them there was little in the
+      pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first mate, by the
+      time they sighted the Lizard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the high
+      temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark. At a sign of opposition
+      or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his cravat, his
+      masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent angle, and
+      his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulders. He cracked it once
+      over the head of the carpenter when the man had accidentally jostled him
+      upon the deck. Once, too, when there was some grumbling and talk of a
+      mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was of opinion that they
+      should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they should march forward
+      and set upon them until they had trounced the devilment out of them. “Give
+      me a knife and a bucket!” he cried with an oath, and could hardly be
+      withheld from setting forth alone to deal with the spokesman of the
+      seamen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only answerable
+      to himself at St. Kitt’s, killing became murder upon the high seas. In
+      politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop of the
+      House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met a
+      Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his vapouring
+      and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a stream of strange
+      anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had never known a
+      voyage pass so pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island, they
+      had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As evening
+      fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from Winchelsea,
+      with the long, dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front of her. Next
+      morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland, and Sir Charles
+      might meet the King’s ministers at Westminster before the evening. The
+      boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were met for a last turn of
+      cards in the cabin, the faithful American still serving as eyes to the
+      Governor. There was a good stake upon the table, for the sailors had tried
+      on this last night to win their losses back from their passenger. Suddenly
+      he threw his cards down, and swept all the money into the pocket of his
+      long-flapped silken waistcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The game’s mine!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!” cried Captain Scarrow; “you have not
+      played out the hand, and we are not the losers.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sink you for a liar!” said the Governor. “I tell you I <i>have</i> played
+      out the hand, and that you <i>are</i> a loser.” He whipped off his wig and
+      his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a pair
+      of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good God!” cried the mate. “It’s Sharkey!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway had
+      put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in each of
+      his hands. The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the scattered cards
+      in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing laugh. “Captain
+      Sharkey is the name, gentlemen,” said he, “and this is Roaring Ned
+      Galloway, the quartermaster of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. We made it hot,
+      and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and him in an oarless
+      boat. You dogs&mdash;you poor, fond, water-hearted dogs&mdash;we hold you
+      at the end of our pistols!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You may shoot, or you may not!” cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon the
+      breast of his frieze jacket. “If it’s my last breath, Sharkey, I tell you
+      that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and hell-fire in
+      store for you!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There’s a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he’s going to make
+      a very pretty death of it!” cried Sharkey. “There’s no one aft save the
+      man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you’ll need it soon. Is
+      the dinghy astern, Ned?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay, ay, captain!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And the other boats scuttled?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I bored them all in three places.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. You look as if you
+      hadn’t quite got your bearings yet. Is there anything you’d like to ask
+      me?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I believe you’re the devil himself!” cried the captain. “Where is the
+      Governor of St. Kitt’s?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut. When I
+      broke prison I learnt from my friends&mdash;for Captain Sharkey has those
+      who love him in every port&mdash;that the Governor was starting for Europe
+      under a master who had never seen him. I climbed his verandah, and I paid
+      him the little debt that I owed him. Then I came aboard you with such of
+      his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide these tell-tale
+      eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a governor should. Now, Ned, you
+      can get to work upon them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Help! Help! Watch ahoy!” yelled the mate; but the butt of the pirate’s
+      pistol crashed down on his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox. Scarrow
+      rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his mouth, and
+      threw his other arm round his waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No use, Master Scarrow,” said Sharkey. “Let us see you go down on your
+      knees and beg for your life.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll see you&mdash;” cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No; not if you twist it off.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Put an inch of your knife into him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You may put six inches, and then I won’t.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sink me, but I like his spirit!” cried Sharkey. “Put your knife in your
+      pocket, Ned. You’ve saved your skin, Scarrow, and it’s a pity so stout a
+      man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can pick up a
+      living. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since you have lain
+      at my mercy and lived to tell the story. Tie him up, Ned.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “To the stove, captain?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Tut, tut! there’s a fire in the stove. None of your rover tricks, Ned
+      Galloway, unless they are called for, or I’ll let you know which of us two
+      is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the table.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!” said the quartermaster. “You
+      surely do not mean to let him go?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still for
+      me to command and for you to obey. Sink you for a villain, do you dare to
+      question my orders?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!” said the quartermaster, and,
+      lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table. With the quick
+      dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spread-eagled hands and feet with a
+      rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with the long
+      cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of St. Kitt’s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you,” said the pirate.
+      “If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had your
+      cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand with
+      the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small craft about, and we
+      shall get one of them. When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a smack,
+      when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can get a
+      barque, and when he has a barque he’ll soon have a full-rigged ship of his
+      own&mdash;so make haste into London town, or I may be coming back, after
+      all, for the <i>Morning Star</i>.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin.
+      Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the
+      companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the
+      stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the
+      falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and
+      dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he
+      rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way through
+      the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!” he screamed. “Cutlasses and pistols!
+      Clear away the long-boat! Clear away the gig! Sharkey, the pirate, is in
+      yonder dinghy. Whistle up the larboard watch, bo’sun, and tumble into the
+      boats, all hands.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant
+      the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The boats are scuttled!” they cried. “They are leaking like a sieve.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten and outwitted at every
+      point. Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor the
+      promise of it. The sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away lay a
+      fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net. Close to them was
+      the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the shining swell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They are dead men!” cried the captain. “A shout all together, boys, to
+      warn them of their danger.” But it was too late. At that very moment the
+      dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat. There were two rapid
+      pistol-shots, a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed by silence.
+      The clustering fishermen had disappeared. And then, suddenly, as the first
+      puffs of a land-breeze came out from the Sussex shore, the boom swung out,
+      the mainsail filled, and the little craft crept out with her nose to the
+      Atlantic.
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             II
+</p>
+    <h3>
+      THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY WITH STEPHEN CRADDOCK
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Careening was a very necessary operation for the old pirate. On his
+      superior speed he depended both for overhauling the trader and escaping
+      the man-of-war. But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities
+      unless he periodically&mdash;once a year, at the least&mdash;cleared his
+      vessel’s bottom from the long, trailing plants and crusting barnacles
+      which gather so rapidly in the tropical seas. For this purpose he
+      lightened his vessel, thrust her into some narrow inlet where she would be
+      left high and dry at low water, fastened blocks and tackles to her masts
+      to pull her over on to her bilge, and then scraped her thoroughly from
+      rudder-post to cut-water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the weeks which were thus occupied the ship was, of course,
+      defenceless; but, on the other hand, she was unapproachable by anything
+      heavier than an empty hull, and the place for careening was chosen with an
+      eye to secrecy, so that there was no great danger. So secure did the
+      captains feel, that it was not uncommon for them, at such times, to leave
+      their ships under a sufficient guard, and to start off in the long-boat,
+      either upon a sporting expedition or, more frequently, upon a visit to
+      some outlying town, where they burned the heads of the women by their
+      swaggering gallantry, or broached pipes of wine in the market square, with
+      a threat to pistol all who would not drink with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes they would even appear in cities of the size of Charleston, and
+      walk the streets with their clattering side-arms&mdash;an open scandal to
+      the whole law-abiding colony. Such visits were not always paid with
+      impunity. It was one of them, for example, which provoked Lieutenant
+      Maynard to hack off Blackbeard’s head, and to spear it upon the end of his
+      bowsprit. But, as a rule, the pirate ruffled and bullied and drabbed
+      without let or hindrance, until it was time for him to go back to his ship
+      once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one pirate, however, who never crossed even the skirts of
+      civilisation, and that was the sinister Sharkey, of the barque <i>Happy
+      Delivery</i>. It may have been from his morose and solitary temper, or, as
+      is more probable, that he knew that his name upon the coast was such that
+      outraged humanity would, against all odds, have thrown themselves upon
+      him, but never once did he show his face in a settlement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When his ship was laid up he would leave her under the charge of Ned
+      Galloway&mdash;her New England quartermaster&mdash;and would take long
+      voyages in his boat, sometimes, it was said, for the purpose of burying
+      his share of the plunder, and sometimes to shoot the wild oxen of
+      Hispaniola, which, when dressed and barbecued, provided provisions for his
+      next voyage. In the latter case the barque would come round to some
+      pre-arranged spot to pick him up, and take on board what he had shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had always been a hope in the islands that Sharkey might be taken on
+      one of these occasions; and at last there came news to Kingston which
+      seemed to justify an attempt upon him. It was brought by an elderly
+      logwood-cutter who had fallen into the pirate’s hands, and in some freak
+      of drunken benevolence had been allowed to get away with nothing worse
+      than a slit nose and a drubbing. His account was recent and definite. The
+      <i>Happy Delivery</i> was careening at Torbec on the south-west of
+      Hispaniola. Sharkey, with four men, was buccaneering on the outlying
+      island of La Vache. The blood of a hundred murdered crews was calling out
+      for vengeance, and now at last it seemed as if it might not call in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Edward Compton, the high-nosed, red-faced Governor, sitting in solemn
+      conclave with the commandant and the head of the council, was sorely
+      puzzled in his mind as to how he should use this chance. There was no
+      man-of-war nearer than Jamestown, and she was a clumsy old fly-boat, which
+      could neither overhaul the pirate on the seas, nor reach her in a shallow
+      inlet. There were forts and artillerymen both at Kingston and Port Royal,
+      but no soldiers available for an expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A private venture might be fitted out&mdash;and there were many who had a
+      blood-feud with Sharkey&mdash;but what could a private venture do? The
+      pirates were numerous and desperate. As to taking Sharkey and his four
+      companions, that, of course, would be easy if they could get at them; but
+      how were they to get at them on a large well-wooded island like La Vache,
+      full of wild hills and impenetrable jungles? A reward was offered to
+      whoever could find a solution, and that brought a man to the front who had
+      a singular plan, and was himself prepared to carry it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stephen Craddock had been that most formidable person, the Puritan gone
+      wrong. Sprung from a decent Salem family, his ill-doing seemed to be a
+      recoil from the austerity of their religion, and he brought to vice all
+      the physical strength and energy with which the virtues of his ancestors
+      had endowed him. He was ingenious, fearless, and exceedingly tenacious of
+      purpose, so that when he was still young, his name became notorious upon
+      the American coast. He was the same Craddock who was tried for his life in
+      Virginia for the slaying of the Seminole Chief, and, though he escaped, it
+      was well known that he had corrupted the witnesses and bribed the judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards, as a slaver, and even, as it was hinted, as a pirate, he had
+      left an evil name behind him in the Bight of Benin. Finally he had
+      returned to Jamaica with a considerable fortune, and had settled down to a
+      life of sombre dissipation. This was the man, gaunt, austere, and
+      dangerous, who now waited upon the Governor with a plan for the
+      extirpation of Sharkey. Sir Edward received him with little enthusiasm,
+      for in spite of some rumours of conversion and reformation, he had always
+      regarded him as an infected sheep who might taint the whole of his little
+      flock. Craddock saw the Governor’s mistrust under his thin veil of formal
+      and restrained courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ve no call to fear me, sir,” said he; “I’m a changed man from what
+      you’ve known. I’ve seen the light again of late, after losing sight of it
+      for many a black year. It was through the ministration of the Rev. John
+      Simons, of our own people. Sir, if your spirit should be in need of
+      quickening, you would find a very sweet savour in his discourse.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor cocked his episcopalian nose at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You came here to speak of Sharkey, Master Craddock,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The man Sharkey is a vessel of wrath,” said Craddock. “His wicked horn
+      has been exalted over long, and it is borne in upon me that if I can cut
+      him off and utterly destroy him, it will be a goodly deed, and one which
+      may atone for many backslidings in the past. A plan has been given to me
+      whereby I may encompass his destruction.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor was keenly interested, for there was a grim and practical air
+      about the man’s freckled face which showed that he was in earnest. After
+      all, he was a seaman and a fighter, and, if it were true that he was eager
+      to atone for his past, no better man could be chosen for the business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This will be a dangerous task, Master Craddock,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If I meet my death at it, it may be that it will cleanse the memory of an
+      ill-spent life. I have much to atone for.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor did not see his way to contradict him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What was your plan?” he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You have heard that Sharkey’s barque, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, came
+      from this very port of Kingston?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It belonged to Mr. Codrington, and it was taken by Sharkey, who scuttled
+      his own sloop and moved into her because she was faster,” said Sir Edward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes; but it may be that you have lever heard that Mr. Codrington has a
+      sister ship, the <i>White Rose</i>, which lies even now in the harbour,
+      and which is so like the pirate, that, if it were not for a white paint
+      line, none could tell them apart.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah! and what of that?” asked the Governor keenly, with the air of one who
+      is just on the edge of an idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By the help of it this man shall be delivered into our hands.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And how?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I will paint out the streak upon the <i>White Rose</i>, and make it in
+      all things like the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. Then I will set sail for the
+      Island of La Vache, where this man is slaying the wild oxen. When he sees
+      me he will surely mistake me for his own vessel which he is awaiting, and
+      he will come on board to his own undoing.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a simple plan, and yet it seemed to the Governor that it might be
+      effective. Without hesitation he gave Craddock permission to carry it out,
+      and to take any steps he liked in order to further the object which he had
+      in view. Sir Edward was not very sanguine, for many attempts had been made
+      upon Sharkey, and their results had shown that he was as cunning as he was
+      ruthless. But this gaunt Puritan with the evil record was cunning and
+      ruthless also. The contest of wits between two such men as Sharkey and
+      Craddock appealed to the Governor’s acute sense of sport, and though he
+      was inwardly convinced that the chances were against him, he backed his
+      man with the same loyalty which he would have shown to his horse or his
+      cock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Haste was, above all things, necessary, for upon any day the careening
+      might be finished, and the pirates out at sea once more. But there was not
+      very much to do, and there were many willing hands to do it, so the second
+      day saw the <i>White Rose</i> beating out for the open sea. There were
+      many seamen in the port who knew the lines and rig of the pirate barque,
+      and not one of them could see the slightest difference in this
+      counterfeit. Her white side line had been painted out, her masts and yards
+      were smoked, to give them the dingy appearance of the weather-beaten
+      rover, and a large diamond-shaped patch was let into her foretopsail. Her
+      crew were volunteers, many of them being men who had sailed with Stephen
+      Craddock before&mdash;the mate, Joshua Hird, an old slaver, had been his
+      accomplice in many voyages, and came now at the bidding of his chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The avenging barque sped across the Caribbean Sea, and, at the sight of
+      that patched topsail, the little craft which they met flew left and right
+      like frightened trout in a pool. On the fourth evening Point Abacou bore
+      five miles to the north and east of them. On the fifth they were at anchor
+      in the Bay of Tortoises at the Island of La Vache, where Sharkey and his
+      four men had been hunting. It was a well-wooded place, with the palms and
+      underwood growing down to the thin crescent of silver sand which skirted
+      the shore. They had hoisted the black flag and the red pennant, but no
+      answer came from the shore. Craddock strained his eyes, hoping every
+      instant to see a boat shoot out to them with Sharkey seated in the sheets.
+      But the night passed away, and a day and yet another night, without any
+      sign of the men whom they were endeavouring to trap. It looked as if they
+      were already gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the second morning Craddock went ashore in search of some proof whether
+      Sharkey and his men were still upon the island. What he found reassured
+      him greatly. Close to the shore was a boucan of green wood, such as was
+      used for preserving the meat, and a great store of barbecued strips of
+      ox-flesh was hung upon lines all round it. The pirate ship had not taken
+      off her provisions, and therefore the hunters were still upon the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why had they not shown themselves? Was it that they had detected that this
+      was not their own ship? Or was it that they were hunting in the interior
+      of the island, and were not on the look-out for a ship yet? Craddock was
+      still hesitating between the two alternatives, when a Carib Indian came
+      down with information. The pirates were in the island, he said, and their
+      camp was a day’s march from the Sea. They had stolen his wife, and the
+      marks of their stripes were still pink upon his brown back. Their enemies
+      were his friends, and he would lead them to where they lay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Craddock could not have asked for anything better; so early next morning,
+      with a small party armed to the teeth, he set off, under the guidance of
+      the Carib. All day they struggled through brushwood and clambered over
+      rocks, pushing their way further and further into the desolate heart of
+      the island. Here and there they found traces of the hunters, the bones of
+      a slain ox, or the marks of feet in a morass, and once, towards evening,
+      it seemed to some of them that they heard the distant rattle of guns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night they spent under the trees, and pushed on again with the
+      earliest light. About noon they came to the huts of bark, which, the Carib
+      told them, were the camp of the hunters, but they were silent and
+      deserted. No doubt their occupants were away at the hunt and would return
+      in the evening, so Craddock and his men lay in ambush in the brushwood
+      around them. But no one came, and another night was spent in the forest.
+      Nothing more could be done, and it seemed to Craddock that after the two
+      days’ absence it was time that he returned to his ship once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The return journey was less difficult, as they had already blazed a path
+      for themselves. Before evening they found themselves once more at the Bay
+      of Palms, and saw their ship riding at anchor where they had left her.
+      Their boat and oars had been hauled up among the bushes, so they launched
+      it and pulled out to the barque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No luck, then!” cried Joshua Hird, the mate, looking down with a pale
+      face from the poop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “His camp was empty, but he may come down to us yet,” said Craddock, with
+      his hand on the ladder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody upon deck began to laugh. “I think,” said the mate, “that these
+      men had better stay in the boat.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why so?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If you will come aboard, sir, you will understand it.” He spoke in a
+      curious, hesitating fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood flushed to Craddock’s gaunt face. “How is this, Master Hird?” he
+      cried, springing up the side. “What mean you by giving orders to my boat’s
+      crew?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he passed over the bulwarks, with one foot upon the deck and one
+      knee upon the rail, a tow-bearded man, whom he had never before observed
+      aboard his vessel, grabbed suddenly at his pistol. Craddock clutched at
+      the fellow’s wrist, but at the same instant his mate snatched the cutlass
+      from his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What roguery is this?” shouted Craddock, looking furiously around him.
+      But the crew stood in knots about the deck, laughing and whispering
+      amongst themselves without showing any desire to go to his assistance.
+      Even in that hurried glance Craddock noticed that they were dressed in the
+      most singular manner, with long riding-coats, full-skirted velvet gowns
+      and coloured ribands at their knees, more like men of fashion than seamen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he looked at their grotesque figures he struck his brow with his
+      clenched fist to be sure that he was awake. The deck seemed to be much
+      dirtier than when he had left it, and there were strange, sun-blackened
+      faces turned upon him from every side. Not one of them did he know save
+      only Joshua Hird. Had the ship been captured in his absence? Were these
+      Sharkey’s men who were around him? At the thought he broke furiously away
+      and tried to climb over to his boat, but a dozen hands were on him in an
+      instant, and he was pushed aft through the open door of his own cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was all different to the cabin which he had left. The floor was
+      different, the ceiling was different, the furniture was different. His had
+      been plain and austere. This was sumptuous and yet dirty, hung with rare
+      velvet curtains splashed with wine-stains, and panelled with costly woods
+      which were pocked with pistol-marks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the table was a great chart of the Caribbean Sea, and beside it, with
+      compasses in his hand, sat a clean-shaven, pale-faced man with a fur cap
+      and a claret-coloured coat of damask. Craddock turned white under his
+      freckles as he looked upon the long, thin high-nostrilled nose and the
+      red-rimmed eyes which were turned upon him with the fixed, humorous gaze
+      of the master player who has left his opponent without a move. “Sharkey!”
+      cried Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey’s thin lips opened, and he broke into his high, sniggering laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You fool!” he cried, and, leaning over, he stabbed Craddock’s shoulder
+      again and again with his compasses. “You poor, dull-witted fool, would you
+      match yourself against me?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not the pain of the wounds, but it was the contempt in Sharkey’s
+      voice which turned Craddock into a savage madman. He flew at the pirate,
+      roaring with rage, striking, kicking, writhing, foaming. It took six men
+      to drag him down on to the floor amidst the splintered remains of the
+      table&mdash;and not one of the six who did not bear the prisoner’s mark
+      upon him. But Sharkey still surveyed him with the same contemptuous eye.
+      From outside there came the crash of breaking wood and the clamour of
+      startled voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What is that?” asked Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They have stove the boat with cold shot, and the men are in the water.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Let them stay there,” said the pirate. “Now, Craddock, you know where you
+      are. You are aboard my ship, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and you lie at my
+      mercy. I knew you for a stout seaman, you rogue, before you took to this
+      long-shore canting. Your hands then were no cleaner than my own. Will you
+      sign articles, as your mate has done, and join us, or shall I heave you
+      over to follow your ship’s company?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where is my ship?” asked Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Scuttled in the bay.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And the hands?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In the bay, too.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then I’m for the bay, also.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hock him and heave him over,” said Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many rough hands had dragged Craddock out upon deck, and Galloway, the
+      quartermaster, had already drawn his hanger to cripple him, when Sharkey
+      came hurrying from his cabin with an eager face. “We can do better with
+      the hound!” he cried. “Sink me if it is not a rare plan. Throw him into
+      the sail-room with the irons on, and do you come here, quartermaster,
+      that I may tell you what I have in my mind.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Craddock, bruised and wounded in soul and body, was thrown into the
+      dark sail-room, so fettered that he could not stir hand or foot, but his
+      Northern blood was running strong in his veins, and his grim spirit
+      aspired only to make such an ending as might go some way towards atoning
+      for the evil of his life. All night he lay in the curve of the bilge
+      listening to the rush of the water and the straining of the timbers which
+      told him that the ship was at sea and driving fast. In the early morning
+      someone came crawling to him in the darkness over the heap of sails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Here’s rum and biscuits,” said the voice of his late mate. “It’s at the
+      risk of my life, Master Craddock, that I bring them to you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It was you who trapped me and caught me as in a snare!” cried Craddock.
+      “How shall you answer for what you have done?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What I did I did with the point of a knife betwixt my blade-bones.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “God forgive you for a coward, Joshua Hird. How came you into their
+      hands?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, Master Craddock, the pirate ship came back from its careening upon
+      the very day that you left us. They laid us aboard, and, short-handed as
+      we were, with the best of the men ashore with you, we could offer but a
+      poor defence. Some were cut down, and they were the happiest. The others
+      were killed afterwards. As to me, I saved my life by signing on with
+      them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And they scuttled my ship?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They scuttled her, and then Sharkey and his men, who had been watching us
+      from the brushwood, came off to the ship. His mainyard had been cracked
+      and fished last voyage, so he had suspicions of us, seeing that ours was
+      whole. Then he thought of laying the same trap for you which you had set
+      for him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Craddock groaned. “How came I not to see that fished mainyard?” he
+      muttered. “But whither are we bound?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We are running north and west.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “North and west! Then we are heading back towards Jamaica.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “With an eight-knot wind.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Have you heard what they mean to do with me?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have not heard. If you would but sign the articles&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Enough, Joshua Hird! I have risked my soul too often.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “As you wish. I have done what I could. Farewell!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that night and the next day the <i>Happy Delivery</i> ran before the
+      easterly trades, and Stephen Craddock lay in the dark of the sail-room
+      working patiently at his wrist-irons. One he had slipped off at the cost
+      of a row of broken and bleeding knuckles, but, do what he would, he could
+      not free the other, and his ankles were securely fastened. From hour to
+      hour he heard the swish of the water, and knew that the barque must be
+      driving with all set in front of the trade wind. In that case they must be
+      nearly back again to Jamaica by now. What plan could Sharkey have in his
+      head, and what use did he hope to make of him? Craddock set his teeth, and
+      vowed that if he had once been a villain from choice he would, at least,
+      never be one by compulsion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the second morning Craddock became aware that sail had been reduced in
+      the vessel, and that she was tacking slowly, with a light breeze on her
+      beam. The varying slope of the sail-room and the sounds from the deck told
+      his practised senses exactly what she was doing. The short reaches showed
+      him that she was manoeuvring near shore, and making for some definite
+      point. If so, she must have reached Jamaica. But what could she be doing
+      there?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly there was a burst of hearty cheering from the deck, and
+      then the crash of a gun above his head, and then the answering booming of
+      guns from far over the water. Craddock sat up and strained his ears. Was
+      the ship in action? Only the one gun had been fired, and though many had
+      answered, there were none of the crashings which told of a shot coming
+      home. Then, if it was not an action, it must be a salute. But who would
+      salute Sharkey, the pirate? It could only be another pirate ship which
+      would do so. So Craddock lay back again with a groan, and continued to
+      work at the manacle which still held his right wrist. But suddenly there
+      came the shuffling of steps outside, and he had hardly time to wrap the
+      loose links round his free hand, when the door was unbolted and two
+      pirates came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Got your hammer, carpenter?” asked one, whom Craddock recognised as the
+      big quartermaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Knock off his leg shackles, then. Better leave the bracelets&mdash;he’s
+      safer with them on.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With hammer and chisel the carpenter loosened the irons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What are you going to do with me?” asked Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Come on deck and you’ll see.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor seized him by the arm and dragged him roughly to the foot of
+      the companion. Above him was a square of blue sky cut across by the mizzen
+      gaff, with the colours flying at the peak. But it was the sight of those
+      colours which struck the breath from Stephen Craddock’s lips. For there
+      were two of them, and the British ensign was flying above the Jolly Rodger&mdash;the
+      honest flag above that of the rogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant Craddock stopped in amazement, but a brutal push from the
+      pirates behind drove him up the companion ladder. As he stepped out upon
+      deck, his eyes turned up to the main, and there again were the British
+      colours flying above the red pennant, and all the shrouds and rigging were
+      garlanded with streamers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the ship been taken, then? But that was impossible, for there were the
+      pirates clustering in swarms along the port bulwarks, and waving their
+      hats joyously in the air. Most prominent of all was the renegade mate,
+      standing on the foc’sle head, and gesticulating wildly. Craddock looked
+      over the side to see what they were cheering at, and then in a flash he
+      saw how critical was the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the port bow, and about a mile off, lay the white houses and forts of
+      Port Royal, with flags breaking out everywhere over their roofs. Right
+      ahead was the opening of the palisades leading to the town of Kingston.
+      Not more than a quarter of a mile off was a small sloop working out
+      against the very slight wind. The British ensign was at her peak, and her
+      rigging was all decorated. On her deck could be seen a dense crowd of
+      people cheering and waving their hats, and the gleam of scarlet told that
+      there were officers of the garrison among them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an instant, with the quick perception of a man of action, Craddock saw
+      through it all. Sharkey, with that diabolical cunning and audacity which
+      were among his main characteristics, was simulating the part which
+      Craddock would himself have played had he come back victorious. It was in
+      <i>his</i> honour that the salutes were firing and the flags flying. It
+      was to welcome <i>him</i> that this ship with the Governor, the
+      commandant, and the chiefs of the island were approaching. In another ten
+      minutes they would all be under the guns of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and
+      Sharkey would have won the greatest stake that ever a pirate played for
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bring him forward,” cried the pirate captain, as Craddock appeared
+      between the carpenter and the quartermaster. “Keep the ports closed, but
+      clear away the port guns, and stand by for a broadside. Another two cable
+      lengths and we have them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They are edging away,” said the boatswain. “I think they smell us.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s soon set right,” said Sharkey, turning his filmy eyes upon
+      Craddock. “Stand there, you&mdash;right there, where they can recognise
+      you, with your hand on the guy, and wave your hat to them. Quick, or your
+      brains will be over your coat. Put an inch of your knife into him, Ned.
+      Now, will you wave your hat? Try him again, then. Hey, shoot him! Stop
+      him!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was too late. Relying upon the manacles, the quartermaster had
+      taken his hands for a moment off Craddock’s arm. In that instant he had
+      flung off the carpenter, and, amid a spatter of pistol bullets, had sprung
+      the bulwarks and was swimming for his life. He had been hit and hit again,
+      but it takes many pistols to kill a resolute and powerful man who has his
+      mind set upon doing something before he dies. He was a strong swimmer,
+      and, in spite of the red trail which he left in the water behind him, he
+      was rapidly increasing his distance from the pirate. “Give me a musket!”
+      cried Sharkey, with a savage oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a famous shot, and his iron nerves never failed him in an
+      emergency. The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then
+      swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop.
+      Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired. With the crack of the gun
+      the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a gesture
+      of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay. Then, as
+      the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an impotent
+      broadside, Stephen Craddock, smiling grimly in his death agony, sank
+      slowly down to that golden couch which glimmered far beneath him.
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             III
+</p>
+    <h3>
+      HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Buccaneers were something higher than a mere band of marauders. They
+      were a floating republic, with laws, usages, and discipline of their own.
+      In their endless and remorseless quarrel with the Spaniards they had some
+      semblance of right upon their side. Their bloody harryings of the cities
+      of the Main were not more barbarous than the inroads of Spain upon the
+      Netherlands&mdash;or upon the Caribs in these same American lands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief of the Buccaneers, were he English or French, a Morgan or a
+      Granmont, was still a responsible person, whose country might countenance
+      him, or even praise him, so long as he refrained from any deed which might
+      shock the leathery seventeenth-century conscience too outrageously. Some
+      of them were touched with religion, and it is still remembered how Sawkins
+      threw the dice overboard upon the Sabbath, and Daniel pistolled a man
+      before the altar for irreverence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there came a day when the fleets of the Buccaneers no longer mustered
+      at the Tortugas, and the solitary and outlawed pirate took their place.
+      Yet even with him the tradition of restraint and of discipline still
+      lingered; and among the early pirates, the Avorys, the Englands, and the
+      Robertses, there remained some respect for human sentiment. They were more
+      dangerous to the merchant than to the seaman. But they in turn were
+      replaced by more savage and desperate men, who frankly recognised that
+      they would get no quarter in their war with the human race, and who swore
+      that they would give as little as they got. Of their histories we know
+      little that is trustworthy. They wrote no memoirs and left no trace, save
+      an occasional blackened and blood-stained derelict adrift upon the face of
+      the Atlantic. Their deeds could only be surmised from the long roll of
+      ships who never made their port.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Searching the records of history, it is only here and there in an
+      old-world trial that the veil that shrouds them seems for an instant to be
+      lifted, and we catch a glimpse of some amazing and grotesque brutality
+      behind. Such was the breed of Ned Low, of Gow the Scotchman, and of the
+      infamous Sharkey, whose coal-black barque, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, was
+      known from the Newfoundland Banks to the mouths of the Orinoco as the dark
+      forerunner of misery and of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were many men, both among the islands and on the Main, who had a
+      blood feud with Sharkey, but not one who had suffered more bitterly than
+      Copley Banks, of Kingston. Banks had been one of the leading sugar
+      merchants of the West Indies. He was a man of position, a member of the
+      Council, the husband of a Percival, and the cousin of the Governor of
+      Virginia. His two sons had been sent to London to be educated, and their
+      mother had gone over to bring them back. On their return voyage the ship,
+      the <i>Duchess of Cornwall</i>, fell into the hands of Sharkey, and the
+      whole family met with an infamous death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks said little when he heard the news, but he sank into a morose
+      and enduring melancholy. He neglected his business, avoided his friends,
+      and spent much of his time in the low taverns of the fishermen and seamen.
+      There, amidst riot and devilry, he sat silently puffing at his pipe, with
+      a set face and a smouldering eye. It was generally supposed that his
+      misfortunes had shaken his wits, and his old friends looked at him
+      askance, for the company which he kept was enough to bar him from honest
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time there came rumours of Sharkey over the sea. Sometimes it
+      was from some schooner which had seen a great flame upon the horizon, and
+      approaching to offer help to the burning ship, had fled away at the sight
+      of the sleek, black barque, lurking like a wolf near a mangled sheep.
+      Sometimes it was a frightened trader, which had come tearing in with her
+      canvas curved like a lady’s bodice, because she had seen a patched
+      foretopsail rising slowly above the violet water-line. Sometimes it was
+      from a coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama cay littered with
+      sun-dried bodies. Once there came a man who had been mate of a Guineaman,
+      and who had escaped from the pirate’s hands. He could not speak&mdash;for
+      reasons which Sharkey could best supply&mdash;but he could write, and he
+      did write, to the very great interest of Copley Banks. For hours they sat
+      together over the map, and the dumb man pointed here and there to outlying
+      reefs and tortuous inlets, while his companion sat smoking in silence,
+      with his unvarying face and his fiery eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, some two years after his misfortunes, Mr. Copley Banks strode
+      into his own office with his old air of energy and alertness. The manager
+      stared at him in surprise, for it was months since he had shown any
+      interest in business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good morning, Mr. Banks!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good morning, Freeman. I see that <i>Ruffling Harry</i> is in the Bay.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have other plans for her, Freeman. I have determined upon a slaving
+      venture to Whydah.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But her cargo is ready, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then it must come out again, Freeman. My mind is made up, and the <i>Ruffling
+      Harry</i> must go slaving to Whydah.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to
+      clear the ship once more. And then Copley Banks began to make preparations
+      for his African voyage. It appeared that he relied upon force rather than
+      barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried none of those showy
+      trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted with eight
+      nine-pounder guns, and racks full of muskets and cutlasses. The
+      after-sailroom next the cabin was transformed into a powder magazine, and
+      she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer. Water and
+      provisions were shipped for a long voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the preparation of his ship’s company was most surprising. It made
+      Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that his
+      master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or another,
+      he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the firm for
+      years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port&mdash;men whose
+      reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been ashamed to
+      furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known to have been
+      present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his hideous scarlet
+      disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a red afterglow from
+      that great crime. He was first mate, and under him was Israel Martin, a
+      little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell Davies at the taking
+      of Cape Coast Castle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
+      their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
+      man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk. His beard had been shaved,
+      and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom Sharkey had
+      placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his experiences to
+      Copley Banks. These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet uncommented upon in
+      the town of Kingston. The Commandant of the troops&mdash;Major Harvey of
+      the Artillery&mdash;made serious representations to the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “She is not a trader, but a small warship,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I think it would be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the
+      vessel.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What do you suspect?” asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man,
+      broken down with fevers and port wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I suspect,” said the soldier, “that it is Stede Bonnet over again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious character
+      who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in his blood,
+      had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the Caribbean
+      Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the utmost
+      consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been accused of
+      being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions upon their
+      plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister
+      construction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, Major Harvey,” said he, “I am vastly sorry to do anything which may
+      offend my friend Copley Banks, for many a time have my knees been under
+      his mahogany, but in face of what you say there is no choice for me but to
+      order you to board the vessel and to satisfy yourself as to her character
+      and destination.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So at one in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers,
+      paid a surprise visit to the <i>Ruffling Harry</i>, with the result that
+      they picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the
+      moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented danger.
+      She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out against the
+      north-east trades on a course for the Windward Passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When upon the next morning the brig had left Morant Point a mere haze upon
+      the Southern horizon, the men were called aft, and Copley Banks revealed
+      his plans to them. He had chosen them, he said, as brisk boys and lads of
+      spirit, who would rather run some risk upon the sea than starve for a
+      living upon the shore. King’s ships were few and weak, and they could
+      master any trader who might come their way. Others had done well at the
+      business, and with a handy, well-found vessel, there was no reason why
+      they should not turn their tarry jackets into velvet coats. If they were
+      prepared to sail under the black flag, he was ready to command them; but
+      if any wished to withdraw, they might have the gig and row back to
+      Jamaica.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four men out of six-and-forty asked for their discharge, went over the
+      ship’s side into the boat, and rowed away amidst the jeers and howlings of
+      the crew. The rest assembled aft, and drew up the articles of their
+      association. A square of black tarpaulin had the white skull painted upon
+      it, and was hoisted amidst cheering at the main.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Officers were elected, and the limits of their authority fixed. Copley
+      Banks was chosen captain, but, as there are no mates upon a pirate craft,
+      Birthmark Sweetlocks became quartermaster, and Israel Martin the
+      boatswain. There was no difficulty in knowing what was the custom of the
+      brotherhood, for half the men at least had served upon pirates before.
+      Food should be the same for all, and no man should interfere with another
+      man’s drink! The captain should have a cabin, but all hands should be
+      welcome to enter it when they chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All should share and share alike, save only the captain, quartermaster,
+      boatswain, carpenter, and master-gunner, who had from a quarter to a whole
+      share extra. He who saw a prize first should have the best weapon taken
+      out of her. He who boarded her first should have the richest suit of
+      clothes aboard of her. Every man might treat his own prisoner, be it man
+      or woman, after his own fashion. If a man flinched from his gun, the
+      quartermaster should pistol him. These were some of the rules which the
+      crew of the <i>Ruffling Harry</i> subscribed by putting forty-two crosses
+      at the foot of the paper upon which they had been drawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So a new rover was afloat upon the seas, and her name before a year was
+      over became as well known as that of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. From the
+      Bahamas to the Leewards, and from the Leewards to the Windwards, Copley
+      Banks became the rival of Sharkey and the terror of traders. For a long
+      time the barque and the brig never met, which was the more singular as the
+      <i>Ruffling Harry</i> was for ever looking in at Sharkey’s resorts; but at
+      last one day, when she was passing down the inlet of Coxon’s Hole, at the
+      east end of Cuba, with the intention of careening, there was the <i>Happy
+      Delivery</i>, with her blocks and tackle-falls already rigged for the same
+      purpose. Copley Banks fired a shotted salute and hoisted the green
+      trumpeter ensign, as the custom was among gentlemen of the sea. Then he
+      dropped his boat and went aboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey was not a man of a genial mood, nor had he any kindly
+      sympathy for those who were of the same trade as himself. Copley Banks
+      found him seated astride upon one of the after guns, with his New England
+      quartermaster, Ned Galloway, and a crowd of roaring ruffians standing
+      about him. Yet none of them roared with quite such assurance when
+      Sharkey’s pale face and filmy blue eyes were turned upon him. He was in his
+      shirt-sleeves, with his cambric frills breaking through his open red satin
+      long-flapped vest. The scorching sun seemed to have no power upon his
+      fleshless frame, for he wore a low fur cap, as though it had been winter.
+      A many-coloured band of silk passed across his body and supported a short,
+      murderous sword, while his broad, brass-buckled belt was stuffed with
+      pistols.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sink you for a poacher!” he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the
+      bulwarks. “I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch
+      also! What mean you by fishing in my waters?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks looked at him, and his eyes were like those of a traveller
+      who sees his home at last. “I am glad that we are of one mind,” said he,
+      “for I am myself of opinion that the seas are not large enough for the two
+      of us. But if you will take your sword and pistols and come upon a
+      sand-bank with me, then the world will be rid of a damned villain,
+      whichever way it goes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now, this is talking!” said Sharkey, jumping off the gun and holding out
+      his hand. “I have not met many who could look John Sharkey in the eyes and
+      speak with a full breath. May the devil seize me if I do not choose you as
+      a consort! But if you play me false, then I will come aboard of you and
+      gut you upon your own poop.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And I pledge you the same!” said Copley Banks, and so the two pirates
+      became sworn comrades to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That summer they went north as far as the Newfoundland Banks, and harried
+      the New York traders and the whale ships from New England. It was Copley
+      Banks who captured the Liverpool ship, <i>House of Hanover</i>, but it was
+      Sharkey who fastened her master to the windlass and pelted him to death
+      with empty claret-bottles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together they engaged the King’s ship <i>Royal Fortune</i>, which had been
+      sent in search of them, and beat her off after a night action of five
+      hours, the drunken, raving crews fighting naked in the light of the
+      battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles
+      of every gun. They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and
+      then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ready for a long cruise
+      down the West Indies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time Sharkey and Copley Banks had become very excellent friends,
+      for Sharkey loved a whole-hearted villain, and he loved a man of metal,
+      and it seemed to him that the two met in the captain of the <i>Ruffling
+      Harry</i>. It was long before he gave his confidence to him, for cold
+      suspicion lay deep in his character. Never once would he trust himself
+      outside his own ship and away from his own men. But Copley Banks came
+      often on board the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and joined Sharkey in many of
+      his morose debauches, so that at last any lingering misgivings of the
+      latter were set at rest. He knew nothing of the evil that he had done to
+      his new boon companion, for of his many victims how could he remember the
+      woman and the two boys whom he had slain with such levity so long ago!
+      When, therefore, he received a challenge to himself and to his
+      quartermaster for a carouse upon the last evening of their stay at the
+      Caicos Bank he saw no reason to refuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A well-found passenger ship had been rifled the week before, so their fare
+      was of the best, and after supper five of them drank deeply together.
+      There were the two captains, Birthmark Sweetlocks, Ned Galloway, and
+      Israel Martin, the old buccaneers-man. To wait upon them was the dumb
+      steward, whose head Sharkey split with a glass, because he had been too
+      slow in the filling of it. The quartermaster has slipped Sharkey’s
+      pistols away from him, for it was an old joke with him to fire them
+      cross-handed under the table and see who was the luckiest man. It was a
+      pleasantry which had cost his boatswain his leg, so now, when the table
+      was cleared, they would coax Sharkey’s weapons away from him on the excuse
+      of the heat, and lay them out of his reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain’s cabin of the <i>Ruffling Harry</i> was in a deck-house upon
+      the poop, and a stern-chaser gun was mounted at the back of it. Round shot
+      were racked round the wall, and three great hogsheads of powder made a
+      stand for dishes and for bottles. In this grim room the five pirates sang
+      and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up their
+      glasses, and passed the box and the candle round for their tobacco-pipes.
+      Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices hoarser, the curses and
+      shoutings more incoherent, until three of the five had closed their
+      blood-shot eyes, and dropped their swimming heads upon the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had
+      drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake
+      his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the watchful
+      steward, for ever filling up his waning glass. From without came the low
+      lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor’s chanty from the
+      barque. In the windless tropical night the words came clearly to their
+      ears:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="poetry">
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">A trader sailed from Stepney Town,</span><br>
+   Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!<br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">A trader sailed from Stepney Town</span><br>
+   With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.<br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ho, the bully Rover Jack,</span><br>
+   Waiting with his yard aback<br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">Out upon the Lowland Sea.</span><br>
+</p>
+    <p>
+      The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks
+      glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from the shot-rack
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Captain Sharkey,” said Copley Banks, “do you remember the <i>Duchess of
+      Cornwall</i>, hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago
+      off the Statira Shoal?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Curse me if I can bear their names in mind,” said Sharkey. “We did as
+      many as ten ships a week about that time.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. Maybe that will
+      bring it back to your mind.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose
+      jutting upwards. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing
+      laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it. “But
+      burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!” he cried. “How came you to
+      think of it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It was of interest to me,” said Copley Banks, “for the woman was my wife,
+      and the lads were my only sons.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering fire
+      which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame. He read
+      their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt. Then he turned
+      to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round him, and in an
+      instant his arms were bound to his side. He fought like a wild cat, and
+      screamed for help. “Ned!” he yelled. “Ned! Wake up! Here’s damned
+      villainy! Help, Ned!&mdash;help!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for any
+      voice to wake them. Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey was
+      swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and
+      helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a handkerchief,
+      but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at them. The dumb man
+      chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for the first time when he
+      saw the empty mouth before him. He understood that vengeance, slow and
+      patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat
+      elaborate. First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder
+      barrels, and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor. They
+      piled it round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled in a
+      heap of it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun and they triced him
+      sitting over the port-hole, with his body about a foot from the muzzle.
+      Wriggle as he would he could not move an inch either to the right or left,
+      and the dumb man trussed him up with a sailor’s cunning, so that there was
+      no chance that he should work free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now, you bloody devil,” said Copley Banks, softly, “you must listen to
+      what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will hear.
+      You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have given all
+      that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “To reach you I have had to sink to your level. For two years I strove
+      against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learnt that there
+      was no other. I’ve robbed and I have murdered&mdash;worse still, I have
+      laughed and lived with you&mdash;and all for the one end. And now my time
+      has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the shadow
+      creeping upon you and the devil waiting for you in the shadow.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty
+      over the water.
+    </p>
+<p class="poetry">
+   <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Where is the trader of Stepney Town?</span><br>
+  Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending!<br>
+   <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Where is the trader of Stepney Town?</span><br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;">His gold’s on the capstan, his blood’s on his gown,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">All for bully Rover Jack,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">Reaching on the weather tack</span><br>
+   <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Right across the Lowland Sea.</span><br>
+</p>
+    <p>
+      The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men
+      pacing backwards and forwards upon the deck. And yet he was helpless,
+      staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to
+      utter so much as a groan. Again there came the burst of voices from the
+      deck of the barque.
+    </p>
+<p class="poetry">
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> So it’s up and it’s over to Stornoway Bay,</span><br>
+  Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with stunsails!<br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> It’s off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay,</span><br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Where the liquor is good and the lasses are gay,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">Waiting for their bully Jack,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">Watching for him sailing back,</span><br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Right across the Lowland Sea.</span><br>
+</p>
+    <p>
+      To the dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own fate
+      seem the harsher, but there was no softening in those venomous blue eyes.
+      Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had sprinkled
+      fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the candle and cut
+      it to the length of about an inch. This he placed upon the loose powder at
+      the breach of the gun. Thin he scattered powder thickly over the floor
+      beneath, so that when the candle fell at the recoil it must explode the
+      huge pile in which the three drunkards were wallowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ve made others look death in the face, Sharkey,” said he; “now it has
+      come to be your own turn. You and these swine here shall go together!” He
+      lit the candle-end as he spoke, and blew out the other lights upon the
+      table. Then he passed out with the dumb man, and locked the cabin door
+      upon the outer side. But before he closed it he took an exultant look
+      backwards, and received one last curse from those unconquerable eyes. In
+      the single dim circle of light that ivory-white face, with the gleam of
+      moisture upon the high, bald forehead, was the last that was ever seen of
+      Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a skiff alongside, and in it Copley Banks and the dumb steward
+      made their way to the beach, and looked back upon the brig riding in the
+      moonlight just outside the shadow of the palm trees. They waited and
+      waited watching that dim light which shone through the stem port. And then
+      at last there came the dull thud of a gun, and an instant later the
+      shattering crash of an explosion. The long, sleek, black barque, the sweep
+      of white sand, and the fringe of nodding feathery palm trees sprang into
+      dazzling light and back into darkness again. Voices screamed and called
+      upon the bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him, touched his companion
+      upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely jungle of the
+      Caicos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE CROXLEY MASTER
+    </h2>
+<p class="center big">
+                             I
+</p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands, in
+      a state of the blackest despondency. Before him was the open ledger with
+      the long columns of Dr. Oldacre’s prescriptions. At his elbow lay the
+      wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the lumps
+      of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of bottles waited to be
+      filled. But his spirits were too low for work. He sat in silence with his
+      fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened
+      brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars upheld
+      the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank. For six days in the week they
+      spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was
+      Sunday. Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and
+      blasted by the greed of man. There was nothing in the surroundings to
+      cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment which
+      weighed upon the medical assistant. His trouble was deeper and more
+      personal. The winter session was approaching. He should be back again at
+      the University completing the last year which would give him his medical
+      degree; but, alas! he had not the money with which to pay his class fees,
+      nor could he imagine how he could procure it. Sixty pounds were wanted to
+      make his career, and it might have been as many thousand for any chance
+      there seemed to be of his obtaining it. He was roused from his black
+      meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre himself, a large, clean-shaven,
+      respectable man, with a prim manner and an austere face. He had prospered
+      exceedingly by the support of the local Church interest, and the rule of
+      his life was never by word or action to run a risk of offending the
+      sentiment which had made him. His standard of respectability and of
+      dignity was exceedingly high, and he expected the same from his
+      assistants. His appearance and words were always vaguely benevolent. A
+      sudden impulse came over the despondent student. He would test the reality
+      of this philanthropy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I beg your pardon, Dr. Oldacre,” said he, rising from his chair; “I have
+      a great favour to ask of you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor’s appearance was not encouraging. His mouth suddenly tightened,
+      and his eyes fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, Mr. Montgomery?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are aware, sir, that I need only one more session to complete my
+      course.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So you have told me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is very important to me, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Naturally.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The fees, Dr. Oldacre, would amount to about sixty pounds.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am afraid that my duties call me elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “One moment, sir! I had hoped, sir, that perhaps, if I signed a paper
+      promising you interest upon your money, you would advance this sum to me.
+      I will pay you back, sir, I really will. Or, if you like, I will work it
+      off after I am qualified.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor’s lips had thinned into a narrow line. His eyes were raised
+      again, and sparkled indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Your request is unreasonable, Mr. Montgomery. I am surprised that you
+      should have made it. Consider, sir, how many thousands of medical students
+      there are in this country. No doubt there are many of them who have a
+      difficulty in finding their fees. Am I to provide for them all? Or why
+      should I make an exception in your favour? I am grieved and disappointed,
+      Mr. Montgomery, that you should have put me into the painful position of
+      having to refuse you.” He turned upon his heel, and walked with offended
+      dignity out of the surgery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The student smiled bitterly, and turned to his work of making up the
+      morning prescriptions. It was poor and unworthy work&mdash;work which any
+      weakling might have done as well, and this was a man of exceptional nerve
+      and sinew. But, such as it was, it brought him his board and one pound a
+      week&mdash;enough to help him during the summer months and let him save a
+      few pounds towards his winter keep. But those class fees! Where were they
+      to come from? He could not save them out of his scanty wage. Dr. Oldacre
+      would not advance them. He saw no way of earning them. His brains were
+      fairly good, but brains of that quality were a drug in the market. He only
+      excelled in his strength, and where was he to find a customer for that?
+      But the ways of Fate are strange, and his customer was at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look y’ere!” said a voice at the door. Montgomery looked up, for the
+      voice was a loud and rasping one. A young man stood at the entrance&mdash;a
+      stocky, bull-necked young miner, in tweed Sunday clothes and an
+      aggressive neck-tie. He was a sinister-looking figure, with dark, insolent
+      eyes, and the jaw and throat of a bulldog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look y’ere!” said he again. “Why hast thou not sent t’ medicine oop as
+      thy master ordered?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had become accustomed to the brutal frankness of the northern
+      worker. At first it had enraged him, but after a time he had grown callous
+      to it, and accepted it as it was meant. But this was something different.
+      It was insolence&mdash;brutal, overbearing insolence, with physical menace
+      behind it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What name?” he asked coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Barton. Happen I may give thee cause to mind that name, yoong man. Mak’
+      oop t’ wife’s medicine this very moment, look ye, or it will be the worse
+      for thee.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery smiled. A pleasant sense of relief thrilled softly through him.
+      What blessed safety-valve was this through which his jangled nerves might
+      find some outlet. The provocation was so gross, the insult so unprovoked,
+      that he could have none of those qualms which take the edge off a man’s
+      mettle. He finished sealing the bottle upon which he was occupied, and he
+      addressed it and placed it carefully in the rack. “Look here!” said he,
+      turning round to the miner, “your medicine will be made up in its turn and
+      sent down to you. I don’t allow folk in the surgery. Wait outside in the
+      waiting-room if you wish to wait at all.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yoong man,” said the miner, “thou’s got to mak’ t’ wife’s medicine here,
+      and now, and quick, while I wait and watch thee, or else happen thou might
+      need some medicine thysel’ before all is over.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I shouldn’t advise you to fasten a quarrel upon me.” Montgomery was
+      speaking in the hard, staccato voice of a man who is holding himself in
+      with difficulty. “You’ll save trouble if you’ll go quietly. If you don’t
+      you’ll be hurt. Ah, you would? Take it, then!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blows were almost simultaneous&mdash;a savage swing which whistled
+      past Montgomery’s ear, and a straight drive which took the workman on the
+      chin. Luck was with the assistant. That single whizzing uppercut, and the
+      way in which it was delivered, warned him that he had a formidable man to
+      deal with. But if he had underrated his antagonist, his antagonist had
+      also underrated him, and had laid himself open to a fatal blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The miner’s head had come with a crash against the corner of the surgery
+      shelves, and he had dropped heavily on to the ground. There he lay with
+      his bandy legs drawn up and his hands thrown abroad, the blood trickling
+      over the surgery tiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Had enough?” asked the assistant, breathing fiercely through his nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no answer came. The man was insensible. And then the danger of his
+      position came upon Montgomery, and he turned as white as his antagonist. A
+      Sunday, the immaculate Dr. Oldacre with his pious connection, a savage
+      brawl with a patient; he would irretrievably lose his situation if the
+      facts came out. It was not much of a situation, but he could not get
+      another without a reference, and Oldacre might refuse him one. Without
+      money for his classes, and without a situation&mdash;what was to become of
+      him? It was absolute ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But perhaps he could escape exposure after all. He seized his insensible
+      adversary, dragged him out into the centre of he room, loosened his
+      collar, and squeezed the surgery sponge over his face. He sat up at last
+      with a gasp and a scowl. “Domn thee, thou’s spoilt my neck-tie,” said he,
+      mopping up the water from his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m sorry I hit you so hard,” said Montgomery, apologetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thou hit me hard! I could stan’ such fly-flappin’ all day. ’Twas this
+      here press that cracked my pate for me, and thou art a looky man to be
+      able to boast as thou hast outed me. And now I’d be obliged to thee if
+      thou wilt give me t’ wife’s medicine.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery gladly made it up and handed it to the miner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are weak still,” said he. “Won’t you stay awhile and rest?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “T’ wife wants her medicine,” said the man, and lurched out at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assistant, looking after him, saw him rolling, with an uncertain step,
+      down the street, until a friend met him, and they walked on arm in arm.
+      The man seemed in his rough Northern fashion to bear no grudge, and so
+      Montgomery’s fears left him. There was no reason why the doctor should
+      know anything about it. He wiped the blood from the floor, put the surgery
+      in order, and went on with his interrupted task, hoping that he had come
+      scathless out of a very dangerous business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet all day he was aware of a sense of vague uneasiness, which sharpened
+      into dismay when, late in the afternoon, he was informed that three
+      gentlemen had called and were waiting for him in the surgery. A coroner’s
+      inquest, a descent of detectives, an invasion of angry relatives&mdash;all
+      sorts of possibilities rose to scare him. With tense nerves and a rigid
+      face he went to meet his visitors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were a very singular trio. Each was known to him by sight; but what
+      on earth the three could be doing together, and, above all, what they
+      could expect from <i>him</i>, was a most inexplicable problem. The first
+      was Sorley Wilson, the son of the owner of the Nonpareil Coalpit. He was a
+      young blood of twenty, heir to a fortune, a keen sportsman, and down for
+      the Easter Vacation from Magdalene College. He sat now upon the edge of
+      the surgery table, looking in thoughtful silence at Montgomery and
+      twisting the ends of his small, black, waxed moustache. The second was
+      Purvis, the publican, owner of the chief beer-shop, and well known as the
+      local bookmaker. He was a coarse, clean-shaven man, whose fiery face made
+      a singular contrast with his ivory-white bald head. He had shrewd,
+      light-blue eyes with foxy lashes, and he also leaned forward in silence
+      from his chair, a fat, red hand upon either knee, and stared critically at
+      the young assistant. So did the third visitor, Fawcett, the horse-breaker,
+      who leaned back, his long, thin legs, with their boxcloth riding-gaiters,
+      thrust out in front of him, tapping his protruding teeth with his
+      riding-whip, with anxious thought in every line of his rugged, bony face.
+      Publican, exquisite, and horse-breaker were all three equally silent,
+      equally earnest, and equally critical. Montgomery seated in the midst of
+      them, looked from one to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, gentlemen?” he observed, but no answer came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The position was embarrassing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No,” said the horse-breaker, at last. “No. It’s off. It’s nowt.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stand oop, lad; let’s see thee standin’.” It was the publican who spoke.
+      Montgomery obeyed. He would learn all about it, no doubt, if he were
+      patient. He stood up and turned slowly round, as if in front of his
+      tailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s off! It’s off!” cried the horse-breaker. “Why, mon, the Master would
+      break him over his knee.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, that be hanged for a yarn!” said the young Cantab. “You can drop out
+      if you like, Fawcett, but I’ll see this thing through, if I have to do it
+      alone. I don’t hedge a penny. I like the cut of him a great deal better
+      than I liked Ted Barton.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look at Barton’s shoulders, Mr. Wilson.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Lumpiness isn’t always strength. Give me nerve and fire and breed. That’s
+      what wins.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay, sir, you have it theer&mdash;you have it theer!” said the fat,
+      red-faced publican, in a thick suety voice. “It’s the same wi’ poops. Get
+      ’em clean-bred an’ fine, an’ they’ll yark the thick ’uns&mdash;yark ’em
+      out o’ their skins.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He’s ten good pund on the light side,” growled the horse-breaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He’s a welter weight, anyhow.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A hundred and thirty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A hundred and fifty, if he’s an ounce.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, the Master doesn’t scale much more than that.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A hundred and seventy-five.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That was when he was hog-fat and living high. Work the grease out of him
+      and I lay there’s no great difference between them. Have you been weighed
+      lately, Mr. Montgomery?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first direct question which had been asked him. He had stood in
+      the midst of them like a horse at a fair, and he was just beginning to
+      wonder whether he was more angry or amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am just eleven stone,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I said that he was a welter weight.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But suppose you was trained?” said the publican. “Wot then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am always in training.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In a manner of speakin’, no doubt, he <i>is</i> always in trainin’,”
+      remarked the horse-breaker. “But trainin’ for everyday work ain’t the same
+      as trainin’ with a trainer; and I dare bet, with all respec’ to your
+      opinion, Mr. Wilson, that there’s half a stone of tallow on him at this
+      minute.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young Cantab put his fingers on the assistant’s upper arm, then with
+      his other hand on his wrist, he bent the forearm sharply, and felt the
+      biceps, as round and hard as a cricket-ball, spring up under his fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Feel that!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The publican and horse-breaker felt it with an air of reverence. “Good
+      lad! He’ll do yet!” cried Purvis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen,” said Montgomery, “I think that you will acknowledge that I
+      have been very patient with you. I have listened to all that you have to
+      say about my personal appearance, and now I must really beg that you will
+      have the goodness to tell me what is the matter.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all sat down in their serious, business-like way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s easy done, Mr. Montgomery,” said the fat-voiced publican. “But
+      before sayin’ anything we had to wait and see whether, in a way of
+      speakin’, there was any need for us to say anything at all. Mr. Wilson
+      thinks there is. Mr. Fawcett, who has the same right to his opinion, bein’
+      also a backer and one o’ the committee, thinks the other way.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I thought him too light built, and I think so now,” said the
+      horse-breaker, still tapping his prominent teeth with the metal head of
+      his riding-whip. “But happen he may pull through, and he’s a fine-made,
+      buirdly young chap, so if you mean to back him, Mr. Wilson&mdash;&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Which I do.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you, Purvis?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I ain’t one to go back, Fawcett.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I’ll stan’ to my share of the purse.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And well I knew you would,” said Purvis, “for it would be somethin’ new
+      to find Isaac Fawcett as a spoil-sport. Well, then, we will make up the
+      hundred for the stake among us, and the fight stands&mdash;always
+      supposin’ the young man is willin’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Excuse all this rot, Mr. Montgomery,” said the University man, in a
+      genial voice. “We’ve begun at the wrong end, I know, but we’ll soon
+      straighten it out, and I hope that you will see your way to falling in
+      with our views. In the first place, you remember the man whom you knocked
+      out this morning? He is Barton&mdash;the famous Ted Barton.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m sure, sir, you may well be proud to have outed him in one round,”
+      said the publican. “Why, it took Morris, the ten-stone-six champion, a
+      deal more trouble than that before he put Barton to sleep. You’ve done a
+      fine performance, sir, and happen you’ll do a finer, if you give yourself
+      the chance.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I never heard of Ted Barton, beyond seeing the name on a medicine label,”
+      said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, you may take it from me that he’s a slaughterer,” said the
+      horse-breaker. “You’ve taught him a lesson that he needed, for it was
+      always a word and a blow with him, and the word alone was worth five
+      shillin’ in a public court. He won’t be so ready now to shake his nief in
+      the face of everyone he meets. However, that’s neither here nor there.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery looked at them in bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For goodness’ sake, gentlemen, tell me what it is you want me to do!” he
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We want you to fight Silas Craggs, better known as the Master of
+      Croxley.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But why?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Because Ted Barton was to have fought him next Saturday. He was the
+      champion of the Wilson coal-pits, and the other was the Master of the
+      iron-folk down at the Croxley smelters. We’d matched our man for a purse
+      of a hundred against the Master. But you’ve queered our man, and he can’t
+      face such a battle with a two-inch cut at the back of his head. There’s
+      only one thing to be done, sir, and that is for you to take his place. If
+      you can lick Ted Barton you may lick the Master of Croxley, but if you
+      don’t we’re done, for there’s no one else who is in the same street with
+      him in this district. It’s twenty rounds, two-ounce gloves, Queensberry
+      rules, and a decision on points if you fight to the finish.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the absurdity of the thing drove every other thought out of
+      Montgomery’s head. But then there came a sudden revulsion. A hundred
+      pounds!&mdash;all he wanted to complete his education was lying there
+      ready to his hand, if only that hand were strong enough to pick it up. He
+      had thought bitterly that morning that there was no market for his
+      strength, but here was one where his muscle might earn more in an hour
+      than his brains in a year. But a chill of doubt came over him. “How can I
+      fight for the coal-pits?” said he. “I am not connected with them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Eh, lad, but thou art!” cried old Purvis. “We’ve got it down in writin’,
+      and it’s clear enough ‘Anyone connected with the coal-pits.’ Doctor
+      Oldacre is the coal-pit club doctor; thou art his assistant. What more can
+      they want?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, that’s right enough,” said the Cantab. “It would be a very sporting
+      thing of you, Mr. Montgomery, if you would come to our help when we are in
+      such a hole. Of course, you might not like to take the hundred pounds; but
+      I have no doubt that, in the case of your winning, we could arrange that
+      it should take the form of a watch or piece of plate, or any other shape
+      which might suggest itself to you. You see, you are responsible for our
+      having lost our champion, so we really feel that we have a claim upon
+      you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Give me a moment, gentlemen. It is very unexpected. I am afraid the
+      doctor would never consent to my going&mdash;in fact, I am sure that he
+      would not.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But he need never know&mdash;not before the fight, at any rate. We are
+      not bound to give the name of our man. So long as he is within the weight
+      limits on the day of the fight, that is all that concerns anyone.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The adventure and the profit would either of them have attracted
+      Montgomery. The two combined were irresistible. “Gentlemen,” said he,
+      “I’ll do it!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three sprang from their seats. The publican had seized his right hand,
+      the horse-dealer his left, and the Cantab slapped him on the back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good lad! good lad!” croaked the publican. “Eh, mon, but if thou yark
+      him, thou’ll rise in one day from being just a common doctor to the
+      best-known mon ’twixt here and Bradford. Thou art a witherin’ tyke, thou
+      art, and no mistake; and if thou beat the Master of Croxley, thou’ll find
+      all the beer thou want for the rest of thy life waiting for thee at the
+      ‘Four Sacks.’”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is the most sporting thing I ever heard of in my life,” said young
+      Wilson. “By George, sir, if you pull it off, you’ve got the constituency
+      in your pocket, if you care to stand. You know the out-house in my
+      garden?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Next the road?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Exactly. I turned it into a gymnasium for Ted Barton. You’ll find all you
+      want there: clubs, punching ball, bars, dumb-bells, everything. Then
+      you’ll want a sparring partner. Ogilvy has been acting for Barton, but we
+      don’t think that he is class enough. Barton bears you no grudge. He’s a
+      good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers. He looked upon
+      you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you now. He is quite
+      ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come any hour you will
+      name.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thank you; I will let you know the hour,” said Montgomery; and so the
+      committee departed jubilant upon their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The medical assistant sat for a time in the surgery turning it over a
+      little in his mind. He had been trained originally at the University by
+      the man who had been middle-weight champion in his day. It was true that
+      his teacher was long past his prime, slow upon his feet, and stiff in his
+      joints, but even so he was still a tough antagonist; but Montgomery had
+      found at last that he could more than hold his own with him. He had won
+      the University medal, and his teacher, who had trained so many students,
+      was emphatic in his opinion that he had never had one who was in the same
+      class with him. He had been exhorted to go in for the Amateur
+      Championships, but he had no particular ambition in that direction. Once
+      he had put on the gloves with Hammer Tunstall in a booth at a fair and had
+      fought three rattling rounds, in which he had the worst of it, but had
+      made the prize fighter stretch himself to the uttermost. There was his
+      whole record, and was it enough to encourage him to stand up to the Master
+      of Croxley? He had never heard of the Master before, but then he had lost
+      touch of the ring during the last few years of hard work. After all, what
+      did it matter? If he won, there was the money, which meant so much to him.
+      If he lost, it would only mean a thrashing. He could take punishment
+      without flinching, of that he was certain. If there were only one chance
+      in a hundred of pulling it off, then it was worth his while to attempt it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Oldacre, new come from church, with an ostentatious Prayer-book in his
+      kid-gloved hand, broke in upon his meditation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You don’t go to service, I observe, Mr. Montgomery” said he, coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir; I have had some business to detain me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is very near to my heart that my household should set a good example.
+      There are so few educated people in this district that a great
+      responsibility devolves upon us. If we do not live up to the highest, how
+      can we expect these poor workers to do so? It is a dreadful thing to
+      reflect that the parish takes a great deal more interest in an approaching
+      glove fight than in their religious duties.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A glove fight, sir?” said Montgomery, guiltily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I believe that to be the correct term. One of my patients tells me that
+      it is the talk of the district. A local ruffian, a patient of ours, by the
+      way, matched against a pugilist over at Croxley. I cannot understand why
+      the law does not step in and stop so degrading an exhibition. It is really
+      a prize fight.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A glove fight, you said.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am informed that a 2oz. glove is an evasion by which they dodge the
+      law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere. They contend for a
+      sum of money. It seems dreadful and almost incredible&mdash;does it not?&mdash;to
+      think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our peaceful
+      home. But you will realise, Mr. Montgomery, that while there are such
+      influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we should live
+      up to our highest.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor’s sermon would have had more effect if the assistant had not
+      once or twice had occasion to test his highest, and come upon it at
+      unexpectedly humble elevations. It is always so particularly easy to
+      “compound for sins we’re most inclined to by damning those we have no mind
+      to.” In any case, Montgomery felt that of all the men concerned in such a
+      fight&mdash;promoters, backers, spectators&mdash;it is the actual fighter
+      who holds the strongest and most honourable position. His conscience gave
+      him no concern upon the subject. Endurance and courage are virtues, not
+      vices, and brutality is, at least, better than effeminacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where
+      Montgomery got his bird’s-eye and also his local information, for the
+      shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of the
+      district. The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in a
+      casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard of the Master of
+      Croxley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Heard of him! Heard of him!” the little man could hardly articulate in
+      his astonishment. “Why, sir, he’s the first mon o’ the district, an’ his
+      name’s as well known in the West Riding as the winner o’ t’ Derby. But
+      Lor,’ sir,”&mdash;here he stopped and rummaged among a heap of papers.
+      “They are makin’ a fuss about him on account o’ his fight wi’ Ted Barton,
+      and so the <i>Croxley Herald</i> has his life an’ record, an’ here it is,
+      an’ thou canst read it for thysel’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheet of the paper which he held up was a lake of print around an
+      islet of illustration. The latter was a coarse wood-cut of a pugilist’s
+      head and neck set in a cross-barred jersey. It was a sinister but powerful
+      face, the face of a debauched hero, clean-shaven, strongly eye-browed,
+      keen-eyed, with huge, aggressive jaw, and an animal dewlap beneath it. The
+      long, obstinate cheeks ran flush up to the narrow, sinister eyes. The
+      mighty neck came down square from the ears and curved outwards into
+      shoulders, which had lost nothing at the hands of the local artist. Above
+      was written “Silas Craggs,” and beneath, “The Master of Croxley.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thou’ll find all about him there, sir,” said the tobacconist. “He’s a
+      witherin’ tyke, he is, and we’re proud to have him in the county. If he
+      hadn’t broke his leg he’d have been champion of England.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Broke his leg, has he?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, and it set badly. They ca’ him owd K, behind his back, for that is
+      how his two legs look. But his arms&mdash;well, if they was both stropped
+      to a bench, as the sayin’ is, I wonder where the champion of England would
+      be then.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll take this with me,” said Montgomery; and putting the paper into his
+      pocket he returned home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not a cheering record which he read there. The whole history of the
+      Croxley Master was given in full, his many victories, his few defeats.
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Born in 1857 (said the provincial biographer), Silas Craggs, better
+   known in sporting circles as the Master of Croxley, is now in his
+   fortieth year.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “Hang it, I’m only twenty-three!” said Montgomery to himself, and read on
+      more cheerfully.
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Having in his youth shown a surprising aptitude for the game, he
+   fought   his way up among his comrades, until he became the
+   recognised champion of the district and won the proud title which
+   he still holds.  Ambitious of a more than local fame, he secured a
+   patron, and fought his first fight against Jack Barton, of
+   Birmingham, in May 1880, at the old Loiterers’ Club.  Craggs,
+   who fought at ten stone-two at the time, had the better of fifteen
+   rattling rounds, and gained an award on points against the Midlander.
+   Having disposed of James Dunn, of Rotherhithe, Cameron, of Glasgow,
+   and a youth named Fernie, he was thought so highly of by the fancy
+   that he was matched against Ernest Willox, at that time
+   middle-weight champion of the North of England, and defeated him in a
+   hard-fought battle, knocking him out in the tenth round after a
+   punishing contest.  At this period it looked as if the very highest
+   honours of the ring were within the reach of the young Yorkshireman,
+   but he was laid upon the shelf by a most unfortunate accident.  The
+   kick of a horse broke his thigh, and for a year he was compelled to
+   rest himself.  When he returned to his work the fracture had set
+   badly, and his activity was much impaired.  It was owing to this
+   that he was defeated in seven rounds by Willox, the man whom he had
+   previously beaten, and afterwards by James Shaw, of London, though
+   the latter acknowledged that he had found the toughest customer of
+   his career.  Undismayed by his reverses, the Master adapted the
+   style of his fighting to his physical disabilities and resumed his
+   career of victory&mdash;defeating Norton (the black), Hobby Wilson, and
+   Levi Cohen, the latter a heavy-weight.  Conceding two stone, he
+   fought a draw with the famous Billy McQuire, and afterwards, for
+   a purse of fifty pounds, he defeated Sam Hare at the Pelican Club,
+   London.  In 1891 a decision was given against him upon a foul when
+   fighting a winning fight against Jim Taylor, the Australian middle
+   weight, and so mortified was he by the decision, that he withdrew
+   from the ring.  Since then he has hardly fought at all save to
+   accommodate any local aspirant who may wish to learn the difference
+   between a bar-room scramble and a scientific contest.  The latest
+   of these ambitious souls comes from the Wilson coal-pits, which have
+   undertaken to put up a stake of 100 pounds and back their local
+   champion.  There are various rumours afloat as to who their
+   representative is to be, the name of Ted Barton being freely
+   mentioned; but the betting, which is seven to one on the Master
+   against any untried man, is a fair reflection of the feeling of
+   the community.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery read it over twice, and it left him with a very serious face.
+      No light matter this which he had undertaken; no battle with a
+      rough-and-tumble fighter who presumed upon a local reputation. The man’s
+      record showed that he was first-class&mdash;or nearly so. There were a few
+      points in his favour, and he must make the most of them. There was age&mdash;twenty-three
+      against forty. There was an old ring proverb that “Youth will be served,”
+      but the annals of the ring offer a great number of exceptions. A hard
+      veteran full of cool valour and ring-craft, could give ten or fifteen
+      years and a beating to most striplings. He could not rely too much upon
+      his advantage in age. But then there was the lameness; that must surely
+      count for a great deal. And, lastly, there was the chance that the Master
+      might underrate his opponent, that he might be remiss in his training, and
+      refuse to abandon his usual way of life, if he thought that he had an easy
+      task before him. In a man of his age and habits this seemed very possible.
+      Montgomery prayed that it might be so. Meanwhile, if his opponent were the
+      best man who ever jumped the ropes into a ring, his own duty was clear. He
+      must prepare himself carefully, throw away no chance, and do the very best
+      that he could. But he knew enough to appreciate the difference which
+      exists in boxing, as in every sport, between the amateur and the
+      professional. The coolness, the power of hitting, above all the capability
+      of taking punishment, count for so much. Those specially developed,
+      gutta-percha-like abdominal muscles of the hardened pugilist will take
+      without flinching a blow which would leave another man writhing on the
+      ground. Such things are not to be acquired in a week, but all that could
+      be done in a week should be done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The medical assistant had a good basis to start from. He was 5ft. 11 ins.&mdash;tall
+      enough for anything on two legs, as the old ring men used to say&mdash;lithe
+      and spare, with the activity of a panther, and a strength which had hardly
+      yet ever found its limitations. His muscular development was finely hard,
+      but his power came rather from that higher nerve-energy which counts for
+      nothing upon a measuring tape. He had the well-curved nose and the widely
+      opened eye which never yet were seen upon the face of a craven, and behind
+      everything he had the driving force, which came from the knowledge that
+      his whole career was at stake upon the contest. The three backers rubbed
+      their hands when they saw him at work punching the ball in the gymnasium
+      next morning; and Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who had written to Leeds to
+      hedge his bets, sent a wire to cancel the letter, and to lay another fifty
+      at the market price of seven to one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery’s chief difficulty was to find time for his training without
+      any interference from the doctor. His work took him a large part of the
+      day, but as the visiting was done on foot, and considerable distances had
+      to be traversed, it was a training in itself. For the rest, he punched the
+      swinging ball and worked with the dumb-bells for an hour every morning and
+      evening, and boxed twice a day with Ted Barton in the gymnasium, gaining
+      as much profit as could be got from a rushing, two-handed slogger. Barton
+      was full of admiration for his cleverness and quickness, but doubtful
+      about his strength. Hard hitting was the feature of his own style, and he
+      exacted it from others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Lord, sir, that’s a turble poor poonch for an eleven-stone man!” he would
+      cry. “Thou wilt have to hit harder than that afore t’ Master will know
+      that thou art theer. All, thot’s better, mon, thot’s fine!” he would add,
+      as his opponent lifted him across the room on the end of a right counter.
+      “Thot’s how I likes to feel ’em. Happen thou’lt pull through yet.” He
+      chuckled with joy when Montgomery knocked him into a corner. “Eh, mon,
+      thou art coming along grand. Thou hast fair yarked me off my legs. Do it
+      again, lad, do it again!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only part of Montgomery’s training which came within the doctor’s
+      observation was his diet, and that puzzled him considerably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You will excuse my remarking, Mr. Montgomery, that you are becoming
+      rather particular in your tastes. Such fads are not to be encouraged in
+      one’s youth. Why do you eat toast with every meal?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I find that it suits me better than bread, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It entails unnecessary work upon the cook. I observe, also, that you have
+      turned against potatoes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir; I think that I am better without them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you no longer drink your beer?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “These causeless whims and fancies are very much to be deprecated, Mr.
+      Montgomery. Consider how many there are to whom these very potatoes and
+      this very beer would be most acceptable.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No doubt, sir, but at present I prefer to do without them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sitting alone at lunch, and the assistant thought that it would
+      be a good opportunity of asking leave for the day of the fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should be glad if you could let me have leave for Saturday, Dr.
+      Oldacre.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is very inconvenient upon so busy a day.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should do a double day’s work on Friday so as to leave everything in
+      order. I should hope to be back in the evening.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am afraid I cannot spare you, Mr. Montgomery.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a facer. If he could not get leave he would go without it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You will remember, Dr. Oldacre, that when I came to you it was understood
+      that I should have a clear day every month. I have never claimed one. But
+      now there are reasons why I wish to have a holiday upon Saturday.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Oldacre gave in with a very bad grace. “Of course, if you insist upon
+      your formal rights, there is no more to be said, Mr. Montgomery, though I
+      feel that it shows a certain indifference to my comfort and the welfare of
+      the practice. Do you still insist?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very good. Have your way.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was boiling over with anger, but Montgomery was a valuable
+      assistant&mdash;steady, capable, and hardworking&mdash;and he could not
+      afford to lose him. Even if he had been prompted to advance those class
+      fees, for which his assistant had appealed, it would have been against his
+      interests to do so, for he did not wish him to qualify, and he desired him
+      to remain in his subordinate position, in which he worked so hard for so
+      small a wage. There was something in the cool insistence of the young man,
+      a quiet resolution in his voice as he claimed his Saturday, which aroused
+      his curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have no desire to interfere unduly with your affairs, Mr. Montgomery,
+      but were you thinking of having a day in Leeds upon Saturday?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In the country?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are very wise. You will find a quiet day among the wild flowers a
+      very valuable restorative. Have you thought of any particular direction?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am going over Croxley way.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, there is no prettier country when once you are past the iron-works.
+      What could be more delightful than to lie upon the Fells, basking in the
+      sunshine, with perhaps some instructive and elevating book as your
+      companion? I should recommend a visit to the ruins of St. Bridget’s
+      Church, a very interesting relic of the early Norman era. By the way,
+      there is one objection which I see to your going to Croxley on Saturday.
+      It is upon that date, as I am informed, that that ruffianly glove fight
+      takes place. You may find yourself molested by the blackguards whom it
+      will attract.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I will take my chance of that, sir,” said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Friday night, which was the last night before the fight,
+      Montgomery’s three backers assembled in the gymnasium and inspected their
+      man as he went through some light exercises to keep his muscles supple. He
+      was certainly in splendid condition, his skin shining with health, and his
+      eyes with energy and confidence. The three walked round him and exulted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He’s simply ripping!” said the undergraduate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By gad, you’ve come out of it splendidly. You’re as hard as a pebble, and
+      fit to fight for your life.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Happen he’s a trifle on the fine side,” said the publican. “Runs a bit
+      light at the loins, to my way of thinkin’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What weight to-day?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ten stone eleven,” the assistant answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s only three pund off in a week’s trainin’,” said the horse-breaker.
+      “He said right when he said that he was in condition. Well, it’s fine
+      stuff all there is of it, but I’m none so sure as there is enough.” He
+      kept poking his finger into Montgomery as if he were one of his horses. “I
+      hear that the Master will scale a hundred and sixty odd at the ring-side.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But there’s some of that which he’d like well to pull off and leave
+      behind wi’ his shirt,” said Purvis. “I hear they’ve had a rare job to get
+      him to drop his beer, and if it had not been for that great red-headed
+      wench of his they’d never ha’ done it. She fair scratted the face off a
+      potman that had brought him a gallon from t’ ‘Chequers.’ They say the
+      hussy is his sparrin’ partner, as well as his sweetheart, and that his
+      poor wife is just breakin’ her heart over it. Hullo, young ’un, what do
+      you want?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door of the gymnasium had opened and a lad, about sixteen, grimy and
+      black with soot and iron, stepped into the yellow glare of the oil lamp.
+      Ted Barton seized him by the collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “See here, thou yoong whelp, this is private, and we want noan o’ thy
+      spyin’!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But I maun speak to Mr. Wilson.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young Cantab stepped forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, my lad, what is it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s aboot t’ fight, Mr. Wilson, sir. I wanted to tell your mon somethin’
+      aboot t’ Maister.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We’ve no time to listen to gossip, my boy. We know all about the Master.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But thou doan’t, sir. Nobody knows but me and mother, and we thought as
+      we’d like thy mon to know, sir, for we want him to fair bray him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, you want the Master fair brayed, do you? So do we. Well, what have
+      you to say?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Is this your mon, sir?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, suppose it is?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then it’s him I want to tell aboot it. T’ Maister is blind o’ the left
+      eye.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nonsense!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s true, sir. Not stone blind, but rarely fogged. He keeps it secret,
+      but mother knows, and so do I. If thou slip him on the left side he can’t
+      cop thee. Thou’ll find it right as I tell thee. And mark him when he sinks
+      his right. ’Tis his best blow, his right upper-cut. T’ Maister’s finisher,
+      they ca’ it at t’ works. It’s a turble blow when it do come home.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thank you, my boy. This is information worth having about his sight,”
+      said Wilson. “How came you to know so much? Who are you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m his son, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wilson whistled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And who sent you to us?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My mother. I maun get back to her again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Take this half-crown.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir, I don’t seek money in comin’ here. I do it&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For love?” suggested the publican.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For hate!” said the boy, and darted off into the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Seems to me t’ red-headed wench may do him more harm than good, after
+      all,” remarked the publican. “And now, Mr. Montgomery, sir, you’ve done
+      enough for this evenin’, an’ a nine-hours’ sleep is the best trainin’
+      before a battle. Happen this time to-morrow night you’ll be safe back
+      again with your 100 pound in your pocket.”
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             II
+</p>
+    <p>
+      Work was struck at one o’clock at the coal-pits and the iron-works, and
+      the fight was arranged for three. From the Croxley Furnaces, from Wilson’s
+      Coal-pits, from the Heartsease Mine, from the Dodd Mills, from the
+      Leverworth Smelters the workmen came trooping, each with his fox-terrier
+      or his lurcher at his heels. Warped with labour and twisted by toil, bent
+      double by week-long work in the cramped coal galleries or half-blinded
+      with years spent in front of white-hot fluid metal, these men still gilded
+      their harsh and hopeless lives by their devotion to sport. It was their
+      one relief, the only thing which could distract their minds from sordid
+      surroundings, and give them an interest beyond the blackened circle which
+      enclosed them. Literature, art, science, all these things were beyond
+      their horizon; but the race, the football match, the cricket, the fight,
+      these were things which they could understand, which they could speculate
+      upon in advance and comment upon afterwards. Sometimes brutal, sometimes
+      grotesque, the love of sport is still one of the great agencies which make
+      for the happiness of our people. It lies very deeply in the springs of our
+      nature, and when it has been educated out, a higher, more refined nature
+      may be left, but it will not be of that robust British type which has left
+      its mark so deeply on the world. Every one of these raddled workers,
+      slouching with his dog at his heels to see something of the fight, was a
+      true unit of his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a squally May day, with bright sunbursts and driving showers.
+      Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting his medicine made up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The weather seems so very unsettled, Mr. Montgomery,” remarked the
+      doctor, “that I am inclined to think that you had better postpone your
+      little country excursion until a later date.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am afraid that I must go to-day, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have just had an intimation that Mrs. Potter, at the other side of
+      Angleton, wishes to see me. It is probable that I shall be there all day.
+      It will be extremely inconvenient to leave the house empty so long.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am very sorry, sir, but I must go,” said the assistant, doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor saw that it would be useless to argue, and departed in the
+      worst of bad tempers upon mission. Montgomery felt easier now that he was
+      gone. He went up to his room, and packed his running-shoes, his
+      fighting-drawers, and his cricket sash into a hand-bag. When he came down,
+      Mr. Wilson was waiting for him in the surgery. “I hear the doctor has
+      gone.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes; he is likely to be away all day.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I don’t see that it matters much. It’s bound to come to his ears by
+      to-night.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes; it’s serious with me, Mr. Wilson. If I win, it’s all right. I don’t
+      mind telling you that the hundred pounds will make all the difference to
+      me. But if I lose, I shall lose my situation, for, as you say, I can’t
+      keep it secret.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Never mind. We’ll see you through among us. I only wonder the doctor has
+      not heard, for it’s all over the country that you are to fight the Croxley
+      Champion. We’ve had Armitage up about it already. He’s the Master’s
+      backer, you know. He wasn’t sure that you were eligible. The Master said
+      he wanted you whether you were eligible or not. Armitage has money on, and
+      would have made trouble if he could. But I showed him that you came within
+      the conditions of the challenge, and he agreed that it was all right. They
+      think they have a soft thing on.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I can only do my best,” said Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They lunched together; a silent and rather nervous repast, for
+      Montgomery’s mind was full of what was before him, and Wilson had himself
+      more money at stake than he cared to lose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wilson’s carriage and pair were at the door, the horses with blue and
+      white rosettes at their ears, which were the colours of the Wilson
+      Coal-pits, well known, on many a football field. At the avenue gate a
+      crowd of some hundred pit-men and their wives gave a cheer as the carriage
+      passed. To the assistant it all seemed dream-like and extraordinary&mdash;the
+      strangest experience of his life, but with a thrill of human action and
+      interest in it which made it passionately absorbing. He lay back in the
+      open carriage and saw the fluttering handkerchiefs from the doors and
+      windows of the miners’ cottages. Wilson had pinned a blue and white
+      rosette upon his coat, and everybody knew him as their champion. “Good
+      luck, sir! good luck to thee!” they shouted from the roadside. He felt
+      that it was like some unromantic knight riding down to sordid lists, but
+      there was something of chivalry in it all the same. He fought for others
+      as well as for himself. He might fail from want of skill or strength, but
+      deep in his sombre soul he vowed that it should never be for want of
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fawcett was just mounting into his high-wheeled, spidery dogcart, with
+      his little bit of blood between the shafts. He waved his whip and fell in
+      behind the carriage. They overtook Purvis, the tomato-faced publican, upon
+      the road, with his wife in her Sunday bonnet. They also dropped into the
+      procession, and then, as they traversed the seven miles of the high road
+      to Croxley, their two-horsed, rosetted carriage became gradually the
+      nucleus of a comet with a loosely radiating tail. From every side-road
+      came the miners’ carts, the humble, ramshackle traps, black and bulging,
+      with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued, open-hearted partisans. They
+      trailed for a long quarter of a mile behind them&mdash;cracking, whipping,
+      shouting, galloping, swearing. Horsemen and runners were mixed with the
+      vehicles. And then suddenly a squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were
+      having their annual training in those parts, clattered and jingled out of
+      a field, and rode as an escort to the carriage. Through the dust-clouds
+      round him Montgomery saw the gleaming brass helmets, the bright coats, and
+      the tossing heads of the chargers, the delighted brown faces of the
+      troopers. It was more dream-like than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, as they approached the monstrous, uncouth line of bottle-shaped
+      buildings which marked the smelting-works of Croxley, their long, writhing
+      snake of dust was headed off by another but longer one which wound across
+      their path. The main road into which their own opened was filled by the
+      rushing current of traps. The Wilson contingent halted until the others
+      should get past. The iron-men cheered and groaned, according to their
+      humour, as they whirled past their antagonist. Rough chaff flew back and
+      forwards like iron nuts and splinters of coal. “Brought him up, then!”
+      “Got t’ hearse for to fetch him back?” “Where’s t’ owd K-legs?” “Mon, mon,
+      have thy photograph took&mdash;’twill mind thee of what thou used to
+      look!” “He fight?&mdash;he’s nowt but a half-baked doctor!” “Happen he’ll
+      doctor thy Croxley Champion afore he’s through wi’t.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they flashed at each other as the one side waited and the other passed.
+      Then there came a rolling murmur swelling into a shout, and a great brake
+      with four horses came clattering along, all streaming with salmon-pink
+      ribbons. The driver wore a white hat with pink rosette, and beside him, on
+      the high seat, were a man and a woman-she with her arm round his waist.
+      Montgomery had one glimpse of them as they flashed past; he with a furry
+      cap drawn low over his brow, a great frieze coat and a pink comforter
+      round his throat; she brazen, red-headed, bright-coloured, laughing
+      excitedly. The Master, for it was he, turned as he passed, gazed hard at
+      Montgomery, and gave him a menacing, gap-toothed grin. It was a hard,
+      wicked face, blue-jowled and craggy, with long, obstinate cheeks and
+      inexorable eyes. The brake behind was full of patrons of the sport-flushed
+      iron-foremen, heads of departments, managers. One was drinking from a
+      metal flask, and raised it to Montgomery as he passed; and then the crowd
+      thinned, and the Wilson cortege with their dragoons swept in at the rear
+      of the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road led away from Croxley, between curving green hills, gashed and
+      polluted by the searchers for coal and iron. The whole country had been
+      gutted, and vast piles of refuse and mountains of slag suggested the
+      mighty chambers which the labour of man had burrowed beneath. On the left
+      the road curved up to where a huge building, roofless and dismantled,
+      stood crumbling and forlorn, with the light shining through the windowless
+      squares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s the old Arrowsmith’s factory. That’s where the fight is to be,”
+      said Wilson. “How are you feeling now?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thank you, I was never better in my life,” Montgomery answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By Gad, I like your nerve!” said Wilson, who was himself flushed and
+      uneasy. “You’ll give us a fight for our money, come what may. That place
+      on the right is the office, and that has been set aside as the dressing
+      and weighing room.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The carriage drove up to it amidst the shouts of the folk upon the
+      hillside. Lines of empty carriages and traps curved down upon the winding
+      road, and a black crowd surged round the door of the ruined factory. The
+      seats, as a huge placard announced, were five shillings, three shillings,
+      and a shilling, with half-price for dogs. The takings, deducting expenses,
+      were to go to the winner, and it was already evident that a larger stake
+      than a hundred pounds was in question. A babel of voices rose from the
+      door. The workers wished to bring their dogs in free. The men scuffled.
+      The dogs barked. The crowd was a whirling, eddying pool surging with a
+      roar up to the narrow cleft which was its only outlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brake, with its salmon-coloured streamers and four reeking horses,
+      stood empty before the door of the office; Wilson, Purvis, Fawcett and
+      Montgomery passed in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a large, bare room inside with square, clean patches upon the
+      grimy walls, where pictures and almanacs had once hung. Worn linoleum
+      covered the floor, but there was no furniture save some benches and a deal
+      table with an ewer and a basin upon it. Two of the corners were curtained
+      off. In the middle of the room was a weighing-chair. A hugely fat man,
+      with a salmon tie and a blue waistcoat with bird’s-eye spots, came
+      bustling up to them. It was Armitage, the butcher and grazier, well known
+      for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal patron of sport in the
+      Riding. “Well, well,” he grunted, in a thick, fussy, wheezy voice, “you
+      have come, then. Got your man? Got your man?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Here he is, fit and well. Mr. Montgomery, let me present you to Mr.
+      Armitage.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Glad to meet you, sir. Happy to make your acquaintance. I make bold to
+      say, sir, that we of Croxley admire your courage, Mr. Montgomery, and that
+      our only hope is a fair fight and no favour, and the best man win. That’s
+      our sentiments at Croxley.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And it is my sentiment, also,” said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, you can’t say fairer than that, Mr. Montgomery. You’ve taken a
+      large contrac’ in hand, but a large contrac’ may be carried through, sir,
+      as anyone that knows my dealings could testify. The Master is ready to
+      weigh in!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So am I.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You must weigh in the buff.” Montgomery looked askance at the tall,
+      red-headed woman who was standing gazing out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s all right,” said Wilson. “Get behind the curtain and put on your
+      fighting kit.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did so, and came out the picture of an athlete, in white, loose
+      drawers, canvas shoes, and the sash of a well-known cricket club round his
+      waist. He was trained to a hair, his skin gleaming like silk, and every
+      muscle rippling down his broad shoulders and along his beautiful arms as
+      he moved them. They bunched into ivory knobs, or slid into long, sinuous
+      curves, as he raised or lowered his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What thinkest thou o’ that?” asked Ted Barton, his second, of the woman
+      in the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced contemptuously at the young athlete. “It’s but a poor kindness
+      thou dost him to put a thread-paper yoong gentleman like yon against a mon
+      as is a mon. Why, my Jock would throttle him wi’ one hond lashed behind
+      him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Happen he may&mdash;happen not,” said Barton. “I have but twa pund in the
+      world, but it’s on him, every penny, and no hedgin’. But here’s t’
+      Maister, and rarely fine he do look.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prize-fighter had come out from his curtain, a squat, formidable
+      figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted
+      leg. His skin had none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery’s, but
+      was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled black
+      hair which thatched his mighty breast. His weight bore no relation to his
+      strength, for those huge shoulders and great arms, with brown,
+      sledge-hammer fists, would have fitted the heaviest man that ever threw
+      his cap into a ring. But his loins and legs were slight in proportion.
+      Montgomery, on the other hand, was as symmetrical as a Greek statue. It
+      would be an encounter between a man who was specially fitted for one
+      sport, and one who was equally capable of any. The two looked curiously at
+      each other: a bulldog, and a high-bred clean-limbed terrier, each full of
+      spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How do you do?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How do?” The Master grinned again, and his three jagged front teeth
+      gleamed for an instant. The rest had been beaten out of him in twenty
+      years of battle. He spat upon the floor. “We have a rare fine day for’t.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Capital,” said Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s the good feelin’ I like,” wheezed the fat butcher. “Good lads,
+      both of them!&mdash;prime lads!&mdash;hard meat an’ good bone. There’s no
+      ill-feelin’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If he downs me, Gawd bless him!” said the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “An’ if we down him, Gawd help him!” interrupted the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Haud thy tongue, wench!” said the Master, impatiently. “Who art thou to
+      put in thy word? Happen I might draw my hand across thy face.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman did not take the threat amiss. “Wilt have enough for thy hand to
+      do, Jock,” said she. “Get quit o’ this gradely man afore thou turn on me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lovers’ quarrel was interrupted by the entrance of a newcomer, a
+      gentleman with a fur-collared overcoat and a very shiny top-hat&mdash;a
+      top-hat of a degree of glossiness which is seldom seen five miles from
+      Hyde Park. This hat he wore at the extreme back of his head, so that the
+      lower surface of the brim made a kind of frame for his high, bald
+      forehead, his, keen eyes, his rugged and yet kindly face. He bustled in
+      with the quiet air of possession with which the ring master enters the
+      circus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s Mr. Stapleton, the referee from London,” said Wilson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How do you do, Mr. Stapleton? I was introduced to you at the big fight at
+      the Corinthian Club in Piccadilly.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah! I dare say,” said the other, shaking hands. “Fact is, I’m introduced
+      to so many that I can’t undertake to carry their names. Wilson, is it?
+      Well, Mr. Wilson, glad to see you. Couldn’t get a fly at the station, and
+      that’s why I’m late.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m sure, sir,” said Armitage, “we should be proud that anyone so well
+      known in the boxing world should come down to our little exhibition.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not at all. Not at all. Anything in the interests of boxin’. All ready?
+      Men weighed?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Weighing now, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah! Just as well that I should see it done. Seen you before, Craggs. Saw
+      you fight your second battle against Willox. You had beaten him once, but
+      he came back on you. What does the indicator say?&mdash;163lbs.&mdash;two
+      off for the kit&mdash;161lbs. Now, my lad, you jump. My goodness, what
+      colours are you wearing?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The Anonymi Cricket Club.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What right have you to wear them? I belong to the club myself.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So do I.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You an amateur?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you are fighting for a money prize?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I suppose you know what you are doing? You realise that you’re a
+      professional pug from this onwards, and that if ever you fight again&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll never fight again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Happen you won’t,” said the woman, and the Master turned a terrible eye
+      upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I suppose you know your own business best. Up you jump. One hundred
+      and fifty-one, minus two, 149&mdash;12lbs. difference, but youth and
+      condition on the other scale. Well, the sooner we get to work the better,
+      for I wish to catch the seven o’clock express at Hellifield. Twenty
+      three-minute rounds, with one-minute intervals, and Queensberry rules.
+      Those are the conditions, are they not?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very good, then&mdash;we may go across.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two combatants had overcoats thrown over their shoulders, and the
+      whole party, backers, fighters, seconds, and the referee filed out of the
+      room. A police inspector was waiting for them in the road. He had a
+      note-book in his hand&mdash;that terrible weapon which awes even the
+      London cabman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I must take your names, gentlemen, in case it should be necessary to
+      proceed for breach of peace.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You don’t mean to stop the fight?” cried Armitage, in a passion of
+      indignation. “I’m Mr. Armitage, of Croxley, and this is Mr. Wilson, and
+      we’ll be responsible that all is fair and as it should be.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll take the names in case it should be necessary to proceed,” said the
+      inspector, impassively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But you know me well.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If you was a dook or even a judge it would be all the same,” said the
+      inspector. “It’s the law, and there’s an end. I’ll not take upon myself to
+      stop the fight, seeing that gloves are to be used, but I’ll take the names
+      of all concerned. Silas Craggs, Robert Montgomery, Edward Barton, James
+      Stapleton, of London. Who seconds Silas Craggs?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I do,” said the woman. “Yes, you can stare, but it’s my job, and no one
+      else’s. Anastasia’s the name&mdash;four a’s.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Craggs?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Johnson&mdash;Anastasia Johnson. If you jug him you can jug me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Who talked of juggin’, ye fool?” growled the Master. “Coom on, Mr.
+      Armitage, for I’m fair sick o’ this loiterin’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector fell in with the procession, and proceeded, as they walked
+      up the hill, to bargain in his official capacity for a front seat, where
+      he could safeguard the interests of the law, and in his private capacity
+      to lay out thirty shillings at seven to one with Mr. Armitage. Through the
+      door they passed, down a narrow lane walled with a dense bank of humanity,
+      up a wooden ladder to a platform, over a rope which was slung waist-high
+      from four corner-stakes, and then Montgomery realised that he was in that
+      ring in which his immediate destiny was to be worked out. On the stake at
+      one corner there hung a blue-and-white streamer. Barton led him across,
+      the overcoat dangling loosely from his shoulders, and he sat down on a
+      wooden stool. Barton and another man, both wearing white sweaters, stood
+      beside him. The so-called ring was a square, twenty feet each way. At the
+      opposite angle was the sinister figure of the Master, with his red-headed
+      woman and a rough-faced friend to look after him. At each corner were
+      metal basins, pitchers of water, and sponges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the hubbub and uproar of the entrance Montgomery was too bewildered
+      to take things in. But now there was a few minutes’ delay, for the referee
+      had lingered behind, and so he looked quietly about him. It was a sight to
+      haunt him for a lifetime. Wooden seats had been built in, sloping upwards
+      to the tops of the walls. Above, instead of a ceiling, a great flight of
+      crows passed slowly across a square of grey cloud. Right up to the topmost
+      benches the folk were banked&mdash;broadcloth in front, corduroys and
+      fustian behind; faces turned everywhere upon him. The grey reek of the
+      pipes filled the building, and the air was pungent with the acrid smell of
+      cheap, strong tobacco. Everywhere among the human faces were to be seen
+      the heads of the dogs. They growled and yapped from the back benches. In
+      that dense mass of humanity, one could hardly pick out individuals, but
+      Montgomery’s eyes caught the brazen gleam of the helmets held upon the
+      knees of the ten yeomen of his escort. At the very edge of the platform
+      sat the reporters, five of them&mdash;three locals and two all the way
+      from London. But where was the all-important referee? There was no sign of
+      him, unless he were in the centre of that angry swirl of men near the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Stapleton had stopped to examine the gloves which were to be used, and
+      entered the building after the combatants. He had started to come down
+      that narrow lane with the human walls which led to the ring. But already
+      it had gone abroad that the Wilson champion was a gentleman, and that
+      another gentleman had been appointed as referee. A wave of suspicion
+      passed through the Croxley folk. They would have one of their own people
+      for a referee. They would not have a stranger. His path was stopped as he
+      made for the ring. Excited men flung themselves in front of him; they
+      waved their fists in his face and cursed him. A woman howled vile names in
+      his ear. Somebody struck at him with an umbrella. “Go thou back to Lunnon.
+      We want noan o’ thee. Go thou back!” they yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stapleton, with his shiny hat cocked backwards, and his large, bulging
+      forehead swelling from under it, looked round him from beneath his bushy
+      brows. He was in the centre of a savage and dangerous mob. Then he drew
+      his watch from his pocket and held it dial upwards in his palm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In three minutes,” said he, “I will declare the fight off.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They raged round him. His cool face and that aggressive top-hat irritated
+      them. Grimy hands were raised. But it was difficult, somehow, to strike a
+      man who was so absolutely indifferent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In two minutes I declare the fight off.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They exploded into blasphemy. The breath of angry men smoked into his
+      placid face. A gnarled, grimy fist vibrated at the end of his nose. “We
+      tell thee we want noan o’ thee. Get thou back where thou com’st from.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In one minute I declare the fight off.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the calm persistence of the man conquered the swaying, mutable,
+      passionate crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Let him through, mon. Happen there’ll be no fight after a’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Let him through.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bill, thou loomp, let him pass. Dost want the fight declared off?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Make room for the referee!&mdash;room for the Lunnon referee!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And half pushed, half carried, he was swept up to the ring. There were two
+      chairs by the side of it, one for him and one for the timekeeper. He sat
+      down, his hands on his knees, his hat at a more wonderful angle than ever,
+      impassive but solemn, with the aspect of one who appreciates his
+      responsibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Armitage, the portly butcher, made his way into the ring and held up
+      two fat hands, sparkling with rings, as a signal for silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen!” he yelled. And then in a crescendo shriek, “Gentlemen!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And ladies!” cried somebody, for, indeed, there was a fair sprinkling of
+      women among the crowd. “Speak up, owd man!” shouted another. “What price
+      pork chops?” cried somebody at the back. Everybody laughed, and the dogs
+      began to bark. Armitage waved his hands amidst the uproar as if he were
+      conducting an orchestra. At last the babel thinned into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen,” he yelled, “the match is between Silas Craggs, whom we call
+      the Master of Croxley, and Robert Montgomery, of the Wilson Coal-pits. The
+      match was to be under eleven-eight. When they were weighed just now,
+      Craggs weighed eleven-seven, and Montgomery ten-nine. The conditions of
+      the contest are&mdash;the best of twenty three-minute rounds with
+      two-ounce gloves. Should the fight run to its full length, it will, of
+      course, be decided upon points. Mr. Stapleton, the well-known London
+      referee, has kindly consented to see fair play. I wish to say that Mr.
+      Wilson and I, the chief backers of the two men, have every confidence in
+      Mr. Stapleton, and that we beg that you will accept his rulings without
+      dispute.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then turned from one combatant to the other, with a wave of his hand.
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             III
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “Montgomery&mdash;Craggs!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great hush fell over the huge assembly. Even the dogs stopped yapping;
+      one might have thought that the monstrous room was empty. The two men had
+      stood up, the small white gloves over their hands. They advanced from their
+      corners and shook hands, Montgomery gravely, Craggs with a smile. Then
+      they fell into position. The crowd gave a long sigh&mdash;the intake of a
+      thousand excited breaths. The referee tilted his chair on to its back
+      legs, and looked moodily critical from the one to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was strength against activity&mdash;that was evident from the first.
+      The Master stood stolidly upon his K leg. It gave him a tremendous
+      pedestal; one could hardly imagine his being knocked down. And he could
+      pivot round upon it with extraordinary quickness; but his advance or
+      retreat was ungainly. His frame, however, was so much larger and broader
+      than that of the student, and his brown, massive face looked so resolute
+      and menacing that the hearts of the Wilson party sank within them. There
+      was one heart, however, which had not done so. It was that of Robert
+      Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Any nervousness which he may have had completely passed away now that he
+      had his work before him. Here was something definite&mdash;this
+      hard-faced, deformed Hercules to beat, with a career as the price of
+      beating him. He glowed with the joy of action; it thrilled through his
+      nerves. He faced his man with little in-and-out steps, breaking to the
+      left, breaking to the right, feeling his way, while Craggs, with a dull,
+      malignant eye, pivoted slowly upon his weak leg, his left arm half
+      extended, his right sunk low across the mark. Montgomery led with his
+      left, and then led again, getting lightly home each time. He tried again,
+      but the Master had his counter ready, and Montgomery reeled back from a
+      harder blow than he had given. Anastasia, the woman, gave a shrill cry of
+      encouragement, and her man let fly his right. Montgomery ducked under it,
+      and in an instant the two were in each other’s arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Break away! Break away!” said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master struck upwards on the break, and shook Montgomery with the
+      blow. Then it was “time.” It had been a spirited opening round. The people
+      buzzed into comment and applause. Montgomery was quite fresh, but the
+      hairy chest of the Master was rising and falling. The man passed a sponge
+      over his head while Anastasia flapped the towel before him. “Good lass!
+      good lass!” cried the crowd, and cheered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men were up again, the Master grimly watchful, Montgomery as alert as
+      a kitten. The Master tried a sudden rush, squattering along with his
+      awkward gait, but coming faster than one would think. The student slipped
+      aside and avoided him. The Master stopped, grinned, and shook his head.
+      Then he motioned with his hand as an invitation to Montgomery to come to
+      him. The student did so and led with his left, but got a swinging right
+      counter in the ribs in exchange. The heavy blow staggered him, and the
+      Master came scrambling in to complete his advantage; but Montgomery, with
+      his greater activity, kept out of danger until the call of “time.” A tame
+      round, and the advantage with the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “T’ Maister’s too strong for him,” said a smelter to his neighbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay; but t’other’s a likely lad. Happen we’ll see some sport yet. He can
+      joomp rarely.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But t’ Maister can stop and hit rarely. Happen he’ll mak’ him joomp when
+      he gets his nief upon him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were up again, the water glistening upon their faces. Montgomery led
+      instantly, and got his right home with a sounding smack upon the master’s
+      forehead. There was a shout from the colliers, and “Silence! Order!” from
+      the referee. Montgomery avoided the counter, and scored with his left.
+      Fresh applause, and the referee upon his feet in indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No comments, gentlemen, if <i>you</i> please, during the rounds.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Just bide a bit!” growled the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Don’t talk&mdash;fight!” said the referee, angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery rubbed in the point by a flush hit upon the mouth, and the
+      Master shambled back to his corner like an angry bear, having had all the
+      worst of the round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where’s thot seven to one?” shouted Purvis, the publican. “I’ll take six
+      to one!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were no answers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Five to one!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were givers at that. Purvis booked them in a tattered notebook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery began to feel happy. He lay back with his legs outstretched,
+      his back against the corner-post, and one gloved hand upon each rope. What
+      a delicious minute it was between each round. If he could only keep out of
+      harm’s way, he must surely wear this man out before the end of twenty
+      rounds. He was so slow that all his strength went for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’re fightin’ a winnin’ fight&mdash;a winnin’ fight,” Ted Barton
+      whispered in his ear. “Go canny; tak’ no chances; you have him proper.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Master was crafty. He had fought so many battles with his maimed
+      limb that he knew how to make the best of it. Warily and slowly he
+      manoeuvred round Montgomery, stepping forward and yet again forward until
+      he had imperceptibly backed him into his corner. The student suddenly saw
+      a flash of triumph upon the grim face, and a gleam in the dull, malignant
+      eyes. The Master was upon him. He sprang aside and was on the ropes. The
+      Master smashed in one of his terrible upper-cuts, and Montgomery half
+      broke it with his guard. The student sprang the other way and was against
+      the other converging rope. He was trapped in the angle. The Master sent in
+      another with a hoggish grunt which spoke of the energy behind it.
+      Montgomery ducked, but got a jab from the left upon the mark. He closed
+      with his man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Break away! Break away!” cried the referee. Montgomery disengaged, and
+      got a swinging blow on the ear as he did so. It had been a damaging round
+      for him, and the Croxley people were shouting their delight. “Gentlemen, I
+      will <i>not</i> have this noise!” Stapleton roared. “I have been
+      accustomed to preside at a well-conducted club, and not at a bear-garden.”
+      This little man, with the tilted hat and the bulging forehead, dominated
+      the whole assembly. He was like a head-master among his boys. He glared
+      round him, and nobody cared to meet his eye. Anastasia had kissed the
+      Master when he resumed his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good lass. Do’t again!” cried the laughing crowd, and the angry Master
+      shook his glove at her, as she flapped her towel in front of him.
+      Montgomery was weary and a little sore, but not depressed. He had learned
+      something. He would not again be tempted into danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three rounds the honours were fairly equal. The student’s hitting was
+      the quicker, the Master’s the harder. Profiting by his lesson, Montgomery
+      kept himself in the open, and refused to be herded into a corner.
+      Sometimes the Master succeeded in rushing him to the side-ropes, but the
+      younger man slipped away, or closed and then disengaged. The monotonous
+      “Break away! Break away!” of the referee broke in upon the quick, low
+      patter of rubber-soled shoes, the dull thud of the blows, and the sharp,
+      hissing breath of two tired men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ninth round found both of them in fairly good condition. Montgomery’s
+      head was still singing from the blow that he had in the corner, and one of
+      his thumbs pained him acutely and seemed to be dislocated. The Master
+      showed no sign of a touch, but his breathing was the more laboured, and a
+      long line of ticks upon the referee’s paper showed that the student had a
+      good show of points. But one of this iron-man’s blows was worth three of
+      his, and he knew that without the gloves he could not have stood for three
+      rounds against him. All the amateur work that he had done was the merest
+      tapping and flapping when compared to those frightful blows, from arms
+      toughened by the shovel and the crowbar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the tenth round, and the fight was half over. The betting now was
+      only three to one, for the Wilson champion had held his own much better
+      than had been expected. But those who knew the ring-craft as well as the
+      staying power of the old prize-fighter knew that the odds were still a
+      long way in his favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Have a care of him!” whispered Barton, as he sent his man up to the
+      scratch. “Have a care! He’ll play thee a trick, if he can.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery saw, or imagined he saw, that his antagonist was tiring. He
+      looked jaded and listless, and his hands drooped a little from their
+      position. His own youth and condition were beginning to tell. He sprang in
+      and brought off a fine left-handed lead. The Master’s return lacked his
+      usual fire. Again Montgomery led, and again he got home. Then he tried his
+      right upon the mark, and the Master guarded it downwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Too low! Too low! A foul! A foul!” yelled a thousand voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The referee rolled his sardonic eyes slowly round. “Seems to me this
+      buildin’ is chock-full of referees,” said he. The people laughed and
+      applauded, but their favour was as immaterial to him as their anger. “No
+      applause, please! This is not a theatre!” he yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery was very pleased with himself. His adversary was evidently in a
+      bad way. He was piling on his points and establishing a lead. He might as
+      well make hay while the sun shone. The Master was looking all abroad.
+      Montgomery popped one upon his blue jowl and got away without a return.
+      And then the Master suddenly dropped both his hands and began rubbing his
+      thigh. Ah! that was it, was it? He had muscular cramp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Go in! Go in!” cried Teddy Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery sprang wildly forward, and the next instant was lying half
+      senseless, with his neck nearly broken, in the middle of the ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole round had been a long conspiracy to tempt him within reach of
+      one of those terrible right-hand upper-cuts for which the Master was
+      famous. For this the listless, weary bearing, for this the cramp in the
+      thigh. When Montgomery had sprung in so hotly he had exposed himself to
+      such a blow as neither flesh nor blood could stand. Whizzing up from below
+      with a rigid arm, which put the Master’s eleven stone into its force, it
+      struck him under the jaw; he whirled half round, and fell a helpless and
+      half-paralysed mass. A vague groan and murmur, inarticulate, too excited
+      for words, rose from the great audience. With open mouths and staring eyes
+      they gazed at the twitching and quivering figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stand back! Stand right back!” shrieked the referee, for the Master was
+      standing over his man ready to give him the <i>coup-de-grace</i> as he
+      rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stand back, Craggs, this instant!” Stapleton repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master sank his hands sulkily and walked backwards to the rope with
+      his ferocious eyes fixed upon his fallen antagonist. The timekeeper called
+      the seconds. If ten of them passed before Montgomery rose to his feet, the
+      fight was ended. Ted Barton wrung his hands and danced about in an agony
+      in his corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As if in a dream&mdash;a terrible nightmare&mdash;the student could hear
+      the voice of the timekeeper&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;he got
+      up on his hand&mdash;six&mdash; seven&mdash;he was on his knee, sick,
+      swimming, faint, but resolute to rise. Eight&mdash;he was up, and the
+      Master was on him like a tiger, lashing savagely at him with both hands.
+      Folk held their breath as they watched those terrible blows, and
+      anticipated the pitiful end&mdash;so much more pitiful where a game but
+      helpless man refuses to accept defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangely automatic is the human brain. Without volition, without effort,
+      there shot into the memory of this bewildered, staggering, half-stupefied
+      man the one thing which could have saved him&mdash;that blind eye of which
+      the Master’s son had spoken. It was the same as the other to look at, but
+      Montgomery remembered that he had said that it was the left. He reeled to
+      the left side, half felled by a drive which lit upon his shoulder. The
+      Master pivoted round upon his leg and was at him in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yark him, lad! Yark him!” screamed the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hold your tongue!” said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery slipped to the left again and yet again, but the Master was too
+      quick and clever for him. He struck round and got him full on the face as
+      he tried once more to break away. Montgomery’s knees weakened under him,
+      and he fell with a groan on the floor. This time he knew that he was done.
+      With bitter agony he realised, as he groped blindly with his hands, that
+      he could not possibly raise himself. Far away and muffled he heard, amid
+      the murmurs of the multitude, the fateful voice of the timekeeper counting
+      off the seconds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;six&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Time!” said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the pent-up passion of the great assembly broke loose. Croxley gave a
+      deep groan of disappointment. The Wilsons were on their feet, yelling with
+      delight. There was still a chance for them. In four more seconds their man
+      would have been solemnly counted out. But now he had a minute in which to
+      recover. The referee looked round with relaxed features and laughing eyes.
+      He loved this rough game, this school for humble heroes, and it was
+      pleasant to him to intervene as a <i>Deus ex machina</i> at so dramatic a
+      moment. His chair and his hat were both tilted at an extreme angle; he and
+      the timekeeper smiled at each other. Ted Barton and the other second had
+      rushed out and thrust an arm each under Montgomery’s knee, the other
+      behind his loins, and so carried him back to his stool. His head lolled
+      upon his shoulder, but a douche of cold water sent a shiver through him,
+      and he started and looked round him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He’s a’ right!” cried the people round. “He’s a rare brave lad. Good lad!
+      Good lad!” Barton poured some brandy into his mouth. The mists cleared a
+      little, and he realised where he was and what he had to do. But he was
+      still very weak, and he hardly dared to hope that he could survive another
+      round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Seconds out of the ring!” cried the referee. “Time!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Croxley Master sprang eagerly off his stool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Keep clear of him! Go easy for a bit,” said Barton, and Montgomery walked
+      out to meet his man once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had had two lessons&mdash;the one when the Master got him into his
+      corner, the other when he had been lured into mixing it up with so
+      powerful an antagonist. Now he would be wary. Another blow would finish
+      him; he could afford to run no risks. The Master was determined to follow
+      up his advantage, and rushed at him, slogging furiously right and left.
+      But Montgomery was too young and active to be caught. He was strong upon
+      his legs once more, and his wits had all come back to him. It was a
+      gallant sight&mdash;the line-of-battleship trying to pour its overwhelming
+      broadside into the frigate, and the frigate manoeuvring always so as to
+      avoid it. The Master tried all his ring-craft. He coaxed the student up by
+      pretended inactivity; he rushed at him with furious rushes towards the
+      ropes. For three rounds he exhausted every wile in trying to get at him.
+      Montgomery during all this time was conscious that his strength was minute
+      by minute coming back to him. The spinal jar from an upper-cut is
+      overwhelming, but evanescent. He was losing all sense of it beyond a great
+      stiffness of the neck. For the first round after his downfall he had been
+      content to be entirely on the defensive, only too happy if he could stall
+      off the furious attacks of the Master. In the second he occasionally
+      ventured upon a light counter. In the third he was smacking back merrily
+      where he saw an opening. His people yelled their approval of him at the
+      end of every round. Even the iron-workers cheered him with that fine
+      unselfishness which true sport engenders. To most of them, unspiritual and
+      unimaginative, the sight of this clean-limbed young Apollo, rising above
+      disaster and holding on while consciousness was in him to his appointed
+      task, was the greatest thing their experience had ever known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Master’s naturally morose temper became more and more murderous at
+      this postponement of his hopes. Three rounds ago the battle had been in
+      his hands; now it was all to do over again. Round by round his man was
+      recovering his strength. By the fifteenth he was strong again in wind and
+      limb. But the vigilant Anastasia saw something which encouraged her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That bash in t’ ribs is telling on him, Jock,” she whispered. “Why else
+      should he be gulping t’ brandy? Go in, lad, and thou hast him yet.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had suddenly taken the flask from Barton’s hand, and had a deep
+      pull at the contents. Then, with his face a little flushed, and with a
+      curious look of purpose, which made the referee stare hard at him, in his
+      eyes, he rose for the sixteenth round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Game as a pairtridge!” cried the publican, as he looked at the hard-set
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!” cried the iron-men to their Master. And
+      then a hum of exultation ran through their ranks as they realised that
+      their tougher, harder, stronger man held the vantage, after all. Neither
+      of the men showed much sign of punishment. Small gloves crush and numb,
+      but they do not cut. One of the Master’s eyes was even more flush with his
+      cheek than Nature had made it. Montgomery had two or three livid marks
+      upon his body, and his face was haggard, save for that pink spot which the
+      brandy had brought into either cheek. He rocked a little as he stood
+      opposite his man, and his hands drooped as if he felt the gloves to be an
+      unutterable weight. It was evident that he was spent and desperately
+      weary. If he received one other blow it must surely be fatal to him. If he
+      brought one home, what power could there be behind it, and what chance was
+      there of its harming the colossus in front of him? It was the crisis of
+      the fight. This round must decide it. “Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!” the
+      iron-men whooped. Even the savage eyes of the referee were unable to
+      restrain the excited crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, at last, the chance had come for Montgomery. He had learned a lesson
+      from his more experienced rival. Why should he not play his own game upon
+      him? He was spent, but not nearly so spent as he pretended. That brandy
+      was to call up his reserves, to let him have strength to take full
+      advantage of the opening when it came. It was thrilling and tingling
+      through his veins at the very moment when he was lurching and rocking like
+      a beaten man. He acted his part admirably. The Master felt that there was
+      an easy task before him, and rushed in with ungainly activity to finish it
+      once for all. He slap-banged away left and right, boring Montgomery up
+      against the ropes, swinging in his ferocious blows with those animal
+      grunts which told of the vicious energy behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery was too cool to fall a victim to any of those murderous
+      upper-cuts. He kept out of harm’s way with a rigid guard, an active foot,
+      and a head which was swift to duck. And yet he contrived to present the
+      same appearance of a man who is hopelessly done. The Master, weary from
+      his own shower of blows, and fearing nothing from so weak a man, dropped
+      his hand for an instant, and at that instant Montgomery’s right came home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a magnificent blow, straight, clean, crisp, with the force of the
+      loins and the back behind it. And it landed where he had meant it to&mdash;
+      upon the exact point of that blue-grained chin. Flesh and blood could not
+      stand such a blow in such a place. Neither valour nor hardihood can save
+      the man to whom it comes. The Master fell backwards, flat, prostrate,
+      striking the ground with so simultaneous a clap that it was like a shutter
+      falling from a wall. A yell, which no referee could control, broke from
+      the crowded benches as the giant went down. He lay upon his back, his
+      knees a little drawn up, his huge chest panting. He twitched and shook,
+      but could not move. His feet pawed convulsively once or twice. It was no
+      use. He was done. “Eight&mdash;nine&mdash;ten!” said the timekeeper, and
+      the roar of a thousand voices, with a deafening clap like the broadside
+      of a ship, told that the Master of Croxley was the Master no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery stood half dazed, looking down at the huge, prostrate figure.
+      He could hardly realise that it was indeed all over. He saw the referee
+      motion towards him with his hand. He heard his name bellowed in triumph
+      from every side. And then he was aware of someone rushing towards him; he
+      caught a glimpse of a flushed face and an aureole of flying red hair, a
+      gloveless fist struck him between the eyes, and he was on his back in the
+      ring beside his antagonist, while a dozen of his supporters were
+      endeavouring to secure the frantic Anastasia. He heard the angry shouting
+      of the referee, the screaming of the furious woman, and the cries of the
+      mob. Then something seemed to break like an over-stretched banjo string,
+      and he sank into the deep, deep, mist-girt abyss of unconsciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dressing was like a thing in a dream, and so was a vision of the
+      Master with the grin of a bulldog upon his face, and his three teeth
+      amiably protruded. He shook Montgomery heartily by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I would have been rare pleased to shake thee by the throttle, lad, a
+      short while syne,” said he. “But I bear no ill-feeling again’ thee. It was
+      a rare poonch that brought me down&mdash;I have not had a better since my
+      second fight wi’ Billy Edwards in ’89. Happen thou might think o’ goin’
+      further wi’ this business. If thou dost, and want a trainer, there’s not
+      much inside t’ ropes as I don’t know. Or happen thou might like to try it
+      wi’ me old style and bare knuckles. Thou hast but to write to t’ iron-works
+      to find me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery disclaimed any such ambition. A canvas bag with his share&mdash;190
+      sovereigns&mdash;was handed to him, of which he gave ten to the Master,
+      who also received some share of the gate-money. Then, with young Wilson
+      escorting him on one side, Purvis on the other, and Fawcett carrying his
+      bag behind, he went in triumph to his carriage, and drove amid a long
+      roar, which lined the highway like a hedge for the seven miles, back to
+      his starting-point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s the greatest thing I ever saw in my life. By George, it’s ripping!”
+      cried Wilson, who had been left in a kind of ecstasy by the events of the
+      day. “There’s a chap over Barnsley way who fancies himself a bit. Let us
+      spring you on him, and let him see what he can make of you. We’ll put up a
+      purse&mdash;won’t we, Purvis? You shall never want a backer.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “At his weight,” said the publican, “I’m behind him, I am, for twenty
+      rounds, and no age, country, or colour barred.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So am I,” cried Fawcett; “middle-weight champion of the world, that’s
+      what he is&mdash;here, in the same carriage with us.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery was not to be beguiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No; I have my own work to do now.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And what may that be?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll use this money to get my medical degree.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we’ve plenty of doctors, but you’re the only man in the Riding that
+      could smack the Croxley Master off his legs. However, I suppose you know
+      your own business best. When you’re a doctor, you’d best come down into
+      these parts, and you’ll always find a job waiting for you at the Wilson
+      Coal-pits.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had returned by devious ways to the surgery. The horses were
+      smoking at the door, and the doctor was just back from his long journey.
+      Several patients had called in his absence, and he was in the worst of
+      tempers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I suppose I should be glad that you have come back at all, Mr.
+      Montgomery!” he snarled. “When next you elect to take a holiday, I trust
+      it will not be at so busy a time.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am sorry, sir, that you should have been inconvenienced.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir, I have been exceedingly inconvenienced.” Here, for the first
+      time, he looked hard at the assistant. “Good Heavens, Mr. Montgomery, what
+      have you been doing with your left eye?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was where Anastasia had lodged her protest. Montgomery laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is nothing, sir,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you have a livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that my
+      representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition. How
+      did you receive these injuries?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, sir, as you know, there was a little glove-fight to-day over at
+      Croxley.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you got mixed up with that brutal crowd?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I <i>was</i> rather mixed up with them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And who assaulted you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “One of the fighters.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Which of them?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The Master of Croxley.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good Heavens! Perhaps you interfered with him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, to tell the truth, I did a little.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mr. Montgomery, in such a practice as mine, intimately associated as it
+      is with the highest and most progressive elements of our small community,
+      it is impossible&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just then the tentative bray of a cornet-player searching for his
+      key-note jarred upon their ears, and an instant later the Wilson Colliery
+      brass band was in full cry with, “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” outside
+      the surgery window. There was a banner waving, and a shouting crowd of
+      miners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What is it? What does it mean?” cried the angry doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It means, sir, that I have, in the only way which was open to me, earned
+      the money which is necessary for my education. It is my duty, Dr. Oldacre,
+      to warn you that I am about to return to the University, and that you
+      should lose no time in appointing my successor.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was in the days when the German armies had broken their way across
+      France, and when the shattered forces of the young Republic had been swept
+      away to the north of the Aisne and to the south of the Loire. Three broad
+      streams of armed men had rolled slowly but irresistibly from the Rhine,
+      now meandering to the north, now to the south, dividing, coalescing, but
+      all uniting to form one great lake round Paris. And from this lake there
+      welled out smaller streams&mdash;one to the north, one southward, to
+      Orleans, and a third westward to Normandy. Many a German trooper saw the
+      sea for the first time when he rode his horse girth-deep into the waves at
+      Dieppe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Black and bitter were the thoughts of Frenchmen when they saw this weal of
+      dishonour slashed across the fair face of their country. They had fought
+      and they had been overborne. That swarming cavalry, those countless
+      footmen, the masterful guns&mdash;they had tried and tried to make head
+      against them. In battalions their invaders were not to be beaten, but man
+      to man, or ten to ten, they were their equals. A brave Frenchman might
+      still make a single German rue the day that he had left his own bank of
+      the Rhine. Thus, unchronicled amid the battles and the sieges, there broke
+      out another war, a war of individuals, with foul murder upon the one side
+      and brutal reprisal on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm, of the 24th Posen Infantry, had suffered severely
+      during this new development. He commanded in the little Norman town of Les
+      Andelys, and his outposts stretched amid the hamlets and farmhouses of the
+      district round. No French force was within fifty miles of him, and yet
+      morning after morning he had to listen to a black report of sentries found
+      dead at their posts, or of foraging parties which had never returned. Then
+      the colonel would go forth in his wrath, and farmsteadings would blaze and
+      villages tremble; but next morning there was still that same dismal tale
+      to be told. Do what he might, he could not shake off his invisible
+      enemies. And yet it should not have been so hard, for, from certain signs
+      in common, in the plan and in the deed, it was certain that all these
+      outrages came from a single source.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm had tried violence, and it had failed. Gold might be
+      more successful. He published it abroad over the countryside that 500frs.
+      would be paid for information. There was no response. Then 800frs. The
+      peasants were incorruptible. Then, goaded on by a murdered corporal, he
+      rose to a thousand, and so bought the soul of Francois Rejane, farm
+      labourer, whose Norman avarice was a stronger passion than his French
+      hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You say that you know who did these crimes?” asked the Prussian colonel,
+      eyeing with loathing the blue-bloused, rat-faced creature before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, colonel.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And it was&mdash;?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Those thousand francs, colonel&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not a sou until your story has been tested. Come! Who is it who has
+      murdered my men?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is Count Eustace of Chateau Noir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You lie!” cried the colonel, angrily. “A gentleman and a nobleman could
+      not have done such crimes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasant shrugged his shoulders. “It is evident to me that you do not
+      know the count. It is this way, colonel. What I tell you is the truth, and
+      I am not afraid that you should test it. The Count of Chateau Noir is a
+      hard man, even at the best time he was a hard man. But of late he has been
+      terrible. It was his son’s death, you know. His son was under Douay, and
+      he was taken, and then in escaping from Germany he met his death. It was
+      the count’s only child, and indeed we all think that it has driven him
+      mad. With his peasants he follows the German armies. I do not know how
+      many he has killed, but it is he who cut the cross upon the foreheads, for
+      it is the badge of his house.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true. The murdered sentries had each had a saltire cross slashed
+      across their brows, as by a hunting-knife. The colonel bent his stiff back
+      and ran his forefinger over the map which lay upon the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The Chateau Noir is not more than four leagues,” he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Three and a kilometre, colonel.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You know the place?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I used to work there.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm rang the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Give this man food and detain him,” said he to the sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why detain me, colonel? I can tell you no more.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We shall need you as guide.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “As guide? But the count? If I were to fall into his hands? Ah, colonel&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prussian commander waved him away. “Send Captain Baumgarten to me at
+      once,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer who answered the summons was a man of middle-age, heavy-jawed,
+      blue-eyed, with a curving yellow moustache, and a brick-red face which
+      turned to an ivory white where his helmet had sheltered it. He was bald,
+      with a shining, tightly stretched scalp, at the back of which, as in a
+      mirror, it was a favourite mess-joke of the subalterns to trim their
+      moustaches. As a soldier he was slow, but reliable and brave. The colonel
+      could trust him where a more dashing officer might be in danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You will proceed to Chateau Noir to-night, captain,” said he. “A guide
+      has been provided. You will arrest the count and bring him back. If there
+      is an attempt at rescue, shoot him at once.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How many men shall I take, colonel?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we are surrounded by spies, and our only chance is to pounce upon
+      him before he knows that we are on the way. A large force will attract
+      attention. On the other hand, you must not risk being cut off.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I might march north, colonel, as if to join General Goeben. Then I could
+      turn down this road which I see upon your map, and get to Chateau Noir
+      before they could hear of us. In that case, with twenty men&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very good, captain. I hope to see you with your prisoner to-morrow
+      morning.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold December night when Captain Baumgarten marched out of Les
+      Andelys with his twenty Poseners, and took the main road to the north
+      west. Two miles out he turned suddenly down a narrow, deeply rutted track,
+      and made swiftly for his man. A thin, cold rain was falling, swishing
+      among the tall poplar trees and rustling in the fields on either side. The
+      captain walked first with Moser, a veteran sergeant, beside him. The
+      sergeant’s wrist was fastened to that of the French peasant, and it had
+      been whispered in his ear that in case of an ambush the first bullet fired
+      would be through his head. Behind them the twenty infantrymen plodded
+      along through the darkness with their faces sunk to the rain, and their
+      boots squeaking in the soft, wet clay. They knew where they were going,
+      and why, and the thought upheld them, for they were bitter at the loss of
+      their comrades. It was a cavalry job, they knew, but the cavalry were all
+      on with the advance, and, besides, it was more fitting that the regiment
+      should avenge its own dead men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly eight when they left Les Andelys. At half-past eleven their
+      guide stopped at a place where two high pillars, crowned with some
+      heraldic stonework, flanked a huge iron gate. The wall in which it had
+      been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered above
+      the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base. The Prussians made
+      their way round it and advanced stealthily, under the shadow of a tunnel
+      of oak branches, up the long avenue, which was still cumbered by the
+      leaves of last autumn. At the top they halted and reconnoitred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The black chateau lay in front of them. The moon had shone out between two
+      rain-clouds, and threw the old house into silver and shadow. It was shaped
+      like an L, with a low arched door in front, and lines of small windows
+      like the open ports of a man-of-war. Above was a dark roof, breaking at
+      the corners into little round overhanging turrets, the whole lying silent
+      in the moonshine, with a drift of ragged clouds blackening the heavens
+      behind it. A single light gleamed in one of the lower windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain whispered his orders to his men. Some were to creep to the
+      front door, some to the back. Some were to watch the east, and some the
+      west. He and the sergeant stole on tiptoe to the lighted window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a small room into which they looked, very meanly furnished. An
+      elderly man, in the dress of a menial, was reading a tattered paper by the
+      light of a guttering candle. He leaned back in his wooden chair with his
+      feet upon a box, while a bottle of white wine stood with a half-filled
+      tumbler upon a stool beside him. The sergeant thrust his needle-gun
+      through the glass, and the man sprang to his feet with a shriek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Silence, for your life! The house is surrounded, and you cannot escape.
+      Come round and open the door, or we will show you no mercy when we come
+      in.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For God’s sake, don’t shoot! I will open it! I will open it!” He rushed
+      from the room with his paper still crumpled up in his hand. An instant
+      later, with a groaning of old locks and a rasping of bars, the low door
+      swung open, and the Prussians poured into the stone-flagged passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where is Count Eustace de Chateau Noir?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My master! He is out, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Out at this time of night? Your life for a lie!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is true, sir. He is out!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I do not know.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Doing what?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I cannot tell. No, it is no use your cocking your pistol, sir. You may
+      kill me, but you cannot make me tell you that which I do not know.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Is he often out at this hour?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Frequently.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And when does he come home?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Before daybreak.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten rasped out a German oath. He had had his journey for
+      nothing, then. The man’s answers were only too likely to be true. It was
+      what he might have expected. But at least he would search the house and
+      make sure. Leaving a picket at the front door and another at the back, the
+      sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of them&mdash;his
+      shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the old tapestries
+      and the low, oak-raftered ceilings. They searched the whole house, from
+      the huge stone-flagged kitchen below to the dining-hall on the second
+      floor, with its gallery for musicians, and its panelling black with age,
+      but nowhere was there a living creature. Up above, in an attic, they found
+      Marie, the elderly wife of the butler; but the owner kept no other
+      servants, and of his own presence there was no trace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was long, however, before Captain Baumgarten had satisfied himself upon
+      the point. It was a difficult house to search. Thin stairs, which only one
+      man could ascend at a time, connected lines of tortuous corridors. The
+      walls were so thick that each room was cut off from its neighbour. Huge
+      fireplaces yawned in each, while the windows were 6ft. deep in the wall.
+      Captain Baumgarten stamped with his feet, tore down curtains, and struck
+      with the pommel of his sword. If there were secret hiding-places, he was
+      not fortunate enough to find them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have an idea,” said he, at last, speaking in German to the sergeant.
+      “You will place a guard over this fellow, and make sure that he
+      communicates with no one.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, captain.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you will place four men in ambush at the front and at the back. It is
+      likely enough that about daybreak our bird may return to the nest.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And the others, captain?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Let them have their suppers in the kitchen. The fellow will serve you
+      with meat and wine. It is a wild night, and we shall be better here than
+      on the country road.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And yourself, captain?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I will take my supper up here in the dining-hall. The logs are laid and
+      we can light the fire. You will call me if there is any alarm. What can
+      you give me for supper&mdash;you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Alas, monsieur, there was a time when I might have answered, ‘What you
+      wish!’ but now it is all that we can do to find a bottle of new claret and
+      a cold pullet.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That will do very well. Let a guard go about with him, sergeant, and let
+      him feel the end of a bayonet if he plays us any tricks.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten was an old campaigner. In the Eastern provinces, and
+      before that in Bohemia, he had learned the art of quartering himself upon
+      the enemy. While the butler brought his supper he occupied himself in
+      making his preparations for a comfortable night. He lit the candelabrum of
+      ten candles upon the centre table. The fire was already burning up,
+      crackling merrily, and sending spurts of blue, pungent smoke into the
+      room. The captain walked to the window and looked out. The moon had gone
+      in again, and it was raining heavily. He could hear the deep sough of the
+      wind, and see the dark loom of the trees, all swaying in the one
+      direction. It was a sight which gave a zest to his comfortable quarters,
+      and to the cold fowl and the bottle of wine which the butler had brought
+      up for him. He was tired and hungry after his long tramp, so he threw his
+      sword, his helmet, and his revolver-belt down upon a chair, and fell to
+      eagerly upon his supper. Then, with his glass of wine before him and his
+      cigar between his lips, he tilted his chair back and looked about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat within a small circle of brilliant light which gleamed upon his
+      silver shoulder-straps, and threw out his terra-cotta face, his heavy
+      eyebrows, and his yellow moustache. But outside that circle things were
+      vague and shadowy in the old dining-hall. Two sides were oak-panelled and
+      two were hung with faded tapestry, across which huntsmen and dogs and
+      stags were still dimly streaming. Above the fireplace were rows of
+      heraldic shields with the blazonings of the family and of its alliances,
+      the fatal saltire cross breaking out on each of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four paintings of old seigneurs of Chateau Noir faced the fireplace, all
+      men with hawk noses and bold, high features, so like each other that only
+      the dress could distinguish the Crusader from the Cavalier of the Fronde.
+      Captain Baumgarten, heavy with his repast, lay back in his chair looking
+      up at them through the clouds of his tobacco smoke, and pondering over the
+      strange chance which had sent him, a man from the Baltic coast, to eat his
+      supper in the ancestral hall of these proud Norman chieftains. But the
+      fire was hot, and the captain’s eyes were heavy. His chin sank slowly upon
+      his chest, and the ten candles gleamed upon the broad, white scalp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a slight noise brought him to his feet. For an instant it seemed
+      to his dazed senses that one of the pictures opposite had walked from its
+      frame. There, beside the table, and almost within arm’s length of him, was
+      standing a huge man, silent, motionless, with no sign of life save his
+      fierce-glinting eyes. He was black-haired, olive-skinned, with a pointed
+      tuft of black beard, and a great, fierce nose, towards which all his
+      features seemed to run. His cheeks were wrinkled like a last year’s apple,
+      but his sweep of shoulder, and bony, corded hands, told of a strength
+      which was unsapped by age. His arms were folded across his arching chest,
+      and his mouth was set in a fixed smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Pray do not trouble yourself to look for your weapons,” he said, as the
+      Prussian cast a swift glance at the empty chair in which they had been
+      laid. “You have been, if you will allow me to say so, a little indiscreet
+      to make yourself so much at home in a house every wall of which is
+      honeycombed with secret passages. You will be amused to hear that forty
+      men were watching you at your supper. Ah! what then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten had taken a step forward with clenched fists. The
+      Frenchman held up the revolver which he grasped in his right hand, while
+      with the left he hurled the German back into his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Pray keep your seat,” said he. “You have no cause to trouble about your
+      men. They have already been provided for. It is astonishing with these
+      stone floors how little one can hear what goes on beneath. You have been
+      relieved of your command, and have now only to think of yourself. May I
+      ask what your name is?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am Captain Baumgarten of the 24th Posen Regiment.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Your French is excellent, though you incline, like most of your
+      countrymen, to turn the ‘p’ into a ‘b.’ I have been amused to hear them
+      cry ‘<i>Avez bitie sur moi!</i>’ You know, doubtless, who it is who
+      addresses you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The Count of Chateau Noir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Precisely. It would have been a misfortune if you had visited my chateau
+      and I had been unable to have a word with you. I have had to do with many
+      German soldiers, but never with an officer before. I have much to talk to
+      you about.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten sat still in his chair. Brave as he was, there was
+      something in this man’s manner which made his skin creep with
+      apprehension. His eyes glanced to right and to left, but his weapons were
+      gone, and in a struggle he saw that he was but a child to this gigantic
+      adversary. The count had picked up the claret bottle and held it to the
+      light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Tut! tut!” said he. “And was this the best that Pierre could do for you?
+      I am ashamed to look you in the face, Captain Baumgarten. We must improve
+      upon this.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He blew a call upon a whistle which hung from his shooting-jacket. The old
+      manservant was in the room in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Chambertin from bin 15!” he cried, and a minute later a grey bottle,
+      streaked with cobwebs, was carried in as a nurse bears an infant. The
+      count filled two glasses to the brim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Drink!” said he. “It is the very best in my cellars, and not to be
+      matched between Rouen and Paris. Drink, sir, and be happy! There are cold
+      joints below. There are two lobsters, fresh from Honfleur. Will you not
+      venture upon a second and more savoury supper?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German officer shook his head. He drained the glass, however, and his
+      host filled it once more, pressing him to give an order for this or that
+      dainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There is nothing in my house which is not at your disposal. You have but
+      to say the word. Well, then, you will allow me to tell you a story while
+      you drink your wine. I have so longed to tell it to some German officer.
+      It is about my son, my only child, Eustace, who was taken and died in
+      escaping. It is a curious little story, and I think that I can promise you
+      that you will never forget it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You must know, then, that my boy was in the artillery&mdash;a fine young
+      fellow, Captain Baumgarten, and the pride of his mother. She died within a
+      week of the news of his death reaching us. It was brought by a brother
+      officer who was at his side throughout, and who escaped while my lad died.
+      I want to tell you all that he told me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Eustace was taken at Weissenburg on the 4th of August. The prisoners were
+      broken up into parties, and sent back into Germany by different routes.
+      Eustace was taken upon the 5th to a village called Lauterburg, where he
+      met with kindness from the German officer in command. This good colonel
+      had the hungry lad to supper, offered him the best he had, opened a bottle
+      of good wine, as I have tried to do for you, and gave him a cigar from his
+      own case. Might I entreat you to take one from mine?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German again shook his head. His horror of his companion had increased
+      as he sat watching the lips that smiled and the eyes that glared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The colonel, as I say, was good to my boy. But, unluckily, the prisoners
+      were moved next day across the Rhine into Ettlingen. They were not equally
+      fortunate there. The officer who guarded them was a ruffian and a villain,
+      Captain Baumgarten. He took a pleasure in humiliating and ill-treating the
+      brave men who had fallen into his power. That night, upon my son answering
+      fiercely back to some taunt of his, he struck him in the eye, like this!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crash of the blow rang through the hall. The German’s face fell
+      forward, his hand up, and blood oozing through his fingers. The count
+      settled down in his chair once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My boy was disfigured by the blow, and this villain made his appearance
+      the object of his jeers. By the way, you look a little comical yourself at
+      the present moment, captain, and your colonel would certainly say that you
+      had been getting into mischief. To continue, however, my boy’s youth and
+      his destitution&mdash;for his pockets were empty&mdash;moved the pity of a
+      kind-hearted major, and he advanced him ten Napoleons from his own pocket
+      without security of any kind. Into your hands, Captain Baumgarten, I
+      return these ten gold pieces, since I cannot learn the name of the lender.
+      I am grateful from my heart for this kindness shown to my boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The vile tyrant who commanded the escort accompanied the prisoners to
+      Durlack, and from there to Carlsruhe. He heaped every outrage upon my lad,
+      because the spirit of the Chateau Noirs would not stoop to turn away his
+      wrath by a feigned submission. Ay, this cowardly villain, whose heart’s
+      blood shall yet clot upon this hand, dared to strike my son with his open
+      hand, to kick him, to tear hairs from his moustache&mdash; to use him thus&mdash;and
+      thus&mdash;and thus!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German writhed and struggled. He was helpless in the hands of this
+      huge giant whose blows were raining upon him. When at last, blinded and
+      half-senseless, he staggered to his feet, it was only to be hurled back
+      again into the great oaken chair. He sobbed in his impotent anger and
+      shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My boy was frequently moved to tears by the humiliation of his position,”
+      continued the count. “You will understand me when I say that it is a
+      bitter thing to be helpless in the hands of an insolent and remorseless
+      enemy. On arriving at Carlsruhe, however, his face, which had been wounded
+      by the brutality of his guard, was bound up by a young Bavarian subaltern
+      who was touched by his appearance. I regret to see that your eye is
+      bleeding so. Will you permit me to bind it with my silk handkerchief?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned forward, but the German dashed his hand aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am in your power, you monster!” he cried; “I can endure your
+      brutalities, but not your hypocrisy.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The count shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am taking things in their order, just as they occurred,” said he. “I
+      was under vow to tell it to the first German officer with whom I could
+      talk <i>tete-a-tete</i>. Let me see, I had got as far as the young
+      Bavarian at Carlsruhe. I regret extremely that you will not permit me to
+      use such slight skill in surgery as I possess. At Carlsruhe, my lad was
+      shut up in the old caserne, where he remained for a fortnight. The worst
+      pang of his captivity was that some unmannerly curs in the garrison would
+      taunt him with his position as he sat by his window in the evening. That
+      reminds me, captain, that you are not quite situated upon a bed of roses
+      yourself, are you now? You came to trap a wolf, my man, and now the beast
+      has you down with his fangs in your throat. A family man, too, I should
+      judge, by that well-filled tunic. Well, a widow the more will make little
+      matter, and they do not usually remain widows long. Get back into the
+      chair, you dog!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, to continue my story&mdash;at the end of a fortnight my son and his
+      friend escaped. I need not trouble you with the dangers which they ran, or
+      with the privations which they endured. Suffice it that to disguise
+      themselves they had to take the clothes of two peasants, whom they waylaid
+      in a wood. Hiding by day and travelling by night, they had got as far into
+      France as Remilly, and were within a mile&mdash;a single mile, captain&mdash;of
+      crossing the German lines when a patrol of Uhlans came right upon them.
+      Ah! it was hard, was it not, when they had come so far and were so near to
+      safety?” The count blew a double call upon his whistle, and three
+      hard-faced peasants entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “These must represent my Uhlans,” said he. “Well, then, the captain in
+      command, finding that these men were French soldiers in civilian dress
+      within the German lines, proceeded to hang them without trial or ceremony.
+      I think, Jean, that the centre beam is the strongest.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unfortunate soldier was dragged from his chair to where a noosed rope
+      had been flung over one of the huge oaken rafters which spanned the room.
+      The cord was slipped over his head, and he felt its harsh grip round his
+      throat. The three peasants seized the other end, and looked to the count
+      for his orders. The officer, pale, but firm, folded his arms and stared
+      defiantly at the man who tortured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are now face to face with death, and I perceive from your lips that
+      you are praying. My son was also face to face with death, and he prayed,
+      also. It happened that a general officer came up, and he heard the lad
+      praying for his mother, and it moved him so&mdash;he being himself a
+      father&mdash;that he ordered his Uhlans away, and he remained with his
+      aide-de-camp only, beside the condemned men. And when he heard all the lad
+      had to tell&mdash;that he was the only child of an old family, and that
+      his mother was in failing health&mdash;he threw off the rope as I throw
+      off this, and he kissed him on either cheek, as I kiss you, and he bade
+      him go, as I bid you go, and may every kind wish of that noble general,
+      though it could not stave off the fever which slew my son, descend now
+      upon your head.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was that Captain Baumgarten, disfigured, blinded, and bleeding,
+      staggered out into the wind and the rain of that wild December dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE STRIPED CHEST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      “What do you make of her, Allardyce?” I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My second mate was standing beside me upon the poop, with his short, thick
+      legs astretch, for the gale had left a considerable swell behind it, and
+      our two quarter-boats nearly touched the water with every roll. He
+      steadied his glass against the mizzen-shrouds, and he looked long and hard
+      at this disconsolate stranger every time she came reeling up on to the
+      crest of a roller and hung balanced for a few seconds before swooping down
+      upon the other side. She lay so low in the water that I could only catch
+      an occasional glimpse of a pea-green line of bulwark. She was a brig, but
+      her mainmast had been snapped short off some 10ft. above the deck, and no
+      effort seemed to have been made to cut away the wreckage, which floated,
+      sails and yards, like the broken wing of a wounded gull upon the water
+      beside her. The foremast was still standing, but the foretopsail was
+      flying loose, and the headsails were streaming out in long, white pennons
+      in front of her. Never have I seen a vessel which appeared to have gone
+      through rougher handling. But we could not be surprised at that, for there
+      had been times during the last three days when it was a question whether
+      our own barque would ever see land again. For thirty-six hours we had kept
+      her nose to it, and if the <i>Mary Sinclair</i> had not been as good a
+      seaboat as ever left the Clyde, we could not have gone through. And yet
+      here we were at the end of it with the loss only of our gig and of part of
+      the starboard bulwark. It did not astonish us, however, when the smother
+      had cleared away, to find that others had been less lucky, and that this
+      mutilated brig staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky,
+      had been left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the
+      terror which is past. Allardyce, who was a slow and methodical Scotchman,
+      stared long and hard at the little craft, while our seamen lined the
+      bulwark or clustered upon the fore shrouds to have a view of the stranger.
+      In latitude 20 degrees and longitude 10 degrees, which were about our
+      bearings, one becomes a little curious as to whom one meets, for one has
+      left the main lines of Atlantic commerce to the north. For ten days we had
+      been sailing over a solitary sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “She’s derelict, I’m thinking,” said the second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had come to the same conclusion, for I could see no signs of life upon
+      her deck, and there was no answer to the friendly wavings from our seamen.
+      The crew had probably deserted her under the impression that she was about
+      to founder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “She can’t last long,” continued Allardyce, in his measured way. “She may
+      put her nose down and her tail up any minute. The water’s lipping up to
+      the edge of her rail.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What’s her flag?” I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m trying to make out. It’s got all twisted and tangled with the
+      halyards. Yes, I’ve got it now, clear enough. It’s the Brazilian flag, but
+      it’s wrong side up.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had hoisted a signal of distress, then, before her people had
+      abandoned her. Perhaps they had only just gone. I took the mate’s glass
+      and looked round over the tumultuous face of the deep blue Atlantic, still
+      veined and starred with white lines and spoutings of foam. But nowhere
+      could I see anything human beyond ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There may be living men aboard,” said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There may be salvage,” muttered the second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then we will run down upon her lee side, and lie to.” We were not more
+      than a hundred yards from her when we swung our foreyard aback, and there
+      we were, the barque and the brig, ducking and bowing like two clowns in a
+      dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Drop one of the quarter-boats,” said I. “Take four men, Mr. Allardyce,
+      and see what you can learn of her.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just at that moment my first officer, Mr. Armstrong, came on deck, for
+      seven bells had struck, and it was but a few minutes off his watch. It
+      would interest me to go myself to this abandoned vessel and to see what
+      there might be aboard of her. So, with a word to Armstrong, I swung myself
+      over the side, slipped down the falls, and took my place in the sheets of
+      the boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was but a little distance, but it took some time to traverse, and so
+      heavy was the roll that often when we were in the trough of the sea, we
+      could not see either the barque which we had left or the brig which we
+      were approaching. The sinking sun did not penetrate down there, and it was
+      cold and dark in the hollows of the waves, but each passing billow heaved
+      us up into the warmth and the sunshine once more. At each of these
+      moments, as we hung upon a white-capped ridge between the two dark
+      valleys, I caught a glimpse of the long, pea-green line, and the nodding
+      foremast of the brig, and I steered so as to come round by her stern, so
+      that we might determine which was the best way of boarding her. As we
+      passed her we saw the name <i>Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria</i> painted across
+      her dripping counter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The weather side, sir,” said the second mate. “Stand by with the
+      boat-hook, carpenter!” An instant later we had jumped over the bulwarks,
+      which were hardly higher than our boat, and found ourselves upon the deck
+      of the abandoned vessel. Our first thought was to provide for our own
+      safety in case&mdash;as seemed very probable&mdash;the vessel should
+      settle down beneath our feet. With this object two of our men held on to
+      the painter of the boat, and fended her off from the vessel’s side, so
+      that she might be ready in case we had to make a hurried retreat. The
+      carpenter was sent to find out how much water there was, and whether it
+      was still gaming, while the other seaman, Allardyce and myself, made a
+      rapid inspection of the vessel and her cargo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deck was littered with wreckage and with hen-coops, in which the dead
+      birds were washing about. The boats were gone, with the exception of one,
+      the bottom of which had been stove, and it was certain that the crew had
+      abandoned the vessel. The cabin was in a deck-house, one side of which had
+      been beaten in by a heavy sea. Allardyce and I entered it, and found the
+      captain’s table as he had left it, his books and papers&mdash; all Spanish
+      or Portuguese&mdash;scattered over it, with piles of cigarette ash
+      everywhere. I looked about for the log, but could not find it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “As likely as not he never kept one,” said Allardyce. “Things are pretty
+      slack aboard a South American trader, and they don’t do more than they can
+      help. If there was one it must have been taken away with him in the boat.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should like to take all these books and papers,” said I. “Ask the
+      carpenter how much time we have.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His report was reassuring. The vessel was full of water, but some of the
+      cargo was buoyant, and there was no immediate danger of her sinking.
+      Probably she would never sink, but would drift about as one of those
+      terrible unmarked reefs which have sent so many stout vessels to the
+      bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In that case there is no danger in your going below, Mr. Allardyce,” said
+      I. “See what you can make of her and find out how much of her cargo may be
+      saved. I’ll look through these papers while you are gone.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bills of lading, and some notes and letters which lay upon the desk,
+      sufficed to inform me that the Brazilian brig <i>Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria</i>
+      had cleared from Bahia a month before. The name of the captain was
+      Texeira, but there was no record as to the number of the crew. She was
+      bound for London, and a glance at the bills of lading was sufficient to
+      show me that we were not likely to profit much in the way of salvage. Her
+      cargo consisted of nuts, ginger, and wood, the latter in the shape of
+      great logs of valuable tropical growths. It was these, no doubt, which had
+      prevented the ill-fated vessel from going to the bottom, but they were of
+      such a size as to make it impossible for us to extract them. Besides
+      these, there were a few fancy goods, such as a number of ornamental birds
+      for millinery purposes, and a hundred cases of preserved fruits. And then,
+      as I turned over the papers, I came upon a short note in English, which
+      arrested my attention.
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   It is requested (said the note) that the various old Spanish
+   and Indian curiosities, which came out of the Santarem
+   collection, and which are consigned to Prontfoot &amp; Neuman
+   of Oxford Street, London, should be put in some place where
+   there may be no danger of these very valuable and unique articles
+   being injured or tampered with.  This applies most particularly
+   to the treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, which must on
+   no account be placed where anyone can get at it.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez! Unique and valuable articles! Here was
+      a chance of salvage after all. I had risen to my feet with the paper in my
+      hand when my Scotch mate appeared in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m thinking all isn’t quite as it should be aboard of this ship, sir,”
+      said he. He was a hard-faced man, and yet I could see that he had been
+      startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What’s the matter?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Murder’s the matter, sir. There’s a man here with his brains beaten out.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Killed in the storm?” said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “May be so, sir, but I’ll be surprised if you think so after you have seen
+      him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where is he, then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This way, sir; here in the maindeck house.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There appeared to have been no accommodation below in the brig, for there
+      was the after-house for the captain, another by the main hatchway, with
+      the cook’s galley attached to it, and a third in the forecastle for the
+      men. It was to this middle one that the mate led me. As you entered, the
+      galley, with its litter of tumbled pots and dishes, was upon the right,
+      and upon the left was a small room with two bunks for the officers. Then
+      beyond there was a place about 12ft. square, which was littered with flags
+      and spare canvas. All round the walls were a number of packets done up in
+      coarse cloth and carefully lashed to the woodwork. At the other end was a
+      great box, striped red and white, though the red was so faded and the
+      white so dirty that it was only where the light fell directly upon it that
+      one could see the colouring. The box was, by subsequent measurement, 4ft.
+      3ins. in length, 3ft. 2ins. in height, and 3ft. across&mdash;considerably
+      larger than a seaman’s chest. But it was not to the box that my eyes or my
+      thoughts were turned as I entered the store-room. On the floor, lying
+      across the litter of bunting, there was stretched a small, dark man with a
+      short, curling beard. He lay as far as it was possible from the box, with
+      his feet towards it and his head away. A crimson patch was printed upon
+      the white canvas on which his head was resting, and little red ribbons
+      wreathed themselves round his swarthy neck and trailed away on to the
+      floor, but there was no sign of a wound that I could see, and his face was
+      as placid as that of a sleeping child. It was only when I stooped that I
+      could perceive his injury, and then I turned away with an exclamation of
+      horror. He had been pole-axed; apparently by some person standing behind
+      him. A frightful blow had smashed in the top of his head and penetrated
+      deeply into his brains. His face might well be placid, for death must have
+      been absolutely instantaneous, and the position of the wound showed that
+      he could never have seen the person who had inflicted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Is that foul play or accident, Captain Barclay?” asked my second mate,
+      demurely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are quite right, Mr. Allardyce. The man has been murdered&mdash;struck
+      down from above by a sharp and heavy weapon. But who was he, and why did
+      they murder him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He was a common seaman, sir,” said the mate. “You can see that if you
+      look at his fingers.” He turned out his pockets as he spoke and brought to
+      light a pack of cards, some tarred string, and a bundle of Brazilian
+      tobacco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hello, look at this!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a large, open knife with a stiff spring blade which he had picked
+      up from the floor. The steel was shining and bright, so that we could not
+      associate it with the crime, and yet the dead man had apparently held it
+      in his hand when he was struck down, for it still lay within his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It looks to me, sir, as if he knew he was in danger and kept his knife
+      handy,” said the mate. “However, we can’t help the poor beggar now. I
+      can’t make out these things that are lashed to the wall. They seem to be
+      idols and weapons and curios of all sorts done up in old sacking.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s right,” said I. “They are the only things of value that we are
+      likely to get from the cargo. Hail the barque and tell them to send the
+      other quarter-boat to help us to get the stuff aboard.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was away I examined this curious plunder which had come into our
+      possession. The curiosities were so wrapped up that I could only form a
+      general idea as to their nature, but the striped box stood in a good light
+      where I could thoroughly examine it. On the lid, which was clamped and
+      cornered with metal-work, there was engraved a complex coat of arms, and
+      beneath it was a line of Spanish which I was able to decipher as meaning,
+      “The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, Knight of the Order of Saint
+      James, Governor and Captain-General of Terra Firma and of the Province of
+      Veraquas.” In one corner was the date, 1606, and on the other a large
+      white label, upon which was written in English, “You are earnestly
+      requested, upon no account, to open this box.” The same warning was
+      repeated underneath in Spanish. As to the lock, it was a very complex and
+      heavy one of engraved steel, with a Latin motto, which was above a
+      seaman’s comprehension. By the time I had finished this examination of the
+      peculiar box, the other quarter-boat with Mr. Armstrong, the first
+      officer, had come alongside, and we began to carry out and place in her
+      the various curiosities which appeared to be the only objects worth moving
+      from the derelict ship. When she was full I sent her back to the barque,
+      and then Allardyce and I, with the carpenter and one seaman, shifted the
+      striped box, which was the only thing left, to our boat, and lowered it
+      over, balancing it upon the two middle thwarts, for it was so heavy that
+      it would have given the boat a dangerous tilt had we placed it at either
+      end. As to the dead man, we left him where we had found him. The mate had
+      a theory that, at the moment of the desertion of the ship, this fellow had
+      started plundering, and that the captain, in an attempt to preserve
+      discipline, had struck him down with a hatchet or some other heavy weapon.
+      It seemed more probable than any other explanation, and yet it did not
+      entirely satisfy me either. But the ocean is full of mysteries, and we
+      were content to leave the fate of the dead seaman of the Brazilian brig to
+      be added to that long list which every sailor can recall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavy box was slung up by ropes on to the deck of the <i>Mary Sinclair</i>,
+      and was carried by four seamen into the cabin, where, between the table
+      and the after-lockers, there was just space for it to stand. There it
+      remained during supper, and after that meal the mates remained with me,
+      and discussed over a glass of grog the event of the day. Mr. Armstrong was
+      a long, thin, vulture-like man, an excellent seaman, but famous for his
+      nearness and cupidity. Our treasure-trove had excited him greatly, and
+      already he had begun with glistening eyes to reckon up how much it might
+      be worth to each of us when the shares of the salvage came to be divided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If the paper said that they were unique, Mr. Barclay, then they may be
+      worth anything that you like to name. You wouldn’t believe the sums that
+      the rich collectors give. A thousand pounds is nothing to them. We’ll have
+      something to show for our voyage, or I am mistaken.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I don’t think that,” said I. “As far as I can see, they are not very
+      different from any other South American curios.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, sir, I’ve traded there for fourteen voyages, and I have never seen
+      anything like that chest before. That’s worth a pile of money, just as it
+      stands. But it’s so heavy that surely there must be something valuable
+      inside it. Don’t you think that we ought to open it and see?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If you break it open you will spoil it, as likely as not,” said the
+      second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armstrong squatted down in front of it, with his head on one side, and his
+      long, thin nose within a few inches of the lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The wood is oak,” said he, “and it has shrunk a little with age. If I had
+      a chisel or a strong-bladed knife I could force the lock back without
+      doing any damage at all.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mention of a strong-bladed knife made me think of the dead seaman upon
+      the brig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I wonder if he could have been on the job when someone came to interfere
+      with him,” said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I don’t know about that, sir, but I am perfectly certain that I could
+      open the box. There’s a screwdriver here in the locker. Just hold the
+      lamp, Allardyce, and I’ll have it done in a brace of shakes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Wait a bit,” said I, for already, with eyes which gleamed with curiosity
+      and with avarice, he was stooping over the lid. “I don’t see that there is
+      any hurry over this matter. You’ve read that card which warns us not to
+      open it. It may mean anything or it may mean nothing, but somehow I feel
+      inclined to obey it. After all, whatever is in it will keep, and if it is
+      valuable it will be worth as much if it is opened in the owner’s offices
+      as in the cabin of the <i>Mary Sinclair</i>.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first officer seemed bitterly disappointed at my decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Surely, sir, you are not superstitious about it,” said he, with a slight
+      sneer upon his thin lips. “If it gets out of our own hands, and we don’t
+      see for ourselves what is inside it, we may be done out of our rights;
+      besides&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s enough, Mr. Armstrong,” said I, abruptly. “You may have every
+      confidence that you will get your rights, but I will not have that box
+      opened to-night.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, the label itself shows that the box has been examined by Europeans,”
+      Allardyce added. “Because a box is a treasure-box is no reason that it has
+      treasures inside it now. A good many folk have had a peep into it since
+      the days of the old Governor of Terra Firma.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armstrong threw the screwdriver down upon the table and shrugged his
+      shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Just as you like,” said he; but for the rest of the evening, although we
+      spoke upon many subjects, I noticed that his eyes were continually coming
+      round, with the same expression of curiosity and greed, to the old striped
+      box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now I come to that portion of my story which fills me even now with a
+      shuddering horror when I think of it. The main cabin had the rooms of the
+      officers round it, but mine was the farthest away from it at the end of
+      the little passage which led to the companion. No regular watch was kept
+      by me, except in cases of emergency, and the three mates divided the
+      watches among them. Armstrong had the middle watch, which ends at four in
+      the morning, and he was relieved by Allardyce. For my part I have always
+      been one of the soundest of sleepers, and it is rare for anything less
+      than a hand upon my shoulder to arouse me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet I was aroused that night, or rather in the early grey of the
+      morning. It was just half-past four by my chronometer when something
+      caused me to sit up in my berth wide awake and with every nerve tingling.
+      It was a sound of some sort, a crash with a human cry at the end of it,
+      which still jarred on my ears. I sat listening, but all was now silent.
+      And yet it could not have been imagination, that hideous cry, for the echo
+      of it still rang in my head, and it seemed to have come from some place
+      quite close to me. I sprang from my bunk, and, pulling on some clothes, I
+      made my way into the cabin. At first I saw nothing unusual there. In the
+      cold, grey light I made out the red-clothed table, the six rotating
+      chairs, the walnut lockers, the swinging barometer, and there, at the end,
+      the big striped chest. I was turning away, with the intention of going
+      upon deck and asking the second mate if he had heard anything, when my
+      eyes fell suddenly upon something which projected from under the table. It
+      was the leg of a man&mdash;a leg with a long sea-boot upon it. I stooped,
+      and there was a figure sprawling upon his face, his arms thrown forward
+      and his body twisted. One glance told me that it was Armstrong, the first
+      officer, and a second that he was a dead man. For a few moments I stood
+      gasping. Then I rushed on to the deck, called Allardyce to my assistance,
+      and came back with him into the cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together we pulled the unfortunate fellow from under the table, and as we
+      looked at his dripping head we exchanged glances, and I do not know which
+      was the paler of the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The same as the Spanish sailor,” said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The very same. God preserve us! It’s that infernal chest! Look at
+      Armstrong’s hand!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He held up the mate’s right hand, and there was the screwdriver which he
+      had wished to use the night before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He’s been at the chest, sir. He knew that I was on deck and you were
+      asleep. He knelt down in front of it, and he pushed the lock back with
+      that tool. Then something happened to him, and he cried out so that you
+      heard him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Allardyce,” I whispered, “what <i>could</i> have happened to him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second mate put his hand upon my sleeve and drew me into his cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We can talk here, sir, and we don’t know who may be listening to us in
+      there. What do you suppose is in that box, Captain Barclay?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I give you my word, Allardyce, that I have no idea.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I can only find one theory which will fit all the facts. Look at
+      the size of the box. Look at all the carving and metal-work which may
+      conceal any number of holes. Look at the weight of it; it took four men to
+      carry it. On top of that, remember that two men have tried to open it, and
+      both have come to their end through it. Now, sir, what can it mean except
+      one thing?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You mean there is a man in it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Of course there is a man in it. You know how it is in these South
+      American States, sir. A man may be president one week and hunted like a
+      dog the next&mdash;they are for ever flying for their lives. My idea is
+      that there is some fellow in hiding there, who is armed and desperate, and
+      who will fight to the death before he is taken.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But his food and drink?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s a roomy chest, sir, and he may have some provisions stowed away. As
+      to his drink, he had a friend among the crew upon the brig who saw that he
+      had what he needed.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You think, then, that the label asking people not to open the box was
+      simply written in his interest?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir, that is my idea. Have you any other way of explaining the
+      facts?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had to confess that I had not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The question is what we are to do?” I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The man’s a dangerous ruffian, who sticks at nothing. I’m thinking it
+      wouldn’t be a bad thing to put a rope round the chest and tow it alongside
+      for half an hour; then we could open it at our ease. Or if we just tied
+      the box up and kept him from getting any water maybe that would do as
+      well. Or the carpenter could put a coat of varnish over it and stop all
+      the blow-holes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Come, Allardyce,” said I, angrily. “You don’t seriously mean to say that
+      a whole ship’s company are going to be terrorised by a single man in a
+      box. If he’s there, I’ll engage to fetch him out!” I went to my room and
+      came back with my revolver in my hand. “Now, Allardyce,” said I, “do you
+      open the lock, and I’ll stand on guard.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For God’s sake, think what you are doing, sir!” cried the mate. “Two men
+      have lost their lives over it, and the blood of one not yet dry upon the
+      carpet.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The more reason why we should revenge him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, sir, at least let me call the carpenter. Three are better than two,
+      and he is a good stout man.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went off in search of him, and I was left alone with the striped chest
+      in the cabin. I don’t think that I’m a nervous man, but I kept the table
+      between me and this solid old relic of the Spanish Main. In the growing
+      light of morning the red and white striping was beginning to appear, and
+      the curious scrolls and wreaths of metal and carving which showed the
+      loving pains which cunning craftsmen had expended upon it. Presently the
+      carpenter and the mate came back together, the former with a hammer in his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s a bad business, this, sir,” said he, shaking his head, as he looked
+      at the body of the mate. “And you think there’s someone hiding in the
+      box?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There’s no doubt about it,” said Allardyce, picking up the screwdriver
+      and setting his jaw like a man who needs to brace his courage. “I’ll drive
+      the lock back if you will both stand by. If he rises let him have it on
+      the head with your hammer, carpenter. Shoot at once, sir, if he raises his
+      hand. Now!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had knelt down in front of the striped chest, and passed the blade of
+      the tool under the lid. With a sharp snick the lock flew back. “Stand by!”
+      yelled the mate, and with a heave he threw open the massive top of the
+      box. As it swung up we all three sprang back, I with my pistol levelled,
+      and the carpenter with the hammer above his head. Then, as nothing
+      happened, we each took a step forward and peeped in. The box was empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not quite empty either, for in one corner was lying an old yellow
+      candlestick, elaborately engraved, which appeared to be as old as the box
+      itself. Its rich yellow tone and artistic shape suggested that it was an
+      object of value. For the rest there was nothing more weighty or valuable
+      than dust in the old striped treasure-chest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I’m blessed!” cried Allardyce, staring blankly into it. “Where does
+      the weight come in, then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look at the thickness of the sides, and look at the lid. Why, it’s five
+      inches through. And see that great metal spring across it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s for holding the lid up,” said the mate. “You see, it won’t lean
+      back. What’s that German printing on the inside?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It means that it was made by Johann Rothstein of Augsburg, in 1606.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And a solid bit of work, too. But it doesn’t throw much light on what has
+      passed, does it, Captain Barclay? That candlestick looks like gold. We
+      shall have something for our trouble after all.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He leant forward to grasp it, and from that moment I have never doubted as
+      to the reality of inspiration, for on the instant I caught him by the
+      collar and pulled him straight again. It may have been some story of the
+      Middle Ages which had come back to my mind, or it may have been that my
+      eye had caught some red which was not that of rust upon the upper part of
+      the lock, but to him and to me it will always seem an inspiration, so
+      prompt and sudden was my action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There’s devilry here,” said I. “Give me the crooked stick from the
+      corner.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an ordinary walking-cane with a hooked top. I passed it over the
+      candlestick and gave it a pull. With a flash a row of polished steel fangs
+      shot out from below the upper lip, and the great striped chest snapped at
+      us like a wild animal. Clang came the huge lid into its place, and the
+      glasses on the swinging rack sang and tinkled with the shock. The mate sat
+      down on the edge of the table and shivered like a frightened horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ve saved my life, Captain Barclay!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So this was the secret of the striped treasure-chest of old Don Ramirez di
+      Leyra, and this was how he preserved his ill-gotten gains from the Terra
+      Firma and the Province of Veraquas. Be the thief ever so cunning he could
+      not tell that golden candlestick from the other articles of value, and the
+      instant that he laid hand upon it the terrible spring was unloosed and the
+      murderous steel pikes were driven into his brain, while the shock of the
+      blow sent the victim backward and enabled the chest to automatically close
+      itself. How many, I wondered, had fallen victims to the ingenuity of the
+      mechanic of Ausgburg? And as I thought of the possible history of that
+      grim striped chest my resolution was very quickly taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Carpenter, bring three men, and carry this on deck.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Going to throw it overboard, sir?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, Mr. Allardyce. I’m not superstitious as a rule, but there are some
+      things which are more than a sailor can be called upon to stand.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No wonder that brig made heavy weather, Captain Barclay, with such a
+      thing on board. The glass is dropping fast, sir, and we are only just in
+      time.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we did not even wait for the three sailors, but we carried it out, the
+      mate, the carpenter, and I, and we pushed it with our own hands over the
+      bulwarks. There was a white spout of water, and it was gone. There it
+      lies, the striped chest, a thousand fathoms deep, and if, as they say, the
+      sea will some day be dry land, I grieve for the man who finds that old box
+      and tries to penetrate into its secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A SHADOW BEFORE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The 15th of July, 1870, found John Worlington Dodds a ruined gamester of
+      the Stock Exchange. Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man. And yet he
+      had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish townlet
+      of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter of the sum
+      which he had earned during the single day that he was within its walls.
+      There is a romance of finance yet to be written, a story of huge forces
+      which are for ever waxing and waning, of bold operations, of breathless
+      suspense, of agonised failure, of deep combinations which are baffled by
+      others still more subtle. The mighty debts of each great European Power
+      stand like so many columns of mercury, for ever rising and falling to
+      indicate the pressure upon each. He who can see far enough into the future
+      to tell how that ever-varying column will stand to-morrow is the man who
+      has fortune within his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Worlington Dodds had many of the gifts which lead a speculator to
+      success. He was quick in observing, just in estimating, prompt and
+      fearless in acting. But in finance there is always the element of luck,
+      which, however one may eliminate it, still remains, like the blank at
+      roulette, a constantly present handicap upon the operator. And so it was
+      that Worlington Dodds had come to grief. On the best advices he had
+      dabbled in the funds of a South American Republic in the days before South
+      American Republics had been found out. The Republic defaulted, and Dodds
+      lost his money. He had bulled the shares of a Scotch railway, and a four
+      months’ strike had hit him hard. He had helped to underwrite a coffee
+      company in the hope that the public would come along upon the feed and
+      gradually nibble away some of his holding, but the political sky had been
+      clouded and the public had refused to invest. Everything which he had
+      touched had gone wrong, and now, on the eve of his marriage, young,
+      clear-headed, and energetic, he was actually a bankrupt had his creditors
+      chosen to make him one. But the Stock Exchange is an indulgent body. What
+      is the case of one to-day may be that of another to-morrow, and everyone
+      is interested in seeing that the stricken man is given time to rise again.
+      So the burden of Worlington Dodds was lightened for him; many shoulders
+      helped to bear it, and he was able to go for a little summer tour into
+      Ireland, for the doctors had ordered him rest and change of air to restore
+      his shaken nervous system. Thus it was that upon the 15th of July, 1870,
+      he found himself at his breakfast in the fly-blown coffee-room of the
+      “George Hotel” in the market square of Dunsloe. It is a dull and
+      depressing coffee-room, and one which is usually empty, but on this
+      particular day it was as crowded and noisy as that of any London hotel.
+      Every table was occupied, and a thick smell of fried bacon and of fish
+      hung in the air. Heavily booted men clattered in and out, spurs jingled,
+      riding-crops were stacked in corners, and there was a general atmosphere
+      of horse. The conversation, too, was of nothing else. From every side
+      Worlington Dodds heard of yearlings, of windgalls, of roarers, of spavins,
+      of cribsuckers, of a hundred other terms which were as unintelligible to
+      him as his own Stock Exchange jargon would have been to the company. He
+      asked the waiter for the reason of it all, and the waiter was an
+      astonished man that there should be any man in this world who did not know
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Shure it’s the Dunsloe horse fair, your honour&mdash;the greatest
+      horse-fair in all Oireland. It lasts for a wake, and the folk come from
+      far an’ near&mdash;from England an’ Scotland an’ iverywhere. If you look
+      out of the winder, your honour, you’ll see the horses, and it’s asy your
+      honour’s conscience must be, or you wouldn’t slape so sound that the
+      creatures didn’t rouse you with their clatter.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds had a recollection that he had heard a confused murmur, which had
+      interwoven itself with his dreams&mdash;a sort of steady rhythmic beating
+      and clanking&mdash;and now, when he looked through the window, he saw the
+      cause of it. The square was packed with horses from end to end&mdash;greys,
+      bays, browns, blacks, chestnuts&mdash;young ones and old, fine ones and
+      coarse, horses of every conceivable sort and size. It seemed a huge
+      function for so small a town, and he remarked as much to the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, you see, your honour, the horses don’t live in the town, an’ they
+      don’t vex their heads how small it is. But it’s in the very centre of the
+      horse-bradin’ districts of Oireland, so where should they come to be sould
+      if it wasn’t to Dunsloe?” The waiter had a telegram in his hand, and he
+      turned the address to Worlington Dodds. “Shure I niver heard such a name,
+      sorr. Maybe you could tell me who owns it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds looked at the envelope. Strellenhaus was the name. “No, I don’t
+      know,” said he. “I never heard it before. It’s a foreign name. Perhaps if
+      you were&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at that moment a little round-faced, ruddy-cheeked gentleman, who was
+      breakfasting at the next table, leaned forward and interrupted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Did you say a foreign name, sir?” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Strellenhaus is the name.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am Mr. Strellenhaus&mdash;Mr. Julius Strellenhaus, of Liverpool. I was
+      expecting a telegram. Thank you very much.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat so near that Dodds, without any wish to play the spy, could not
+      help to some extent overlooking him as he opened the envelope. The message
+      was a very long one. Quite a wad of melon-tinted paper came out from the
+      tawny envelope. Mr. Strellenhaus arranged the sheets methodically upon the
+      table-cloth in front of him, so that no eye but his own could see them.
+      Then he took out a note-book, and, with an anxious face, he began to make
+      entries in it, glancing first at the telegram and then at the book, and
+      writing apparently one letter or figure at a time. Dodds was interested,
+      for he knew exactly what the man was doing. He was working out a cipher.
+      Dodds had often done it himself. And then suddenly the little man turned
+      very pale, as if the full purport of the message had been a shock to him.
+      Dodds had done that also, and his sympathies were all with his neighbors.
+      Then the stranger rose, and, leaving his breakfast untasted, he walked out
+      of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m thinkin’ that the gintleman has had bad news, sorr,” said the
+      confidential waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Looks like it,” Dodds answered; and at that moment his thoughts were
+      suddenly drawn off into another direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boots had entered the room with a telegram in his hand. “Where’s Mr.
+      Mancune?” said he to the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, there are some quare names about. What was it you said?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mr. Mancune,” said the boots, glancing round him. “Ah, there he is!” and
+      he handed the telegram to a gentleman who was sitting reading the paper in
+      a corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds’s eyes had already fallen upon this man, and he had wondered vaguely
+      what he was doing in such company. He was a tall, white-haired,
+      eagle-nosed gentleman, with a waxed moustache and a carefully pointed
+      beard&mdash;an aristocratic type which seemed out of its element among the
+      rough, hearty, noisy dealers who surrounded him. This, then, was Mr.
+      Mancune, for whom the second telegram was intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he opened it, tearing it open with a feverish haste, Dodds could
+      perceive that it was as bulky as the first one. He observed also, from the
+      delay in reading it, that it was also in some sort of cipher. The
+      gentleman did not write down any translation of it, but he sat for some
+      time with his nervous, thin fingers twitching amongst the hairs of his
+      white beard, and his shaggy brows bent in the deepest and most absorbed
+      attention whilst he mastered the meaning of it. Then he sprang suddenly to
+      his feet, his eyes flashed, his cheeks flushed, and in his excitement he
+      crumpled the message up in his hand. With an effort he mastered his
+      emotion, put the paper into his pocket, and walked out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was enough to excite a less astute and imaginative man than
+      Worlington Dodds. Was there any connection between these two messages, or
+      was it merely a coincidence? Two men with strange names receive two
+      telegrams within a few minutes of each other, each of considerable length,
+      each in cipher, and each causing keen emotion to the man who received it.
+      One turned pale. The other sprang excitedly to his feet. It might be a
+      coincidence, but it was a very curious one. If it was not a coincidence,
+      then what could it mean? Were they confederates who pretended to work
+      apart, but who each received identical orders from some person at a
+      distance? That was possible, and yet there were difficulties in the way.
+      He puzzled and puzzled, but could find no satisfactory solution to the
+      problem. All breakfast he was turning it over in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When breakfast was over he sauntered out into the market square, where the
+      horse sale was already in progress. The yearlings were being sold first&mdash;tall,
+      long-legged, skittish, wild-eyed creatures, who had run free upon the
+      upland pastures, with ragged hair and towsie manes, but hardy, inured to
+      all weathers, and with the makings of splendid hunters and steeplechasers
+      when corn and time had brought them to maturity. They were largely of
+      thoroughbred blood, and were being bought by English dealers, who would
+      invest a few pounds now on what they might sell for fifty guineas in a
+      year, if all went well. It was legitimate speculation, for the horse is a
+      delicate creature, he is afflicted with many ailments, the least accident
+      may destroy his value, he is a certain expense and an uncertain profit,
+      and for one who comes safely to maturity several may bring no return at
+      all. So the English horse-dealers took their risks as they bought up the
+      shaggy Irish yearlings. One man with a ruddy face and a yellow overcoat
+      took them by the dozen, with as much <i>sang froid</i> as if they had been
+      oranges, entering each bargain in a bloated note-book. He bought forty or
+      fifty during the time that Dodds was watching him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Who is that?” he asked his neighbour, whose spurs and gaiters showed that
+      he was likely to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man stared in astonishment at the stranger’s ignorance. “Why, that’s
+      Jim Holloway, the great Jim Holloway,” said he; then, seeing by the blank
+      look upon Dodds’s face that even this information had not helped him much,
+      he went into details. “Sure he’s the head of Holloway &amp; Morland, of
+      London,” said he. “He’s the buying partner, and he buys cheap; and the
+      other stays at home and sells, and he sells dear. He owns more horses than
+      any man in the world, and asks the best money for them. I dare say you’ll
+      find that half of what are sold at the Dunsloe fair this day will go to
+      him, and he’s got such a purse that there’s not a man who can bid against
+      him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Worlington Dodds watched the doings of the great dealer with interest. He
+      had passed on now to the two-year-olds and three-year-olds, full-grown
+      horses, but still a little loose in the limb and weak in the bone. The
+      London buyer was choosing his animals carefully, but having chosen them,
+      the vigour of his competition drove all other bidders out of it. With a
+      careless nod he would run the figure up five pounds at a time, until he
+      was left in possession of the field. At the same time he was a shrewd
+      observer, and when, as happened more than once, he believed that someone
+      was bidding against him simply in order to run him up, the head would
+      cease suddenly to nod, the note-book would be closed with a snap, and the
+      intruder would be left with a purchase which he did not desire upon his
+      hands. All Dodds’s business instincts were aroused by the tactics of this
+      great operator, and he stood in the crowd watching with the utmost
+      interest all that occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not to buy young horses, however, that the great dealers come to
+      Ireland, and the real business of the fair commenced when the four and
+      five-year-olds were reached; the full-grown, perfect horses, at their
+      prime, and ready for any work or any fatigue. Seventy magnificent
+      creatures had been brought down by a single breeder, a comfortable-looking, keen-eyed,
+      ruddy-cheeked gentleman who stood beside the salesman
+      and whispered cautions and precepts into his ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s Flynn of Kildare,” said Dodds’s informant. “Jack Flynn has brought
+      down that string of horses, and the other large string over yonder belongs
+      to Tom Flynn, his brother. The two of them together are the two first
+      breeders in Ireland.” A crowd had gathered in front of the horses. By
+      common consent a place had been made for Mr. Holloway, and Dodds could
+      catch a glimpse of his florid face and yellow covert-coat in the front
+      rank. He had opened his note-book, and was tapping his teeth reflectively
+      with his pencil as he eyed the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ll see a fight now between the first seller and the first buyer in
+      the country,” said Dodds’s acquaintance. “They are a beautiful string,
+      anyhow. I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t average five-and-thirty
+      pound apiece for the lot as they stand.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The salesman had mounted upon a chair, and his keen, clean-shaven face
+      overlooked the crowd. Mr. Jack Flynn’s grey whiskers were at his elbow,
+      and Mr. Holloway immediately in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ve seen these horses, gentlemen,” said the salesman, with a backward
+      sweep of his hand towards the line of tossing heads and streaming manes.
+      “When you know that they are bred by Mr. Jack Flynn, at his place in
+      Kildare, you will have a guarantee of their quality. They are the best
+      that Ireland can produce, and in this class of horse the best that Ireland
+      can produce are the best in the world, as every riding man knows well.
+      Hunters or carriage horses, all warranted sound, and bred from the best
+      stock. There are seventy in Mr. Jack Flynn’s string, and he bids me say
+      that if any wholesale dealer would make one bid for the whole lot, to save
+      time, he would have the preference over any purchaser.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause and a whisper from the crowd in front, with some
+      expressions of discontent. By a single sweep all the small dealers had
+      been put out of it. It was only a long purse which could buy on such a
+      scale as that. The salesman looked round him inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Come, Mr. Holloway,” said he, at last. “You didn’t come over here for the
+      sake of the scenery. You may travel the country and not see such another
+      string of horses. Give us a starting bid.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great dealer was still rattling his pencil upon his front teeth.
+      “Well,” said he, at last, “they <i>are</i> a fine lot of horses, and I
+      won’t deny it. They do you credit, Mr. Flynn, I am sure. All the same I
+      didn’t mean to fill a ship at a single bid in this fashion. I like to pick
+      and choose my horses.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In that case Mr. Flynn is quite prepared to sell them in smaller lots,”
+      said the salesman. “It was rather for the convenience of a wholesale
+      customer that he was prepared to put them all up together. But if no
+      gentleman wishes to bid&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Wait a minute,” said a voice. “They are very fine horses, these, and I
+      will give you a bid to start you. I will give you twenty pounds each for
+      the string of seventy.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a rustle as the crowd all swayed their heads to catch a glimpse
+      of the speaker. The salesman leaned forward. “May I ask your name, sir?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Strellenhaus&mdash;Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s a new firm,” said Dodds’s neighbour. “I thought I knew them all, but
+      I never heard of him before.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The salesman’s head had disappeared, for he was whispering with the
+      breeder. Now he suddenly straightened himself again. “Thank you for giving
+      us a lead, sir,” said he. “Now, gentlemen, you have heard the offer of Mr.
+      Strellenhaus of Liverpool. It will give us a base to start from. Mr.
+      Strellenhaus has offered twenty pounds a head.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Guineas,” said Holloway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bravo, Mr. Holloway! I knew that you would take a hand. You are not the
+      man to let such a string of horses pass away from you. The bid is twenty
+      guineas a head.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Twenty-five pounds,” said Mr. Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Twenty-six.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was London against Liverpool, and it was the head of the trade against
+      an outsider. Still, the one man had increased his bids by fives and the
+      other only by ones. Those fives meant determination and also wealth.
+      Holloway had ruled the market so long that the crowd was delighted at
+      finding someone who would stand up to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The bid now stands at thirty pounds a head,” said the salesman. “The word
+      lies with you, Mr. Holloway.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The London dealer was glancing keenly at his unknown opponent, and he was
+      asking himself whether this was a genuine rival, or whether it was a
+      device of some sort&mdash;an agent of Flynn’s perhaps&mdash;for running up
+      the price. Little Mr. Strellenhaus, the same apple-faced gentleman whom
+      Dodds had noticed in the coffee-room, stood looking at the horses with the
+      sharp, quick glances of a man who knows what he is looking for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-one,” said Holloway, with the air of a man who has gone to his
+      extreme limit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-two,” said Strellenhaus, promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holloway grew angry at this persistent opposition. His red face flushed
+      redder still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-three!” he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-four,” said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holloway became thoughtful, and entered a few figures in his note-book.
+      There were seventy horses. He knew that Flynn’s stock was always of the
+      highest quality. With the hunting season coming on he might rely upon
+      selling them at an average of from forty-five to fifty. Some of them might
+      carry a heavy weight, and would run to three figures. On the other hand,
+      there was the feed and keep of them for three months, the danger of the
+      voyage, the chance of influenza or some of those other complaints which
+      run through an entire stable as measles go through a nursery. Deducting
+      all this, it was a question whether at the present price any profit would
+      be left upon the transaction. Every pound that he bid meant seventy out of
+      his pocket. And yet he could not submit to be beaten by this stranger
+      without a struggle. As a business matter it was important to him to be
+      recognised as the head of his profession. He would make one more effort,
+      if he sacrificed his profit by doing so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “At the end of your rope, Mr. Holloway?” asked the salesman, with the
+      suspicion of a sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-five,” cried Holloway gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-six,” said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then I wish you joy of your bargain,” said Holloway. “I don’t buy at that
+      price, but I should be glad to sell you some.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Strellenhaus took no notice of the irony. He was still looking
+      critically at the horses. The salesman glanced round him in a perfunctory
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-six pounds bid,” said he. “Mr. Jack Flynn’s lot is going to Mr.
+      Strellenhaus of Liverpool, at thirty-six pounds a head. Going&mdash;going&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Forty!” cried a high, thin, clear voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A buzz rose from the crowd, and they were all on tiptoe again, trying to
+      catch a glimpse of this reckless buyer. Being a tall man, Dodds could see
+      over the others, and there, at the side of Holloway, he saw the masterful
+      nose and aristocratic beard of the second stranger in the coffee-room. A
+      sudden personal interest added itself to the scene. He felt that he was on
+      the verge of something&mdash;something dimly seen&mdash; which he could
+      himself turn to account. The two men with strange names, the telegrams,
+      the horses&mdash;what was underlying it all? The salesman was all
+      animation again, and Mr. Jack Flynn was sitting up with his white whiskers
+      bristling and his eyes twinkling. It was the best deal which he had ever
+      made in his fifty years of experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What name, sir?” asked the salesman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mr. Mancune.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Address?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mr. Mancune of Glasgow.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thank you for your bid, sir. Forty pounds a head has been bid by Mr.
+      Mancune of Glasgow. Any advance upon forty?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Forty-one,” said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Forty-five,” said Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tactics had changed, and it was the turn of Strellenhaus now to
+      advance by ones, while his rival sprang up by fives. But the former was as
+      dogged as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Forty-six,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Fifty!” cried Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was unheard of. The most that the horses could possibly average at a
+      retail price was as much as these men were willing to pay wholesale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Two lunatics from Bedlam,” whispered the angry Holloway. “If I was Flynn
+      I would see the colour of their money before I went any further.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same thought had occurred to the salesman. “As a mere matter of
+      business, gentlemen,” said he, “it is usual in such cases to put down a
+      small deposit as a guarantee of <i>bona fides</i>. You will understand how
+      I am placed, and that I have not had the pleasure of doing business with
+      either of you before.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How much?” asked Strellenhaus, briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Should we say five hundred?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Here is a note for a thousand pounds.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And here is another,” said Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nothing could be more handsome, gentlemen,” said the salesman. “It’s a
+      treat to see such a spirited competition. The last bid was fifty pounds a
+      head from Mancune. The word lies with you, Mr. Strellenhaus.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jack Flynn whispered something to the salesman. “Quite so! Mr. Flynn
+      suggests, gentlemen, that as you are both large buyers, it would, perhaps,
+      be a convenience to you if he was to add the string of Mr. Tom Flynn,
+      which consists of seventy animals of precisely the same quality, making
+      one hundred and forty in all. Have you any objection, Mr. Mancune?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you, Mr. Strellenhaus?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should prefer it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very handsome! Very handsome indeed!” murmured the salesman. “Then I
+      understand, Mr. Mancune, that your offer of fifty pounds a head extends to
+      the whole of these horses?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long breath went up from the crowd. Seven thousand pounds at one deal.
+      It was a record for Dunsloe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Any advance, Mr. Strellenhaus?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Fifty-one.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Fifty-five.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Fifty-six.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sixty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They could hardly believe their ears. Holloway stood with his mouth open,
+      staring blankly in front of him. The salesman tried hard to look as if
+      such bidding and such prices were nothing unusual. Jack Flynn of Kildare
+      smiled benignly and rubbed his hands together. The crowd listened in dead
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sixty-one,” said Strellenhaus. From the beginning he had stood without a
+      trace of emotion upon his round face, like a little automatic figure which
+      bid by clockwork. His rival was of a more excitable nature. His eyes were
+      shining, and he was for ever twitching at his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sixty-five,” he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sixty-six.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Seventy.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the clockwork had run down. No answering bid came from Mr.
+      Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Seventy bid, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Strellenhaus shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am buying for another, and I have reached his limit,” said he. “If you
+      will permit me to send for instructions&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am afraid, sir, that the sale must proceed.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then the horses belong to this gentleman.” For the first time he turned
+      towards his rival, and their glances crossed like sword-blades. “It is
+      possible that I may see the horses again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I hope so,” said Mr. Mancune; and his white, waxed moustache gave a
+      feline upward bristle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, with a bow, they separated. Mr. Strellenhaus walked, down to the
+      telegraph-office, where his message was delayed because Mr. Worlington
+      Dodds was already at the end of the wires, for, after dim guesses and
+      vague conjecture, he had suddenly caught a clear view of this coming event
+      which had cast so curious a shadow before it in this little Irish town.
+      Political rumours, names, appearances, telegrams, seasoned horses at any
+      price, there could only be one meaning to it. He held a secret, and he
+      meant to use it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Warner, who was the partner of Mr. Worlington Dodds, and who was
+      suffering from the same eclipse, had gone down to the Stock Exchange, but
+      had found little consolation there, for the European system was in a
+      ferment, and rumours of peace and of war were succeeding each other with
+      such rapidity and assurance that it was impossible to know which to trust.
+      It was obvious that a fortune lay either way, for every rumour set the
+      funds fluctuating; but without special information it was impossible to
+      act, and no one dared to plunge heavily upon the strength of newspaper
+      surmise and the gossip of the street. Warner knew that an hour’s work
+      might resuscitate the fallen fortunes of himself and his partner, and yet
+      he could not afford to make a mistake. He returned to his office in the
+      afternoon, half inclined to back the chances of peace, for of all war
+      scares not one in ten comes to pass. As he entered the office a telegram
+      lay upon the table. It was from Dunsloe, a place of which he had never
+      heard, and was signed by his absent partner. The message was in cipher,
+      but he soon translated it, for it was short and crisp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am a bear of everything German and French. Sell, sell, sell, keep on
+      selling.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Warner hesitated. What could Worlington Dodds know at Dunsloe
+      which was not known in Throgmorton Street? But he remembered the quickness
+      and decision of his partner. He would not have sent such a message without
+      very good grounds. If he was to act at all he must act at once, so,
+      hardening his heart, he went down to the house, and, dealing upon that
+      curious system by which a man can sell what he has not got, and what he
+      could not pay for if he had it, he disposed of heavy parcels of French and
+      German securities. He had caught the market in one of its little spasms of
+      hope, and there was no lack of buying until his own persistent selling
+      caused others to follow his lead, and so brought about a reaction. When
+      Warner returned to his offices it took him some hours to work out his
+      accounts, and he emerged into the streets in the evening with the absolute
+      certainty that the next settling-day would leave him either hopelessly
+      bankrupt or exceedingly prosperous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It all depended upon Worlington Dodds’s information. What could he
+      possibly have found out at Dunsloe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly he saw a newspaper boy fasten a poster upon a lamp-post,
+      and a little crowd had gathered round it in an instant. One of them waved
+      his hat in the air; another shouted to a friend across the street. Warner
+      hurried up and caught a glimpse of the poster between two craning heads&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="center">
+           “FRANCE DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY.”
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “By Jove!” cried Warner. “Old Dodds was right, after all.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE KING OF THE FOXES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was after a hunting dinner, and there were as many scarlet coats as
+      black ones round the table. The conversation over the cigars had turned,
+      therefore, in the direction of horses and horsemen, with reminiscences of
+      phenomenal runs where foxes had led the pack from end to end of a county,
+      and been overtaken at last by two or three limping hounds and a huntsman
+      on foot, while every rider in the field had been pounded. As the port
+      circulated the runs became longer and more apocryphal, until we had the
+      whips inquiring their way and failing to understand the dialect of the
+      people who answered them. The foxes, too, became more eccentric, and we
+      had foxes up pollard willows, foxes which were dragged by the tail out of
+      horses’ mangers, and foxes which had raced through an open front door and
+      gone to ground in a lady’s bonnet-box. The master had told one or two tall
+      reminiscences, and when he cleared his throat for another we were all
+      curious, for he was a bit of an artist in his way, and produced his
+      effects in a <i>crescendo</i> fashion. His face wore the earnest,
+      practical, severely accurate expression which heralded some of his finest
+      efforts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It was before I was master,” said he. “Sir Charles Adair had the hounds
+      at that time, and then afterwards they passed to old Lathom, and then to
+      me. It may possibly have been just after Lathom took them over, but my
+      strong impression is that it was in Adair’s time. That would be early in
+      the seventies&mdash;about seventy-two, I should say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The man I mean has moved to another part of the country, but I daresay
+      that some of you can remember him. Danbury was the name&mdash;Walter
+      Danbury, or Wat Danbury, as the people used to call him. He was the son of
+      old Joe Danbury, of High Ascombe, and when his father died he came into a
+      very good thing, for his only brother was drowned when the <i>Magna Charta</i>
+      foundered, so he inherited the whole estate. It was but a few hundred
+      acres, but it was good arable land, and those were the great days of
+      farming. Besides, it was freehold, and a yeoman farmer without a mortgage
+      was a warmish man before the great fall in wheat came. Foreign wheat and
+      barbed wire&mdash;those are the two curses of this country, for the one
+      spoils the farmer’s work and the other spoils his play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This young Wat Danbury was a very fine fellow, a keen rider, and a
+      thorough sportsman, but his head was a little turned at having come, when
+      so young, into a comfortable fortune, and he went the pace for a year or
+      two. The lad had no vice in him, but there was a hard-drinking set in the
+      neighbourhood at that time, and Danbury got drawn in among them; and,
+      being an amiable fellow who liked to do what his friends were doing, he
+      very soon took to drinking a great deal more than was good for him. As a
+      rule, a man who takes his exercise may drink as much as he likes in the
+      evening, and do himself no very great harm, if he will leave it alone
+      during the day. Danbury had too many friends for that, however, and it
+      really looked as if the poor chap was going to the bad, when a very
+      curious thing happened which pulled him up with such a sudden jerk that he
+      never put his hand upon the neck of a whisky bottle again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He had a peculiarity which I have noticed in a good many other men, that
+      though he was always playing tricks with his own health, he was none the
+      less very anxious about it, and was extremely fidgety if ever he had any
+      trivial symptom. Being a tough, open-air fellow, who was always as hard as
+      a nail, it was seldom that there was anything amiss with him; but at last
+      the drink began to tell, and he woke one morning with his hands shaking
+      and all his nerves tingling like over-stretched fiddle-strings. He had
+      been dining at some very wet house the night before, and the wine had,
+      perhaps, been more plentiful than choice; at any rate, there he was, with
+      a tongue like a bath towel and a head that ticked like an eight-day clock.
+      He was very alarmed at his own condition, and he sent for Doctor
+      Middleton, of Ascombe, the father of the man who practises there now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Middleton had been a great friend of old Danbury’s, and he was very sorry
+      to see his son going to the devil; so he improved the occasion by taking
+      his case very seriously, and lecturing him upon the danger of his ways. He
+      shook his head and talked about the possibility of <i>delirium tremens</i>,
+      or even of mania, if he continued to lead such a life. Wat Danbury was
+      horribly frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Do you think I am going to get anything of the sort?’ he wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Well, really, I don’t know,’ said the doctor gravely. ‘I cannot
+      undertake to say that you are out of danger. Your system is very much out
+      of order. At any time during the day you might have those grave symptoms
+      of which I warn you.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘You think I shall be safe by evening?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘If you drink nothing during the day, and have no nervous symptoms before
+      evening, I think you may consider yourself safe,’ the doctor answered. A
+      little fright would, he thought, do his patient good, so he made the most
+      of the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘What symptoms may I expect?’ asked Danbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It generally takes the form of optical delusions.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I see specks floating all about.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘That is mere biliousness,’ said the doctor soothingly, for he saw that
+      the lad was highly strung, and he did not wish to overdo it. ‘I daresay
+      that you will have no symptoms of the kind, but when they do come they
+      usually take the shape of insects, or reptiles, or curious animals.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘And if I see anything of the kind?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘If you do, you will at once send for me;’ and so, with a promise of
+      medicine, the doctor departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Young Wat Danbury rose and dressed and moped about the room feeling very
+      miserable and unstrung, with a vision of the County Asylum for ever in his
+      mind. He had the doctor’s word for it that if he could get through to
+      evening in safety he would be all right; but it is not very exhilarating
+      to be waiting for symptoms, and to keep on glancing at your bootjack to
+      see whether it is still a bootjack or whether it has begun to develop
+      antennae and legs. At last he could stand it no longer, and an
+      overpowering longing for the fresh air and the green grass came over him.
+      Why should he stay indoors when the Ascombe Hunt was meeting within half a
+      mile of him? If he was going to have these delusions which the doctor
+      talked of, he would not have them the sooner nor the worse because he was
+      on horseback in the open. He was sure, too, it would ease his aching head.
+      And so it came about that in ten minutes he was in his hunting-kit, and in
+      ten more he was riding out of his stable-yard with his roan mare ‘Matilda’
+      between his knees. He was a little unsteady in his saddle just at first,
+      but the farther he went the better he felt, until by the time he reached
+      the meet his head was almost clear, and there was nothing troubling him
+      except those haunting words of the doctor’s about the possibility of
+      delusions any time before nightfall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But soon he forgot that also, for as he came up the hounds were thrown
+      off, and they drew the Gravel Hanger, and afterwards the Hickory Copse. It
+      was just the morning for a scent&mdash;no wind to blow it away, no water
+      to wash it out, and just damp enough to make it cling. There was a field
+      of forty, all keen men and good riders, so when they came to the Black
+      Hanger they knew that there would be some sport, for that’s a cover which
+      never draws blank. The woods were thicker in those days than now, and the
+      foxes were thicker also, and that great dark oak-grove was swarming with
+      them. The only difficulty was to make them break, for it is, as you know,
+      a very close country, and you must coax them out into the open before you
+      can hope for a run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When they came to the Black Hanger the field took their positions along
+      the cover-side wherever they thought that they were most likely to get a
+      good start. Some went in with the hounds, some clustered at the ends of
+      the drives, and some kept outside in the hope of the fox breaking in that
+      direction. Young Wat Danbury knew the country like the palm of his hand,
+      so he made for a place where several drives intersected, and there he
+      waited. He had a feeling that the faster and the farther he galloped the
+      better he should be, and so he was chafing to be off. His mare, too, was
+      in the height of fettle and one of the fastest goers in the county. Wat
+      was a splendid lightweight rider&mdash;under ten stone with his saddle&mdash;and
+      the mare was a powerful creature, all quarters and shoulders, fit to carry
+      a lifeguardsman; and so it was no wonder that there was hardly a man in
+      the field who could hope to stay with him. There he waited and listened to
+      the shouting of the huntsman and the whips, catching a glimpse now and
+      then in the darkness of the wood of a whisking tail, or the gleam of a
+      white-and-tan side amongst the underwood. It was a well-trained pack, and
+      there was not so much as a whine to tell you that forty hounds were
+      working all round you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And then suddenly there came one long-drawn yell from one of them, and it
+      was taken up by another, and another, until within a few seconds the whole
+      pack was giving tongue together and running on a hot scent. Danbury saw
+      them stream across one of the drives and disappear upon the other side,
+      and an instant later the three red coats of the hunt servants flashed
+      after them upon the same line. He might have made a shorter cut down one
+      of the other drives, but he was afraid of heading the fox, so he followed
+      the lead of the huntsman. Right through the wood they went in a bee-line,
+      galloping with their faces brushed by their horses’ manes as they stooped
+      under the branches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s ugly going, as you know, with the roots all wriggling about in the
+      darkness, but you can take a risk when you catch an occasional glimpse of
+      the pack running with a breast-high scent; so in and out they dodged until
+      the wood began to thin at the edges, and they found themselves in the long
+      bottom where the river runs. It is clear going there upon grassland, and
+      the hounds were running very strong about two hundred yards ahead, keeping
+      parallel with the stream. The field, who had come round the wood instead
+      of going through, were coming hard over the fields upon the left; but
+      Danbury, with the hunt servants, had a clear lead, and they never lost it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Two of the field got on terms with them&mdash;Parson Geddes on a big
+      seventeen-hand bay which he used to ride in those days, and Squire Foley,
+      who rode as a feather-weight, and made his hunters out of cast
+      thoroughbreds from the Newmarket sales; but the others never had a look-in
+      from start to finish, for there was no check and no pulling, and it was
+      clear cross-country racing from start to finish. If you had drawn a line
+      right across the map with a pencil you couldn’t go straighter than that
+      fox ran, heading for the South Downs and the sea, and the hounds ran as
+      surely as if they were running to view, and yet from the beginning no one
+      ever saw the fox, and there was never a hallo forrard to tell them that he
+      had been spied. This, however, is not so surprising, for if you’ve been
+      over that line of country you will know that there are not very many
+      people about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There were six of them then in the front row&mdash;Parson Geddes, Squire
+      Foley, the huntsman, two whips, and Wat Danbury, who had forgotten all
+      about his head and the doctor by this time, and had not a thought for
+      anything but the run. All six were galloping just as hard as they could
+      lay hoofs to the ground. One of the whips dropped back, however, as some
+      of the hounds were tailing off, and that brought them down to five. Then
+      Foley’s thoroughbred strained herself, as these slim-legged,
+      dainty-fetlocked thoroughbreds will do when the going is rough, and he had
+      to take a back seat. But the other four were still going strong, and they
+      did four or five miles down the river flat at a rasping pace. It had been
+      a wet winter, and the waters had been out a little time before, so there
+      was a deal of sliding and splashing; but by the time they came to the
+      bridge the whole field was out of sight, and these four had the hunt to
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The fox had crossed the bridge&mdash;for foxes do not care to swim a
+      chilly river any more than humans do&mdash;and from that point he had
+      streaked away southward as hard as he could tear. It is broken country,
+      rolling heaths, down one slope and up another, and it’s hard to say
+      whether the up or the down is the more trying for the horses. This sort of
+      switchback work is all right for a cobby, short-backed, short-legged
+      little horse, but it is killing work for a big, long-striding hunter such
+      as one wants in the Midlands. Anyhow, it was too much for Parson Geddes’
+      seventeen-hand bay, and though he tried the Irish trick&mdash;for he was a
+      rare keen sportsman&mdash;of running up the hills by his horse’s head, it
+      was all to no use, and he had to give it up. So then there were only the
+      huntsman, the whip, and Wat Danbury&mdash;all going strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But the country got worse and worse and the hills were steeper and more
+      thickly covered in heather and bracken. The horses were over their hocks
+      all the time, and the place was pitted with rabbit-holes; but the hounds
+      were still streaming along, and the riders could not afford to pick their
+      steps. As they raced down one slope, the hounds were always flowing up the
+      opposite one, until it looked like that game where the one figure in
+      falling makes the other one rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But never a glimpse did they get of the fox, although they knew very well
+      that he must be only a very short way ahead for the scent to be so strong.
+      And then Wat Danbury heard a crash and a thud at his elbow, and looking
+      round he saw a pair of white cords and top-boots kicking out of a tussock
+      of brambles. The whip’s horse had stumbled, and the whip was out of the
+      running. Danbury and the huntsman eased down for an instant; and then,
+      seeing the man staggering to his feet all right, they turned and settled
+      into their saddles once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Joe Clarke, the huntsman, was a famous old rider, known for five counties
+      round; but he reckoned upon his second horse, and the second horses had
+      all been left many miles behind. However, the one he was riding was good
+      enough for anything with such a horseman upon his back, and he was going
+      as well as when he started. As to Wat Danbury, he was going better. With
+      every stride his own feelings improved, and the mind of the rider had its
+      influence upon the mind of the horse. The stout little roan was gathering
+      its muscular limbs under it, and stretching to the gallop as if it were
+      steel and whale-bone instead of flesh and blood. Wat had never come to the
+      end of its powers yet, and to-day he had such a chance of testing them as
+      he had never had before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There was a pasture country beyond the heather slopes, and for several
+      miles the two riders were either losing ground as they fumbled with their
+      crop-handles at the bars of gates, or gaining it again as they galloped
+      over the fields. Those were the days before this accursed wire came into
+      the country, and you could generally break a hedge where you could not fly
+      it, so they did not trouble the gates more than they could help. Then they
+      were down in a hard lane, where they had to slacken their pace, and
+      through a farm where a man came shouting excitedly after them; but they
+      had no time to stop and listen to him, for the hounds were on some
+      ploughland, only two fields ahead. It was sloping upwards, that
+      ploughland, and the horses were over their fetlocks in the red, soft soil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When they reached the top they were blowing badly, but a grand valley
+      sloped before them, leading up to the open country of the South Downs.
+      Between, there lay a belt of pine-woods, into which the hounds were
+      streaming, running now in a long, straggling line, and shedding one here
+      and one there as they ran. You could see the white-and-tan dots here and
+      there where the limpers were tailing away. But half the pack were still
+      going well, though the pace and distance had both been tremendous&mdash;two
+      clear hours now without a check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There was a drive through the pine-wood&mdash;one of those green,
+      slightly rutted drives where a horse can get the last yard out of itself,
+      for the ground is hard enough to give him clean going and yet springy
+      enough to help him. Wat Danbury got alongside of the huntsman and they
+      galloped together with their stirrup-irons touching, and the hounds within
+      a hundred yards of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘We have it all to ourselves,’ said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Yes, sir, we’ve shook on the lot of ’em this time,’ said old Joe Clarke.
+      ‘If we get this fox it’s worth while ’aving ’im skinned an’ stuffed, for
+      ’e’s a curiosity ’e is.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It’s the fastest run I ever had in my life!’ cried Danbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘And the fastest that ever I ’ad, an’ that means more,’ said the old
+      huntsman. ‘But what licks me is that we’ve never ’ad a look at the beast.
+      ’E must leave an amazin’ scent be’ind ’im when these ’ounds can follow ’im
+      like this, and yet none of us have seen ’im when we’ve ’ad a clear ’alf
+      mile view in front of us.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I expect we’ll have a view of him presently,’ said Danbury; and in his
+      mind he added, ‘at least, I shall,’ for the huntsman’s horse was gasping
+      as it ran, and the white foam was pouring down it like the side of a
+      washing-tub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They had followed the hounds on to one of the side tracks which led out
+      of the main drive, and that divided into a smaller track still, where the
+      branches switched across their faces as they went, and there was barely
+      room for one horse at a time. Wat Danbury took the lead, and he heard the
+      huntsman’s horse clumping along heavily behind him, while his own mare was
+      going with less spring than when she had started. She answered to a touch
+      of his crop or spur, however, and he felt that there was something still
+      left to draw upon. And then he looked up, and there was a heavy wooden
+      stile at the end of the narrow track, with a lane of stiff young saplings
+      leading down to it, which was far too thick to break through. The hounds
+      were running clear upon the grassland on the other side, and you were
+      bound either to get over that stile or lose sight of them, for the pace
+      was too hot to let you go round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, Wat Danbury was not the lad to flinch, and at it he went full
+      split, like a man who means what he is doing. She rose gallantly to it,
+      rapped it hard with her front hoof, shook him on to her withers, recovered
+      herself, and was over. Wat had hardly got back into his saddle when there
+      was a clatter behind him like the fall of a woodstack, and there was the
+      top bar in splinters, the horse on its belly, and the huntsman on hands
+      and knees half a dozen yards in front of him. Wat pulled up for an
+      instant, for the fall was a smasher; but he saw old Joe spring to his feet
+      and get to his horse’s bridle. The horse staggered up, but the moment it
+      put one foot in front of the other, Wat saw that it was hopelessly lame&mdash;a
+      slipped shoulder and a six weeks’ job. There was nothing he could do, and
+      Joe was shouting to him not to lose the hounds, so off he went again, the
+      one solitary survivor of the whole hunt. When a man finds himself there,
+      he can retire from fox-hunting, for he has tasted the highest which it has
+      to offer. I remember once when I was out with the Royal Surrey&mdash;but
+      I’ll tell you that story afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The pack, or what was left of them, had got a bit ahead during this time;
+      but he had a clear view of them on the downland, and the mare seemed full
+      of pride at being the only one left, for she was stepping out rarely and
+      tossing her head as she went. They were two miles over the green shoulder
+      of a hill, a rattle down a stony, deep-rutted country lane, where the mare
+      stumbled and nearly came down, a jump over a 5ft. brook, a cut through a
+      hazel copse, another dose of heavy ploughland, a couple of gates to open,
+      and then the green, unbroken Downs beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Well,’ said Wat Danbury to himself, ‘I’ll see this fox run into or I
+      shall see it drowned, for it’s all clear going now between this and the
+      chalk cliffs which line the sea.’ But he was wrong in that, as he speedily
+      discovered. In all the little hollows of the downs at that part there are
+      plantations of fir-woods, some of which have grown to a good size. You do
+      not see them until you come upon the edge of the valleys in which they
+      lie. Danbury was galloping hard over the short, springy turf when he came
+      over the lip of one of these depressions, and there was the dark clump of
+      wood lying in front of and beneath him. There were only a dozen hounds
+      still running, and they were just disappearing among the trees. The
+      sunlight was shining straight upon the long olive-green slopes which
+      curved down towards this wood, and Danbury, who had the eyes of a hawk,
+      swept them over this great expanse; but there was nothing moving upon it.
+      A few sheep were grazing far up on the right, but there was no other sight
+      of any living creature. He was certain then that he was very near to the
+      end, for either the fox must have gone to ground in the wood or the
+      hounds’ noses must be at his very brush. The mare seemed to know also what
+      that great empty sweep of countryside meant, for she quickened her stride,
+      and a few minutes afterwards Danbury was galloping into the fir-wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He had come from bright sunshine, but the wood was very closely planted,
+      and so dim that he could hardly see to right or to left out of the narrow
+      path down which he was riding. You know what a solemn, churchyardy sort of
+      place a fir-wood is. I suppose it is the absence of any undergrowth, and
+      the fact that the trees never move at all. At any rate a kind of chill
+      suddenly struck Wat Danbury, and it flashed through his mind that there
+      had been some very singular points about this run&mdash; its length and
+      its straightness, and the fact that from the first find no one had ever
+      caught a glimpse of the creature. Some silly talk which had been going
+      round the country about the king of the foxes&mdash;a sort of demon fox,
+      so fast that it could outrun any pack, and so fierce that they could do
+      nothing with it if they overtook it&mdash;suddenly came back into his
+      mind, and it did not seem so laughable now in the dim fir-wood as it had
+      done when the story had been told over the wine and cigars. The
+      nervousness which had been on him in the morning, and which he had hoped
+      that he had shaken off, swept over him again in an overpowering wave. He
+      had been so proud of being alone, and yet he would have given 10 pounds
+      now to have had Joe Clarke’s homely face beside him. And then, just at
+      that moment, there broke out from the thickest part of the wood the most
+      frantic hullabaloo that ever he had heard in his life. The hounds had run
+      into their fox.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, you know, or you ought to know, what your duty is in such a case.
+      You have to be whip, huntsman, and everything else if you are the first
+      man up. You get in among the hounds, lash them off, and keep the brush and
+      pads from being destroyed. Of course, Wat Danbury knew all about that, and
+      he tried to force his mare through the trees to the place where all this
+      hideous screaming and howling came from, but the wood was so thick that it
+      was impossible to ride it. He sprang off, therefore, left the mare
+      standing, and broke his way through as best he could with his hunting-lash
+      ready over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But as he ran forward he felt his flesh go cold and creepy all over. He
+      had heard hounds run into foxes many times before, but he had never heard
+      such sounds as these. They were not the cries of triumph, but of fear.
+      Every now and then came a shrill yelp of mortal agony. Holding his breath,
+      he ran on until he broke through the interlacing branches, and found
+      himself in a little clearing with the hounds all crowding round a patch
+      of tangled bramble at the further end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When he first caught sight of them the hounds were standing in a
+      half-circle round this bramble patch, with their backs bristling and their
+      jaws gaping. In front of the brambles lay one of them with his throat torn
+      out, all crimson and white-and-tan. Wat came running out into the
+      clearing, and at the sight of him the hounds took heart again, and one of
+      them sprang with a growl into the bushes. At the same instant, a creature
+      the size of a donkey jumped on to its feet, a huge grey head, with
+      monstrous glistening fangs and tapering fox jaws, shot out from among the
+      branches, and the hound was thrown several feet into the air, and fell
+      howling among the cover. Then there was a clashing snap, like a rat-trap
+      closing, and the howls sharpened into a scream and then were still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Danbury had been on the look-out for symptoms all day, and now he had
+      found them. He looked once more at the thicket, saw a pair of savage red
+      eyes fixed upon him, and fairly took to his heels. It might only be a
+      passing delusion, or it might be the permanent mania of which the doctor
+      had spoken, but anyhow, the thing to do was to get back to bed and to
+      quiet, and to hope for the best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He forgot the hounds, the hunt, and everything else in his desperate
+      fears for his own reason. He sprang upon his mare, galloped her madly over
+      the downs, and only stopped when he found himself at a country station.
+      There he left his mare at the inn, and made back for home as quickly as
+      steam would take him. It was evening before he got there, shivering with
+      apprehension, and seeing those red eyes and savage teeth at every turn. He
+      went straight to bed and sent for Dr. Middleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I’ve got ’em, doctor,’ said he. ‘It came about exactly as you said&mdash;
+      strange creatures, optical delusions, and everything. All I ask you now is
+      to save my reason.’ The doctor listened to his story, and was shocked as
+      he heard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It appears to be a very clear case,’ said he. ‘This must be a lesson to
+      you for life.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Never a drop again if I only come safely through this,’ cried Wat
+      Danbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Well, my dear boy, if you will stick to that it may prove a blessing in
+      disguise. But the difficulty in this case is to know where fact ends and
+      fancy begins. You see, it is not as if there was only one delusion. There
+      have been several. The dead dogs, for example, must have been one as well
+      as the creature in the bush.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I saw it all as clearly as I see you.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘One of the characteristics of this form of delirium is that what you see
+      is even clearer than reality. I was wondering whether the whole run was
+      not a delusion also.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Wat Danbury pointed to his hunting boots still lying upon the floor,
+      necked with the splashings of two counties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Hum! that looks very real, certainly. No doubt, in your weak state, you
+      over-exerted yourself and so brought this attack upon yourself. Well,
+      whatever the cause, our treatment is clear. You will take the soothing
+      mixture which I will send to you, and we shall put two leeches upon your
+      temples to-night to relieve any congestion of the brain.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So Wat Danbury spent the night in tossing about and reflecting what a
+      sensitive thing this machinery of ours is, and how very foolish it is to
+      play tricks with what is so easily put out of gear and so difficult to
+      mend. And so he repeated and repeated his oath that this first lesson
+      should be his last, and that from that time forward he would be a sober,
+      hard-working yeoman as his father had been before him. So he lay, tossing
+      and still repentant, when his door flew open in the morning and in rushed
+      the doctor with a newspaper crumpled up in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘My dear boy,’ he cried, ‘I owe you a thousand apologies. You’re the most
+      ill-used lad and I the greatest numskull in the county. Listen to this!’
+      And he sat down upon the side of the bed, flattened out his paper upon his
+      knee, and began to read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The paragraph was headed, ‘Disaster to the Ascombe Hounds,’ and it went
+      on to say that four of the hounds, shockingly torn and mangled, had been
+      found in Winton Fir Wood upon the South Downs. The run had been so severe
+      that half the pack were lamed; but the four found in the wood were
+      actually dead, although the cause of their extraordinary injuries was
+      still unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘So, you see,’ said the doctor, looking up, ‘that I was wrong when I put
+      the dead hounds among the delusions.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘But the cause?’ cried Wat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Well, I think we may guess the cause from an item which has been
+      inserted just as the paper went to press:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   “Late last night, Mr. Brown, of Smither’s Farm, to the
+   east of Hastings, perceived what he imagined to be an enormous
+   dog worrying one of his sheep.  He shot the creature, which
+   proves to be a grey Siberian wolf of the variety known as
+   <i>Lupus Giganticus</i>.  It is supposed to have escaped from some
+   travelling menagerie.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s the story, gentlemen, and Wat Danbury stuck to his good
+      resolutions, for the fright which he had cured him of all wish to run such
+      a risk again; and he never touches anything stronger than lime-juice&mdash;at
+      least, he hadn’t before he left this part of the country, five years ago
+      next Lady Day.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was only the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that
+      great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the
+      bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole
+      Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders which
+      studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was beating
+      down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims of the
+      pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a blast-furnace. It
+      had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were no larger than
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Whew!” cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead, “you’d pay five shillings
+      for this at the hummums.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Precisely,” said Scott. “But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in a
+      Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and a
+      whole Christmas-treeful of things dangling from you. The hot-house at Kew
+      is excellent as a conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon the
+      horizontal bar. I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and a halt until
+      evening.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward. Everywhere
+      were the same black burned rocks and deep orange sand. At one spot only an
+      intermittent line appeared to have been cut through the rugged spurs which
+      ran down to the river. It was the bed of the old railway, long destroyed
+      by the Arabs, but now in process of reconstruction by the advancing
+      Egyptians. There was no other sign of man’s handiwork in all that desolate
+      scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s palm trees or nothing,” said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I suppose we must; and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the
+      force up. What <i>would</i> our editors say if we were late for the
+      action?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn’t need to be told that no sane
+      modern general would ever attack until the Press is up.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You don’t mean that?” said young Anerley. “I thought we were looked upon
+      as an unmitigated nuisance.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Newspaper correspondents and travelling gentlemen, and all that tribe of
+      useless drones’&mdash;being an extract from Lord Wolseley’s ‘Soldier’s
+      Pocket-Book,’” cried Scott. “We know all about <i>that</i>, Anerley;” and
+      he winked behind his blue spectacles. “If there was going to be a battle
+      we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up. I’ve been in
+      fifteen, and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a reporter’s
+      table.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s very well; but the enemy may be less considerate,” said Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They are not strong enough to force a battle.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A skirmish, then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear. In that case we are just
+      where we should be.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So we are! What a score over Reuter’s man up with the advance! Well,
+      we’ll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies.
+      Reuter’s was thirty miles ahead; two evening pennies upon camels were
+      twenty miles behind. And among them they represented the eyes and ears of
+      the public&mdash;the great silent millions and millions who had paid for
+      everything, and who waited so patiently to know the result of their
+      outlay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were remarkable men these body-servants of the Press; two of them
+      already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first campaign,
+      and full of deference for his famous comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was
+      Mortimer, of the <i>Intelligence</i>&mdash;tall, straight, and hawk-faced,
+      with khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund,
+      and a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled
+      by the mosquito and the sand-fly. The other&mdash;small, quick, mercurial,
+      with blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch for ever flicking in
+      his left hand&mdash;was Scott, of the <i>Courier</i>, who had come through
+      more dangers and brought off more brilliant <i>coups</i> than any man in
+      the profession, save the eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to
+      take the field. They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and it
+      was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship lay.
+      Each dovetailed into the other. The strength of each was in the other’s
+      weakness. Together they formed a perfect unit. Mortimer was Saxon&mdash;slow,
+      conscientious, and deliberate; Scott was Celtic&mdash;quick,
+      happy-go-lucky, and brilliant. Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the more
+      attractive. Mortimer was the deeper thinker, Scott the brighter talker. By
+      a curious coincidence, though each had seen much of warfare, their
+      campaigns had never coincided. Together they covered all recent military
+      history. Scott had done Plevna, the Shipka, the Zulus, Egypt, Suakim;
+      Mortimer had seen the Boer War, the Chilian, the Bulgaria and Servian, the
+      Gordon relief, the Indian frontier, Brazilian rebellion, and Madagascar.
+      This intimate personal knowledge gave a peculiar flavour to their talk.
+      There was none of the second-hand surmise and conjecture which form so
+      much of our conversation; it was all concrete and final. The speaker had
+      been there, had seen it, and there was an end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of their friendship there was the keenest professional rivalry
+      between the two men. Either would have sacrificed himself to help his
+      companion, but either would also have sacrificed his companion to help his
+      paper. Never did a jockey yearn for a winning mount as keenly as each of
+      them longed to have a full column in a morning edition whilst every other
+      daily was blank. They were perfectly frank about the matter. Each
+      professed himself ready to steal a march on his neighbour, and each
+      recognised that the other’s duty to his employer was far higher than any
+      personal consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third man was Anerley, of the <i>Gazette</i>&mdash;young,
+      inexperienced, and rather simple-looking. He had a droop of the lip, which
+      some of his more intimate friends regarded as a libel upon his character,
+      and his eyes were so slow and so sleepy that they suggested an
+      affectation. A leaning towards soldiering had sent him twice to autumn
+      manoeuvres, and a touch of colour in his descriptions had induced the
+      proprietors of the <i>Gazette</i> to give him a trial as a war-special.
+      There was a pleasing diffidence about his bearing which recommended him to
+      his experienced companions, and if they had a smile sometimes at his
+      guileless ways, it was soothing to them to have a comrade from whom
+      nothing was to be feared. From the day that they left the telegraph-wire
+      behind them at Sarras, the man who was mounted upon a 15-guinea 13-4
+      Syrian was delivered over into the hands of the owners of the two fastest
+      polo-ponies that ever shot down the Ghezireh ground. The three had
+      dismounted and led their beasts under the welcome shade. In the brassy,
+      yellow glare every branch above threw so black and solid a shadow that the
+      men involuntarily raised their feet to step over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The palm makes an excellent hat-rack,” said Scott, slinging his revolver
+      and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which bristle
+      from the trunk. “As a shade tree, however, it isn’t an unqualified
+      success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means to ends
+      something a little less flimsy could not have been devised for the
+      tropics.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Like the banyan in India.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Or the fine hardwood trees in Ashantee, where a whole regiment could
+      picnic under the shade.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The teak tree isn’t bad in Burmah, either. By Jove, the baccy has all
+      come loose in the saddle-bag! That long-cut mixture smokes rather hot for
+      this climate. How about the baggles, Anerley?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They’ll be here in five minutes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down the winding path which curved among the rocks the little train of
+      baggage-camels was daintily picking its way. They came mincing and
+      undulating along, turning their heads slowly from side to side with the
+      air of a self-conscious woman. In front rode the three Berberee
+      body-servants upon donkeys, and behind walked the Arab camel-boys. They
+      had been travelling for nine long hours, ever since the first rising of
+      the moon, at the weary camel-drag of two and a half miles an hour, but now
+      they brightened, both beasts and men, at the sight of the grove and the
+      riderless horses. In a few minutes the loads were unstrapped, the animals
+      tethered, a fire lighted, fresh water carried up from the river, and each
+      camel-boy provided with his own little heap of tibbin laid in the centre
+      of the table-cloth, without which no well-bred Arabian will condescend to
+      feed. The dazzling light without, the subdued half-tones within, the green
+      palm-fronds outlined against the deep blue sky, the flitting,
+      silent-footed Arab servants, the crackling of sticks, the reek of a
+      lighting fire, the placid supercilious heads of the camels, they all come
+      back in their dreams to those who have known them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott was breaking eggs into a pan and rolling out a love-song in his
+      rich, deep voice. Anerley, with his head and arms buried in a deal
+      packing-case, was working his way through strata of tinned soups, bully
+      beef, potted chicken, and sardines to reach the jams which lay beneath.
+      The conscientious Mortimer, with his notebook upon his knee, was jotting
+      down what the railway engineer had told him at the line-end the day
+      before. Suddenly he raised his eyes and saw the man himself on his
+      chestnut pony, dipping and rising over the broken ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hullo! Here’s Merryweather!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A pretty lather his pony is in! He’s had her at that hand-gallop for
+      hours, by the look of her. Hullo, Merryweather, hullo!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The engineer, a small, compact man with a pointed red beard, had made as
+      though he would ride past their camp without word or halt. Now he swerved,
+      and easing his pony down to a canter, he headed her towards them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For God’s sake, a drink!” he croaked. “My tongue is stuck to the roof of
+      my mouth.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer ran with the water-bottle, Scott with the whisky-flask, and
+      Anerley with the tin pannikin. The engineer drank until his breath failed
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I must be off,” said he, striking the drops from his red moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Any news?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A hitch in the railway construction. I must see the general. It’s the
+      devil not having a telegraph.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Anything we can report?” Out came three notebooks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll tell you after I’ve seen the general.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Any dervishes?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The usual shaves. Hud-up, Jinny! Good-bye!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a soft thudding upon the sand, and a clatter among the stones the
+      weary pony was off upon her journey once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nothing serious, I suppose?” said Mortimer, staring after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Deuced serious,” cried Scott. “The ham and eggs are burned! No&mdash;it’s
+      all right&mdash;saved, and done to a turn! Pull the box up, Anerley. Come
+      on, Mortimer, stow that notebook! The fork is mightier than the pen just
+      at present. What’s the matter with you, Anerley?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I was wondering whether what we have just seen was worth a telegram.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it’s for the proprietors to say if it’s worth it. Sordid money
+      considerations are not for us. We must wire about something just to
+      justify our khaki coats and our putties.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But what is there to say?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer’s long, austere face broke into a smile over the youngster’s
+      innocence. “It’s not quite usual in our profession to give each other
+      tips,” said he. “However, as my telegram is written, I’ve no objection to
+      your reading it. You may be sure that I would not show it to you if it
+      were of the slightest importance.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley took up the slip of paper and read:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Merryweather obstacles stop journey confer general stop nature
+   difficulties later stop rumours dervishes.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “This is very condensed,” said Anerley, with wrinkled brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Condensed!” cried Scott. “Why, it’s sinfully garrulous. If my old man got
+      a wire like that his language would crack the lamp-shades. I’d cut out
+      half this; for example, I’d have out ‘journey,’ and ‘nature,’ and
+      ‘rumours.’ But my old man would make a ten-line paragraph of it for all
+      that.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I’ll do it myself just to show you. Lend me that stylo.” He
+      scribbled for a minute in his notebook. “It works out somewhat on these
+      lines”:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Mr. Charles H.  Merryweather, the eminent railway engineer,
+   who is at present engaged in superintending the construction
+   of the line from Sarras to the front, has met with considerable
+   obstacles to the rapid completion of his important task&mdash;
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “Of course the old man knows who Merryweather is, and what he is about, so
+      the word ‘obstacles’ would suggest all that to him.”
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   He has to-day been compelled to make a journey of forty
+   miles to the front, in order to confer with the general upon
+   the steps which are necessary in order to facilitate the work.
+   Further particulars of the exact nature of the difficulties
+   met with will be made public at a later date.  All is quiet
+   upon the line of communications, though the usual persistent
+   rumours of the presence of dervishes in the Eastern desert
+   continue to circulate.&mdash;<i>Our own correspondent</i>.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “How’s that?” cried Scott, triumphantly, and his white teeth gleamed
+      suddenly through his black beard. “That’s the sort of flapdoodle for the
+      dear old public.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Will it interest them?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, everything interests them. They want to know all about it; and they
+      like to think that there is a man who is getting a hundred a month simply
+      in order to tell it to them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s very kind of you to teach me all this.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it is a little unconventional, for, after all, we are here to score
+      over each other if we can. There are no more eggs, and you must take it
+      out in jam. Of course, as Mortimer says, such a telegram as this is of no
+      importance one way or another, except to prove to the office that we <i>are</i>
+      in the Soudan, and not at Monte Carlo. But when it comes to serious work
+      it must be every man for himself.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Is that quite necessary?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, of course it is.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should have thought if three men were to combine and to share their
+      news, they would do better than if they were each to act for himself, and
+      they would have a much pleasanter time of it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two older men sat with their bread-and-jam in their hands, and an
+      expression of genuine disgust upon their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We are not here to have a pleasant time,” said Mortimer, with a flash
+      through his glasses. “We are here to do our best for our papers. How can
+      they score over each other if we do not do the same? If we all combine we
+      might as well amalgamate with Reuter at once.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, it would take away the whole glory of the profession!” cried Scott.
+      “At present the smartest man gets his stuff first on the wires. What
+      inducement is there to be smart if we all share and share alike?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And at present the man with the best equipment has the best chance,”
+      remarked Mortimer, glancing across at the shot-silk polo ponies and the
+      cheap little Syrian grey. “That is the fair reward of foresight and
+      enterprise. Every man for himself, and let the best man win.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s the way to find who the best man is. Look at Chandler. He would
+      never have got his chance if he had not played always off his own bat.
+      You’ve heard how he pretended to break his leg, sent his
+      fellow-correspondent off for the doctor, and so got a fair start for the
+      telegraph-office.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Do you mean to say that was legitimate?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Everything is legitimate. It’s your wits against my wits.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should call it dishonourable.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You may call it what you like. Chandler’s paper got the battle and the
+      other’s didn’t. It made Chandler’s name.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Or take Westlake,” said Mortimer, cramming the tobacco into his pipe.
+      “Hi, Abdul, you may have the dishes! Westlake brought his stuff down by
+      pretending to be the Government courier, and using the relays of
+      Government horses. Westlake’s paper sold half a million.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Is that legitimate also?” asked Anerley, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why not?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it looks a little like horse-stealing and lying.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, <i>I</i> think I should do a little horse-stealing and lying if I
+      could have a column to myself in a London daily. What do you say, Scott?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Anything short of manslaughter.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And I’m not sure that I’d trust you there.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I don’t think I should be guilty of newspaper-man-slaughter. That I
+      regard as a distinct breach of professional etiquette. But if any outsider
+      comes between a highly charged correspondent and an electric wire, he does
+      it at his peril. My dear Anerley, I tell you frankly that if you are going
+      to handicap yourself with scruple you may just as well be in Fleet Street
+      as in the Soudan. Our life is irregular. Our work has never been
+      systematised. No doubt it will be some day, but the time is not yet. Do
+      what you can and how you can, and be first on the wires; that’s my advice
+      to you; and also, that when next you come upon a campaign you bring with
+      you the best horse that money can buy. Mortimer may beat me or I may beat
+      Mortimer, but at least we know that between us we have the fastest ponies
+      in the country. We have neglected no chance.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am not so certain of that,” said Mortimer, slowly. “You are aware, of
+      course, that though a horse beats a camel on twenty miles, a camel beats a
+      horse on thirty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What, one of those camels?” cried Anerley in astonishment. The two
+      seniors burst out laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, no, the real high-bred trotter&mdash;the kind of beast the dervishes
+      ride when they make their lightning raids.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Faster than a galloping horse?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it tires a horse down. It goes the
+      same gait all the way, and it wants neither halt nor drink, and it takes
+      rough ground much better than a horse. They used to have long distance
+      races at Halfa, and the camel always won at thirty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Still, we need not reproach ourselves, Scott, for we are not very likely
+      to have to carry a thirty-mile message. They will have the field telegraph
+      next week.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Quite so. But at the present moment&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I know, my dear chap; but there is no motion of urgency before the house.
+      Load baggles at five o’clock; so you have just three hours clear. Any sign
+      of the evening pennies?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer swept the northern horizon with his binoculars. “Not in sight
+      yet.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They are quite capable of travelling during the heat of the day. Just the
+      sort of thing evening pennies <i>would</i> do. Take care of your match,
+      Anerley. These palm groves go up like a powder magazine if you set them
+      alight. Bye-bye.” The two men crawled under their mosquito-nets and sank
+      instantly into the easy sleep of those whose lives are spent in the open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Anerley stood with his back against a palm tree and his briar
+      between his lips, thinking over the advice which he had received. After
+      all, they were the heads of the profession, these men, and it was not for
+      him, the newcomer, to reform their methods. If they served their papers in
+      this fashion, then he must do the same. They had at least been frank and
+      generous in teaching him the rules of the game. If it was good enough for
+      them it was good enough for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a broiling afternoon, and those thin frills of foam round the
+      black, glistening necks of the Nile boulders looked delightfully cool and
+      alluring. But it would not be safe to bathe for some hours to come. The
+      air shimmered and vibrated over the baking stretch of sand and rock. There
+      was not a breath of wind, and the droning and piping of the insects
+      inclined one for sleep. Somewhere above a hoopoe was calling. Anerley
+      knocked out his ashes, and was turning towards his couch, when his eye
+      caught something moving in the desert to the south. It was a horseman
+      riding towards them as swiftly as the broken ground would permit. A
+      messenger from the army, thought Anerley; and then, as he watched, the sun
+      suddenly struck the man on the side of the head, and his chin flamed into
+      gold. There could not be two horsemen with beards of such a colour. It was
+      Merryweather, the engineer, and he was returning. What on earth was he
+      returning for? He had been so keen to see the general, and yet he was
+      coming back with his mission unaccomplished. Was it that his pony was
+      hopelessly foundered? It seemed to be moving well. Anerley picked up
+      Mortimer’s binoculars, and a foam-bespattered horse and a weary
+      koorbash-cracking man came cantering up the centre of the field. But there
+      was nothing in his appearance to explain the mystery of his return. Then
+      as he watched them they dipped into a hollow and disappeared. He could see
+      that it was one of those narrow khors which led to the river, and he
+      waited, glass in hand, for their immediate reappearance. But minute passed
+      after minute and there was no sign of them. That narrow gully appeared to
+      have swallowed them up. And then with a curious gulp and start he saw a
+      little grey cloud wreathe itself slowly from among the rocks and drift in
+      a long, hazy shred over the desert. In an instant he had torn Scott and
+      Mortimer from their slumbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Get up, you chaps!” he cried. “I believe Merryweather has been shot by
+      dervishes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And Reuter not here!” cried the two veterans, exultantly clutching at
+      their notebooks. “Merryweather shot! Where? When? How?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few words Anerley explained what he had seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You heard nothing?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nothing.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, a shot loses itself very easily among rocks. By George, look at the
+      buzzards!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two large brown birds were soaring in the deep blue heaven. As Scott spoke
+      they circled down and dropped into the little khor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s good enough,” said Mortimer, with his nose between the leaves of
+      his book. “‘Merryweather headed dervishes stop return stop shot mutilated
+      stop raid communications.’ How’s that?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You think he was headed off?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why else should he return?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In that case, if they were out in front of him and others cut him off,
+      there must be several small raiding parties.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should judge so.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How about the ‘mutilated’?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ve fought against Arabs before.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where are you off to?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sarras.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I think I’ll race you in,” said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley stared in astonishment at the absolutely impersonal way in which
+      these men regarded the situation. In their zeal for news it had apparently
+      never struck them that they, their camp, and their servants were all in
+      the lion’s mouth. But even as they talked there came the harsh,
+      importunate rat-tat-tat of an irregular volley from among the rocks, and
+      the high, keening whistle of bullets over their heads. A palm spray
+      fluttered down amongst them. At the same instant the six frightened
+      servants came running wildly in for protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the cool-headed Mortimer who organised the defence, for Scott’s
+      Celtic soul was so aflame at all this “copy” in hand and more to come that
+      he was too exuberantly boisterous for a commander. The other, with his
+      spectacles and his stern face, soon had the servants in hand. “<i>Tali
+      henna! Egri!</i> What the deuce are you frightened about? Put the camels
+      between the palm trunks. That’s right. Now get the knee-tethers on them.
+      <i>Quies</i>! Did you never hear bullets before? Now put the donkeys here.
+      Not much&mdash;you don’t get my polo-pony to make a zareba with. Picket
+      the ponies between the grove and the river out of danger’s way. These
+      fellows seem to fire even higher than they did in ’85.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s got home, anyhow,” said Scott, as they heard a soft, splashing
+      thud like a stone in a mud-bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Who’s hit, then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The brown camel that’s chewing the cud.” As he spoke the creature, its
+      jaw still working, laid its long neck along the ground and closed its
+      large dark eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That shot cost me 15 pounds,” said Mortimer, ruefully. “How many of them
+      do you make?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Four, I think.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Only four Bezingers, at any rate; there may be some spearmen.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I think not; it is a little raiding-party of rifle-men. By the way,
+      Anerley, you’ve never been under fire before, have you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Never,” said the young pressman, who was conscious of a curious feeling
+      of nervous elation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Love and poverty and war, they are all experiences necessary to make a
+      complete life. Pass over those cartridges. This is a very mild baptism
+      that you are undergoing, for behind these camels you are as safe as if you
+      were sitting in the back room of the Authors’ Club.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “As safe, but hardly as comfortable,” said Scott. “A long glass of hock
+      and seltzer would be exceedingly acceptable. But oh, Mortimer, what a
+      chance! Think of the general’s feelings when he hears that the first
+      action of the war has been fought by the Press column. Think of Reuter,
+      who has been stewing at the front for a week! Think of the evening pennies
+      just too late for the fun. By George, that slug brushed a mosquito off
+      me!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And one of the donkeys is hit.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This is sinful. It will end in our having to carry our own kits to
+      Khartoum.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Never mind, my boy, it all goes to make copy. I can see the headlines&mdash;‘Raid
+      on Communications’: ‘Murder of British Engineer’: ‘Press Column Attacked.’
+      Won’t it be ripping?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I wonder what the next line will be,” said Anerley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Our Special Wounded’!” cried Scott, rolling over on to his back. “No
+      harm done,” he added, gathering himself up again; “only a chip off my
+      knee. This is getting sultry. I confess that the idea of that back room at
+      the Authors’ Club begins to grow upon me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have some diachylon.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Afterwards will do. We’re having a ’appy day with Fuzzy on the rush. I
+      wish he <i>would</i> rush.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They’re coming nearer.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This is an excellent revolver of mine if it didn’t throw so devilish
+      high. I always aim at a man’s toes if I want to stimulate his digestion. O
+      Lord, there’s our kettle gone!” With a boom like a dinner-gong a Remington
+      bullet had passed through the kettle, and a cloud of steam hissed up from
+      the fire. A wild shout came from the rocks above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The idiots think that they have blown us up. They’ll rush us now, as sure
+      as fate; then it will be our turn to lead. Got your revolver, Anerley?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have this double-barrelled fowling-piece.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sensible man! It’s the best weapon in the world at this sort of
+      rough-and-tumble work. What cartridges?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Swan-shot.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That will do all right. I carry this big bore double-barrelled pistol
+      loaded with slugs. You might as well try to stop one of these fellows with
+      a pea-shooter as with a service revolver.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There are ways and means,” said Scott. “The Geneva Convention does not
+      hold south of the first cataract. It’s easy to make a bullet mushroom by a
+      little manipulation of the tip of it. When I was in the broken square at
+      Tamai&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Wait a bit,” cried Mortimer, adjusting his glasses. “I think they are
+      coming now.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The time,” said Scott, snapping up his watch, “being exactly seventeen
+      minutes past four.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley had been lying behind a camel staring with an interest which
+      bordered upon fascination at the rocks opposite. Here was a little woolly
+      puff of smoke, and there was another one, but never once had they caught a
+      glimpse of the attackers. To him there was something weird and awesome in
+      these unseen, persistent men who, minute by minute, were drawing closer to
+      them. He had heard them cry out when the kettle was broken, and once,
+      immediately afterwards, an enormously strong voice had roared something
+      which had set Scott shrugging his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They’ve got to take us first,” said he, and Anerley thought his nerve
+      might be better if he did not ask for a translation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The firing had begun at a distance of some 100 yards, which put it out of
+      the question for them, with their lighter weapons, to make any reply to
+      it. Had their antagonists continued to keep that range the defenders must
+      either have made a hopeless sally or tried to shelter themselves behind
+      their zareba as best they might on the chance that the sound might bring
+      up help. But, luckily for them, the African has never taken kindly to the
+      rifle, and his primitive instinct to close with his enemy is always too
+      strong for his sense of strategy. They were drawing in, therefore, and
+      now, for the first time, Anerley caught sight of a face looking at them
+      from over a rock. It was a huge, virile, strong-jawed head of a pure negro
+      type, with silver trinkets gleaming in the ears. The man raised a great
+      arm from behind the rock, and shook his Remington at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Shall I fire?” asked Anerley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, no; it is too far. Your shot would scatter all over the place.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s a picturesque ruffian,” said Scott. “Couldn’t you kodak him,
+      Mortimer? There’s another!” A fine-featured brown Arab, with a black,
+      pointed beard, was peeping from behind another boulder. He wore the green
+      turban which proclaimed him hadji, and his face showed the keen, nervous
+      exultation of the religious fanatic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They seem a piebald crowd,” said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That last is one of the real fighting Baggara,” remarked Mortimer. “He’s
+      a dangerous man.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He looks pretty vicious. There’s another negro!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Two more! Dingas, by the look of them. Just the same chaps we get our own
+      black battalions from. As long as they get a fight they don’t mind who
+      it’s for; but if the idiots had only sense enough to understand, they
+      would know that the Arab is their hereditary enemy, and we their
+      hereditary friends. Look at the silly juggins, gnashing his teeth at the
+      very men who put down the slave trade!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Couldn’t you explain?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll explain with this pistol when he comes a little nearer. Now sit
+      tight, Anerley. They’re off!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were indeed. It was the brown man with the green turban who headed
+      the rush. Close at his heels was the negro with the silver ear-rings&mdash;
+      a giant of a man, and the other two were only a little behind. As they
+      sprang over the rocks one after the other, it took Anerley back to the
+      school sports when he held the tape for the hurdle-race. It was
+      magnificent, the wild spirit and abandon of it, the flutter of the
+      chequered galabeeahs, the gleam of steel, the wave of black arms, the
+      frenzied faces, the quick pitter-patter of the rushing feet. The
+      law-abiding Briton is so imbued with the idea of the sanctity of human
+      life that it was hard for the young pressman to realise that these men had
+      every intention of killing him, and that he was at perfect liberty to do
+      as much for them. He lay staring as if this were a show and he a
+      spectator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now, Anerley, now! Take the Arab!” cried somebody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put up the gun and saw the brown fierce face at the other end of the
+      barrel. He tugged at the trigger, but the face grew larger and fiercer
+      with every stride. Again and again he tugged. A revolver-shot rang out at
+      his elbow, then another one, and he saw a red spot spring out on the
+      Arab’s brown breast. But he was still coming on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Shoot, you ass, shoot!” screamed Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he strained unavailingly at the trigger. There were two more
+      pistol-shots, and the big negro had fallen and risen and fallen again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Cock it, you fool!” shouted a furious voice; and at the same instant,
+      with a rush and flutter, the Arab bounded over the prostrate camel and
+      came down with his bare feet upon Anerley’s chest. In a dream he seemed to
+      be struggling frantically with someone upon the ground, then he was
+      conscious of a tremendous explosion in his very face, and so ended for him
+      the first action of the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good-bye, old chap. You’ll be all right. Give yourself time.” It was
+      Mortimer’s voice, and he became dimly conscious of a long, spectacled
+      face, and of a heavy hand upon his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sorry to leave you. We’ll be lucky now if we are in time for the morning
+      editions.” Scott was tightening his girth as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We’ll put in our wire that you have been hurt, so your people will know
+      why they don’t hear from you. If Reuter or the evening pennies come up,
+      don’t give the thing away. Abbas will look after you, and we’ll be back
+      to-morrow afternoon. Bye-bye!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley heard it all, though he did not feel energy enough to answer.
+      Then, as he watched two sleek, brown ponies with their yellow-clad riders
+      dwindling among the rocks, his memory cleared suddenly, and he realised
+      that the first great journalistic chance of his life was slipping away
+      from him. It was a small fight, but it was the first of the war, and the
+      great public at home were all athirst for news. They would have it in the
+      <i>Courier</i>; they would have it in the <i>Intelligence</i>, and not a
+      word in the <i>Gazette</i>. The thought brought him to his feet, though he
+      had to throw his arm round the stem of the palm tree to steady his
+      swimming head. There was a big black man lying where he had fallen, his
+      huge chest pocked with bullet-marks, every wound rosetted with its circle
+      of flies. The Arab was stretched out within a few yards of him, with two
+      hands clasped over the dreadful thing which had been his head. Across him
+      was lying Anerley’s fowling-piece, one barrel discharged, the other at
+      half cock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Scott effendi shoot him your gun,” said a voice. It was Abbas, his
+      English-speaking body-servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley groaned at the disgrace of it. He had lost his head so completely
+      that he had forgotten to cock his gun; and yet he knew that it was not
+      fear but interest which had so absorbed him. He put his hand up to his
+      head and felt that a wet handkerchief was bound round his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where are the two other dervishes?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They ran away. One got shot in arm.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What’s happened to me?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Effendi got cut on head. Effendi catch bad man by arms, and Scott effendi
+      shot him. Face burn very bad.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley became conscious suddenly that there was a pringling about his
+      skin and an overpowering smell of burned hair under his nostrils. He put
+      his hand to his moustache. It was gone. His eyebrows too? He could not
+      find them. His head, no doubt, was very near to the dervish’s when they
+      were rolling upon the ground together, and this was the effect of the
+      explosion of his own gun. Well, he would have time to grow some more hair
+      before he saw Fleet Street again. But the cut, perhaps, was a more serious
+      matter. Was it enough to prevent him getting to the telegraph-office at
+      Sarras? The only way was to try and see. But there was only that poor
+      little Syrian grey of his. There it stood in the evening sunshine, with a
+      sunk head and a bent knee, as if its morning’s work was still heavy upon
+      it. What hope was there of being able to do thirty-five miles of heavy
+      going upon that? It would be a strain upon the splendid ponies of his
+      companions&mdash;and they were the swiftest and most enduring in the
+      country. The most enduring? There was one creature more enduring, and that
+      was a real trotting camel. If he had had one he might have got to the
+      wires first after all, for Mortimer had said that over thirty miles they
+      have the better of any horse. Yes, if he had only had a real trotting
+      camel! And then like a flash came Mortimer’s words, “It is the kind of
+      beast that the dervishes ride when they make their lightning raids.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beasts the dervishes ride! What had these dead dervishes ridden? In an
+      instant he was clambering up the rocks, with Abbas protesting at his
+      heels. Had the two fugitives carried away all the camels, or had they been
+      content to save themselves? The brass gleam from a litter of empty
+      Remington cases caught his eye, and showed where the enemy had been
+      crouching. And then he could have shouted for joy, for there, in the
+      hollow, some little distance off, rose the high, graceful white neck and
+      the elegant head of such a camel as he had never set eyes upon before&mdash;a
+      swanlike, beautiful creature, as far from the rough, clumsy baggles as the
+      cart-horse is from the racer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beast was kneeling under the shelter of the rocks with its waterskin
+      and bag of doora slung over its shoulders, and its forelegs tethered Arab
+      fashion with a rope around the knees. Anerley threw his leg over the front
+      pommel while Abbas slipped off the cord. Forward flew Anerley towards the
+      creature’s neck, then violently backwards, clawing madly at anything which
+      might save him, and then, with a jerk which nearly snapped his loins, he
+      was thrown forward again. But the camel was on its legs now, and the young
+      pressman was safely seated upon one of the fliers of the desert. It was as
+      gentle as it was swift, and it stood oscillating its long neck and gazing
+      round with its large brown eyes, whilst Anerley coiled his legs round the
+      peg and grasped the curved camel-stick which Abbas had handed up to him.
+      There were two bridle-cords, one from the nostril and one from the neck,
+      but he remembered that Scott had said that it was the servant’s and not
+      the house-bell which had to be pulled, so he kept his grasp upon the
+      lower. Then he touched the long, vibrating neck with his stick, and in an
+      instant Abbas’ farewell seemed to come from far behind him, and the black
+      rocks and yellow sand were dancing past on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his first experience of a trotting camel, and at first the motion,
+      although irregular and abrupt, was not unpleasant. Having no stirrup or
+      fixed point of any kind, he could not rise to it, but he gripped as
+      tightly as he could with his knee, and he tried to sway backwards and
+      forwards as he had seen the Arabs do. It was a large, very concave
+      Makloofa saddle, and he was conscious that he was bouncing about on it
+      with as little power of adhesion as a billiard-ball upon a tea-tray. He
+      gripped the two sides with his hands to hold himself steady. The creature
+      had got into its long, swinging, stealthy trot, its sponge-like feet
+      making no sound upon the hard sand. Anerley leaned back with his two hands
+      gripping hard behind him, and he whooped the creature on. The sun had
+      already sunk behind the line of black volcanic peaks, which look like huge
+      slag-heaps at the mouth of a mine. The western sky had taken that lovely
+      light green and pale pink tint which makes evening beautiful upon the
+      Nile, and the old brown river itself, swirling down amongst the black
+      rocks, caught some shimmer of the colours above. The glare, the heat, and
+      the piping of the insects had all ceased together. In spite of his aching
+      head, Anerley could have cried out for pure physical joy as the swift
+      creature beneath him flew along with him through that cool, invigorating
+      air, with the virile north wind soothing his pringling face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had looked at his watch, and now he made a swift calculation of times
+      and distances. It was past six when he had left the camp. Over broken
+      ground it was impossible that he could hope to do more than seven miles an
+      hour&mdash;less on bad parts, more on the smooth. His recollection of the
+      track was that there were few smooth and many bad. He would be lucky,
+      then, if he reached Sarras anywhere from twelve to one. Then the messages
+      took a good two hours to go through, for they had to be transcribed at
+      Cairo. At the best he could only hope to have told his story in Fleet
+      Street at two or three in the morning. It was possible that he might
+      manage it, but the chances seemed enormously against him. About three the
+      morning edition would be made up, and his chance gone for ever. The one
+      thing clear was that only the first man at the wires would have any chance
+      at all, and Anerley meant to be first if hard riding could do it. So he
+      tapped away at the bird-like neck, and the creature’s long, loose limbs
+      went faster and faster at every tap. Where the rocky spurs ran down to the
+      river, horses would have to go round, while camels might get across, so
+      that Anerley felt that he was always gaining upon his companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was a price to be paid for the feeling. He had heard of men who
+      had burst when on camel journeys, and he knew that the Arabs swathe their
+      bodies tightly in broad cloth bandages when they prepare for a long march.
+      It had seemed unnecessary and ridiculous when he first began to speed over
+      the level track, but now, when he got on the rocky paths, he understood
+      what it meant. Never for an instant was he at the same angle. Backwards,
+      forwards he swung, with a tingling jar at the end of each sway, until he
+      ached from his neck to his knees. It caught him across the shoulders, it
+      caught him down the spine, it gripped him over the loins, it marked the
+      lower line of his ribs with one heavy, dull throb. He clutched here and
+      there with his hand to try and ease the strain upon his muscles. He drew
+      up his knees, altered his seat, and set his teeth with a grim
+      determination to go through with it should it kill him. His head was
+      splitting, his flayed face smarting, and every joint in his body aching as
+      if it were dislocated. But he forgot all that when, with the rising of the
+      moon, he heard the clinking of horses’ hoofs down upon the track by the
+      river, and knew that, unseen by them, he had already got well abreast of
+      his companions. But he was hardly halfway, and the time already eleven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day the needles had been ticking away without intermission in the
+      little corrugated iron hut which served as a telegraph station at Sarras.
+      With its bare walls and its packing-case seats, it was none the less for
+      the moment one of the vital spots upon the earth’s surface, and the crisp,
+      importunate ticking might have come from the world-old clock of Destiny.
+      Many august people had been at the other end of those wires, and had
+      communed with the moist-faced military clerk. A French Premier had
+      demanded a pledge, and an English marquis had passed on the request to the
+      General in command, with a question as to how it would affect the
+      situation. Cipher telegrams had nearly driven the clerk out of his wits,
+      for of all crazy occupations the taking of a cipher message, when you are
+      without the key to the cipher, is the worst. Much high diplomacy had been
+      going on all day in the innermost chambers of European chancellories, and
+      the results of it had been whispered into this little corrugated-iron hut.
+      About two in the morning an enormous despatch had come at last to an end,
+      and the weary operator had opened the door, and was lighting his pipe in
+      the cool, fresh air, when he saw a camel plump down in the dust, and a
+      man, who seemed to be in the last stage of drunkenness, come rolling
+      towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What’s the time?” he cried, in a voice which appeared to be the only
+      sober thing about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the clerk’s lips to say that it was time that the questioner was
+      in his bed, but it is not safe upon a campaign to be ironical at the
+      expense of khaki-clad men. He contented himself, therefore, with the bald
+      statement that it was after two. But no retort that he could have devised
+      could have had a more crushing effect. The voice turned drunken also, and
+      the man caught at the door-post to uphold him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Two o’clock! I’m done after all!” said he. His head was tied up in a
+      bloody handkerchief, his face was crimson, and he stood with his legs
+      crooked as if the pith had all gone out of his back. The clerk began to
+      realise that something out of the ordinary was in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How long does it take to get a wire to London?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “About two hours.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And it’s two now. I could not get it there before four.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Before three.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Four.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, three.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But you said two hours.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, but there’s more than an hour’s difference in longitude.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By Heaven, I’ll do it yet!” cried Anerley, and staggering to a
+      packing-case, he began the dictation of his famous despatch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it came about that the <i>Gazette</i> had a long column, with
+      headlines like an epitaph, when the sheets of the <i>Intelligence</i> and
+      the <i>Courier</i> were as blank as the faces of their editors. And so,
+      too, it happened that when two weary men, upon two foundered horses,
+      arrived about four in the morning at the Sarras post-office, they looked
+      at each other in silence and departed noiselessly, with the conviction
+      that there are some situations with which the English language is not
+      capable of dealing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE NEW CATACOMB
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      “Look here, Burger,” said Kennedy, “I do wish that you would confide in
+      me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two famous students of Roman remains sat together in Kennedy’s
+      comfortable room overlooking the Corso. The night was cold, and they had
+      both pulled up their chairs to the unsatisfactory Italian stove which
+      threw out a zone of stuffiness rather than of warmth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside under the bright winter stars lay the modern Rome, the long,
+      double chain of the electric lamps, the brilliantly lighted <i>cafes</i>,
+      the rushing carriages, and the dense throng upon the footpaths. But
+      inside, in the sumptuous chamber of the rich young English archaeologist,
+      there was only old Rome to be seen. Cracked and time-worn friezes hung
+      upon the walls, grey old busts of senators and soldiers with their
+      fighting heads and their hard, cruel faces peered out from the corners. On
+      the centre table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments, and
+      ornaments, there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths
+      of Caracalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was
+      exhibited in Berlin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amphorae hung from the ceiling, and a litter of curiosities strewed the
+      rich red Turkey carpet. And of them all there was not one which was not of
+      the most unimpeachable authenticity, and of the utmost rarity and value;
+      for Kennedy, though little more than thirty, had a European reputation in
+      this particular branch of research, and was, moreover, provided with that
+      long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap to the student’s
+      energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him an
+      enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often been seduced by
+      whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one,
+      capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of
+      sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its
+      aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensuous mouth, was a fair
+      index of the compromise between strength and weakness in his nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger. He came of a
+      curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust
+      qualities of the North mingling strangely with the softer graces of the
+      South. Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above them
+      rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow curls lying
+      round it. His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his companion had
+      frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman busts which
+      peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber. Under its bluff
+      German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian subtlety, but the
+      smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one understood that this
+      was only an indication of his ancestry, with no actual bearing upon his
+      character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In age and in reputation he was on the same level as his English
+      companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous.
+      Twelve years before he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived
+      ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded
+      to him by the University of Bonn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and
+      singlemindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of fame,
+      until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was every
+      reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the Chair of the
+      greatest of German Universities. But the singleness of purpose which had
+      brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant Englishman,
+      had caused him in everything outside their work to stand infinitely below
+      him. He had never found a pause in his studies in which to cultivate the
+      social graces. It was only when he spoke of his own subject that his face
+      was filled with life and soul. At other times he was silent and
+      embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in larger subjects, and
+      impatient of that small talk which is the conventional refuge of those who
+      have no thoughts to express.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared
+      to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different
+      rivals. The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own
+      studies each was the only one of the younger men who had knowledge and
+      enthusiasm enough to properly appreciate the other. Their common interests
+      and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been attracted by the
+      other’s knowledge. And then gradually something had been added to this.
+      Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and simplicity of his rival,
+      while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the brilliancy and vivacity
+      which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman society. I say “had,”
+      because just at the moment the young Englishman was somewhat under a
+      cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A love affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had
+      indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked many
+      of his friends. But in the bachelor circles of students and artists in
+      which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of honour in such
+      matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of shoulders shrugged
+      over the flight of two and the return of one, the general sentiment was
+      probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy rather than of reprobation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look here, Burger,” said Kennedy, looking hard at the placid face of his
+      companion, “I do wish that you would confide in me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he waved his hand in the direction of a rug which lay upon the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the rug stood a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wicker-work
+      which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of
+      objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn
+      papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have seemed
+      to have come straight from a dustman’s bin, but which a specialist would
+      have speedily recognized as unique of their kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pile of odds and ends in the flat wicker-work basket supplied exactly
+      one of those missing links of social development which are of such
+      interest to the student. It was the German who had brought them in, and
+      the Englishman’s eyes were hungry as he looked at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I won’t interfere with your treasure-trove, but I should very much like
+      to hear about it,” he continued, while Burger very deliberately lit a
+      cigar. “It is evidently a discovery of the first importance. These
+      inscriptions will make a sensation throughout Europe.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For every one here there are a million there!” said the German. “There
+      are so many that a dozen savants might spend a lifetime over them, and
+      build up a reputation as solid as the Castle of St. Angelo.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy was thinking with his fine forehead wrinkled and his fingers
+      playing with his long, fair moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You have given yourself away, Burger!” said he at last. “Your words can
+      only apply to one thing. You have discovered a new catacomb.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I had no doubt that you had already come to that conclusion from an
+      examination of these objects.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, they certainly appeared to indicate it, but your last remarks make
+      it certain. There is no place except a catacomb which could contain so
+      vast a store of relics as you describe.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Quite so. There is no mystery about that. I <i>have</i> discovered a new
+      catacomb.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah, that is my secret, my dear Kennedy! Suffice it that it is so situated
+      that there is not one chance in a million of anyone else coming upon it.
+      Its date is different from that of any known catacomb, and it has been
+      reserved for the burial of the highest Christians, so that the remains and
+      the relics are quite different from anything which has ever been seen
+      before. If I was not aware of your knowledge and of your energy, my
+      friend, I would not hesitate, under the pledge of secrecy, to tell you
+      everything about it. But as it is I think that I must certainly prepare my
+      own report of the matter before I expose myself to such formidable
+      competition.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy loved his subject with a love which was almost a mania&mdash;a
+      love which held him true to it, amidst all the distractions which come to
+      a wealthy and dissipated young man. He had ambition, but his ambition was
+      secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which
+      concerned the old life and history of the city. He yearned to see this new
+      underworld which his companion had discovered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look here, Burger,” said he, earnestly, “I assure you that you can trust
+      me most implicitly in the matter. Nothing would induce me to put pen to
+      paper about anything which I see until I have your express permission. I
+      quite understand your feeling, and I think it is most natural, but you
+      have really nothing whatever to fear from me. On the other hand, if you
+      don’t tell me I shall make a systematic search, and I shall most certainly
+      discover it. In that case, of course, I should make what use I liked of
+      it, since I should be under no obligation to you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Burger smiled thoughtfully over his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have noticed, friend Kennedy,” said he, “that when I want information
+      over any point you are not always so ready to supply it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When did you ever ask me anything that I did not tell you? You remember,
+      for example, my giving you the material for your paper about the temple of
+      the Vestals.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah, well, that was not a matter of much importance. If I were to question
+      you upon some intimate thing, would you give me an answer, I wonder! This
+      new catacomb is a very intimate thing to me, and I should certainly expect
+      some sign of confidence in return.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What you are driving at I cannot imagine,” said the Englishman, “but if
+      you mean that you will answer my question about the catacomb if I answer
+      any question which you may put to me, I can assure you that I will
+      certainly do so.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, then,” said Burger, leaning luxuriously back in his settee, and
+      puffing a blue tree of cigar-smoke into the air, “tell me all about your
+      relations with Miss Mary Saunderson.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy sprang up in his chair and glared angrily at his impassive
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What the devil do you mean?” he cried. “What sort of a question is this?
+      You may mean it as a joke, but you never made a worse one.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, I don’t mean it as a joke,” said Burger, simply. “I am really rather
+      interested in the details of the matter. I don’t know much about the world
+      and women and social life and that sort of thing, and such an incident has
+      the fascination of the unknown for me. I know you, and I knew her by sight&mdash;I
+      had even spoken to her once or twice. I should very much like to hear from
+      your own lips exactly what it was which occurred between you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I won’t tell you a word.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s all right. It was only my whim to see if you would give up a
+      secret as easily as you expected me to give up my secret of the new
+      catacomb. You wouldn’t, and I didn’t expect you to. But why should you
+      expect otherwise of me? There’s St. John’s clock striking ten. It is quite
+      time that I was going home.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, wait a bit, Burger,” said Kennedy; “this is really a ridiculous
+      caprice of yours to wish to know about an old love affair which has burned
+      out months ago. You know we look upon a man who kisses and tells as the
+      greatest coward and villain possible.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Certainly,” said the German, gathering up his basket of curiosities,
+      “when he tells anything about a girl which is previously unknown, he must
+      be so. But in this case, as you must be aware, it was a public matter
+      which was the common talk of Rome, so that you are not really doing Miss
+      Mary Saunderson any injury by discussing her case with me. But still, I
+      respect your scruples; and so good night!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Wait a bit, Burger,” said Kennedy, laying his hand upon the other’s arm;
+      “I am very keen upon this catacomb business, and I can’t let it drop quite
+      so easily. Would you mind asking me something else in return&mdash;something
+      not quite so eccentric this time?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, no; you have refused, and there is an end of it,” said Burger, with
+      his basket on his arm. “No doubt you are quite right not to answer, and no
+      doubt I am quite right also&mdash;and so again, my dear Kennedy, good
+      night!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman watched Burger cross the room, and he had his hand on the
+      handle of the door before his host sprang up with the air of a man who is
+      making the best of that which cannot be helped. “Hold on, old fellow,”
+      said he. “I think you are behaving in a most ridiculous fashion, but
+      still, if this is your condition, I suppose that I must submit to it. I
+      hate saying anything about a girl, but, as you say, it is all over Rome,
+      and I don’t suppose I can tell you anything which you do not know already.
+      What was it you wanted to know?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German came back to the stove, and, laying down his basket, he sank
+      into his chair once more. “May I have another cigar?” said he. “Thank you
+      very much! I never smoke when I work, but I enjoy a chat much more when I
+      am under the influence of tobacco. Now, as regards this young lady, with
+      whom you had this little adventure. What in the world has become of her?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “She is at home with her own people.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, really&mdash;in England?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What part of England&mdash;London?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, Twickenham.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You must excuse my curiosity, my dear Kennedy, and you must put it down
+      to my ignorance of the world. No doubt it is quite a simple thing to
+      persuade a young lady to go off with you for three weeks or so, and then
+      to hand her over to her own family at&mdash;what did you call the place?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Twickenham.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Quite so&mdash;at Twickenham. But it is something so entirely outside my
+      own experience that I cannot even imagine how you set about it. For
+      example, if you had loved this girl your love could hardly disappear in
+      three weeks, so I presume that you could not have loved her at all. But if
+      you did not love her why should you make this great scandal which has
+      damaged you and ruined her?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy looked moodily into the red eye of the stove. “That’s a logical
+      way of looking at it, certainly,” said he. “Love is a big word, and it
+      represents a good many different shades of feeling. I liked her, and&mdash;
+      well, you say you’ve seen her&mdash;you know how charming she can look.
+      But still I am willing to admit, looking back, that I could never have
+      really loved her.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then, my dear Kennedy, why did you do it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The adventure of the thing had a great deal to do with it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What! You are so fond of adventures!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where would the variety of life be without them? It was for an adventure
+      that I first began to pay my attentions to her. I’ve chased a good deal of
+      game in my time, but there’s no chase like that of a pretty woman. There
+      was the piquant difficulty of it also, for, as she was the companion of
+      Lady Emily Rood it was almost impossible to see her alone. On the top of
+      all the other obstacles which attracted me, I learned from her own lips
+      very early in the proceedings that she was engaged.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mein Gott! To whom?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “She mentioned no names.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I do not think that anyone knows that. So that made the adventure more
+      alluring, did it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it did certainly give a spice to it. Don’t you think so?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I tell you that I am very ignorant about these things.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My dear fellow, you can remember that the apple you stole from your
+      neighbour’s tree was always sweeter than that which fell from your own.
+      And then I found that she cared for me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What&mdash;at once?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, no, it took about three months of sapping and mining. But at last I
+      won her over. She understood that my judicial separation from my wife made
+      it impossible for me to do the right thing by her&mdash;but she came all
+      the same, and we had a delightful time, as long as it lasted.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But how about the other man?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose it is the survival of the
+      fittest,” said he. “If he had been the better man she would not have
+      deserted him. Let’s drop the subject, for I have had enough of it!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Only one other thing. How did you get rid of her in three weeks?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we had both cooled down a bit, you understand. She absolutely
+      refused, under any circumstances, to come back to face the people she had
+      known in Rome. Now, of course, Rome is necessary to me, and I was already
+      pining to be back at my work&mdash;so there was one obvious cause of
+      separation. Then, again, her old father turned up at the hotel in London,
+      and there was a scene, and the whole thing became so unpleasant that
+      really&mdash;though I missed her dreadfully at first&mdash;I was very glad
+      to slip out of it. Now, I rely upon you not to repeat anything of what I
+      have said.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My dear Kennedy, I should not dream of repeating it. But all that you say
+      interests me very much, for it gives me an insight into your way of
+      looking at things, which is entirely different from mine, for I have seen
+      so little of life. And now you want to know about my new catacomb. There’s
+      no use my trying to describe it, for you would never find it by that.
+      There is only one thing, and that is for me to take you there.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That would be splendid.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When would you like to come?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The sooner the better. I am all impatience to see it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it is a beautiful night&mdash;though a trifle cold. Suppose we
+      start in an hour. We must be very careful to keep the matter to ourselves.
+      If anyone saw us hunting in couples they would suspect that there was
+      something going on.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We can’t be too cautious,” said Kennedy. “Is it far?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Some miles.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not too far to walk?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, no, we could walk there easily.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We had better do so, then. A cabman’s suspicions would be aroused if he
+      dropped us both at some lonely spot in the dead of the night.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Quite so. I think it would be best for us to meet at the Gate of the
+      Appian Way at midnight. I must go back to my lodgings for the matches and
+      candles and things.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “All right, Burger! I think it is very kind of you to let me into this
+      secret, and I promise you that I will write nothing about it until you
+      have published your report. Good-bye for the present! You will find me at
+      the Gate at twelve.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cold, clear air was filled with the musical chimes from that city of
+      clocks as Burger, wrapped in an Italian overcoat, with a lantern hanging
+      from his hand, walked up to the rendezvous. Kennedy stepped out of the
+      shadow to meet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are ardent in work as well as in love!” said the German, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes; I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I hope you left no clue as to where we were going.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not such a fool! By Jove, I am chilled to the bone! Come on, Burger, let
+      us warm ourselves by a spurt of hard walking.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their footsteps sounded loud and crisp upon the rough stone paving of the
+      disappointing road which is all that is left of the most famous highway of
+      the world. A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop, and a few carts
+      of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only things which they met.
+      They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up through the darkness upon
+      each side of them, until they had come as far as the Catacombs of St.
+      Calixtus, and saw against a rising moon the great circular bastion of
+      Cecilia Metella in front of them. Then Burger stopped with his hand to his
+      side. “Your legs are longer than mine, and you are more accustomed to
+      walking,” said he, laughing. “I think that the place where we turn off is
+      somewhere here. Yes, this is it, round the corner of the trattoria. Now,
+      it is a very narrow path, so perhaps I had better go in front, and you can
+      follow.” He had lit his lantern, and by its light they were enabled to
+      follow a narrow and devious track which wound across the marshes of the
+      Campagna. The great Aqueduct of old Rome lay like a monstrous caterpillar
+      across the moonlit landscape, and their road led them under one of its
+      huge arches, and past the circle of crumbling bricks which marks the old
+      arena. At last Burger stopped at a solitary wooden cowhouse, and he drew a
+      key from his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Surely your catacomb is not inside a house!” cried Kennedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The entrance to it is. That is just the safeguard which we have against
+      anyone else discovering it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Does the proprietor know of it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not he. He had found one or two objects which made me almost certain that
+      his house was built on the entrance to such a place. So I rented it from
+      him, and did my excavations for myself. Come in, and shut the door behind
+      you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long, empty building, with the mangers of the cows along one
+      wall. Burger put his lantern down on the ground, and shaded its light in
+      all directions save one by draping his overcoat round it. “It might excite
+      remark if anyone saw a light in this lonely place,” said he. “Just help me
+      to move this boarding.” The flooring was loose in the corner, and plank by
+      plank the two savants raised it and leaned it against the wall. Below
+      there was a square aperture and a stair of old stone steps which led away
+      down into the bowels of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Be careful!” cried Burger, as Kennedy, in his impatience, hurried down
+      them. “It is a perfect rabbits’-warren below, and if you were once to lose
+      your way there, the chances would be a hundred to one against your ever
+      coming out again. Wait until I bring the light.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How do you find your own way if it is so complicated?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I had some very narrow escapes at first, but I have gradually learned to
+      go about. There is a certain system to it, but it is one which a lost man,
+      if he were in the dark, could not possibly find out. Even now I always
+      spin out a ball of string behind me when I am going far into the catacomb.
+      You can see for yourself that it is difficult, but every one of these
+      passages divides and subdivides a dozen times before you go a hundred
+      yards.” They had descended some twenty feet from the level of the byre,
+      and they were standing now in a square chamber cut out of the soft tufa.
+      The lantern cast a flickering light, bright below and dim above, over the
+      cracked brown walls. In every direction were the black openings of
+      passages which radiated from this common centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I want you to follow me closely, my friend,” said Burger. “Do not loiter
+      to look at anything upon the way, for the place to which I will take you
+      contains all that you can see, and more. It will save time for us to go
+      there direct.” He led the way down one of the corridors, and the
+      Englishman followed closely at his heels. Every now and then the passage
+      bifurcated, but Burger was evidently following some secret marks of his
+      own, for he neither stopped nor hesitated. Everywhere along the walls,
+      packed like the berths upon an emigrant ship, lay the Christians of old
+      Rome. The yellow light flickered over the shrivelled features of the
+      mummies, and gleamed upon rounded skulls and long, white arm-bones crossed
+      over fleshless chests. And everywhere as he passed Kennedy looked with
+      wistful eyes upon inscriptions, funeral vessels, pictures, vestments,
+      utensils, all lying as pious hands had placed them so many centuries ago.
+      It was apparent to him, even in those hurried, passing glances, that this
+      was the earliest and finest of the catacombs, containing such a storehouse
+      of Roman remains as had never before come at one time under the
+      observation of the student. “What would happen if the light went out?” he
+      asked, as they hurried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have a spare candle and a box of matches in my pocket. By the way,
+      Kennedy, have you any matches?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No; you had better give me some.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, that is all right. There is no chance of our separating.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How far are we going? It seems to me that we have walked at least a
+      quarter of a mile.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “More than that, I think. There is really no limit to the tombs&mdash;at
+      least, I have never been able to find any. This is a very difficult place,
+      so I think that I will use our ball of string.” He fastened one end of it
+      to a projecting stone and he carried the coil in the breast of his coat,
+      paying it out as he advanced. Kennedy saw that it was no unnecessary
+      precaution, for the passages had become more complexed and tortuous than
+      ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors. But these all
+      ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of tufa topped
+      with a slab of marble at one end of it. “By Jove!” cried Kennedy in an
+      ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble. “It is a Christian
+      altar&mdash;probably the first one in existence. Here is the little
+      consecration cross cut upon the corner of it. No doubt this circular space
+      was used as a church.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Precisely,” said Burger. “If I had more time I should like to show you
+      all the bodies which are buried in these niches upon the walls, for they
+      are the early popes and bishops of the Church, with their mitres, their
+      croziers, and full canonicals. Go over to that one and look at it!”
+      Kennedy went across, and stared at the ghastly head which lay loosely on
+      the shredded and mouldering mitre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This is most interesting,” said he, and his voice seemed to boom against
+      the concave vault. “As far as my experience goes, it is unique. Bring the
+      lantern over, Burger, for I want to see them all.” But the German had
+      strolled away, and was standing in the middle of a yellow circle of light
+      at the other side of the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Do you know how many wrong turnings there are between this and the
+      stairs?” he asked. “There are over two thousand. No doubt it was one of
+      the means of protection which the Christians adopted. The odds are two
+      thousand to one against a man getting out, even if he had a light; but if
+      he were in the dark it would, of course, be far more difficult.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So I should think.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And the darkness is something dreadful. I tried it once for an
+      experiment. Let us try it again!” He stooped to the lantern, and in an
+      instant it was as if an invisible hand was squeezed tightly over each of
+      Kennedy’s eyes. Never had he known what such darkness was. It seemed to
+      press upon him and to smother him. It was a solid obstacle against which
+      the body shrank from advancing. He put his hands out to push it back from
+      him. “That will do, Burger,” said he, “let’s have the light again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his companion began to laugh, and in that circular room the sound
+      seemed to come from every side at once. “You seem uneasy, friend Kennedy,”
+      said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Go on, man, light the candle!” said Kennedy, impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s very strange, Kennedy, but I could not in the least tell by the
+      sound in which direction you stand. Could you tell where I am?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No; you seem to be on every side of me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If it were not for this string which I hold in my hand I should not have
+      a notion which way to go.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I dare say not. Strike a light, man, and have an end of this nonsense.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, Kennedy, there are two things which I understand that you are very
+      fond of. The one is adventure, and the other is an obstacle to surmount.
+      The adventure must be the finding of your way out of this catacomb. The
+      obstacle will be the darkness and the two thousand wrong turns which make
+      the way a little difficult to find. But you need not hurry, for you have
+      plenty of time, and when you halt for a rest now and then, I should like
+      you just to think of Miss Mary Saunderson, and whether you treated her
+      quite fairly.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You devil, what do you mean?” roared Kennedy. He was running about in
+      little circles and clasping at the solid blackness with both hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good-bye,” said the mocking voice, and it was already at some distance.
+      “I really do not think, Kennedy, even by your own showing that you did the
+      right thing by that girl. There was only one little thing which you
+      appeared not to know, and I can supply it. Miss Saunderson was engaged to
+      a poor, ungainly devil of a student, and his name was Julius Burger.”
+      There was a rustle somewhere&mdash;the vague sound of a foot striking a
+      stone&mdash;and then there fell silence upon that old Christian church&mdash;a
+      stagnant heavy silence which closed round Kennedy and shut him in like
+      water round a drowning man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some two months afterwards the following paragraph made the round of the
+      European Press:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   One of the most interesting discoveries of recent years is
+   that of the new catacomb in Rome, which lies some distance to the
+   east of the well-known vaults of St. Calixtus.  The finding of this
+   important burial-place, which is exceedingly rich in most
+   interesting early Christian remains, is due to the energy and
+   sagacity of Dr. Julius Burger, the young German specialist, who is
+   rapidly taking the first place as an authority upon ancient Rome.
+   Although the first to publish his discovery, it appears that a less
+   fortunate adventurer had anticipated Dr. Burger.  Some months ago
+   Mr. Kennedy, the well-known English student, disappeared suddenly
+   from his rooms in the “Corso”, and it was conjectured that his
+   association with a recent scandal had driven him to leave Rome.  It
+   appears now that he had in reality fallen a victim to that fervid
+   love of archaeology which had raised him to a distinguished place
+   among living scholars.  His body was discovered in the heart of the
+   new catacomb, and it was evident from the condition of his feet and
+   boots that he had tramped for days through the tortuous corridors
+   which make these subterranean tombs so dangerous to explorers.  The
+   deceased gentleman had, with inexplicable rashness, made his way
+   into this labyrinth without, as far as can be discovered, taking
+   with him either candles or matches, so that his sad fate was the
+   natural result of his own temerity.  What makes the matter more
+   painful is that Dr. Julius Burger was an intimate friend of the
+   deceased.  His joy at the extraordinary find which he has been so
+   fortunate as to make has been greatly marred by the terrible fate
+   of his comrade and fellow-worker.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was in the days when the tide of Mahdism, which had swept in such a
+      flood from the great Lakes and Darfur to the confines of Egypt, had at
+      last come to its full, and even begun, as some hoped, to show signs of a
+      turn. At its outset it had been terrible. It had engulfed Hicks’s army,
+      swept over Gordon and Khartoum, rolled behind the British forces as they
+      retired down the river, and finally cast up a spray of raiding parties as
+      far north as Assouan. Then it found other channels to east and west, to
+      Central Africa and to Abyssinia, and retired a little on the side of
+      Egypt. For ten years there ensued a lull, during which the frontier
+      garrisons looked out upon those distant blue hills of Dongola. Behind the
+      violet mists which draped them lay a land of blood and horror. From time
+      to time some adventurer went south towards those haze-girt mountains,
+      tempted by stories of gum and ivory, but none ever returned. Once a
+      mutilated Egyptian and once a Greek woman, mad with thirst and fear, made
+      their way to the lines. They were the only exports of that country of
+      darkness. Sometimes the sunset would turn those distant mists into a bank
+      of crimson, and the dark mountains would rise from that sinister reek like
+      islands in a sea of blood. It seemed a grim symbol in the southern heaven
+      when seen from the fort-capped hills by Wady Halfa. Ten years of lust in
+      Khartoum, ten years of silent work in Cairo, and then all was ready, and
+      it was time for civilisation to take a trip south once more, travelling as
+      her wont is in an armoured train. Everything was ready, down to the last
+      pack-saddle of the last camel, and yet no one suspected it, for an
+      unconstitutional Government has its advantage. A great administrator had
+      argued, and managed, and cajoled; a great soldier had organised and
+      planned, and made piastres do the work of pounds. And then one night these
+      two master spirits met and clasped hands, and the soldier vanished away
+      upon some business of his own. And just at that very time, Bimbashi Hilary
+      Joyce, seconded from the Royal Mallow Fusiliers, and temporarily attached
+      to the Ninth Soudanese, made his first appearance in Cairo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Napoleon had said, and Hilary Joyce had noted, that great reputations are
+      only to be made in the East. Here he was in the East with four tin cases
+      of baggage, a Wilkinson sword, a Bond’s slug-throwing pistol, and a copy
+      of “Green’s Introduction to the Study of Arabic.” With such a start, and
+      the blood of youth running hot in his veins, everything seemed easy. He
+      was a little frightened of the general; he had heard stories of his
+      sternness to young officers, but with tact and suavity he hoped for the
+      best. So, leaving his effects at “Shepherd’s Hotel,” he reported himself
+      at headquarters. It was not the general, but the head of the Intelligence
+      Department who received him, the chief being still absent upon that
+      business which had called him. Hilary Joyce found himself in the presence
+      of a short, thick-set officer, with a gentle voice and a placid expression
+      which covered a remarkably acute and energetic spirit. With that quiet
+      smile and guileless manner he had undercut and outwitted the most cunning
+      of Orientals. He stood, a cigarette between his fingers, looking at the
+      newcomer. “I heard that you had come. Sorry the chief isn’t here to see
+      you. Gone up to the frontier, you know.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My regiment is at Wady Halfa. I suppose, sir, that I should report myself
+      there at once?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No; I was to give you your orders.” He led the way to a map upon the
+      wall, and pointed with the end of his cigarette. “You see this place. It’s
+      the Oasis of Kurkur&mdash;a little quiet, I am afraid, but excellent air.
+      You are to get out there as quick as possible. You’ll find a company of
+      the Ninth, and half a squadron of cavalry. You will be in command.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hilary Joyce looked at the name, printed at the intersection of two black
+      lines without another dot upon the map for several inches around it. “A
+      village, sir?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, a well. Not very good water, I’m afraid, but you soon get accustomed
+      to natron. It’s an important post, as being at the junction of two caravan
+      routes. All routes are closed now, of course, but still you never know who
+      <i>might</i> come along them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We are there, I presume, to prevent raiding?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, between you and me, there’s really nothing to raid. You are there
+      to intercept messengers. They must call at the wells. Of course you have
+      only just come out, but you probably understand already enough about the
+      conditions of this country to know that there is a great deal of
+      disaffection about, and that the Khalifa is likely to try and keep in
+      touch with his adherents. Then, again, Senoussi lives up that way”&mdash;he
+      waved his cigarette to the westward&mdash;“the Khalifa might send a
+      message to him along that route. Anyhow, your duty is to arrest everyone
+      coming along, and get some account of him before you let him go. You don’t
+      talk Arabic, I suppose?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am learning, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, well, you’ll have time enough for study there. And you’ll have a
+      native officer, Ali something or other, who speaks English, and can
+      interpret for you. Well, good-bye&mdash;I’ll tell the chief that you
+      reported yourself. Get on to your post now as quickly as you can.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Railway to Baliani, the post-boat to Assouan, and then two days on a camel
+      in the Libyan desert, with an Ababdeh guide, and three baggage-camels to
+      tie one down to their own exasperating pace. However, even two and a half
+      miles an hour mount up in time, and at last, on the third evening, from
+      the blackened slag-heap of a hill which is called the Jebel Kurkur, Hilary
+      Joyce looked down upon a distant clump of palms, and thought that this
+      cool patch of green in the midst of the merciless blacks and yellows was
+      the fairest colour effect that he had ever seen. An hour later he had
+      ridden into the little camp, the guard had turned out to salute him, his
+      native subordinate had greeted him in excellent English, and he had fairly
+      entered into his own. It was not an exhilarating place for a lengthy
+      residence. There was one large, bowl-shaped, grassy depression sloping
+      down to the three pits of brown and brackish water. There was the grove of
+      palm trees also, beautiful to look upon, but exasperating in view of the
+      fact that Nature has provided her least shady trees on the very spot where
+      shade is needed most. A single wide-spread acacia did something to restore
+      the balance. Here Hilary Joyce slumbered in the heat, and in the cool he
+      inspected his square-shouldered, spindle-shanked Soudanese, with their
+      cheery black faces and their funny little pork-pie forage caps. Joyce was
+      a martinet at drill, and the blacks loved being drilled, so the Bimbashi
+      was soon popular among them. But one day was exactly like another. The
+      weather, the view, the employment, the food&mdash;everything was the same.
+      At the end of three weeks he felt that he had been there for interminable
+      years. And then at last there came something to break the monotony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, as the sun was sinking, Hilary Joyce rode slowly down the old
+      caravan road. It had a fascination for him, this narrow track, winding
+      among the boulders and curving up the nullahs, for he remembered how in
+      the map it had gone on and on, stretching away into the unknown heart of
+      Africa. The countless pads of innumerable camels through many centuries
+      had beaten it smooth, so that now, unused and deserted, it still wound
+      away, the strangest of roads, a foot broad, and perhaps two thousand miles
+      in length. Joyce wondered as he rode how long it was since any traveller
+      had journeyed up it from the south, and then he raised his eyes, and there
+      was a man coming along the path. For an instant Joyce thought that it
+      might be one of his own men, but a second glance assured him that this
+      could not be so. The stranger was dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab,
+      and not in the close-fitting khaki of a soldier. He was very tall, and a
+      high turban made him seem gigantic. He strode swiftly along, with head
+      erect, and the bearing of a man who knows no fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who could he be, this formidable giant coming out of the unknown? The
+      precursor possibly of a horde of savage spearmen. And where could he have
+      walked from? The nearest well was a long hundred miles down the track. At
+      any rate the frontier post of Kurkur could not afford to receive casual
+      visitors. Hilary Joyce whisked round his horse, galloped into camp, and
+      gave the alarm. Then, with twenty horsemen at his back, he rode out again
+      to reconnoitre. The man was still coming on in spite of these hostile
+      preparations. For an instant he hesitated when first he saw the cavalry,
+      but escape was out of the question, and he advanced with the air of one
+      who makes the best of a bad job. He made no resistance, and said nothing
+      when the hands of two troopers clutched at his shoulders, but walked
+      quietly between their horses into camp. Shortly afterwards the patrol came
+      in again. There were no signs of any dervishes. The man was alone. A
+      splendid trotting camel had been found lying dead a little way down the
+      track. The mystery of the stranger’s arrival was explained. But why, and
+      whence, and whither?&mdash;these were questions for which a zealous
+      officer must find an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hilary Joyce was disappointed that there were no dervishes. It would have
+      been a great start for him in the Egyptian army had he fought a little
+      action on his own account. But even as it was, he had a rare chance of
+      impressing the authorities. He would love to show his capacity to the head
+      of the Intelligence, and even more to that grim Chief who never forgot
+      what was smart, or forgave what was slack. The prisoner’s dress and
+      bearing showed that he was of importance. Mean men do not ride pure-bred
+      trotting camels. Joyce sponged his head with cold water, drank a cup of
+      strong coffee, put on an imposing official tarboosh instead of his
+      sun-helmet, and formed himself into a court of inquiry and judgment under
+      the acacia tree. He would have liked his people to have seen him now, with
+      his two black orderlies in waiting, and his Egyptian native officer at his
+      side. He sat behind a camp-table, and the prisoner, strongly guarded, was
+      led up to him. The man was a handsome fellow, with bold grey eyes and a
+      long black beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why!” cried Joyce, “the rascal is making faces at me.” A curious
+      contraction had passed over the man’s features, but so swiftly that it
+      might have been a nervous twitch. He was now a model of Oriental gravity.
+      “Ask him who he is, and what he wants?” The native officer did so, but the
+      stranger made no reply, save that the same sharp spasm passed once more
+      over his face. “Well, I’m blessed!” cried Hilary Joyce. “Of all the
+      impudent scoundrels! He keeps on winking at me. Who are you, you rascal?
+      Give an account of yourself! D’ye hear?” But the tall Arab was as
+      impervious to English as to Arabic. The Egyptian tried again and again.
+      The prisoner looked at Joyce with his inscrutable eyes, and occasionally
+      twitched his face at him, but never opened his mouth. The Bimbashi
+      scratched his head in bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look here, Mahomet Ali, we’ve got to get some sense out of this fellow.
+      You say there are no papers on him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir; we found no papers.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No clue of any kind?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He has come far, sir. A trotting camel does not die easily. He has come
+      from Dongola, at least.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we must get him to talk.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is possible that he is deaf and dumb.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not he. I never saw a man look more all there in my life.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You might send him across to Assouan.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And give someone else the credit? No, thank you. This is my bird. But how
+      are we going to get him to find his tongue?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Egyptian’s dark eyes skirted the encampment and rested on the cook’s
+      fire. “Perhaps,” said he, “if the Bimbashi thought fit&mdash;” He looked
+      at the prisoner and then at the burning wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, no; it wouldn’t do. No, by Jove, that’s going too far.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A very little might do it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, no. It’s all very well here, but it would sound just awful if ever it
+      got as far as Fleet Street. But, I say,” he whispered, “we might frighten
+      him a bit. There’s no harm in that.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Tell them to undo the man’s galabeeah. Order them to put a horseshoe in
+      the fire and make it red-hot.” The prisoner watched the proceedings with
+      an air which had more of amusement than of uneasiness. He never winced as
+      the black sergeant approached with the glowing shoe held upon two
+      bayonets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Will you speak now?” asked the Bimbashi, savagely. The prisoner smiled
+      gently and stroked his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, chuck the infernal thing away!” cried Joyce, jumping up in a passion.
+      “There’s no use trying to bluff the fellow. He knows we won’t do it. But I
+      <i>can</i> and I <i>will</i> flog him, and you can tell him from me that
+      if he hasn’t found his tongue by to-morrow morning I’ll take the skin off
+      his back as sure as my name’s Joyce. Have you said all that?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, you can sleep upon it, you beauty, and a good night’s rest may it
+      give you!” He adjourned the Court, and the prisoner, as imperturbable as
+      ever, was led away by the guard to his supper of rice and water. Hilary
+      Joyce was a kind-hearted man, and his own sleep was considerably disturbed
+      by the prospect of the punishment which he must inflict next day. He had
+      hopes that the mere sight of the koorbash and the thongs might prevail
+      over his prisoner’s obstinacy. And then, again, he thought how shocking it
+      would be if the man proved to be really dumb after all. The possibility
+      shook him so that he had almost determined by daybreak that he would send
+      the stranger on unhurt to Assouan. And yet what a tame conclusion it would
+      be to the incident! He lay upon his angareeb still debating it when the
+      question suddenly and effectively settled itself. Ali Mahomet rushed into
+      his tent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sir,” he cried, “the prisoner is gone!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gone!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir, and your own best riding camel as well. There is a slit cut in
+      the tent, and he got away unseen in the early morning.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bimbashi acted with all energy. Cavalry rode along every track; scouts
+      examined the soft sand of the wadys for signs of the fugitive, but no
+      trace was discovered. The man had utterly disappeared. With a heavy heart,
+      Hilary Joyce wrote an official report of the matter and forwarded it to
+      Assouan. Five days later there came a curt order from the chief that he
+      should report himself there. He feared the worst from the stern soldier,
+      who spared others as little as he spared himself. And his worst
+      forebodings were realised. Travel-stained and weary, he reported himself
+      one night at the general’s quarters. Behind a table piled with papers and
+      strewn with maps the famous soldier and his Chief of Intelligence were
+      deep in plans and figures. Their greeting was a cold one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I understand, Captain Joyce,” said the general, “that you have allowed a
+      very important prisoner to slip through your fingers.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am sorry, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No doubt. But that will not mend matters. Did you ascertain anything
+      about him before you lost him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How was that?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I could get nothing out of him, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Did you try?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir; I did what I could.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What did you do?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, sir, I threatened to use physical force.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What did he say?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He said nothing.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What was he like?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A tall man, sir. Rather a desperate character, I should think.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Any way by which we could identify him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A long black beard, sir. Grey eyes. And a nervous way of twitching his
+      face.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, Captain Joyce,” said the general, in his stern, inflexible voice,
+      “I cannot congratulate you upon your first exploit in the Egyptian army.
+      You are aware that every English officer in this force is a picked man. I
+      have the whole British army from which to draw. It is necessary,
+      therefore, that I should insist upon the very highest efficiency. It would
+      be unfair upon the others to pass over any obvious want of zeal or
+      intelligence. You are seconded from the Royal Mallows, I understand?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have no doubt that your colonel will be glad to see you fulfilling your
+      regimental duties again.”
+    <p>Hilary Joyce’s heart was too heavy for words. He was silent.</p>
+    <p>“I will let you know my final decision to-morrow morning.”</p>
+    <p>Joyce saluted and turned upon his heel.</p>
+    <p>
+      “You can sleep upon that, you beauty, and a good night’s rest may it give
+      you!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joyce turned in bewilderment. Where had those words been used before? Who
+      was it who had used them? The general was standing erect. Both he and the
+      Chief of the Intelligence were laughing. Joyce stared at the tall figure,
+      the erect bearing, the inscrutable grey eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good Lord!” he gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, well, Captain Joyce, we are quits!” said the general, holding out
+      his hand. “You gave me a bad ten minutes with that infernal red-hot
+      horseshoe of yours. I’ve done as much for you. I don’t think we can spare
+      you for the Royal Mallows just yet awhile.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But, sir; but&mdash;!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The fewer questions the better, perhaps. But of course it must seem
+      rather amazing. I had a little private business with the Kabbabish. It
+      must be done in person. I did it, and came to your post in my return. I
+      kept on winking at you as a sign that I wanted a word with you alone.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, yes. I begin to understand.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I couldn’t give it away before all those blacks, or where should I have
+      been the next time I used my false beard and Arab dress? You put me in a
+      very awkward position. But at last I had a word alone with your Egyptian
+      officer, who managed my escape all right.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He! Mahomet Ali!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I ordered him to say nothing. I had a score to settle with you. But we
+      dine at eight, Captain Joyce. We live plainly here, but I think I can do
+      you a little better than you did me at Kurkur.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There are many folk who knew Alphonse Lacour in his old age. From about
+      the time of the Revolution of ’48 until he died in the second year of the
+      Crimean War he was always to be found in the same corner of the Cafe de
+      Provence, at the end of the Rue St. Honore, coming down about nine in the
+      evening, and going when he could find no one to talk with. It took some
+      self-restraint to listen to the old diplomatist, for his stories were
+      beyond all belief, and yet he was quick at detecting the shadow of a smile
+      or the slightest little raising of the eyebrows. Then his huge, rounded
+      back would straighten itself, his bulldog chin would project, and his r’s
+      would burr like a kettledrum. When he got as far as, “Ah, monsieur
+      r-r-r-rit!” or “Vous ne me cr-r-r-royez pas donc!” it was quite time to
+      remember that you had a ticket for the opera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was his story of Talleyrand and the five oyster-shells, and there
+      was his utterly absurd account of Napoleon’s second visit to Ajaccio. Then
+      there was that most circumstantial romance (which he never ventured upon
+      until his second bottle had been uncorked) of the Emperor’s escape from
+      St. Helena&mdash;how he lived for a whole year in Philadelphia, while
+      Count Herbert de Bertrand, who was his living image, personated him at
+      Longwood. But of all his stories there was none which was more notorious
+      than that of the Koran and the Foreign Office messenger. And yet when
+      Monsieur Otto’s memoirs were written it was found that there really was
+      some foundation for old Lacour’s incredible statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You must know, monsieur,” he would say, “that I left Egypt after Kleber’s
+      assassination. I would gladly have stayed on, for I was engaged in a
+      translation of the Koran, and between ourselves I had thoughts at the time
+      of embracing Mahometanism, for I was deeply struck by the wisdom of their
+      views about marriage. They had made an incredible mistake, however, upon
+      the subject of wine, and this was what the Mufti who attempted to convert
+      me could never get over. Then when old Kleber died and Menou came to the
+      top, I felt that it was time for me to go. It is not for me to speak of my
+      own capacities, monsieur, but you will readily understand that the man
+      does not care to be ridden by the mule. I carried my Koran and my papers
+      to London, where Monsieur Otto had been sent by the First Consul to
+      arrange a treaty of peace; for both nations were very weary of the war,
+      which had already lasted ten years. Here I was most useful to Monsieur
+      Otto on account of my knowledge of the English tongue, and also, if I may
+      say so, on account of my natural capacity. They were happy days during
+      which I lived in the square of Bloomsbury. The climate of monsieur’s
+      country is, it must be confessed, detestable. But then what would you
+      have? Flowers grow best in the rain. One has but to point to monsieur’s
+      fellow country-women to prove it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, Monsieur Otto, our Ambassador, was kept terribly busy over that
+      treaty, and all of his staff were worked to death. We had not Pitt to deal
+      with, which was, perhaps, as well for us. He was a terrible man that Pitt,
+      and wherever half a dozen enemies of France were plotting together, there
+      was his sharp-pointed nose right in the middle of them. The nation,
+      however, had been thoughtful enough to put him out of office, and we had
+      to do with Monsieur Addington. But Milord Hawkesbury was the Foreign
+      Minister, and it was with him that we were obliged to do our bargaining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You can understand that it was no child’s play. After ten years of war
+      each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the other,
+      or to the other’s allies. What was to be given back, and what was to be
+      kept? Is this island worth that peninsula? If we do this at Venice, will
+      you do that at Sierra Leone? If we give up Egypt to the Sultan, will you
+      restore the Cape of Good Hope, which you have taken from our allies the
+      Dutch? So we wrangled and wrestled, and I have seen Monsieur Otto come
+      back to the Embassy so exhausted that his secretary and I had to help him
+      from his carriage to his sofa. But at last things adjusted themselves, and
+      the night came round when the treaty was to be finally signed. Now, you
+      must know that the one great card which we held, and which we played,
+      played, played at every point of the game, was that we had Egypt. The
+      English were very nervous about our being there. It gave us a foot at each
+      end of the Mediterranean, you see. And they were not sure that that
+      wonderful little Napoleon of ours might not make it the base of an advance
+      against India. So whenever Lord Hawkesbury proposed to retain anything, we
+      had only to reply, ‘In <i>that</i> case, of course, we cannot consent to
+      evacuate Egypt,’ and in this way we quickly brought him to reason. It was
+      by the help of Egypt that we gained terms which were remarkably
+      favourable, and especially that we caused the English to consent to give
+      up the Cape of Good Hope. We did not wish your people, monsieur, to have
+      any foothold in South Africa, for history has taught us that the British
+      foothold of one half-century is the British Empire of the next. It is not
+      your army or your navy against which we have to guard, but it is your
+      terrible younger son and your man in search of a career. When we French
+      have a possession across the seas, we like to sit in Paris and to
+      felicitate ourselves upon it. With you it is different. You take your
+      wives and your children, and you run away to see what kind of place this
+      may be, and after that we might as well try to take that old Square of
+      Bloomsbury away from you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it was upon the first of October that the treaty was finally to be
+      signed. In the morning I was congratulating Monsieur Otto upon the happy
+      conclusion of his labours. He was a little pale shrimp of a man, very
+      quick and nervous, and he was so delighted now at his own success that he
+      could not sit still, but ran about the room chattering and laughing, while
+      I sat on a cushion in the corner, as I had learned to do in the East.
+      Suddenly, in came a messenger with a letter which had been forwarded from
+      Paris. Monsieur Otto cast his eye upon it, and then, without a word, his
+      knees gave way, and he fell senseless upon the floor. I ran to him, as did
+      the courier, and between us we carried him to the sofa. He might have been
+      dead from his appearance, but I could still feel his heart thrilling
+      beneath my palm. ‘What is this, then?’ I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I do not know,’ answered the messenger. ‘Monsieur Talleyrand told me to
+      hurry as never man hurried before, and to put this letter into the hands
+      of Monsieur Otto. I was in Paris at midday yesterday.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I know that I am to blame, but I could not help glancing at the letter,
+      picking it out of the senseless hand of Monsieur Otto. My God! the
+      thunderbolt that it was! I did not faint, but I sat down beside my chief
+      and I burst into tears. It was but a few words, but they told us that
+      Egypt had been evacuated by our troops a month before. All our treaty was
+      undone then, and the one consideration which had induced our enemies to
+      give us good terms had vanished. In twelve hours it would not have
+      mattered. But now the treaty was not yet signed. We should have to give up
+      the Cape. We should have to let England have Malta. Now that Egypt was
+      gone we had nothing left to offer in exchange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But we are not so easily beaten, we Frenchmen. You English misjudge us
+      when you think that because we show emotions which you conceal, that we
+      are therefore of a weak and womanly nature. You cannot read your histories
+      and believe that. Monsieur Otto recovered his senses presently, and we
+      took counsel what we should do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It is useless to go on, Alphonse,’ said he. ‘This Englishman will laugh
+      at me when I ask him to sign.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Courage!’ I cried; and then a sudden thought coming into my head&mdash;‘How
+      do we know that the English will have news of this? Perhaps they may sign
+      the treaty before they know of it.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Monsieur Otto sprang from the sofa and flung himself into my arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Alphonse,’ he cried, ‘you have saved me! Why should they know about it?
+      Our news has come from Toulon to Paris, and thence straight to London.
+      Theirs will come by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar. At this moment
+      it is unlikely that anyone in Paris knows of it, save only Talleyrand and
+      the First Consul. If we keep our secret, we may still get our treaty
+      signed.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah! monsieur, you can imagine the horrible uncertainty in which we spent
+      the day. Never, never shall I forget those slow hours during which we sat
+      together, starting at every distant shout, lest it should be the first
+      sign of the rejoicing which this news would cause in London. Monsieur Otto
+      passed from youth to age in a day. As for me, I find it easier to go out
+      and meet danger than to wait for it. I set forth, therefore, towards
+      evening. I wandered here, and wandered there. I was in the fencing-rooms
+      of Monsieur Angelo, and in the salon-de-boxe of Monsieur Jackson, and in
+      the club of Brooks, and in the lobby of the Chamber of Deputies, but
+      nowhere did I hear any news. Still, it was possible that Milord Hawkesbury
+      had received it himself just as we had. He lived in Harley Street, and
+      there it was that the treaty was to be finally signed that night at eight.
+      I entreated Monsieur Otto to drink two glasses of Burgundy before he went,
+      for I feared lest his haggard face and trembling hands should rouse
+      suspicion in the English minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we went round together in one of the Embassy’s carriages about
+      half-past seven. Monsieur Otto went in alone; but presently, on excuse of
+      getting his portfolio, he came out again, with his cheeks flushed with
+      joy, to tell me that all was well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘He knows nothing,’ he whispered. ‘Ah, if the next half-hour were over!’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Give me a sign when it is settled,’ said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘For what reason?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Because until then no messenger shall interrupt you. I give you my
+      promise&mdash;I, Alphonse Lacour.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He clasped my hand in both of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I shall make an excuse to move one of the candles on to the table in the
+      window,’ said he, and hurried into the house, whilst I was left waiting
+      beside the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, if we could but secure ourselves from interruption for a single
+      half-hour the day would be our own. I had hardly begun to form my plans
+      when I saw the lights of a carriage coming swiftly from the direction of
+      Oxford Street. Ah! if it should be the messenger! What could I do? I was
+      prepared to kill him&mdash;yes, even to kill him&mdash;rather than at this
+      last moment allow our work to be undone. Thousands die to make a glorious
+      war. Why should not one die to make a glorious peace? What though they
+      hurried me to the scaffold? I should have sacrificed myself for my
+      country. I had a little curved Turkish knife strapped to my waist. My hand
+      was on the hilt of it when the carriage which had alarmed me so rattled
+      safely past me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But another might come. I must be prepared. Above all, I must not
+      compromise the Embassy. I ordered our carriage to move on, and I engaged
+      what you call a hackney coach. Then I spoke to the driver, and gave him a
+      guinea. He understood that it was a special service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘You shall have another guinea if you do what you are told,’ said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘All right, master,’ said he, turning his slow eyes upon me without a
+      trace of excitement or curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘If I enter your coach with another gentleman, you will drive up and
+      down Harley Street, and take no orders from anyone but me. When I get out,
+      you will carry the other gentleman to Watier’s Club, in Bruton Street.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘All right, master,’ said he again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So I stood outside Milord Hawkesbury’s house, and you can think how often
+      my eyes went up to that window in the hope of seeing the candle twinkle in
+      it. Five minutes passed, and another five. Oh, how slowly they crept
+      along! It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a white fog
+      crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the dim
+      oil-lamps. I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my ears
+      were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the rumble of
+      wheels. It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of Harley, even
+      upon a sunny day. The houses are solid and very respectable over yonder,
+      but there is nothing of the feminine about them. It is a city to be
+      inhabited by males. But on that raw night, amid the damp and the fog, with
+      the anxiety gnawing at my heart, it seemed the saddest, weariest spot in
+      the whole wide world. I paced up and down slapping my hands to keep them
+      warm, and still straining my ears. And then suddenly out of the dull hum
+      of the traffic down in Oxford Street I heard a sound detach itself, and
+      grow louder and louder, and clearer and clearer with every instant, until
+      two yellow lights came flashing through the fog, and a light cabriolet
+      whirled up to the door of the Foreign Minister. It had not stopped before
+      a young fellow sprang out of it and hurried to the steps, while the driver
+      turned his horse and rattled off into the fog once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah, it is in the moment of action that I am best, monsieur. You, who only
+      see me when I am drinking my wine in the Cafe de Provence, cannot conceive
+      the heights to which I rise. At that moment, when I knew that the fruits
+      of a ten years’ war were at stake, I was magnificent. It was the last
+      French campaign and I the general and army in one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Sir,” said I, touching him upon the arm, ‘are you the messenger for Lord
+      Hawkesbury?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Yes,’ said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I have been waiting for you half an hour,’ said I. ‘You are to follow me
+      at once. He is with the French Ambassador.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I spoke with such assurance that he never hesitated for an instant. When
+      he entered the hackney coach and I followed him in, my heart gave such a
+      thrill of joy that I could hardly keep from shouting aloud. He was a poor
+      little creature, this Foreign Office messenger, not much bigger than
+      Monsieur Otto, and I&mdash;monsieur can see my hands now, and imagine what
+      they were like when I was seven-and-twenty years of age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, now that I had him in my coach, the question was what I should do
+      with him. I did not wish to hurt him if I could help it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘This is a pressing business,’ said he. ‘I have a despatch which I must
+      deliver instantly.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Our coach had rattled down Harley Street now, in accordance with my
+      instruction, it turned and began to go up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Hullo!’ he cried. ‘What’s this?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘What then?’ I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘We are driving back. Where is Lord Hawkesbury?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘We shall see him presently.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Let me out!’ he shouted. ‘There’s some trickery in this. Coachman, stop
+      the coach! Let me out, I say!’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I dashed him back into his seat as he tried to turn the handle of the
+      door. He roared for help. I clapped my palm across his mouth. He made his
+      teeth meet through the side of it. I seized his own cravat and bound it
+      over his lips. He still mumbled and gurgled, but the noise was covered by
+      the rattle of our wheels. We were passing the minister’s house, and there
+      was no candle in the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The messenger sat quiet for a little, and I could see the glint of his
+      eyes as he stared at me through the gloom. He was partly stunned, I think,
+      by the force with which I had hurled him into his seat. And also he was
+      pondering, perhaps, what he should do next. Presently he got his mouth
+      partly free from the cravat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘You shall have my watch and my purse if you will let me go,’ said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Sir,’ said I, ‘I am as honourable a man as you are yourself.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Who are you, then?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘My name is of no importance.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘What do you want with me?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It is a bet.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘A bet? What d’you mean? Do you understand that I am on the Government
+      service, and that you will see the inside of a gaol for this?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘That is the bet. That is the sport, said I.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘You may find it poor sport before you finish,’ he cried. ‘What is this
+      insane bet of yours then?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I have bet,’ I answered, ‘that I will recite a chapter of the Koran to
+      the first gentleman whom I should meet in the street.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I do not know what made me think of it, save that my translation was
+      always running in my head. He clutched at the door-handle, and again I had
+      to hurl him back into his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘How long will it take?’ he gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It depends on the chapter,’ I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘A short one, then, and let me go!’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘But is it fair?’ I argued. ‘When I say a chapter, I do not mean the
+      shortest chapter, but rather one which should be of average length.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Help! help! help!’ he squealed, and I was compelled again to adjust his
+      cravat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘A little patience,’ said I, ‘and it will soon be over. I should like to
+      recite the chapter which would be of most interest to yourself. You will
+      confess that I am trying to make things as pleasant as I can for you?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He slipped his mouth free again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Quick, then, quick!’ he groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘The Chapter of the Camel?’ I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Yes, yes.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Or that of the Fleet Stallion?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Yes, yes. Only proceed!’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We had passed the window and there was no candle. I settled down to
+      recite the Chapter of the Stallion to him. Perhaps you do not know your
+      Koran very well, monsieur? Well, I knew it by heart then, as I know it by
+      heart now. The style is a little exasperating for anyone who is in a
+      hurry. But, then, what would you have? The people in the East are never in
+      a hurry, and it was written for them. I repeated it all with the dignity
+      and solemnity which a sacred book demands, and the young Englishman he
+      wriggled and groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘When the horses, standing on three feet and placing the tip of their
+      fourth foot upon the ground, were mustered in front of him in the evening,
+      he said, I have loved the love of earthly good above the remembrance of
+      things on high, and have spent the time in viewing these horses. Bring the
+      horses back to me. And when they were brought back he began to cut off
+      their legs and&mdash;’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It was at this moment that the young Englishman sprang at me. My God! how
+      little can I remember of the next few minutes! He was a boxer, this shred
+      of a man. He had been trained to strike. I tried to catch him by the
+      hands. Pac, pac, he came upon my nose and upon my eye. I put down my head
+      and thrust at him with it. Pac, he came from below. But ah! I was too much
+      for him. I hurled myself upon him, and he had no place where he could
+      escape from my weight. He fell flat upon the cushions and I seated myself
+      upon him with such conviction that the wind flew from him as from a burst
+      bellows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then I searched to see what there was with which I could tie him. I drew
+      the strings from my shoes, and with one I secured his wrists, and with
+      another his ankles. Then I tied the cravat round his mouth again, so that
+      he could only lie and glare at me. When I had done all this, and had
+      stopped the bleeding of my own nose, I looked out of the coach and ah,
+      monsieur, the very first thing which caught my eyes was that candle&mdash;that
+      dear little candle&mdash;glimmering in the window of the minister. Alone,
+      with these two hands, I had retrieved the capitulation of an army and the
+      loss of a province. Yes, monsieur, what Abercrombie and 5,000 men had done
+      upon the beach at Aboukir was undone by me, single-handed, in a hackney
+      coach in Harley Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I had no time to lose, for at any moment Monsieur Otto might be
+      down. I shouted to my driver, gave him his second guinea, and allowed him
+      to proceed to Watier’s. For myself, I sprang into our Embassy’s carriage,
+      and a moment later the door of the minister opened. He had himself
+      escorted Monsieur Otto downstairs, and now so deep was he in talk that he
+      walked out bareheaded as far as the carriage. As he stood there by the
+      open door, there came the rattle of wheels, and a man rushed down the
+      pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘A despatch of great importance for Milord Hawkesbury!’ he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I could see that it was not my messenger, but a second one. Milord
+      Hawkesbury caught the paper from his hand, and read it by the light of the
+      carriage lamp. His face, monsieur, was as white as this plate, before he
+      had finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Monsieur Otto,’ he cried, ‘we have signed this treaty upon a false
+      understanding. Egypt is in our hands.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘What!’ cried Monsieur Otto. ‘Impossible!’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It is certain. It fell to Abercrombie last month.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘In that case,’ said Monsieur Otto, ‘it is very fortunate that the treaty
+      is signed.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Very fortunate for you, sir,’ cried Milord Hawkesbury, as he turned back
+      to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Next day, monsieur, what they call the Bow Street runners were after me,
+      but they could not run across salt water, and Alphonse Lacour was
+      receiving the congratulations of Monsieur Talleyrand and the First Consul
+      before ever his pursuers had got as far as Dover.”
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+  <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10446 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #10446 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10446)
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10446 ***
+
+
+
+
+THE GREEN FLAG.
+
+ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+THE GREEN FLAG.
+
+CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+
+THE CROXLEY MASTER.
+
+THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR.
+
+THE STRIPED CHEST.
+
+A SHADOW BEFORE.
+
+THE KING OF THE FOXES.
+
+THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS.
+
+THE NEW CATACOMB.
+
+THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE.
+
+A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREEN FLAG
+
+
+When Jack Conolly, of the Irish Shotgun Brigade, the Rory of the Hills
+Inner Circle, and the extreme left wing of the Land League, was
+incontinently shot by Sergeant Murdoch of the constabulary, in a little
+moonlight frolic near Kanturk, his twin-brother Dennis joined the
+British Army. The countryside had become too hot for him; and, as the
+seventy-five shillings were wanting which might have carried him to
+America, he took the only way handy of getting himself out of the way.
+Seldom has Her Majesty had a less promising recruit, for his hot Celtic
+blood seethed with hatred against Britain and all things British.
+The sergeant, however, smiling complacently over his 6 ft. of brawn and
+his 44 in. chest, whisked him off with a dozen other of the boys to the
+depot at Fermoy, whence in a few weeks they were sent on, with the
+spade-work kinks taken out of their backs, to the first battalion of the
+Royal Mallows, at the top of the roster for foreign service.
+
+The Royal Mallows, at about that date, were as strange a lot of men as
+ever were paid by a great empire to fight its battles. It was the
+darkest hour of the land struggle, when the one side came out with
+crow-bar and battering-ram by day, and the other with mask and with
+shot-gun by night. Men driven from their homes and potato-patches found
+their way even into the service of the Government, to which it seemed to
+them that they owed their troubles, and now and then they did wild
+things before they came. There were recruits in the Irish regiments who
+would forget to answer to their own names, so short had been their
+acquaintance with them. Of these the Royal Mallows had their full
+share; and, while they still retained their fame as being one of the
+smartest corps in the army, no one knew better than their officers that
+they were dry-rotted with treason and with bitter hatred of the flag
+under which they served.
+
+And the centre of all the disaffection was C Company, in which Dennis
+Conolly found himself enrolled. They were Celts, Catholics, and men of
+the tenant class to a man; and their whole experience of the British
+Government had been an inexorable landlord, and a constabulary who
+seemed to them to be always on the side of the rent-collector. Dennis
+was not the only moonlighter in the ranks, nor was he alone in having an
+intolerable family blood-feud to harden his heart. Savagery had
+begotten savagery in that veiled civil war. A landlord with an iron
+mortgage weighing down upon him had small bowels for his tenantry.
+He did but take what the law allowed, and yet, with men like Jim Holan,
+or Patrick McQuire, or Peter Flynn, who had seen the roofs torn from
+their cottages and their folk huddled among their pitiable furniture
+upon the roadside, it was ill to argue about abstract law. What matter
+that in that long and bitter struggle there was many another outrage on
+the part of the tenant, and many another grievance on the side of the
+landowner! A stricken man can only feel his own wound, and the rank and
+file of the C Company of the Royal Mallows were sore and savage to the
+soul. There were low whisperings in barrack-rooms and canteens,
+stealthy meetings in public-house parlours, bandying of passwords from
+mouth to mouth, and many other signs which made their officers right
+glad when the order came which sent them to foreign, and better still,
+to active service.
+
+For Irish regiments have before now been disaffected, and have at a
+distance looked upon the foe as though he might, in truth, be the
+friend; but when they have been put face on to him, and when their
+officers have dashed to the front with a wave and halloo, those rebel
+hearts have softened and their gallant Celtic blood has boiled with the
+mad joy of the fight, until the slower Britons have marvelled that they
+ever could have doubted the loyalty of their Irish comrades. So it
+would be again, according to the officers, and so it would not be if
+Dennis Conolly and a few others could have their way.
+
+It was a March morning upon the eastern fringe of the Nubian desert.
+The sun had not yet risen, but a tinge of pink flushed up as far as the
+cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon
+across the horizon. From the coast inland stretched dreary sand-plains,
+dotted over with thick clumps of mimosa scrub and mottled patches of
+thorny bush. No tree broke the monotony of that vast desert. The dull,
+dusty hue of the thickets, and the yellow glare of the sand, were the
+only colours, save at one point, where, from a distance, it seemed that
+a land-slip of snow-white stones had shot itself across a low foot-hill.
+But as the traveller approached he saw, with a thrill, that these were
+no stones, but the bleaching bones of a slaughtered army. With its dull
+tints, its gnarled, viprous bushes, its arid, barren soil, and this
+death streak trailed across it, it was indeed a nightmare country.
+
+Some eight or ten miles inland the rolling plain curved upwards with a
+steeper slope until it ran into a line of red basaltic rock which
+zigzagged from north to south, heaping itself up at one point into a
+fantastic knoll. On the summit of this there stood upon that March
+morning three Arab chieftains--the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas, Moussa
+Wad Aburhegel, who led the Berber dervishes, and Hamid Wad Hussein, who
+had come northward with his fighting men from the land of the Baggaras.
+They had all three just risen from their praying-carpets, and were
+peering out, with fierce, high-nosed faces thrust forwards, at the
+stretch of country revealed by the spreading dawn.
+
+The red rim of the sun was pushing itself now above the distant sea, and
+the whole coast-line stood out brilliantly yellow against the rich deep
+blue beyond. At one spot lay a huddle of white-walled houses, a mere
+splotch in the distance; while four tiny cock-boats, which lay beyond,
+marked the position of three of Her Majesty’s 10,000-ton troopers and
+the admiral’s flagship. But it was not upon the distant town, nor upon
+the great vessels, nor yet upon the sinister white litter which gleamed
+in the plain beneath them, that the Arab chieftains gazed. Two miles
+from where they stood, amid the sand-hills and the mimosa scrub, a great
+parallelogram had been marked by piled-up bushes. From the inside of
+this dozens of tiny blue smoke-reeks curled up into the still morning
+air; while there rose from it a confused deep murmur, the voices of men
+and the gruntings of camels blended into the same insect buzz.
+
+“The unbelievers have cooked their morning food,” said the Baggara
+chief, shading his eyes with his tawny, sinewy hand. “Truly their sleep
+has been scanty; for Hamid and a hundred of his men have fired upon them
+since the rising of the moon.”
+
+“So it was with these others,” answered the Sheik Kadra, pointing with
+his sheathed sword towards the old battle-field. “They also had a day
+of little water and a night of little rest, and the heart was gone out
+of them ere ever the sons of the Prophet had looked them in the eyes.
+This blade drank deep that day, and will again before the sun has
+travelled from the sea to the hill.”
+
+“And yet these are other men,” remarked the Berber dervish. “Well, I
+know that Allah has placed them in the clutch of our fingers, yet it may
+be that they with the big hats will stand firmer than the cursed men of
+Egypt.”
+
+“Pray Allah that it may be so,” cried the fierce Baggara, with a flash
+of his black eyes. “It was not to chase women that I brought 700 men
+from the river to the coast. See, my brother, already they are forming
+their array.”
+
+A fanfare of bugle-calls burst from the distant camp. At the same time
+the bank of bushes at one side had been thrown or trampled down, and the
+little army within began to move slowly out on to the plain. Once clear
+of the camp they halted, and the slant rays of the sun struck flashes
+from bayonet and from gun-barrel as the ranks closed up until the big
+pith helmets joined into a single long white ribbon. Two streaks of
+scarlet glowed on either side of the square, but elsewhere the fringe of
+fighting-men was of the dull yellow khaki tint which hardly shows
+against the desert sand. Inside their array was a dense mass of camels
+and mules bearing stores and ambulance needs. Outside a twinkling clump
+of cavalry was drawn up on each flank, and in front a thin, scattered
+line of mounted infantry was already slowly advancing over the
+bush-strewn plain, halting on every eminence, and peering warily round
+as men might who have to pick their steps among the bones of those who
+have preceded them.
+
+The three chieftains still lingered upon the knoll, looking down with
+hungry eyes and compressed lips at the dark steel-tipped patch.
+“They are slower to start than the men of Egypt,” the Sheik of the
+Hadendowas growled in his beard.
+
+“Slower also to go back, perchance, my brother,” murmured the dervish.
+
+“And yet they are not many--3,000 at the most.”
+
+“And we 10,000, with the Prophet’s grip upon our spear-hafts and his
+words upon our banner. See to their chieftain, how he rides upon the
+right and looks up at us with the glass that sees from afar! It may be
+that he sees this also.” The Arab shook his sword at the small clump of
+horsemen who had spurred out from the square.
+
+“Lo! he beckons,” cried the dervish; “and see those others at the
+corner, how they bend and heave. Ha! by the Prophet, I had thought it.”
+As he spoke, a little woolly puff of smoke spurted up at the corner of
+the square, and a 7 lb. shell burst with a hard metallic smack just over
+their heads. The splinters knocked chips from the red rocks around
+them.
+
+“Bismillah!” cried the Hadendowa; “if the gun can carry thus far, then
+ours can answer to it. Ride to the left, Moussa, and tell Ben Ali to
+cut the skin from the Egyptians if they cannot hit yonder mark.
+And you, Hamid, to the right, and see that 3,000 men lie close in the
+wady that we have chosen. Let the others beat the drum and show the
+banner of the Prophet, for by the black stone their spears will have
+drunk deep ere they look upon the stars again.”
+
+A long, straggling, boulder-strewn plateau lay on the summit of the red
+hills, sloping very precipitously to the plain, save at one point, where
+a winding gully curved downwards, its mouth choked with sand-mounds and
+olive-hued scrub. Along the edge of this position lay the Arab host--a
+motley crew of shock-headed desert clansmen, fierce predatory slave
+dealers of the interior, and wild dervishes from the Upper Nile, all
+blent together by their common fearlessness and fanaticism. Two races
+were there, as wide as the poles apart--the thin-lipped, straight-haired
+Arab and the thick-lipped, curly negro--yet the faith of Islam had bound
+them closer than a blood tie. Squatting among the rocks, or lying
+thickly in the shadow, they peered out at the slow-moving square beneath
+them, while women with water-skins and bags of dhoora fluttered from
+group to group, calling out to each other those fighting texts from the
+Koran which in the hour of battle are maddening as wine to the true
+believer. A score of banners waved over the ragged, valiant crew, and
+among them, upon desert horses and white Bishareen camels, were the
+Emirs and Sheiks who were to lead them against the infidels.
+
+As the Sheik Kadra sprang into his saddle and drew his sword there was a
+wild whoop and a clatter of waving spears, while the one-ended war-drums
+burst into a dull crash like a wave upon shingle. For a moment 10,000
+men were up on the rocks with brandished arms and leaping figures; the
+next they were under cover again, waiting sternly and silently for their
+chieftain’s orders. The square was less than half a mile from the ridge
+now, and shell after shell from the 7 lb. guns were pitching over it.
+A deep roar on the right, and then a second one showed that the Egyptian
+Krupps were in action. Sheik Kadra’s hawk eyes saw that the shells
+burst far beyond the mark, and he spurred his horse along to where a
+knot of mounted chiefs were gathered round the two guns, which were
+served by their captured crews.
+
+“How is this, Ben Ali?” he cried. “It was not thus that the dogs fired
+when it was their own brothers in faith at whom they aimed!”
+
+A chieftain reined his horse back, and thrust a blood-smeared sword into
+its sheath. Beside him two Egyptian artillerymen with their throats cut
+were sobbing out their lives upon the ground. “Who lays the gun this
+time?” asked the fierce chief, glaring at the frightened gunners.
+“Here, thou black-browed child of Shaitan, aim, and aim for thy life.”
+
+It may have been chance, or it may have been skill, but the third and
+fourth shells burst over the square. Sheik Kadra smiled grimly and
+galloped back to the left, where his spearmen were streaming down into
+the gully. As he joined them a deep growling rose from the plain
+beneath, like the snarling of a sullen wild beast, and a little knot of
+tribesmen fell into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead from
+a Gardner. Their comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down into
+the ravine. From all along the crest burst the hard, sharp crackle of
+Remington fire.
+
+The square had slowly advanced, rippling over the low sandhills, and
+halting every few minutes to re-arrange its formation. Now, having made
+sure that there was no force of the enemy in the scrub, it changed its
+direction, and began to take a line parallel to the Arab position.
+It was too steep to assail from the front, and if they moved far enough
+to the right the general hoped that he might turn it. On the top of
+those ruddy hills lay a baronetcy for him, and a few extra hundreds in
+his pension, and he meant having them both that day. The Remington fire
+was annoying, and so were those two Krupp guns; already there were more
+cacolets full than he cared to see. But on the whole he thought it
+better to hold his fire until he had more to aim at than a few hundred
+of fuzzy heads peeping over a razor-back ridge. He was a bulky,
+red-faced man, a fine whist-player, and a soldier who knew his work.
+His men believed in him, and he had good reason to believe in them, for
+he had excellent stuff under him that day. Being an ardent champion of
+the short-service system, he took particular care to work with veteran
+first battalions, and his little force was the compressed essence of an
+army corps.
+
+The left front of the square was formed by four companies of the Royal
+Wessex, and the right by four of the Royal Mallows. On either side the
+other halves of the same regiments marched in quarter column of
+companies. Behind them, on the right was a battalion of Guards, and on
+the left one of Marines, while the rear was closed in by a Rifle
+battalion. Two Royal Artillery 7 lb. screw-guns kept pace with the
+square, and a dozen white-bloused sailors, under their blue-coated,
+tight-waisted officers, trailed their Gardner in front, turning every
+now and then to spit up at the draggled banners which waved over the
+cragged ridge. Hussars and Lancers scouted in the scrub at each side,
+and within moved the clump of camels, with humorous eyes and
+supercilious lips, their comic faces a contrast to the blood-stained men
+who already lay huddled in the cacolets on either side.
+
+The square was now moving slowly on a line parallel with the rocks,
+stopping every few minutes to pick up wounded, and to allow the
+screw-guns and Gardner to make themselves felt. The men looked serious,
+for that spring on to the rocks of the Arab army had given them a vague
+glimpse of the number and ferocity of their foes; but their faces were
+set like stone, for they knew to a man that they must win or they must
+die--and die, too, in a particularly unlovely fashion. But most serious
+of all was the general, for he had seen that which brought a flush to
+his cheeks and a frown to his brow.
+
+“I say, Stephen,” said he to his galloper, “those Mallows seem a trifle
+jumpy. The right flank company bulged a bit when the niggers showed on
+the hill.”
+
+“Youngest troops in the square, sir,” murmured the aide, looking at them
+critically through his eye-glass.
+
+“Tell Colonel Flanagan to see to it, Stephen,” said the general; and the
+galloper sped upon his way. The colonel, a fine old Celtic warrior, was
+over at C Company in an instant.
+
+“How are the men, Captain Foley?”
+
+“Never better, sir,” answered the senior captain, in the spirit that
+makes a Madras officer look murder if you suggest recruiting his
+regiment from the Punjab.
+
+“Stiffen them up!” cried the colonel. As he rode away a colour-sergeant
+seemed to trip, and fell forward into a mimosa bush. He made no effort
+to rise, but lay in a heap among the thorns.
+
+“Sergeant O’Rooke’s gone, sorr,” cried a voice. “Never mind, lads,”
+said Captain Foley. “He’s died like a soldier, fighting for his Queen.”
+
+“Down with the Queen!” shouted a hoarse voice from the ranks.
+
+But the roar of the Gardner and the typewriter-like clicking of the
+hopper burst in at the tail of the words. Captain Foley heard them, and
+Subalterns Grice and Murphy heard them; but there are times when a deaf
+ear is a gift from the gods.
+
+“Steady, Mallows!” cried the captain, in a pause of the grunting
+machine-gun. “We have the honour of Ireland to guard this day.”
+
+“And well we know how to guard it, captin!” cried the same ominous
+voice; and there was a buzz from the length of the company.
+
+The captain and the two subs. came together behind the marching line.
+
+“They seem a bit out of hand,” murmured the captain.
+
+“Bedad,” said the Galway boy, “they mean to scoot like redshanks.”
+
+“They nearly broke when the blacks showed on the hill,” said Grice.
+
+“The first man that turns, my sword is through him,” cried Foley, loud
+enough to be heard by five files on either side of him. Then, in a
+lower voice, “It’s a bitter drop to swallow, but it’s my duty to report
+what you think to the chief, and have a company of Jollies put behind
+us.” He turned away with the safety of the square upon his mind, and
+before he had reached his goal the square had ceased to exist.
+
+In their march in front of what looked like a face of cliff, they had
+come opposite to the mouth of the gully, in which, screened by scrub and
+boulders, 3,000 chosen dervishes, under Hamid Wad Hussein, of the
+Baggaras, were crouching. Tat, tat, tat, went the rifles of three
+mounted infantrymen in front of the left shoulder of the square, and an
+instant later they were spurring it for their lives, crouching over the
+manes of their horses, and pelting over the sandhills with thirty or
+forty galloping chieftains at their heels. Rocks and scrub and mimosa
+swarmed suddenly into life. Rushing black figures came and went in the
+gaps of the bushes. A howl that drowned the shouts of the officers, a
+long quavering yell, burst from the ambuscade. Two rolling volleys from
+the Royal Wessex, one crash from the screw-gun firing shrapnel, and then
+before a second cartridge could be rammed in, a living, glistening black
+wave, tipped with steel, had rolled over the gun, the Royal Wessex had
+been dashed back among the camels, and 1,000 fanatics were hewing and
+hacking in the heart of what had been the square.
+
+The camels and mules in the centre, jammed more and more together as
+their leaders flinched from the rush of the tribesmen, shut out the view
+of the other three faces, who could only tell that the Arabs had got in
+by the yells upon Allah, which rose ever nearer and nearer amid the
+clouds of sand-dust, the struggling animals, and the dense mass of
+swaying, cursing men. Some of the Wessex fired back at the Arabs who
+had passed them, as excited Tommies will, and it is whispered among
+doctors that it was not always a Remington bullet which was cut from a
+wound that day. Some rallied in little knots, stabbing furiously with
+their bayonets at the rushing spearmen. Others turned at bay with their
+backs against the camels, and others round the general and his staff,
+who, revolver in hand, had flung themselves into the heart of it.
+But the whole square was sidling slowly away from the gorge, pushed back
+by the pressure at the shattered corner.
+
+The officers and men at the other faces were glancing nervously to the
+rear, uncertain what was going on, and unable to take help to their
+comrades without breaking the formation.
+
+“By Jove, they’ve got through the Wessex!” cried Grice of the Mallows.
+
+“The divils have hurrooshed us, Ted,” said his brother subaltern,
+cocking his revolver.
+
+The ranks were breaking, and crowding towards Private Conolly, all
+talking together as the officers peered back through the veil of dust.
+The sailors had run their Gardner out, and she was squirting death out
+of her five barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages.
+“Oh, this bloody gun!” shouted a voice. “She’s jammed again.”
+The fierce metallic grunting had ceased, and her crew were straining and
+hauling at the breech.
+
+“This damned vertical feed!” cried an officer.
+
+“The spanner, Wilson!--the spanner! Stand to your cutlasses, boys, or
+they’re into us.” His voice rose into a shriek as he ended, for a
+shovel-headed spear had been buried in his chest. A second wave of
+dervishes lapped over the hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and
+the right front of the line. The sailors were overborne in an instant,
+but the Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the yell of the
+Moslem with an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two hundred of them
+with a single point-blank volley. The howling, leaping crew swerved
+away to the right, and dashed on into the gap which had already been
+made for them.
+
+But C Company had drawn no trigger to stop that fiery rush. The men
+leaned moodily upon their Martinis. Some had even thrown them upon the
+ground. Conolly was talking fiercely to those about him. Captain
+Foley, thrusting his way through the press, rushed up to him with a
+revolver in his hand.
+
+“This is your doing, you villain!” he cried.
+
+“If you raise your pistol, Captin, your brains will be over your coat,”
+said a low voice at his side.
+
+He saw that several rifles were turned on him. The two subs. had
+pressed forward, and were by his side. “What is it, then?” he cried,
+looking round from one fierce mutinous face to another. “Are you
+Irishmen? Are you soldiers? What are you here for but to fight for
+your country?”
+
+“England is no country of ours,” cried several.
+
+“You are not fighting for England. You are fighting for Ireland, and
+for the Empire of which it as part.”
+
+“A black curse on the Impire!” shouted Private McQuire, throwing down
+his rifle. “’Twas the Impire that backed the man that druv me onto the
+roadside. May me hand stiffen before I draw trigger for it.
+
+“What’s the Impire to us, Captain Foley, and what’s the Widdy to us
+ayther?” cried a voice.
+
+“Let the constabulary foight for her.”
+
+“Ay, be God, they’d be better imployed than pullin’ a poor man’s thatch
+about his ears.”
+
+“Or shootin’ his brother, as they did mine.”
+
+“It was the Impire laid my groanin’ mother by the wayside. Her son will
+rot before he upholds it, and ye can put that in the charge-sheet in the
+next coort-martial.”
+
+In vain the three officers begged, menaced, persuaded. The square was
+still moving, ever moving, with the same bloody fight raging in its
+entrails. Even while they had been speaking they had been shuffling
+backwards, and the useless Gardner, with her slaughtered crew, was
+already a good hundred yards from them. And the pace was accelerating.
+The mass of men, tormented and writhing, was trying, by a common
+instinct, to reach some clearer ground where they could re-form. Three
+faces were still intact, but the fourth had been caved in, and badly
+mauled, without its comrades being able to help it. The Guards had met
+a fresh rush of the Hadendowas, and had blown back the tribesmen with a
+volley, and the cavalry had ridden over another stream of them, as they
+welled out of the gully. A litter of hamstrung horses, and haggled men
+behind them, showed that a spearman on his face among the bushes can
+show some sport to the man who charges him. But, in spite of all, the
+square was still reeling swiftly backwards, trying to shake itself clear
+of this torment which clung to its heart. Would it break or would it
+re-form? The lives of five regiments and the honour of the flag hung
+upon the answer.
+
+Some, at least, were breaking. The C Company of the Mallows had lost
+all military order, and was pushing back in spite of the haggard
+officers, who cursed, and shoved, and prayed in the vain attempt to hold
+them. The captain and the subs. were elbowed and jostled, while the men
+crowded towards Private Conolly for their orders. The confusion had not
+spread, for the other companies, in the dust and smoke and turmoil, had
+lost touch with their mutinous comrades. Captain Foley saw that even
+now there might be time to avert a disaster. “Think what you are doing,
+man,” he yelled, rushing towards the ringleader. “There are a thousand
+Irish in the square, and they are dead men if we break.”
+
+The words alone might have had little effect on the old moonlighter.
+It is possible that, in his scheming brain, he had already planned how
+he was to club his Irish together and lead them to the sea. But at that
+moment the Arabs broke through the screen of camels which had fended
+them off. There was a struggle, a screaming, a mule rolled over, a
+wounded man sprang up in a cacolet with a spear through him, and then
+through the narrow gap surged a stream of naked savages, mad with
+battle, drunk with slaughter, spotted and splashed with blood--blood
+dripping from their spears, their arms, their faces. Their yells, their
+bounds, their crouching, darting figures, the horrid energy of their
+spear-thrusts, made them look like a blast of fiends from the pit. And
+were these the Allies of Ireland? Were these the men who were to strike
+for her against her enemies? Conolly’s soul rose up in loathing at the
+thought.
+
+He was a man of firm purpose, and yet at the first sight of those
+howling fiends that purpose faltered, and at the second it was blown to
+the winds. He saw a huge coal-black negro seize a shrieking
+camel-driver and saw at his throat with a knife. He saw a shock-headed
+tribesman plunge his great spear through the back of their own little
+bugler from Mill-street. He saw a dozen deeds of blood--the murder of
+the wounded, the hacking of the unarmed--and caught, too, in a glance,
+the good wholesome faces of the faced-about rear rank of the Marines.
+The Mallows, too, had faced about, and in an instant Conolly had thrown
+himself into the heart of C Company, striving with the officers to form
+the men up with their comrades.
+
+But the mischief had gone too far. The rank and file had no heart in
+their work. They had broken before, and this last rush of murderous
+savages was a hard thing for broken men to stand against. They flinched
+from the furious faces and dripping forearms. Why should they throw
+away their lives for a flag for which they cared nothing? Why should
+their leader urge them to break, and now shriek to them to re-form?
+They would not re-form. They wanted to get to the sea and to safety.
+He flung himself among them with outstretched arms, with words of
+reason, with shouts, with gaspings. It was useless; the tide was beyond
+his control. They were shredding out into the desert with their faces
+set for the coast.
+
+“Bhoys, will ye stand for this?” screamed a voice. It was so ringing,
+so strenuous, that the breaking Mallows glanced backwards. They were
+held by what they saw. Private Conolly had planted his rifle-stock
+downwards in a mimosa bush. From the fixed bayonet there fluttered a
+little green flag with the crownless harp. God knows for what black
+mutiny, for what signal of revolt, that flag had been treasured up
+within the corporal’s tunic! Now its green wisp stood amid the rush,
+while three proud regimental colours were reeling slowly backwards.
+
+“What for the flag?” yelled the private.
+
+“My heart’s blood for it! and mine! and mine!” cried a score of voices.
+“God bless it! The flag, boys--the flag!”
+
+C Company were rallying upon it. The stragglers clutched at each
+other, and pointed. “Here, McQuire, Flynn, O’Hara,” ran the shoutings.
+“Close on the flag! Back to the flag!” The three standards reeled
+backwards, and the seething square strove for a clearer space where they
+could form their shattered ranks; but C Company, grim and
+powder-stained, choked with enemies and falling fast, still closed in on
+the little rebel ensign that flapped from the mimosa bush.
+
+It was a good half-hour before the square, having disentangled itself
+from its difficulties and dressed its ranks, began to slowly move
+forwards over the ground, across which in its labour and anguish it had
+been driven. The long trail of Wessex men and Arabs showed but too
+clearly the path they had come.
+
+“How many got into us, Stephen?” asked the general, tapping his
+snuff-box.
+
+“I should put them down at a thousand or twelve hundred, sir.”
+
+“I did not see any get out again. What the devil were the Wessex
+thinking about? The Guards stood well, though; so did the Mallows.”
+
+“Colonel Flanagan reports that his front flank company was cut off,
+sir.”
+
+“Why, that’s the company that was out of hand when we advanced!”
+
+“Colonel Flanagan reports, sir, that the company took the whole brunt of
+the attack, and gave the square time to re-form.”
+
+“Tell the Hussars to ride forward, Stephen,” said the general, “and try
+if they can see anything of them. There’s no firing, and I fear that
+the Mallows will want to do some recruiting. Let the square take ground
+by the right, and then advance!”
+
+But the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas saw from his knoll that the men
+with the big hats had rallied, and that they were coming back in the
+quiet business fashion of men whose work was before them. He took
+counsel with Moussa the Dervish and Hussein the Baggara, and a woestruck
+man was he when he learned that the third of his men were safe in the
+Moslem Paradise. So, having still some signs of victory to show, he
+gave the word, and the desert warriors flitted off unseen and unheard,
+even as they had come.
+
+A red rock plateau, a few hundred spears and Remingtons, and a plain
+which for the second time was strewn with slaughtered men, was all that
+his day’s fighting gave to the English general.
+
+It was a squadron of Hussars which came first to the spot where the
+rebel flag had waved. A dense litter of Arab dead marked the place.
+Within, the flag waved no longer, but the rifle stood in the mimosa
+bush, and round it, with their wounds in front, lay the Fenian private
+and the silent ranks of the Irishry. Sentiment is not an English
+failing, but the Hussar captain raised his hilt in a salute as he rode
+past the blood-soaked ring.
+
+The British general sent home dispatches to his Government, and so did
+the chief of the Hadendowas, though the style and manner differed
+somewhat in each.
+
+
+
+The Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowa people to Mohammed Ahmed, the chosen of
+Allah, homage and greeting, (began the latter). Know by this that on
+the fourth day of this moon we gave battle to the Kaffirs who call
+themselves Inglees, having with us the Chief Hussein with ten thousand
+of the faithful. By the blessing of Allah we have broken them, and
+chased them for a mile, though indeed these infidels are different from
+the dogs of Egypt, and have slain very many of our men. Yet we hope to
+smite them again ere the new moon be come, to which end I trust that
+thou wilt send us a thousand Dervishes from Omdurman. In token of our
+victory I send you by this messenger a flag which we have taken. By the
+colour it might well seem to have belonged to those of the true faith,
+but the Kaffirs gave their blood freely to save it, and so we think
+that, though small, it is very dear to them.
+
+
+
+
+CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+
+
+                             I
+
+HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT’S CAME HOME.
+
+
+When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end
+by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been
+fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some
+took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce,
+others were absorbed into the fishing fleets, and a few of the more
+reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at
+the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the
+whole human race.
+
+With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they scoured the seas,
+disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in
+for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants
+by their lavishness, and horrified them by their brutalities.
+
+On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above
+all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant
+menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations
+by the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer, and
+dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.
+
+They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that
+discipline and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers,
+both formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an
+account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken
+whim of the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with
+longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell
+into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after
+serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his
+cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and
+salt in front of him. It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his
+calling in the Caribbean Gulf.
+
+Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship _Morning Star_, and yet
+he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the
+falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the
+guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt’s was his final port of
+call, and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old
+England. He had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he
+had left Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red
+pepper, he had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet
+edge of the tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands,
+touching here and there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy
+and outrage.
+
+Captain Sharkey, of the twenty-gun pirate barque, _Happy Delivery_, had
+passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and with
+murdered men. Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim pleasantries
+and of his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main his
+coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with
+death and many things which are worse than death. So nervous was
+Captain Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship, and her full and
+valuable lading, that he struck out to the west as far as Bird’s Island
+to be out of the usual track of commerce. And yet even in those
+solitary waters he had been unable to shake off sinister traces of
+Captain Sharkey.
+
+One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
+ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as
+they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and
+wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon
+transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship.
+He was from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole
+survivor of a schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.
+
+For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath
+a tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late
+captain to be thrown into the boat, “as provisions for the voyage,” but
+the seaman had at once committed it to the deep, lest the temptation
+should be more than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge frame
+until, at the last moment, the _Morning Star_ had found him in that
+madness which is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for
+Captain Scarrow, for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this
+big New Englander was a prize worth having. He vowed that he was the
+only man whom Captain Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.
+
+Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the
+pirate was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the
+seaman’s mind as he watched the agent’s boat shooting out from the
+Custom-house quay.
+
+“I’ll lay you a wager, Morgan,” said he to the first mate, “that the
+agent will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his
+lips.”
+
+“Well, captain, I’ll have you a silver dollar, and chance it,” said the
+rough old Bristol man beside him.
+
+The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
+sprang up the ladder. “Welcome, Captain Scarrow!” he cried. “Have you
+heard about Sharkey?”
+
+The captain grinned at the mate.
+
+“What devilry has he been up to now?” he asked.
+
+“Devilry! You’ve not heard, then? Why, we’ve got him safe under lock
+and key at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be
+hanged to-morrow morning.”
+
+Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken
+up by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through
+the break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the
+front of them with a radiant face turned up to Heaven, for he came of
+the Puritan stock.
+
+“Sharkey to be hanged!” he cried. “You don’t know, Master Agent, if
+they lack a hangman, do you?”
+
+“Stand back!” cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was
+even stronger than his interest at the news. “I’ll pay that dollar,
+Captain Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet.
+How came the villain to be taken?”
+
+“Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and
+they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship.
+So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
+Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
+brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried,
+but our good little Governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it.
+‘He’s my meat,’ said he, ‘and I claim the cooking of it.’ If you can
+stay till to-morrow morning at ten, you’ll see the joint swinging.”
+
+“I wish I could,” said the captain, wistfully, “but I am sadly behind
+time now. I should start with the evening tide.”
+
+“That you can’t do,” said the agent with decision. “The Governor is
+going back with you.”
+
+“The Governor!”
+
+“Yes. He’s had a dispatch from Government to return without delay.
+The fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles
+has been waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains.”
+
+“Well, well!” cried the captain in some perplexity, “I’m a plain seaman,
+and I don’t know much of governors and baronets and their ways. I don’t
+remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it’s in King
+George’s service, and he asks a cast in the _Morning Star_ as far as
+London, I’ll do what I can for him. There’s my own cabin he can have
+and welcome. As to the cooking, it’s lobscouse and salmagundy six days
+in the week; but he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks
+our galley too rough for his taste.”
+
+“You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow,” said the agent.
+“Sir Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague,
+and it is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage.
+Dr. Larousse said that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not
+put fresh life into him. He has a great spirit in him, though, and you
+must not blame him if he is somewhat short in his speech.”
+
+“He may say what he likes, and do what he likes, so long as he does not
+come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship,” said the captain.
+“He is Governor of St. Kitt’s, but I am Governor of the _Morning Star_,
+and, by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to
+my employer, just as he does to King George.”
+
+“He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order
+before he leaves.”
+
+“The early morning tide, then.”
+
+“Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night; and he will follow
+them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt’s
+without seeing Sharkey do the rogue’s hornpipe. His own orders were
+instant, so it may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr.
+Larousse may attend him upon the journey.”
+
+Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations
+which they could for their illustrious passenger. The largest cabin was
+turned out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which
+barrels of fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary
+the plain food of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor’s
+baggage began to arrive--great iron-bound ant-proof trunks, and official
+tin packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested
+the cocked hat or the sword within. And then there came a note, with a
+heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made
+his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in
+the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.
+
+He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun
+to deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some
+difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard that the Governor was
+an eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came
+limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick
+bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails
+like a poodle’s coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large
+green glasses which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from
+it. A fierce beak of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in
+front of him. His ague had caused him to swathe his throat and chin
+with a broad linen cravat, and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown
+secured by a cord round the waist. As he advanced he carried his
+masterful nose high in the air, but his head turned slowly from side to
+side in the helpless manner of the purblind, and he called in a high,
+querulous voice for the captain.
+
+“You have my things?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, Sir Charles.”
+
+“Have you wine aboard?”
+
+“I have ordered five cases, sir.”
+
+“And tobacco?”
+
+“There is a keg of Trinidad.”
+
+“You play a hand at picquet?”
+
+“Passably well, sir.”
+
+“Then anchor up, and to sea!”
+
+There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly
+through the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands.
+The decrepit Governor still limped the deck, with one guiding hand upon
+the quarter rail.
+
+“You are on Government service now, captain,” said he. “They are
+counting the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you. Have you
+all that she will carry?”
+
+“Every inch, Sir Charles.”
+
+“Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, Captain Scarrow,
+that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your
+voyage.”
+
+“I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency’s society,” said the captain.
+“But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted.”
+
+“Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of
+Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out.”
+
+“I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague.”
+
+“Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much.”
+
+“We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon.”
+
+“Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he has a snug business
+amongst the merchants. But hark!” He raised his ring-covered band in
+the air. From far astern there came the low, deep thunder of cannon.
+
+“It is from the island!” cried the captain in astonishment. “Can it be
+a signal for us to put back?”
+
+The Governor laughed. “You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to
+be hanged this morning. I ordered the batteries to salute when the
+rascal was kicking his last, so that I might know of it out at sea.
+There’s an end of Sharkey!”
+
+“There’s an end of Sharkey!” cried the captain; and the crew took up the
+cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at
+the low, purple line of the vanishing land.
+
+It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the
+invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was
+generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial
+and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge
+and so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of
+the deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting
+his conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and
+Governor smoked their long pipes, and drank their claret as three good
+comrades should.
+
+“And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?” asked the captain.
+
+“He is a man of some presence,” said the Governor.
+
+“I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil,” remarked
+the mate.
+
+“Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions,” said the Governor.
+
+“I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his
+eyes,” said Captain Scarrow. “They were of the lightest filmy blue,
+with red-rimmed lids. Was that not so, Sir Charles?”
+
+“Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others!
+But I remember now that the adjutant-general said that he had such an
+eye as you describe, and added that the jury was so foolish as to be
+visibly discomposed when it was turned upon them. It is well for them
+that he is dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and
+if he had laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with
+straw and hung him for a figure-head.”
+
+The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a
+high, neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so
+heartily, for they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who
+sailed the western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be
+their own. Another bottle was broached to drink to a pleasant voyage,
+and the Governor would drink just one other on the top of it, so that
+the seamen were glad at last to stagger off--the one to his watch, and
+the other to his bunk. But when, after his four hours’ spell, the mate
+came down again, he was amazed to see the Governor, in his Ramillies
+wig, his glasses, and his powdering-gown, still seated sedately at the
+lonely table with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.
+
+“I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt’s when he was sick,” said
+he, “and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he
+is well.”
+
+The voyage of the _Morning Star_ was a successful one, and in about
+three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel. From the first
+day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before
+they were halfway across the Atlantic, he was, save only for his eyes,
+as well as any man upon the ship. Those who uphold the nourishing
+qualities of wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night
+passed that he did not repeat the performance of his first one. And yet
+he would be out upon deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the
+best of them, peering about with his weak eyes, and asking questions
+about the sails and the rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of
+the sea. And he made up for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining
+leave from the captain that the New England seaman--he who had been cast
+away in the boat--should lead him about, and, above all, that he should
+sit beside him when he played cards and count the number of the pips,
+for unaided he could not tell the king from the knave.
+
+It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service,
+since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey and the other was his
+avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to
+lend his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all
+respect behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed
+forefinger upon the card which he should play. Between them there was
+little in the pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first
+mate, by the time they sighted the Lizard.
+
+And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the
+high temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark. At a sign of
+opposition or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his
+cravat, his masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent
+angle, and his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulders.
+He cracked it once over the head of the carpenter when the man had
+accidentally jostled him upon the deck. Once, too, when there was some
+grumbling and talk of a mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was
+of opinion that they should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they
+should march forward and set upon them until they had trounced the
+devilment out of them. “Give me a knife and a bucket!” he cried with an
+oath, and could hardly be withheld from setting forth alone to deal with
+the spokesman of the seamen.
+
+Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only
+answerable to himself at St. Kitt’s, killing became murder upon the high
+seas. In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop
+of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met
+a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his
+vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a
+stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had
+never known a voyage pass so pleasantly.
+
+And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island,
+they had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As
+evening fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from
+Winchelsea, with the long, dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front
+of her. Next morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland,
+and Sir Charles might meet the King’s ministers at Westminster before
+the evening. The boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were
+met for a last turn of cards in the cabin, the faithful American still
+serving as eyes to the Governor. There was a good stake upon the table,
+for the sailors had tried on this last night to win their losses back
+from their passenger. Suddenly he threw his cards down, and swept all
+the money into the pocket of his long-flapped silken waistcoat.
+
+“The game’s mine!” said he.
+
+“Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!” cried Captain Scarrow; “you have not
+played out the hand, and we are not the losers.”
+
+“Sink you for a liar!” said the Governor. “I tell you I _have_ played
+out the hand, and that you _are_ a loser.” He whipped off his wig and
+his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a pair
+of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.
+
+“Good God!” cried the mate. “It’s Sharkey!”
+
+The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway
+had put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in
+each of his hands. The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the
+scattered cards in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing
+laugh. “Captain Sharkey is the name, gentlemen,” said he, “and this is
+Roaring Ned Galloway, the quartermaster of the _Happy Delivery_.
+We made it hot, and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and
+him in an oarless boat. You dogs--you poor, fond, water-hearted
+dogs--we hold you at the end of our pistols!”
+
+“You may shoot, or you may not!” cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon
+the breast of his frieze jacket. “If it’s my last breath, Sharkey, I
+tell you that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and
+hell-fire in store for you!”
+
+“There’s a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he’s going to
+make a very pretty death of it!” cried Sharkey. “There’s no one aft
+save the man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you’ll need
+it soon. Is the dinghy astern, Ned?”
+
+“Ay, ay, captain!”
+
+“And the other boats scuttled?”
+
+“I bored them all in three places.”
+
+“Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. You look as if you
+hadn’t quite got your bearings yet. Is there anything you’d like to ask
+me?”
+
+“I believe you’re the devil himself!” cried the captain. “Where is the
+Governor of St. Kitt’s?”
+
+“When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut.
+When I broke prison I learnt from my friends--for Captain Sharkey has
+those who love him in every port--that the Governor was starting for
+Europe under a master who had never seen him. I climbed his verandah,
+and I paid him the little debt that I owed him. Then I came aboard you
+with such of his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide
+these tell-tale eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a governor
+should. Now, Ned, you can get to work upon them.”
+
+“Help! Help! Watch ahoy!” yelled the mate; but the butt of the pirate’s
+pistol crashed down on his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox.
+Scarrow rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his
+mouth, and threw his other arm round his waist.
+
+“No use, Master Scarrow,” said Sharkey. “Let us see you go down on your
+knees and beg for your life.”
+
+“I’ll see you--” cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.
+
+“Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?”
+
+“No; not if you twist it off.”
+
+“Put an inch of your knife into him.”
+
+“You may put six inches, and then I won’t.”
+
+“Sink me, but I like his spirit!” cried Sharkey. “Put your knife in
+your pocket, Ned. You’ve saved your skin, Scarrow, and it’s a pity so
+stout a man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can
+pick up a living. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since
+you have lain at my mercy and lived to tell the story. Tie him up,
+Ned.”
+
+“To the stove, captain?”
+
+“Tut, tut! there’s a fire in the stove. None of your rover tricks, Ned
+Galloway, unless they are called for, or I’ll let you know which of us
+two is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the table.”
+
+“Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!” said the quartermaster.
+“You surely do not mean to let him go?”
+
+“If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still
+for me to command and for you to obey. Sink you for a villain, do you
+dare to question my orders?”
+
+“Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!” said the quartermaster,
+and, lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table. With the
+quick dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spread-eagled hands and feet
+with a rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with
+the long cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of
+St. Kitt’s.
+
+“Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you,” said the pirate.
+“If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had
+your cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand
+with the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small craft about, and
+we shall get one of them. When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a
+smack, when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can
+get a barque, and when he has a barque he’ll soon have a full-rigged
+ship of his own--so make haste into London town, or I may be coming
+back, after all, for the _Morning Star_.”
+
+Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin.
+Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the
+companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the
+stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the
+falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore
+and dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles,
+he rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way
+through the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.
+
+“Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!” he screamed. “Cutlasses and
+pistols! Clear away the long-boat! Clear away the gig! Sharkey, the
+pirate, is in yonder dinghy. Whistle up the larboard watch, bo’sun,
+and tumble into the boats, all hands.”
+
+Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant
+the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once
+more.
+
+“The boats are scuttled!” they cried. “They are leaking like a sieve.”
+
+The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten and outwitted at
+every point. Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor
+the promise of it. The sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away
+lay a fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net. Close to
+them was the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the shining swell.
+
+“They are dead men!” cried the captain. “A shout all together, boys,
+to warn them of their danger.” But it was too late. At that very
+moment the dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat. There were
+two rapid pistol-shots, a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed
+by silence. The clustering fishermen had disappeared. And then,
+suddenly, as the first puffs of a land-breeze came out from the Sussex
+shore, the boom swung out, the mainsail filled, and the little craft
+crept out with her nose to the Atlantic.
+
+
+                             II
+
+THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY WITH STEPHEN CRADDOCK
+
+
+Careening was a very necessary operation for the old pirate. On his
+superior speed he depended both for overhauling the trader and escaping
+the man-of-war. But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities
+unless he periodically--once a year, at the least--cleared his vessel’s
+bottom from the long, trailing plants and crusting barnacles which
+gather so rapidly in the tropical seas. For this purpose he lightened
+his vessel, thrust her into some narrow inlet where she would be left
+high and dry at low water, fastened blocks and tackles to her masts to
+pull her over on to her bilge, and then scraped her thoroughly from
+rudder-post to cut-water.
+
+During the weeks which were thus occupied the ship was, of course,
+defenceless; but, on the other hand, she was unapproachable by anything
+heavier than an empty hull, and the place for careening was chosen with
+an eye to secrecy, so that there was no great danger. So secure did the
+captains feel, that it was not uncommon for them, at such times, to
+leave their ships under a sufficient guard, and to start off in the
+long-boat, either upon a sporting expedition or, more frequently, upon a
+visit to some outlying town, where they burned the heads of the women by
+their swaggering gallantry, or broached pipes of wine in the market
+square, with a threat to pistol all who would not drink with them.
+
+Sometimes they would even appear in cities of the size of Charleston,
+and walk the streets with their clattering side-arms--an open scandal to
+the whole law-abiding colony. Such visits were not always paid with
+impunity. It was one of them, for example, which provoked Lieutenant
+Maynard to hack off Blackbeard’s head, and to spear it upon the end of
+his bowsprit. But, as a rule, the pirate ruffled and bullied and
+drabbed without let or hindrance, until it was time for him to go back
+to his ship once more.
+
+There was one pirate, however, who never crossed even the skirts of
+civilisation, and that was the sinister Sharkey, of the barque _Happy
+Delivery_. It may have been from his morose and solitary temper, or, as
+is more probable, that he knew that his name upon the coast was such
+that outraged humanity would, against all odds, have thrown themselves
+upon him, but never once did he show his face in a settlement.
+
+When his ship was laid up he would leave her under the charge of Ned
+Galloway--her New England quartermaster--and would take long voyages in
+his boat, sometimes, it was said, for the purpose of burying his share
+of the plunder, and sometimes to shoot the wild oxen of Hispaniola,
+which, when dressed and barbecued, provided provisions for his next
+voyage. In the latter case the barque would come round to some
+pre-arranged spot to pick him up, and take on board what he had shot.
+
+There had always been a hope in the islands that Sharkey might be taken
+on one of these occasions; and at last there came news to Kingston which
+seemed to justify an attempt upon him. It was brought by an elderly
+logwood-cutter who had fallen into the pirate’s hands, and in some freak
+of drunken benevolence had been allowed to get away with nothing worse
+than a slit nose and a drubbing. His account was recent and definite.
+The _Happy Delivery_ was careening at Torbec on the south-west of
+Hispaniola. Sharkey, with four men, was buccaneering on the outlying
+island of La Vache. The blood of a hundred murdered crews was calling
+out for vengeance, and now at last it seemed as if it might not call in
+vain.
+
+Sir Edward Compton, the high-nosed, red-faced Governor, sitting in
+solemn conclave with the commandant and the head of the council, was
+sorely puzzled in his mind as to how he should use this chance.
+There was no man-of-war nearer than Jamestown, and she was a clumsy old
+fly-boat, which could neither overhaul the pirate on the seas, nor reach
+her in a shallow inlet. There were forts and artillerymen both at
+Kingston and Port Royal, but no soldiers available for an expedition.
+
+A private venture might be fitted out--and there were many who had a
+blood-feud with Sharkey--but what could a private venture do?
+The pirates were numerous and desperate. As to taking Sharkey and his
+four companions, that, of course, would be easy if they could get at
+them; but how were they to get at them on a large well-wooded island
+like La Vache, full of wild hills and impenetrable jungles? A reward
+was offered to whoever could find a solution, and that brought a man to
+the front who had a singular plan, and was himself prepared to carry it
+out.
+
+Stephen Craddock had been that most formidable person, the Puritan gone
+wrong. Sprung from a decent Salem family, his ill-doing seemed to be a
+recoil from the austerity of their religion, and he brought to vice all
+the physical strength and energy with which the virtues of his ancestors
+had endowed him. He was ingenious, fearless, and exceedingly tenacious
+of purpose, so that when he was still young, his name became notorious
+upon the American coast. He was the same Craddock who was tried for his
+life in Virginia for the slaying of the Seminole Chief, and, though he
+escaped, it was well known that he had corrupted the witnesses and
+bribed the judge.
+
+Afterwards, as a slaver, and even, as it was hinted, as a pirate, he had
+left an evil name behind him in the Bight of Benin. Finally he had
+returned to Jamaica with a considerable fortune, and had settled down to
+a life of sombre dissipation. This was the man, gaunt, austere, and
+dangerous, who now waited upon the Governor with a plan for the
+extirpation of Sharkey. Sir Edward received him with little enthusiasm,
+for in spite of some rumours of conversion and reformation, he had
+always regarded him as an infected sheep who might taint the whole of
+his little flock. Craddock saw the Governor’s mistrust under his thin
+veil of formal and restrained courtesy.
+
+“You’ve no call to fear me, sir,” said he; “I’m a changed man from what
+you’ve known. I’ve seen the light again of late, after losing sight of
+it for many a black year. It was through the ministration of the Rev.
+John Simons, of our own people. Sir, if your spirit should be in need
+of quickening, you would find a very sweet savour in his discourse.”
+
+The Governor cocked his episcopalian nose at him.
+
+“You came here to speak of Sharkey, Master Craddock,” said he.
+
+“The man Sharkey is a vessel of wrath,” said Craddock. “His wicked
+horn has been exalted over long, and it is borne in upon me that if I
+can cut him off and utterly destroy him, it will be a goodly deed, and
+one which may atone for many backslidings in the past. A plan has been
+given to me whereby I may encompass his destruction.”
+
+The Governor was keenly interested, for there was a grim and practical
+air about the man’s freckled face which showed that he was in earnest.
+After all, he was a seaman and a fighter, and, if it were true that he
+was eager to atone for his past, no better man could be chosen for the
+business.
+
+“This will be a dangerous task, Master Craddock,” said he.
+
+“If I meet my death at it, it may be that it will cleanse the memory of
+an ill-spent life. I have much to atone for.”
+
+The Governor did not see his way to contradict him.
+
+“What was your plan?” he asked.
+
+“You have heard that Sharkey’s barque, the _Happy Delivery_, came from
+this very port of Kingston?”
+
+“It belonged to Mr. Codrington, and it was taken by Sharkey, who
+scuttled his own sloop and moved into her because she was faster,” said
+Sir Edward.
+
+“Yes; but it may be that you have lever heard that Mr. Codrington has a
+sister ship, the _White Rose_, which lies even now in the harbour, and
+which is so like the pirate, that, if it were not for a white paint
+line, none could tell them apart.”
+
+“Ah! and what of that?” asked the Governor keenly, with the air of one
+who is just on the edge of an idea.
+
+“By the help of it this man shall be delivered into our hands.”
+
+“And how?”
+
+“I will paint out the streak upon the _White Rose_, and make it in all
+things like the _Happy Delivery_. Then I will set sail for the Island
+of La Vache, where this man is slaying the wild oxen. When he sees me
+he will surely mistake me for his own vessel which he is awaiting, and
+he will come on board to his own undoing.”
+
+It was a simple plan, and yet it seemed to the Governor that it might be
+effective. Without hesitation he gave Craddock permission to carry it
+out, and to take any steps he liked in order to further the object which
+he had in view. Sir Edward was not very sanguine, for many attempts had
+been made upon Sharkey, and their results had shown that he was as
+cunning as he was ruthless. But this gaunt Puritan with the evil record
+was cunning and ruthless also. The contest of wits between two such men
+as Sharkey and Craddock appealed to the Governor’s acute sense of sport,
+and though he was inwardly convinced that the chances were against him,
+he backed his man with the same loyalty which he would have shown to his
+horse or his cock.
+
+Haste was, above all things, necessary, for upon any day the careening
+might be finished, and the pirates out at sea once more. But there was
+not very much to do, and there were many willing hands to do it, so the
+second day saw the _White Rose_ beating out for the open sea. There
+were many seamen in the port who knew the lines and rig of the pirate
+barque, and not one of them could see the slightest difference in this
+counterfeit. Her white side line had been painted out, her masts and
+yards were smoked, to give them the dingy appearance of the
+weather-beaten rover, and a large diamond-shaped patch was let into her
+foretopsail. Her crew were volunteers, many of them being men who had
+sailed with Stephen Craddock before--the mate, Joshua Hird, an old
+slaver, had been his accomplice in many voyages, and came now at the
+bidding of his chief.
+
+The avenging barque sped across the Caribbean Sea, and, at the sight of
+that patched topsail, the little craft which they met flew left and
+right like frightened trout in a pool. On the fourth evening Point
+Abacou bore five miles to the north and east of them. On the fifth they
+were at anchor in the Bay of Tortoises at the Island of La Vache, where
+Sharkey and his four men had been hunting. It was a well-wooded place,
+with the palms and underwood growing down to the thin crescent of silver
+sand which skirted the shore. They had hoisted the black flag and the
+red pennant, but no answer came from the shore. Craddock strained his
+eyes, hoping every instant to see a boat shoot out to them with Sharkey
+seated in the sheets. But the night passed away, and a day and yet
+another night, without any sign of the men whom they were endeavouring
+to trap. It looked as if they were already gone.
+
+On the second morning Craddock went ashore in search of some proof
+whether Sharkey and his men were still upon the island. What he found
+reassured him greatly. Close to the shore was a boucan of green wood,
+such as was used for preserving the meat, and a great store of barbecued
+strips of ox-flesh was hung upon lines all round it. The pirate ship
+had not taken off her provisions, and therefore the hunters were still
+upon the island.
+
+Why had they not shown themselves? Was it that they had detected that
+this was not their own ship? Or was it that they were hunting in the
+interior of the island, and were not on the look-out for a ship yet?
+Craddock was still hesitating between the two alternatives, when a Carib
+Indian came down with information. The pirates were in the island, he
+said, and their camp was a day’s march from the Sea. They had stolen
+his wife, and the marks of their stripes were still pink upon his brown
+back. Their enemies were his friends, and he would lead them to where
+they lay.
+
+Craddock could not have asked for anything better; so early next
+morning, with a small party armed to the teeth, he set off, under the
+guidance of the Carib. All day they struggled through brushwood and
+clambered over rocks, pushing their way further and further into the
+desolate heart of the island. Here and there they found traces of the
+hunters, the bones of a slain ox, or the marks of feet in a morass, and
+once, towards evening, it seemed to some of them that they heard the
+distant rattle of guns.
+
+That night they spent under the trees, and pushed on again with the
+earliest light. About noon they came to the huts of bark, which, the
+Carib told them, were the camp of the hunters, but they were silent and
+deserted. No doubt their occupants were away at the hunt and would
+return in the evening, so Craddock and his men lay in ambush in the
+brushwood around them. But no one came, and another night was spent in
+the forest. Nothing more could be done, and it seemed to Craddock that
+after the two days’ absence it was time that he returned to his ship
+once more.
+
+The return journey was less difficult, as they had already blazed a path
+for themselves. Before evening they found themselves once more at the
+Bay of Palms, and saw their ship riding at anchor where they had left
+her. Their boat and oars had been hauled up among the bushes, so they
+launched it and pulled out to the barque.
+
+“No luck, then!” cried Joshua Hird, the mate, looking down with a pale
+face from the poop.
+
+“His camp was empty, but he may come down to us yet,” said Craddock,
+with his hand on the ladder.
+
+Somebody upon deck began to laugh. “I think,” said the mate, “that
+these men had better stay in the boat.”
+
+“Why so?”
+
+“If you will come aboard, sir, you will understand it.” He spoke in a
+curious, hesitating fashion.
+
+The blood flushed to Craddock’s gaunt face. “How is this, Master Hird?”
+he cried, springing up the side. “What mean you by giving orders to my
+boat’s crew?”
+
+But as he passed over the bulwarks, with one foot upon the deck and one
+knee upon the rail, a tow-bearded man, whom he had never before observed
+aboard his vessel, grabbed suddenly at his pistol. Craddock clutched at
+the fellow’s wrist, but at the same instant his mate snatched the
+cutlass from his side.
+
+“What roguery is this?” shouted Craddock, looking furiously around him.
+But the crew stood in knots about the deck, laughing and whispering
+amongst themselves without showing any desire to go to his assistance.
+Even in that hurried glance Craddock noticed that they were dressed in
+the most singular manner, with long riding-coats, full-skirted velvet
+gowns and coloured ribands at their knees, more like men of fashion than
+seamen.
+
+As he looked at their grotesque figures he struck his brow with his
+clenched fist to be sure that he was awake. The deck seemed to be much
+dirtier than when he had left it, and there were strange, sun-blackened
+faces turned upon him from every side. Not one of them did he know save
+only Joshua Hird. Had the ship been captured in his absence? Were
+these Sharkey’s men who were around him? At the thought he broke
+furiously away and tried to climb over to his boat, but a dozen hands
+were on him in an instant, and he was pushed aft through the open door
+of his own cabin.
+
+And it was all different to the cabin which he had left. The floor was
+different, the ceiling was different, the furniture was different.
+His had been plain and austere. This was sumptuous and yet dirty, hung
+with rare velvet curtains splashed with wine-stains, and panelled with
+costly woods which were pocked with pistol-marks.
+
+On the table was a great chart of the Caribbean Sea, and beside it, with
+compasses in his hand, sat a clean-shaven, pale-faced man with a fur cap
+and a claret-coloured coat of damask. Craddock turned white under his
+freckles as he looked upon the long, thin high-nostrilled nose and the
+red-rimmed eyes which were turned upon him with the fixed, humorous gaze
+of the master player who has left his opponent without a move.
+“Sharkey!” cried Craddock.
+
+Sharkey’s thin lips opened, and he broke into his high, sniggering
+laugh.
+
+“You fool!” he cried, and, leaning over, he stabbed Craddock’s shoulder
+again and again with his compasses. “You poor, dull-witted fool, would
+you match yourself against me?”
+
+It was not the pain of the wounds, but it was the contempt in Sharkey’s
+voice which turned Craddock into a savage madman. He flew at the
+pirate, roaring with rage, striking, kicking, writhing, foaming.
+It took six men to drag him down on to the floor amidst the splintered
+remains of the table--and not one of the six who did not bear the
+prisoner’s mark upon him. But Sharkey still surveyed him with the same
+contemptuous eye. From outside there came the crash of breaking wood
+and the clamour of startled voices.
+
+“What is that?” asked Sharkey.
+
+“They have stove the boat with cold shot, and the men are in the water.”
+
+“Let them stay there,” said the pirate. “Now, Craddock, you know where
+you are. You are aboard my ship, the _Happy Delivery_, and you lie at
+my mercy. I knew you for a stout seaman, you rogue, before you took to
+this long-shore canting. Your hands then were no cleaner than my own.
+Will you sign articles, as your mate has done, and join us, or shall I
+heave you over to follow your ship’s company?”
+
+“Where is my ship?” asked Craddock.
+
+“Scuttled in the bay.”
+
+“And the hands?”
+
+“In the bay, too.”
+
+“Then I’m for the bay, also.”
+
+“Hock him and heave him over,” said Sharkey.
+
+Many rough hands had dragged Craddock out upon deck, and Galloway, the
+quartermaster, had already drawn his hanger to cripple him, when Sharkey
+came hurrying from his cabin with an eager face. “We can do better with
+the hound!” he cried. “Sink me if it is not a rare plan. Throw him
+into the sail-room with the irons on, and do you come here,
+quartermaster, that I may tell you what I have in my mind.”
+
+So Craddock, bruised and wounded in soul and body, was thrown into the
+dark sail-room, so fettered that he could not stir hand or foot, but his
+Northern blood was running strong in his veins, and his grim spirit
+aspired only to make such an ending as might go some way towards atoning
+for the evil of his life. All night he lay in the curve of the bilge
+listening to the rush of the water and the straining of the timbers
+which told him that the ship was at sea and driving fast. In the early
+morning someone came crawling to him in the darkness over the heap of
+sails.
+
+“Here’s rum and biscuits,” said the voice of his late mate. “It’s at
+the risk of my life, Master Craddock, that I bring them to you.”
+
+“It was you who trapped me and caught me as in a snare!” cried Craddock.
+“How shall you answer for what you have done?”
+
+“What I did I did with the point of a knife betwixt my blade-bones.”
+
+“God forgive you for a coward, Joshua Hird. How came you into their
+hands?”
+
+“Why, Master Craddock, the pirate ship came back from its careening upon
+the very day that you left us. They laid us aboard, and, short-handed
+as we were, with the best of the men ashore with you, we could offer but
+a poor defence. Some were cut down, and they were the happiest. The
+others were killed afterwards. As to me, I saved my life by signing on
+with them.”
+
+“And they scuttled my ship?”
+
+“They scuttled her, and then Sharkey and his men, who had been watching
+us from the brushwood, came off to the ship. His mainyard had been
+cracked and fished last voyage, so he had suspicions of us, seeing that
+ours was whole. Then he thought of laying the same trap for you which
+you had set for him.”
+
+Craddock groaned. “How came I not to see that fished mainyard?” he
+muttered. “But whither are we bound?”
+
+“We are running north and west.”
+
+“North and west! Then we are heading back towards Jamaica.”
+
+“With an eight-knot wind.”
+
+“Have you heard what they mean to do with me?”
+
+“I have not heard. If you would but sign the articles--”
+
+“Enough, Joshua Hird! I have risked my soul too often.”
+
+“As you wish. I have done what I could. Farewell!”
+
+All that night and the next day the _Happy Delivery_ ran before the
+easterly trades, and Stephen Craddock lay in the dark of the sail-room
+working patiently at his wrist-irons. One he had slipped off at the
+cost of a row of broken and bleeding knuckles, but, do what he would, he
+could not free the other, and his ankles were securely fastened.
+From hour to hour he heard the swish of the water, and knew that the
+barque must be driving with all set in front of the trade wind. In that
+case they must be nearly back again to Jamaica by now. What plan could
+Sharkey have in his head, and what use did he hope to make of him?
+Craddock set his teeth, and vowed that if he had once been a villain
+from choice he would, at least, never be one by compulsion.
+
+On the second morning Craddock became aware that sail had been reduced
+in the vessel, and that she was tacking slowly, with a light breeze on
+her beam. The varying slope of the sail-room and the sounds from the
+deck told his practised senses exactly what she was doing. The short
+reaches showed him that she was manoeuvring near shore, and making for
+some definite point. If so, she must have reached Jamaica. But what
+could she be doing there?
+
+And then suddenly there was a burst of hearty cheering from the deck,
+and then the crash of a gun above his head, and then the answering
+booming of guns from far over the water. Craddock sat up and strained
+his ears. Was the ship in action? Only the one gun had been fired, and
+though many had answered, there were none of the crashings which told of
+a shot coming home. Then, if it was not an action, it must be a salute.
+But who would salute Sharkey, the pirate? It could only be another
+pirate ship which would do so. So Craddock lay back again with a groan,
+and continued to work at the manacle which still held his right wrist.
+But suddenly there came the shuffling of steps outside, and he had
+hardly time to wrap the loose links round his free hand, when the door
+was unbolted and two pirates came in.
+
+“Got your hammer, carpenter?” asked one, whom Craddock recognised as the
+big quartermaster.
+
+“Knock off his leg shackles, then. Better leave the bracelets--he’s
+safer with them on.”
+
+With hammer and chisel the carpenter loosened the irons.
+
+“What are you going to do with me?” asked Craddock.
+
+“Come on deck and you’ll see.”
+
+The sailor seized him by the arm and dragged him roughly to the foot of
+the companion. Above him was a square of blue sky cut across by the
+mizzen gaff, with the colours flying at the peak. But it was the sight
+of those colours which struck the breath from Stephen Craddock’s lips.
+For there were two of them, and the British ensign was flying above the
+Jolly Rodger--the honest flag above that of the rogue.
+
+For an instant Craddock stopped in amazement, but a brutal push from the
+pirates behind drove him up the companion ladder. As he stepped out
+upon deck, his eyes turned up to the main, and there again were the
+British colours flying above the red pennant, and all the shrouds and
+rigging were garlanded with streamers.
+
+Had the ship been taken, then? But that was impossible, for there were
+the pirates clustering in swarms along the port bulwarks, and waving
+their hats joyously in the air. Most prominent of all was the renegade
+mate, standing on the foc’sle head, and gesticulating wildly. Craddock
+looked over the side to see what they were cheering at, and then in a
+flash he saw how critical was the moment.
+
+On the port bow, and about a mile off, lay the white houses and forts of
+Port Royal, with flags breaking out everywhere over their roofs.
+Right ahead was the opening of the palisades leading to the town of
+Kingston. Not more than a quarter of a mile off was a small sloop
+working out against the very slight wind. The British ensign was at her
+peak, and her rigging was all decorated. On her deck could be seen a
+dense crowd of people cheering and waving their hats, and the gleam of
+scarlet told that there were officers of the garrison among them.
+
+In an instant, with the quick perception of a man of action, Craddock
+saw through it all. Sharkey, with that diabolical cunning and audacity
+which were among his main characteristics, was simulating the part which
+Craddock would himself have played had he come back victorious. It was
+in _his_ honour that the salutes were firing and the flags flying.
+It was to welcome _him_ that this ship with the Governor, the
+commandant, and the chiefs of the island were approaching. In another
+ten minutes they would all be under the guns of the _Happy Delivery_,
+and Sharkey would have won the greatest stake that ever a pirate played
+for yet.
+
+“Bring him forward,” cried the pirate captain, as Craddock appeared
+between the carpenter and the quartermaster. “Keep the ports closed,
+but clear away the port guns, and stand by for a broadside. Another two
+cable lengths and we have them.”
+
+“They are edging away,” said the boatswain. “I think they smell us.”
+
+“That’s soon set right,” said Sharkey, turning his filmy eyes upon
+Craddock. “Stand there, you--right there, where they can recognise you,
+with your hand on the guy, and wave your hat to them. Quick, or your
+brains will be over your coat. Put an inch of your knife into him, Ned.
+Now, will you wave your hat? Try him again, then. Hey, shoot him! Stop
+him!”
+
+But it was too late. Relying upon the manacles, the quartermaster had
+taken his hands for a moment off Craddock’s arm. In that instant he had
+flung off the carpenter, and, amid a spatter of pistol bullets, had
+sprung the bulwarks and was swimming for his life. He had been hit and
+hit again, but it takes many pistols to kill a resolute and powerful man
+who has his mind set upon doing something before he dies. He was a
+strong swimmer, and, in spite of the red trail which he left in the
+water behind him, he was rapidly increasing his distance from the
+pirate. “Give me a musket!” cried Sharkey, with a savage oath.
+
+He was a famous shot, and his iron nerves never failed him in an
+emergency. The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then
+swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop.
+Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired. With the crack of the
+gun the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a
+gesture of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay.
+Then, as the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an
+impotent broadside, Stephen Craddock, smiling grimly in his death agony,
+sank slowly down to that golden couch which glimmered far beneath him.
+
+
+
+                             III
+
+HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY
+
+
+The Buccaneers were something higher than a mere band of marauders.
+They were a floating republic, with laws, usages, and discipline of
+their own. In their endless and remorseless quarrel with the
+Spaniards they had some semblance of right upon their side.
+Their bloody harryings of the cities of the Main were not more barbarous
+than the inroads of Spain upon the Netherlands--or upon the Caribs in
+these same American lands.
+
+The chief of the Buccaneers, were he English or French, a Morgan or a
+Granmont, was still a responsible person, whose country might
+countenance him, or even praise him, so long as he refrained from any
+deed which might shock the leathery seventeenth-century conscience too
+outrageously. Some of them were touched with religion, and it is still
+remembered how Sawkins threw the dice overboard upon the Sabbath, and
+Daniel pistolled a man before the altar for irreverence.
+
+But there came a day when the fleets of the Buccaneers no longer
+mustered at the Tortugas, and the solitary and outlawed pirate took
+their place. Yet even with him the tradition of restraint and of
+discipline still lingered; and among the early pirates, the Avorys, the
+Englands, and the Robertses, there remained some respect for human
+sentiment. They were more dangerous to the merchant than to the seaman.
+But they in turn were replaced by more savage and desperate men, who
+frankly recognised that they would get no quarter in their war with the
+human race, and who swore that they would give as little as they got.
+Of their histories we know little that is trustworthy. They wrote no
+memoirs and left no trace, save an occasional blackened and
+blood-stained derelict adrift upon the face of the Atlantic.
+Their deeds could only be surmised from the long roll of ships who never
+made their port.
+
+Searching the records of history, it is only here and there in an
+old-world trial that the veil that shrouds them seems for an instant to
+be lifted, and we catch a glimpse of some amazing and grotesque
+brutality behind. Such was the breed of Ned Low, of Gow the Scotchman,
+and of the infamous Sharkey, whose coal-black barque, the _Happy
+Delivery_, was known from the Newfoundland Banks to the mouths of the
+Orinoco as the dark forerunner of misery and of death.
+
+There were many men, both among the islands and on the Main, who had a
+blood feud with Sharkey, but not one who had suffered more bitterly than
+Copley Banks, of Kingston. Banks had been one of the leading sugar
+merchants of the West Indies. He was a man of position, a member of the
+Council, the husband of a Percival, and the cousin of the Governor of
+Virginia. His two sons had been sent to London to be educated, and
+their mother had gone over to bring them back. On their return voyage
+the ship, the _Duchess of Cornwall_, fell into the hands of Sharkey, and
+the whole family met with an infamous death.
+
+Copley Banks said little when he heard the news, but he sank into a
+morose and enduring melancholy. He neglected his business, avoided his
+friends, and spent much of his time in the low taverns of the fishermen
+and seamen. There, amidst riot and devilry, he sat silently puffing at
+his pipe, with a set face and a smouldering eye. It was generally
+supposed that his misfortunes had shaken his wits, and his old friends
+looked at him askance, for the company which he kept was enough to bar
+him from honest men.
+
+From time to time there came rumours of Sharkey over the sea. Sometimes
+it was from some schooner which had seen a great flame upon the horizon,
+and approaching to offer help to the burning ship, had fled away at the
+sight of the sleek, black barque, lurking like a wolf near a mangled
+sheep. Sometimes it was a frightened trader, which had come tearing in
+with her canvas curved like a lady’s bodice, because she had seen a
+patched foretopsail rising slowly above the violet water-line.
+Sometimes it was from a coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama cay
+littered with sun-dried bodies. Once there came a man who had been mate
+of a Guineaman, and who had escaped from the pirate’s hands. He could
+not speak--for reasons which Sharkey could best supply--but he could
+write, and he did write, to the very great interest of Copley Banks.
+For hours they sat together over the map, and the dumb man pointed here
+and there to outlying reefs and tortuous inlets, while his companion sat
+smoking in silence, with his unvarying face and his fiery eyes.
+
+One morning, some two years after his misfortunes, Mr. Copley Banks
+strode into his own office with his old air of energy and alertness.
+The manager stared at him in surprise, for it was months since he had
+shown any interest in business.
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Banks!” said he.
+
+“Good morning, Freeman. I see that _Ruffling Harry_ is in the Bay.”
+
+“Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday.”
+
+“I have other plans for her, Freeman. I have determined upon a slaving
+venture to Whydah.”
+
+“But her cargo is ready, sir.”
+
+“Then it must come out again, Freeman. My mind is made up, and the
+_Ruffling Harry_ must go slaving to Whydah.”
+
+All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to
+clear the ship once more. And then Copley Banks began to make
+preparations for his African voyage. It appeared that he relied upon
+force rather than barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried
+none of those showy trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted
+with eight nine-pounder guns, and racks full of muskets and cutlasses.
+The after-sailroom next the cabin was transformed into a powder
+magazine, and she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer.
+Water and provisions were shipped for a long voyage.
+
+But the preparation of his ship’s company was most surprising. It made
+Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that
+his master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or
+another, he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the
+firm for years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port--men
+whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been
+ashamed to furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known
+to have been present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his
+hideous scarlet disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a
+red afterglow from that great crime. He was first mate, and under him
+was Israel Martin, a little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell
+Davies at the taking of Cape Coast Castle.
+
+The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
+their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
+man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk. His beard had been
+shaved, and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom
+Sharkey had placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his
+experiences to Copley Banks. These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet
+uncommented upon in the town of Kingston. The Commandant of the
+troops--Major Harvey of the Artillery--made serious representations to
+the Governor.
+
+“She is not a trader, but a small warship,” said he.
+
+“I think it would be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the
+vessel.”
+
+“What do you suspect?” asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man,
+broken down with fevers and port wine.
+
+“I suspect,” said the soldier, “that it is Stede Bonnet over again.”
+
+Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious
+character who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in
+his blood, had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the
+Caribbean Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the
+utmost consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been
+accused of being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions
+upon their plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister
+construction.
+
+“Well, Major Harvey,” said he, “I am vastly sorry to do anything which
+may offend my friend Copley Banks, for many a time have my knees been
+under his mahogany, but in face of what you say there is no choice for
+me but to order you to board the vessel and to satisfy yourself as to
+her character and destination.”
+
+So at one in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers,
+paid a surprise visit to the _Ruffling Harry_, with the result that they
+picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the
+moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented
+danger. She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out
+against the north-east trades on a course for the Windward Passage.
+
+When upon the next morning the brig had left Morant Point a mere haze
+upon the Southern horizon, the men were called aft, and Copley Banks
+revealed his plans to them. He had chosen them, he said, as brisk boys
+and lads of spirit, who would rather run some risk upon the sea than
+starve for a living upon the shore. King’s ships were few and weak, and
+they could master any trader who might come their way. Others had done
+well at the business, and with a handy, well-found vessel, there was no
+reason why they should not turn their tarry jackets into velvet coats.
+If they were prepared to sail under the black flag, he was ready to
+command them; but if any wished to withdraw, they might have the gig and
+row back to Jamaica.
+
+Four men out of six-and-forty asked for their discharge, went over the
+ship’s side into the boat, and rowed away amidst the jeers and howlings
+of the crew. The rest assembled aft, and drew up the articles of their
+association. A square of black tarpaulin had the white skull painted
+upon it, and was hoisted amidst cheering at the main.
+
+Officers were elected, and the limits of their authority fixed. Copley
+Banks was chosen captain, but, as there are no mates upon a pirate
+craft, Birthmark Sweetlocks became quartermaster, and Israel Martin the
+boatswain. There was no difficulty in knowing what was the custom of
+the brotherhood, for half the men at least had served upon pirates
+before. Food should be the same for all, and no man should interfere
+with another man’s drink! The captain should have a cabin, but all
+hands should be welcome to enter it when they chose.
+
+All should share and share alike, save only the captain, quartermaster,
+boatswain, carpenter, and master-gunner, who had from a quarter to a
+whole share extra. He who saw a prize first should have the best weapon
+taken out of her. He who boarded her first should have the richest suit
+of clothes aboard of her. Every man might treat his own prisoner, be it
+man or woman, after his own fashion. If a man flinched from his gun,
+the quartermaster should pistol him. These were some of the rules which
+the crew of the _Ruffling Harry_ subscribed by putting forty-two crosses
+at the foot of the paper upon which they had been drawn.
+
+So a new rover was afloat upon the seas, and her name before a year was
+over became as well known as that of the _Happy Delivery_. From the
+Bahamas to the Leewards, and from the Leewards to the Windwards, Copley
+Banks became the rival of Sharkey and the terror of traders. For a long
+time the barque and the brig never met, which was the more singular as
+the _Ruffling Harry_ was for ever looking in at Sharkey’s resorts; but
+at last one day, when she was passing down the inlet of Coxon’s Hole, at
+the east end of Cuba, with the intention of careening, there was the
+_Happy Delivery_, with her blocks and tackle-falls already rigged for
+the same purpose. Copley Banks fired a shotted salute and hoisted the
+green trumpeter ensign, as the custom was among gentlemen of the sea.
+Then he dropped his boat and went aboard.
+
+Captain Sharkey was not a man of a genial mood, nor had he any kindly
+sympathy for those who were of the same trade as himself. Copley Banks
+found him seated astride upon one of the after guns, with his New
+England quartermaster, Ned Galloway, and a crowd of roaring ruffians
+standing about him. Yet none of them roared with quite such assurance
+when Sharkey’s pale face and filmy blue eyes were turned upon him.
+He was in his shirt-sleeves, with his cambric frills breaking through
+his open red satin long-flapped vest. The scorching sun seemed to have
+no power upon his fleshless frame, for he wore a low fur cap, as though
+it had been winter. A many-coloured band of silk passed across his body
+and supported a short, murderous sword, while his broad, brass-buckled
+belt was stuffed with pistols.
+
+“Sink you for a poacher!” he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the
+bulwarks. “I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch
+also! What mean you by fishing in my waters?”
+
+Copley Banks looked at him, and his eyes were like those of a traveller
+who sees his home at last. “I am glad that we are of one mind,” said
+he, “for I am myself of opinion that the seas are not large enough for
+the two of us. But if you will take your sword and pistols and come
+upon a sand-bank with me, then the world will be rid of a damned
+villain, whichever way it goes.”
+
+“Now, this is talking!” said Sharkey, jumping off the gun and holding
+out his hand. “I have not met many who could look John Sharkey in the
+eyes and speak with a full breath. May the devil seize me if I do not
+choose you as a consort! But if you play me false, then I will come
+aboard of you and gut you upon your own poop.”
+
+“And I pledge you the same!” said Copley Banks, and so the two pirates
+became sworn comrades to each other.
+
+That summer they went north as far as the Newfoundland Banks, and
+harried the New York traders and the whale ships from New England.
+It was Copley Banks who captured the Liverpool ship, _House of Hanover_,
+but it was Sharkey who fastened her master to the windlass and pelted
+him to death with empty claret-bottles.
+
+Together they engaged the King’s ship _Royal Fortune_, which had been
+sent in search of them, and beat her off after a night action of five
+hours, the drunken, raving crews fighting naked in the light of the
+battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles
+of every gun. They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and
+then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ready for a long
+cruise down the West Indies.
+
+By this time Sharkey and Copley Banks had become very excellent friends,
+for Sharkey loved a whole-hearted villain, and he loved a man of metal,
+and it seemed to him that the two met in the captain of the _Ruffling
+Harry_. It was long before he gave his confidence to him, for cold
+suspicion lay deep in his character. Never once would he trust himself
+outside his own ship and away from his own men. But Copley Banks came
+often on board the _Happy Delivery_, and joined Sharkey in many of his
+morose debauches, so that at last any lingering misgivings of the latter
+were set at rest. He knew nothing of the evil that he had done to his
+new boon companion, for of his many victims how could he remember the
+woman and the two boys whom he had slain with such levity so long ago!
+When, therefore, he received a challenge to himself and to his
+quartermaster for a carouse upon the last evening of their stay at the
+Caicos Bank he saw no reason to refuse.
+
+A well-found passenger ship had been rifled the week before, so their
+fare was of the best, and after supper five of them drank deeply
+together. There were the two captains, Birthmark Sweetlocks, Ned
+Galloway, and Israel Martin, the old buccaneers-man. To wait upon them
+was the dumb steward, whose head Sharkey split with a glass, because he
+had been too slow in the filling of it. The quartermaster has slipped
+Sharkey’s pistols away from him, for it was an old joke with him to fire
+them cross-handed under the table and see who was the luckiest man.
+It was a pleasantry which had cost his boatswain his leg, so now, when
+the table was cleared, they would coax Sharkey’s weapons away from him
+on the excuse of the heat, and lay them out of his reach.
+
+The captain’s cabin of the _Ruffling Harry_ was in a deck-house upon the
+poop, and a stern-chaser gun was mounted at the back of it. Round shot
+were racked round the wall, and three great hogsheads of powder made a
+stand for dishes and for bottles. In this grim room the five pirates
+sang and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up
+their glasses, and passed the box and the candle round for their
+tobacco-pipes. Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices
+hoarser, the curses and shoutings more incoherent, until three of the
+five had closed their blood-shot eyes, and dropped their swimming heads
+upon the table.
+
+Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had
+drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake
+his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the
+watchful steward, for ever filling up his waning glass. From without
+came the low lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor’s
+chanty from the barque. In the windless tropical night the words came
+clearly to their ears:--
+
+     A trader sailed from Stepney Town,
+   Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!
+     A trader sailed from Stepney Town
+   With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.
+     Ho, the bully Rover Jack,
+   Waiting with his yard aback
+     Out upon the Lowland Sea.
+
+The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks
+glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from
+the shot-rack behind him.
+
+“Captain Sharkey,” said Copley Banks, “do you remember the _Duchess of
+Cornwall_, hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago
+off the Statira Shoal?”
+
+“Curse me if I can bear their names in mind,” said Sharkey. “We did as
+many as ten ships a week about that time.”
+
+“There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. Maybe that will
+bring it back to your mind.”
+
+Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose
+jutting upwards. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing
+laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it.
+“But burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!” he cried. “How came
+you to think of it?”
+
+“It was of interest to me,” said Copley Banks, “for the woman was my
+wife, and the lads were my only sons.”
+
+Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering
+fire which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame.
+He read their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt.
+Then he turned to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round
+him, and in an instant his arms were bound to his side. He fought like
+a wild cat, and screamed for help. “Ned!” he yelled. “Ned! Wake up!
+Here’s damned villainy! Help, Ned!--help!”
+
+But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for
+any voice to wake them. Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey
+was swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and
+helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a
+handkerchief, but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at
+them. The dumb man chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for
+the first time when he saw the empty mouth before him. He understood
+that vengeance, slow and patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him
+at last.
+
+The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat
+elaborate. First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder
+barrels, and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor.
+They piled it round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled
+in a heap of it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun and they triced
+him sitting over the port-hole, with his body about a foot from the
+muzzle. Wriggle as he would he could not move an inch either to the
+right or left, and the dumb man trussed him up with a sailor’s cunning,
+so that there was no chance that he should work free.
+
+“Now, you bloody devil,” said Copley Banks, softly, “you must listen to
+what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will
+hear. You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have
+given all that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as
+well.
+
+“To reach you I have had to sink to your level. For two years I strove
+against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learnt that
+there was no other. I’ve robbed and I have murdered--worse still, I
+have laughed and lived with you--and all for the one end. And now my
+time has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the
+shadow creeping upon you and the devil waiting for you in the shadow.”
+
+Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty
+over the water.
+
+    Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
+  Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending!
+    Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
+    His gold’s on the capstan, his blood’s on his gown,
+      All for bully Rover Jack,
+      Reaching on the weather tack
+    Right across the Lowland Sea.
+
+The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men
+pacing backwards and forwards upon the deck. And yet he was helpless,
+staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to
+utter so much as a groan. Again there came the burst of voices from the
+deck of the barque.
+
+    So it’s up and it’s over to Stornoway Bay,
+  Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with stunsails!
+    It’s off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay,
+    Where the liquor is good and the lasses are gay,
+      Waiting for their bully Jack,
+      Watching for him sailing back,
+    Right across the Lowland Sea.
+
+To the dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own
+fate seem the harsher, but there was no softening in those venomous blue
+eyes. Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had
+sprinkled fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the
+candle and cut it to the length of about an inch. This he placed upon
+the loose powder at the breach of the gun. Thin he scattered powder
+thickly over the floor beneath, so that when the candle fell at the
+recoil it must explode the huge pile in which the three drunkards were
+wallowing.
+
+“You’ve made others look death in the face, Sharkey,” said he; “now it
+has come to be your own turn. You and these swine here shall go
+together!” He lit the candle-end as he spoke, and blew out the other
+lights upon the table. Then he passed out with the dumb man, and locked
+the cabin door upon the outer side. But before he closed it he took an
+exultant look backwards, and received one last curse from those
+unconquerable eyes. In the single dim circle of light that ivory-white
+face, with the gleam of moisture upon the high, bald forehead, was the
+last that was ever seen of Sharkey.
+
+There was a skiff alongside, and in it Copley Banks and the dumb steward
+made their way to the beach, and looked back upon the brig riding in the
+moonlight just outside the shadow of the palm trees. They waited and
+waited watching that dim light which shone through the stem port. And
+then at last there came the dull thud of a gun, and an instant later the
+shattering crash of an explosion. The long, sleek, black barque, the
+sweep of white sand, and the fringe of nodding feathery palm trees
+sprang into dazzling light and back into darkness again. Voices
+screamed and called upon the bay.
+
+Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him, touched his companion
+upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely jungle of
+the Caicos.
+
+
+
+
+THE CROXLEY MASTER
+
+
+                             I
+
+
+Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands,
+in a state of the blackest despondency. Before him was the open ledger
+with the long columns of Dr. Oldacre’s prescriptions. At his elbow lay
+the wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the
+lumps of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of bottles waited to
+be filled. But his spirits were too low for work. He sat in silence
+with his fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands.
+
+Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened
+brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars
+upheld the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank. For six days in the week
+they spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was
+Sunday. Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and
+blasted by the greed of man. There was nothing in the surroundings to
+cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment
+which weighed upon the medical assistant. His trouble was deeper and
+more personal. The winter session was approaching. He should be back
+again at the University completing the last year which would give him
+his medical degree; but, alas! he had not the money with which to pay
+his class fees, nor could he imagine how he could procure it.
+Sixty pounds were wanted to make his career, and it might have been as
+many thousand for any chance there seemed to be of his obtaining it.
+He was roused from his black meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre
+himself, a large, clean-shaven, respectable man, with a prim manner and
+an austere face. He had prospered exceedingly by the support of the
+local Church interest, and the rule of his life was never by word or
+action to run a risk of offending the sentiment which had made him.
+His standard of respectability and of dignity was exceedingly high, and
+he expected the same from his assistants. His appearance and words were
+always vaguely benevolent. A sudden impulse came over the despondent
+student. He would test the reality of this philanthropy.
+
+“I beg your pardon, Dr. Oldacre,” said he, rising from his chair;
+“I have a great favour to ask of you.”
+
+The doctor’s appearance was not encouraging. His mouth suddenly
+tightened, and his eyes fell.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Montgomery?”
+
+“You are aware, sir, that I need only one more session to complete my
+course.”
+
+“So you have told me.”
+
+“It is very important to me, sir.”
+
+“Naturally.”
+
+“The fees, Dr. Oldacre, would amount to about sixty pounds.”
+
+“I am afraid that my duties call me elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery.”
+
+“One moment, sir! I had hoped, sir, that perhaps, if I signed a paper
+promising you interest upon your money, you would advance this sum to
+me. I will pay you back, sir, I really will. Or, if you like, I will
+work it off after I am qualified.”
+
+The doctor’s lips had thinned into a narrow line. His eyes were raised
+again, and sparkled indignantly.
+
+“Your request is unreasonable, Mr. Montgomery. I am surprised that you
+should have made it. Consider, sir, how many thousands of medical
+students there are in this country. No doubt there are many of them who
+have a difficulty in finding their fees. Am I to provide for them all?
+Or why should I make an exception in your favour? I am grieved and
+disappointed, Mr. Montgomery, that you should have put me into the
+painful position of having to refuse you.” He turned upon his heel, and
+walked with offended dignity out of the surgery.
+
+The student smiled bitterly, and turned to his work of making up the
+morning prescriptions. It was poor and unworthy work--work which any
+weakling might have done as well, and this was a man of exceptional
+nerve and sinew. But, such as it was, it brought him his board and one
+pound a week--enough to help him during the summer months and let him
+save a few pounds towards his winter keep. But those class fees!
+Where were they to come from? He could not save them out of his scanty
+wage. Dr. Oldacre would not advance them. He saw no way of earning
+them. His brains were fairly good, but brains of that quality were a
+drug in the market. He only excelled in his strength, and where was he
+to find a customer for that? But the ways of Fate are strange, and his
+customer was at hand.
+
+“Look y’ere!” said a voice at the door. Montgomery looked up, for the
+voice was a loud and rasping one. A young man stood at the
+entrance--a stocky, bull-necked young miner, in tweed Sunday clothes
+and an aggressive neck-tie. He was a sinister-looking figure, with
+dark, insolent eyes, and the jaw and throat of a bulldog.
+
+“Look y’ere!” said he again. “Why hast thou not sent t’ medicine oop as
+thy master ordered?”
+
+Montgomery had become accustomed to the brutal frankness of the northern
+worker. At first it had enraged him, but after a time he had grown
+callous to it, and accepted it as it was meant. But this was something
+different. It was insolence--brutal, overbearing insolence, with
+physical menace behind it.
+
+“What name?” he asked coldly.
+
+“Barton. Happen I may give thee cause to mind that name, yoong man.
+Mak’ oop t’ wife’s medicine this very moment, look ye, or it will be the
+worse for thee.”
+
+Montgomery smiled. A pleasant sense of relief thrilled softly through
+him. What blessed safety-valve was this through which his jangled
+nerves might find some outlet. The provocation was so gross, the insult
+so unprovoked, that he could have none of those qualms which take the
+edge off a man’s mettle. He finished sealing the bottle upon which he
+was occupied, and he addressed it and placed it carefully in the rack.
+“Look here!” said he, turning round to the miner, “your medicine will be
+made up in its turn and sent down to you. I don’t allow folk in the
+surgery. Wait outside in the waiting-room if you wish to wait at all.”
+
+“Yoong man,” said the miner, “thou’s got to mak’ t’ wife’s medicine
+here, and now, and quick, while I wait and watch thee, or else happen
+thou might need some medicine thysel’ before all is over.”
+
+“I shouldn’t advise you to fasten a quarrel upon me.” Montgomery was
+speaking in the hard, staccato voice of a man who is holding himself in
+with difficulty. “You’ll save trouble if you’ll go quietly. If you
+don’t you’ll be hurt. Ah, you would? Take it, then!”
+
+The blows were almost simultaneous--a savage swing which whistled past
+Montgomery’s ear, and a straight drive which took the workman on the
+chin. Luck was with the assistant. That single whizzing uppercut, and
+the way in which it was delivered, warned him that he had a formidable
+man to deal with. But if he had underrated his antagonist, his
+antagonist had also underrated him, and had laid himself open to a fatal
+blow.
+
+The miner’s head had come with a crash against the corner of the surgery
+shelves, and he had dropped heavily on to the ground. There he lay with
+his bandy legs drawn up and his hands thrown abroad, the blood trickling
+over the surgery tiles.
+
+“Had enough?” asked the assistant, breathing fiercely through his nose.
+
+But no answer came. The man was insensible. And then the danger of his
+position came upon Montgomery, and he turned as white as his antagonist.
+A Sunday, the immaculate Dr. Oldacre with his pious connection, a savage
+brawl with a patient; he would irretrievably lose his situation if the
+facts came out. It was not much of a situation, but he could not get
+another without a reference, and Oldacre might refuse him one. Without
+money for his classes, and without a situation--what was to become of
+him? It was absolute ruin.
+
+But perhaps he could escape exposure after all. He seized his
+insensible adversary, dragged him out into the centre of he room,
+loosened his collar, and squeezed the surgery sponge over his face. He
+sat up at last with a gasp and a scowl. “Domn thee, thou’s spoilt my
+neck-tie,” said he, mopping up the water from his breast.
+
+“I’m sorry I hit you so hard,” said Montgomery, apologetically.
+
+“Thou hit me hard! I could stan’ such fly-flappin’ all day. ’Twas this
+here press that cracked my pate for me, and thou art a looky man to be
+able to boast as thou hast outed me. And now I’d be obliged to thee if
+thou wilt give me t’ wife’s medicine.”
+
+Montgomery gladly made it up and handed it to the miner.
+
+“You are weak still,” said he. “Won’t you stay awhile and rest?”
+
+“T’ wife wants her medicine,” said the man, and lurched out at the door.
+
+The assistant, looking after him, saw him rolling, with an uncertain
+step, down the street, until a friend met him, and they walked on arm in
+arm. The man seemed in his rough Northern fashion to bear no grudge,
+and so Montgomery’s fears left him. There was no reason why the doctor
+should know anything about it. He wiped the blood from the floor, put
+the surgery in order, and went on with his interrupted task, hoping that
+he had come scathless out of a very dangerous business.
+
+Yet all day he was aware of a sense of vague uneasiness, which sharpened
+into dismay when, late in the afternoon, he was informed that three
+gentlemen had called and were waiting for him in the surgery.
+A coroner’s inquest, a descent of detectives, an invasion of angry
+relatives--all sorts of possibilities rose to scare him. With tense
+nerves and a rigid face he went to meet his visitors.
+
+They were a very singular trio. Each was known to him by sight; but
+what on earth the three could be doing together, and, above all, what
+they could expect from _him_, was a most inexplicable problem.
+The first was Sorley Wilson, the son of the owner of the Nonpareil
+Coalpit. He was a young blood of twenty, heir to a fortune, a keen
+sportsman, and down for the Easter Vacation from Magdalene College.
+He sat now upon the edge of the surgery table, looking in thoughtful
+silence at Montgomery and twisting the ends of his small, black, waxed
+moustache. The second was Purvis, the publican, owner of the chief
+beer-shop, and well known as the local bookmaker. He was a coarse,
+clean-shaven man, whose fiery face made a singular contrast with his
+ivory-white bald head. He had shrewd, light-blue eyes with foxy lashes,
+and he also leaned forward in silence from his chair, a fat, red hand
+upon either knee, and stared critically at the young assistant. So did
+the third visitor, Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who leaned back, his
+long, thin legs, with their boxcloth riding-gaiters, thrust out in front
+of him, tapping his protruding teeth with his riding-whip, with anxious
+thought in every line of his rugged, bony face. Publican, exquisite,
+and horse-breaker were all three equally silent, equally earnest, and
+equally critical. Montgomery seated in the midst of them, looked from
+one to the other.
+
+“Well, gentlemen?” he observed, but no answer came.
+
+The position was embarrassing.
+
+“No,” said the horse-breaker, at last. “No. It’s off. It’s nowt.”
+
+“Stand oop, lad; let’s see thee standin’.” It was the publican who
+spoke. Montgomery obeyed. He would learn all about it, no doubt, if he
+were patient. He stood up and turned slowly round, as if in front of
+his tailor.
+
+“It’s off! It’s off!” cried the horse-breaker. “Why, mon, the Master
+would break him over his knee.”
+
+“Oh, that be hanged for a yarn!” said the young Cantab. “You can drop
+out if you like, Fawcett, but I’ll see this thing through, if I have to
+do it alone. I don’t hedge a penny. I like the cut of him a great deal
+better than I liked Ted Barton.”
+
+“Look at Barton’s shoulders, Mr. Wilson.”
+
+“Lumpiness isn’t always strength. Give me nerve and fire and breed.
+That’s what wins.”
+
+“Ay, sir, you have it theer--you have it theer!” said the fat, red-faced
+publican, in a thick suety voice. “It’s the same wi’ poops. Get ’em
+clean-bred an’ fine, an’ they’ll yark the thick ’uns--yark ’em out o’
+their skins.”
+
+“He’s ten good pund on the light side,” growled the horse-breaker.
+
+“He’s a welter weight, anyhow.”
+
+“A hundred and thirty.”
+
+“A hundred and fifty, if he’s an ounce.”
+
+“Well, the Master doesn’t scale much more than that.”
+
+“A hundred and seventy-five.”
+
+“That was when he was hog-fat and living high. Work the grease out of
+him and I lay there’s no great difference between them. Have you been
+weighed lately, Mr. Montgomery?”
+
+It was the first direct question which had been asked him. He had stood
+in the midst of them like a horse at a fair, and he was just beginning
+to wonder whether he was more angry or amused.
+
+“I am just eleven stone,” said he.
+
+“I said that he was a welter weight.”
+
+“But suppose you was trained?” said the publican. “Wot then?”
+
+“I am always in training.”
+
+“In a manner of speakin’, no doubt, he _is_ always in trainin’,”
+remarked the horse-breaker. “But trainin’ for everyday work ain’t the
+same as trainin’ with a trainer; and I dare bet, with all respec’ to
+your opinion, Mr. Wilson, that there’s half a stone of tallow on him at
+this minute.”
+
+The young Cantab put his fingers on the assistant’s upper arm, then with
+his other hand on his wrist, he bent the forearm sharply, and felt the
+biceps, as round and hard as a cricket-ball, spring up under his
+fingers.
+
+“Feel that!” said he.
+
+The publican and horse-breaker felt it with an air of reverence. “Good
+lad! He’ll do yet!” cried Purvis.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said Montgomery, “I think that you will acknowledge that I
+have been very patient with you. I have listened to all that you have
+to say about my personal appearance, and now I must really beg that you
+will have the goodness to tell me what is the matter.”
+
+They all sat down in their serious, business-like way.
+
+“That’s easy done, Mr. Montgomery,” said the fat-voiced publican.
+“But before sayin’ anything we had to wait and see whether, in a way of
+speakin’, there was any need for us to say anything at all. Mr. Wilson
+thinks there is. Mr. Fawcett, who has the same right to his opinion,
+bein’ also a backer and one o’ the committee, thinks the other way.”
+
+“I thought him too light built, and I think so now,” said the
+horse-breaker, still tapping his prominent teeth with the metal head of
+his riding-whip. “But happen he may pull through, and he’s a
+fine-made, buirdly young chap, so if you mean to back him, Mr.
+Wilson----”
+
+“Which I do.”
+
+“And you, Purvis?”
+
+“I ain’t one to go back, Fawcett.”
+
+“Well, I’ll stan’ to my share of the purse.”
+
+“And well I knew you would,” said Purvis, “for it would be somethin’ new
+to find Isaac Fawcett as a spoil-sport. Well, then, we will make up the
+hundred for the stake among us, and the fight stands--always supposin’
+the young man is willin’.”
+
+“Excuse all this rot, Mr. Montgomery,” said the University man, in a
+genial voice. “We’ve begun at the wrong end, I know, but we’ll soon
+straighten it out, and I hope that you will see your way to falling in
+with our views. In the first place, you remember the man whom you
+knocked out this morning? He is Barton--the famous Ted Barton.”
+
+“I’m sure, sir, you may well be proud to have outed him in one round,”
+said the publican. “Why, it took Morris, the ten-stone-six champion, a
+deal more trouble than that before he put Barton to sleep. You’ve done
+a fine performance, sir, and happen you’ll do a finer, if you give
+yourself the chance.”
+
+“I never heard of Ted Barton, beyond seeing the name on a medicine
+label,” said the assistant.
+
+“Well, you may take it from me that he’s a slaughterer,” said the
+horse-breaker. “You’ve taught him a lesson that he needed, for it was
+always a word and a blow with him, and the word alone was worth five
+shillin’ in a public court. He won’t be so ready now to shake his nief
+in the face of everyone he meets. However, that’s neither here nor
+there.”
+
+Montgomery looked at them in bewilderment.
+
+“For goodness’ sake, gentlemen, tell me what it is you want me to do!”
+he cried.
+
+“We want you to fight Silas Craggs, better known as the Master of
+Croxley.”
+
+“But why?”
+
+“Because Ted Barton was to have fought him next Saturday. He was the
+champion of the Wilson coal-pits, and the other was the Master of the
+iron-folk down at the Croxley smelters. We’d matched our man for a
+purse of a hundred against the Master. But you’ve queered our man, and
+he can’t face such a battle with a two-inch cut at the back of his head.
+There’s only one thing to be done, sir, and that is for you to take his
+place. If you can lick Ted Barton you may lick the Master of Croxley,
+but if you don’t we’re done, for there’s no one else who is in the same
+street with him in this district. It’s twenty rounds, two-ounce gloves,
+Queensberry rules, and a decision on points if you fight to the finish.”
+
+For a moment the absurdity of the thing drove every other thought out of
+Montgomery’s head. But then there came a sudden revulsion. A hundred
+pounds!--all he wanted to complete his education was lying there ready
+to his hand, if only that hand were strong enough to pick it up. He had
+thought bitterly that morning that there was no market for his strength,
+but here was one where his muscle might earn more in an hour than his
+brains in a year. But a chill of doubt came over him. “How can I fight
+for the coal-pits?” said he. “I am not connected with them.”
+
+“Eh, lad, but thou art!” cried old Purvis. “We’ve got it down in
+writin’, and it’s clear enough ‘Anyone connected with the coal-pits.’
+Doctor Oldacre is the coal-pit club doctor; thou art his assistant.
+What more can they want?”
+
+“Yes, that’s right enough,” said the Cantab. “It would be a very
+sporting thing of you, Mr. Montgomery, if you would come to our help
+when we are in such a hole. Of course, you might not like to take the
+hundred pounds; but I have no doubt that, in the case of your winning,
+we could arrange that it should take the form of a watch or piece of
+plate, or any other shape which might suggest itself to you. You see,
+you are responsible for our having lost our champion, so we really feel
+that we have a claim upon you.”
+
+“Give me a moment, gentlemen. It is very unexpected. I am afraid the
+doctor would never consent to my going--in fact, I am sure that he would
+not.”
+
+“But he need never know--not before the fight, at any rate. We are not
+bound to give the name of our man. So long as he is within the weight
+limits on the day of the fight, that is all that concerns anyone.”
+
+The adventure and the profit would either of them have attracted
+Montgomery. The two combined were irresistible. “Gentlemen,” said he,
+“I’ll do it!”
+
+The three sprang from their seats. The publican had seized his right
+hand, the horse-dealer his left, and the Cantab slapped him on the back.
+
+“Good lad! good lad!” croaked the publican. “Eh, mon, but if thou yark
+him, thou’ll rise in one day from being just a common doctor to the
+best-known mon ’twixt here and Bradford. Thou art a witherin’ tyke,
+thou art, and no mistake; and if thou beat the Master of Croxley,
+thou’ll find all the beer thou want for the rest of thy life waiting for
+thee at the ‘Four Sacks.’”
+
+“It is the most sporting thing I ever heard of in my life,” said young
+Wilson. “By George, sir, if you pull it off, you’ve got the
+constituency in your pocket, if you care to stand. You know the
+out-house in my garden?”
+
+“Next the road?”
+
+“Exactly. I turned it into a gymnasium for Ted Barton. You’ll find all
+you want there: clubs, punching ball, bars, dumb-bells, everything.
+Then you’ll want a sparring partner. Ogilvy has been acting for Barton,
+but we don’t think that he is class enough. Barton bears you no grudge.
+He’s a good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers. He
+looked upon you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you
+now. He is quite ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come
+any hour you will name.”
+
+“Thank you; I will let you know the hour,” said Montgomery; and so the
+committee departed jubilant upon their way.
+
+The medical assistant sat for a time in the surgery turning it over a
+little in his mind. He had been trained originally at the University by
+the man who had been middle-weight champion in his day. It was true
+that his teacher was long past his prime, slow upon his feet, and stiff
+in his joints, but even so he was still a tough antagonist; but
+Montgomery had found at last that he could more than hold his own with
+him. He had won the University medal, and his teacher, who had trained
+so many students, was emphatic in his opinion that he had never had one
+who was in the same class with him. He had been exhorted to go in for
+the Amateur Championships, but he had no particular ambition in that
+direction. Once he had put on the gloves with Hammer Tunstall in a
+booth at a fair and had fought three rattling rounds, in which he had
+the worst of it, but had made the prize fighter stretch himself to the
+uttermost. There was his whole record, and was it enough to encourage
+him to stand up to the Master of Croxley? He had never heard of the
+Master before, but then he had lost touch of the ring during the last
+few years of hard work. After all, what did it matter? If he won,
+there was the money, which meant so much to him. If he lost, it would
+only mean a thrashing. He could take punishment without flinching, of
+that he was certain. If there were only one chance in a hundred of
+pulling it off, then it was worth his while to attempt it.
+
+Dr. Oldacre, new come from church, with an ostentatious Prayer-book in
+his kid-gloved hand, broke in upon his meditation.
+
+“You don’t go to service, I observe, Mr. Montgomery” said he, coldly.
+
+“No, sir; I have had some business to detain me.”
+
+“It is very near to my heart that my household should set a good
+example. There are so few educated people in this district that a great
+responsibility devolves upon us. If we do not live up to the highest,
+how can we expect these poor workers to do so? It is a dreadful thing
+to reflect that the parish takes a great deal more interest in an
+approaching glove fight than in their religious duties.”
+
+“A glove fight, sir?” said Montgomery, guiltily.
+
+“I believe that to be the correct term. One of my patients tells me
+that it is the talk of the district. A local ruffian, a patient of
+ours, by the way, matched against a pugilist over at Croxley.
+I cannot understand why the law does not step in and stop so degrading
+an exhibition. It is really a prize fight.”
+
+“A glove fight, you said.”
+
+“I am informed that a 2oz. glove is an evasion by which they dodge the
+law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere. They contend
+for a sum of money. It seems dreadful and almost incredible--does it
+not?--to think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our
+peaceful home. But you will realise, Mr. Montgomery, that while there
+are such influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we
+should live up to our highest.”
+
+The doctor’s sermon would have had more effect if the assistant had not
+once or twice had occasion to test his highest, and come upon it at
+unexpectedly humble elevations. It is always so particularly easy to
+“compound for sins we’re most inclined to by damning those we have no
+mind to.” In any case, Montgomery felt that of all the men concerned in
+such a fight--promoters, backers, spectators--it is the actual fighter
+who holds the strongest and most honourable position. His conscience
+gave him no concern upon the subject. Endurance and courage are
+virtues, not vices, and brutality is, at least, better than effeminacy.
+
+There was a little tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where
+Montgomery got his bird’s-eye and also his local information, for the
+shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of
+the district. The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in
+a casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard of the Master of
+Croxley.
+
+“Heard of him! Heard of him!” the little man could hardly articulate in
+his astonishment. “Why, sir, he’s the first mon o’ the district, an’
+his name’s as well known in the West Riding as the winner o’ t’ Derby.
+But Lor,’ sir,”--here he stopped and rummaged among a heap of papers.
+“They are makin’ a fuss about him on account o’ his fight wi’ Ted
+Barton, and so the _Croxley Herald_ has his life an’ record, an’ here it
+is, an’ thou canst read it for thysel’.”
+
+The sheet of the paper which he held up was a lake of print around an
+islet of illustration. The latter was a coarse wood-cut of a pugilist’s
+head and neck set in a cross-barred jersey. It was a sinister but
+powerful face, the face of a debauched hero, clean-shaven, strongly
+eye-browed, keen-eyed, with huge, aggressive jaw, and an animal dewlap
+beneath it. The long, obstinate cheeks ran flush up to the narrow,
+sinister eyes. The mighty neck came down square from the ears and
+curved outwards into shoulders, which had lost nothing at the hands of
+the local artist. Above was written “Silas Craggs,” and beneath,
+“The Master of Croxley.”
+
+“Thou’ll find all about him there, sir,” said the tobacconist. “He’s a
+witherin’ tyke, he is, and we’re proud to have him in the county. If he
+hadn’t broke his leg he’d have been champion of England.”
+
+“Broke his leg, has he?”
+
+“Yes, and it set badly. They ca’ him owd K, behind his back, for that
+is how his two legs look. But his arms--well, if they was both stropped
+to a bench, as the sayin’ is, I wonder where the champion of England
+would be then.”
+
+“I’ll take this with me,” said Montgomery; and putting the paper into
+his pocket he returned home.
+
+It was not a cheering record which he read there. The whole history of
+the Croxley Master was given in full, his many victories, his few
+defeats.
+
+   Born in 1857 (said the provincial biographer), Silas Craggs, better
+   known in sporting circles as the Master of Croxley, is now in his
+   fortieth year.
+
+“Hang it, I’m only twenty-three!” said Montgomery to himself, and read
+on more cheerfully.
+
+   Having in his youth shown a surprising aptitude for the game, he
+   fought his way up among his comrades, until he became the
+   recognised champion of the district and won the proud title which
+   he still holds. Ambitious of a more than local fame, he secured a
+   patron, and fought his first fight against Jack Barton, of
+   Birmingham, in May 1880, at the old Loiterers’ Club. Craggs,
+   who fought at ten stone-two at the time, had the better of fifteen
+   rattling rounds, and gained an award on points against the Midlander.
+   Having disposed of James Dunn, of Rotherhithe, Cameron, of Glasgow,
+   and a youth named Fernie, he was thought so highly of by the fancy
+   that he was matched against Ernest Willox, at that time
+   middle-weight champion of the North of England, and defeated him in a
+   hard-fought battle, knocking him out in the tenth round after a
+   punishing contest. At this period it looked as if the very highest
+   honours of the ring were within the reach of the young Yorkshireman,
+   but he was laid upon the shelf by a most unfortunate accident. The
+   kick of a horse broke his thigh, and for a year he was compelled to
+   rest himself. When he returned to his work the fracture had set
+   badly, and his activity was much impaired. It was owing to this
+   that he was defeated in seven rounds by Willox, the man whom he had
+   previously beaten, and afterwards by James Shaw, of London, though
+   the latter acknowledged that he had found the toughest customer of
+   his career. Undismayed by his reverses, the Master adapted the
+   style of his fighting to his physical disabilities and resumed his
+   career of victory--defeating Norton (the black), Hobby Wilson, and
+   Levi Cohen, the latter a heavy-weight. Conceding two stone, he
+   fought a draw with the famous Billy McQuire, and afterwards, for
+   a purse of fifty pounds, he defeated Sam Hare at the Pelican Club,
+   London. In 1891 a decision was given against him upon a foul when
+   fighting a winning fight against Jim Taylor, the Australian middle
+   weight, and so mortified was he by the decision, that he withdrew
+   from the ring. Since then he has hardly fought at all save to
+   accommodate any local aspirant who may wish to learn the difference
+   between a bar-room scramble and a scientific contest. The latest
+   of these ambitious souls comes from the Wilson coal-pits, which have
+   undertaken to put up a stake of 100 pounds and back their local
+   champion. There are various rumours afloat as to who their
+   representative is to be, the name of Ted Barton being freely
+   mentioned; but the betting, which is seven to one on the Master
+   against any untried man, is a fair reflection of the feeling of
+   the community.
+
+Montgomery read it over twice, and it left him with a very serious face.
+No light matter this which he had undertaken; no battle with a
+rough-and-tumble fighter who presumed upon a local reputation.
+The man’s record showed that he was first-class--or nearly so. There
+were a few points in his favour, and he must make the most of them.
+There was age--twenty-three against forty. There was an old ring
+proverb that “Youth will be served,” but the annals of the ring offer a
+great number of exceptions. A hard veteran full of cool valour and
+ring-craft, could give ten or fifteen years and a beating to most
+striplings. He could not rely too much upon his advantage in age.
+But then there was the lameness; that must surely count for a great
+deal. And, lastly, there was the chance that the Master might underrate
+his opponent, that he might be remiss in his training, and refuse to
+abandon his usual way of life, if he thought that he had an easy task
+before him. In a man of his age and habits this seemed very possible.
+Montgomery prayed that it might be so. Meanwhile, if his opponent were
+the best man who ever jumped the ropes into a ring, his own duty was
+clear. He must prepare himself carefully, throw away no chance, and do
+the very best that he could. But he knew enough to appreciate the
+difference which exists in boxing, as in every sport, between the
+amateur and the professional. The coolness, the power of hitting, above
+all the capability of taking punishment, count for so much. Those
+specially developed, gutta-percha-like abdominal muscles of the hardened
+pugilist will take without flinching a blow which would leave another
+man writhing on the ground. Such things are not to be acquired in a
+week, but all that could be done in a week should be done.
+
+The medical assistant had a good basis to start from. He was 5ft. 11
+ins.--tall enough for anything on two legs, as the old ring men used to
+say--lithe and spare, with the activity of a panther, and a strength
+which had hardly yet ever found its limitations. His muscular
+development was finely hard, but his power came rather from that higher
+nerve-energy which counts for nothing upon a measuring tape. He had the
+well-curved nose and the widely opened eye which never yet were seen
+upon the face of a craven, and behind everything he had the driving
+force, which came from the knowledge that his whole career was at stake
+upon the contest. The three backers rubbed their hands when they saw
+him at work punching the ball in the gymnasium next morning; and
+Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who had written to Leeds to hedge his bets,
+sent a wire to cancel the letter, and to lay another fifty at the market
+price of seven to one.
+
+Montgomery’s chief difficulty was to find time for his training without
+any interference from the doctor. His work took him a large part of the
+day, but as the visiting was done on foot, and considerable distances
+had to be traversed, it was a training in itself. For the rest, he
+punched the swinging ball and worked with the dumb-bells for an hour
+every morning and evening, and boxed twice a day with Ted Barton in the
+gymnasium, gaining as much profit as could be got from a rushing,
+two-handed slogger. Barton was full of admiration for his cleverness
+and quickness, but doubtful about his strength. Hard hitting was the
+feature of his own style, and he exacted it from others.
+
+“Lord, sir, that’s a turble poor poonch for an eleven-stone man!” he
+would cry. “Thou wilt have to hit harder than that afore t’ Master will
+know that thou art theer. All, thot’s better, mon, thot’s fine!” he
+would add, as his opponent lifted him across the room on the end of a
+right counter. “Thot’s how I likes to feel ’em. Happen thou’lt pull
+through yet.” He chuckled with joy when Montgomery knocked him into a
+corner. “Eh, mon, thou art coming along grand. Thou hast fair yarked
+me off my legs. Do it again, lad, do it again!”
+
+The only part of Montgomery’s training which came within the doctor’s
+observation was his diet, and that puzzled him considerably.
+
+“You will excuse my remarking, Mr. Montgomery, that you are becoming
+rather particular in your tastes. Such fads are not to be encouraged in
+one’s youth. Why do you eat toast with every meal?”
+
+“I find that it suits me better than bread, sir.”
+
+“It entails unnecessary work upon the cook. I observe, also, that you
+have turned against potatoes.”
+
+“Yes, sir; I think that I am better without them.”
+
+“And you no longer drink your beer?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“These causeless whims and fancies are very much to be deprecated, Mr.
+Montgomery. Consider how many there are to whom these very potatoes and
+this very beer would be most acceptable.”
+
+“No doubt, sir, but at present I prefer to do without them.”
+
+They were sitting alone at lunch, and the assistant thought that it
+would be a good opportunity of asking leave for the day of the fight.
+
+“I should be glad if you could let me have leave for Saturday, Dr.
+Oldacre.”
+
+“It is very inconvenient upon so busy a day.”
+
+“I should do a double day’s work on Friday so as to leave everything in
+order. I should hope to be back in the evening.”
+
+“I am afraid I cannot spare you, Mr. Montgomery.”
+
+This was a facer. If he could not get leave he would go without it.
+
+“You will remember, Dr. Oldacre, that when I came to you it was
+understood that I should have a clear day every month. I have never
+claimed one. But now there are reasons why I wish to have a holiday
+upon Saturday.”
+
+Dr. Oldacre gave in with a very bad grace. “Of course, if you insist
+upon your formal rights, there is no more to be said, Mr. Montgomery,
+though I feel that it shows a certain indifference to my comfort and the
+welfare of the practice. Do you still insist?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Very good. Have your way.”
+
+The doctor was boiling over with anger, but Montgomery was a valuable
+assistant--steady, capable, and hardworking--and he could not afford to
+lose him. Even if he had been prompted to advance those class fees, for
+which his assistant had appealed, it would have been against his
+interests to do so, for he did not wish him to qualify, and he desired
+him to remain in his subordinate position, in which he worked so hard
+for so small a wage. There was something in the cool insistence of the
+young man, a quiet resolution in his voice as he claimed his Saturday,
+which aroused his curiosity.
+
+“I have no desire to interfere unduly with your affairs, Mr. Montgomery,
+but were you thinking of having a day in Leeds upon Saturday?”
+
+“No, sir.
+
+“In the country?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You are very wise. You will find a quiet day among the wild flowers a
+very valuable restorative. Have you thought of any particular
+direction?”
+
+“I am going over Croxley way.”
+
+“Well, there is no prettier country when once you are past the
+iron-works. What could be more delightful than to lie upon the Fells,
+basking in the sunshine, with perhaps some instructive and elevating
+book as your companion? I should recommend a visit to the ruins of St.
+Bridget’s Church, a very interesting relic of the early Norman era.
+By the way, there is one objection which I see to your going to Croxley
+on Saturday. It is upon that date, as I am informed, that that
+ruffianly glove fight takes place. You may find yourself molested by
+the blackguards whom it will attract.”
+
+“I will take my chance of that, sir,” said the assistant.
+
+On the Friday night, which was the last night before the fight,
+Montgomery’s three backers assembled in the gymnasium and inspected
+their man as he went through some light exercises to keep his muscles
+supple. He was certainly in splendid condition, his skin shining with
+health, and his eyes with energy and confidence. The three walked round
+him and exulted.
+
+“He’s simply ripping!” said the undergraduate.
+
+“By gad, you’ve come out of it splendidly. You’re as hard as a pebble,
+and fit to fight for your life.”
+
+“Happen he’s a trifle on the fine side,” said the publican. “Runs a bit
+light at the loins, to my way of thinkin’.”
+
+“What weight to-day?”
+
+“Ten stone eleven,” the assistant answered.
+
+“That’s only three pund off in a week’s trainin’,” said the
+horse-breaker. “He said right when he said that he was in condition.
+Well, it’s fine stuff all there is of it, but I’m none so sure as there
+is enough.” He kept poking his finger into Montgomery as if he were one
+of his horses. “I hear that the Master will scale a hundred and sixty
+odd at the ring-side.”
+
+“But there’s some of that which he’d like well to pull off and leave
+behind wi’ his shirt,” said Purvis. “I hear they’ve had a rare job to
+get him to drop his beer, and if it had not been for that great
+red-headed wench of his they’d never ha’ done it. She fair scratted the
+face off a potman that had brought him a gallon from t’ ‘Chequers.’
+They say the hussy is his sparrin’ partner, as well as his sweetheart,
+and that his poor wife is just breakin’ her heart over it. Hullo, young
+’un, what do you want?”
+
+The door of the gymnasium had opened and a lad, about sixteen, grimy and
+black with soot and iron, stepped into the yellow glare of the oil lamp.
+Ted Barton seized him by the collar.
+
+“See here, thou yoong whelp, this is private, and we want noan o’ thy
+spyin’!”
+
+“But I maun speak to Mr. Wilson.”
+
+The young Cantab stepped forward.
+
+“Well, my lad, what is it?”
+
+“It’s aboot t’ fight, Mr. Wilson, sir. I wanted to tell your mon
+somethin’ aboot t’ Maister.”
+
+“We’ve no time to listen to gossip, my boy. We know all about the
+Master.”
+
+“But thou doan’t, sir. Nobody knows but me and mother, and we thought
+as we’d like thy mon to know, sir, for we want him to fair bray him.”
+
+“Oh, you want the Master fair brayed, do you? So do we. Well, what
+have you to say?”
+
+“Is this your mon, sir?”
+
+“Well, suppose it is?”
+
+“Then it’s him I want to tell aboot it. T’ Maister is blind o’ the left
+eye.”
+
+“Nonsense!”
+
+“It’s true, sir. Not stone blind, but rarely fogged. He keeps it
+secret, but mother knows, and so do I. If thou slip him on the left
+side he can’t cop thee. Thou’ll find it right as I tell thee. And mark
+him when he sinks his right. ’Tis his best blow, his right upper-cut.
+T’ Maister’s finisher, they ca’ it at t’ works. It’s a turble blow when
+it do come home.”
+
+“Thank you, my boy. This is information worth having about his sight,”
+said Wilson. “How came you to know so much? Who are you?”
+
+“I’m his son, sir.”
+
+Wilson whistled.
+
+“And who sent you to us?”
+
+“My mother. I maun get back to her again.”
+
+“Take this half-crown.”
+
+“No, sir, I don’t seek money in comin’ here. I do it--”
+
+“For love?” suggested the publican.
+
+“For hate!” said the boy, and darted off into the darkness.
+
+“Seems to me t’ red-headed wench may do him more harm than good, after
+all,” remarked the publican. “And now, Mr. Montgomery, sir, you’ve done
+enough for this evenin’, an’ a nine-hours’ sleep is the best trainin’
+before a battle. Happen this time to-morrow night you’ll be safe back
+again with your 100 pound in your pocket.”
+
+
+                             II
+
+
+Work was struck at one o’clock at the coal-pits and the iron-works, and
+the fight was arranged for three. From the Croxley Furnaces, from
+Wilson’s Coal-pits, from the Heartsease Mine, from the Dodd Mills, from
+the Leverworth Smelters the workmen came trooping, each with his
+fox-terrier or his lurcher at his heels. Warped with labour and twisted
+by toil, bent double by week-long work in the cramped coal galleries or
+half-blinded with years spent in front of white-hot fluid metal, these
+men still gilded their harsh and hopeless lives by their devotion to
+sport. It was their one relief, the only thing which could distract
+their minds from sordid surroundings, and give them an interest beyond
+the blackened circle which enclosed them. Literature, art, science, all
+these things were beyond their horizon; but the race, the football
+match, the cricket, the fight, these were things which they could
+understand, which they could speculate upon in advance and comment upon
+afterwards. Sometimes brutal, sometimes grotesque, the love of sport is
+still one of the great agencies which make for the happiness of our
+people. It lies very deeply in the springs of our nature, and when it
+has been educated out, a higher, more refined nature may be left, but it
+will not be of that robust British type which has left its mark so
+deeply on the world. Every one of these raddled workers, slouching with
+his dog at his heels to see something of the fight, was a true unit of
+his race.
+
+It was a squally May day, with bright sunbursts and driving showers.
+Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting his medicine made
+up.
+
+“The weather seems so very unsettled, Mr. Montgomery,” remarked the
+doctor, “that I am inclined to think that you had better postpone your
+little country excursion until a later date.”
+
+“I am afraid that I must go to-day, sir.”
+
+“I have just had an intimation that Mrs. Potter, at the other side of
+Angleton, wishes to see me. It is probable that I shall be there all
+day. It will be extremely inconvenient to leave the house empty so
+long.”
+
+“I am very sorry, sir, but I must go,” said the assistant, doggedly.
+
+The doctor saw that it would be useless to argue, and departed in the
+worst of bad tempers upon mission. Montgomery felt easier now that he
+was gone. He went up to his room, and packed his running-shoes, his
+fighting-drawers, and his cricket sash into a hand-bag. When he came
+down, Mr. Wilson was waiting for him in the surgery. “I hear the doctor
+has gone.”
+
+“Yes; he is likely to be away all day.”
+
+“I don’t see that it matters much. It’s bound to come to his ears by
+to-night.”
+
+“Yes; it’s serious with me, Mr. Wilson. If I win, it’s all right.
+I don’t mind telling you that the hundred pounds will make all the
+difference to me. But if I lose, I shall lose my situation, for, as you
+say, I can’t keep it secret.”
+
+“Never mind. We’ll see you through among us. I only wonder the doctor
+has not heard, for it’s all over the country that you are to fight the
+Croxley Champion. We’ve had Armitage up about it already. He’s the
+Master’s backer, you know. He wasn’t sure that you were eligible.
+The Master said he wanted you whether you were eligible or not.
+Armitage has money on, and would have made trouble if he could. But I
+showed him that you came within the conditions of the challenge, and he
+agreed that it was all right. They think they have a soft thing on.”
+
+“Well, I can only do my best,” said Montgomery.
+
+They lunched together; a silent and rather nervous repast, for
+Montgomery’s mind was full of what was before him, and Wilson had
+himself more money at stake than he cared to lose.
+
+Wilson’s carriage and pair were at the door, the horses with blue and
+white rosettes at their ears, which were the colours of the Wilson
+Coal-pits, well known, on many a football field. At the avenue gate a
+crowd of some hundred pit-men and their wives gave a cheer as the
+carriage passed. To the assistant it all seemed dream-like and
+extraordinary--the strangest experience of his life, but with a thrill
+of human action and interest in it which made it passionately absorbing.
+He lay back in the open carriage and saw the fluttering handkerchiefs
+from the doors and windows of the miners’ cottages. Wilson had pinned a
+blue and white rosette upon his coat, and everybody knew him as their
+champion. “Good luck, sir! good luck to thee!” they shouted from the
+roadside. He felt that it was like some unromantic knight riding down
+to sordid lists, but there was something of chivalry in it all the same.
+He fought for others as well as for himself. He might fail from want of
+skill or strength, but deep in his sombre soul he vowed that it should
+never be for want of heart.
+
+Mr. Fawcett was just mounting into his high-wheeled, spidery dogcart,
+with his little bit of blood between the shafts. He waved his whip and
+fell in behind the carriage. They overtook Purvis, the tomato-faced
+publican, upon the road, with his wife in her Sunday bonnet. They also
+dropped into the procession, and then, as they traversed the seven miles
+of the high road to Croxley, their two-horsed, rosetted carriage became
+gradually the nucleus of a comet with a loosely radiating tail.
+From every side-road came the miners’ carts, the humble, ramshackle
+traps, black and bulging, with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued,
+open-hearted partisans. They trailed for a long quarter of a mile
+behind them--cracking, whipping, shouting, galloping, swearing.
+Horsemen and runners were mixed with the vehicles. And then suddenly a
+squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were having their annual training
+in those parts, clattered and jingled out of a field, and rode as an
+escort to the carriage. Through the dust-clouds round him Montgomery
+saw the gleaming brass helmets, the bright coats, and the tossing heads
+of the chargers, the delighted brown faces of the troopers. It was more
+dream-like than ever.
+
+And then, as they approached the monstrous, uncouth line of
+bottle-shaped buildings which marked the smelting-works of Croxley,
+their long, writhing snake of dust was headed off by another but longer
+one which wound across their path. The main road into which their own
+opened was filled by the rushing current of traps. The Wilson
+contingent halted until the others should get past. The iron-men
+cheered and groaned, according to their humour, as they whirled past
+their antagonist. Rough chaff flew back and forwards like iron nuts and
+splinters of coal. “Brought him up, then!” “Got t’ hearse for to fetch
+him back?” “Where’s t’ owd K-legs?” “Mon, mon, have thy photograph
+took--’twill mind thee of what thou used to look!” “He fight?--he’s
+nowt but a half-baked doctor!” “Happen he’ll doctor thy Croxley
+Champion afore he’s through wi’t.”
+
+So they flashed at each other as the one side waited and the other
+passed. Then there came a rolling murmur swelling into a shout, and a
+great brake with four horses came clattering along, all streaming with
+salmon-pink ribbons. The driver wore a white hat with pink rosette, and
+beside him, on the high seat, were a man and a woman-she with her arm
+round his waist. Montgomery had one glimpse of them as they flashed
+past; he with a furry cap drawn low over his brow, a great frieze coat
+and a pink comforter round his throat; she brazen, red-headed,
+bright-coloured, laughing excitedly. The Master, for it was he, turned
+as he passed, gazed hard at Montgomery, and gave him a menacing,
+gap-toothed grin. It was a hard, wicked face, blue-jowled and craggy,
+with long, obstinate cheeks and inexorable eyes. The brake behind was
+full of patrons of the sport-flushed iron-foremen, heads of departments,
+managers. One was drinking from a metal flask, and raised it to
+Montgomery as he passed; and then the crowd thinned, and the Wilson
+cortege with their dragoons swept in at the rear of the others.
+
+The road led away from Croxley, between curving green hills, gashed and
+polluted by the searchers for coal and iron. The whole country had been
+gutted, and vast piles of refuse and mountains of slag suggested the
+mighty chambers which the labour of man had burrowed beneath. On the
+left the road curved up to where a huge building, roofless and
+dismantled, stood crumbling and forlorn, with the light shining through
+the windowless squares.
+
+“That’s the old Arrowsmith’s factory. That’s where the fight is to be,”
+said Wilson. “How are you feeling now?”
+
+“Thank you, I was never better in my life,” Montgomery answered.
+
+“By Gad, I like your nerve!” said Wilson, who was himself flushed and
+uneasy. “You’ll give us a fight for our money, come what may.
+That place on the right is the office, and that has been set aside as
+the dressing and weighing room.”
+
+The carriage drove up to it amidst the shouts of the folk upon the
+hillside. Lines of empty carriages and traps curved down upon the
+winding road, and a black crowd surged round the door of the ruined
+factory. The seats, as a huge placard announced, were five shillings,
+three shillings, and a shilling, with half-price for dogs. The takings,
+deducting expenses, were to go to the winner, and it was already evident
+that a larger stake than a hundred pounds was in question. A babel of
+voices rose from the door. The workers wished to bring their dogs in
+free. The men scuffled. The dogs barked. The crowd was a whirling,
+eddying pool surging with a roar up to the narrow cleft which was its
+only outlet.
+
+The brake, with its salmon-coloured streamers and four reeking horses,
+stood empty before the door of the office; Wilson, Purvis, Fawcett and
+Montgomery passed in.
+
+There was a large, bare room inside with square, clean patches upon the
+grimy walls, where pictures and almanacs had once hung. Worn linoleum
+covered the floor, but there was no furniture save some benches and a
+deal table with an ewer and a basin upon it. Two of the corners were
+curtained off. In the middle of the room was a weighing-chair.
+A hugely fat man, with a salmon tie and a blue waistcoat with bird’s-eye
+spots, came bustling up to them. It was Armitage, the butcher and
+grazier, well known for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal
+patron of sport in the Riding. “Well, well,” he grunted, in a thick,
+fussy, wheezy voice, “you have come, then. Got your man? Got your man?”
+
+“Here he is, fit and well. Mr. Montgomery, let me present you to Mr.
+Armitage.”
+
+“Glad to meet you, sir. Happy to make your acquaintance. I make bold
+to say, sir, that we of Croxley admire your courage, Mr. Montgomery, and
+that our only hope is a fair fight and no favour, and the best man win.
+That’s our sentiments at Croxley.”
+
+“And it is my sentiment, also,” said the assistant.
+
+“Well, you can’t say fairer than that, Mr. Montgomery. You’ve taken a
+large contrac’ in hand, but a large contrac’ may be carried through,
+sir, as anyone that knows my dealings could testify. The Master is
+ready to weigh in!”
+
+“So am I.”
+
+“You must weigh in the buff.” Montgomery looked askance at the tall,
+red-headed woman who was standing gazing out of the window.
+
+“That’s all right,” said Wilson. “Get behind the curtain and put on
+your fighting kit.”
+
+He did so, and came out the picture of an athlete, in white, loose
+drawers, canvas shoes, and the sash of a well-known cricket club round
+his waist. He was trained to a hair, his skin gleaming like silk, and
+every muscle rippling down his broad shoulders and along his beautiful
+arms as he moved them. They bunched into ivory knobs, or slid into
+long, sinuous curves, as he raised or lowered his hands.
+
+“What thinkest thou o’ that?” asked Ted Barton, his second, of the woman
+in the window.
+
+She glanced contemptuously at the young athlete. “It’s but a poor
+kindness thou dost him to put a thread-paper yoong gentleman like yon
+against a mon as is a mon. Why, my Jock would throttle him wi’ one hond
+lashed behind him.”
+
+“Happen he may--happen not,” said Barton. “I have but twa pund in the
+world, but it’s on him, every penny, and no hedgin’. But here’s t’
+Maister, and rarely fine he do look.”
+
+The prize-fighter had come out from his curtain, a squat, formidable
+figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted
+leg. His skin had none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery’s,
+but was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled
+black hair which thatched his mighty breast. His weight bore no
+relation to his strength, for those huge shoulders and great arms, with
+brown, sledge-hammer fists, would have fitted the heaviest man that ever
+threw his cap into a ring. But his loins and legs were slight in
+proportion. Montgomery, on the other hand, was as symmetrical as a
+Greek statue. It would be an encounter between a man who was specially
+fitted for one sport, and one who was equally capable of any. The two
+looked curiously at each other: a bulldog, and a high-bred clean-limbed
+terrier, each full of spirit.
+
+“How do you do?”
+
+“How do?” The Master grinned again, and his three jagged front teeth
+gleamed for an instant. The rest had been beaten out of him in twenty
+years of battle. He spat upon the floor. “We have a rare fine day
+for’t.”
+
+“Capital,” said Montgomery.
+
+“That’s the good feelin’ I like,” wheezed the fat butcher. “Good lads,
+both of them!--prime lads!--hard meat an’ good bone. There’s no
+ill-feelin’.”
+
+“If he downs me, Gawd bless him!” said the Master.
+
+“An’ if we down him, Gawd help him!” interrupted the woman.
+
+“Haud thy tongue, wench!” said the Master, impatiently. “Who art thou
+to put in thy word? Happen I might draw my hand across thy face.”
+
+The woman did not take the threat amiss. “Wilt have enough for thy hand
+to do, Jock,” said she. “Get quit o’ this gradely man afore thou turn
+on me.”
+
+The lovers’ quarrel was interrupted by the entrance of a newcomer, a
+gentleman with a fur-collared overcoat and a very shiny top-hat--a
+top-hat of a degree of glossiness which is seldom seen five miles from
+Hyde Park. This hat he wore at the extreme back of his head, so that
+the lower surface of the brim made a kind of frame for his high, bald
+forehead, his, keen eyes, his rugged and yet kindly face. He bustled in
+with the quiet air of possession with which the ring master enters the
+circus.
+
+“It’s Mr. Stapleton, the referee from London,” said Wilson.
+
+“How do you do, Mr. Stapleton? I was introduced to you at the big fight
+at the Corinthian Club in Piccadilly.”
+
+“Ah! I dare say,” said the other, shaking hands. “Fact is, I’m
+introduced to so many that I can’t undertake to carry their names.
+Wilson, is it? Well, Mr. Wilson, glad to see you. Couldn’t get a fly
+at the station, and that’s why I’m late.”
+
+“I’m sure, sir,” said Armitage, “we should be proud that anyone so well
+known in the boxing world should come down to our little exhibition.”
+
+“Not at all. Not at all. Anything in the interests of boxin’. All
+ready? Men weighed?”
+
+“Weighing now, sir.”
+
+“Ah! Just as well that I should see it done. Seen you before,
+Craggs. Saw you fight your second battle against Willox. You had
+beaten him once, but he came back on you. What does the indicator
+say--163lbs.--two off for the kit--161lbs. Now, my lad, you jump. My
+goodness, what colours are you wearing?”
+
+“The Anonymi Cricket Club.”
+
+“What right have you to wear them? I belong to the club myself.”
+
+“So do I.”
+
+“You an amateur?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And you are fighting for a money prize?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I suppose you know what you are doing? You realise that you’re a
+professional pug from this onwards, and that if ever you fight again--”
+
+“I’ll never fight again.”
+
+“Happen you won’t,” said the woman, and the Master turned a terrible eye
+upon her.
+
+“Well, I suppose you know your own business best. Up you jump. One
+hundred and fifty-one, minus two, 149--12lbs. difference, but youth and
+condition on the other scale. Well, the sooner we get to work the
+better, for I wish to catch the seven o’clock express at Hellifield.
+Twenty three-minute rounds, with one-minute intervals, and Queensberry
+rules. Those are the conditions, are they not?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Very good, then--we may go across.”
+
+The two combatants had overcoats thrown over their shoulders, and the
+whole party, backers, fighters, seconds, and the referee filed out of
+the room. A police inspector was waiting for them in the road. He had
+a note-book in his hand--that terrible weapon which awes even the
+London cabman.
+
+“I must take your names, gentlemen, in case it should be necessary to
+proceed for breach of peace.”
+
+“You don’t mean to stop the fight?” cried Armitage, in a passion of
+indignation. “I’m Mr. Armitage, of Croxley, and this is Mr. Wilson, and
+we’ll be responsible that all is fair and as it should be.”
+
+“I’ll take the names in case it should be necessary to proceed,” said
+the inspector, impassively.
+
+“But you know me well.”
+
+“If you was a dook or even a judge it would be all the same,” said the
+inspector. “It’s the law, and there’s an end. I’ll not take upon
+myself to stop the fight, seeing that gloves are to be used, but I’ll
+take the names of all concerned. Silas Craggs, Robert Montgomery,
+Edward Barton, James Stapleton, of London. Who seconds Silas Craggs?”
+
+“I do,” said the woman. “Yes, you can stare, but it’s my job, and no
+one else’s. Anastasia’s the name--four a’s.”
+
+“Craggs?”
+
+“Johnson--Anastasia Johnson. If you jug him you can jug me.”
+
+“Who talked of juggin’, ye fool?” growled the Master. “Coom on, Mr.
+Armitage, for I’m fair sick o’ this loiterin’.”
+
+The inspector fell in with the procession, and proceeded, as they walked
+up the hill, to bargain in his official capacity for a front seat, where
+he could safeguard the interests of the law, and in his private
+capacity to lay out thirty shillings at seven to one with Mr. Armitage.
+Through the door they passed, down a narrow lane walled with a dense
+bank of humanity, up a wooden ladder to a platform, over a rope which
+was slung waist-high from four corner-stakes, and then Montgomery
+realised that he was in that ring in which his immediate destiny was to
+be worked out. On the stake at one corner there hung a blue-and-white
+streamer. Barton led him across, the overcoat dangling loosely from his
+shoulders, and he sat down on a wooden stool. Barton and another man,
+both wearing white sweaters, stood beside him. The so-called ring was a
+square, twenty feet each way. At the opposite angle was the sinister
+figure of the Master, with his red-headed woman and a rough-faced friend
+to look after him. At each corner were metal basins, pitchers of water,
+and sponges.
+
+During the hubbub and uproar of the entrance Montgomery was too
+bewildered to take things in. But now there was a few minutes’ delay,
+for the referee had lingered behind, and so he looked quietly about him.
+It was a sight to haunt him for a lifetime. Wooden seats had been built
+in, sloping upwards to the tops of the walls. Above, instead of a
+ceiling, a great flight of crows passed slowly across a square of grey
+cloud. Right up to the topmost benches the folk were banked--broadcloth
+in front, corduroys and fustian behind; faces turned everywhere upon
+him. The grey reek of the pipes filled the building, and the air was
+pungent with the acrid smell of cheap, strong tobacco. Everywhere among
+the human faces were to be seen the heads of the dogs. They growled and
+yapped from the back benches. In that dense mass of humanity, one could
+hardly pick out individuals, but Montgomery’s eyes caught the brazen
+gleam of the helmets held upon the knees of the ten yeomen of his
+escort. At the very edge of the platform sat the reporters, five of
+them--three locals and two all the way from London. But where was the
+all-important referee? There was no sign of him, unless he were in the
+centre of that angry swirl of men near the door.
+
+Mr. Stapleton had stopped to examine the gloves which were to be used,
+and entered the building after the combatants. He had started to come
+down that narrow lane with the human walls which led to the ring.
+But already it had gone abroad that the Wilson champion was a gentleman,
+and that another gentleman had been appointed as referee. A wave of
+suspicion passed through the Croxley folk. They would have one of their
+own people for a referee. They would not have a stranger. His path was
+stopped as he made for the ring. Excited men flung themselves in front
+of him; they waved their fists in his face and cursed him. A woman
+howled vile names in his ear. Somebody struck at him with an umbrella.
+“Go thou back to Lunnon. We want noan o’ thee. Go thou back!” they
+yelled.
+
+Stapleton, with his shiny hat cocked backwards, and his large, bulging
+forehead swelling from under it, looked round him from beneath his bushy
+brows. He was in the centre of a savage and dangerous mob. Then he
+drew his watch from his pocket and held it dial upwards in his palm.
+
+“In three minutes,” said he, “I will declare the fight off.”
+
+They raged round him. His cool face and that aggressive top-hat
+irritated them. Grimy hands were raised. But it was difficult,
+somehow, to strike a man who was so absolutely indifferent.
+
+“In two minutes I declare the fight off.”
+
+They exploded into blasphemy. The breath of angry men smoked into his
+placid face. A gnarled, grimy fist vibrated at the end of his nose.
+“We tell thee we want noan o’ thee. Get thou back where thou com’st
+from.”
+
+“In one minute I declare the fight off.”
+
+Then the calm persistence of the man conquered the swaying, mutable,
+passionate crowd.
+
+“Let him through, mon. Happen there’ll be no fight after a’.”
+
+“Let him through.”
+
+“Bill, thou loomp, let him pass. Dost want the fight declared off?”
+
+“Make room for the referee!--room for the Lunnon referee!”
+
+And half pushed, half carried, he was swept up to the ring. There were
+two chairs by the side of it, one for him and one for the timekeeper.
+He sat down, his hands on his knees, his hat at a more wonderful angle
+than ever, impassive but solemn, with the aspect of one who appreciates
+his responsibilities.
+
+Mr. Armitage, the portly butcher, made his way into the ring and held up
+two fat hands, sparkling with rings, as a signal for silence.
+
+“Gentlemen!” he yelled. And then in a crescendo shriek, “Gentlemen!”
+
+“And ladies!” cried somebody, for, indeed, there was a fair sprinkling
+of women among the crowd. “Speak up, owd man!” shouted another. “What
+price pork chops?” cried somebody at the back. Everybody laughed, and
+the dogs began to bark. Armitage waved his hands amidst the uproar as
+if he were conducting an orchestra. At last the babel thinned into
+silence.
+
+“Gentlemen,” he yelled, “the match is between Silas Craggs, whom we
+call the Master of Croxley, and Robert Montgomery, of the Wilson
+Coal-pits. The match was to be under eleven-eight. When they were
+weighed just now, Craggs weighed eleven-seven, and Montgomery ten-nine.
+The conditions of the contest are--the best of twenty three-minute
+rounds with two-ounce gloves. Should the fight run to its full length,
+it will, of course, be decided upon points. Mr. Stapleton, the
+well-known London referee, has kindly consented to see fair play.
+I wish to say that Mr. Wilson and I, the chief backers of the two men,
+have every confidence in Mr. Stapleton, and that we beg that you will
+accept his rulings without dispute.”
+
+He then turned from one combatant to the other, with a wave of his hand.
+
+
+                             III
+
+
+“Montgomery--Craggs!” said he.
+
+A great hush fell over the huge assembly. Even the dogs stopped
+yapping; one might have thought that the monstrous room was empty.
+The two men had stood up, the small white gloves over their hands.
+They advanced from their corners and shook hands, Montgomery gravely,
+Craggs with a smile. Then they fell into position. The crowd gave a
+long sigh--the intake of a thousand excited breaths. The referee tilted
+his chair on to its back legs, and looked moodily critical from the one
+to the other.
+
+It was strength against activity--that was evident from the first.
+The Master stood stolidly upon his K leg. It gave him a tremendous
+pedestal; one could hardly imagine his being knocked down. And he could
+pivot round upon it with extraordinary quickness; but his advance or
+retreat was ungainly. His frame, however, was so much larger and
+broader than that of the student, and his brown, massive face looked so
+resolute and menacing that the hearts of the Wilson party sank within
+them. There was one heart, however, which had not done so. It was that
+of Robert Montgomery.
+
+Any nervousness which he may have had completely passed away now that he
+had his work before him. Here was something definite--this hard-faced,
+deformed Hercules to beat, with a career as the price of beating him.
+He glowed with the joy of action; it thrilled through his nerves.
+He faced his man with little in-and-out steps, breaking to the left,
+breaking to the right, feeling his way, while Craggs, with a dull,
+malignant eye, pivoted slowly upon his weak leg, his left arm half
+extended, his right sunk low across the mark. Montgomery led with his
+left, and then led again, getting lightly home each time. He tried
+again, but the Master had his counter ready, and Montgomery reeled back
+from a harder blow than he had given. Anastasia, the woman, gave a
+shrill cry of encouragement, and her man let fly his right. Montgomery
+ducked under it, and in an instant the two were in each other’s arms.
+
+“Break away! Break away!” said the referee.
+
+The Master struck upwards on the break, and shook Montgomery with the
+blow. Then it was “time.” It had been a spirited opening round.
+The people buzzed into comment and applause. Montgomery was quite
+fresh, but the hairy chest of the Master was rising and falling.
+The man passed a sponge over his head while Anastasia flapped the towel
+before him. “Good lass! good lass!” cried the crowd, and cheered her.
+
+The men were up again, the Master grimly watchful, Montgomery as alert
+as a kitten. The Master tried a sudden rush, squattering along with his
+awkward gait, but coming faster than one would think. The student
+slipped aside and avoided him. The Master stopped, grinned, and shook
+his head. Then he motioned with his hand as an invitation to
+Montgomery to come to him. The student did so and led with his left,
+but got a swinging right counter in the ribs in exchange. The heavy
+blow staggered him, and the Master came scrambling in to complete his
+advantage; but Montgomery, with his greater activity, kept out of danger
+until the call of “time.” A tame round, and the advantage with the
+Master.
+
+“T’ Maister’s too strong for him,” said a smelter to his neighbour.
+
+“Ay; but t’other’s a likely lad. Happen we’ll see some sport yet.
+He can joomp rarely.”
+
+“But t’ Maister can stop and hit rarely. Happen he’ll mak’ him joomp
+when he gets his nief upon him.”
+
+They were up again, the water glistening upon their faces. Montgomery
+led instantly, and got his right home with a sounding smack upon the
+master’s forehead. There was a shout from the colliers, and “Silence!
+Order!” from the referee. Montgomery avoided the counter, and scored
+with his left. Fresh applause, and the referee upon his feet in
+indignation.
+
+“No comments, gentlemen, if _you_ please, during the rounds.”
+
+“Just bide a bit!” growled the Master.
+
+“Don’t talk--fight!” said the referee, angrily.
+
+Montgomery rubbed in the point by a flush hit upon the mouth, and the
+Master shambled back to his corner like an angry bear, having had all
+the worst of the round.
+
+“Where’s thot seven to one?” shouted Purvis, the publican. “I’ll take
+six to one!”
+
+There were no answers.
+
+“Five to one!”
+
+There were givers at that. Purvis booked them in a tattered notebook.
+
+Montgomery began to feel happy. He lay back with his legs outstretched,
+his back against the corner-post, and one gloved hand upon each rope.
+What a delicious minute it was between each round. If he could only
+keep out of harm’s way, he must surely wear this man out before the end
+of twenty rounds. He was so slow that all his strength went for
+nothing.
+
+“You’re fightin’ a winnin’ fight--a winnin’ fight,” Ted Barton whispered
+in his ear. “Go canny; tak’ no chances; you have him proper.”
+
+But the Master was crafty. He had fought so many battles with his
+maimed limb that he knew how to make the best of it. Warily and slowly
+he manoeuvred round Montgomery, stepping forward and yet again forward
+until he had imperceptibly backed him into his corner. The student
+suddenly saw a flash of triumph upon the grim face, and a gleam in the
+dull, malignant eyes. The Master was upon him. He sprang aside and was
+on the ropes. The Master smashed in one of his terrible upper-cuts, and
+Montgomery half broke it with his guard. The student sprang the other
+way and was against the other converging rope. He was trapped in the
+angle. The Master sent in another with a hoggish grunt which spoke of
+the energy behind it. Montgomery ducked, but got a jab from the left
+upon the mark. He closed with his man.
+
+“Break away! Break away!” cried the referee. Montgomery disengaged,
+and got a swinging blow on the ear as he did so. It had been a damaging
+round for him, and the Croxley people were shouting their delight.
+“Gentlemen, I will _not_ have this noise!” Stapleton roared. “I have
+been accustomed to preside at a well-conducted club, and not at a
+bear-garden.” This little man, with the tilted hat and the bulging
+forehead, dominated the whole assembly. He was like a head-master among
+his boys. He glared round him, and nobody cared to meet his eye.
+Anastasia had kissed the Master when he resumed his seat.
+
+“Good lass. Do’t again!” cried the laughing crowd, and the angry Master
+shook his glove at her, as she flapped her towel in front of him.
+Montgomery was weary and a little sore, but not depressed. He had
+learned something. He would not again be tempted into danger.
+
+For three rounds the honours were fairly equal. The student’s hitting
+was the quicker, the Master’s the harder. Profiting by his lesson,
+Montgomery kept himself in the open, and refused to be herded into a
+corner. Sometimes the Master succeeded in rushing him to the
+side-ropes, but the younger man slipped away, or closed and then
+disengaged. The monotonous “Break away! Break away!” of the referee
+broke in upon the quick, low patter of rubber-soled shoes, the dull thud
+of the blows, and the sharp, hissing breath of two tired men.
+
+The ninth round found both of them in fairly good condition.
+Montgomery’s head was still singing from the blow that he had in the
+corner, and one of his thumbs pained him acutely and seemed to be
+dislocated. The Master showed no sign of a touch, but his breathing was
+the more laboured, and a long line of ticks upon the referee’s paper
+showed that the student had a good show of points. But one of this
+iron-man’s blows was worth three of his, and he knew that without the
+gloves he could not have stood for three rounds against him. All the
+amateur work that he had done was the merest tapping and flapping when
+compared to those frightful blows, from arms toughened by the shovel and
+the crowbar.
+
+It was the tenth round, and the fight was half over. The betting now
+was only three to one, for the Wilson champion had held his own much
+better than had been expected. But those who knew the ring-craft as
+well as the staying power of the old prize-fighter knew that the odds
+were still a long way in his favour.
+
+“Have a care of him!” whispered Barton, as he sent his man up to the
+scratch. “Have a care! He’ll play thee a trick, if he can.”
+
+But Montgomery saw, or imagined he saw, that his antagonist was tiring.
+He looked jaded and listless, and his hands drooped a little from their
+position. His own youth and condition were beginning to tell.
+He sprang in and brought off a fine left-handed lead. The Master’s
+return lacked his usual fire. Again Montgomery led, and again he got
+home. Then he tried his right upon the mark, and the Master guarded it
+downwards.
+
+“Too low! Too low! A foul! A foul!” yelled a thousand voices.
+
+The referee rolled his sardonic eyes slowly round. “Seems to me this
+buildin’ is chock-full of referees,” said he. The people laughed and
+applauded, but their favour was as immaterial to him as their anger.
+“No applause, please! This is not a theatre!” he yelled.
+
+Montgomery was very pleased with himself. His adversary was evidently
+in a bad way. He was piling on his points and establishing a lead.
+He might as well make hay while the sun shone. The Master was looking
+all abroad. Montgomery popped one upon his blue jowl and got away
+without a return. And then the Master suddenly dropped both his hands
+and began rubbing his thigh. Ah! that was it, was it? He had muscular
+cramp.
+
+“Go in! Go in!” cried Teddy Barton.
+
+Montgomery sprang wildly forward, and the next instant was lying half
+senseless, with his neck nearly broken, in the middle of the ring.
+
+The whole round had been a long conspiracy to tempt him within reach of
+one of those terrible right-hand upper-cuts for which the Master was
+famous. For this the listless, weary bearing, for this the cramp in the
+thigh. When Montgomery had sprung in so hotly he had exposed himself to
+such a blow as neither flesh nor blood could stand. Whizzing up from
+below with a rigid arm, which put the Master’s eleven stone into its
+force, it struck him under the jaw; he whirled half round, and fell a
+helpless and half-paralysed mass. A vague groan and murmur,
+inarticulate, too excited for words, rose from the great audience.
+With open mouths and staring eyes they gazed at the twitching and
+quivering figure.
+
+“Stand back! Stand right back!” shrieked the referee, for the Master
+was standing over his man ready to give him the _coup-de-grace_ as he
+rose.
+
+“Stand back, Craggs, this instant!” Stapleton repeated.
+
+The Master sank his hands sulkily and walked backwards to the rope with
+his ferocious eyes fixed upon his fallen antagonist. The timekeeper
+called the seconds. If ten of them passed before Montgomery rose to his
+feet, the fight was ended. Ted Barton wrung his hands and danced about
+in an agony in his corner.
+
+As if in a dream--a terrible nightmare--the student could hear the voice
+of the timekeeper--three--four--five--he got up on his hand--six--
+seven--he was on his knee, sick, swimming, faint, but resolute to rise.
+Eight--he was up, and the Master was on him like a tiger, lashing
+savagely at him with both hands. Folk held their breath as they watched
+those terrible blows, and anticipated the pitiful end--so much more
+pitiful where a game but helpless man refuses to accept defeat.
+
+Strangely automatic is the human brain. Without volition, without
+effort, there shot into the memory of this bewildered, staggering,
+half-stupefied man the one thing which could have saved him--that blind
+eye of which the Master’s son had spoken. It was the same as the other
+to look at, but Montgomery remembered that he had said that it was the
+left. He reeled to the left side, half felled by a drive which lit upon
+his shoulder. The Master pivoted round upon his leg and was at him in
+an instant.
+
+“Yark him, lad! Yark him!” screamed the woman.
+
+“Hold your tongue!” said the referee.
+
+Montgomery slipped to the left again and yet again, but the Master was
+too quick and clever for him. He struck round and got him full on the
+face as he tried once more to break away. Montgomery’s knees weakened
+under him, and he fell with a groan on the floor. This time he knew
+that he was done. With bitter agony he realised, as he groped blindly
+with his hands, that he could not possibly raise himself. Far away and
+muffled he heard, amid the murmurs of the multitude, the fateful voice
+of the timekeeper counting off the seconds.
+
+“One--two--three--four--five--six--”
+
+“Time!” said the referee.
+
+Then the pent-up passion of the great assembly broke loose. Croxley
+gave a deep groan of disappointment. The Wilsons were on their feet,
+yelling with delight. There was still a chance for them. In four more
+seconds their man would have been solemnly counted out. But now he had
+a minute in which to recover. The referee looked round with relaxed
+features and laughing eyes. He loved this rough game, this school for
+humble heroes, and it was pleasant to him to intervene as a _Deus ex
+machina_ at so dramatic a moment. His chair and his hat were both
+tilted at an extreme angle; he and the timekeeper smiled at each other.
+Ted Barton and the other second had rushed out and thrust an arm each
+under Montgomery’s knee, the other behind his loins, and so carried him
+back to his stool. His head lolled upon his shoulder, but a douche of
+cold water sent a shiver through him, and he started and looked round
+him.
+
+“He’s a’ right!” cried the people round. “He’s a rare brave lad.
+Good lad! Good lad!” Barton poured some brandy into his mouth.
+The mists cleared a little, and he realised where he was and what he had
+to do. But he was still very weak, and he hardly dared to hope that he
+could survive another round.
+
+“Seconds out of the ring!” cried the referee. “Time!”
+
+The Croxley Master sprang eagerly off his stool.
+
+“Keep clear of him! Go easy for a bit,” said Barton, and Montgomery
+walked out to meet his man once more.
+
+He had had two lessons--the one when the Master got him into his corner,
+the other when he had been lured into mixing it up with so powerful an
+antagonist. Now he would be wary. Another blow would finish him; he
+could afford to run no risks. The Master was determined to follow up
+his advantage, and rushed at him, slogging furiously right and left.
+But Montgomery was too young and active to be caught. He was strong
+upon his legs once more, and his wits had all come back to him. It was
+a gallant sight--the line-of-battleship trying to pour its overwhelming
+broadside into the frigate, and the frigate manoeuvring always so as to
+avoid it. The Master tried all his ring-craft. He coaxed the student
+up by pretended inactivity; he rushed at him with furious rushes
+towards the ropes. For three rounds he exhausted every wile in trying
+to get at him. Montgomery during all this time was conscious that his
+strength was minute by minute coming back to him. The spinal jar from
+an upper-cut is overwhelming, but evanescent. He was losing all sense
+of it beyond a great stiffness of the neck. For the first round after
+his downfall he had been content to be entirely on the defensive, only
+too happy if he could stall off the furious attacks of the Master.
+In the second he occasionally ventured upon a light counter. In the
+third he was smacking back merrily where he saw an opening. His people
+yelled their approval of him at the end of every round. Even the
+iron-workers cheered him with that fine unselfishness which true sport
+engenders. To most of them, unspiritual and unimaginative, the sight of
+this clean-limbed young Apollo, rising above disaster and holding on
+while consciousness was in him to his appointed task, was the greatest
+thing their experience had ever known.
+
+But the Master’s naturally morose temper became more and more murderous
+at this postponement of his hopes. Three rounds ago the battle had been
+in his hands; now it was all to do over again. Round by round his man
+was recovering his strength. By the fifteenth he was strong again in
+wind and limb. But the vigilant Anastasia saw something which
+encouraged her.
+
+“That bash in t’ ribs is telling on him, Jock,” she whispered.
+“Why else should he be gulping t’ brandy? Go in, lad, and thou hast him
+yet.”
+
+Montgomery had suddenly taken the flask from Barton’s hand, and had a
+deep pull at the contents. Then, with his face a little flushed, and
+with a curious look of purpose, which made the referee stare hard at
+him, in his eyes, he rose for the sixteenth round.
+
+“Game as a pairtridge!” cried the publican, as he looked at the hard-set
+face.
+
+“Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!” cried the iron-men to their Master.
+And then a hum of exultation ran through their ranks as they realised
+that their tougher, harder, stronger man held the vantage, after all.
+Neither of the men showed much sign of punishment. Small gloves crush
+and numb, but they do not cut. One of the Master’s eyes was even more
+flush with his cheek than Nature had made it. Montgomery had two or
+three livid marks upon his body, and his face was haggard, save for that
+pink spot which the brandy had brought into either cheek. He rocked a
+little as he stood opposite his man, and his hands drooped as if he felt
+the gloves to be an unutterable weight. It was evident that he was
+spent and desperately weary. If he received one other blow it must
+surely be fatal to him. If he brought one home, what power could there
+be behind it, and what chance was there of its harming the colossus in
+front of him? It was the crisis of the fight. This round must decide
+it. “Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!” the iron-men whooped. Even the
+savage eyes of the referee were unable to restrain the excited crowd.
+
+Now, at last, the chance had come for Montgomery. He had learned a
+lesson from his more experienced rival. Why should he not play his own
+game upon him? He was spent, but not nearly so spent as he pretended.
+That brandy was to call up his reserves, to let him have strength to
+take full advantage of the opening when it came. It was thrilling and
+tingling through his veins at the very moment when he was lurching and
+rocking like a beaten man. He acted his part admirably. The Master
+felt that there was an easy task before him, and rushed in with ungainly
+activity to finish it once for all. He slap-banged away left and right,
+boring Montgomery up against the ropes, swinging in his ferocious blows
+with those animal grunts which told of the vicious energy behind them.
+
+But Montgomery was too cool to fall a victim to any of those murderous
+upper-cuts. He kept out of harm’s way with a rigid guard, an active
+foot, and a head which was swift to duck. And yet he contrived to
+present the same appearance of a man who is hopelessly done. The
+Master, weary from his own shower of blows, and fearing nothing from so
+weak a man, dropped his hand for an instant, and at that instant
+Montgomery’s right came home.
+
+It was a magnificent blow, straight, clean, crisp, with the force of the
+loins and the back behind it. And it landed where he had meant it to--
+upon the exact point of that blue-grained chin. Flesh and blood could
+not stand such a blow in such a place. Neither valour nor hardihood can
+save the man to whom it comes. The Master fell backwards, flat,
+prostrate, striking the ground with so simultaneous a clap that it was
+like a shutter falling from a wall. A yell, which no referee could
+control, broke from the crowded benches as the giant went down. He lay
+upon his back, his knees a little drawn up, his huge chest panting.
+He twitched and shook, but could not move. His feet pawed convulsively
+once or twice. It was no use. He was done. “Eight--nine--ten!” said
+the timekeeper, and the roar of a thousand voices, with a deafening
+clap like the broadside of a ship, told that the Master of Croxley was
+the Master no more.
+
+Montgomery stood half dazed, looking down at the huge, prostrate figure.
+He could hardly realise that it was indeed all over. He saw the referee
+motion towards him with his hand. He heard his name bellowed in triumph
+from every side. And then he was aware of someone rushing towards him;
+he caught a glimpse of a flushed face and an aureole of flying red hair,
+a gloveless fist struck him between the eyes, and he was on his back in
+the ring beside his antagonist, while a dozen of his supporters were
+endeavouring to secure the frantic Anastasia. He heard the angry
+shouting of the referee, the screaming of the furious woman, and the
+cries of the mob. Then something seemed to break like an over-stretched
+banjo string, and he sank into the deep, deep, mist-girt abyss of
+unconsciousness.
+
+The dressing was like a thing in a dream, and so was a vision of the
+Master with the grin of a bulldog upon his face, and his three teeth
+amiably protruded. He shook Montgomery heartily by the hand.
+
+“I would have been rare pleased to shake thee by the throttle, lad, a
+short while syne,” said he. “But I bear no ill-feeling again’ thee.
+It was a rare poonch that brought me down--I have not had a better
+since my second fight wi’ Billy Edwards in ’89. Happen thou might think
+o’ goin’ further wi’ this business. If thou dost, and want a trainer,
+there’s not much inside t’ ropes as I don’t know. Or happen thou might
+like to try it wi’ me old style and bare knuckles. Thou hast but to
+write to t’ iron-works to find me.”
+
+But Montgomery disclaimed any such ambition. A canvas bag with his
+share--190 sovereigns--was handed to him, of which he gave ten to the
+Master, who also received some share of the gate-money. Then, with
+young Wilson escorting him on one side, Purvis on the other, and Fawcett
+carrying his bag behind, he went in triumph to his carriage, and drove
+amid a long roar, which lined the highway like a hedge for the seven
+miles, back to his starting-point.
+
+“It’s the greatest thing I ever saw in my life. By George, it’s
+ripping!” cried Wilson, who had been left in a kind of ecstasy by the
+events of the day. “There’s a chap over Barnsley way who fancies
+himself a bit. Let us spring you on him, and let him see what he can
+make of you. We’ll put up a purse--won’t we, Purvis? You shall never
+want a backer.”
+
+“At his weight,” said the publican, “I’m behind him, I am, for twenty
+rounds, and no age, country, or colour barred.”
+
+“So am I,” cried Fawcett; “middle-weight champion of the world, that’s
+what he is--here, in the same carriage with us.”
+
+But Montgomery was not to be beguiled.
+
+“No; I have my own work to do now.”
+
+“And what may that be?”
+
+“I’ll use this money to get my medical degree.”
+
+“Well, we’ve plenty of doctors, but you’re the only man in the Riding
+that could smack the Croxley Master off his legs. However, I suppose
+you know your own business best. When you’re a doctor, you’d best come
+down into these parts, and you’ll always find a job waiting for you at
+the Wilson Coal-pits.”
+
+Montgomery had returned by devious ways to the surgery. The horses were
+smoking at the door, and the doctor was just back from his long journey.
+Several patients had called in his absence, and he was in the worst of
+tempers.
+
+“I suppose I should be glad that you have come back at all,
+Mr. Montgomery!” he snarled. “When next you elect to take a holiday, I
+trust it will not be at so busy a time.”
+
+“I am sorry, sir, that you should have been inconvenienced.”
+
+“Yes, sir, I have been exceedingly inconvenienced.” Here, for the first
+time, he looked hard at the assistant. “Good Heavens, Mr. Montgomery,
+what have you been doing with your left eye?”
+
+It was where Anastasia had lodged her protest. Montgomery laughed.
+
+“It is nothing, sir,” said he.
+
+“And you have a livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that
+my representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition.
+How did you receive these injuries?”
+
+“Well, sir, as you know, there was a little glove-fight to-day over at
+Croxley.”
+
+“And you got mixed up with that brutal crowd?”
+
+“I _was_ rather mixed up with them.”
+
+“And who assaulted you?”
+
+“One of the fighters.”
+
+“Which of them?”
+
+“The Master of Croxley.”
+
+“Good Heavens! Perhaps you interfered with him?”
+
+“Well, to tell the truth, I did a little.”
+
+“Mr. Montgomery, in such a practice as mine, intimately associated as it
+is with the highest and most progressive elements of our small
+community, it is impossible--”
+
+But just then the tentative bray of a cornet-player searching for his
+key-note jarred upon their ears, and an instant later the Wilson
+Colliery brass band was in full cry with, “See the Conquering Hero
+Comes,” outside the surgery window. There was a banner waving, and a
+shouting crowd of miners.
+
+“What is it? What does it mean?” cried the angry doctor.
+
+“It means, sir, that I have, in the only way which was open to me,
+earned the money which is necessary for my education. It is my duty,
+Dr. Oldacre, to warn you that I am about to return to the University,
+and that you should lose no time in appointing my successor.”
+
+
+
+
+THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR
+
+It was in the days when the German armies had broken their way across
+France, and when the shattered forces of the young Republic had been
+swept away to the north of the Aisne and to the south of the Loire.
+Three broad streams of armed men had rolled slowly but irresistibly from
+the Rhine, now meandering to the north, now to the south, dividing,
+coalescing, but all uniting to form one great lake round Paris. And
+from this lake there welled out smaller streams--one to the north, one
+southward, to Orleans, and a third westward to Normandy. Many a German
+trooper saw the sea for the first time when he rode his horse girth-deep
+into the waves at Dieppe.
+
+Black and bitter were the thoughts of Frenchmen when they saw this weal
+of dishonour slashed across the fair face of their country. They had
+fought and they had been overborne. That swarming cavalry, those
+countless footmen, the masterful guns--they had tried and tried to make
+head against them. In battalions their invaders were not to be beaten,
+but man to man, or ten to ten, they were their equals. A brave
+Frenchman might still make a single German rue the day that he had left
+his own bank of the Rhine. Thus, unchronicled amid the battles and the
+sieges, there broke out another war, a war of individuals, with foul
+murder upon the one side and brutal reprisal on the other.
+
+Colonel von Gramm, of the 24th Posen Infantry, had suffered severely
+during this new development. He commanded in the little Norman town of
+Les Andelys, and his outposts stretched amid the hamlets and farmhouses
+of the district round. No French force was within fifty miles of him,
+and yet morning after morning he had to listen to a black report of
+sentries found dead at their posts, or of foraging parties which had
+never returned. Then the colonel would go forth in his wrath, and
+farmsteadings would blaze and villages tremble; but next morning there
+was still that same dismal tale to be told. Do what he might, he could
+not shake off his invisible enemies. And yet it should not have been so
+hard, for, from certain signs in common, in the plan and in the deed, it
+was certain that all these outrages came from a single source.
+
+Colonel von Gramm had tried violence, and it had failed. Gold might be
+more successful. He published it abroad over the countryside that
+500frs. would be paid for information. There was no response. Then
+800frs. The peasants were incorruptible. Then, goaded on by a murdered
+corporal, he rose to a thousand, and so bought the soul of Francois
+Rejane, farm labourer, whose Norman avarice was a stronger passion than
+his French hatred.
+
+“You say that you know who did these crimes?” asked the Prussian
+colonel, eyeing with loathing the blue-bloused, rat-faced creature
+before him.
+
+“Yes, colonel.”
+
+“And it was--?”
+
+“Those thousand francs, colonel--”
+
+“Not a sou until your story has been tested. Come! Who is it who has
+murdered my men?”
+
+“It is Count Eustace of Chateau Noir.”
+
+“You lie!” cried the colonel, angrily. “A gentleman and a nobleman
+could not have done such crimes.”
+
+The peasant shrugged his shoulders. “It is evident to me that you do
+not know the count. It is this way, colonel. What I tell you is the
+truth, and I am not afraid that you should test it. The Count of
+Chateau Noir is a hard man, even at the best time he was a hard man.
+But of late he has been terrible. It was his son’s death, you know.
+His son was under Douay, and he was taken, and then in escaping from
+Germany he met his death. It was the count’s only child, and indeed we
+all think that it has driven him mad. With his peasants he follows the
+German armies. I do not know how many he has killed, but it is he who
+cut the cross upon the foreheads, for it is the badge of his house.”
+
+It was true. The murdered sentries had each had a saltire cross slashed
+across their brows, as by a hunting-knife. The colonel bent his stiff
+back and ran his forefinger over the map which lay upon the table.
+
+“The Chateau Noir is not more than four leagues,” he said.
+
+“Three and a kilometre, colonel.”
+
+“You know the place?”
+
+“I used to work there.”
+
+Colonel von Gramm rang the bell.
+
+“Give this man food and detain him,” said he to the sergeant.
+
+“Why detain me, colonel? I can tell you no more.”
+
+“We shall need you as guide.”
+
+“As guide? But the count? If I were to fall into his hands?
+Ah, colonel--”
+
+The Prussian commander waved him away. “Send Captain Baumgarten to me
+at once,” said he.
+
+The officer who answered the summons was a man of middle-age,
+heavy-jawed, blue-eyed, with a curving yellow moustache, and a brick-red
+face which turned to an ivory white where his helmet had sheltered it.
+He was bald, with a shining, tightly stretched scalp, at the back of
+which, as in a mirror, it was a favourite mess-joke of the subalterns to
+trim their moustaches. As a soldier he was slow, but reliable and
+brave. The colonel could trust him where a more dashing officer might
+be in danger.
+
+“You will proceed to Chateau Noir to-night, captain,” said he. “A guide
+has been provided. You will arrest the count and bring him back.
+If there is an attempt at rescue, shoot him at once.”
+
+“How many men shall I take, colonel?”
+
+“Well, we are surrounded by spies, and our only chance is to pounce upon
+him before he knows that we are on the way. A large force will attract
+attention. On the other hand, you must not risk being cut off.”
+
+“I might march north, colonel, as if to join General Goeben. Then I
+could turn down this road which I see upon your map, and get to Chateau
+Noir before they could hear of us. In that case, with twenty men--”
+
+“Very good, captain. I hope to see you with your prisoner to-morrow
+morning.”
+
+It was a cold December night when Captain Baumgarten marched out of Les
+Andelys with his twenty Poseners, and took the main road to the north
+west. Two miles out he turned suddenly down a narrow, deeply rutted
+track, and made swiftly for his man. A thin, cold rain was falling,
+swishing among the tall poplar trees and rustling in the fields on
+either side. The captain walked first with Moser, a veteran sergeant,
+beside him. The sergeant’s wrist was fastened to that of the French
+peasant, and it had been whispered in his ear that in case of an
+ambush the first bullet fired would be through his head. Behind them
+the twenty infantrymen plodded along through the darkness with their
+faces sunk to the rain, and their boots squeaking in the soft, wet clay.
+They knew where they were going, and why, and the thought upheld them,
+for they were bitter at the loss of their comrades. It was a cavalry
+job, they knew, but the cavalry were all on with the advance, and,
+besides, it was more fitting that the regiment should avenge its own
+dead men.
+
+It was nearly eight when they left Les Andelys. At half-past eleven
+their guide stopped at a place where two high pillars, crowned with some
+heraldic stonework, flanked a huge iron gate. The wall in which it had
+been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered
+above the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base. The
+Prussians made their way round it and advanced stealthily, under the
+shadow of a tunnel of oak branches, up the long avenue, which was still
+cumbered by the leaves of last autumn. At the top they halted and
+reconnoitred.
+
+The black chateau lay in front of them. The moon had shone out between
+two rain-clouds, and threw the old house into silver and shadow. It was
+shaped like an L, with a low arched door in front, and lines of small
+windows like the open ports of a man-of-war. Above was a dark roof,
+breaking at the corners into little round overhanging turrets, the whole
+lying silent in the moonshine, with a drift of ragged clouds blackening
+the heavens behind it. A single light gleamed in one of the lower
+windows.
+
+The captain whispered his orders to his men. Some were to creep to the
+front door, some to the back. Some were to watch the east, and some the
+west. He and the sergeant stole on tiptoe to the lighted window.
+
+It was a small room into which they looked, very meanly furnished.
+An elderly man, in the dress of a menial, was reading a tattered paper
+by the light of a guttering candle. He leaned back in his wooden chair
+with his feet upon a box, while a bottle of white wine stood with a
+half-filled tumbler upon a stool beside him. The sergeant thrust his
+needle-gun through the glass, and the man sprang to his feet with a
+shriek.
+
+“Silence, for your life! The house is surrounded, and you cannot
+escape. Come round and open the door, or we will show you no mercy when
+we come in.”
+
+“For God’s sake, don’t shoot! I will open it! I will open it!”
+He rushed from the room with his paper still crumpled up in his hand.
+An instant later, with a groaning of old locks and a rasping of bars,
+the low door swung open, and the Prussians poured into the stone-flagged
+passage.
+
+“Where is Count Eustace de Chateau Noir?”
+
+“My master! He is out, sir.”
+
+“Out at this time of night? Your life for a lie!”
+
+“It is true, sir. He is out!”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“I do not know.”
+
+“Doing what?”
+
+“I cannot tell. No, it is no use your cocking your pistol, sir. You
+may kill me, but you cannot make me tell you that which I do not know.”
+
+“Is he often out at this hour?”
+
+“Frequently.”
+
+“And when does he come home?”
+
+“Before daybreak.”
+
+Captain Baumgarten rasped out a German oath. He had had his journey
+for nothing, then. The man’s answers were only too likely to be true.
+It was what he might have expected. But at least he would search the
+house and make sure. Leaving a picket at the front door and another at
+the back, the sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of
+them--his shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the
+old tapestries and the low, oak-raftered ceilings. They searched the
+whole house, from the huge stone-flagged kitchen below to the
+dining-hall on the second floor, with its gallery for musicians, and
+its panelling black with age, but nowhere was there a living creature.
+Up above, in an attic, they found Marie, the elderly wife of the
+butler; but the owner kept no other servants, and of his own presence
+there was no trace.
+
+It was long, however, before Captain Baumgarten had satisfied himself
+upon the point. It was a difficult house to search. Thin stairs, which
+only one man could ascend at a time, connected lines of tortuous
+corridors. The walls were so thick that each room was cut off from its
+neighbour. Huge fireplaces yawned in each, while the windows were 6ft.
+deep in the wall. Captain Baumgarten stamped with his feet, tore down
+curtains, and struck with the pommel of his sword. If there were secret
+hiding-places, he was not fortunate enough to find them.
+
+“I have an idea,” said he, at last, speaking in German to the sergeant.
+“You will place a guard over this fellow, and make sure that he
+communicates with no one.”
+
+“Yes, captain.”
+
+“And you will place four men in ambush at the front and at the back. It
+is likely enough that about daybreak our bird may return to the nest.”
+
+“And the others, captain?”
+
+“Let them have their suppers in the kitchen. The fellow will serve you
+with meat and wine. It is a wild night, and we shall be better here
+than on the country road.”
+
+“And yourself, captain?”
+
+“I will take my supper up here in the dining-hall. The logs are laid
+and we can light the fire. You will call me if there is any alarm.
+What can you give me for supper--you?”
+
+“Alas, monsieur, there was a time when I might have answered, ‘What you
+wish!’ but now it is all that we can do to find a bottle of new claret
+and a cold pullet.”
+
+“That will do very well. Let a guard go about with him, sergeant, and
+let him feel the end of a bayonet if he plays us any tricks.”
+
+Captain Baumgarten was an old campaigner. In the Eastern provinces, and
+before that in Bohemia, he had learned the art of quartering himself
+upon the enemy. While the butler brought his supper he occupied himself
+in making his preparations for a comfortable night. He lit the
+candelabrum of ten candles upon the centre table. The fire was already
+burning up, crackling merrily, and sending spurts of blue, pungent smoke
+into the room. The captain walked to the window and looked out.
+The moon had gone in again, and it was raining heavily. He could hear
+the deep sough of the wind, and see the dark loom of the trees, all
+swaying in the one direction. It was a sight which gave a zest to his
+comfortable quarters, and to the cold fowl and the bottle of wine which
+the butler had brought up for him. He was tired and hungry after his
+long tramp, so he threw his sword, his helmet, and his revolver-belt
+down upon a chair, and fell to eagerly upon his supper. Then, with his
+glass of wine before him and his cigar between his lips, he tilted his
+chair back and looked about him.
+
+He sat within a small circle of brilliant light which gleamed upon his
+silver shoulder-straps, and threw out his terra-cotta face, his heavy
+eyebrows, and his yellow moustache. But outside that circle things were
+vague and shadowy in the old dining-hall. Two sides were oak-panelled
+and two were hung with faded tapestry, across which huntsmen and dogs
+and stags were still dimly streaming. Above the fireplace were rows of
+heraldic shields with the blazonings of the family and of its alliances,
+the fatal saltire cross breaking out on each of them.
+
+Four paintings of old seigneurs of Chateau Noir faced the fireplace, all
+men with hawk noses and bold, high features, so like each other that
+only the dress could distinguish the Crusader from the Cavalier of the
+Fronde. Captain Baumgarten, heavy with his repast, lay back in his
+chair looking up at them through the clouds of his tobacco smoke, and
+pondering over the strange chance which had sent him, a man from the
+Baltic coast, to eat his supper in the ancestral hall of these proud
+Norman chieftains. But the fire was hot, and the captain’s eyes were
+heavy. His chin sank slowly upon his chest, and the ten candles gleamed
+upon the broad, white scalp.
+
+Suddenly a slight noise brought him to his feet. For an instant it
+seemed to his dazed senses that one of the pictures opposite had walked
+from its frame. There, beside the table, and almost within arm’s length
+of him, was standing a huge man, silent, motionless, with no sign of
+life save his fierce-glinting eyes. He was black-haired, olive-skinned,
+with a pointed tuft of black beard, and a great, fierce nose, towards
+which all his features seemed to run. His cheeks were wrinkled like a
+last year’s apple, but his sweep of shoulder, and bony, corded hands,
+told of a strength which was unsapped by age. His arms were folded
+across his arching chest, and his mouth was set in a fixed smile.
+
+“Pray do not trouble yourself to look for your weapons,” he said, as the
+Prussian cast a swift glance at the empty chair in which they had been
+laid. “You have been, if you will allow me to say so, a little
+indiscreet to make yourself so much at home in a house every wall of
+which is honeycombed with secret passages. You will be amused to hear
+that forty men were watching you at your supper. Ah! what then?”
+
+Captain Baumgarten had taken a step forward with clenched fists.
+The Frenchman held up the revolver which he grasped in his right hand,
+while with the left he hurled the German back into his chair.
+
+“Pray keep your seat,” said he. “You have no cause to trouble about
+your men. They have already been provided for. It is astonishing with
+these stone floors how little one can hear what goes on beneath.
+You have been relieved of your command, and have now only to think of
+yourself. May I ask what your name is?”
+
+“I am Captain Baumgarten of the 24th Posen Regiment.”
+
+“Your French is excellent, though you incline, like most of your
+countrymen, to turn the ‘p’ into a ‘b.’ I have been amused to hear them
+cry ‘_Avez bitie sur moi!_’ You know, doubtless, who it is who addresses
+you.”
+
+“The Count of Chateau Noir.”
+
+“Precisely. It would have been a misfortune if you had visited my
+chateau and I had been unable to have a word with you. I have had to do
+with many German soldiers, but never with an officer before. I have
+much to talk to you about.”
+
+Captain Baumgarten sat still in his chair. Brave as he was, there was
+something in this man’s manner which made his skin creep with
+apprehension. His eyes glanced to right and to left, but his weapons
+were gone, and in a struggle he saw that he was but a child to this
+gigantic adversary. The count had picked up the claret bottle and held
+it to the light.
+
+“Tut! tut!” said he. “And was this the best that Pierre could do for
+you? I am ashamed to look you in the face, Captain Baumgarten. We must
+improve upon this.”
+
+He blew a call upon a whistle which hung from his shooting-jacket.
+The old manservant was in the room in an instant.
+
+“Chambertin from bin 15!” he cried, and a minute later a grey bottle,
+streaked with cobwebs, was carried in as a nurse bears an infant.
+The count filled two glasses to the brim.
+
+“Drink!” said he. “It is the very best in my cellars, and not to be
+matched between Rouen and Paris. Drink, sir, and be happy! There are
+cold joints below. There are two lobsters, fresh from Honfleur. Will
+you not venture upon a second and more savoury supper?”
+
+The German officer shook his head. He drained the glass, however, and
+his host filled it once more, pressing him to give an order for this or
+that dainty.
+
+“There is nothing in my house which is not at your disposal. You have
+but to say the word. Well, then, you will allow me to tell you a story
+while you drink your wine. I have so longed to tell it to some
+German officer. It is about my son, my only child, Eustace, who was
+taken and died in escaping. It is a curious little story, and I think
+that I can promise you that you will never forget it.
+
+“You must know, then, that my boy was in the artillery--a fine young
+fellow, Captain Baumgarten, and the pride of his mother. She died
+within a week of the news of his death reaching us. It was brought by a
+brother officer who was at his side throughout, and who escaped while my
+lad died. I want to tell you all that he told me.
+
+“Eustace was taken at Weissenburg on the 4th of August. The prisoners
+were broken up into parties, and sent back into Germany by different
+routes. Eustace was taken upon the 5th to a village called Lauterburg,
+where he met with kindness from the German officer in command.
+This good colonel had the hungry lad to supper, offered him the best he
+had, opened a bottle of good wine, as I have tried to do for you, and
+gave him a cigar from his own case. Might I entreat you to take one
+from mine?”
+
+The German again shook his head. His horror of his companion had
+increased as he sat watching the lips that smiled and the eyes that
+glared.
+
+“The colonel, as I say, was good to my boy. But, unluckily, the
+prisoners were moved next day across the Rhine into Ettlingen.
+They were not equally fortunate there. The officer who guarded them was
+a ruffian and a villain, Captain Baumgarten. He took a pleasure in
+humiliating and ill-treating the brave men who had fallen into his
+power. That night, upon my son answering fiercely back to some taunt of
+his, he struck him in the eye, like this!”
+
+The crash of the blow rang through the hall. The German’s face fell
+forward, his hand up, and blood oozing through his fingers. The count
+settled down in his chair once more.
+
+“My boy was disfigured by the blow, and this villain made his appearance
+the object of his jeers. By the way, you look a little comical yourself
+at the present moment, captain, and your colonel would certainly say
+that you had been getting into mischief. To continue, however, my boy’s
+youth and his destitution--for his pockets were empty--moved the pity of
+a kind-hearted major, and he advanced him ten Napoleons from his own
+pocket without security of any kind. Into your hands, Captain
+Baumgarten, I return these ten gold pieces, since I cannot learn the
+name of the lender. I am grateful from my heart for this kindness shown
+to my boy.
+
+“The vile tyrant who commanded the escort accompanied the prisoners to
+Durlack, and from there to Carlsruhe. He heaped every outrage upon my
+lad, because the spirit of the Chateau Noirs would not stoop to turn
+away his wrath by a feigned submission. Ay, this cowardly villain,
+whose heart’s blood shall yet clot upon this hand, dared to strike my
+son with his open hand, to kick him, to tear hairs from his moustache--
+to use him thus--and thus--and thus!”
+
+The German writhed and struggled. He was helpless in the hands of this
+huge giant whose blows were raining upon him. When at last, blinded and
+half-senseless, he staggered to his feet, it was only to be hurled back
+again into the great oaken chair. He sobbed in his impotent anger and
+shame.
+
+“My boy was frequently moved to tears by the humiliation of his
+position,” continued the count. “You will understand me when I say that
+it is a bitter thing to be helpless in the hands of an insolent and
+remorseless enemy. On arriving at Carlsruhe, however, his face, which
+had been wounded by the brutality of his guard, was bound up by a young
+Bavarian subaltern who was touched by his appearance. I regret to see
+that your eye is bleeding so. Will you permit me to bind it with my
+silk handkerchief?”
+
+He leaned forward, but the German dashed his hand aside.
+
+“I am in your power, you monster!” he cried; “I can endure your
+brutalities, but not your hypocrisy.”
+
+The count shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I am taking things in their order, just as they occurred,” said he.
+“I was under vow to tell it to the first German officer with whom I
+could talk _tete-a-tete_. Let me see, I had got as far as the young
+Bavarian at Carlsruhe. I regret extremely that you will not permit me
+to use such slight skill in surgery as I possess. At Carlsruhe, my lad
+was shut up in the old caserne, where he remained for a fortnight.
+The worst pang of his captivity was that some unmannerly curs in the
+garrison would taunt him with his position as he sat by his window in
+the evening. That reminds me, captain, that you are not quite situated
+upon a bed of roses yourself, are you now? You came to trap a wolf, my
+man, and now the beast has you down with his fangs in your throat.
+A family man, too, I should judge, by that well-filled tunic. Well, a
+widow the more will make little matter, and they do not usually remain
+widows long. Get back into the chair, you dog!
+
+“Well, to continue my story--at the end of a fortnight my son and his
+friend escaped. I need not trouble you with the dangers which they ran,
+or with the privations which they endured. Suffice it that to disguise
+themselves they had to take the clothes of two peasants, whom they
+waylaid in a wood. Hiding by day and travelling by night, they had got
+as far into France as Remilly, and were within a mile--a single mile,
+captain--of crossing the German lines when a patrol of Uhlans came right
+upon them. Ah! it was hard, was it not, when they had come so far and
+were so near to safety?” The count blew a double call upon his whistle,
+and three hard-faced peasants entered the room.
+
+“These must represent my Uhlans,” said he. “Well, then, the captain in
+command, finding that these men were French soldiers in civilian dress
+within the German lines, proceeded to hang them without trial or
+ceremony. I think, Jean, that the centre beam is the strongest.”
+
+The unfortunate soldier was dragged from his chair to where a noosed
+rope had been flung over one of the huge oaken rafters which spanned the
+room. The cord was slipped over his head, and he felt its harsh grip
+round his throat. The three peasants seized the other end, and looked
+to the count for his orders. The officer, pale, but firm, folded his
+arms and stared defiantly at the man who tortured him.
+
+“You are now face to face with death, and I perceive from your lips
+that you are praying. My son was also face to face with death, and he
+prayed, also. It happened that a general officer came up, and he heard
+the lad praying for his mother, and it moved him so--he being himself
+a father--that he ordered his Uhlans away, and he remained with his
+aide-de-camp only, beside the condemned men. And when he heard all the
+lad had to tell--that he was the only child of an old family, and that
+his mother was in failing health--he threw off the rope as I throw off
+this, and he kissed him on either cheek, as I kiss you, and he bade him
+go, as I bid you go, and may every kind wish of that noble general,
+though it could not stave off the fever which slew my son, descend now
+upon your head.”
+
+And so it was that Captain Baumgarten, disfigured, blinded, and
+bleeding, staggered out into the wind and the rain of that wild
+December dawn.
+
+
+
+
+THE STRIPED CHEST
+
+
+“What do you make of her, Allardyce?” I asked.
+
+My second mate was standing beside me upon the poop, with his short,
+thick legs astretch, for the gale had left a considerable swell behind
+it, and our two quarter-boats nearly touched the water with every roll.
+He steadied his glass against the mizzen-shrouds, and he looked long and
+hard at this disconsolate stranger every time she came reeling up on to
+the crest of a roller and hung balanced for a few seconds before
+swooping down upon the other side. She lay so low in the water that I
+could only catch an occasional glimpse of a pea-green line of bulwark.
+She was a brig, but her mainmast had been snapped short off some 10ft.
+above the deck, and no effort seemed to have been made to cut away the
+wreckage, which floated, sails and yards, like the broken wing of a
+wounded gull upon the water beside her. The foremast was still
+standing, but the foretopsail was flying loose, and the headsails were
+streaming out in long, white pennons in front of her. Never have I seen
+a vessel which appeared to have gone through rougher handling. But we
+could not be surprised at that, for there had been times during the last
+three days when it was a question whether our own barque would ever see
+land again. For thirty-six hours we had kept her nose to it, and if the
+_Mary Sinclair_ had not been as good a seaboat as ever left the Clyde,
+we could not have gone through. And yet here we were at the end of it
+with the loss only of our gig and of part of the starboard bulwark.
+It did not astonish us, however, when the smother had cleared away, to
+find that others had been less lucky, and that this mutilated brig
+staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky, had been
+left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the terror
+which is past. Allardyce, who was a slow and methodical Scotchman,
+stared long and hard at the little craft, while our seamen lined the
+bulwark or clustered upon the fore shrouds to have a view of the
+stranger. In latitude 20 degrees and longitude 10 degrees, which were
+about our bearings, one becomes a little curious as to whom one meets,
+for one has left the main lines of Atlantic commerce to the north.
+For ten days we had been sailing over a solitary sea.
+
+“She’s derelict, I’m thinking,” said the second mate.
+
+I had come to the same conclusion, for I could see no signs of life
+upon her deck, and there was no answer to the friendly wavings from our
+seamen. The crew had probably deserted her under the impression that
+she was about to founder.
+
+“She can’t last long,” continued Allardyce, in his measured way.
+“She may put her nose down and her tail up any minute. The water’s
+lipping up to the edge of her rail.”
+
+“What’s her flag?” I asked.
+
+“I’m trying to make out. It’s got all twisted and tangled with the
+halyards. Yes, I’ve got it now, clear enough. It’s the Brazilian flag,
+but it’s wrong side up.”
+
+She had hoisted a signal of distress, then, before her people had
+abandoned her. Perhaps they had only just gone. I took the mate’s
+glass and looked round over the tumultuous face of the deep blue
+Atlantic, still veined and starred with white lines and spoutings of
+foam. But nowhere could I see anything human beyond ourselves.
+
+“There may be living men aboard,” said I.
+
+“There may be salvage,” muttered the second mate.
+
+“Then we will run down upon her lee side, and lie to.” We were not more
+than a hundred yards from her when we swung our foreyard aback, and
+there we were, the barque and the brig, ducking and bowing like two
+clowns in a dance.
+
+“Drop one of the quarter-boats,” said I. “Take four men, Mr. Allardyce,
+and see what you can learn of her.”
+
+But just at that moment my first officer, Mr. Armstrong, came on deck,
+for seven bells had struck, and it was but a few minutes off his watch.
+It would interest me to go myself to this abandoned vessel and to see
+what there might be aboard of her. So, with a word to Armstrong, I
+swung myself over the side, slipped down the falls, and took my place in
+the sheets of the boat.
+
+It was but a little distance, but it took some time to traverse, and so
+heavy was the roll that often when we were in the trough of the sea, we
+could not see either the barque which we had left or the brig which we
+were approaching. The sinking sun did not penetrate down there, and it
+was cold and dark in the hollows of the waves, but each passing billow
+heaved us up into the warmth and the sunshine once more. At each of
+these moments, as we hung upon a white-capped ridge between the two dark
+valleys, I caught a glimpse of the long, pea-green line, and the nodding
+foremast of the brig, and I steered so as to come round by her stern, so
+that we might determine which was the best way of boarding her. As we
+passed her we saw the name _Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria_ painted across
+her dripping counter.
+
+“The weather side, sir,” said the second mate. “Stand by with the
+boat-hook, carpenter!” An instant later we had jumped over the
+bulwarks, which were hardly higher than our boat, and found ourselves
+upon the deck of the abandoned vessel. Our first thought was to provide
+for our own safety in case--as seemed very probable--the vessel should
+settle down beneath our feet. With this object two of our men held on
+to the painter of the boat, and fended her off from the vessel’s side,
+so that she might be ready in case we had to make a hurried retreat.
+The carpenter was sent to find out how much water there was, and whether
+it was still gaming, while the other seaman, Allardyce and myself, made
+a rapid inspection of the vessel and her cargo.
+
+The deck was littered with wreckage and with hen-coops, in which the
+dead birds were washing about. The boats were gone, with the exception
+of one, the bottom of which had been stove, and it was certain that the
+crew had abandoned the vessel. The cabin was in a deck-house, one side
+of which had been beaten in by a heavy sea. Allardyce and I entered it,
+and found the captain’s table as he had left it, his books and papers--
+all Spanish or Portuguese--scattered over it, with piles of cigarette
+ash everywhere. I looked about for the log, but could not find it.
+
+“As likely as not he never kept one,” said Allardyce. “Things are
+pretty slack aboard a South American trader, and they don’t do more than
+they can help. If there was one it must have been taken away with him
+in the boat.”
+
+“I should like to take all these books and papers,” said I. “Ask the
+carpenter how much time we have.”
+
+His report was reassuring. The vessel was full of water, but some of
+the cargo was buoyant, and there was no immediate danger of her sinking.
+Probably she would never sink, but would drift about as one of those
+terrible unmarked reefs which have sent so many stout vessels to the
+bottom.
+
+“In that case there is no danger in your going below, Mr. Allardyce,”
+said I. “See what you can make of her and find out how much of her
+cargo may be saved. I’ll look through these papers while you are gone.”
+
+The bills of lading, and some notes and letters which lay upon the desk,
+sufficed to inform me that the Brazilian brig _Nossa Sehnora da
+Vittoria_ had cleared from Bahia a month before. The name of the
+captain was Texeira, but there was no record as to the number of the
+crew. She was bound for London, and a glance at the bills of lading was
+sufficient to show me that we were not likely to profit much in the way
+of salvage. Her cargo consisted of nuts, ginger, and wood, the latter
+in the shape of great logs of valuable tropical growths. It was these,
+no doubt, which had prevented the ill-fated vessel from going to the
+bottom, but they were of such a size as to make it impossible for us to
+extract them. Besides these, there were a few fancy goods, such as a
+number of ornamental birds for millinery purposes, and a hundred cases
+of preserved fruits. And then, as I turned over the papers, I came upon
+a short note in English, which arrested my attention.
+
+   It is requested (said the note) that the various old Spanish
+   and Indian curiosities, which came out of the Santarem
+   collection, and which are consigned to Prontfoot & Neuman
+   of Oxford Street, London, should be put in some place where
+   there may be no danger of these very valuable and unique articles
+   being injured or tampered with. This applies most particularly
+   to the treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, which must on
+   no account be placed where anyone can get at it.
+
+The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez! Unique and valuable articles!
+Here was a chance of salvage after all. I had risen to my feet with the
+paper in my hand when my Scotch mate appeared in the doorway.
+
+“I’m thinking all isn’t quite as it should be aboard of this ship,
+sir,” said he. He was a hard-faced man, and yet I could see that he had
+been startled.
+
+“What’s the matter?”
+
+“Murder’s the matter, sir. There’s a man here with his brains beaten
+out.”
+
+“Killed in the storm?” said I.
+
+“May be so, sir, but I’ll be surprised if you think so after you have
+seen him.”
+
+“Where is he, then?”
+
+“This way, sir; here in the maindeck house.”
+
+There appeared to have been no accommodation below in the brig, for
+there was the after-house for the captain, another by the main hatchway,
+with the cook’s galley attached to it, and a third in the forecastle for
+the men. It was to this middle one that the mate led me. As you
+entered, the galley, with its litter of tumbled pots and dishes, was
+upon the right, and upon the left was a small room with two bunks for
+the officers. Then beyond there was a place about 12ft. square, which
+was littered with flags and spare canvas. All round the walls were a
+number of packets done up in coarse cloth and carefully lashed to the
+woodwork. At the other end was a great box, striped red and white,
+though the red was so faded and the white so dirty that it was only
+where the light fell directly upon it that one could see the colouring.
+The box was, by subsequent measurement, 4ft. 3ins. in length, 3ft. 2ins.
+in height, and 3ft. across--considerably larger than a seaman’s chest.
+But it was not to the box that my eyes or my thoughts were turned as I
+entered the store-room. On the floor, lying across the litter of
+bunting, there was stretched a small, dark man with a short, curling
+beard. He lay as far as it was possible from the box, with his feet
+towards it and his head away. A crimson patch was printed upon the
+white canvas on which his head was resting, and little red ribbons
+wreathed themselves round his swarthy neck and trailed away on to the
+floor, but there was no sign of a wound that I could see, and his face
+was as placid as that of a sleeping child. It was only when I stooped
+that I could perceive his injury, and then I turned away with an
+exclamation of horror. He had been pole-axed; apparently by some person
+standing behind him. A frightful blow had smashed in the top of his
+head and penetrated deeply into his brains. His face might well be
+placid, for death must have been absolutely instantaneous, and the
+position of the wound showed that he could never have seen the person
+who had inflicted it.
+
+“Is that foul play or accident, Captain Barclay?” asked my second mate,
+demurely.
+
+“You are quite right, Mr. Allardyce. The man has been murdered--struck
+down from above by a sharp and heavy weapon. But who was he, and why
+did they murder him?”
+
+“He was a common seaman, sir,” said the mate. “You can see that if you
+look at his fingers.” He turned out his pockets as he spoke and brought
+to light a pack of cards, some tarred string, and a bundle of Brazilian
+tobacco.
+
+“Hello, look at this!” said he.
+
+It was a large, open knife with a stiff spring blade which he had picked
+up from the floor. The steel was shining and bright, so that we could
+not associate it with the crime, and yet the dead man had apparently
+held it in his hand when he was struck down, for it still lay within his
+grasp.
+
+“It looks to me, sir, as if he knew he was in danger and kept his knife
+handy,” said the mate. “However, we can’t help the poor beggar now.
+I can’t make out these things that are lashed to the wall. They seem
+to be idols and weapons and curios of all sorts done up in old sacking.”
+
+“That’s right,” said I. “They are the only things of value that we are
+likely to get from the cargo. Hail the barque and tell them to send the
+other quarter-boat to help us to get the stuff aboard.”
+
+While he was away I examined this curious plunder which had come into
+our possession. The curiosities were so wrapped up that I could only
+form a general idea as to their nature, but the striped box stood in a
+good light where I could thoroughly examine it. On the lid, which was
+clamped and cornered with metal-work, there was engraved a complex coat
+of arms, and beneath it was a line of Spanish which I was able to
+decipher as meaning, “The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, Knight
+of the Order of Saint James, Governor and Captain-General of Terra Firma
+and of the Province of Veraquas.” In one corner was the date, 1606, and
+on the other a large white label, upon which was written in English,
+“You are earnestly requested, upon no account, to open this box.”
+The same warning was repeated underneath in Spanish. As to the lock, it
+was a very complex and heavy one of engraved steel, with a Latin motto,
+which was above a seaman’s comprehension. By the time I had finished
+this examination of the peculiar box, the other quarter-boat with Mr.
+Armstrong, the first officer, had come alongside, and we began to carry
+out and place in her the various curiosities which appeared to be the
+only objects worth moving from the derelict ship. When she was full I
+sent her back to the barque, and then Allardyce and I, with the
+carpenter and one seaman, shifted the striped box, which was the only
+thing left, to our boat, and lowered it over, balancing it upon the two
+middle thwarts, for it was so heavy that it would have given the boat a
+dangerous tilt had we placed it at either end. As to the dead man, we
+left him where we had found him. The mate had a theory that, at the
+moment of the desertion of the ship, this fellow had started
+plundering, and that the captain, in an attempt to preserve discipline,
+had struck him down with a hatchet or some other heavy weapon.
+It seemed more probable than any other explanation, and yet it did not
+entirely satisfy me either. But the ocean is full of mysteries, and we
+were content to leave the fate of the dead seaman of the Brazilian brig
+to be added to that long list which every sailor can recall.
+
+The heavy box was slung up by ropes on to the deck of the _Mary
+Sinclair_, and was carried by four seamen into the cabin, where, between
+the table and the after-lockers, there was just space for it to stand.
+There it remained during supper, and after that meal the mates remained
+with me, and discussed over a glass of grog the event of the day.
+Mr. Armstrong was a long, thin, vulture-like man, an excellent seaman,
+but famous for his nearness and cupidity. Our treasure-trove had
+excited him greatly, and already he had begun with glistening eyes to
+reckon up how much it might be worth to each of us when the shares of
+the salvage came to be divided.
+
+“If the paper said that they were unique, Mr. Barclay, then they may be
+worth anything that you like to name. You wouldn’t believe the sums
+that the rich collectors give. A thousand pounds is nothing to them.
+We’ll have something to show for our voyage, or I am mistaken.”
+
+“I don’t think that,” said I. “As far as I can see, they are not very
+different from any other South American curios.”
+
+“Well, sir, I’ve traded there for fourteen voyages, and I have never
+seen anything like that chest before. That’s worth a pile of money,
+just as it stands. But it’s so heavy that surely there must be
+something valuable inside it. Don’t you think that we ought to open it
+and see?”
+
+“If you break it open you will spoil it, as likely as not,” said the
+second mate.
+
+Armstrong squatted down in front of it, with his head on one side, and
+his long, thin nose within a few inches of the lock.
+
+“The wood is oak,” said he, “and it has shrunk a little with age. If I
+had a chisel or a strong-bladed knife I could force the lock back
+without doing any damage at all.”
+
+The mention of a strong-bladed knife made me think of the dead seaman
+upon the brig.
+
+“I wonder if he could have been on the job when someone came to
+interfere with him,” said I.
+
+“I don’t know about that, sir, but I am perfectly certain that I could
+open the box. There’s a screwdriver here in the locker. Just hold the
+lamp, Allardyce, and I’ll have it done in a brace of shakes.”
+
+“Wait a bit,” said I, for already, with eyes which gleamed with
+curiosity and with avarice, he was stooping over the lid. “I don’t see
+that there is any hurry over this matter. You’ve read that card which
+warns us not to open it. It may mean anything or it may mean nothing,
+but somehow I feel inclined to obey it. After all, whatever is in it
+will keep, and if it is valuable it will be worth as much if it is
+opened in the owner’s offices as in the cabin of the _Mary Sinclair_.”
+
+The first officer seemed bitterly disappointed at my decision.
+
+“Surely, sir, you are not superstitious about it,” said he, with a
+slight sneer upon his thin lips. “If it gets out of our own hands, and
+we don’t see for ourselves what is inside it, we may be done out of our
+rights; besides--”
+
+“That’s enough, Mr. Armstrong,” said I, abruptly. “You may have every
+confidence that you will get your rights, but I will not have that box
+opened to-night.”
+
+“Why, the label itself shows that the box has been examined by
+Europeans,” Allardyce added. “Because a box is a treasure-box is no
+reason that it has treasures inside it now. A good many folk have had a
+peep into it since the days of the old Governor of Terra Firma.”
+
+Armstrong threw the screwdriver down upon the table and shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+“Just as you like,” said he; but for the rest of the evening, although
+we spoke upon many subjects, I noticed that his eyes were continually
+coming round, with the same expression of curiosity and greed, to the
+old striped box.
+
+And now I come to that portion of my story which fills me even now with
+a shuddering horror when I think of it. The main cabin had the rooms of
+the officers round it, but mine was the farthest away from it at the end
+of the little passage which led to the companion. No regular watch was
+kept by me, except in cases of emergency, and the three mates divided
+the watches among them. Armstrong had the middle watch, which ends at
+four in the morning, and he was relieved by Allardyce. For my part I
+have always been one of the soundest of sleepers, and it is rare for
+anything less than a hand upon my shoulder to arouse me.
+
+And yet I was aroused that night, or rather in the early grey of the
+morning. It was just half-past four by my chronometer when something
+caused me to sit up in my berth wide awake and with every nerve
+tingling. It was a sound of some sort, a crash with a human cry at the
+end of it, which still jarred on my ears. I sat listening, but all was
+now silent. And yet it could not have been imagination, that hideous
+cry, for the echo of it still rang in my head, and it seemed to have
+come from some place quite close to me. I sprang from my bunk, and,
+pulling on some clothes, I made my way into the cabin. At first I saw
+nothing unusual there. In the cold, grey light I made out the
+red-clothed table, the six rotating chairs, the walnut lockers, the
+swinging barometer, and there, at the end, the big striped chest. I was
+turning away, with the intention of going upon deck and asking the
+second mate if he had heard anything, when my eyes fell suddenly upon
+something which projected from under the table. It was the leg of a
+man--a leg with a long sea-boot upon it. I stooped, and there was a
+figure sprawling upon his face, his arms thrown forward and his body
+twisted. One glance told me that it was Armstrong, the first officer,
+and a second that he was a dead man. For a few moments I stood gasping.
+Then I rushed on to the deck, called Allardyce to my assistance, and
+came back with him into the cabin.
+
+Together we pulled the unfortunate fellow from under the table, and as
+we looked at his dripping head we exchanged glances, and I do not know
+which was the paler of the two.
+
+“The same as the Spanish sailor,” said I.
+
+“The very same. God preserve us! It’s that infernal chest! Look at
+Armstrong’s hand!”
+
+He held up the mate’s right hand, and there was the screwdriver which he
+had wished to use the night before.
+
+“He’s been at the chest, sir. He knew that I was on deck and you were
+asleep. He knelt down in front of it, and he pushed the lock back with
+that tool. Then something happened to him, and he cried out so that you
+heard him.”
+
+“Allardyce,” I whispered, “what _could_ have happened to him?”
+
+The second mate put his hand upon my sleeve and drew me into his cabin.
+
+“We can talk here, sir, and we don’t know who may be listening to us in
+there. What do you suppose is in that box, Captain Barclay?”
+
+“I give you my word, Allardyce, that I have no idea.”
+
+“Well, I can only find one theory which will fit all the facts. Look at
+the size of the box. Look at all the carving and metal-work which may
+conceal any number of holes. Look at the weight of it; it took four men
+to carry it. On top of that, remember that two men have tried to open
+it, and both have come to their end through it. Now, sir, what can it
+mean except one thing?”
+
+“You mean there is a man in it?”
+
+“Of course there is a man in it. You know how it is in these South
+American States, sir. A man may be president one week and hunted like a
+dog the next--they are for ever flying for their lives. My idea is that
+there is some fellow in hiding there, who is armed and desperate, and
+who will fight to the death before he is taken.”
+
+“But his food and drink?”
+
+“It’s a roomy chest, sir, and he may have some provisions stowed away.
+As to his drink, he had a friend among the crew upon the brig who saw
+that he had what he needed.”
+
+“You think, then, that the label asking people not to open the box was
+simply written in his interest?”
+
+“Yes, sir, that is my idea. Have you any other way of explaining the
+facts?”
+
+I had to confess that I had not.
+
+“The question is what we are to do?” I asked.
+
+“The man’s a dangerous ruffian, who sticks at nothing. I’m thinking it
+wouldn’t be a bad thing to put a rope round the chest and tow it
+alongside for half an hour; then we could open it at our ease. Or if we
+just tied the box up and kept him from getting any water maybe that
+would do as well. Or the carpenter could put a coat of varnish over it
+and stop all the blow-holes.”
+
+“Come, Allardyce,” said I, angrily. “You don’t seriously mean to say
+that a whole ship’s company are going to be terrorised by a single man
+in a box. If he’s there, I’ll engage to fetch him out!” I went to my
+room and came back with my revolver in my hand. “Now, Allardyce,” said
+I, “do you open the lock, and I’ll stand on guard.”
+
+“For God’s sake, think what you are doing, sir!” cried the mate. “Two
+men have lost their lives over it, and the blood of one not yet dry upon
+the carpet.”
+
+“The more reason why we should revenge him.”
+
+“Well, sir, at least let me call the carpenter. Three are better than
+two, and he is a good stout man.”
+
+He went off in search of him, and I was left alone with the striped
+chest in the cabin. I don’t think that I’m a nervous man, but I kept
+the table between me and this solid old relic of the Spanish Main.
+In the growing light of morning the red and white striping was beginning
+to appear, and the curious scrolls and wreaths of metal and carving
+which showed the loving pains which cunning craftsmen had expended upon
+it. Presently the carpenter and the mate came back together, the former
+with a hammer in his hand.
+
+“It’s a bad business, this, sir,” said he, shaking his head, as he
+looked at the body of the mate. “And you think there’s someone hiding
+in the box?”
+
+“There’s no doubt about it,” said Allardyce, picking up the screwdriver
+and setting his jaw like a man who needs to brace his courage.
+“I’ll drive the lock back if you will both stand by. If he rises let
+him have it on the head with your hammer, carpenter. Shoot at once,
+sir, if he raises his hand. Now!”
+
+He had knelt down in front of the striped chest, and passed the blade of
+the tool under the lid. With a sharp snick the lock flew back. “Stand
+by!” yelled the mate, and with a heave he threw open the massive top of
+the box. As it swung up we all three sprang back, I with my pistol
+levelled, and the carpenter with the hammer above his head. Then, as
+nothing happened, we each took a step forward and peeped in. The box
+was empty.
+
+Not quite empty either, for in one corner was lying an old yellow
+candlestick, elaborately engraved, which appeared to be as old as the
+box itself. Its rich yellow tone and artistic shape suggested that it
+was an object of value. For the rest there was nothing more weighty or
+valuable than dust in the old striped treasure-chest.
+
+“Well, I’m blessed!” cried Allardyce, staring blankly into it.
+“Where does the weight come in, then?”
+
+“Look at the thickness of the sides, and look at the lid. Why, it’s
+five inches through. And see that great metal spring across it.”
+
+“That’s for holding the lid up,” said the mate. “You see, it won’t lean
+back. What’s that German printing on the inside?”
+
+“It means that it was made by Johann Rothstein of Augsburg, in 1606.”
+
+“And a solid bit of work, too. But it doesn’t throw much light on what
+has passed, does it, Captain Barclay? That candlestick looks like gold.
+We shall have something for our trouble after all.”
+
+He leant forward to grasp it, and from that moment I have never doubted
+as to the reality of inspiration, for on the instant I caught him by the
+collar and pulled him straight again. It may have been some story of
+the Middle Ages which had come back to my mind, or it may have been that
+my eye had caught some red which was not that of rust upon the upper
+part of the lock, but to him and to me it will always seem an
+inspiration, so prompt and sudden was my action.
+
+“There’s devilry here,” said I. “Give me the crooked stick from the
+corner.”
+
+It was an ordinary walking-cane with a hooked top. I passed it over the
+candlestick and gave it a pull. With a flash a row of polished steel
+fangs shot out from below the upper lip, and the great striped chest
+snapped at us like a wild animal. Clang came the huge lid into its
+place, and the glasses on the swinging rack sang and tinkled with the
+shock. The mate sat down on the edge of the table and shivered like a
+frightened horse.
+
+“You’ve saved my life, Captain Barclay!” said he.
+
+So this was the secret of the striped treasure-chest of old Don Ramirez
+di Leyra, and this was how he preserved his ill-gotten gains from the
+Terra Firma and the Province of Veraquas. Be the thief ever so cunning
+he could not tell that golden candlestick from the other articles of
+value, and the instant that he laid hand upon it the terrible spring was
+unloosed and the murderous steel pikes were driven into his brain, while
+the shock of the blow sent the victim backward and enabled the chest to
+automatically close itself. How many, I wondered, had fallen victims to
+the ingenuity of the mechanic of Ausgburg? And as I thought of the
+possible history of that grim striped chest my resolution was very
+quickly taken.
+
+“Carpenter, bring three men, and carry this on deck.”
+
+“Going to throw it overboard, sir?”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Allardyce. I’m not superstitious as a rule, but there are
+some things which are more than a sailor can be called upon to stand.”
+
+“No wonder that brig made heavy weather, Captain Barclay, with such a
+thing on board. The glass is dropping fast, sir, and we are only just
+in time.”
+
+So we did not even wait for the three sailors, but we carried it out,
+the mate, the carpenter, and I, and we pushed it with our own hands over
+the bulwarks. There was a white spout of water, and it was gone. There
+it lies, the striped chest, a thousand fathoms deep, and if, as they
+say, the sea will some day be dry land, I grieve for the man who finds
+that old box and tries to penetrate into its secret.
+
+
+
+
+A SHADOW BEFORE
+
+
+The 15th of July, 1870, found John Worlington Dodds a ruined gamester of
+the Stock Exchange. Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man. And yet
+he had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish
+townlet of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter
+of the sum which he had earned during the single day that he was
+within its walls. There is a romance of finance yet to be written, a
+story of huge forces which are for ever waxing and waning, of bold
+operations, of breathless suspense, of agonised failure, of deep
+combinations which are baffled by others still more subtle. The mighty
+debts of each great European Power stand like so many columns of
+mercury, for ever rising and falling to indicate the pressure upon each.
+He who can see far enough into the future to tell how that ever-varying
+column will stand to-morrow is the man who has fortune within his grasp.
+
+John Worlington Dodds had many of the gifts which lead a speculator to
+success. He was quick in observing, just in estimating, prompt and
+fearless in acting. But in finance there is always the element of luck,
+which, however one may eliminate it, still remains, like the blank at
+roulette, a constantly present handicap upon the operator. And so it
+was that Worlington Dodds had come to grief. On the best advices he had
+dabbled in the funds of a South American Republic in the days before
+South American Republics had been found out. The Republic defaulted,
+and Dodds lost his money. He had bulled the shares of a Scotch railway,
+and a four months’ strike had hit him hard. He had helped to underwrite
+a coffee company in the hope that the public would come along upon the
+feed and gradually nibble away some of his holding, but the political
+sky had been clouded and the public had refused to invest. Everything
+which he had touched had gone wrong, and now, on the eve of his
+marriage, young, clear-headed, and energetic, he was actually a bankrupt
+had his creditors chosen to make him one. But the Stock Exchange is an
+indulgent body. What is the case of one to-day may be that of another
+to-morrow, and everyone is interested in seeing that the stricken man is
+given time to rise again. So the burden of Worlington Dodds was
+lightened for him; many shoulders helped to bear it, and he was able to
+go for a little summer tour into Ireland, for the doctors had ordered
+him rest and change of air to restore his shaken nervous system. Thus
+it was that upon the 15th of July, 1870, he found himself at his
+breakfast in the fly-blown coffee-room of the “George Hotel” in the
+market square of Dunsloe. It is a dull and depressing coffee-room, and
+one which is usually empty, but on this particular day it was as crowded
+and noisy as that of any London hotel. Every table was occupied, and a
+thick smell of fried bacon and of fish hung in the air. Heavily booted
+men clattered in and out, spurs jingled, riding-crops were stacked in
+corners, and there was a general atmosphere of horse. The conversation,
+too, was of nothing else. From every side Worlington Dodds heard of
+yearlings, of windgalls, of roarers, of spavins, of cribsuckers, of a
+hundred other terms which were as unintelligible to him as his own
+Stock Exchange jargon would have been to the company. He asked the
+waiter for the reason of it all, and the waiter was an astonished man
+that there should be any man in this world who did not know it.
+
+“Shure it’s the Dunsloe horse fair, your honour--the greatest
+horse-fair in all Oireland. It lasts for a wake, and the folk come from
+far an’ near--from England an’ Scotland an’ iverywhere. If you look out
+of the winder, your honour, you’ll see the horses, and it’s asy your
+honour’s conscience must be, or you wouldn’t slape so sound that the
+creatures didn’t rouse you with their clatter.”
+
+Dodds had a recollection that he had heard a confused murmur, which had
+interwoven itself with his dreams--a sort of steady rhythmic beating and
+clanking--and now, when he looked through the window, he saw the cause
+of it. The square was packed with horses from end to end--greys, bays,
+browns, blacks, chestnuts--young ones and old, fine ones and coarse,
+horses of every conceivable sort and size. It seemed a huge function
+for so small a town, and he remarked as much to the waiter.
+
+“Well, you see, your honour, the horses don’t live in the town, an’ they
+don’t vex their heads how small it is. But it’s in the very centre of
+the horse-bradin’ districts of Oireland, so where should they come to be
+sould if it wasn’t to Dunsloe?” The waiter had a telegram in his hand,
+and he turned the address to Worlington Dodds. “Shure I niver heard
+such a name, sorr. Maybe you could tell me who owns it?”
+
+Dodds looked at the envelope. Strellenhaus was the name. “No, I don’t
+know,” said he. “I never heard it before. It’s a foreign name.
+Perhaps if you were--”
+
+But at that moment a little round-faced, ruddy-cheeked gentleman, who
+was breakfasting at the next table, leaned forward and interrupted him.
+
+“Did you say a foreign name, sir?” said he.
+
+“Strellenhaus is the name.”
+
+“I am Mr. Strellenhaus--Mr. Julius Strellenhaus, of Liverpool. I was
+expecting a telegram. Thank you very much.”
+
+He sat so near that Dodds, without any wish to play the spy, could not
+help to some extent overlooking him as he opened the envelope.
+The message was a very long one. Quite a wad of melon-tinted paper came
+out from the tawny envelope. Mr. Strellenhaus arranged the sheets
+methodically upon the table-cloth in front of him, so that no eye but
+his own could see them. Then he took out a note-book, and, with an
+anxious face, he began to make entries in it, glancing first at the
+telegram and then at the book, and writing apparently one letter or
+figure at a time. Dodds was interested, for he knew exactly what the
+man was doing. He was working out a cipher. Dodds had often done it
+himself. And then suddenly the little man turned very pale, as if the
+full purport of the message had been a shock to him. Dodds had done
+that also, and his sympathies were all with his neighbors. Then the
+stranger rose, and, leaving his breakfast untasted, he walked out of the
+room.
+
+“I’m thinkin’ that the gintleman has had bad news, sorr,” said the
+confidential waiter.
+
+“Looks like it,” Dodds answered; and at that moment his thoughts were
+suddenly drawn off into another direction.
+
+The boots had entered the room with a telegram in his hand. “Where’s
+Mr. Mancune?” said he to the waiter.
+
+“Well, there are some quare names about. What was it you said?”
+
+“Mr. Mancune,” said the boots, glancing round him. “Ah, there he is!”
+and he handed the telegram to a gentleman who was sitting reading the
+paper in a corner.
+
+Dodds’s eyes had already fallen upon this man, and he had wondered
+vaguely what he was doing in such company. He was a tall, white-haired,
+eagle-nosed gentleman, with a waxed moustache and a carefully pointed
+beard--an aristocratic type which seemed out of its element among the
+rough, hearty, noisy dealers who surrounded him. This, then, was Mr.
+Mancune, for whom the second telegram was intended.
+
+As he opened it, tearing it open with a feverish haste, Dodds could
+perceive that it was as bulky as the first one. He observed also, from
+the delay in reading it, that it was also in some sort of cipher.
+The gentleman did not write down any translation of it, but he sat for
+some time with his nervous, thin fingers twitching amongst the hairs of
+his white beard, and his shaggy brows bent in the deepest and most
+absorbed attention whilst he mastered the meaning of it. Then he sprang
+suddenly to his feet, his eyes flashed, his cheeks flushed, and in his
+excitement he crumpled the message up in his hand. With an effort he
+mastered his emotion, put the paper into his pocket, and walked out of
+the room.
+
+This was enough to excite a less astute and imaginative man than
+Worlington Dodds. Was there any connection between these two messages,
+or was it merely a coincidence? Two men with strange names receive two
+telegrams within a few minutes of each other, each of considerable
+length, each in cipher, and each causing keen emotion to the man who
+received it. One turned pale. The other sprang excitedly to his feet.
+It might be a coincidence, but it was a very curious one. If it was not
+a coincidence, then what could it mean? Were they confederates who
+pretended to work apart, but who each received identical orders from
+some person at a distance? That was possible, and yet there were
+difficulties in the way. He puzzled and puzzled, but could find no
+satisfactory solution to the problem. All breakfast he was turning it
+over in his mind.
+
+When breakfast was over he sauntered out into the market square, where
+the horse sale was already in progress. The yearlings were being sold
+first--tall, long-legged, skittish, wild-eyed creatures, who had run
+free upon the upland pastures, with ragged hair and towsie manes, but
+hardy, inured to all weathers, and with the makings of splendid hunters
+and steeplechasers when corn and time had brought them to maturity.
+They were largely of thoroughbred blood, and were being bought by
+English dealers, who would invest a few pounds now on what they might
+sell for fifty guineas in a year, if all went well. It was legitimate
+speculation, for the horse is a delicate creature, he is afflicted with
+many ailments, the least accident may destroy his value, he is a certain
+expense and an uncertain profit, and for one who comes safely to
+maturity several may bring no return at all. So the English
+horse-dealers took their risks as they bought up the shaggy Irish
+yearlings. One man with a ruddy face and a yellow overcoat took them by
+the dozen, with as much _sang froid_ as if they had been oranges,
+entering each bargain in a bloated note-book. He bought forty or fifty
+during the time that Dodds was watching him.
+
+“Who is that?” he asked his neighbour, whose spurs and gaiters showed
+that he was likely to know.
+
+The man stared in astonishment at the stranger’s ignorance.
+“Why, that’s Jim Holloway, the great Jim Holloway,” said he; then,
+seeing by the blank look upon Dodds’s face that even this information
+had not helped him much, he went into details. “Sure he’s the head of
+Holloway & Morland, of London,” said he. “He’s the buying partner, and
+he buys cheap; and the other stays at home and sells, and he sells dear.
+He owns more horses than any man in the world, and asks the best money
+for them. I dare say you’ll find that half of what are sold at the
+Dunsloe fair this day will go to him, and he’s got such a purse that
+there’s not a man who can bid against him.”
+
+Worlington Dodds watched the doings of the great dealer with interest.
+He had passed on now to the two-year-olds and three-year-olds,
+full-grown horses, but still a little loose in the limb and weak in the
+bone. The London buyer was choosing his animals carefully, but having
+chosen them, the vigour of his competition drove all other bidders out
+of it. With a careless nod he would run the figure up five pounds at a
+time, until he was left in possession of the field. At the same time he
+was a shrewd observer, and when, as happened more than once, he believed
+that someone was bidding against him simply in order to run him up, the
+head would cease suddenly to nod, the note-book would be closed with a
+snap, and the intruder would be left with a purchase which he did not
+desire upon his hands. All Dodds’s business instincts were aroused by
+the tactics of this great operator, and he stood in the crowd watching
+with the utmost interest all that occurred.
+
+It is not to buy young horses, however, that the great dealers come
+to Ireland, and the real business of the fair commenced when the four
+and five-year-olds were reached; the full-grown, perfect horses,
+at their prime, and ready for any work or any fatigue. Seventy
+magnificent creatures had been brought down by a single breeder, a
+comfortable-looking, keen-eyed, ruddy-cheeked gentleman who stood
+beside the salesman and whispered cautions and precepts into his ear.
+
+“That’s Flynn of Kildare,” said Dodds’s informant. “Jack Flynn has
+brought down that string of horses, and the other large string over
+yonder belongs to Tom Flynn, his brother. The two of them together
+are the two first breeders in Ireland.” A crowd had gathered in
+front of the horses. By common consent a place had been made for Mr.
+Holloway, and Dodds could catch a glimpse of his florid face and yellow
+covert-coat in the front rank. He had opened his note-book, and was
+tapping his teeth reflectively with his pencil as he eyed the horses.
+
+“You’ll see a fight now between the first seller and the first buyer in
+the country,” said Dodds’s acquaintance. “They are a beautiful string,
+anyhow. I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t average five-and-thirty
+pound apiece for the lot as they stand.”
+
+The salesman had mounted upon a chair, and his keen, clean-shaven face
+overlooked the crowd. Mr. Jack Flynn’s grey whiskers were at his elbow,
+and Mr. Holloway immediately in front.
+
+“You’ve seen these horses, gentlemen,” said the salesman, with a
+backward sweep of his hand towards the line of tossing heads and
+streaming manes. “When you know that they are bred by Mr. Jack Flynn,
+at his place in Kildare, you will have a guarantee of their quality.
+They are the best that Ireland can produce, and in this class of horse
+the best that Ireland can produce are the best in the world, as every
+riding man knows well. Hunters or carriage horses, all warranted sound,
+and bred from the best stock. There are seventy in Mr. Jack Flynn’s
+string, and he bids me say that if any wholesale dealer would make one
+bid for the whole lot, to save time, he would have the preference over
+any purchaser.”
+
+There was a pause and a whisper from the crowd in front, with some
+expressions of discontent. By a single sweep all the small dealers had
+been put out of it. It was only a long purse which could buy on such a
+scale as that. The salesman looked round him inquiringly.
+
+“Come, Mr. Holloway,” said he, at last. “You didn’t come over here for
+the sake of the scenery. You may travel the country and not see such
+another string of horses. Give us a starting bid.”
+
+The great dealer was still rattling his pencil upon his front teeth.
+“Well,” said he, at last, “they _are_ a fine lot of horses, and I won’t
+deny it. They do you credit, Mr. Flynn, I am sure. All the same I
+didn’t mean to fill a ship at a single bid in this fashion. I like to
+pick and choose my horses.”
+
+“In that case Mr. Flynn is quite prepared to sell them in smaller lots,”
+said the salesman. “It was rather for the convenience of a wholesale
+customer that he was prepared to put them all up together. But if no
+gentleman wishes to bid--”
+
+“Wait a minute,” said a voice. “They are very fine horses, these, and I
+will give you a bid to start you. I will give you twenty pounds each
+for the string of seventy.”
+
+There was a rustle as the crowd all swayed their heads to catch a
+glimpse of the speaker. The salesman leaned forward. “May I ask your
+name, sir?”
+
+“Strellenhaus--Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool.”
+
+“It’s a new firm,” said Dodds’s neighbour. “I thought I knew them all,
+but I never heard of him before.”
+
+The salesman’s head had disappeared, for he was whispering with the
+breeder. Now he suddenly straightened himself again. “Thank you for
+giving us a lead, sir,” said he. “Now, gentlemen, you have heard the
+offer of Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool. It will give us a base to start
+from. Mr. Strellenhaus has offered twenty pounds a head.”
+
+“Guineas,” said Holloway.
+
+“Bravo, Mr. Holloway! I knew that you would take a hand. You are not
+the man to let such a string of horses pass away from you. The bid is
+twenty guineas a head.”
+
+“Twenty-five pounds,” said Mr. Strellenhaus.
+
+“Twenty-six.”
+
+“Thirty.”
+
+It was London against Liverpool, and it was the head of the trade
+against an outsider. Still, the one man had increased his bids by fives
+and the other only by ones. Those fives meant determination and also
+wealth. Holloway had ruled the market so long that the crowd was
+delighted at finding someone who would stand up to him.
+
+“The bid now stands at thirty pounds a head,” said the salesman.
+“The word lies with you, Mr. Holloway.”
+
+The London dealer was glancing keenly at his unknown opponent, and he
+was asking himself whether this was a genuine rival, or whether it was a
+device of some sort--an agent of Flynn’s perhaps--for running up the
+price. Little Mr. Strellenhaus, the same apple-faced gentleman whom
+Dodds had noticed in the coffee-room, stood looking at the horses with
+the sharp, quick glances of a man who knows what he is looking for.
+
+“Thirty-one,” said Holloway, with the air of a man who has gone to his
+extreme limit.
+
+“Thirty-two,” said Strellenhaus, promptly.
+
+Holloway grew angry at this persistent opposition. His red face flushed
+redder still.
+
+“Thirty-three!” he shouted.
+
+“Thirty-four,” said Strellenhaus.
+
+Holloway became thoughtful, and entered a few figures in his note-book.
+There were seventy horses. He knew that Flynn’s stock was always of the
+highest quality. With the hunting season coming on he might rely upon
+selling them at an average of from forty-five to fifty. Some of them
+might carry a heavy weight, and would run to three figures. On the
+other hand, there was the feed and keep of them for three months, the
+danger of the voyage, the chance of influenza or some of those other
+complaints which run through an entire stable as measles go through a
+nursery. Deducting all this, it was a question whether at the present
+price any profit would be left upon the transaction. Every pound that
+he bid meant seventy out of his pocket. And yet he could not submit to
+be beaten by this stranger without a struggle. As a business matter it
+was important to him to be recognised as the head of his profession.
+He would make one more effort, if he sacrificed his profit by doing so.
+
+“At the end of your rope, Mr. Holloway?” asked the salesman, with the
+suspicion of a sneer.
+
+“Thirty-five,” cried Holloway gruffly.
+
+“Thirty-six,” said Strellenhaus.
+
+“Then I wish you joy of your bargain,” said Holloway. “I don’t buy at
+that price, but I should be glad to sell you some.”
+
+Mr. Strellenhaus took no notice of the irony. He was still looking
+critically at the horses. The salesman glanced round him in a
+perfunctory way.
+
+“Thirty-six pounds bid,” said he. “Mr. Jack Flynn’s lot is going to Mr.
+Strellenhaus of Liverpool, at thirty-six pounds a head. Going--going--”
+
+“Forty!” cried a high, thin, clear voice.
+
+A buzz rose from the crowd, and they were all on tiptoe again, trying to
+catch a glimpse of this reckless buyer. Being a tall man, Dodds could
+see over the others, and there, at the side of Holloway, he saw the
+masterful nose and aristocratic beard of the second stranger in the
+coffee-room. A sudden personal interest added itself to the scene.
+He felt that he was on the verge of something--something dimly seen--
+which he could himself turn to account. The two men with strange names,
+the telegrams, the horses--what was underlying it all? The salesman was
+all animation again, and Mr. Jack Flynn was sitting up with his white
+whiskers bristling and his eyes twinkling. It was the best deal which
+he had ever made in his fifty years of experience.
+
+“What name, sir?” asked the salesman.
+
+“Mr. Mancune.”
+
+“Address?”
+
+“Mr. Mancune of Glasgow.”
+
+“Thank you for your bid, sir. Forty pounds a head has been bid by Mr.
+Mancune of Glasgow. Any advance upon forty?”
+
+“Forty-one,” said Strellenhaus.
+
+“Forty-five,” said Mancune.
+
+The tactics had changed, and it was the turn of Strellenhaus now to
+advance by ones, while his rival sprang up by fives. But the former was
+as dogged as ever.
+
+“Forty-six,” said he.
+
+“Fifty!” cried Mancune.
+
+It was unheard of. The most that the horses could possibly average at a
+retail price was as much as these men were willing to pay wholesale.
+
+“Two lunatics from Bedlam,” whispered the angry Holloway. “If I was
+Flynn I would see the colour of their money before I went any further.”
+
+The same thought had occurred to the salesman. “As a mere matter of
+business, gentlemen,” said he, “it is usual in such cases to put down a
+small deposit as a guarantee of _bona fides_. You will understand how I
+am placed, and that I have not had the pleasure of doing business with
+either of you before.”
+
+“How much?” asked Strellenhaus, briefly.
+
+“Should we say five hundred?”
+
+“Here is a note for a thousand pounds.”
+
+“And here is another,” said Mancune.
+
+“Nothing could be more handsome, gentlemen,” said the salesman. “It’s a
+treat to see such a spirited competition. The last bid was fifty pounds
+a head from Mancune. The word lies with you, Mr. Strellenhaus.”
+
+Mr. Jack Flynn whispered something to the salesman. “Quite so! Mr.
+Flynn suggests, gentlemen, that as you are both large buyers, it would,
+perhaps, be a convenience to you if he was to add the string of Mr. Tom
+Flynn, which consists of seventy animals of precisely the same quality,
+making one hundred and forty in all. Have you any objection, Mr.
+Mancune?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“And you, Mr. Strellenhaus?”
+
+“I should prefer it.”
+
+“Very handsome! Very handsome indeed!” murmured the salesman. “Then I
+understand, Mr. Mancune, that your offer of fifty pounds a head extends
+to the whole of these horses?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+A long breath went up from the crowd. Seven thousand pounds at one
+deal. It was a record for Dunsloe.
+
+“Any advance, Mr. Strellenhaus?”
+
+“Fifty-one.”
+
+“Fifty-five.”
+
+“Fifty-six.”
+
+“Sixty.”
+
+They could hardly believe their ears. Holloway stood with his mouth
+open, staring blankly in front of him. The salesman tried hard to look
+as if such bidding and such prices were nothing unusual. Jack Flynn of
+Kildare smiled benignly and rubbed his hands together. The crowd
+listened in dead silence.
+
+“Sixty-one,” said Strellenhaus. From the beginning he had stood without
+a trace of emotion upon his round face, like a little automatic figure
+which bid by clockwork. His rival was of a more excitable nature. His
+eyes were shining, and he was for ever twitching at his beard.
+
+“Sixty-five,” he cried.
+
+“Sixty-six.”
+
+“Seventy.”
+
+But the clockwork had run down. No answering bid came from Mr.
+Strellenhaus.
+
+“Seventy bid, sir.”
+
+Mr. Strellenhaus shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I am buying for another, and I have reached his limit,” said he.
+“If you will permit me to send for instructions--”
+
+“I am afraid, sir, that the sale must proceed.”
+
+“Then the horses belong to this gentleman.” For the first time he
+turned towards his rival, and their glances crossed like sword-blades.
+“It is possible that I may see the horses again.”
+
+“I hope so,” said Mr. Mancune; and his white, waxed moustache gave a
+feline upward bristle.
+
+So, with a bow, they separated. Mr. Strellenhaus walked, down to the
+telegraph-office, where his message was delayed because Mr. Worlington
+Dodds was already at the end of the wires, for, after dim guesses and
+vague conjecture, he had suddenly caught a clear view of this coming
+event which had cast so curious a shadow before it in this little Irish
+town. Political rumours, names, appearances, telegrams, seasoned horses
+at any price, there could only be one meaning to it. He held a secret,
+and he meant to use it.
+
+Mr. Warner, who was the partner of Mr. Worlington Dodds, and who was
+suffering from the same eclipse, had gone down to the Stock Exchange,
+but had found little consolation there, for the European system was in a
+ferment, and rumours of peace and of war were succeeding each other with
+such rapidity and assurance that it was impossible to know which to
+trust. It was obvious that a fortune lay either way, for every rumour
+set the funds fluctuating; but without special information it was
+impossible to act, and no one dared to plunge heavily upon the strength
+of newspaper surmise and the gossip of the street. Warner knew that an
+hour’s work might resuscitate the fallen fortunes of himself and his
+partner, and yet he could not afford to make a mistake. He returned to
+his office in the afternoon, half inclined to back the chances of peace,
+for of all war scares not one in ten comes to pass. As he entered the
+office a telegram lay upon the table. It was from Dunsloe, a place of
+which he had never heard, and was signed by his absent partner.
+The message was in cipher, but he soon translated it, for it was short
+and crisp.
+
+“I am a bear of everything German and French. Sell, sell, sell, keep on
+selling.”
+
+For a moment Warner hesitated. What could Worlington Dodds know at
+Dunsloe which was not known in Throgmorton Street? But he remembered
+the quickness and decision of his partner. He would not have sent such
+a message without very good grounds. If he was to act at all he must
+act at once, so, hardening his heart, he went down to the house, and,
+dealing upon that curious system by which a man can sell what he has not
+got, and what he could not pay for if he had it, he disposed of heavy
+parcels of French and German securities. He had caught the market in
+one of its little spasms of hope, and there was no lack of buying until
+his own persistent selling caused others to follow his lead, and so
+brought about a reaction. When Warner returned to his offices it took
+him some hours to work out his accounts, and he emerged into the streets
+in the evening with the absolute certainty that the next settling-day
+would leave him either hopelessly bankrupt or exceedingly prosperous.
+
+It all depended upon Worlington Dodds’s information. What could he
+possibly have found out at Dunsloe?
+
+And then suddenly he saw a newspaper boy fasten a poster upon a
+lamp-post, and a little crowd had gathered round it in an instant.
+One of them waved his hat in the air; another shouted to a friend across
+the street. Warner hurried up and caught a glimpse of the poster
+between two craning heads--
+
+           “FRANCE DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY.”
+
+“By Jove!” cried Warner. “Old Dodds was right, after all.”
+
+
+
+
+THE KING OF THE FOXES
+
+
+It was after a hunting dinner, and there were as many scarlet coats as
+black ones round the table. The conversation over the cigars had
+turned, therefore, in the direction of horses and horsemen, with
+reminiscences of phenomenal runs where foxes had led the pack from end
+to end of a county, and been overtaken at last by two or three limping
+hounds and a huntsman on foot, while every rider in the field had been
+pounded. As the port circulated the runs became longer and more
+apocryphal, until we had the whips inquiring their way and failing to
+understand the dialect of the people who answered them. The foxes, too,
+became more eccentric, and we had foxes up pollard willows, foxes which
+were dragged by the tail out of horses’ mangers, and foxes which had
+raced through an open front door and gone to ground in a lady’s
+bonnet-box. The master had told one or two tall reminiscences, and when
+he cleared his throat for another we were all curious, for he was a bit
+of an artist in his way, and produced his effects in a _crescendo_
+fashion. His face wore the earnest, practical, severely accurate
+expression which heralded some of his finest efforts.
+
+“It was before I was master,” said he. “Sir Charles Adair had the
+hounds at that time, and then afterwards they passed to old Lathom, and
+then to me. It may possibly have been just after Lathom took them over,
+but my strong impression is that it was in Adair’s time. That would be
+early in the seventies--about seventy-two, I should say.
+
+“The man I mean has moved to another part of the country, but I daresay
+that some of you can remember him. Danbury was the name--Walter
+Danbury, or Wat Danbury, as the people used to call him. He was the son
+of old Joe Danbury, of High Ascombe, and when his father died he came
+into a very good thing, for his only brother was drowned when the _Magna
+Charta_ foundered, so he inherited the whole estate. It was but a few
+hundred acres, but it was good arable land, and those were the great
+days of farming. Besides, it was freehold, and a yeoman farmer without
+a mortgage was a warmish man before the great fall in wheat came.
+Foreign wheat and barbed wire--those are the two curses of this country,
+for the one spoils the farmer’s work and the other spoils his play.
+
+“This young Wat Danbury was a very fine fellow, a keen rider, and a
+thorough sportsman, but his head was a little turned at having come,
+when so young, into a comfortable fortune, and he went the pace for a
+year or two. The lad had no vice in him, but there was a hard-drinking
+set in the neighbourhood at that time, and Danbury got drawn in among
+them; and, being an amiable fellow who liked to do what his friends were
+doing, he very soon took to drinking a great deal more than was good for
+him. As a rule, a man who takes his exercise may drink as much as he
+likes in the evening, and do himself no very great harm, if he will
+leave it alone during the day. Danbury had too many friends for that,
+however, and it really looked as if the poor chap was going to the bad,
+when a very curious thing happened which pulled him up with such a
+sudden jerk that he never put his hand upon the neck of a whisky bottle
+again.
+
+“He had a peculiarity which I have noticed in a good many other men,
+that though he was always playing tricks with his own health, he was
+none the less very anxious about it, and was extremely fidgety if ever
+he had any trivial symptom. Being a tough, open-air fellow, who was
+always as hard as a nail, it was seldom that there was anything amiss
+with him; but at last the drink began to tell, and he woke one morning
+with his hands shaking and all his nerves tingling like over-stretched
+fiddle-strings. He had been dining at some very wet house the night
+before, and the wine had, perhaps, been more plentiful than choice; at
+any rate, there he was, with a tongue like a bath towel and a head that
+ticked like an eight-day clock. He was very alarmed at his own
+condition, and he sent for Doctor Middleton, of Ascombe, the father of
+the man who practises there now.
+
+“Middleton had been a great friend of old Danbury’s, and he was very
+sorry to see his son going to the devil; so he improved the occasion by
+taking his case very seriously, and lecturing him upon the danger of his
+ways. He shook his head and talked about the possibility of _delirium
+tremens_, or even of mania, if he continued to lead such a life.
+Wat Danbury was horribly frightened.
+
+“‘Do you think I am going to get anything of the sort?’ he wailed.
+
+“‘Well, really, I don’t know,’ said the doctor gravely. ‘I cannot
+undertake to say that you are out of danger. Your system is very much
+out of order. At any time during the day you might have those grave
+symptoms of which I warn you.’
+
+“‘You think I shall be safe by evening?’
+
+“‘If you drink nothing during the day, and have no nervous symptoms
+before evening, I think you may consider yourself safe,’ the doctor
+answered. A little fright would, he thought, do his patient good, so he
+made the most of the matter.
+
+“‘What symptoms may I expect?’ asked Danbury.
+
+“‘It generally takes the form of optical delusions.’
+
+“‘I see specks floating all about.’
+
+“‘That is mere biliousness,’ said the doctor soothingly, for he saw that
+the lad was highly strung, and he did not wish to overdo it.
+‘I daresay that you will have no symptoms of the kind, but when they do
+come they usually take the shape of insects, or reptiles, or curious
+animals.’
+
+“‘And if I see anything of the kind?’
+
+“‘If you do, you will at once send for me;’ and so, with a promise of
+medicine, the doctor departed.
+
+“Young Wat Danbury rose and dressed and moped about the room feeling
+very miserable and unstrung, with a vision of the County Asylum for ever
+in his mind. He had the doctor’s word for it that if he could get
+through to evening in safety he would be all right; but it is not very
+exhilarating to be waiting for symptoms, and to keep on glancing at your
+bootjack to see whether it is still a bootjack or whether it has begun
+to develop antennae and legs. At last he could stand it no longer, and
+an overpowering longing for the fresh air and the green grass came over
+him. Why should he stay indoors when the Ascombe Hunt was meeting
+within half a mile of him? If he was going to have these delusions
+which the doctor talked of, he would not have them the sooner nor the
+worse because he was on horseback in the open. He was sure, too, it
+would ease his aching head. And so it came about that in ten minutes he
+was in his hunting-kit, and in ten more he was riding out of his
+stable-yard with his roan mare ‘Matilda’ between his knees. He was a
+little unsteady in his saddle just at first, but the farther he went the
+better he felt, until by the time he reached the meet his head was
+almost clear, and there was nothing troubling him except those haunting
+words of the doctor’s about the possibility of delusions any time before
+nightfall.
+
+“But soon he forgot that also, for as he came up the hounds were thrown
+off, and they drew the Gravel Hanger, and afterwards the Hickory Copse.
+It was just the morning for a scent--no wind to blow it away, no water
+to wash it out, and just damp enough to make it cling. There was a
+field of forty, all keen men and good riders, so when they came to the
+Black Hanger they knew that there would be some sport, for that’s a
+cover which never draws blank. The woods were thicker in those days
+than now, and the foxes were thicker also, and that great dark
+oak-grove was swarming with them. The only difficulty was to make them
+break, for it is, as you know, a very close country, and you must coax
+them out into the open before you can hope for a run.
+
+“When they came to the Black Hanger the field took their positions along
+the cover-side wherever they thought that they were most likely to get a
+good start. Some went in with the hounds, some clustered at the ends of
+the drives, and some kept outside in the hope of the fox breaking in
+that direction. Young Wat Danbury knew the country like the palm of his
+hand, so he made for a place where several drives intersected, and there
+he waited. He had a feeling that the faster and the farther he galloped
+the better he should be, and so he was chafing to be off. His mare,
+too, was in the height of fettle and one of the fastest goers in the
+county. Wat was a splendid lightweight rider--under ten stone with his
+saddle--and the mare was a powerful creature, all quarters and
+shoulders, fit to carry a lifeguardsman; and so it was no wonder that
+there was hardly a man in the field who could hope to stay with him.
+There he waited and listened to the shouting of the huntsman and the
+whips, catching a glimpse now and then in the darkness of the wood of a
+whisking tail, or the gleam of a white-and-tan side amongst the
+underwood. It was a well-trained pack, and there was not so much as a
+whine to tell you that forty hounds were working all round you.
+
+“And then suddenly there came one long-drawn yell from one of them, and
+it was taken up by another, and another, until within a few seconds the
+whole pack was giving tongue together and running on a hot scent.
+Danbury saw them stream across one of the drives and disappear upon the
+other side, and an instant later the three red coats of the hunt
+servants flashed after them upon the same line. He might have made a
+shorter cut down one of the other drives, but he was afraid of heading
+the fox, so he followed the lead of the huntsman. Right through the
+wood they went in a bee-line, galloping with their faces brushed by
+their horses’ manes as they stooped under the branches.
+
+“It’s ugly going, as you know, with the roots all wriggling about in the
+darkness, but you can take a risk when you catch an occasional glimpse
+of the pack running with a breast-high scent; so in and out they dodged
+until the wood began to thin at the edges, and they found themselves in
+the long bottom where the river runs. It is clear going there upon
+grassland, and the hounds were running very strong about two hundred
+yards ahead, keeping parallel with the stream. The field, who had come
+round the wood instead of going through, were coming hard over the
+fields upon the left; but Danbury, with the hunt servants, had a clear
+lead, and they never lost it.
+
+“Two of the field got on terms with them--Parson Geddes on a big
+seventeen-hand bay which he used to ride in those days, and Squire
+Foley, who rode as a feather-weight, and made his hunters out of cast
+thoroughbreds from the Newmarket sales; but the others never had a
+look-in from start to finish, for there was no check and no pulling, and
+it was clear cross-country racing from start to finish. If you had
+drawn a line right across the map with a pencil you couldn’t go
+straighter than that fox ran, heading for the South Downs and the sea,
+and the hounds ran as surely as if they were running to view, and yet
+from the beginning no one ever saw the fox, and there was never a hallo
+forrard to tell them that he had been spied. This, however, is not so
+surprising, for if you’ve been over that line of country you will know
+that there are not very many people about.
+
+“There were six of them then in the front row--Parson Geddes, Squire
+Foley, the huntsman, two whips, and Wat Danbury, who had forgotten all
+about his head and the doctor by this time, and had not a thought for
+anything but the run. All six were galloping just as hard as they could
+lay hoofs to the ground. One of the whips dropped back, however, as
+some of the hounds were tailing off, and that brought them down to five.
+Then Foley’s thoroughbred strained herself, as these slim-legged,
+dainty-fetlocked thoroughbreds will do when the going is rough, and he
+had to take a back seat. But the other four were still going strong,
+and they did four or five miles down the river flat at a rasping pace.
+It had been a wet winter, and the waters had been out a little time
+before, so there was a deal of sliding and splashing; but by the time
+they came to the bridge the whole field was out of sight, and these four
+had the hunt to themselves.
+
+“The fox had crossed the bridge--for foxes do not care to swim a chilly
+river any more than humans do--and from that point he had streaked away
+southward as hard as he could tear. It is broken country, rolling
+heaths, down one slope and up another, and it’s hard to say whether the
+up or the down is the more trying for the horses. This sort of
+switchback work is all right for a cobby, short-backed, short-legged
+little horse, but it is killing work for a big, long-striding hunter
+such as one wants in the Midlands. Anyhow, it was too much for Parson
+Geddes’ seventeen-hand bay, and though he tried the Irish trick--for he
+was a rare keen sportsman--of running up the hills by his horse’s head,
+it was all to no use, and he had to give it up. So then there were only
+the huntsman, the whip, and Wat Danbury--all going strong.
+
+“But the country got worse and worse and the hills were steeper and more
+thickly covered in heather and bracken. The horses were over their
+hocks all the time, and the place was pitted with rabbit-holes; but the
+hounds were still streaming along, and the riders could not afford to
+pick their steps. As they raced down one slope, the hounds were always
+flowing up the opposite one, until it looked like that game where the
+one figure in falling makes the other one rise.
+
+“But never a glimpse did they get of the fox, although they knew very
+well that he must be only a very short way ahead for the scent to be so
+strong. And then Wat Danbury heard a crash and a thud at his elbow, and
+looking round he saw a pair of white cords and top-boots kicking out of
+a tussock of brambles. The whip’s horse had stumbled, and the whip was
+out of the running. Danbury and the huntsman eased down for an instant;
+and then, seeing the man staggering to his feet all right, they turned
+and settled into their saddles once more.
+
+“Joe Clarke, the huntsman, was a famous old rider, known for five
+counties round; but he reckoned upon his second horse, and the second
+horses had all been left many miles behind. However, the one he was
+riding was good enough for anything with such a horseman upon his back,
+and he was going as well as when he started. As to Wat Danbury, he was
+going better. With every stride his own feelings improved, and the mind
+of the rider had its influence upon the mind of the horse. The stout
+little roan was gathering its muscular limbs under it, and stretching to
+the gallop as if it were steel and whale-bone instead of flesh and
+blood. Wat had never come to the end of its powers yet, and to-day he
+had such a chance of testing them as he had never had before.
+
+“There was a pasture country beyond the heather slopes, and for several
+miles the two riders were either losing ground as they fumbled with
+their crop-handles at the bars of gates, or gaining it again as they
+galloped over the fields. Those were the days before this accursed wire
+came into the country, and you could generally break a hedge where you
+could not fly it, so they did not trouble the gates more than they could
+help. Then they were down in a hard lane, where they had to slacken
+their pace, and through a farm where a man came shouting excitedly after
+them; but they had no time to stop and listen to him, for the hounds
+were on some ploughland, only two fields ahead. It was sloping upwards,
+that ploughland, and the horses were over their fetlocks in the red,
+soft soil.
+
+“When they reached the top they were blowing badly, but a grand valley
+sloped before them, leading up to the open country of the South Downs.
+Between, there lay a belt of pine-woods, into which the hounds were
+streaming, running now in a long, straggling line, and shedding one here
+and one there as they ran. You could see the white-and-tan dots here
+and there where the limpers were tailing away. But half the pack were
+still going well, though the pace and distance had both been
+tremendous--two clear hours now without a check.
+
+“There was a drive through the pine-wood--one of those green, slightly
+rutted drives where a horse can get the last yard out of itself, for the
+ground is hard enough to give him clean going and yet springy enough to
+help him. Wat Danbury got alongside of the huntsman and they galloped
+together with their stirrup-irons touching, and the hounds within a
+hundred yards of them.
+
+“‘We have it all to ourselves,’ said he.
+
+“‘Yes, sir, we’ve shook on the lot of ’em this time,’ said old Joe
+Clarke. ‘If we get this fox it’s worth while ’aving ’im skinned an’
+stuffed, for ’e’s a curiosity ’e is.’
+
+“‘It’s the fastest run I ever had in my life!’ cried Danbury.
+
+“‘And the fastest that ever I ’ad, an’ that means more,’ said the old
+huntsman. ‘But what licks me is that we’ve never ’ad a look at the
+beast. ’E must leave an amazin’ scent be’ind ’im when these ’ounds can
+follow ’im like this, and yet none of us have seen ’im when we’ve ’ad a
+clear ’alf mile view in front of us.’
+
+“‘I expect we’ll have a view of him presently,’ said Danbury; and in his
+mind he added, ‘at least, I shall,’ for the huntsman’s horse was gasping
+as it ran, and the white foam was pouring down it like the side of a
+washing-tub.
+
+“They had followed the hounds on to one of the side tracks which led out
+of the main drive, and that divided into a smaller track still, where
+the branches switched across their faces as they went, and there was
+barely room for one horse at a time. Wat Danbury took the lead, and he
+heard the huntsman’s horse clumping along heavily behind him, while his
+own mare was going with less spring than when she had started. She
+answered to a touch of his crop or spur, however, and he felt that there
+was something still left to draw upon. And then he looked up, and there
+was a heavy wooden stile at the end of the narrow track, with a lane of
+stiff young saplings leading down to it, which was far too thick to
+break through. The hounds were running clear upon the grassland on the
+other side, and you were bound either to get over that stile or lose
+sight of them, for the pace was too hot to let you go round.
+
+“Well, Wat Danbury was not the lad to flinch, and at it he went full
+split, like a man who means what he is doing. She rose gallantly to it,
+rapped it hard with her front hoof, shook him on to her withers,
+recovered herself, and was over. Wat had hardly got back into his
+saddle when there was a clatter behind him like the fall of a woodstack,
+and there was the top bar in splinters, the horse on its belly, and the
+huntsman on hands and knees half a dozen yards in front of him.
+Wat pulled up for an instant, for the fall was a smasher; but he saw old
+Joe spring to his feet and get to his horse’s bridle. The horse
+staggered up, but the moment it put one foot in front of the other, Wat
+saw that it was hopelessly lame--a slipped shoulder and a six weeks’
+job. There was nothing he could do, and Joe was shouting to him not to
+lose the hounds, so off he went again, the one solitary survivor of the
+whole hunt. When a man finds himself there, he can retire from
+fox-hunting, for he has tasted the highest which it has to offer.
+I remember once when I was out with the Royal Surrey--but I’ll tell you
+that story afterwards.
+
+“The pack, or what was left of them, had got a bit ahead during this
+time; but he had a clear view of them on the downland, and the mare
+seemed full of pride at being the only one left, for she was stepping
+out rarely and tossing her head as she went. They were two miles over
+the green shoulder of a hill, a rattle down a stony, deep-rutted country
+lane, where the mare stumbled and nearly came down, a jump over a 5ft.
+brook, a cut through a hazel copse, another dose of heavy ploughland, a
+couple of gates to open, and then the green, unbroken Downs beyond.
+
+“‘Well,’ said Wat Danbury to himself, ‘I’ll see this fox run into or I
+shall see it drowned, for it’s all clear going now between this and the
+chalk cliffs which line the sea.’ But he was wrong in that, as he
+speedily discovered. In all the little hollows of the downs at that
+part there are plantations of fir-woods, some of which have grown to a
+good size. You do not see them until you come upon the edge of the
+valleys in which they lie. Danbury was galloping hard over the short,
+springy turf when he came over the lip of one of these depressions, and
+there was the dark clump of wood lying in front of and beneath him.
+There were only a dozen hounds still running, and they were just
+disappearing among the trees. The sunlight was shining straight upon
+the long olive-green slopes which curved down towards this wood, and
+Danbury, who had the eyes of a hawk, swept them over this great expanse;
+but there was nothing moving upon it. A few sheep were grazing far up
+on the right, but there was no other sight of any living creature.
+He was certain then that he was very near to the end, for either the fox
+must have gone to ground in the wood or the hounds’ noses must be at his
+very brush. The mare seemed to know also what that great empty sweep of
+countryside meant, for she quickened her stride, and a few minutes
+afterwards Danbury was galloping into the fir-wood.
+
+“He had come from bright sunshine, but the wood was very closely
+planted, and so dim that he could hardly see to right or to left out of
+the narrow path down which he was riding. You know what a solemn,
+churchyardy sort of place a fir-wood is. I suppose it is the absence of
+any undergrowth, and the fact that the trees never move at all. At any
+rate a kind of chill suddenly struck Wat Danbury, and it flashed through
+his mind that there had been some very singular points about this run--
+its length and its straightness, and the fact that from the first find
+no one had ever caught a glimpse of the creature. Some silly talk which
+had been going round the country about the king of the foxes--a sort of
+demon fox, so fast that it could outrun any pack, and so fierce that
+they could do nothing with it if they overtook it--suddenly came back
+into his mind, and it did not seem so laughable now in the dim fir-wood
+as it had done when the story had been told over the wine and cigars.
+The nervousness which had been on him in the morning, and which he had
+hoped that he had shaken off, swept over him again in an overpowering
+wave. He had been so proud of being alone, and yet he would have given
+10 pounds now to have had Joe Clarke’s homely face beside him. And
+then, just at that moment, there broke out from the thickest part of the
+wood the most frantic hullabaloo that ever he had heard in his life.
+The hounds had run into their fox.
+
+“Well, you know, or you ought to know, what your duty is in such a case.
+You have to be whip, huntsman, and everything else if you are the first
+man up. You get in among the hounds, lash them off, and keep the brush
+and pads from being destroyed. Of course, Wat Danbury knew all about
+that, and he tried to force his mare through the trees to the place
+where all this hideous screaming and howling came from, but the wood was
+so thick that it was impossible to ride it. He sprang off, therefore,
+left the mare standing, and broke his way through as best he could with
+his hunting-lash ready over his shoulder.
+
+“But as he ran forward he felt his flesh go cold and creepy all over.
+He had heard hounds run into foxes many times before, but he had never
+heard such sounds as these. They were not the cries of triumph, but of
+fear. Every now and then came a shrill yelp of mortal agony. Holding
+his breath, he ran on until he broke through the interlacing branches,
+and found himself in a little clearing with the hounds all crowding
+round a patch of tangled bramble at the further end.
+
+“When he first caught sight of them the hounds were standing in a
+half-circle round this bramble patch, with their backs bristling and
+their jaws gaping. In front of the brambles lay one of them with his
+throat torn out, all crimson and white-and-tan. Wat came running out
+into the clearing, and at the sight of him the hounds took heart again,
+and one of them sprang with a growl into the bushes. At the same
+instant, a creature the size of a donkey jumped on to its feet, a huge
+grey head, with monstrous glistening fangs and tapering fox jaws, shot
+out from among the branches, and the hound was thrown several feet into
+the air, and fell howling among the cover. Then there was a clashing
+snap, like a rat-trap closing, and the howls sharpened into a scream and
+then were still.
+
+“Danbury had been on the look-out for symptoms all day, and now he had
+found them. He looked once more at the thicket, saw a pair of savage
+red eyes fixed upon him, and fairly took to his heels. It might only be
+a passing delusion, or it might be the permanent mania of which the
+doctor had spoken, but anyhow, the thing to do was to get back to bed
+and to quiet, and to hope for the best.
+
+“He forgot the hounds, the hunt, and everything else in his desperate
+fears for his own reason. He sprang upon his mare, galloped her madly
+over the downs, and only stopped when he found himself at a country
+station. There he left his mare at the inn, and made back for home as
+quickly as steam would take him. It was evening before he got there,
+shivering with apprehension, and seeing those red eyes and savage teeth
+at every turn. He went straight to bed and sent for Dr. Middleton.
+
+“‘I’ve got ’em, doctor,’ said he. ‘It came about exactly as you said--
+strange creatures, optical delusions, and everything. All I ask you now
+is to save my reason.’ The doctor listened to his story, and was
+shocked as he heard it.
+
+“‘It appears to be a very clear case,’ said he. ‘This must be a lesson
+to you for life.’
+
+“‘Never a drop again if I only come safely through this,’ cried Wat
+Danbury.
+
+“‘Well, my dear boy, if you will stick to that it may prove a blessing
+in disguise. But the difficulty in this case is to know where fact ends
+and fancy begins. You see, it is not as if there was only one delusion.
+There have been several. The dead dogs, for example, must have been one
+as well as the creature in the bush.’
+
+“‘I saw it all as clearly as I see you.’
+
+“‘One of the characteristics of this form of delirium is that what you
+see is even clearer than reality. I was wondering whether the whole run
+was not a delusion also.’
+
+“Wat Danbury pointed to his hunting boots still lying upon the floor,
+necked with the splashings of two counties.
+
+“‘Hum! that looks very real, certainly. No doubt, in your weak state,
+you over-exerted yourself and so brought this attack upon yourself.
+Well, whatever the cause, our treatment is clear. You will take the
+soothing mixture which I will send to you, and we shall put two leeches
+upon your temples to-night to relieve any congestion of the brain.’
+
+“So Wat Danbury spent the night in tossing about and reflecting what a
+sensitive thing this machinery of ours is, and how very foolish it is to
+play tricks with what is so easily put out of gear and so difficult to
+mend. And so he repeated and repeated his oath that this first lesson
+should be his last, and that from that time forward he would be a sober,
+hard-working yeoman as his father had been before him. So he lay,
+tossing and still repentant, when his door flew open in the morning and
+in rushed the doctor with a newspaper crumpled up in his hand.
+
+“‘My dear boy,’ he cried, ‘I owe you a thousand apologies. You’re the
+most ill-used lad and I the greatest numskull in the county. Listen to
+this!’ And he sat down upon the side of the bed, flattened out his
+paper upon his knee, and began to read.
+
+“The paragraph was headed, ‘Disaster to the Ascombe Hounds,’ and it went
+on to say that four of the hounds, shockingly torn and mangled, had been
+found in Winton Fir Wood upon the South Downs. The run had been so
+severe that half the pack were lamed; but the four found in the wood
+were actually dead, although the cause of their extraordinary injuries
+was still unknown.
+
+“‘So, you see,’ said the doctor, looking up, ‘that I was wrong when I
+put the dead hounds among the delusions.’
+
+“‘But the cause?’ cried Wat.
+
+“‘Well, I think we may guess the cause from an item which has been
+inserted just as the paper went to press:--
+
+   “Late last night, Mr. Brown, of Smither’s Farm, to the
+   east of Hastings, perceived what he imagined to be an enormous
+   dog worrying one of his sheep. He shot the creature, which
+   proves to be a grey Siberian wolf of the variety known as
+   _Lupus Giganticus_. It is supposed to have escaped from some
+   travelling menagerie.
+
+“That’s the story, gentlemen, and Wat Danbury stuck to his good
+resolutions, for the fright which he had cured him of all wish to run
+such a risk again; and he never touches anything stronger than
+lime-juice--at least, he hadn’t before he left this part of the country,
+five years ago next Lady Day.”
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS
+
+
+There was only the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that
+great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the
+bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole
+Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders
+which studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was
+beating down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims
+of the pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a
+blast-furnace. It had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were
+no larger than themselves.
+
+“Whew!” cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead, “you’d pay five shillings
+for this at the hummums.”
+
+“Precisely,” said Scott. “But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in
+a Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and
+a whole Christmas-treeful of things dangling from you. The hot-house at
+Kew is excellent as a conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon
+the horizontal bar. I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and a halt
+until evening.”
+
+Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward.
+Everywhere were the same black burned rocks and deep orange sand.
+At one spot only an intermittent line appeared to have been cut through
+the rugged spurs which ran down to the river. It was the bed of the old
+railway, long destroyed by the Arabs, but now in process of
+reconstruction by the advancing Egyptians. There was no other sign of
+man’s handiwork in all that desolate scene.
+
+“It’s palm trees or nothing,” said Scott.
+
+“Well, I suppose we must; and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the
+force up. What _would_ our editors say if we were late for the action?”
+
+“My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn’t need to be told that no sane
+modern general would ever attack until the Press is up.”
+
+“You don’t mean that?” said young Anerley. “I thought we were looked
+upon as an unmitigated nuisance.”
+
+“‘Newspaper correspondents and travelling gentlemen, and all that tribe
+of useless drones’--being an extract from Lord Wolseley’s ‘Soldier’s
+Pocket-Book,’” cried Scott. “We know all about _that_, Anerley;” and he
+winked behind his blue spectacles. “If there was going to be a battle
+we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up. I’ve been
+in fifteen, and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a
+reporter’s table.”
+
+“That’s very well; but the enemy may be less considerate,” said
+Mortimer.
+
+“They are not strong enough to force a battle.”
+
+“A skirmish, then?”
+
+“Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear. In that case we are just
+where we should be.”
+
+“So we are! What a score over Reuter’s man up with the advance!
+Well, we’ll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms.”
+
+There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies.
+Reuter’s was thirty miles ahead; two evening pennies upon camels were
+twenty miles behind. And among them they represented the eyes and ears
+of the public--the great silent millions and millions who had paid for
+everything, and who waited so patiently to know the result of their
+outlay.
+
+They were remarkable men these body-servants of the Press; two of them
+already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first
+campaign, and full of deference for his famous comrades.
+
+This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was
+Mortimer, of the _Intelligence_--tall, straight, and hawk-faced, with
+khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund, and
+a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled by
+the mosquito and the sand-fly. The other--small, quick, mercurial, with
+blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch for ever flicking in
+his left hand--was Scott, of the _Courier_, who had come through more
+dangers and brought off more brilliant _coups_ than any man in the
+profession, save the eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to
+take the field. They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and
+it was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship
+lay. Each dovetailed into the other. The strength of each was in the
+other’s weakness. Together they formed a perfect unit. Mortimer was
+Saxon--slow, conscientious, and deliberate; Scott was Celtic--quick,
+happy-go-lucky, and brilliant. Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the
+more attractive. Mortimer was the deeper thinker, Scott the brighter
+talker. By a curious coincidence, though each had seen much of warfare,
+their campaigns had never coincided. Together they covered all recent
+military history. Scott had done Plevna, the Shipka, the Zulus, Egypt,
+Suakim; Mortimer had seen the Boer War, the Chilian, the Bulgaria and
+Servian, the Gordon relief, the Indian frontier, Brazilian rebellion,
+and Madagascar. This intimate personal knowledge gave a peculiar
+flavour to their talk. There was none of the second-hand surmise and
+conjecture which form so much of our conversation; it was all concrete
+and final. The speaker had been there, had seen it, and there was an
+end of it.
+
+In spite of their friendship there was the keenest professional rivalry
+between the two men. Either would have sacrificed himself to help his
+companion, but either would also have sacrificed his companion to help
+his paper. Never did a jockey yearn for a winning mount as keenly as
+each of them longed to have a full column in a morning edition whilst
+every other daily was blank. They were perfectly frank about the
+matter. Each professed himself ready to steal a march on his neighbour,
+and each recognised that the other’s duty to his employer was far higher
+than any personal consideration.
+
+The third man was Anerley, of the _Gazette_--young, inexperienced, and
+rather simple-looking. He had a droop of the lip, which some of his
+more intimate friends regarded as a libel upon his character, and his
+eyes were so slow and so sleepy that they suggested an affectation.
+A leaning towards soldiering had sent him twice to autumn manoeuvres,
+and a touch of colour in his descriptions had induced the proprietors of
+the _Gazette_ to give him a trial as a war-special. There was a
+pleasing diffidence about his bearing which recommended him to his
+experienced companions, and if they had a smile sometimes at his
+guileless ways, it was soothing to them to have a comrade from whom
+nothing was to be feared. From the day that they left the
+telegraph-wire behind them at Sarras, the man who was mounted upon a
+15-guinea 13-4 Syrian was delivered over into the hands of the owners of
+the two fastest polo-ponies that ever shot down the Ghezireh ground.
+The three had dismounted and led their beasts under the welcome shade.
+In the brassy, yellow glare every branch above threw so black and solid
+a shadow that the men involuntarily raised their feet to step over
+them.
+
+“The palm makes an excellent hat-rack,” said Scott, slinging his
+revolver and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which
+bristle from the trunk. “As a shade tree, however, it isn’t an
+unqualified success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means
+to ends something a little less flimsy could not have been devised for
+the tropics.”
+
+“Like the banyan in India.”
+
+“Or the fine hardwood trees in Ashantee, where a whole regiment could
+picnic under the shade.”
+
+“The teak tree isn’t bad in Burmah, either. By Jove, the baccy has all
+come loose in the saddle-bag! That long-cut mixture smokes rather hot
+for this climate. How about the baggles, Anerley?”
+
+“They’ll be here in five minutes.”
+
+Down the winding path which curved among the rocks the little train of
+baggage-camels was daintily picking its way. They came mincing and
+undulating along, turning their heads slowly from side to side with the
+air of a self-conscious woman. In front rode the three Berberee
+body-servants upon donkeys, and behind walked the Arab camel-boys.
+They had been travelling for nine long hours, ever since the first
+rising of the moon, at the weary camel-drag of two and a half miles an
+hour, but now they brightened, both beasts and men, at the sight of the
+grove and the riderless horses. In a few minutes the loads were
+unstrapped, the animals tethered, a fire lighted, fresh water carried up
+from the river, and each camel-boy provided with his own little heap of
+tibbin laid in the centre of the table-cloth, without which no well-bred
+Arabian will condescend to feed. The dazzling light without, the
+subdued half-tones within, the green palm-fronds outlined against the
+deep blue sky, the flitting, silent-footed Arab servants, the crackling
+of sticks, the reek of a lighting fire, the placid supercilious heads of
+the camels, they all come back in their dreams to those who have known
+them.
+
+Scott was breaking eggs into a pan and rolling out a love-song in his
+rich, deep voice. Anerley, with his head and arms buried in a deal
+packing-case, was working his way through strata of tinned soups, bully
+beef, potted chicken, and sardines to reach the jams which lay beneath.
+The conscientious Mortimer, with his notebook upon his knee, was jotting
+down what the railway engineer had told him at the line-end the day
+before. Suddenly he raised his eyes and saw the man himself on his
+chestnut pony, dipping and rising over the broken ground.
+
+“Hullo! Here’s Merryweather!”
+
+“A pretty lather his pony is in! He’s had her at that hand-gallop for
+hours, by the look of her. Hullo, Merryweather, hullo!”
+
+The engineer, a small, compact man with a pointed red beard, had made as
+though he would ride past their camp without word or halt. Now he
+swerved, and easing his pony down to a canter, he headed her towards
+them.
+
+“For God’s sake, a drink!” he croaked. “My tongue is stuck to the roof
+of my mouth.”
+
+Mortimer ran with the water-bottle, Scott with the whisky-flask, and
+Anerley with the tin pannikin. The engineer drank until his breath
+failed him.
+
+“Well, I must be off,” said he, striking the drops from his red
+moustache.
+
+“Any news?”
+
+“A hitch in the railway construction. I must see the general.
+It’s the devil not having a telegraph.”
+
+“Anything we can report?” Out came three notebooks.
+
+“I’ll tell you after I’ve seen the general.”
+
+“Any dervishes?”
+
+“The usual shaves. Hud-up, Jinny! Good-bye!”
+
+With a soft thudding upon the sand, and a clatter among the stones the
+weary pony was off upon her journey once more.
+
+“Nothing serious, I suppose?” said Mortimer, staring after him.
+
+“Deuced serious,” cried Scott. “The ham and eggs are burned! No--it’s
+all right--saved, and done to a turn! Pull the box up, Anerley.
+Come on, Mortimer, stow that notebook! The fork is mightier than the
+pen just at present. What’s the matter with you, Anerley?”
+
+“I was wondering whether what we have just seen was worth a telegram.”
+
+“Well, it’s for the proprietors to say if it’s worth it. Sordid money
+considerations are not for us. We must wire about something just to
+justify our khaki coats and our putties.”
+
+“But what is there to say?”
+
+Mortimer’s long, austere face broke into a smile over the youngster’s
+innocence. “It’s not quite usual in our profession to give each other
+tips,” said he. “However, as my telegram is written, I’ve no objection
+to your reading it. You may be sure that I would not show it to you if
+it were of the slightest importance.”
+
+Anerley took up the slip of paper and read:--
+
+   Merryweather obstacles stop journey confer general stop nature
+   difficulties later stop rumours dervishes.
+
+“This is very condensed,” said Anerley, with wrinkled brows.
+
+“Condensed!” cried Scott. “Why, it’s sinfully garrulous. If my old man
+got a wire like that his language would crack the lamp-shades. I’d cut
+out half this; for example, I’d have out ‘journey,’ and ‘nature,’ and
+‘rumours.’ But my old man would make a ten-line paragraph of it for all
+that.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Well, I’ll do it myself just to show you. Lend me that stylo.” He
+scribbled for a minute in his notebook. “It works out somewhat on these
+lines”:--
+
+   Mr. Charles H. Merryweather, the eminent railway engineer,
+   who is at present engaged in superintending the construction
+   of the line from Sarras to the front, has met with considerable
+   obstacles to the rapid completion of his important task--
+
+“Of course the old man knows who Merryweather is, and what he is about,
+so the word ‘obstacles’ would suggest all that to him.”
+
+   He has to-day been compelled to make a journey of forty
+   miles to the front, in order to confer with the general upon
+   the steps which are necessary in order to facilitate the work.
+   Further particulars of the exact nature of the difficulties
+   met with will be made public at a later date. All is quiet
+   upon the line of communications, though the usual persistent
+   rumours of the presence of dervishes in the Eastern desert
+   continue to circulate.--_Our own correspondent_.
+
+“How’s that?” cried Scott, triumphantly, and his white teeth gleamed
+suddenly through his black beard. “That’s the sort of flapdoodle for
+the dear old public.”
+
+“Will it interest them?”
+
+“Oh, everything interests them. They want to know all about it; and
+they like to think that there is a man who is getting a hundred a month
+simply in order to tell it to them.”
+
+“It’s very kind of you to teach me all this.”
+
+“Well, it is a little unconventional, for, after all, we are here to
+score over each other if we can. There are no more eggs, and you must
+take it out in jam. Of course, as Mortimer says, such a telegram as
+this is of no importance one way or another, except to prove to the
+office that we _are_ in the Soudan, and not at Monte Carlo. But when it
+comes to serious work it must be every man for himself.”
+
+“Is that quite necessary?”
+
+“Why, of course it is.”
+
+“I should have thought if three men were to combine and to share their
+news, they would do better than if they were each to act for himself,
+and they would have a much pleasanter time of it.”
+
+The two older men sat with their bread-and-jam in their hands, and an
+expression of genuine disgust upon their faces.
+
+“We are not here to have a pleasant time,” said Mortimer, with a flash
+through his glasses. “We are here to do our best for our papers.
+How can they score over each other if we do not do the same? If we all
+combine we might as well amalgamate with Reuter at once.”
+
+“Why, it would take away the whole glory of the profession!” cried
+Scott. “At present the smartest man gets his stuff first on the wires.
+What inducement is there to be smart if we all share and share alike?”
+
+“And at present the man with the best equipment has the best chance,”
+remarked Mortimer, glancing across at the shot-silk polo ponies and the
+cheap little Syrian grey. “That is the fair reward of foresight and
+enterprise. Every man for himself, and let the best man win.”
+
+“That’s the way to find who the best man is. Look at Chandler.
+He would never have got his chance if he had not played always off his
+own bat. You’ve heard how he pretended to break his leg, sent his
+fellow-correspondent off for the doctor, and so got a fair start for the
+telegraph-office.”
+
+“Do you mean to say that was legitimate?”
+
+“Everything is legitimate. It’s your wits against my wits.”
+
+“I should call it dishonourable.”
+
+“You may call it what you like. Chandler’s paper got the battle and the
+other’s didn’t. It made Chandler’s name.”
+
+“Or take Westlake,” said Mortimer, cramming the tobacco into his pipe.
+“Hi, Abdul, you may have the dishes! Westlake brought his stuff down by
+pretending to be the Government courier, and using the relays of
+Government horses. Westlake’s paper sold half a million.”
+
+“Is that legitimate also?” asked Anerley, thoughtfully.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Well, it looks a little like horse-stealing and lying.”
+
+“Well, _I_ think I should do a little horse-stealing and lying if I
+could have a column to myself in a London daily. What do you say,
+Scott?”
+
+“Anything short of manslaughter.”
+
+“And I’m not sure that I’d trust you there.”
+
+“Well, I don’t think I should be guilty of newspaper-man-slaughter.
+That I regard as a distinct breach of professional etiquette. But if
+any outsider comes between a highly charged correspondent and an
+electric wire, he does it at his peril. My dear Anerley, I tell you
+frankly that if you are going to handicap yourself with scruple you may
+just as well be in Fleet Street as in the Soudan. Our life is
+irregular. Our work has never been systematised. No doubt it will be
+some day, but the time is not yet. Do what you can and how you can, and
+be first on the wires; that’s my advice to you; and also, that when next
+you come upon a campaign you bring with you the best horse that money
+can buy. Mortimer may beat me or I may beat Mortimer, but at least we
+know that between us we have the fastest ponies in the country. We have
+neglected no chance.”
+
+“I am not so certain of that,” said Mortimer, slowly. “You are aware,
+of course, that though a horse beats a camel on twenty miles, a camel
+beats a horse on thirty.”
+
+“What, one of those camels?” cried Anerley in astonishment. The two
+seniors burst out laughing.
+
+“No, no, the real high-bred trotter--the kind of beast the dervishes
+ride when they make their lightning raids.”
+
+“Faster than a galloping horse?” “Well, it tires a horse down. It goes
+the same gait all the way, and it wants neither halt nor drink, and it
+takes rough ground much better than a horse. They used to have long
+distance races at Halfa, and the camel always won at thirty.”
+
+“Still, we need not reproach ourselves, Scott, for we are not very
+likely to have to carry a thirty-mile message. They will have the field
+telegraph next week.”
+
+“Quite so. But at the present moment--”
+
+“I know, my dear chap; but there is no motion of urgency before the
+house. Load baggles at five o’clock; so you have just three hours
+clear. Any sign of the evening pennies?”
+
+Mortimer swept the northern horizon with his binoculars. “Not in sight
+yet.”
+
+“They are quite capable of travelling during the heat of the day.
+Just the sort of thing evening pennies _would_ do. Take care of your
+match, Anerley. These palm groves go up like a powder magazine if you
+set them alight. Bye-bye.” The two men crawled under their
+mosquito-nets and sank instantly into the easy sleep of those whose
+lives are spent in the open.
+
+Young Anerley stood with his back against a palm tree and his briar
+between his lips, thinking over the advice which he had received.
+After all, they were the heads of the profession, these men, and it was
+not for him, the newcomer, to reform their methods. If they served
+their papers in this fashion, then he must do the same. They had at
+least been frank and generous in teaching him the rules of the game.
+If it was good enough for them it was good enough for him.
+
+It was a broiling afternoon, and those thin frills of foam round the
+black, glistening necks of the Nile boulders looked delightfully cool
+and alluring. But it would not be safe to bathe for some hours to come.
+The air shimmered and vibrated over the baking stretch of sand and rock.
+There was not a breath of wind, and the droning and piping of the
+insects inclined one for sleep. Somewhere above a hoopoe was calling.
+Anerley knocked out his ashes, and was turning towards his couch, when
+his eye caught something moving in the desert to the south. It was a
+horseman riding towards them as swiftly as the broken ground would
+permit. A messenger from the army, thought Anerley; and then, as he
+watched, the sun suddenly struck the man on the side of the head, and
+his chin flamed into gold. There could not be two horsemen with beards
+of such a colour. It was Merryweather, the engineer, and he was
+returning. What on earth was he returning for? He had been so keen to
+see the general, and yet he was coming back with his mission
+unaccomplished. Was it that his pony was hopelessly foundered?
+It seemed to be moving well. Anerley picked up Mortimer’s binoculars,
+and a foam-bespattered horse and a weary koorbash-cracking man came
+cantering up the centre of the field. But there was nothing in his
+appearance to explain the mystery of his return. Then as he watched
+them they dipped into a hollow and disappeared. He could see that it
+was one of those narrow khors which led to the river, and he waited,
+glass in hand, for their immediate reappearance. But minute passed
+after minute and there was no sign of them. That narrow gully appeared
+to have swallowed them up. And then with a curious gulp and start he
+saw a little grey cloud wreathe itself slowly from among the rocks and
+drift in a long, hazy shred over the desert. In an instant he had torn
+Scott and Mortimer from their slumbers.
+
+“Get up, you chaps!” he cried. “I believe Merryweather has been shot by
+dervishes.”
+
+“And Reuter not here!” cried the two veterans, exultantly clutching at
+their notebooks. “Merryweather shot! Where? When? How?”
+
+In a few words Anerley explained what he had seen.
+
+“You heard nothing?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Well, a shot loses itself very easily among rocks. By George, look at
+the buzzards!”
+
+Two large brown birds were soaring in the deep blue heaven. As Scott
+spoke they circled down and dropped into the little khor.
+
+“That’s good enough,” said Mortimer, with his nose between the leaves of
+his book. “‘Merryweather headed dervishes stop return stop shot
+mutilated stop raid communications.’ How’s that?”
+
+“You think he was headed off?”
+
+“Why else should he return?”
+
+“In that case, if they were out in front of him and others cut him off,
+there must be several small raiding parties.”
+
+“I should judge so.”
+
+“How about the ‘mutilated’?”
+
+“I’ve fought against Arabs before.”
+
+“Where are you off to?”
+
+“Sarras.”
+
+“I think I’ll race you in,” said Scott.
+
+Anerley stared in astonishment at the absolutely impersonal way in which
+these men regarded the situation. In their zeal for news it had
+apparently never struck them that they, their camp, and their servants
+were all in the lion’s mouth. But even as they talked there came the
+harsh, importunate rat-tat-tat of an irregular volley from among the
+rocks, and the high, keening whistle of bullets over their heads.
+A palm spray fluttered down amongst them. At the same instant the six
+frightened servants came running wildly in for protection.
+
+It was the cool-headed Mortimer who organised the defence, for Scott’s
+Celtic soul was so aflame at all this “copy” in hand and more to come
+that he was too exuberantly boisterous for a commander. The other, with
+his spectacles and his stern face, soon had the servants in hand.
+“_Tali henna! Egri!_ What the deuce are you frightened about? Put the
+camels between the palm trunks. That’s right. Now get the knee-tethers
+on them. _Quies_! Did you never hear bullets before? Now put the
+donkeys here. Not much--you don’t get my polo-pony to make a zareba
+with. Picket the ponies between the grove and the river out of danger’s
+way. These fellows seem to fire even higher than they did in ’85.”
+
+“That’s got home, anyhow,” said Scott, as they heard a soft, splashing
+thud like a stone in a mud-bank.
+
+“Who’s hit, then?”
+
+“The brown camel that’s chewing the cud.” As he spoke the creature, its
+jaw still working, laid its long neck along the ground and closed its
+large dark eyes.
+
+“That shot cost me 15 pounds,” said Mortimer, ruefully. “How many of
+them do you make?”
+
+“Four, I think.”
+
+“Only four Bezingers, at any rate; there may be some spearmen.”
+
+“I think not; it is a little raiding-party of rifle-men. By the way,
+Anerley, you’ve never been under fire before, have you?”
+
+“Never,” said the young pressman, who was conscious of a curious feeling
+of nervous elation.
+
+“Love and poverty and war, they are all experiences necessary to make a
+complete life. Pass over those cartridges. This is a very mild baptism
+that you are undergoing, for behind these camels you are as safe as if
+you were sitting in the back room of the Authors’ Club.”
+
+“As safe, but hardly as comfortable,” said Scott. “A long glass of hock
+and seltzer would be exceedingly acceptable. But oh, Mortimer, what a
+chance! Think of the general’s feelings when he hears that the first
+action of the war has been fought by the Press column. Think of Reuter,
+who has been stewing at the front for a week! Think of the evening
+pennies just too late for the fun. By George, that slug brushed a
+mosquito off me!”
+
+“And one of the donkeys is hit.”
+
+“This is sinful. It will end in our having to carry our own kits to
+Khartoum.”
+
+“Never mind, my boy, it all goes to make copy. I can see the
+headlines--‘Raid on Communications’: ‘Murder of British Engineer’:
+‘Press Column Attacked.’ Won’t it be ripping?”
+
+“I wonder what the next line will be,” said Anerley.
+
+“‘Our Special Wounded’!” cried Scott, rolling over on to his back.
+“No harm done,” he added, gathering himself up again; “only a chip off
+my knee. This is getting sultry. I confess that the idea of that back
+room at the Authors’ Club begins to grow upon me.”
+
+“I have some diachylon.”
+
+“Afterwards will do. We’re having a ’appy day with Fuzzy on the rush.
+I wish he _would_ rush.”
+
+“They’re coming nearer.”
+
+“This is an excellent revolver of mine if it didn’t throw so devilish
+high. I always aim at a man’s toes if I want to stimulate his
+digestion. O Lord, there’s our kettle gone!” With a boom like a
+dinner-gong a Remington bullet had passed through the kettle, and a
+cloud of steam hissed up from the fire. A wild shout came from the
+rocks above.
+
+“The idiots think that they have blown us up. They’ll rush us now, as
+sure as fate; then it will be our turn to lead. Got your revolver,
+Anerley?”
+
+“I have this double-barrelled fowling-piece.”
+
+“Sensible man! It’s the best weapon in the world at this sort of
+rough-and-tumble work. What cartridges?”
+
+“Swan-shot.”
+
+“That will do all right. I carry this big bore double-barrelled pistol
+loaded with slugs. You might as well try to stop one of these fellows
+with a pea-shooter as with a service revolver.”
+
+“There are ways and means,” said Scott. “The Geneva Convention does not
+hold south of the first cataract. It’s easy to make a bullet mushroom
+by a little manipulation of the tip of it. When I was in the broken
+square at Tamai--”
+
+“Wait a bit,” cried Mortimer, adjusting his glasses. “I think they are
+coming now.”
+
+“The time,” said Scott, snapping up his watch, “being exactly seventeen
+minutes past four.”
+
+Anerley had been lying behind a camel staring with an interest which
+bordered upon fascination at the rocks opposite. Here was a little
+woolly puff of smoke, and there was another one, but never once had they
+caught a glimpse of the attackers. To him there was something weird and
+awesome in these unseen, persistent men who, minute by minute, were
+drawing closer to them. He had heard them cry out when the kettle was
+broken, and once, immediately afterwards, an enormously strong voice had
+roared something which had set Scott shrugging his shoulders.
+
+“They’ve got to take us first,” said he, and Anerley thought his nerve
+might be better if he did not ask for a translation.
+
+The firing had begun at a distance of some 100 yards, which put it out
+of the question for them, with their lighter weapons, to make any reply
+to it. Had their antagonists continued to keep that range the defenders
+must either have made a hopeless sally or tried to shelter themselves
+behind their zareba as best they might on the chance that the sound
+might bring up help. But, luckily for them, the African has never taken
+kindly to the rifle, and his primitive instinct to close with his enemy
+is always too strong for his sense of strategy. They were drawing in,
+therefore, and now, for the first time, Anerley caught sight of a face
+looking at them from over a rock. It was a huge, virile, strong-jawed
+head of a pure negro type, with silver trinkets gleaming in the ears.
+The man raised a great arm from behind the rock, and shook his Remington
+at them.
+
+“Shall I fire?” asked Anerley.
+
+“No, no; it is too far. Your shot would scatter all over the place.”
+
+“It’s a picturesque ruffian,” said Scott. “Couldn’t you kodak him,
+Mortimer? There’s another!” A fine-featured brown Arab, with a black,
+pointed beard, was peeping from behind another boulder. He wore the
+green turban which proclaimed him hadji, and his face showed the keen,
+nervous exultation of the religious fanatic.
+
+“They seem a piebald crowd,” said Scott.
+
+“That last is one of the real fighting Baggara,” remarked Mortimer.
+“He’s a dangerous man.”
+
+“He looks pretty vicious. There’s another negro!”
+
+“Two more! Dingas, by the look of them. Just the same chaps we get our
+own black battalions from. As long as they get a fight they don’t mind
+who it’s for; but if the idiots had only sense enough to understand,
+they would know that the Arab is their hereditary enemy, and we their
+hereditary friends. Look at the silly juggins, gnashing his teeth at
+the very men who put down the slave trade!”
+
+“Couldn’t you explain?”
+
+“I’ll explain with this pistol when he comes a little nearer. Now sit
+tight, Anerley. They’re off!”
+
+They were indeed. It was the brown man with the green turban who headed
+the rush. Close at his heels was the negro with the silver ear-rings--
+a giant of a man, and the other two were only a little behind. As they
+sprang over the rocks one after the other, it took Anerley back to the
+school sports when he held the tape for the hurdle-race. It was
+magnificent, the wild spirit and abandon of it, the flutter of the
+chequered galabeeahs, the gleam of steel, the wave of black arms, the
+frenzied faces, the quick pitter-patter of the rushing feet. The
+law-abiding Briton is so imbued with the idea of the sanctity of human
+life that it was hard for the young pressman to realise that these men
+had every intention of killing him, and that he was at perfect liberty
+to do as much for them. He lay staring as if this were a show and he a
+spectator.
+
+“Now, Anerley, now! Take the Arab!” cried somebody.
+
+He put up the gun and saw the brown fierce face at the other end of the
+barrel. He tugged at the trigger, but the face grew larger and fiercer
+with every stride. Again and again he tugged. A revolver-shot rang out
+at his elbow, then another one, and he saw a red spot spring out on the
+Arab’s brown breast. But he was still coming on.
+
+“Shoot, you ass, shoot!” screamed Scott.
+
+Again he strained unavailingly at the trigger. There were two more
+pistol-shots, and the big negro had fallen and risen and fallen again.
+
+“Cock it, you fool!” shouted a furious voice; and at the same instant,
+with a rush and flutter, the Arab bounded over the prostrate camel and
+came down with his bare feet upon Anerley’s chest. In a dream he seemed
+to be struggling frantically with someone upon the ground, then he was
+conscious of a tremendous explosion in his very face, and so ended for
+him the first action of the war.
+
+“Good-bye, old chap. You’ll be all right. Give yourself time.” It was
+Mortimer’s voice, and he became dimly conscious of a long, spectacled
+face, and of a heavy hand upon his shoulder.
+
+“Sorry to leave you. We’ll be lucky now if we are in time for the
+morning editions.” Scott was tightening his girth as he spoke.
+
+“We’ll put in our wire that you have been hurt, so your people will know
+why they don’t hear from you. If Reuter or the evening pennies come up,
+don’t give the thing away. Abbas will look after you, and we’ll be back
+to-morrow afternoon. Bye-bye!”
+
+Anerley heard it all, though he did not feel energy enough to answer.
+Then, as he watched two sleek, brown ponies with their yellow-clad
+riders dwindling among the rocks, his memory cleared suddenly, and he
+realised that the first great journalistic chance of his life was
+slipping away from him. It was a small fight, but it was the first of
+the war, and the great public at home were all athirst for news.
+They would have it in the _Courier_; they would have it in the
+_Intelligence_, and not a word in the _Gazette_. The thought brought
+him to his feet, though he had to throw his arm round the stem of the
+palm tree to steady his swimming head. There was a big black man lying
+where he had fallen, his huge chest pocked with bullet-marks, every
+wound rosetted with its circle of flies. The Arab was stretched out
+within a few yards of him, with two hands clasped over the dreadful
+thing which had been his head. Across him was lying Anerley’s
+fowling-piece, one barrel discharged, the other at half cock.
+
+“Scott effendi shoot him your gun,” said a voice. It was Abbas, his
+English-speaking body-servant.
+
+Anerley groaned at the disgrace of it. He had lost his head so
+completely that he had forgotten to cock his gun; and yet he knew that
+it was not fear but interest which had so absorbed him. He put his hand
+up to his head and felt that a wet handkerchief was bound round his
+forehead.
+
+“Where are the two other dervishes?”
+
+“They ran away. One got shot in arm.”
+
+“What’s happened to me?”
+
+“Effendi got cut on head. Effendi catch bad man by arms, and Scott
+effendi shot him. Face burn very bad.”
+
+Anerley became conscious suddenly that there was a pringling about his
+skin and an overpowering smell of burned hair under his nostrils. He
+put his hand to his moustache. It was gone. His eyebrows too?
+He could not find them. His head, no doubt, was very near to the
+dervish’s when they were rolling upon the ground together, and this was
+the effect of the explosion of his own gun. Well, he would have time to
+grow some more hair before he saw Fleet Street again. But the cut,
+perhaps, was a more serious matter. Was it enough to prevent him
+getting to the telegraph-office at Sarras? The only way was to try and
+see. But there was only that poor little Syrian grey of his. There it
+stood in the evening sunshine, with a sunk head and a bent knee, as if
+its morning’s work was still heavy upon it. What hope was there of
+being able to do thirty-five miles of heavy going upon that? It would
+be a strain upon the splendid ponies of his companions--and they were
+the swiftest and most enduring in the country. The most enduring?
+There was one creature more enduring, and that was a real trotting
+camel. If he had had one he might have got to the wires first after
+all, for Mortimer had said that over thirty miles they have the better
+of any horse. Yes, if he had only had a real trotting camel! And then
+like a flash came Mortimer’s words, “It is the kind of beast that the
+dervishes ride when they make their lightning raids.”
+
+The beasts the dervishes ride! What had these dead dervishes ridden?
+In an instant he was clambering up the rocks, with Abbas protesting at
+his heels. Had the two fugitives carried away all the camels, or had
+they been content to save themselves? The brass gleam from a litter of
+empty Remington cases caught his eye, and showed where the enemy had
+been crouching. And then he could have shouted for joy, for there, in
+the hollow, some little distance off, rose the high, graceful white neck
+and the elegant head of such a camel as he had never set eyes upon
+before--a swanlike, beautiful creature, as far from the rough, clumsy
+baggles as the cart-horse is from the racer.
+
+The beast was kneeling under the shelter of the rocks with its waterskin
+and bag of doora slung over its shoulders, and its forelegs tethered
+Arab fashion with a rope around the knees. Anerley threw his leg over
+the front pommel while Abbas slipped off the cord. Forward flew
+Anerley towards the creature’s neck, then violently backwards, clawing
+madly at anything which might save him, and then, with a jerk which
+nearly snapped his loins, he was thrown forward again. But the camel
+was on its legs now, and the young pressman was safely seated upon one
+of the fliers of the desert. It was as gentle as it was swift, and it
+stood oscillating its long neck and gazing round with its large brown
+eyes, whilst Anerley coiled his legs round the peg and grasped the
+curved camel-stick which Abbas had handed up to him. There were two
+bridle-cords, one from the nostril and one from the neck, but he
+remembered that Scott had said that it was the servant’s and not the
+house-bell which had to be pulled, so he kept his grasp upon the lower.
+Then he touched the long, vibrating neck with his stick, and in an
+instant Abbas’ farewell seemed to come from far behind him, and the
+black rocks and yellow sand were dancing past on either side.
+
+It was his first experience of a trotting camel, and at first the
+motion, although irregular and abrupt, was not unpleasant. Having no
+stirrup or fixed point of any kind, he could not rise to it, but he
+gripped as tightly as he could with his knee, and he tried to sway
+backwards and forwards as he had seen the Arabs do. It was a large,
+very concave Makloofa saddle, and he was conscious that he was bouncing
+about on it with as little power of adhesion as a billiard-ball upon a
+tea-tray. He gripped the two sides with his hands to hold himself
+steady. The creature had got into its long, swinging, stealthy trot,
+its sponge-like feet making no sound upon the hard sand. Anerley leaned
+back with his two hands gripping hard behind him, and he whooped the
+creature on. The sun had already sunk behind the line of black volcanic
+peaks, which look like huge slag-heaps at the mouth of a mine.
+The western sky had taken that lovely light green and pale pink tint
+which makes evening beautiful upon the Nile, and the old brown river
+itself, swirling down amongst the black rocks, caught some shimmer of
+the colours above. The glare, the heat, and the piping of the insects
+had all ceased together. In spite of his aching head, Anerley could
+have cried out for pure physical joy as the swift creature beneath him
+flew along with him through that cool, invigorating air, with the virile
+north wind soothing his pringling face.
+
+He had looked at his watch, and now he made a swift calculation of times
+and distances. It was past six when he had left the camp. Over broken
+ground it was impossible that he could hope to do more than seven miles
+an hour--less on bad parts, more on the smooth. His recollection of the
+track was that there were few smooth and many bad. He would be lucky,
+then, if he reached Sarras anywhere from twelve to one. Then the
+messages took a good two hours to go through, for they had to be
+transcribed at Cairo. At the best he could only hope to have told his
+story in Fleet Street at two or three in the morning. It was possible
+that he might manage it, but the chances seemed enormously against him.
+About three the morning edition would be made up, and his chance gone
+for ever. The one thing clear was that only the first man at the wires
+would have any chance at all, and Anerley meant to be first if hard
+riding could do it. So he tapped away at the bird-like neck, and the
+creature’s long, loose limbs went faster and faster at every tap.
+Where the rocky spurs ran down to the river, horses would have to go
+round, while camels might get across, so that Anerley felt that he was
+always gaining upon his companions.
+
+But there was a price to be paid for the feeling. He had heard of men
+who had burst when on camel journeys, and he knew that the Arabs swathe
+their bodies tightly in broad cloth bandages when they prepare for a
+long march. It had seemed unnecessary and ridiculous when he first
+began to speed over the level track, but now, when he got on the rocky
+paths, he understood what it meant. Never for an instant was he at the
+same angle. Backwards, forwards he swung, with a tingling jar at the
+end of each sway, until he ached from his neck to his knees. It caught
+him across the shoulders, it caught him down the spine, it gripped him
+over the loins, it marked the lower line of his ribs with one heavy,
+dull throb. He clutched here and there with his hand to try and ease
+the strain upon his muscles. He drew up his knees, altered his seat,
+and set his teeth with a grim determination to go through with it should
+it kill him. His head was splitting, his flayed face smarting, and
+every joint in his body aching as if it were dislocated. But he forgot
+all that when, with the rising of the moon, he heard the clinking of
+horses’ hoofs down upon the track by the river, and knew that, unseen by
+them, he had already got well abreast of his companions. But he was
+hardly halfway, and the time already eleven.
+
+All day the needles had been ticking away without intermission in the
+little corrugated iron hut which served as a telegraph station at
+Sarras. With its bare walls and its packing-case seats, it was none the
+less for the moment one of the vital spots upon the earth’s surface, and
+the crisp, importunate ticking might have come from the world-old clock
+of Destiny. Many august people had been at the other end of those
+wires, and had communed with the moist-faced military clerk. A French
+Premier had demanded a pledge, and an English marquis had passed on the
+request to the General in command, with a question as to how it would
+affect the situation. Cipher telegrams had nearly driven the clerk out
+of his wits, for of all crazy occupations the taking of a cipher
+message, when you are without the key to the cipher, is the worst.
+Much high diplomacy had been going on all day in the innermost chambers
+of European chancellories, and the results of it had been whispered into
+this little corrugated-iron hut. About two in the morning an enormous
+despatch had come at last to an end, and the weary operator had opened
+the door, and was lighting his pipe in the cool, fresh air, when he saw
+a camel plump down in the dust, and a man, who seemed to be in the last
+stage of drunkenness, come rolling towards him.
+
+“What’s the time?” he cried, in a voice which appeared to be the only
+sober thing about him.
+
+It was on the clerk’s lips to say that it was time that the questioner
+was in his bed, but it is not safe upon a campaign to be ironical at the
+expense of khaki-clad men. He contented himself, therefore, with the
+bald statement that it was after two. But no retort that he could have
+devised could have had a more crushing effect. The voice turned drunken
+also, and the man caught at the door-post to uphold him.
+
+“Two o’clock! I’m done after all!” said he. His head was tied up in a
+bloody handkerchief, his face was crimson, and he stood with his legs
+crooked as if the pith had all gone out of his back. The clerk began to
+realise that something out of the ordinary was in the wind.
+
+“How long does it take to get a wire to London?”
+
+“About two hours.”
+
+“And it’s two now. I could not get it there before four.”
+
+“Before three.”
+
+“Four.”
+
+“No, three.”
+
+“But you said two hours.”
+
+“Yes, but there’s more than an hour’s difference in longitude.”
+
+“By Heaven, I’ll do it yet!” cried Anerley, and staggering to a
+packing-case, he began the dictation of his famous despatch.
+
+And so it came about that the _Gazette_ had a long column, with
+headlines like an epitaph, when the sheets of the _Intelligence_ and the
+_Courier_ were as blank as the faces of their editors. And so, too, it
+happened that when two weary men, upon two foundered horses, arrived
+about four in the morning at the Sarras post-office, they looked at each
+other in silence and departed noiselessly, with the conviction that
+there are some situations with which the English language is not capable
+of dealing.
+
+
+
+
+The New Catacomb
+
+
+“Look here, Burger,” said Kennedy, “I do wish that you would confide in
+me.”
+
+The two famous students of Roman remains sat together in Kennedy’s
+comfortable room overlooking the Corso. The night was cold, and they
+had both pulled up their chairs to the unsatisfactory Italian stove
+which threw out a zone of stuffiness rather than of warmth.
+
+Outside under the bright winter stars lay the modern Rome, the long,
+double chain of the electric lamps, the brilliantly lighted _cafes_, the
+rushing carriages, and the dense throng upon the footpaths. But inside,
+in the sumptuous chamber of the rich young English archaeologist, there
+was only old Rome to be seen. Cracked and time-worn friezes hung upon
+the walls, grey old busts of senators and soldiers with their fighting
+heads and their hard, cruel faces peered out from the corners. On the
+centre table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments, and ornaments,
+there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths of
+Caracalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was
+exhibited in Berlin.
+
+Amphorae hung from the ceiling, and a litter of curiosities strewed the
+rich red Turkey carpet. And of them all there was not one which was not
+of the most unimpeachable authenticity, and of the utmost rarity and
+value; for Kennedy, though little more than thirty, had a European
+reputation in this particular branch of research, and was, moreover,
+provided with that long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap
+to the student’s energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose,
+gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often
+been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an
+incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in
+sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high,
+white forehead, its aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensuous
+mouth, was a fair index of the compromise between strength and weakness
+in his nature.
+
+Of a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger. He came of a
+curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust
+qualities of the North mingling strangely with the softer graces of the
+South. Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above
+them rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow
+curls lying round it. His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his
+companion had frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman
+busts which peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber.
+Under its bluff German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian
+subtlety, but the smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one
+understood that this was only an indication of his ancestry, with no
+actual bearing upon his character.
+
+In age and in reputation he was on the same level as his English
+companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous.
+Twelve years before he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived
+ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded
+to him by the University of Bonn.
+
+Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and
+singlemindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of
+fame, until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was
+every reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the Chair
+of the greatest of German Universities. But the singleness of purpose
+which had brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant
+Englishman, had caused him in everything outside their work to stand
+infinitely below him. He had never found a pause in his studies in
+which to cultivate the social graces. It was only when he spoke of his
+own subject that his face was filled with life and soul. At other times
+he was silent and embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in
+larger subjects, and impatient of that small talk which is the
+conventional refuge of those who have no thoughts to express.
+
+And yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared
+to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different
+rivals. The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own
+studies each was the only one of the younger men who had knowledge and
+enthusiasm enough to properly appreciate the other. Their common
+interests and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been
+attracted by the other’s knowledge. And then gradually something had
+been added to this. Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and
+simplicity of his rival, while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the
+brilliancy and vivacity which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman
+society. I say “had,” because just at the moment the young Englishman
+was somewhat under a cloud.
+
+A love affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had
+indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked
+many of his friends. But in the bachelor circles of students and
+artists in which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of
+honour in such matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of
+shoulders shrugged over the flight of two and the return of one, the
+general sentiment was probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy
+rather than of reprobation.
+
+“Look here, Burger,” said Kennedy, looking hard at the placid face of
+his companion, “I do wish that you would confide in me.”
+
+As he spoke he waved his hand in the direction of a rug which
+lay upon the floor.
+
+On the rug stood a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wicker-work
+which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of
+objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn
+papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have
+seemed to have come straight from a dustman’s bin, but which a
+specialist would have speedily recognized as unique of their kind.
+
+The pile of odds and ends in the flat wicker-work basket supplied
+exactly one of those missing links of social development which are of
+such interest to the student. It was the German who had brought them
+in, and the Englishman’s eyes were hungry as he looked at them.
+
+“I won’t interfere with your treasure-trove, but I should very much like
+to hear about it,” he continued, while Burger very deliberately lit a
+cigar. “It is evidently a discovery of the first importance. These
+inscriptions will make a sensation throughout Europe.”
+
+“For every one here there are a million there!” said the German. “There
+are so many that a dozen savants might spend a lifetime over them, and
+build up a reputation as solid as the Castle of St. Angelo.”
+
+Kennedy was thinking with his fine forehead wrinkled and his fingers
+playing with his long, fair moustache.
+
+“You have given yourself away, Burger!” said he at last. “Your words
+can only apply to one thing. You have discovered a new catacomb.”
+
+“I had no doubt that you had already come to that conclusion from an
+examination of these objects.”
+
+“Well, they certainly appeared to indicate it, but your last remarks
+make it certain. There is no place except a catacomb which could
+contain so vast a store of relics as you describe.”
+
+“Quite so. There is no mystery about that. I _have_ discovered a new
+catacomb.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Ah, that is my secret, my dear Kennedy! Suffice it that it is so
+situated that there is not one chance in a million of anyone else coming
+upon it. Its date is different from that of any known catacomb, and it
+has been reserved for the burial of the highest Christians, so that the
+remains and the relics are quite different from anything which has ever
+been seen before. If I was not aware of your knowledge and of your
+energy, my friend, I would not hesitate, under the pledge of secrecy, to
+tell you everything about it. But as it is I think that I must
+certainly prepare my own report of the matter before I expose myself to
+such formidable competition.”
+
+Kennedy loved his subject with a love which was almost a mania--a love
+which held him true to it, amidst all the distractions which come to a
+wealthy and dissipated young man. He had ambition, but his ambition was
+secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which
+concerned the old life and history of the city. He yearned to see this
+new underworld which his companion had discovered.
+
+“Look here, Burger,” said he, earnestly, “I assure you that you can
+trust me most implicitly in the matter. Nothing would induce me to put
+pen to paper about anything which I see until I have your express
+permission. I quite understand your feeling, and I think it is most
+natural, but you have really nothing whatever to fear from me. On the
+other hand, if you don’t tell me I shall make a systematic search, and I
+shall most certainly discover it. In that case, of course, I should
+make what use I liked of it, since I should be under no obligation to
+you.”
+
+Burger smiled thoughtfully over his cigar.
+
+“I have noticed, friend Kennedy,” said he, “that when I want information
+over any point you are not always so ready to supply it.”
+
+“When did you ever ask me anything that I did not tell you? You
+remember, for example, my giving you the material for your paper about
+the temple of the Vestals.”
+
+“Ah, well, that was not a matter of much importance. If I were to
+question you upon some intimate thing, would you give me an answer, I
+wonder! This new catacomb is a very intimate thing to me, and I should
+certainly expect some sign of confidence in return.”
+
+“What you are driving at I cannot imagine,” said the Englishman, “but if
+you mean that you will answer my question about the catacomb if I answer
+any question which you may put to me, I can assure you that I will
+certainly do so.”
+
+“Well, then,” said Burger, leaning luxuriously back in his settee, and
+puffing a blue tree of cigar-smoke into the air, “tell me all about your
+relations with Miss Mary Saunderson.”
+
+Kennedy sprang up in his chair and glared angrily at his impassive
+companion.
+
+“What the devil do you mean?” he cried. “What sort of a question is
+this? You may mean it as a joke, but you never made a worse one.”
+
+“No, I don’t mean it as a joke,” said Burger, simply. “I am really
+rather interested in the details of the matter. I don’t know much about
+the world and women and social life and that sort of thing, and such an
+incident has the fascination of the unknown for me. I know you, and I
+knew her by sight--I had even spoken to her once or twice. I should
+very much like to hear from your own lips exactly what it was which
+occurred between you.”
+
+“I won’t tell you a word.”
+
+“That’s all right. It was only my whim to see if you would give up a
+secret as easily as you expected me to give up my secret of the new
+catacomb. You wouldn’t, and I didn’t expect you to. But why should you
+expect otherwise of me? There’s St. John’s clock striking ten. It is
+quite time that I was going home.”
+
+“No, wait a bit, Burger,” said Kennedy; “this is really a ridiculous
+caprice of yours to wish to know about an old love affair which has
+burned out months ago. You know we look upon a man who kisses and tells
+as the greatest coward and villain possible.”
+
+“Certainly,” said the German, gathering up his basket of curiosities,
+“when he tells anything about a girl which is previously unknown, he
+must be so. But in this case, as you must be aware, it was a public
+matter which was the common talk of Rome, so that you are not really
+doing Miss Mary Saunderson any injury by discussing her case with me.
+But still, I respect your scruples; and so good night!”
+
+“Wait a bit, Burger,” said Kennedy, laying his hand upon the other’s
+arm; “I am very keen upon this catacomb business, and I can’t let it
+drop quite so easily. Would you mind asking me something else in
+return--something not quite so eccentric this time?”
+
+“No, no; you have refused, and there is an end of it,” said Burger, with
+his basket on his arm. “No doubt you are quite right not to answer, and
+no doubt I am quite right also--and so again, my dear Kennedy, good
+night!”
+
+The Englishman watched Burger cross the room, and he had his hand on the
+handle of the door before his host sprang up with the air of a man who
+is making the best of that which cannot be helped. “Hold on, old
+fellow,” said he. “I think you are behaving in a most ridiculous
+fashion, but still, if this is your condition, I suppose that I must
+submit to it. I hate saying anything about a girl, but, as you say, it
+is all over Rome, and I don’t suppose I can tell you anything which you
+do not know already. What was it you wanted to know?”
+
+The German came back to the stove, and, laying down his basket, he sank
+into his chair once more. “May I have another cigar?” said he. “Thank
+you very much! I never smoke when I work, but I enjoy a chat much more
+when I am under the influence of tobacco. Now, as regards this young
+lady, with whom you had this little adventure. What in the world has
+become of her?”
+
+“She is at home with her own people.”
+
+“Oh, really--in England?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What part of England--London?”
+
+“No, Twickenham.”
+
+“You must excuse my curiosity, my dear Kennedy, and you must put it down
+to my ignorance of the world. No doubt it is quite a simple thing to
+persuade a young lady to go off with you for three weeks or so, and then
+to hand her over to her own family at--what did you call the place?”
+
+“Twickenham.”
+
+“Quite so--at Twickenham. But it is something so entirely outside my
+own experience that I cannot even imagine how you set about it. For
+example, if you had loved this girl your love could hardly disappear in
+three weeks, so I presume that you could not have loved her at all. But
+if you did not love her why should you make this great scandal which has
+damaged you and ruined her?”
+
+Kennedy looked moodily into the red eye of the stove. “That’s a logical
+way of looking at it, certainly,” said he. “Love is a big word, and it
+represents a good many different shades of feeling. I liked her, and--
+well, you say you’ve seen her--you know how charming she can look.
+But still I am willing to admit, looking back, that I could never have
+really loved her.”
+
+“Then, my dear Kennedy, why did you do it?”
+
+“The adventure of the thing had a great deal to do with it.”
+
+“What! You are so fond of adventures!”
+
+“Where would the variety of life be without them? It was for an
+adventure that I first began to pay my attentions to her. I’ve chased a
+good deal of game in my time, but there’s no chase like that of a pretty
+woman. There was the piquant difficulty of it also, for, as she was the
+companion of Lady Emily Rood it was almost impossible to see her alone.
+On the top of all the other obstacles which attracted me, I learned from
+her own lips very early in the proceedings that she was engaged.”
+
+“Mein Gott! To whom?”
+
+“She mentioned no names.”
+
+“I do not think that anyone knows that. So that made the adventure more
+alluring, did it?”
+
+“Well, it did certainly give a spice to it. Don’t you think so?”
+
+“I tell you that I am very ignorant about these things.”
+
+“My dear fellow, you can remember that the apple you stole from your
+neighbour’s tree was always sweeter than that which fell from your own.
+And then I found that she cared for me.”
+
+“What--at once?”
+
+“Oh, no, it took about three months of sapping and mining. But at last
+I won her over. She understood that my judicial separation from my wife
+made it impossible for me to do the right thing by her--but she came all
+the same, and we had a delightful time, as long as it lasted.”
+
+“But how about the other man?”
+
+Kennedy shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose it is the survival of the
+fittest,” said he. “If he had been the better man she would not have
+deserted him. Let’s drop the subject, for I have had enough of it!”
+
+“Only one other thing. How did you get rid of her in three weeks?”
+
+“Well, we had both cooled down a bit, you understand. She absolutely
+refused, under any circumstances, to come back to face the people she
+had known in Rome. Now, of course, Rome is necessary to me, and I was
+already pining to be back at my work--so there was one obvious cause of
+separation. Then, again, her old father turned up at the hotel in
+London, and there was a scene, and the whole thing became so unpleasant
+that really--though I missed her dreadfully at first--I was very glad to
+slip out of it. Now, I rely upon you not to repeat anything of what I
+have said.”
+
+“My dear Kennedy, I should not dream of repeating it. But all that you
+say interests me very much, for it gives me an insight into your way of
+looking at things, which is entirely different from mine, for I have
+seen so little of life. And now you want to know about my new catacomb.
+There’s no use my trying to describe it, for you would never find it by
+that. There is only one thing, and that is for me to take you there.”
+
+“That would be splendid.”
+
+“When would you like to come?”
+
+“The sooner the better. I am all impatience to see it.”
+
+“Well, it is a beautiful night--though a trifle cold. Suppose we start
+in an hour. We must be very careful to keep the matter to ourselves.
+If anyone saw us hunting in couples they would suspect that there was
+something going on.”
+
+“We can’t be too cautious,” said Kennedy. “Is it far?”
+
+“Some miles.”
+
+“Not too far to walk?”
+
+“Oh, no, we could walk there easily.”
+
+“We had better do so, then. A cabman’s suspicions would be aroused if
+he dropped us both at some lonely spot in the dead of the night.”
+
+“Quite so. I think it would be best for us to meet at the Gate of the
+Appian Way at midnight. I must go back to my lodgings for the matches
+and candles and things.”
+
+“All right, Burger! I think it is very kind of you to let me into this
+secret, and I promise you that I will write nothing about it until you
+have published your report. Good-bye for the present! You will find me
+at the Gate at twelve.”
+
+The cold, clear air was filled with the musical chimes from that city of
+clocks as Burger, wrapped in an Italian overcoat, with a lantern hanging
+from his hand, walked up to the rendezvous. Kennedy stepped out of the
+shadow to meet him.
+
+“You are ardent in work as well as in love!” said the German, laughing.
+
+“Yes; I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour.”
+
+“I hope you left no clue as to where we were going.”
+
+“Not such a fool! By Jove, I am chilled to the bone! Come on, Burger,
+let us warm ourselves by a spurt of hard walking.”
+
+Their footsteps sounded loud and crisp upon the rough stone paving of
+the disappointing road which is all that is left of the most famous
+highway of the world. A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop,
+and a few carts of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only
+things which they met. They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up
+through the darkness upon each side of them, until they had come as far
+as the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, and saw against a rising moon the
+great circular bastion of Cecilia Metella in front of them. Then Burger
+stopped with his hand to his side. “Your legs are longer than mine, and
+you are more accustomed to walking,” said he, laughing. “I think that
+the place where we turn off is somewhere here. Yes, this is it, round
+the corner of the trattoria. Now, it is a very narrow path, so perhaps
+I had better go in front, and you can follow.” He had lit his lantern,
+and by its light they were enabled to follow a narrow and devious track
+which wound across the marshes of the Campagna. The great Aqueduct of
+old Rome lay like a monstrous caterpillar across the moonlit landscape,
+and their road led them under one of its huge arches, and past the
+circle of crumbling bricks which marks the old arena. At last Burger
+stopped at a solitary wooden cowhouse, and he drew a key from his
+pocket.
+
+“Surely your catacomb is not inside a house!” cried Kennedy.
+
+“The entrance to it is. That is just the safeguard which we have
+against anyone else discovering it.”
+
+“Does the proprietor know of it?”
+
+“Not he. He had found one or two objects which made me almost certain
+that his house was built on the entrance to such a place. So I rented
+it from him, and did my excavations for myself. Come in, and shut the
+door behind you.”
+
+It was a long, empty building, with the mangers of the cows along one
+wall. Burger put his lantern down on the ground, and shaded its light
+in all directions save one by draping his overcoat round it. “It might
+excite remark if anyone saw a light in this lonely place,” said he.
+“Just help me to move this boarding.” The flooring was loose in the
+corner, and plank by plank the two savants raised it and leaned it
+against the wall. Below there was a square aperture and a stair of old
+stone steps which led away down into the bowels of the earth.
+
+“Be careful!” cried Burger, as Kennedy, in his impatience,
+hurried down them. “It is a perfect rabbits’-warren below, and if
+you were once to lose your way there, the chances would be a hundred
+to one against your ever coming out again. Wait until I bring the
+light.”
+
+“How do you find your own way if it is so complicated?”
+
+“I had some very narrow escapes at first, but I have gradually learned
+to go about. There is a certain system to it, but it is one which a
+lost man, if he were in the dark, could not possibly find out. Even now
+I always spin out a ball of string behind me when I am going far into
+the catacomb. You can see for yourself that it is difficult, but every
+one of these passages divides and subdivides a dozen times before you go
+a hundred yards.” They had descended some twenty feet from the level of
+the byre, and they were standing now in a square chamber cut out of the
+soft tufa. The lantern cast a flickering light, bright below and dim
+above, over the cracked brown walls. In every direction were the black
+openings of passages which radiated from this common centre.
+
+“I want you to follow me closely, my friend,” said Burger. “Do not
+loiter to look at anything upon the way, for the place to which I will
+take you contains all that you can see, and more. It will save time for
+us to go there direct.” He led the way down one of the corridors, and
+the Englishman followed closely at his heels. Every now and then the
+passage bifurcated, but Burger was evidently following some secret marks
+of his own, for he neither stopped nor hesitated. Everywhere along the
+walls, packed like the berths upon an emigrant ship, lay the Christians
+of old Rome. The yellow light flickered over the shrivelled features of
+the mummies, and gleamed upon rounded skulls and long, white arm-bones
+crossed over fleshless chests. And everywhere as he passed Kennedy
+looked with wistful eyes upon inscriptions, funeral vessels, pictures,
+vestments, utensils, all lying as pious hands had placed them so many
+centuries ago. It was apparent to him, even in those hurried, passing
+glances, that this was the earliest and finest of the catacombs,
+containing such a storehouse of Roman remains as had never before come
+at one time under the observation of the student. “What would happen if
+the light went out?” he asked, as they hurried on.
+
+“I have a spare candle and a box of matches in my pocket. By the way,
+Kennedy, have you any matches?”
+
+“No; you had better give me some.”
+
+“Oh, that is all right. There is no chance of our separating.”
+
+“How far are we going? It seems to me that we have walked at least a
+quarter of a mile.”
+
+“More than that, I think. There is really no limit to the tombs--at
+least, I have never been able to find any. This is a very difficult
+place, so I think that I will use our ball of string.” He fastened one
+end of it to a projecting stone and he carried the coil in the breast of
+his coat, paying it out as he advanced. Kennedy saw that it was no
+unnecessary precaution, for the passages had become more complexed and
+tortuous than ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors.
+But these all ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of
+tufa topped with a slab of marble at one end of it. “By Jove!” cried
+Kennedy in an ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble. “It
+is a Christian altar--probably the first one in existence. Here is the
+little consecration cross cut upon the corner of it. No doubt this
+circular space was used as a church.”
+
+“Precisely,” said Burger. “If I had more time I should like to show you
+all the bodies which are buried in these niches upon the walls, for they
+are the early popes and bishops of the Church, with their mitres, their
+croziers, and full canonicals. Go over to that one and look at it!”
+Kennedy went across, and stared at the ghastly head which lay loosely on
+the shredded and mouldering mitre.
+
+“This is most interesting,” said he, and his voice seemed to boom
+against the concave vault. “As far as my experience goes, it is unique.
+Bring the lantern over, Burger, for I want to see them all.” But the
+German had strolled away, and was standing in the middle of a yellow
+circle of light at the other side of the hall.
+
+“Do you know how many wrong turnings there are between this and the
+stairs?” he asked. “There are over two thousand. No doubt it was one
+of the means of protection which the Christians adopted. The odds are
+two thousand to one against a man getting out, even if he had a light;
+but if he were in the dark it would, of course, be far more difficult.”
+
+“So I should think.”
+
+“And the darkness is something dreadful. I tried it once for an
+experiment. Let us try it again!” He stooped to the lantern, and in an
+instant it was as if an invisible hand was squeezed tightly over each of
+Kennedy’s eyes. Never had he known what such darkness was. It seemed
+to press upon him and to smother him. It was a solid obstacle against
+which the body shrank from advancing. He put his hands out to push it
+back from him. “That will do, Burger,” said he, “let’s have the light
+again.”
+
+But his companion began to laugh, and in that circular room the sound
+seemed to come from every side at once. “You seem uneasy, friend
+Kennedy,” said he.
+
+“Go on, man, light the candle!” said Kennedy, impatiently.
+
+“It’s very strange, Kennedy, but I could not in the least tell by the
+sound in which direction you stand. Could you tell where I am?”
+
+“No; you seem to be on every side of me.”
+
+“If it were not for this string which I hold in my hand I should not
+have a notion which way to go.”
+
+“I dare say not. Strike a light, man, and have an end of this
+nonsense.”
+
+“Well, Kennedy, there are two things which I understand that you are
+very fond of. The one is adventure, and the other is an obstacle to
+surmount. The adventure must be the finding of your way out of this
+catacomb. The obstacle will be the darkness and the two thousand wrong
+turns which make the way a little difficult to find. But you need not
+hurry, for you have plenty of time, and when you halt for a rest now and
+then, I should like you just to think of Miss Mary Saunderson, and
+whether you treated her quite fairly.”
+
+“You devil, what do you mean?” roared Kennedy. He was running
+about in little circles and clasping at the solid blackness with
+both hands.
+
+“Good-bye,” said the mocking voice, and it was already at some distance.
+“I really do not think, Kennedy, even by your own showing that you did
+the right thing by that girl. There was only one little thing which you
+appeared not to know, and I can supply it. Miss Saunderson was engaged
+to a poor, ungainly devil of a student, and his name was Julius Burger.”
+There was a rustle somewhere--the vague sound of a foot striking a
+stone--and then there fell silence upon that old Christian church--a
+stagnant heavy silence which closed round Kennedy and shut him in like
+water round a drowning man.
+
+
+Some two months afterwards the following paragraph made the round of the
+European Press:--
+
+
+   One of the most interesting discoveries of recent years is
+   that of the new catacomb in Rome, which lies some distance to the
+   east of the well-known vaults of St. Calixtus. The finding of this
+   important burial-place, which is exceedingly rich in most
+   interesting early Christian remains, is due to the energy and
+   sagacity of Dr. Julius Burger, the young German specialist, who is
+   rapidly taking the first place as an authority upon ancient Rome.
+   Although the first to publish his discovery, it appears that a less
+   fortunate adventurer had anticipated Dr. Burger. Some months ago
+   Mr. Kennedy, the well-known English student, disappeared suddenly
+   from his rooms in the “Corso”, and it was conjectured that his
+   association with a recent scandal had driven him to leave Rome. It
+   appears now that he had in reality fallen a victim to that fervid
+   love of archaeology which had raised him to a distinguished place
+   among living scholars. His body was discovered in the heart of the
+   new catacomb, and it was evident from the condition of his feet and
+   boots that he had tramped for days through the tortuous corridors
+   which make these subterranean tombs so dangerous to explorers. The
+   deceased gentleman had, with inexplicable rashness, made his way
+   into this labyrinth without, as far as can be discovered, taking
+   with him either candles or matches, so that his sad fate was the
+   natural result of his own temerity. What makes the matter more
+   painful is that Dr. Julius Burger was an intimate friend of the
+   deceased. His joy at the extraordinary find which he has been so
+   fortunate as to make has been greatly marred by the terrible fate
+   of his comrade and fellow-worker.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE
+
+
+It was in the days when the tide of Mahdism, which had swept in such a
+flood from the great Lakes and Darfur to the confines of Egypt, had at
+last come to its full, and even begun, as some hoped, to show signs of a
+turn. At its outset it had been terrible. It had engulfed Hicks’s
+army, swept over Gordon and Khartoum, rolled behind the British forces
+as they retired down the river, and finally cast up a spray of raiding
+parties as far north as Assouan. Then it found other channels to east
+and west, to Central Africa and to Abyssinia, and retired a little on
+the side of Egypt. For ten years there ensued a lull, during which the
+frontier garrisons looked out upon those distant blue hills of Dongola.
+Behind the violet mists which draped them lay a land of blood and
+horror. From time to time some adventurer went south towards those
+haze-girt mountains, tempted by stories of gum and ivory, but none ever
+returned. Once a mutilated Egyptian and once a Greek woman, mad with
+thirst and fear, made their way to the lines. They were the only
+exports of that country of darkness. Sometimes the sunset would turn
+those distant mists into a bank of crimson, and the dark mountains would
+rise from that sinister reek like islands in a sea of blood. It seemed
+a grim symbol in the southern heaven when seen from the fort-capped
+hills by Wady Halfa. Ten years of lust in Khartoum, ten years of silent
+work in Cairo, and then all was ready, and it was time for civilisation
+to take a trip south once more, travelling as her wont is in an armoured
+train. Everything was ready, down to the last pack-saddle of the last
+camel, and yet no one suspected it, for an unconstitutional Government
+has its advantage. A great administrator had argued, and managed, and
+cajoled; a great soldier had organised and planned, and made piastres do
+the work of pounds. And then one night these two master spirits met and
+clasped hands, and the soldier vanished away upon some business of his
+own. And just at that very time, Bimbashi Hilary Joyce, seconded from
+the Royal Mallow Fusiliers, and temporarily attached to the Ninth
+Soudanese, made his first appearance in Cairo.
+
+Napoleon had said, and Hilary Joyce had noted, that great reputations
+are only to be made in the East. Here he was in the East with four tin
+cases of baggage, a Wilkinson sword, a Bond’s slug-throwing pistol, and
+a copy of “Green’s Introduction to the Study of Arabic.” With such a
+start, and the blood of youth running hot in his veins, everything
+seemed easy. He was a little frightened of the general; he had heard
+stories of his sternness to young officers, but with tact and suavity he
+hoped for the best. So, leaving his effects at “Shepherd’s Hotel,” he
+reported himself at headquarters. It was not the general, but the head
+of the Intelligence Department who received him, the chief being still
+absent upon that business which had called him. Hilary Joyce found
+himself in the presence of a short, thick-set officer, with a gentle
+voice and a placid expression which covered a remarkably acute and
+energetic spirit. With that quiet smile and guileless manner he had
+undercut and outwitted the most cunning of Orientals. He stood, a
+cigarette between his fingers, looking at the newcomer. “I heard that
+you had come. Sorry the chief isn’t here to see you. Gone up to the
+frontier, you know.”
+
+“My regiment is at Wady Halfa. I suppose, sir, that I should report
+myself there at once?”
+
+“No; I was to give you your orders.” He led the way to a map upon the
+wall, and pointed with the end of his cigarette. “You see this place.
+It’s the Oasis of Kurkur--a little quiet, I am afraid, but excellent
+air. You are to get out there as quick as possible. You’ll find a
+company of the Ninth, and half a squadron of cavalry. You will be in
+command.”
+
+Hilary Joyce looked at the name, printed at the intersection of two
+black lines without another dot upon the map for several inches around
+it. “A village, sir?”
+
+“No, a well. Not very good water, I’m afraid, but you soon get
+accustomed to natron. It’s an important post, as being at the junction
+of two caravan routes. All routes are closed now, of course, but still
+you never know who _might_ come along them.”
+
+“We are there, I presume, to prevent raiding?”
+
+“Well, between you and me, there’s really nothing to raid. You are
+there to intercept messengers. They must call at the wells. Of course
+you have only just come out, but you probably understand already enough
+about the conditions of this country to know that there is a great deal
+of disaffection about, and that the Khalifa is likely to try and keep in
+touch with his adherents. Then, again, Senoussi lives up that way”--he
+waved his cigarette to the westward--“the Khalifa might send a message
+to him along that route. Anyhow, your duty is to arrest everyone coming
+along, and get some account of him before you let him go. You don’t
+talk Arabic, I suppose?”
+
+“I am learning, sir.”
+
+“Well, well, you’ll have time enough for study there. And you’ll have a
+native officer, Ali something or other, who speaks English, and can
+interpret for you. Well, good-bye--I’ll tell the chief that you
+reported yourself. Get on to your post now as quickly as you can.”
+
+Railway to Baliani, the post-boat to Assouan, and then two days on a
+camel in the Libyan desert, with an Ababdeh guide, and three
+baggage-camels to tie one down to their own exasperating pace.
+However, even two and a half miles an hour mount up in time, and at
+last, on the third evening, from the blackened slag-heap of a hill which
+is called the Jebel Kurkur, Hilary Joyce looked down upon a distant
+clump of palms, and thought that this cool patch of green in the midst
+of the merciless blacks and yellows was the fairest colour effect that
+he had ever seen. An hour later he had ridden into the little camp, the
+guard had turned out to salute him, his native subordinate had greeted
+him in excellent English, and he had fairly entered into his own.
+It was not an exhilarating place for a lengthy residence. There was one
+large, bowl-shaped, grassy depression sloping down to the three pits of
+brown and brackish water. There was the grove of palm trees also,
+beautiful to look upon, but exasperating in view of the fact that Nature
+has provided her least shady trees on the very spot where shade is
+needed most. A single wide-spread acacia did something to restore the
+balance. Here Hilary Joyce slumbered in the heat, and in the cool he
+inspected his square-shouldered, spindle-shanked Soudanese, with their
+cheery black faces and their funny little pork-pie forage caps.
+Joyce was a martinet at drill, and the blacks loved being drilled, so
+the Bimbashi was soon popular among them. But one day was exactly like
+another. The weather, the view, the employment, the food--everything
+was the same. At the end of three weeks he felt that he had been there
+for interminable years. And then at last there came something to break
+the monotony.
+
+One evening, as the sun was sinking, Hilary Joyce rode slowly down the
+old caravan road. It had a fascination for him, this narrow track,
+winding among the boulders and curving up the nullahs, for he
+remembered how in the map it had gone on and on, stretching away into
+the unknown heart of Africa. The countless pads of innumerable camels
+through many centuries had beaten it smooth, so that now, unused and
+deserted, it still wound away, the strangest of roads, a foot broad, and
+perhaps two thousand miles in length. Joyce wondered as he rode how
+long it was since any traveller had journeyed up it from the south, and
+then he raised his eyes, and there was a man coming along the path.
+For an instant Joyce thought that it might be one of his own men, but a
+second glance assured him that this could not be so. The stranger was
+dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab, and not in the close-fitting
+khaki of a soldier. He was very tall, and a high turban made him seem
+gigantic. He strode swiftly along, with head erect, and the bearing of
+a man who knows no fear.
+
+Who could he be, this formidable giant coming out of the unknown?
+The precursor possibly of a horde of savage spearmen. And where could
+he have walked from? The nearest well was a long hundred miles down the
+track. At any rate the frontier post of Kurkur could not afford to
+receive casual visitors. Hilary Joyce whisked round his horse, galloped
+into camp, and gave the alarm. Then, with twenty horsemen at his back,
+he rode out again to reconnoitre. The man was still coming on in spite
+of these hostile preparations. For an instant he hesitated when first
+he saw the cavalry, but escape was out of the question, and he advanced
+with the air of one who makes the best of a bad job. He made no
+resistance, and said nothing when the hands of two troopers clutched at
+his shoulders, but walked quietly between their horses into camp.
+Shortly afterwards the patrol came in again. There were no signs of any
+dervishes. The man was alone. A splendid trotting camel had been found
+lying dead a little way down the track. The mystery of the stranger’s
+arrival was explained. But why, and whence, and whither?--these were
+questions for which a zealous officer must find an answer.
+
+Hilary Joyce was disappointed that there were no dervishes. It would
+have been a great start for him in the Egyptian army had he fought a
+little action on his own account. But even as it was, he had a rare
+chance of impressing the authorities. He would love to show his
+capacity to the head of the Intelligence, and even more to that grim
+Chief who never forgot what was smart, or forgave what was slack.
+The prisoner’s dress and bearing showed that he was of importance.
+Mean men do not ride pure-bred trotting camels. Joyce sponged his head
+with cold water, drank a cup of strong coffee, put on an imposing
+official tarboosh instead of his sun-helmet, and formed himself into a
+court of inquiry and judgment under the acacia tree. He would have
+liked his people to have seen him now, with his two black orderlies in
+waiting, and his Egyptian native officer at his side. He sat behind a
+camp-table, and the prisoner, strongly guarded, was led up to him.
+The man was a handsome fellow, with bold grey eyes and a long black
+beard.
+
+“Why!” cried Joyce, “the rascal is making faces at me.” A curious
+contraction had passed over the man’s features, but so swiftly that it
+might have been a nervous twitch. He was now a model of Oriental
+gravity. “Ask him who he is, and what he wants?” The native officer
+did so, but the stranger made no reply, save that the same sharp spasm
+passed once more over his face. “Well, I’m blessed!” cried Hilary
+Joyce. “Of all the impudent scoundrels! He keeps on winking at me.
+Who are you, you rascal? Give an account of yourself! D’ye hear?”
+But the tall Arab was as impervious to English as to Arabic.
+The Egyptian tried again and again. The prisoner looked at Joyce with
+his inscrutable eyes, and occasionally twitched his face at him, but
+never opened his mouth. The Bimbashi scratched his head in
+bewilderment.
+
+“Look here, Mahomet Ali, we’ve got to get some sense out of this fellow.
+You say there are no papers on him?”
+
+“No, sir; we found no papers.”
+
+“No clue of any kind?”
+
+“He has come far, sir. A trotting camel does not die easily. He has
+come from Dongola, at least.”
+
+“Well, we must get him to talk.”
+
+“It is possible that he is deaf and dumb.”
+
+“Not he. I never saw a man look more all there in my life.”
+
+“You might send him across to Assouan.”
+
+“And give someone else the credit? No, thank you. This is my bird.
+But how are we going to get him to find his tongue?”
+
+The Egyptian’s dark eyes skirted the encampment and rested on the cook’s
+fire. “Perhaps,” said he, “if the Bimbashi thought fit--” He looked at
+the prisoner and then at the burning wood.
+
+“No, no; it wouldn’t do. No, by Jove, that’s going too far.”
+
+“A very little might do it.”
+
+“No, no. It’s all very well here, but it would sound just awful if ever
+it got as far as Fleet Street. But, I say,” he whispered, “we might
+frighten him a bit. There’s no harm in that.”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Tell them to undo the man’s galabeeah. Order them to put a horseshoe
+in the fire and make it red-hot.” The prisoner watched the proceedings
+with an air which had more of amusement than of uneasiness. He never
+winced as the black sergeant approached with the glowing shoe held upon
+two bayonets.
+
+“Will you speak now?” asked the Bimbashi, savagely. The prisoner smiled
+gently and stroked his beard.
+
+“Oh, chuck the infernal thing away!” cried Joyce, jumping up in a
+passion. “There’s no use trying to bluff the fellow. He knows we won’t
+do it. But I _can_ and I _will_ flog him, and you can tell him from me
+that if he hasn’t found his tongue by to-morrow morning I’ll take the
+skin off his back as sure as my name’s Joyce. Have you said all that?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Well, you can sleep upon it, you beauty, and a good night’s rest may it
+give you!” He adjourned the Court, and the prisoner, as imperturbable
+as ever, was led away by the guard to his supper of rice and water.
+Hilary Joyce was a kind-hearted man, and his own sleep was considerably
+disturbed by the prospect of the punishment which he must inflict next
+day. He had hopes that the mere sight of the koorbash and the thongs
+might prevail over his prisoner’s obstinacy. And then, again, he
+thought how shocking it would be if the man proved to be really dumb
+after all. The possibility shook him so that he had almost determined
+by daybreak that he would send the stranger on unhurt to Assouan.
+And yet what a tame conclusion it would be to the incident! He lay upon
+his angareeb still debating it when the question suddenly and
+effectively settled itself. Ali Mahomet rushed into his tent.
+
+“Sir,” he cried, “the prisoner is gone!”
+
+“Gone!”
+
+“Yes, sir, and your own best riding camel as well. There is a slit cut
+in the tent, and he got away unseen in the early morning.”
+
+The Bimbashi acted with all energy. Cavalry rode along every track;
+scouts examined the soft sand of the wadys for signs of the fugitive,
+but no trace was discovered. The man had utterly disappeared. With a
+heavy heart, Hilary Joyce wrote an official report of the matter and
+forwarded it to Assouan. Five days later there came a curt order from
+the chief that he should report himself there. He feared the worst from
+the stern soldier, who spared others as little as he spared himself.
+And his worst forebodings were realised. Travel-stained and weary, he
+reported himself one night at the general’s quarters. Behind a table
+piled with papers and strewn with maps the famous soldier and his Chief
+of Intelligence were deep in plans and figures. Their greeting was a
+cold one.
+
+“I understand, Captain Joyce,” said the general, “that you have allowed
+a very important prisoner to slip through your fingers.”
+
+“I am sorry, sir.”
+
+“No doubt. But that will not mend matters. Did you ascertain anything
+about him before you lost him?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“How was that?”
+
+“I could get nothing out of him, sir.”
+
+“Did you try?”
+
+“Yes, sir; I did what I could.”
+
+“What did you do?”
+
+“Well, sir, I threatened to use physical force.”
+
+“What did he say?”
+
+“He said nothing.”
+
+“What was he like?”
+
+“A tall man, sir. Rather a desperate character, I should think.”
+
+“Any way by which we could identify him?”
+
+“A long black beard, sir. Grey eyes. And a nervous way of twitching
+his face.”
+
+“Well, Captain Joyce,” said the general, in his stern, inflexible voice,
+“I cannot congratulate you upon your first exploit in the Egyptian army.
+You are aware that every English officer in this force is a picked man.
+I have the whole British army from which to draw. It is necessary,
+therefore, that I should insist upon the very highest efficiency.
+It would be unfair upon the others to pass over any obvious want of zeal
+or intelligence. You are seconded from the Royal Mallows, I
+understand?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“I have no doubt that your colonel will be glad to see you fulfilling
+your regimental duties again.”
+
+Hilary Joyce’s heart was too heavy for words. He was silent.
+
+“I will let you know my final decision to-morrow morning.”
+
+Joyce saluted and turned upon his heel.
+
+“You can sleep upon that, you beauty, and a good night’s rest may it
+give you!”
+
+Joyce turned in bewilderment. Where had those words been used before?
+Who was it who had used them? The general was standing erect. Both he
+and the Chief of the Intelligence were laughing. Joyce stared at the
+tall figure, the erect bearing, the inscrutable grey eyes.
+
+“Good Lord!” he gasped.
+
+“Well, well, Captain Joyce, we are quits!” said the general, holding out
+his hand. “You gave me a bad ten minutes with that infernal red-hot
+horseshoe of yours. I’ve done as much for you. I don’t think we can
+spare you for the Royal Mallows just yet awhile.”
+
+“But, sir; but--!”
+
+“The fewer questions the better, perhaps. But of course it must seem
+rather amazing. I had a little private business with the Kabbabish.
+It must be done in person. I did it, and came to your post in my
+return. I kept on winking at you as a sign that I wanted a word with
+you alone.”
+
+“Yes, yes. I begin to understand.”
+
+“I couldn’t give it away before all those blacks, or where should I have
+been the next time I used my false beard and Arab dress? You put me in
+a very awkward position. But at last I had a word alone with your
+Egyptian officer, who managed my escape all right.”
+
+“He! Mahomet Ali!”
+
+“I ordered him to say nothing. I had a score to settle with you.
+But we dine at eight, Captain Joyce. We live plainly here, but I think
+I can do you a little better than you did me at Kurkur.”
+
+
+
+A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE
+
+
+There are many folk who knew Alphonse Lacour in his old age. From about
+the time of the Revolution of ’48 until he died in the second year of
+the Crimean War he was always to be found in the same corner of the Cafe
+de Provence, at the end of the Rue St. Honore, coming down about nine in
+the evening, and going when he could find no one to talk with. It took
+some self-restraint to listen to the old diplomatist, for his stories
+were beyond all belief, and yet he was quick at detecting the shadow of
+a smile or the slightest little raising of the eyebrows. Then his huge,
+rounded back would straighten itself, his bulldog chin would project,
+and his r’s would burr like a kettledrum. When he got as far as, “Ah,
+monsieur r-r-r-rit!” or “Vous ne me cr-r-r-royez pas donc!” it was quite
+time to remember that you had a ticket for the opera.
+
+There was his story of Talleyrand and the five oyster-shells, and there
+was his utterly absurd account of Napoleon’s second visit to Ajaccio.
+Then there was that most circumstantial romance (which he never ventured
+upon until his second bottle had been uncorked) of the Emperor’s escape
+from St. Helena--how he lived for a whole year in Philadelphia, while
+Count Herbert de Bertrand, who was his living image, personated him at
+Longwood. But of all his stories there was none which was more
+notorious than that of the Koran and the Foreign Office messenger. And
+yet when Monsieur Otto’s memoirs were written it was found that there
+really was some foundation for old Lacour’s incredible statement.
+
+“You must know, monsieur,” he would say, “that I left Egypt after
+Kleber’s assassination. I would gladly have stayed on, for I was
+engaged in a translation of the Koran, and between ourselves I had
+thoughts at the time of embracing Mahometanism, for I was deeply struck
+by the wisdom of their views about marriage. They had made an
+incredible mistake, however, upon the subject of wine, and this was what
+the Mufti who attempted to convert me could never get over. Then when
+old Kleber died and Menou came to the top, I felt that it was time for
+me to go. It is not for me to speak of my own capacities, monsieur, but
+you will readily understand that the man does not care to be ridden by
+the mule. I carried my Koran and my papers to London, where Monsieur
+Otto had been sent by the First Consul to arrange a treaty of peace; for
+both nations were very weary of the war, which had already lasted ten
+years. Here I was most useful to Monsieur Otto on account of my
+knowledge of the English tongue, and also, if I may say so, on account
+of my natural capacity. They were happy days during which I lived in
+the square of Bloomsbury. The climate of monsieur’s country is, it must
+be confessed, detestable. But then what would you have? Flowers grow
+best in the rain. One has but to point to monsieur’s fellow
+country-women to prove it.
+
+“Well, Monsieur Otto, our Ambassador, was kept terribly busy over that
+treaty, and all of his staff were worked to death. We had not Pitt to
+deal with, which was, perhaps, as well for us. He was a terrible man
+that Pitt, and wherever half a dozen enemies of France were plotting
+together, there was his sharp-pointed nose right in the middle of them.
+The nation, however, had been thoughtful enough to put him out of
+office, and we had to do with Monsieur Addington. But Milord Hawkesbury
+was the Foreign Minister, and it was with him that we were obliged to do
+our bargaining.
+
+“You can understand that it was no child’s play. After ten years of war
+each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the
+other, or to the other’s allies. What was to be given back, and what
+was to be kept? Is this island worth that peninsula? If we do this at
+Venice, will you do that at Sierra Leone? If we give up Egypt to the
+Sultan, will you restore the Cape of Good Hope, which you have taken
+from our allies the Dutch? So we wrangled and wrestled, and I have seen
+Monsieur Otto come back to the Embassy so exhausted that his secretary
+and I had to help him from his carriage to his sofa. But at last things
+adjusted themselves, and the night came round when the treaty was to be
+finally signed. Now, you must know that the one great card which we
+held, and which we played, played, played at every point of the game,
+was that we had Egypt. The English were very nervous about our being
+there. It gave us a foot at each end of the Mediterranean, you see.
+And they were not sure that that wonderful little Napoleon of ours might
+not make it the base of an advance against India. So whenever Lord
+Hawkesbury proposed to retain anything, we had only to reply, ‘In _that_
+case, of course, we cannot consent to evacuate Egypt,’ and in this way
+we quickly brought him to reason. It was by the help of Egypt that we
+gained terms which were remarkably favourable, and especially that we
+caused the English to consent to give up the Cape of Good Hope. We did
+not wish your people, monsieur, to have any foothold in South Africa,
+for history has taught us that the British foothold of one half-century
+is the British Empire of the next. It is not your army or your navy
+against which we have to guard, but it is your terrible younger son and
+your man in search of a career. When we French have a possession across
+the seas, we like to sit in Paris and to felicitate ourselves upon it.
+With you it is different. You take your wives and your children, and
+you run away to see what kind of place this may be, and after that we
+might as well try to take that old Square of Bloomsbury away from you.
+
+“Well, it was upon the first of October that the treaty was finally to
+be signed. In the morning I was congratulating Monsieur Otto upon the
+happy conclusion of his labours. He was a little pale shrimp of a man,
+very quick and nervous, and he was so delighted now at his own success
+that he could not sit still, but ran about the room chattering and
+laughing, while I sat on a cushion in the corner, as I had learned to do
+in the East. Suddenly, in came a messenger with a letter which had been
+forwarded from Paris. Monsieur Otto cast his eye upon it, and then,
+without a word, his knees gave way, and he fell senseless upon the
+floor. I ran to him, as did the courier, and between us we carried him
+to the sofa. He might have been dead from his appearance, but I could
+still feel his heart thrilling beneath my palm. ‘What is this, then?’ I
+asked.
+
+“‘I do not know,’ answered the messenger. ‘Monsieur Talleyrand told me
+to hurry as never man hurried before, and to put this letter into the
+hands of Monsieur Otto. I was in Paris at midday yesterday.’
+
+“I know that I am to blame, but I could not help glancing at the letter,
+picking it out of the senseless hand of Monsieur Otto. My God! the
+thunderbolt that it was! I did not faint, but I sat down beside my
+chief and I burst into tears. It was but a few words, but they told us
+that Egypt had been evacuated by our troops a month before. All our
+treaty was undone then, and the one consideration which had induced our
+enemies to give us good terms had vanished. In twelve hours it would
+not have mattered. But now the treaty was not yet signed. We should
+have to give up the Cape. We should have to let England have Malta.
+Now that Egypt was gone we had nothing left to offer in exchange.
+
+“But we are not so easily beaten, we Frenchmen. You English misjudge us
+when you think that because we show emotions which you conceal, that we
+are therefore of a weak and womanly nature. You cannot read your
+histories and believe that. Monsieur Otto recovered his senses
+presently, and we took counsel what we should do.
+
+“‘It is useless to go on, Alphonse,’ said he. ‘This Englishman will
+laugh at me when I ask him to sign.’
+
+“‘Courage!’ I cried; and then a sudden thought coming into my head--‘How
+do we know that the English will have news of this? Perhaps they may
+sign the treaty before they know of it.’
+
+“Monsieur Otto sprang from the sofa and flung himself into my arms.
+
+“‘Alphonse,’ he cried, ‘you have saved me! Why should they know about
+it? Our news has come from Toulon to Paris, and thence straight to
+London. Theirs will come by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar. At
+this moment it is unlikely that anyone in Paris knows of it, save only
+Talleyrand and the First Consul. If we keep our secret, we may still
+get our treaty signed.’
+
+“Ah! monsieur, you can imagine the horrible uncertainty in which we
+spent the day. Never, never shall I forget those slow hours during
+which we sat together, starting at every distant shout, lest it should
+be the first sign of the rejoicing which this news would cause in
+London. Monsieur Otto passed from youth to age in a day. As for me, I
+find it easier to go out and meet danger than to wait for it. I set
+forth, therefore, towards evening. I wandered here, and wandered there.
+I was in the fencing-rooms of Monsieur Angelo, and in the salon-de-boxe
+of Monsieur Jackson, and in the club of Brooks, and in the lobby of the
+Chamber of Deputies, but nowhere did I hear any news. Still, it was
+possible that Milord Hawkesbury had received it himself just as we had.
+He lived in Harley Street, and there it was that the treaty was to be
+finally signed that night at eight. I entreated Monsieur Otto to drink
+two glasses of Burgundy before he went, for I feared lest his haggard
+face and trembling hands should rouse suspicion in the English
+minister.
+
+“Well, we went round together in one of the Embassy’s carriages about
+half-past seven. Monsieur Otto went in alone; but presently, on excuse
+of getting his portfolio, he came out again, with his cheeks flushed
+with joy, to tell me that all was well.
+
+“‘He knows nothing,’ he whispered. ‘Ah, if the next half-hour were
+over!’
+
+“‘Give me a sign when it is settled,’ said I.
+
+“‘For what reason?’
+
+“‘Because until then no messenger shall interrupt you. I give you my
+promise--I, Alphonse Lacour.’
+
+“He clasped my hand in both of his.
+
+“‘I shall make an excuse to move one of the candles on to the table in
+the window,’ said he, and hurried into the house, whilst I was left
+waiting beside the carriage.
+
+“Well, if we could but secure ourselves from interruption for a single
+half-hour the day would be our own. I had hardly begun to form my plans
+when I saw the lights of a carriage coming swiftly from the direction of
+Oxford Street. Ah! if it should be the messenger! What could I do?
+I was prepared to kill him--yes, even to kill him--rather than at this
+last moment allow our work to be undone. Thousands die to make a
+glorious war. Why should not one die to make a glorious peace?
+What though they hurried me to the scaffold? I should have sacrificed
+myself for my country. I had a little curved Turkish knife strapped to
+my waist. My hand was on the hilt of it when the carriage which had
+alarmed me so rattled safely past me.
+
+“But another might come. I must be prepared. Above all, I must not
+compromise the Embassy. I ordered our carriage to move on, and I
+engaged what you call a hackney coach. Then I spoke to the driver, and
+gave him a guinea. He understood that it was a special service.
+
+“‘You shall have another guinea if you do what you are told,’ said I.
+
+“‘All right, master,’ said he, turning his slow eyes upon me without a
+trace of excitement or curiosity.
+
+“‘If I enter your coach with another gentleman, you will drive up and
+down Harley Street, and take no orders from anyone but me. When I get
+out, you will carry the other gentleman to Watier’s Club, in Bruton
+Street.’
+
+“‘All right, master,’ said he again.
+
+“So I stood outside Milord Hawkesbury’s house, and you can think how
+often my eyes went up to that window in the hope of seeing the candle
+twinkle in it. Five minutes passed, and another five. Oh, how slowly
+they crept along! It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a
+white fog crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the
+dim oil-lamps. I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my
+ears were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the
+rumble of wheels. It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of
+Harley, even upon a sunny day. The houses are solid and very
+respectable over yonder, but there is nothing of the feminine about
+them. It is a city to be inhabited by males. But on that raw night,
+amid the damp and the fog, with the anxiety gnawing at my heart, it
+seemed the saddest, weariest spot in the whole wide world. I paced up
+and down slapping my hands to keep them warm, and still straining my
+ears. And then suddenly out of the dull hum of the traffic down in
+Oxford Street I heard a sound detach itself, and grow louder and louder,
+and clearer and clearer with every instant, until two yellow lights came
+flashing through the fog, and a light cabriolet whirled up to the door
+of the Foreign Minister. It had not stopped before a young fellow
+sprang out of it and hurried to the steps, while the driver turned his
+horse and rattled off into the fog once more.
+
+“Ah, it is in the moment of action that I am best, monsieur. You, who
+only see me when I am drinking my wine in the Cafe de Provence, cannot
+conceive the heights to which I rise. At that moment, when I knew that
+the fruits of a ten years’ war were at stake, I was magnificent. It was
+the last French campaign and I the general and army in one.
+
+“‘Sir,” said I, touching him upon the arm, ‘are you the messenger for
+Lord Hawkesbury?’
+
+“‘Yes,’ said he.
+
+“‘I have been waiting for you half an hour,’ said I. ‘You are to follow
+me at once. He is with the French Ambassador.’
+
+“I spoke with such assurance that he never hesitated for an instant.
+When he entered the hackney coach and I followed him in, my heart gave
+such a thrill of joy that I could hardly keep from shouting aloud.
+He was a poor little creature, this Foreign Office messenger, not much
+bigger than Monsieur Otto, and I--monsieur can see my hands now, and
+imagine what they were like when I was seven-and-twenty years of age.
+
+“Well, now that I had him in my coach, the question was what I should do
+with him. I did not wish to hurt him if I could help it.
+
+“‘This is a pressing business,’ said he. ‘I have a despatch which I
+must deliver instantly.’
+
+“Our coach had rattled down Harley Street now, in accordance with my
+instruction, it turned and began to go up again.
+
+“‘Hullo!’ he cried. ‘What’s this?’
+
+“‘What then?’ I asked.
+
+“‘We are driving back. Where is Lord Hawkesbury?’
+
+“‘We shall see him presently.’
+
+“‘Let me out!’ he shouted. ‘There’s some trickery in this. Coachman,
+stop the coach! Let me out, I say!’
+
+“I dashed him back into his seat as he tried to turn the handle of the
+door. He roared for help. I clapped my palm across his mouth. He made
+his teeth meet through the side of it. I seized his own cravat and
+bound it over his lips. He still mumbled and gurgled, but the noise was
+covered by the rattle of our wheels. We were passing the minister’s
+house, and there was no candle in the window.
+
+“The messenger sat quiet for a little, and I could see the glint of his
+eyes as he stared at me through the gloom. He was partly stunned, I
+think, by the force with which I had hurled him into his seat. And also
+he was pondering, perhaps, what he should do next. Presently he got his
+mouth partly free from the cravat.
+
+“‘You shall have my watch and my purse if you will let me go,’ said he.
+
+“‘Sir,’ said I, ‘I am as honourable a man as you are yourself.’
+
+“‘Who are you, then?’
+
+“‘My name is of no importance.’
+
+“‘What do you want with me?’
+
+“‘It is a bet.’
+
+“‘A bet? What d’you mean? Do you understand that I am on the
+Government service, and that you will see the inside of a gaol for
+this?’
+
+“‘That is the bet. That is the sport, said I.’
+
+“‘You may find it poor sport before you finish,’ he cried. ‘What is
+this insane bet of yours then?’
+
+“‘I have bet,’ I answered, ‘that I will recite a chapter of the Koran to
+the first gentleman whom I should meet in the street.’
+
+“I do not know what made me think of it, save that my translation was
+always running in my head. He clutched at the door-handle, and again I
+had to hurl him back into his seat.
+
+“‘How long will it take?’ he gasped.
+
+“‘It depends on the chapter,’ I answered.
+
+“‘A short one, then, and let me go!’
+
+“‘But is it fair?’ I argued. ‘When I say a chapter, I do not mean the
+shortest chapter, but rather one which should be of average length.’
+
+“‘Help! help! help!’ he squealed, and I was compelled again to adjust
+his cravat.
+
+“‘A little patience,’ said I, ‘and it will soon be over. I should like
+to recite the chapter which would be of most interest to yourself. You
+will confess that I am trying to make things as pleasant as I can for
+you?’
+
+“He slipped his mouth free again.
+
+“‘Quick, then, quick!’ he groaned.
+
+“‘The Chapter of the Camel?’ I suggested.
+
+“‘Yes, yes.’
+
+“‘Or that of the Fleet Stallion?’
+
+“‘Yes, yes. Only proceed!’
+
+“We had passed the window and there was no candle. I settled down to
+recite the Chapter of the Stallion to him. Perhaps you do not know your
+Koran very well, monsieur? Well, I knew it by heart then, as I know it
+by heart now. The style is a little exasperating for anyone who is in a
+hurry. But, then, what would you have? The people in the East are
+never in a hurry, and it was written for them. I repeated it all with
+the dignity and solemnity which a sacred book demands, and the young
+Englishman he wriggled and groaned.
+
+“‘When the horses, standing on three feet and placing the tip of their
+fourth foot upon the ground, were mustered in front of him in the
+evening, he said, I have loved the love of earthly good above the
+remembrance of things on high, and have spent the time in viewing these
+horses. Bring the horses back to me. And when they were brought back
+he began to cut off their legs and--’
+
+“It was at this moment that the young Englishman sprang at me. My God!
+how little can I remember of the next few minutes! He was a boxer, this
+shred of a man. He had been trained to strike. I tried to catch him by
+the hands. Pac, pac, he came upon my nose and upon my eye. I put down
+my head and thrust at him with it. Pac, he came from below. But ah!
+I was too much for him. I hurled myself upon him, and he had no place
+where he could escape from my weight. He fell flat upon the cushions
+and I seated myself upon him with such conviction that the wind flew
+from him as from a burst bellows.
+
+“Then I searched to see what there was with which I could tie him. I
+drew the strings from my shoes, and with one I secured his wrists, and
+with another his ankles. Then I tied the cravat round his mouth again,
+so that he could only lie and glare at me. When I had done all this,
+and had stopped the bleeding of my own nose, I looked out of the coach
+and ah, monsieur, the very first thing which caught my eyes was that
+candle--that dear little candle--glimmering in the window of the
+minister. Alone, with these two hands, I had retrieved the capitulation
+of an army and the loss of a province. Yes, monsieur, what Abercrombie
+and 5,000 men had done upon the beach at Aboukir was undone by me,
+single-handed, in a hackney coach in Harley Street.
+
+“Well, I had no time to lose, for at any moment Monsieur Otto might be
+down. I shouted to my driver, gave him his second guinea, and allowed
+him to proceed to Watier’s. For myself, I sprang into our Embassy’s
+carriage, and a moment later the door of the minister opened. He had
+himself escorted Monsieur Otto downstairs, and now so deep was he in
+talk that he walked out bareheaded as far as the carriage. As he stood
+there by the open door, there came the rattle of wheels, and a man
+rushed down the pavement.
+
+“‘A despatch of great importance for Milord Hawkesbury!’ he cried.
+
+“I could see that it was not my messenger, but a second one. Milord
+Hawkesbury caught the paper from his hand, and read it by the light of
+the carriage lamp. His face, monsieur, was as white as this plate,
+before he had finished.
+
+“‘Monsieur Otto,’ he cried, ‘we have signed this treaty upon a false
+understanding. Egypt is in our hands.’
+
+“‘What!’ cried Monsieur Otto. ‘Impossible!’
+
+“‘It is certain. It fell to Abercrombie last month.’
+
+“‘In that case,’ said Monsieur Otto, ‘it is very fortunate that the
+treaty is signed.’
+
+“‘Very fortunate for you, sir,’ cried Milord Hawkesbury, as he turned
+back to the house.
+
+“Next day, monsieur, what they call the Bow Street runners were after
+me, but they could not run across salt water, and Alphonse Lacour was
+receiving the congratulations of Monsieur Talleyrand and the First
+Consul before ever his pursuers had got as far as Dover.”
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10446 ***
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+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>
+     The Green Flag | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style> /* <![CDATA[ */
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+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10446 ***</div>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE GREEN FLAG
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Arthur Conan Doyle
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> THE GREEN FLAG </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> CAPTAIN SHARKEY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE CROXLEY MASTER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE STRIPED CHEST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> A SHADOW BEFORE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> THE KING OF THE FOXES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> THE NEW CATACOMB </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE GREEN FLAG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Jack Conolly, of the Irish Shotgun Brigade, the Rory of the Hills
+      Inner Circle, and the extreme left wing of the Land League, was
+      incontinently shot by Sergeant Murdoch of the constabulary, in a little
+      moonlight frolic near Kanturk, his twin-brother Dennis joined the British
+      Army. The countryside had become too hot for him; and, as the seventy-five
+      shillings were wanting which might have carried him to America, he took
+      the only way handy of getting himself out of the way. Seldom has Her
+      Majesty had a less promising recruit, for his hot Celtic blood seethed
+      with hatred against Britain and all things British. The sergeant, however,
+      smiling complacently over his 6 ft. of brawn and his 44 in. chest, whisked
+      him off with a dozen other of the boys to the depot at Fermoy, whence in a
+      few weeks they were sent on, with the spade-work kinks taken out of their
+      backs, to the first battalion of the Royal Mallows, at the top of the
+      roster for foreign service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Royal Mallows, at about that date, were as strange a lot of men as
+      ever were paid by a great empire to fight its battles. It was the darkest
+      hour of the land struggle, when the one side came out with crow-bar and
+      battering-ram by day, and the other with mask and with shot-gun by night.
+      Men driven from their homes and potato-patches found their way even into
+      the service of the Government, to which it seemed to them that they owed
+      their troubles, and now and then they did wild things before they came.
+      There were recruits in the Irish regiments who would forget to answer to
+      their own names, so short had been their acquaintance with them. Of these
+      the Royal Mallows had their full share; and, while they still retained
+      their fame as being one of the smartest corps in the army, no one knew
+      better than their officers that they were dry-rotted with treason and with
+      bitter hatred of the flag under which they served.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the centre of all the disaffection was C Company, in which Dennis
+      Conolly found himself enrolled. They were Celts, Catholics, and men of the
+      tenant class to a man; and their whole experience of the British
+      Government had been an inexorable landlord, and a constabulary who seemed
+      to them to be always on the side of the rent-collector. Dennis was not the
+      only moonlighter in the ranks, nor was he alone in having an intolerable
+      family blood-feud to harden his heart. Savagery had begotten savagery in
+      that veiled civil war. A landlord with an iron mortgage weighing down upon
+      him had small bowels for his tenantry. He did but take what the law
+      allowed, and yet, with men like Jim Holan, or Patrick McQuire, or Peter
+      Flynn, who had seen the roofs torn from their cottages and their folk
+      huddled among their pitiable furniture upon the roadside, it was ill to
+      argue about abstract law. What matter that in that long and bitter
+      struggle there was many another outrage on the part of the tenant, and
+      many another grievance on the side of the landowner! A stricken man can
+      only feel his own wound, and the rank and file of the C Company of the
+      Royal Mallows were sore and savage to the soul. There were low whisperings
+      in barrack-rooms and canteens, stealthy meetings in public-house parlours,
+      bandying of passwords from mouth to mouth, and many other signs which made
+      their officers right glad when the order came which sent them to foreign,
+      and better still, to active service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Irish regiments have before now been disaffected, and have at a
+      distance looked upon the foe as though he might, in truth, be the friend;
+      but when they have been put face on to him, and when their officers have
+      dashed to the front with a wave and halloo, those rebel hearts have
+      softened and their gallant Celtic blood has boiled with the mad joy of the
+      fight, until the slower Britons have marvelled that they ever could have
+      doubted the loyalty of their Irish comrades. So it would be again,
+      according to the officers, and so it would not be if Dennis Conolly and a
+      few others could have their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a March morning upon the eastern fringe of the Nubian desert. The
+      sun had not yet risen, but a tinge of pink flushed up as far as the
+      cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon across
+      the horizon. From the coast inland stretched dreary sand-plains, dotted
+      over with thick clumps of mimosa scrub and mottled patches of thorny bush.
+      No tree broke the monotony of that vast desert. The dull, dusty hue of the
+      thickets, and the yellow glare of the sand, were the only colours, save at
+      one point, where, from a distance, it seemed that a land-slip of
+      snow-white stones had shot itself across a low foot-hill. But as the
+      traveller approached he saw, with a thrill, that these were no stones, but
+      the bleaching bones of a slaughtered army. With its dull tints, its
+      gnarled, viprous bushes, its arid, barren soil, and this death streak
+      trailed across it, it was indeed a nightmare country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some eight or ten miles inland the rolling plain curved upwards with a
+      steeper slope until it ran into a line of red basaltic rock which
+      zigzagged from north to south, heaping itself up at one point into a
+      fantastic knoll. On the summit of this there stood upon that March morning
+      three Arab chieftains&mdash;the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas, Moussa Wad
+      Aburhegel, who led the Berber dervishes, and Hamid Wad Hussein, who had
+      come northward with his fighting men from the land of the Baggaras. They
+      had all three just risen from their praying-carpets, and were peering out,
+      with fierce, high-nosed faces thrust forwards, at the stretch of country
+      revealed by the spreading dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red rim of the sun was pushing itself now above the distant sea, and
+      the whole coast-line stood out brilliantly yellow against the rich deep
+      blue beyond. At one spot lay a huddle of white-walled houses, a mere
+      splotch in the distance; while four tiny cock-boats, which lay beyond,
+      marked the position of three of Her Majesty's 10,000-ton troopers and the
+      admiral's flagship. But it was not upon the distant town, nor upon the
+      great vessels, nor yet upon the sinister white litter which gleamed in the
+      plain beneath them, that the Arab chieftains gazed. Two miles from where
+      they stood, amid the sand-hills and the mimosa scrub, a great
+      parallelogram had been marked by piled-up bushes. From the inside of this
+      dozens of tiny blue smoke-reeks curled up into the still morning air;
+      while there rose from it a confused deep murmur, the voices of men and the
+      gruntings of camels blended into the same insect buzz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The unbelievers have cooked their morning food," said the Baggara chief,
+      shading his eyes with his tawny, sinewy hand. "Truly their sleep has been
+      scanty; for Hamid and a hundred of his men have fired upon them since the
+      rising of the moon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So it was with these others," answered the Sheik Kadra, pointing with his
+      sheathed sword towards the old battle-field. "They also had a day of
+      little water and a night of little rest, and the heart was gone out of
+      them ere ever the sons of the Prophet had looked them in the eyes. This
+      blade drank deep that day, and will again before the sun has travelled
+      from the sea to the hill."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yet these are other men," remarked the Berber dervish. "Well, I know
+      that Allah has placed them in the clutch of our fingers, yet it may be
+      that they with the big hats will stand firmer than the cursed men of
+      Egypt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pray Allah that it may be so," cried the fierce Baggara, with a flash of
+      his black eyes. "It was not to chase women that I brought 700 men from the
+      river to the coast. See, my brother, already they are forming their
+      array."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fanfare of bugle-calls burst from the distant camp. At the same time the
+      bank of bushes at one side had been thrown or trampled down, and the
+      little army within began to move slowly out on to the plain. Once clear of
+      the camp they halted, and the slant rays of the sun struck flashes from
+      bayonet and from gun-barrel as the ranks closed up until the big pith
+      helmets joined into a single long white ribbon. Two streaks of scarlet
+      glowed on either side of the square, but elsewhere the fringe of
+      fighting-men was of the dull yellow khaki tint which hardly shows against
+      the desert sand. Inside their array was a dense mass of camels and mules
+      bearing stores and ambulance needs. Outside a twinkling clump of cavalry
+      was drawn up on each flank, and in front a thin, scattered line of mounted
+      infantry was already slowly advancing over the bush-strewn plain, halting
+      on every eminence, and peering warily round as men might who have to pick
+      their steps among the bones of those who have preceded them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three chieftains still lingered upon the knoll, looking down with
+      hungry eyes and compressed lips at the dark steel-tipped patch. "They are
+      slower to start than the men of Egypt," the Sheik of the Hadendowas
+      growled in his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Slower also to go back, perchance, my brother," murmured the dervish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yet they are not many&mdash;3,000 at the most."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And we 10,000, with the Prophet's grip upon our spear-hafts and his words
+      upon our banner. See to their chieftain, how he rides upon the right and
+      looks up at us with the glass that sees from afar! It may be that he sees
+      this also." The Arab shook his sword at the small clump of horsemen who
+      had spurred out from the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lo! he beckons," cried the dervish; "and see those others at the corner,
+      how they bend and heave. Ha! by the Prophet, I had thought it." As he
+      spoke, a little woolly puff of smoke spurted up at the corner of the
+      square, and a 7 lb. shell burst with a hard metallic smack just over their
+      heads. The splinters knocked chips from the red rocks around them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bismillah!" cried the Hadendowa; "if the gun can carry thus far, then
+      ours can answer to it. Ride to the left, Moussa, and tell Ben Ali to cut
+      the skin from the Egyptians if they cannot hit yonder mark. And you,
+      Hamid, to the right, and see that 3,000 men lie close in the wady that we
+      have chosen. Let the others beat the drum and show the banner of the
+      Prophet, for by the black stone their spears will have drunk deep ere they
+      look upon the stars again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long, straggling, boulder-strewn plateau lay on the summit of the red
+      hills, sloping very precipitously to the plain, save at one point, where a
+      winding gully curved downwards, its mouth choked with sand-mounds and
+      olive-hued scrub. Along the edge of this position lay the Arab host&mdash;a
+      motley crew of shock-headed desert clansmen, fierce predatory slave
+      dealers of the interior, and wild dervishes from the Upper Nile, all blent
+      together by their common fearlessness and fanaticism. Two races were
+      there, as wide as the poles apart&mdash;the thin-lipped, straight-haired
+      Arab and the thick-lipped, curly negro&mdash;yet the faith of Islam had
+      bound them closer than a blood tie. Squatting among the rocks, or lying
+      thickly in the shadow, they peered out at the slow-moving square beneath
+      them, while women with water-skins and bags of dhoora fluttered from group
+      to group, calling out to each other those fighting texts from the Koran
+      which in the hour of battle are maddening as wine to the true believer. A
+      score of banners waved over the ragged, valiant crew, and among them, upon
+      desert horses and white Bishareen camels, were the Emirs and Sheiks who
+      were to lead them against the infidels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Sheik Kadra sprang into his saddle and drew his sword there was a
+      wild whoop and a clatter of waving spears, while the one-ended war-drums
+      burst into a dull crash like a wave upon shingle. For a moment 10,000 men
+      were up on the rocks with brandished arms and leaping figures; the next
+      they were under cover again, waiting sternly and silently for their
+      chieftain's orders. The square was less than half a mile from the ridge
+      now, and shell after shell from the 7 lb. guns were pitching over it. A
+      deep roar on the right, and then a second one showed that the Egyptian
+      Krupps were in action. Sheik Kadra's hawk eyes saw that the shells burst
+      far beyond the mark, and he spurred his horse along to where a knot of
+      mounted chiefs were gathered round the two guns, which were served by
+      their captured crews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How is this, Ben Ali?" he cried. "It was not thus that the dogs fired
+      when it was their own brothers in faith at whom they aimed!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A chieftain reined his horse back, and thrust a blood-smeared sword into
+      its sheath. Beside him two Egyptian artillerymen with their throats cut
+      were sobbing out their lives upon the ground. "Who lays the gun this
+      time?" asked the fierce chief, glaring at the frightened gunners." Here,
+      thou black-browed child of Shaitan, aim, and aim for thy life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may have been chance, or it may have been skill, but the third and
+      fourth shells burst over the square. Sheik Kadra smiled grimly and
+      galloped back to the left, where his spearmen were streaming down into the
+      gully. As he joined them a deep growling rose from the plain beneath, like
+      the snarling of a sullen wild beast, and a little knot of tribesmen fell
+      into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead from a Gardner. Their
+      comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down into the ravine. From all
+      along the crest burst the hard, sharp crackle of Remington fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The square had slowly advanced, rippling over the low sandhills, and
+      halting every few minutes to re-arrange its formation. Now, having made
+      sure that there was no force of the enemy in the scrub, it changed its
+      direction, and began to take a line parallel to the Arab position. It was
+      too steep to assail from the front, and if they moved far enough to the
+      right the general hoped that he might turn it. On the top of those ruddy
+      hills lay a baronetcy for him, and a few extra hundreds in his pension,
+      and he meant having them both that day. The Remington fire was annoying,
+      and so were those two Krupp guns; already there were more cacolets full
+      than he cared to see. But on the whole he thought it better to hold his
+      fire until he had more to aim at than a few hundred of fuzzy heads peeping
+      over a razor-back ridge. He was a bulky, red-faced man, a fine
+      whist-player, and a soldier who knew his work. His men believed in him,
+      and he had good reason to believe in them, for he had excellent stuff
+      under him that day. Being an ardent champion of the short-service system,
+      he took particular care to work with veteran first battalions, and his
+      little force was the compressed essence of an army corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The left front of the square was formed by four companies of the Royal
+      Wessex, and the right by four of the Royal Mallows. On either side the
+      other halves of the same regiments marched in quarter column of companies.
+      Behind them, on the right was a battalion of Guards, and on the left one
+      of Marines, while the rear was closed in by a Rifle battalion. Two Royal
+      Artillery 7 lb. screw-guns kept pace with the square, and a dozen
+      white-bloused sailors, under their blue-coated, tight-waisted officers,
+      trailed their Gardner in front, turning every now and then to spit up at
+      the draggled banners which waved over the cragged ridge. Hussars and
+      Lancers scouted in the scrub at each side, and within moved the clump of
+      camels, with humorous eyes and supercilious lips, their comic faces a
+      contrast to the blood-stained men who already lay huddled in the cacolets
+      on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The square was now moving slowly on a line parallel with the rocks,
+      stopping every few minutes to pick up wounded, and to allow the screw-guns
+      and Gardner to make themselves felt. The men looked serious, for that
+      spring on to the rocks of the Arab army had given them a vague glimpse of
+      the number and ferocity of their foes; but their faces were set like
+      stone, for they knew to a man that they must win or they must die&mdash;and
+      die, too, in a particularly unlovely fashion. But most serious of all was
+      the general, for he had seen that which brought a flush to his cheeks and
+      a frown to his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I say, Stephen," said he to his galloper, "those Mallows seem a trifle
+      jumpy. The right flank company bulged a bit when the niggers showed on the
+      hill."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Youngest troops in the square, sir," murmured the aide, looking at them
+      critically through his eye-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell Colonel Flanagan to see to it, Stephen," said the general; and the
+      galloper sped upon his way. The colonel, a fine old Celtic warrior, was
+      over at C Company in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How are the men, Captain Foley?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never better, sir," answered the senior captain, in the spirit that makes
+      a Madras officer look murder if you suggest recruiting his regiment from
+      the Punjab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stiffen them up!" cried the colonel. As he rode away a colour-sergeant
+      seemed to trip, and fell forward into a mimosa bush. He made no effort to
+      rise, but lay in a heap among the thorns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sergeant O'Rooke's gone, sorr," cried a voice. "Never mind, lads," said
+      Captain Foley. "He's died like a soldier, fighting for his Queen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Down with the Queen!" shouted a hoarse voice from the ranks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the roar of the Gardner and the typewriter-like clicking of the hopper
+      burst in at the tail of the words. Captain Foley heard them, and
+      Subalterns Grice and Murphy heard them; but there are times when a deaf
+      ear is a gift from the gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Steady, Mallows!" cried the captain, in a pause of the grunting
+      machine-gun. "We have the honour of Ireland to guard this day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And well we know how to guard it, captin!" cried the same ominous voice;
+      and there was a buzz from the length of the company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain and the two subs. came together behind the marching line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They seem a bit out of hand," murmured the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bedad," said the Galway boy, "they mean to scoot like redshanks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They nearly broke when the blacks showed on the hill," said Grice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The first man that turns, my sword is through him," cried Foley, loud
+      enough to be heard by five files on either side of him. Then, in a lower
+      voice, "It's a bitter drop to swallow, but it's my duty to report what you
+      think to the chief, and have a company of Jollies put behind us." He
+      turned away with the safety of the square upon his mind, and before he had
+      reached his goal the square had ceased to exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In their march in front of what looked like a face of cliff, they had come
+      opposite to the mouth of the gully, in which, screened by scrub and
+      boulders, 3,000 chosen dervishes, under Hamid Wad Hussein, of the
+      Baggaras, were crouching. Tat, tat, tat, went the rifles of three mounted
+      infantrymen in front of the left shoulder of the square, and an instant
+      later they were spurring it for their lives, crouching over the manes of
+      their horses, and pelting over the sandhills with thirty or forty
+      galloping chieftains at their heels. Rocks and scrub and mimosa swarmed
+      suddenly into life. Rushing black figures came and went in the gaps of the
+      bushes. A howl that drowned the shouts of the officers, a long quavering
+      yell, burst from the ambuscade. Two rolling volleys from the Royal Wessex,
+      one crash from the screw-gun firing shrapnel, and then before a second
+      cartridge could be rammed in, a living, glistening black wave, tipped with
+      steel, had rolled over the gun, the Royal Wessex had been dashed back
+      among the camels, and 1,000 fanatics were hewing and hacking in the heart
+      of what had been the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The camels and mules in the centre, jammed more and more together as their
+      leaders flinched from the rush of the tribesmen, shut out the view of the
+      other three faces, who could only tell that the Arabs had got in by the
+      yells upon Allah, which rose ever nearer and nearer amid the clouds of
+      sand-dust, the struggling animals, and the dense mass of swaying, cursing
+      men. Some of the Wessex fired back at the Arabs who had passed them, as
+      excited Tommies will, and it is whispered among doctors that it was not
+      always a Remington bullet which was cut from a wound that day. Some
+      rallied in little knots, stabbing furiously with their bayonets at the
+      rushing spearmen. Others turned at bay with their backs against the
+      camels, and others round the general and his staff, who, revolver in hand,
+      had flung themselves into the heart of it. But the whole square was
+      sidling slowly away from the gorge, pushed back by the pressure at the
+      shattered corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officers and men at the other faces were glancing nervously to the
+      rear, uncertain what was going on, and unable to take help to their
+      comrades without breaking the formation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By Jove, they've got through the Wessex!" cried Grice of the Mallows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The divils have hurrooshed us, Ted," said his brother subaltern, cocking
+      his revolver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ranks were breaking, and crowding towards Private Conolly, all talking
+      together as the officers peered back through the veil of dust. The sailors
+      had run their Gardner out, and she was squirting death out of her five
+      barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages. "Oh, this bloody
+      gun!" shouted a voice. "She's jammed again." The fierce metallic grunting
+      had ceased, and her crew were straining and hauling at the breech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This damned vertical feed!" cried an officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The spanner, Wilson!&mdash;the spanner! Stand to your cutlasses, boys, or
+      they're into us." His voice rose into a shriek as he ended, for a
+      shovel-headed spear had been buried in his chest. A second wave of
+      dervishes lapped over the hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and the
+      right front of the line. The sailors were overborne in an instant, but the
+      Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the yell of the Moslem with
+      an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two hundred of them with a single
+      point-blank volley. The howling, leaping crew swerved away to the right,
+      and dashed on into the gap which had already been made for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But C Company had drawn no trigger to stop that fiery rush. The men leaned
+      moodily upon their Martinis. Some had even thrown them upon the ground.
+      Conolly was talking fiercely to those about him. Captain Foley, thrusting
+      his way through the press, rushed up to him with a revolver in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is your doing, you villain!" he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you raise your pistol, Captin, your brains will be over your coat,"
+      said a low voice at his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw that several rifles were turned on him. The two subs. had pressed
+      forward, and were by his side. "What is it, then?" he cried, looking round
+      from one fierce mutinous face to another. "Are you Irishmen? Are you
+      soldiers? What are you here for but to fight for your country?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "England is no country of ours," cried several.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not fighting for England. You are fighting for Ireland, and for
+      the Empire of which it as part."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A black curse on the Impire!" shouted Private McQuire, throwing down his
+      rifle. "'Twas the Impire that backed the man that druv me onto the
+      roadside. May me hand stiffen before I draw trigger for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the Impire to us, Captain Foley, and what's the Widdy to us
+      ayther?" cried a voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let the constabulary foight for her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, be God, they'd be better imployed than pullin' a poor man's thatch
+      about his ears."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Or shootin' his brother, as they did mine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was the Impire laid my groanin' mother by the wayside. Her son will
+      rot before he upholds it, and ye can put that in the charge-sheet in the
+      next coort-martial."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain the three officers begged, menaced, persuaded. The square was
+      still moving, ever moving, with the same bloody fight raging in its
+      entrails. Even while they had been speaking they had been shuffling
+      backwards, and the useless Gardner, with her slaughtered crew, was already
+      a good hundred yards from them. And the pace was accelerating. The mass of
+      men, tormented and writhing, was trying, by a common instinct, to reach
+      some clearer ground where they could re-form. Three faces were still
+      intact, but the fourth had been caved in, and badly mauled, without its
+      comrades being able to help it. The Guards had met a fresh rush of the
+      Hadendowas, and had blown back the tribesmen with a volley, and the
+      cavalry had ridden over another stream of them, as they welled out of the
+      gully. A litter of hamstrung horses, and haggled men behind them, showed
+      that a spearman on his face among the bushes can show some sport to the
+      man who charges him. But, in spite of all, the square was still reeling
+      swiftly backwards, trying to shake itself clear of this torment which
+      clung to its heart. Would it break or would it re-form? The lives of five
+      regiments and the honour of the flag hung upon the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some, at least, were breaking. The C Company of the Mallows had lost all
+      military order, and was pushing back in spite of the haggard officers, who
+      cursed, and shoved, and prayed in the vain attempt to hold them. The
+      captain and the subs. were elbowed and jostled, while the men crowded
+      towards Private Conolly for their orders. The confusion had not spread,
+      for the other companies, in the dust and smoke and turmoil, had lost touch
+      with their mutinous comrades. Captain Foley saw that even now there might
+      be time to avert a disaster. "Think what you are doing, man," he yelled,
+      rushing towards the ringleader. "There are a thousand Irish in the square,
+      and they are dead men if we break."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words alone might have had little effect on the old moonlighter. It is
+      possible that, in his scheming brain, he had already planned how he was to
+      club his Irish together and lead them to the sea. But at that moment the
+      Arabs broke through the screen of camels which had fended them off. There
+      was a struggle, a screaming, a mule rolled over, a wounded man sprang up
+      in a cacolet with a spear through him, and then through the narrow gap
+      surged a stream of naked savages, mad with battle, drunk with slaughter,
+      spotted and splashed with blood&mdash;blood dripping from their spears,
+      their arms, their faces. Their yells, their bounds, their crouching,
+      darting figures, the horrid energy of their spear-thrusts, made them look
+      like a blast of fiends from the pit. And were these the Allies of Ireland?
+      Were these the men who were to strike for her against her enemies?
+      Conolly's soul rose up in loathing at the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a man of firm purpose, and yet at the first sight of those howling
+      fiends that purpose faltered, and at the second it was blown to the winds.
+      He saw a huge coal-black negro seize a shrieking camel-driver and saw at
+      his throat with a knife. He saw a shock-headed tribesman plunge his great
+      spear through the back of their own little bugler from Mill-street. He saw
+      a dozen deeds of blood&mdash;the murder of the wounded, the hacking of the
+      unarmed&mdash;and caught, too, in a glance, the good wholesome faces of
+      the faced-about rear rank of the Marines. The Mallows, too, had faced
+      about, and in an instant Conolly had thrown himself into the heart of C
+      Company, striving with the officers to form the men up with their
+      comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the mischief had gone too far. The rank and file had no heart in their
+      work. They had broken before, and this last rush of murderous savages was
+      a hard thing for broken men to stand against. They flinched from the
+      furious faces and dripping forearms. Why should they throw away their
+      lives for a flag for which they cared nothing? Why should their leader
+      urge them to break, and now shriek to them to re-form? They would not
+      re-form. They wanted to get to the sea and to safety. He flung himself
+      among them with outstretched arms, with words of reason, with shouts, with
+      gaspings. It was useless; the tide was beyond his control. They were
+      shredding out into the desert with their faces set for the coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bhoys, will ye stand for this?" screamed a voice. It was so ringing, so
+      strenuous, that the breaking Mallows glanced backwards. They were held by
+      what they saw. Private Conolly had planted his rifle-stock downwards in a
+      mimosa bush. From the fixed bayonet there fluttered a little green flag
+      with the crownless harp. God knows for what black mutiny, for what signal
+      of revolt, that flag had been treasured up within the corporal's tunic!
+      Now its green wisp stood amid the rush, while three proud regimental
+      colours were reeling slowly backwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What for the flag?" yelled the private.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My heart's blood for it! and mine! and mine!" cried a score of voices.
+      "God bless it! The flag, boys&mdash;the flag!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      C Company were rallying upon it. The stragglers clutched at each other,
+      and pointed. "Here, McQuire, Flynn, O'Hara," ran the shoutings. "Close on
+      the flag! Back to the flag!" The three standards reeled backwards, and the
+      seething square strove for a clearer space where they could form their
+      shattered ranks; but C Company, grim and powder-stained, choked with
+      enemies and falling fast, still closed in on the little rebel ensign that
+      flapped from the mimosa bush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a good half-hour before the square, having disentangled itself from
+      its difficulties and dressed its ranks, began to slowly move forwards over
+      the ground, across which in its labour and anguish it had been driven. The
+      long trail of Wessex men and Arabs showed but too clearly the path they
+      had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How many got into us, Stephen?" asked the general, tapping his snuff-box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should put them down at a thousand or twelve hundred, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did not see any get out again. What the devil were the Wessex thinking
+      about? The Guards stood well, though; so did the Mallows."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Colonel Flanagan reports that his front flank company was cut off, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, that's the company that was out of hand when we advanced!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Colonel Flanagan reports, sir, that the company took the whole brunt of
+      the attack, and gave the square time to re-form."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell the Hussars to ride forward, Stephen," said the general, "and try if
+      they can see anything of them. There's no firing, and I fear that the
+      Mallows will want to do some recruiting. Let the square take ground by the
+      right, and then advance!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas saw from his knoll that the men with
+      the big hats had rallied, and that they were coming back in the quiet
+      business fashion of men whose work was before them. He took counsel with
+      Moussa the Dervish and Hussein the Baggara, and a woestruck man was he
+      when he learned that the third of his men were safe in the Moslem
+      Paradise. So, having still some signs of victory to show, he gave the
+      word, and the desert warriors flitted off unseen and unheard, even as they
+      had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A red rock plateau, a few hundred spears and Remingtons, and a plain which
+      for the second time was strewn with slaughtered men, was all that his
+      day's fighting gave to the English general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a squadron of Hussars which came first to the spot where the rebel
+      flag had waved. A dense litter of Arab dead marked the place. Within, the
+      flag waved no longer, but the rifle stood in the mimosa bush, and round
+      it, with their wounds in front, lay the Fenian private and the silent
+      ranks of the Irishry. Sentiment is not an English failing, but the Hussar
+      captain raised his hilt in a salute as he rode past the blood-soaked ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The British general sent home dispatches to his Government, and so did the
+      chief of the Hadendowas, though the style and manner differed somewhat in
+      each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowa people to Mohammed Ahmed, the chosen of
+      Allah, homage and greeting, (began the latter). Know by this that on the
+      fourth day of this moon we gave battle to the Kaffirs who call themselves
+      Inglees, having with us the Chief Hussein with ten thousand of the
+      faithful. By the blessing of Allah we have broken them, and chased them
+      for a mile, though indeed these infidels are different from the dogs of
+      Egypt, and have slain very many of our men. Yet we hope to smite them
+      again ere the new moon be come, to which end I trust that thou wilt send
+      us a thousand Dervishes from Omdurman. In token of our victory I send you
+      by this messenger a flag which we have taken. By the colour it might well
+      seem to have belonged to those of the true faith, but the Kaffirs gave
+      their blood freely to save it, and so we think that, though small, it is
+      very dear to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+    </h2>
+<p class="center big">
+                             I
+</p>
+    <h3>
+      HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT'S CAME HOME.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end
+      by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been
+      fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some
+      took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce,
+      others were absorbed into the fishing fleets, and a few of the more
+      reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at
+      the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the whole
+      human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they scoured the seas,
+      disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in
+      for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants by
+      their lavishness, and horrified them by their brutalities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above
+      all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant
+      menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations by
+      the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer, and
+      dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that discipline
+      and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers, both
+      formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an account
+      to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken whim of
+      the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with longer
+      stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell into their
+      hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after serving as boon
+      companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his cabin table with
+      his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and salt in front of him.
+      It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his calling in the Caribbean
+      Gulf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship <i>Morning Star</i>, and
+      yet he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the
+      falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the
+      guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt's was his final port of call,
+      and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old England. He
+      had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he had left
+      Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red pepper, he
+      had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet edge of the
+      tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands, touching here and
+      there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy and outrage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey, of the twenty-gun pirate barque, <i>Happy Delivery</i>,
+      had passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and
+      with murdered men. Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim
+      pleasantries and of his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main
+      his coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with
+      death and many things which are worse than death. So nervous was Captain
+      Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship, and her full and valuable lading,
+      that he struck out to the west as far as Bird's Island to be out of the
+      usual track of commerce. And yet even in those solitary waters he had been
+      unable to shake off sinister traces of Captain Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
+      ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as
+      they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and
+      wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon
+      transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship. He was
+      from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole survivor of a
+      schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath a
+      tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late captain
+      to be thrown into the boat, "as provisions for the voyage," but the seaman
+      had at once committed it to the deep, lest the temptation should be more
+      than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge frame until, at the
+      last moment, the <i>Morning Star</i> had found him in that madness which
+      is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for Captain Scarrow,
+      for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this big New Englander was
+      a prize worth having. He vowed that he was the only man whom Captain
+      Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the pirate
+      was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the seaman's
+      mind as he watched the agent's boat shooting out from the Custom-house
+      quay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll lay you a wager, Morgan," said he to the first mate, "that the agent
+      will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his lips."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, captain, I'll have you a silver dollar, and chance it," said the
+      rough old Bristol man beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
+      sprang up the ladder. "Welcome, Captain Scarrow!" he cried. "Have you
+      heard about Sharkey?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain grinned at the mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What devilry has he been up to now?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Devilry! You've not heard, then? Why, we've got him safe under lock and
+      key at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be hanged
+      to-morrow morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken up
+      by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through the
+      break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the front of
+      them with a radiant face turned up to Heaven, for he came of the Puritan
+      stock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sharkey to be hanged!" he cried. "You don't know, Master Agent, if they
+      lack a hangman, do you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stand back!" cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was even
+      stronger than his interest at the news. "I'll pay that dollar, Captain
+      Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet. How came
+      the villain to be taken?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and
+      they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship.
+      So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
+      Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
+      brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried, but
+      our good little Governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it. 'He's my
+      meat,' said he, 'and I claim the cooking of it.' If you can stay till
+      to-morrow morning at ten, you'll see the joint swinging."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish I could," said the captain, wistfully, "but I am sadly behind time
+      now. I should start with the evening tide."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That you can't do," said the agent with decision. "The Governor is going
+      back with you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Governor!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes. He's had a dispatch from Government to return without delay. The
+      fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles has been
+      waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, well!" cried the captain in some perplexity, "I'm a plain seaman,
+      and I don't know much of governors and baronets and their ways. I don't
+      remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it's in King George's
+      service, and he asks a cast in the <i>Morning Star</i> as far as London,
+      I'll do what I can for him. There's my own cabin he can have and welcome.
+      As to the cooking, it's lobscouse and salmagundy six days in the week; but
+      he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks our galley too
+      rough for his taste."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow," said the agent. "Sir
+      Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague, and it
+      is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage. Dr. Larousse said
+      that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not put fresh life into
+      him. He has a great spirit in him, though, and you must not blame him if
+      he is somewhat short in his speech."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He may say what he likes, and do what he likes, so long as he does not
+      come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship," said the captain. "He
+      is Governor of St. Kitt's, but I am Governor of the <i>Morning Star</i>,
+      and, by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to
+      my employer, just as he does to King George."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order
+      before he leaves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The early morning tide, then."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night; and he will follow
+      them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt's without
+      seeing Sharkey do the rogue's hornpipe. His own orders were instant, so it
+      may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr. Larousse may
+      attend him upon the journey."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations which
+      they could for their illustrious passenger. The largest cabin was turned
+      out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which barrels of
+      fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary the plain food
+      of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor's baggage began to
+      arrive&mdash;great iron-bound ant-proof trunks, and official tin
+      packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested the
+      cocked hat or the sword within. And then there came a note, with a
+      heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made
+      his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in
+      the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun to
+      deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some
+      difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard that the Governor was an
+      eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came
+      limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick
+      bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails like a
+      poodle's coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large green glasses
+      which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from it. A fierce beak
+      of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in front of him. His ague
+      had caused him to swathe his throat and chin with a broad linen cravat,
+      and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown secured by a cord round the
+      waist. As he advanced he carried his masterful nose high in the air, but
+      his head turned slowly from side to side in the helpless manner of the
+      purblind, and he called in a high, querulous voice for the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have my things?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Sir Charles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you wine aboard?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have ordered five cases, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And tobacco?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is a keg of Trinidad."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You play a hand at picquet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Passably well, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then anchor up, and to sea!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly through
+      the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands. The decrepit
+      Governor still limped the deck, with one guiding hand upon the quarter
+      rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are on Government service now, captain," said he. "They are counting
+      the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you. Have you all that she
+      will carry?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Every inch, Sir Charles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, Captain Scarrow,
+      that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your
+      voyage."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency's society," said the captain.
+      "But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of
+      Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he has a snug business
+      amongst the merchants. But hark!" He raised his ring-covered band in the
+      air. From far astern there came the low, deep thunder of cannon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is from the island!" cried the captain in astonishment. "Can it be a
+      signal for us to put back?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor laughed. "You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to be
+      hanged this morning. I ordered the batteries to salute when the rascal was
+      kicking his last, so that I might know of it out at sea. There's an end of
+      Sharkey!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's an end of Sharkey!" cried the captain; and the crew took up the
+      cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at the
+      low, purple line of the vanishing land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the
+      invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was
+      generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial
+      and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge and
+      so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of the
+      deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting his
+      conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and Governor
+      smoked their long pipes, and drank their claret as three good comrades
+      should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?" asked the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is a man of some presence," said the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil," remarked
+      the mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions," said the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his
+      eyes," said Captain Scarrow. "They were of the lightest filmy blue, with
+      red-rimmed lids. Was that not so, Sir Charles?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others! But
+      I remember now that the adjutant-general said that he had such an eye as
+      you describe, and added that the jury was so foolish as to be visibly
+      discomposed when it was turned upon them. It is well for them that he is
+      dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and if he had
+      laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with straw and
+      hung him for a figure-head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a high,
+      neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so heartily, for
+      they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who sailed the
+      western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be their own.
+      Another bottle was broached to drink to a pleasant voyage, and the
+      Governor would drink just one other on the top of it, so that the seamen
+      were glad at last to stagger off&mdash;the one to his watch, and the other
+      to his bunk. But when, after his four hours' spell, the mate came down
+      again, he was amazed to see the Governor, in his Ramillies wig, his
+      glasses, and his powdering-gown, still seated sedately at the lonely table
+      with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt's when he was sick," said he,
+      "and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he is
+      well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voyage of the <i>Morning Star</i> was a successful one, and in about
+      three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel. From the first
+      day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before they
+      were halfway across the Atlantic, he was, save only for his eyes, as well
+      as any man upon the ship. Those who uphold the nourishing qualities of
+      wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night passed that he did
+      not repeat the performance of his first one. And yet he would be out upon
+      deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the best of them, peering
+      about with his weak eyes, and asking questions about the sails and the
+      rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of the sea. And he made up
+      for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining leave from the captain that
+      the New England seaman&mdash;he who had been cast away in the boat&mdash;should
+      lead him about, and, above all, that he should sit beside him when he
+      played cards and count the number of the pips, for unaided he could not
+      tell the king from the knave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service,
+      since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey and the other was his
+      avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to lend
+      his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all respect
+      behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed forefinger
+      upon the card which he should play. Between them there was little in the
+      pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first mate, by the
+      time they sighted the Lizard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the high
+      temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark. At a sign of opposition
+      or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his cravat, his
+      masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent angle, and
+      his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulders. He cracked it once
+      over the head of the carpenter when the man had accidentally jostled him
+      upon the deck. Once, too, when there was some grumbling and talk of a
+      mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was of opinion that they
+      should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they should march forward
+      and set upon them until they had trounced the devilment out of them. "Give
+      me a knife and a bucket!" he cried with an oath, and could hardly be
+      withheld from setting forth alone to deal with the spokesman of the
+      seamen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only answerable
+      to himself at St. Kitt's, killing became murder upon the high seas. In
+      politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop of the
+      House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met a
+      Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his vapouring
+      and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a stream of strange
+      anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had never known a
+      voyage pass so pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island, they
+      had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As evening
+      fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from Winchelsea,
+      with the long, dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front of her. Next
+      morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland, and Sir Charles
+      might meet the King's ministers at Westminster before the evening. The
+      boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were met for a last turn of
+      cards in the cabin, the faithful American still serving as eyes to the
+      Governor. There was a good stake upon the table, for the sailors had tried
+      on this last night to win their losses back from their passenger. Suddenly
+      he threw his cards down, and swept all the money into the pocket of his
+      long-flapped silken waistcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The game's mine!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!" cried Captain Scarrow; "you have not
+      played out the hand, and we are not the losers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sink you for a liar!" said the Governor. "I tell you I <i>have</i> played
+      out the hand, and that you <i>are</i> a loser." He whipped off his wig and
+      his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a pair
+      of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good God!" cried the mate. "It's Sharkey!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway had
+      put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in each of
+      his hands. The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the scattered cards
+      in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing laugh. "Captain
+      Sharkey is the name, gentlemen," said he, "and this is Roaring Ned
+      Galloway, the quartermaster of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. We made it hot,
+      and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and him in an oarless
+      boat. You dogs&mdash;you poor, fond, water-hearted dogs&mdash; we hold you
+      at the end of our pistols!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may shoot, or you may not!" cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon the
+      breast of his frieze jacket. "If it's my last breath, Sharkey, I tell you
+      that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and hell-fire in
+      store for you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he's going to make
+      a very pretty death of it!" cried Sharkey. "There's no one aft save the
+      man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you'll need it soon. Is
+      the dinghy astern, Ned?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, ay, captain!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the other boats scuttled?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I bored them all in three places."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. You look as if you
+      hadn't quite got your bearings yet. Is there anything you'd like to ask
+      me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe you're the devil himself!" cried the captain. "Where is the
+      Governor of St. Kitt's?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut. When I
+      broke prison I learnt from my friends&mdash;for Captain Sharkey has those
+      who love him in every port&mdash;that the Governor was starting for Europe
+      under a master who had never seen him. I climbed his verandah, and I paid
+      him the little debt that I owed him. Then I came aboard you with such of
+      his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide these tell-tale
+      eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a governor should. Now, Ned, you
+      can get to work upon them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Help! Help! Watch ahoy!" yelled the mate; but the butt of the pirate's
+      pistol crashed down on his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox. Scarrow
+      rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his mouth, and
+      threw his other arm round his waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No use, Master Scarrow," said Sharkey. "Let us see you go down on your
+      knees and beg for your life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll see you&mdash;" cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; not if you twist it off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Put an inch of your knife into him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may put six inches, and then I won't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sink me, but I like his spirit!" cried Sharkey. "Put your knife in your
+      pocket, Ned. You've saved your skin, Scarrow, and it's a pity so stout a
+      man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can pick up a
+      living. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since you have lain
+      at my mercy and lived to tell the story. Tie him up, Ned."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To the stove, captain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tut, tut! there's a fire in the stove. None of your rover tricks, Ned
+      Galloway, unless they are called for, or I'll let you know which of us two
+      is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the table."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!" said the quartermaster. "You
+      surely do not mean to let him go?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still for
+      me to command and for you to obey. Sink you for a villain, do you dare to
+      question my orders?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!" said the quartermaster, and,
+      lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table. With the quick
+      dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spread-eagled hands and feet with a
+      rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with the long
+      cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of St. Kitt's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you," said the pirate.
+      "If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had your
+      cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand with
+      the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small craft about, and we
+      shall get one of them. When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a smack,
+      when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can get a
+      barque, and when he has a barque he'll soon have a full-rigged ship of his
+      own&mdash;so make haste into London town, or I may be coming back, after
+      all, for the <i>Morning Star</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin.
+      Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the
+      companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the
+      stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the
+      falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and
+      dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he
+      rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way through
+      the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!" he screamed. "Cutlasses and pistols!
+      Clear away the long-boat! Clear away the gig! Sharkey, the pirate, is in
+      yonder dinghy. Whistle up the larboard watch, bo'sun, and tumble into the
+      boats, all hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant
+      the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The boats are scuttled!" they cried. "They are leaking like a sieve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten and outwitted at every
+      point. Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor the
+      promise of it. The sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away lay a
+      fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net. Close to them was
+      the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the shining swell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are dead men!" cried the captain. "A shout all together, boys, to
+      warn them of their danger." But it was too late. At that very moment the
+      dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat. There were two rapid
+      pistol-shots, a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed by silence.
+      The clustering fishermen had disappeared. And then, suddenly, as the first
+      puffs of a land-breeze came out from the Sussex shore, the boom swung out,
+      the mainsail filled, and the little craft crept out with her nose to the
+      Atlantic.
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             II
+</p>
+    <h3>
+      THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY WITH STEPHEN CRADDOCK
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Careening was a very necessary operation for the old pirate. On his
+      superior speed he depended both for overhauling the trader and escaping
+      the man-of-war. But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities
+      unless he periodically&mdash;once a year, at the least&mdash;cleared his
+      vessel's bottom from the long, trailing plants and crusting barnacles
+      which gather so rapidly in the tropical seas. For this purpose he
+      lightened his vessel, thrust her into some narrow inlet where she would be
+      left high and dry at low water, fastened blocks and tackles to her masts
+      to pull her over on to her bilge, and then scraped her thoroughly from
+      rudder-post to cut-water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the weeks which were thus occupied the ship was, of course,
+      defenceless; but, on the other hand, she was unapproachable by anything
+      heavier than an empty hull, and the place for careening was chosen with an
+      eye to secrecy, so that there was no great danger. So secure did the
+      captains feel, that it was not uncommon for them, at such times, to leave
+      their ships under a sufficient guard, and to start off in the long-boat,
+      either upon a sporting expedition or, more frequently, upon a visit to
+      some outlying town, where they burned the heads of the women by their
+      swaggering gallantry, or broached pipes of wine in the market square, with
+      a threat to pistol all who would not drink with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes they would even appear in cities of the size of Charleston, and
+      walk the streets with their clattering side-arms&mdash;an open scandal to
+      the whole law-abiding colony. Such visits were not always paid with
+      impunity. It was one of them, for example, which provoked Lieutenant
+      Maynard to hack off Blackbeard's head, and to spear it upon the end of his
+      bowsprit. But, as a rule, the pirate ruffled and bullied and drabbed
+      without let or hindrance, until it was time for him to go back to his ship
+      once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one pirate, however, who never crossed even the skirts of
+      civilisation, and that was the sinister Sharkey, of the barque <i>Happy
+      Delivery</i>. It may have been from his morose and solitary temper, or, as
+      is more probable, that he knew that his name upon the coast was such that
+      outraged humanity would, against all odds, have thrown themselves upon
+      him, but never once did he show his face in a settlement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When his ship was laid up he would leave her under the charge of Ned
+      Galloway&mdash;her New England quartermaster&mdash;and would take long
+      voyages in his boat, sometimes, it was said, for the purpose of burying
+      his share of the plunder, and sometimes to shoot the wild oxen of
+      Hispaniola, which, when dressed and barbecued, provided provisions for his
+      next voyage. In the latter case the barque would come round to some
+      pre-arranged spot to pick him up, and take on board what he had shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had always been a hope in the islands that Sharkey might be taken on
+      one of these occasions; and at last there came news to Kingston which
+      seemed to justify an attempt upon him. It was brought by an elderly
+      logwood-cutter who had fallen into the pirate's hands, and in some freak
+      of drunken benevolence had been allowed to get away with nothing worse
+      than a slit nose and a drubbing. His account was recent and definite. The
+      <i>Happy Delivery</i> was careening at Torbec on the south-west of
+      Hispaniola. Sharkey, with four men, was buccaneering on the outlying
+      island of La Vache. The blood of a hundred murdered crews was calling out
+      for vengeance, and now at last it seemed as if it might not call in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Edward Compton, the high-nosed, red-faced Governor, sitting in solemn
+      conclave with the commandant and the head of the council, was sorely
+      puzzled in his mind as to how he should use this chance. There was no
+      man-of-war nearer than Jamestown, and she was a clumsy old fly-boat, which
+      could neither overhaul the pirate on the seas, nor reach her in a shallow
+      inlet. There were forts and artillerymen both at Kingston and Port Royal,
+      but no soldiers available for an expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A private venture might be fitted out&mdash;and there were many who had a
+      blood-feud with Sharkey&mdash;but what could a private venture do? The
+      pirates were numerous and desperate. As to taking Sharkey and his four
+      companions, that, of course, would be easy if they could get at them; but
+      how were they to get at them on a large well-wooded island like La Vache,
+      full of wild hills and impenetrable jungles? A reward was offered to
+      whoever could find a solution, and that brought a man to the front who had
+      a singular plan, and was himself prepared to carry it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stephen Craddock had been that most formidable person, the Puritan gone
+      wrong. Sprung from a decent Salem family, his ill-doing seemed to be a
+      recoil from the austerity of their religion, and he brought to vice all
+      the physical strength and energy with which the virtues of his ancestors
+      had endowed him. He was ingenious, fearless, and exceedingly tenacious of
+      purpose, so that when he was still young, his name became notorious upon
+      the American coast. He was the same Craddock who was tried for his life in
+      Virginia for the slaying of the Seminole Chief, and, though he escaped, it
+      was well known that he had corrupted the witnesses and bribed the judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards, as a slaver, and even, as it was hinted, as a pirate, he had
+      left an evil name behind him in the Bight of Benin. Finally he had
+      returned to Jamaica with a considerable fortune, and had settled down to a
+      life of sombre dissipation. This was the man, gaunt, austere, and
+      dangerous, who now waited upon the Governor with a plan for the
+      extirpation of Sharkey. Sir Edward received him with little enthusiasm,
+      for in spite of some rumours of conversion and reformation, he had always
+      regarded him as an infected sheep who might taint the whole of his little
+      flock. Craddock saw the Governor's mistrust under his thin veil of formal
+      and restrained courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've no call to fear me, sir," said he; "I'm a changed man from what
+      you've known. I've seen the light again of late, after losing sight of it
+      for many a black year. It was through the ministration of the Rev. John
+      Simons, of our own people. Sir, if your spirit should be in need of
+      quickening, you would find a very sweet savour in his discourse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor cocked his episcopalian nose at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You came here to speak of Sharkey, Master Craddock," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The man Sharkey is a vessel of wrath," said Craddock. "His wicked horn
+      has been exalted over long, and it is borne in upon me that if I can cut
+      him off and utterly destroy him, it will be a goodly deed, and one which
+      may atone for many backslidings in the past. A plan has been given to me
+      whereby I may encompass his destruction."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor was keenly interested, for there was a grim and practical air
+      about the man's freckled face which showed that he was in earnest. After
+      all, he was a seaman and a fighter, and, if it were true that he was eager
+      to atone for his past, no better man could be chosen for the business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This will be a dangerous task, Master Craddock," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I meet my death at it, it may be that it will cleanse the memory of an
+      ill-spent life. I have much to atone for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor did not see his way to contradict him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was your plan?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have heard that Sharkey's barque, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, came
+      from this very port of Kingston?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It belonged to Mr. Codrington, and it was taken by Sharkey, who scuttled
+      his own sloop and moved into her because she was faster," said Sir Edward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; but it may be that you have lever heard that Mr. Codrington has a
+      sister ship, the <i>White Rose</i>, which lies even now in the harbour,
+      and which is so like the pirate, that, if it were not for a white paint
+      line, none could tell them apart."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! and what of that?" asked the Governor keenly, with the air of one who
+      is just on the edge of an idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By the help of it this man shall be delivered into our hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will paint out the streak upon the <i>White Rose</i>, and make it in
+      all things like the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. Then I will set sail for the
+      Island of La Vache, where this man is slaying the wild oxen. When he sees
+      me he will surely mistake me for his own vessel which he is awaiting, and
+      he will come on board to his own undoing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a simple plan, and yet it seemed to the Governor that it might be
+      effective. Without hesitation he gave Craddock permission to carry it out,
+      and to take any steps he liked in order to further the object which he had
+      in view. Sir Edward was not very sanguine, for many attempts had been made
+      upon Sharkey, and their results had shown that he was as cunning as he was
+      ruthless. But this gaunt Puritan with the evil record was cunning and
+      ruthless also. The contest of wits between two such men as Sharkey and
+      Craddock appealed to the Governor's acute sense of sport, and though he
+      was inwardly convinced that the chances were against him, he backed his
+      man with the same loyalty which he would have shown to his horse or his
+      cock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Haste was, above all things, necessary, for upon any day the careening
+      might be finished, and the pirates out at sea once more. But there was not
+      very much to do, and there were many willing hands to do it, so the second
+      day saw the <i>White Rose</i> beating out for the open sea. There were
+      many seamen in the port who knew the lines and rig of the pirate barque,
+      and not one of them could see the slightest difference in this
+      counterfeit. Her white side line had been painted out, her masts and yards
+      were smoked, to give them the dingy appearance of the weather-beaten
+      rover, and a large diamond-shaped patch was let into her foretopsail. Her
+      crew were volunteers, many of them being men who had sailed with Stephen
+      Craddock before&mdash;the mate, Joshua Hird, an old slaver, had been his
+      accomplice in many voyages, and came now at the bidding of his chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The avenging barque sped across the Caribbean Sea, and, at the sight of
+      that patched topsail, the little craft which they met flew left and right
+      like frightened trout in a pool. On the fourth evening Point Abacou bore
+      five miles to the north and east of them. On the fifth they were at anchor
+      in the Bay of Tortoises at the Island of La Vache, where Sharkey and his
+      four men had been hunting. It was a well-wooded place, with the palms and
+      underwood growing down to the thin crescent of silver sand which skirted
+      the shore. They had hoisted the black flag and the red pennant, but no
+      answer came from the shore. Craddock strained his eyes, hoping every
+      instant to see a boat shoot out to them with Sharkey seated in the sheets.
+      But the night passed away, and a day and yet another night, without any
+      sign of the men whom they were endeavouring to trap. It looked as if they
+      were already gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the second morning Craddock went ashore in search of some proof whether
+      Sharkey and his men were still upon the island. What he found reassured
+      him greatly. Close to the shore was a boucan of green wood, such as was
+      used for preserving the meat, and a great store of barbecued strips of
+      ox-flesh was hung upon lines all round it. The pirate ship had not taken
+      off her provisions, and therefore the hunters were still upon the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why had they not shown themselves? Was it that they had detected that this
+      was not their own ship? Or was it that they were hunting in the interior
+      of the island, and were not on the look-out for a ship yet? Craddock was
+      still hesitating between the two alternatives, when a Carib Indian came
+      down with information. The pirates were in the island, he said, and their
+      camp was a day's march from the Sea. They had stolen his wife, and the
+      marks of their stripes were still pink upon his brown back. Their enemies
+      were his friends, and he would lead them to where they lay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Craddock could not have asked for anything better; so early next morning,
+      with a small party armed to the teeth, he set off, under the guidance of
+      the Carib. All day they struggled through brushwood and clambered over
+      rocks, pushing their way further and further into the desolate heart of
+      the island. Here and there they found traces of the hunters, the bones of
+      a slain ox, or the marks of feet in a morass, and once, towards evening,
+      it seemed to some of them that they heard the distant rattle of guns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night they spent under the trees, and pushed on again with the
+      earliest light. About noon they came to the huts of bark, which, the Carib
+      told them, were the camp of the hunters, but they were silent and
+      deserted. No doubt their occupants were away at the hunt and would return
+      in the evening, so Craddock and his men lay in ambush in the brushwood
+      around them. But no one came, and another night was spent in the forest.
+      Nothing more could be done, and it seemed to Craddock that after the two
+      days' absence it was time that he returned to his ship once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The return journey was less difficult, as they had already blazed a path
+      for themselves. Before evening they found themselves once more at the Bay
+      of Palms, and saw their ship riding at anchor where they had left her.
+      Their boat and oars had been hauled up among the bushes, so they launched
+      it and pulled out to the barque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No luck, then!" cried Joshua Hird, the mate, looking down with a pale
+      face from the poop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His camp was empty, but he may come down to us yet," said Craddock, with
+      his hand on the ladder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody upon deck began to laugh. "I think," said the mate, "that these
+      men had better stay in the boat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you will come aboard, sir, you will understand it." He spoke in a
+      curious, hesitating fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood flushed to Craddock's gaunt face. "How is this, Master Hird?" he
+      cried, springing up the side. "What mean you by giving orders to my boat's
+      crew?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he passed over the bulwarks, with one foot upon the deck and one
+      knee upon the rail, a tow-bearded man, whom he had never before observed
+      aboard his vessel, grabbed suddenly at his pistol. Craddock clutched at
+      the fellow's wrist, but at the same instant his mate snatched the cutlass
+      from his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What roguery is this?" shouted Craddock, looking furiously around him.
+      But the crew stood in knots about the deck, laughing and whispering
+      amongst themselves without showing any desire to go to his assistance.
+      Even in that hurried glance Craddock noticed that they were dressed in the
+      most singular manner, with long riding-coats, full-skirted velvet gowns
+      and coloured ribands at their knees, more like men of fashion than seamen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he looked at their grotesque figures he struck his brow with his
+      clenched fist to be sure that he was awake. The deck seemed to be much
+      dirtier than when he had left it, and there were strange, sun-blackened
+      faces turned upon him from every side. Not one of them did he know save
+      only Joshua Hird. Had the ship been captured in his absence? Were these
+      Sharkey's men who were around him? At the thought he broke furiously away
+      and tried to climb over to his boat, but a dozen hands were on him in an
+      instant, and he was pushed aft through the open door of his own cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was all different to the cabin which he had left. The floor was
+      different, the ceiling was different, the furniture was different. His had
+      been plain and austere. This was sumptuous and yet dirty, hung with rare
+      velvet curtains splashed with wine-stains, and panelled with costly woods
+      which were pocked with pistol-marks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the table was a great chart of the Caribbean Sea, and beside it, with
+      compasses in his hand, sat a clean-shaven, pale-faced man with a fur cap
+      and a claret-coloured coat of damask. Craddock turned white under his
+      freckles as he looked upon the long, thin high-nostrilled nose and the
+      red-rimmed eyes which were turned upon him with the fixed, humorous gaze
+      of the master player who has left his opponent without a move. "Sharkey!"
+      cried Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey's thin lips opened, and he broke into his high, sniggering laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You fool!" he cried, and, leaning over, he stabbed Craddock's shoulder
+      again and again with his compasses. "You poor, dull-witted fool, would you
+      match yourself against me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not the pain of the wounds, but it was the contempt in Sharkey's
+      voice which turned Craddock into a savage madman. He flew at the pirate,
+      roaring with rage, striking, kicking, writhing, foaming. It took six men
+      to drag him down on to the floor amidst the splintered remains of the
+      table&mdash;and not one of the six who did not bear the prisoner's mark
+      upon him. But Sharkey still surveyed him with the same contemptuous eye.
+      From outside there came the crash of breaking wood and the clamour of
+      startled voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is that?" asked Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They have stove the boat with cold shot, and the men are in the water."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let them stay there," said the pirate. "Now, Craddock, you know where you
+      are. You are aboard my ship, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and you lie at my
+      mercy. I knew you for a stout seaman, you rogue, before you took to this
+      long-shore canting. Your hands then were no cleaner than my own. Will you
+      sign articles, as your mate has done, and join us, or shall I heave you
+      over to follow your ship's company?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is my ship?" asked Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Scuttled in the bay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the hands?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the bay, too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I'm for the bay, also."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hock him and heave him over," said Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many rough hands had dragged Craddock out upon deck, and Galloway, the
+      quartermaster, had already drawn his hanger to cripple him, when Sharkey
+      came hurrying from his cabin with an eager face. "We can do better with
+      the hound!" he cried. "Sink me if it is not a rare plan. Throw him into
+      the sail-room with the irons on, and do you come here, quartermaster,
+      that I may tell you what I have in my mind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Craddock, bruised and wounded in soul and body, was thrown into the
+      dark sail-room, so fettered that he could not stir hand or foot, but his
+      Northern blood was running strong in his veins, and his grim spirit
+      aspired only to make such an ending as might go some way towards atoning
+      for the evil of his life. All night he lay in the curve of the bilge
+      listening to the rush of the water and the straining of the timbers which
+      told him that the ship was at sea and driving fast. In the early morning
+      someone came crawling to him in the darkness over the heap of sails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here's rum and biscuits," said the voice of his late mate. "It's at the
+      risk of my life, Master Craddock, that I bring them to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was you who trapped me and caught me as in a snare!" cried Craddock.
+      "How shall you answer for what you have done?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What I did I did with the point of a knife betwixt my blade-bones."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "God forgive you for a coward, Joshua Hird. How came you into their
+      hands?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, Master Craddock, the pirate ship came back from its careening upon
+      the very day that you left us. They laid us aboard, and, short-handed as
+      we were, with the best of the men ashore with you, we could offer but a
+      poor defence. Some were cut down, and they were the happiest. The others
+      were killed afterwards. As to me, I saved my life by signing on with
+      them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And they scuttled my ship?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They scuttled her, and then Sharkey and his men, who had been watching us
+      from the brushwood, came off to the ship. His mainyard had been cracked
+      and fished last voyage, so he had suspicions of us, seeing that ours was
+      whole. Then he thought of laying the same trap for you which you had set
+      for him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Craddock groaned. "How came I not to see that fished mainyard?" he
+      muttered. "But whither are we bound?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are running north and west."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "North and west! Then we are heading back towards Jamaica."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With an eight-knot wind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you heard what they mean to do with me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have not heard. If you would but sign the articles&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Enough, Joshua Hird! I have risked my soul too often."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As you wish. I have done what I could. Farewell!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that night and the next day the <i>Happy Delivery</i> ran before the
+      easterly trades, and Stephen Craddock lay in the dark of the sail-room
+      working patiently at his wrist-irons. One he had slipped off at the cost
+      of a row of broken and bleeding knuckles, but, do what he would, he could
+      not free the other, and his ankles were securely fastened. From hour to
+      hour he heard the swish of the water, and knew that the barque must be
+      driving with all set in front of the trade wind. In that case they must be
+      nearly back again to Jamaica by now. What plan could Sharkey have in his
+      head, and what use did he hope to make of him? Craddock set his teeth, and
+      vowed that if he had once been a villain from choice he would, at least,
+      never be one by compulsion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the second morning Craddock became aware that sail had been reduced in
+      the vessel, and that she was tacking slowly, with a light breeze on her
+      beam. The varying slope of the sail-room and the sounds from the deck told
+      his practised senses exactly what she was doing. The short reaches showed
+      him that she was manoeuvring near shore, and making for some definite
+      point. If so, she must have reached Jamaica. But what could she be doing
+      there?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly there was a burst of hearty cheering from the deck, and
+      then the crash of a gun above his head, and then the answering booming of
+      guns from far over the water. Craddock sat up and strained his ears. Was
+      the ship in action? Only the one gun had been fired, and though many had
+      answered, there were none of the crashings which told of a shot coming
+      home. Then, if it was not an action, it must be a salute. But who would
+      salute Sharkey, the pirate? It could only be another pirate ship which
+      would do so. So Craddock lay back again with a groan, and continued to
+      work at the manacle which still held his right wrist. But suddenly there
+      came the shuffling of steps outside, and he had hardly time to wrap the
+      loose links round his free hand, when the door was unbolted and two
+      pirates came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Got your hammer, carpenter?" asked one, whom Craddock recognised as the
+      big quartermaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Knock off his leg shackles, then. Better leave the bracelets&mdash;he's
+      safer with them on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With hammer and chisel the carpenter loosened the irons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you going to do with me?" asked Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come on deck and you'll see."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor seized him by the arm and dragged him roughly to the foot of
+      the companion. Above him was a square of blue sky cut across by the mizzen
+      gaff, with the colours flying at the peak. But it was the sight of those
+      colours which struck the breath from Stephen Craddock's lips. For there
+      were two of them, and the British ensign was flying above the Jolly Rodger&mdash;the
+      honest flag above that of the rogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant Craddock stopped in amazement, but a brutal push from the
+      pirates behind drove him up the companion ladder. As he stepped out upon
+      deck, his eyes turned up to the main, and there again were the British
+      colours flying above the red pennant, and all the shrouds and rigging were
+      garlanded with streamers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the ship been taken, then? But that was impossible, for there were the
+      pirates clustering in swarms along the port bulwarks, and waving their
+      hats joyously in the air. Most prominent of all was the renegade mate,
+      standing on the foc'sle head, and gesticulating wildly. Craddock looked
+      over the side to see what they were cheering at, and then in a flash he
+      saw how critical was the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the port bow, and about a mile off, lay the white houses and forts of
+      Port Royal, with flags breaking out everywhere over their roofs. Right
+      ahead was the opening of the palisades leading to the town of Kingston.
+      Not more than a quarter of a mile off was a small sloop working out
+      against the very slight wind. The British ensign was at her peak, and her
+      rigging was all decorated. On her deck could be seen a dense crowd of
+      people cheering and waving their hats, and the gleam of scarlet told that
+      there were officers of the garrison among them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an instant, with the quick perception of a man of action, Craddock saw
+      through it all. Sharkey, with that diabolical cunning and audacity which
+      were among his main characteristics, was simulating the part which
+      Craddock would himself have played had he come back victorious. It was in
+      <i>his</i> honour that the salutes were firing and the flags flying. It
+      was to welcome <i>him</i> that this ship with the Governor, the
+      commandant, and the chiefs of the island were approaching. In another ten
+      minutes they would all be under the guns of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and
+      Sharkey would have won the greatest stake that ever a pirate played for
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bring him forward," cried the pirate captain, as Craddock appeared
+      between the carpenter and the quartermaster. "Keep the ports closed, but
+      clear away the port guns, and stand by for a broadside. Another two cable
+      lengths and we have them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are edging away," said the boatswain. "I think they smell us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's soon set right," said Sharkey, turning his filmy eyes upon
+      Craddock. "Stand there, you&mdash;right there, where they can recognise
+      you, with your hand on the guy, and wave your hat to them. Quick, or your
+      brains will be over your coat. Put an inch of your knife into him, Ned.
+      Now, will you wave your hat? Try him again, then. Hey, shoot him! Stop
+      him!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was too late. Relying upon the manacles, the quartermaster had
+      taken his hands for a moment off Craddock's arm. In that instant he had
+      flung off the carpenter, and, amid a spatter of pistol bullets, had sprung
+      the bulwarks and was swimming for his life. He had been hit and hit again,
+      but it takes many pistols to kill a resolute and powerful man who has his
+      mind set upon doing something before he dies. He was a strong swimmer,
+      and, in spite of the red trail which he left in the water behind him, he
+      was rapidly increasing his distance from the pirate. "Give me a musket!"
+      cried Sharkey, with a savage oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a famous shot, and his iron nerves never failed him in an
+      emergency. The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then
+      swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop.
+      Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired. With the crack of the gun
+      the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a gesture
+      of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay. Then, as
+      the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an impotent
+      broadside, Stephen Craddock, smiling grimly in his death agony, sank
+      slowly down to that golden couch which glimmered far beneath him.
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             III
+</p>
+    <h3>
+      HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Buccaneers were something higher than a mere band of marauders. They
+      were a floating republic, with laws, usages, and discipline of their own.
+      In their endless and remorseless quarrel with the Spaniards they had some
+      semblance of right upon their side. Their bloody harryings of the cities
+      of the Main were not more barbarous than the inroads of Spain upon the
+      Netherlands&mdash;or upon the Caribs in these same American lands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief of the Buccaneers, were he English or French, a Morgan or a
+      Granmont, was still a responsible person, whose country might countenance
+      him, or even praise him, so long as he refrained from any deed which might
+      shock the leathery seventeenth-century conscience too outrageously. Some
+      of them were touched with religion, and it is still remembered how Sawkins
+      threw the dice overboard upon the Sabbath, and Daniel pistolled a man
+      before the altar for irreverence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there came a day when the fleets of the Buccaneers no longer mustered
+      at the Tortugas, and the solitary and outlawed pirate took their place.
+      Yet even with him the tradition of restraint and of discipline still
+      lingered; and among the early pirates, the Avorys, the Englands, and the
+      Robertses, there remained some respect for human sentiment. They were more
+      dangerous to the merchant than to the seaman. But they in turn were
+      replaced by more savage and desperate men, who frankly recognised that
+      they would get no quarter in their war with the human race, and who swore
+      that they would give as little as they got. Of their histories we know
+      little that is trustworthy. They wrote no memoirs and left no trace, save
+      an occasional blackened and blood-stained derelict adrift upon the face of
+      the Atlantic. Their deeds could only be surmised from the long roll of
+      ships who never made their port.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Searching the records of history, it is only here and there in an
+      old-world trial that the veil that shrouds them seems for an instant to be
+      lifted, and we catch a glimpse of some amazing and grotesque brutality
+      behind. Such was the breed of Ned Low, of Gow the Scotchman, and of the
+      infamous Sharkey, whose coal-black barque, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, was
+      known from the Newfoundland Banks to the mouths of the Orinoco as the dark
+      forerunner of misery and of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were many men, both among the islands and on the Main, who had a
+      blood feud with Sharkey, but not one who had suffered more bitterly than
+      Copley Banks, of Kingston. Banks had been one of the leading sugar
+      merchants of the West Indies. He was a man of position, a member of the
+      Council, the husband of a Percival, and the cousin of the Governor of
+      Virginia. His two sons had been sent to London to be educated, and their
+      mother had gone over to bring them back. On their return voyage the ship,
+      the <i>Duchess of Cornwall</i>, fell into the hands of Sharkey, and the
+      whole family met with an infamous death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks said little when he heard the news, but he sank into a morose
+      and enduring melancholy. He neglected his business, avoided his friends,
+      and spent much of his time in the low taverns of the fishermen and seamen.
+      There, amidst riot and devilry, he sat silently puffing at his pipe, with
+      a set face and a smouldering eye. It was generally supposed that his
+      misfortunes had shaken his wits, and his old friends looked at him
+      askance, for the company which he kept was enough to bar him from honest
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time there came rumours of Sharkey over the sea. Sometimes it
+      was from some schooner which had seen a great flame upon the horizon, and
+      approaching to offer help to the burning ship, had fled away at the sight
+      of the sleek, black barque, lurking like a wolf near a mangled sheep.
+      Sometimes it was a frightened trader, which had come tearing in with her
+      canvas curved like a lady's bodice, because she had seen a patched
+      foretopsail rising slowly above the violet water-line. Sometimes it was
+      from a coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama cay littered with
+      sun-dried bodies. Once there came a man who had been mate of a Guineaman,
+      and who had escaped from the pirate's hands. He could not speak&mdash;for
+      reasons which Sharkey could best supply&mdash;but he could write, and he
+      did write, to the very great interest of Copley Banks. For hours they sat
+      together over the map, and the dumb man pointed here and there to outlying
+      reefs and tortuous inlets, while his companion sat smoking in silence,
+      with his unvarying face and his fiery eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, some two years after his misfortunes, Mr. Copley Banks strode
+      into his own office with his old air of energy and alertness. The manager
+      stared at him in surprise, for it was months since he had shown any
+      interest in business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good morning, Mr. Banks!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good morning, Freeman. I see that <i>Ruffling Harry</i> is in the Bay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have other plans for her, Freeman. I have determined upon a slaving
+      venture to Whydah."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But her cargo is ready, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then it must come out again, Freeman. My mind is made up, and the <i>Ruffling
+      Harry</i> must go slaving to Whydah."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to
+      clear the ship once more. And then Copley Banks began to make preparations
+      for his African voyage. It appeared that he relied upon force rather than
+      barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried none of those showy
+      trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted with eight
+      nine-pounder guns, and racks full of muskets and cutlasses. The
+      after-sailroom next the cabin was transformed into a powder magazine, and
+      she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer. Water and
+      provisions were shipped for a long voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the preparation of his ship's company was most surprising. It made
+      Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that his
+      master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or another,
+      he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the firm for
+      years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port&mdash;men whose
+      reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been ashamed to
+      furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known to have been
+      present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his hideous scarlet
+      disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a red afterglow from
+      that great crime. He was first mate, and under him was Israel Martin, a
+      little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell Davies at the taking
+      of Cape Coast Castle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
+      their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
+      man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk. His beard had been shaved,
+      and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom Sharkey had
+      placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his experiences to
+      Copley Banks. These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet uncommented upon in
+      the town of Kingston. The Commandant of the troops&mdash;Major Harvey of
+      the Artillery&mdash;made serious representations to the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is not a trader, but a small warship," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think it would be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the
+      vessel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you suspect?" asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man,
+      broken down with fevers and port wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suspect," said the soldier, "that it is Stede Bonnet over again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious character
+      who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in his blood,
+      had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the Caribbean
+      Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the utmost
+      consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been accused of
+      being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions upon their
+      plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister
+      construction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Major Harvey," said he, "I am vastly sorry to do anything which may
+      offend my friend Copley Banks, for many a time have my knees been under
+      his mahogany, but in face of what you say there is no choice for me but to
+      order you to board the vessel and to satisfy yourself as to her character
+      and destination."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So at one in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers,
+      paid a surprise visit to the <i>Ruffling Harry</i>, with the result that
+      they picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the
+      moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented danger.
+      She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out against the
+      north-east trades on a course for the Windward Passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When upon the next morning the brig had left Morant Point a mere haze upon
+      the Southern horizon, the men were called aft, and Copley Banks revealed
+      his plans to them. He had chosen them, he said, as brisk boys and lads of
+      spirit, who would rather run some risk upon the sea than starve for a
+      living upon the shore. King's ships were few and weak, and they could
+      master any trader who might come their way. Others had done well at the
+      business, and with a handy, well-found vessel, there was no reason why
+      they should not turn their tarry jackets into velvet coats. If they were
+      prepared to sail under the black flag, he was ready to command them; but
+      if any wished to withdraw, they might have the gig and row back to
+      Jamaica.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four men out of six-and-forty asked for their discharge, went over the
+      ship's side into the boat, and rowed away amidst the jeers and howlings of
+      the crew. The rest assembled aft, and drew up the articles of their
+      association. A square of black tarpaulin had the white skull painted upon
+      it, and was hoisted amidst cheering at the main.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Officers were elected, and the limits of their authority fixed. Copley
+      Banks was chosen captain, but, as there are no mates upon a pirate craft,
+      Birthmark Sweetlocks became quartermaster, and Israel Martin the
+      boatswain. There was no difficulty in knowing what was the custom of the
+      brotherhood, for half the men at least had served upon pirates before.
+      Food should be the same for all, and no man should interfere with another
+      man's drink! The captain should have a cabin, but all hands should be
+      welcome to enter it when they chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All should share and share alike, save only the captain, quartermaster,
+      boatswain, carpenter, and master-gunner, who had from a quarter to a whole
+      share extra. He who saw a prize first should have the best weapon taken
+      out of her. He who boarded her first should have the richest suit of
+      clothes aboard of her. Every man might treat his own prisoner, be it man
+      or woman, after his own fashion. If a man flinched from his gun, the
+      quartermaster should pistol him. These were some of the rules which the
+      crew of the <i>Ruffling Harry</i> subscribed by putting forty-two crosses
+      at the foot of the paper upon which they had been drawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So a new rover was afloat upon the seas, and her name before a year was
+      over became as well known as that of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. From the
+      Bahamas to the Leewards, and from the Leewards to the Windwards, Copley
+      Banks became the rival of Sharkey and the terror of traders. For a long
+      time the barque and the brig never met, which was the more singular as the
+      <i>Ruffling Harry</i> was for ever looking in at Sharkey's resorts; but at
+      last one day, when she was passing down the inlet of Coxon's Hole, at the
+      east end of Cuba, with the intention of careening, there was the <i>Happy
+      Delivery</i>, with her blocks and tackle-falls already rigged for the same
+      purpose. Copley Banks fired a shotted salute and hoisted the green
+      trumpeter ensign, as the custom was among gentlemen of the sea. Then he
+      dropped his boat and went aboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey was not a man of a genial mood, nor had he any kindly
+      sympathy for those who were of the same trade as himself. Copley Banks
+      found him seated astride upon one of the after guns, with his New England
+      quartermaster, Ned Galloway, and a crowd of roaring ruffians standing
+      about him. Yet none of them roared with quite such assurance when
+      Sharkey's pale face and filmy blue eyes were turned upon him. He was in his
+      shirt-sleeves, with his cambric frills breaking through his open red satin
+      long-flapped vest. The scorching sun seemed to have no power upon his
+      fleshless frame, for he wore a low fur cap, as though it had been winter.
+      A many-coloured band of silk passed across his body and supported a short,
+      murderous sword, while his broad, brass-buckled belt was stuffed with
+      pistols.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sink you for a poacher!" he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the
+      bulwarks. "I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch
+      also! What mean you by fishing in my waters?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks looked at him, and his eyes were like those of a traveller
+      who sees his home at last. "I am glad that we are of one mind," said he,
+      "for I am myself of opinion that the seas are not large enough for the two
+      of us. But if you will take your sword and pistols and come upon a
+      sand-bank with me, then the world will be rid of a damned villain,
+      whichever way it goes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, this is talking!" said Sharkey, jumping off the gun and holding out
+      his hand. "I have not met many who could look John Sharkey in the eyes and
+      speak with a full breath. May the devil seize me if I do not choose you as
+      a consort! But if you play me false, then I will come aboard of you and
+      gut you upon your own poop."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I pledge you the same!" said Copley Banks, and so the two pirates
+      became sworn comrades to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That summer they went north as far as the Newfoundland Banks, and harried
+      the New York traders and the whale ships from New England. It was Copley
+      Banks who captured the Liverpool ship, <i>House of Hanover</i>, but it was
+      Sharkey who fastened her master to the windlass and pelted him to death
+      with empty claret-bottles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together they engaged the King's ship <i>Royal Fortune</i>, which had been
+      sent in search of them, and beat her off after a night action of five
+      hours, the drunken, raving crews fighting naked in the light of the
+      battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles
+      of every gun. They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and
+      then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ready for a long cruise
+      down the West Indies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time Sharkey and Copley Banks had become very excellent friends,
+      for Sharkey loved a whole-hearted villain, and he loved a man of metal,
+      and it seemed to him that the two met in the captain of the <i>Ruffling
+      Harry</i>. It was long before he gave his confidence to him, for cold
+      suspicion lay deep in his character. Never once would he trust himself
+      outside his own ship and away from his own men. But Copley Banks came
+      often on board the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and joined Sharkey in many of
+      his morose debauches, so that at last any lingering misgivings of the
+      latter were set at rest. He knew nothing of the evil that he had done to
+      his new boon companion, for of his many victims how could he remember the
+      woman and the two boys whom he had slain with such levity so long ago!
+      When, therefore, he received a challenge to himself and to his
+      quartermaster for a carouse upon the last evening of their stay at the
+      Caicos Bank he saw no reason to refuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A well-found passenger ship had been rifled the week before, so their fare
+      was of the best, and after supper five of them drank deeply together.
+      There were the two captains, Birthmark Sweetlocks, Ned Galloway, and
+      Israel Martin, the old buccaneers-man. To wait upon them was the dumb
+      steward, whose head Sharkey split with a glass, because he had been too
+      slow in the filling of it. The quartermaster has slipped Sharkey's
+      pistols away from him, for it was an old joke with him to fire them
+      cross-handed under the table and see who was the luckiest man. It was a
+      pleasantry which had cost his boatswain his leg, so now, when the table
+      was cleared, they would coax Sharkey's weapons away from him on the excuse
+      of the heat, and lay them out of his reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain's cabin of the <i>Ruffling Harry</i> was in a deck-house upon
+      the poop, and a stern-chaser gun was mounted at the back of it. Round shot
+      were racked round the wall, and three great hogsheads of powder made a
+      stand for dishes and for bottles. In this grim room the five pirates sang
+      and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up their
+      glasses, and passed the box and the candle round for their tobacco-pipes.
+      Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices hoarser, the curses and
+      shoutings more incoherent, until three of the five had closed their
+      blood-shot eyes, and dropped their swimming heads upon the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had
+      drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake
+      his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the watchful
+      steward, for ever filling up his waning glass. From without came the low
+      lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor's chanty from the
+      barque. In the windless tropical night the words came clearly to their
+      ears:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="poetry">
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">A trader sailed from Stepney Town,</span><br>
+   Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!<br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">A trader sailed from Stepney Town</span><br>
+   With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.<br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ho, the bully Rover Jack,</span><br>
+   Waiting with his yard aback<br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">Out upon the Lowland Sea.</span><br>
+</p>
+    <p>
+      The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks
+      glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from the shot-rack
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Captain Sharkey," said Copley Banks, "do you remember the <i>Duchess of
+      Cornwall</i>, hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago
+      off the Statira Shoal?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Curse me if I can bear their names in mind," said Sharkey. "We did as
+      many as ten ships a week about that time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. Maybe that will
+      bring it back to your mind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose
+      jutting upwards. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing
+      laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it. "But
+      burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!" he cried. "How came you to
+      think of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was of interest to me," said Copley Banks, "for the woman was my wife,
+      and the lads were my only sons."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering fire
+      which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame. He read
+      their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt. Then he turned
+      to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round him, and in an
+      instant his arms were bound to his side. He fought like a wild cat, and
+      screamed for help. "Ned!" he yelled. "Ned! Wake up! Here's damned
+      villainy! Help, Ned!&mdash;help!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for any
+      voice to wake them. Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey was
+      swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and
+      helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a handkerchief,
+      but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at them. The dumb man
+      chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for the first time when he
+      saw the empty mouth before him. He understood that vengeance, slow and
+      patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat
+      elaborate. First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder
+      barrels, and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor. They
+      piled it round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled in a
+      heap of it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun and they triced him
+      sitting over the port-hole, with his body about a foot from the muzzle.
+      Wriggle as he would he could not move an inch either to the right or left,
+      and the dumb man trussed him up with a sailor's cunning, so that there was
+      no chance that he should work free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, you bloody devil," said Copley Banks, softly, "you must listen to
+      what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will hear.
+      You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have given all
+      that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To reach you I have had to sink to your level. For two years I strove
+      against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learnt that there
+      was no other. I've robbed and I have murdered&mdash;worse still, I have
+      laughed and lived with you&mdash;and all for the one end. And now my time
+      has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the shadow
+      creeping upon you and the devil waiting for you in the shadow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty
+      over the water.
+    </p>
+<p class="poetry">
+   <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Where is the trader of Stepney Town?</span><br>
+  Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending!<br>
+   <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Where is the trader of Stepney Town?</span><br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;">His gold's on the capstan, his blood's on his gown,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">All for bully Rover Jack,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">Reaching on the weather tack</span><br>
+   <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Right across the Lowland Sea.</span><br>
+</p>
+    <p>
+      The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men
+      pacing backwards and forwards upon the deck. And yet he was helpless,
+      staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to
+      utter so much as a groan. Again there came the burst of voices from the
+      deck of the barque.
+    </p>
+<p class="poetry">
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> So it's up and it's over to Stornoway Bay,</span><br>
+  Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with stunsails!<br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> It's off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay,</span><br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Where the liquor is good and the lasses are gay,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">Waiting for their bully Jack,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">Watching for him sailing back,</span><br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Right across the Lowland Sea.</span><br>
+</p>
+    <p>
+      To the dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own fate
+      seem the harsher, but there was no softening in those venomous blue eyes.
+      Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had sprinkled
+      fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the candle and cut
+      it to the length of about an inch. This he placed upon the loose powder at
+      the breach of the gun. Thin he scattered powder thickly over the floor
+      beneath, so that when the candle fell at the recoil it must explode the
+      huge pile in which the three drunkards were wallowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've made others look death in the face, Sharkey," said he; "now it has
+      come to be your own turn. You and these swine here shall go together!" He
+      lit the candle-end as he spoke, and blew out the other lights upon the
+      table. Then he passed out with the dumb man, and locked the cabin door
+      upon the outer side. But before he closed it he took an exultant look
+      backwards, and received one last curse from those unconquerable eyes. In
+      the single dim circle of light that ivory-white face, with the gleam of
+      moisture upon the high, bald forehead, was the last that was ever seen of
+      Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a skiff alongside, and in it Copley Banks and the dumb steward
+      made their way to the beach, and looked back upon the brig riding in the
+      moonlight just outside the shadow of the palm trees. They waited and
+      waited watching that dim light which shone through the stem port. And then
+      at last there came the dull thud of a gun, and an instant later the
+      shattering crash of an explosion. The long, sleek, black barque, the sweep
+      of white sand, and the fringe of nodding feathery palm trees sprang into
+      dazzling light and back into darkness again. Voices screamed and called
+      upon the bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him, touched his companion
+      upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely jungle of the
+      Caicos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE CROXLEY MASTER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands, in
+      a state of the blackest despondency. Before him was the open ledger with
+      the long columns of Dr. Oldacre's prescriptions. At his elbow lay the
+      wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the lumps
+      of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of bottles waited to be
+      filled. But his spirits were too low for work. He sat in silence with his
+      fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened
+      brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars upheld
+      the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank. For six days in the week they
+      spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was
+      Sunday. Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and
+      blasted by the greed of man. There was nothing in the surroundings to
+      cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment which
+      weighed upon the medical assistant. His trouble was deeper and more
+      personal. The winter session was approaching. He should be back again at
+      the University completing the last year which would give him his medical
+      degree; but, alas! he had not the money with which to pay his class fees,
+      nor could he imagine how he could procure it. Sixty pounds were wanted to
+      make his career, and it might have been as many thousand for any chance
+      there seemed to be of his obtaining it. He was roused from his black
+      meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre himself, a large, clean-shaven,
+      respectable man, with a prim manner and an austere face. He had prospered
+      exceedingly by the support of the local Church interest, and the rule of
+      his life was never by word or action to run a risk of offending the
+      sentiment which had made him. His standard of respectability and of
+      dignity was exceedingly high, and he expected the same from his
+      assistants. His appearance and words were always vaguely benevolent. A
+      sudden impulse came over the despondent student. He would test the reality
+      of this philanthropy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg your pardon, Dr. Oldacre," said he, rising from his chair; "I have
+      a great favour to ask of you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor's appearance was not encouraging. His mouth suddenly tightened,
+      and his eyes fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Mr. Montgomery?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are aware, sir, that I need only one more session to complete my
+      course."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So you have told me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very important to me, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Naturally."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The fees, Dr. Oldacre, would amount to about sixty pounds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid that my duties call me elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One moment, sir! I had hoped, sir, that perhaps, if I signed a paper
+      promising you interest upon your money, you would advance this sum to me.
+      I will pay you back, sir, I really will. Or, if you like, I will work it
+      off after I am qualified."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor's lips had thinned into a narrow line. His eyes were raised
+      again, and sparkled indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your request is unreasonable, Mr. Montgomery. I am surprised that you
+      should have made it. Consider, sir, how many thousands of medical students
+      there are in this country. No doubt there are many of them who have a
+      difficulty in finding their fees. Am I to provide for them all? Or why
+      should I make an exception in your favour? I am grieved and disappointed,
+      Mr. Montgomery, that you should have put me into the painful position of
+      having to refuse you." He turned upon his heel, and walked with offended
+      dignity out of the surgery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The student smiled bitterly, and turned to his work of making up the
+      morning prescriptions. It was poor and unworthy work&mdash;work which any
+      weakling might have done as well, and this was a man of exceptional nerve
+      and sinew. But, such as it was, it brought him his board and one pound a
+      week&mdash;enough to help him during the summer months and let him save a
+      few pounds towards his winter keep. But those class fees! Where were they
+      to come from? He could not save them out of his scanty wage. Dr. Oldacre
+      would not advance them. He saw no way of earning them. His brains were
+      fairly good, but brains of that quality were a drug in the market. He only
+      excelled in his strength, and where was he to find a customer for that?
+      But the ways of Fate are strange, and his customer was at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look y'ere!" said a voice at the door. Montgomery looked up, for the
+      voice was a loud and rasping one. A young man stood at the entrance&mdash;
+      a stocky, bull-necked young miner, in tweed Sunday clothes and an
+      aggressive neck-tie. He was a sinister-looking figure, with dark, insolent
+      eyes, and the jaw and throat of a bulldog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look y'ere!" said he again. "Why hast thou not sent t' medicine oop as
+      thy master ordered?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had become accustomed to the brutal frankness of the northern
+      worker. At first it had enraged him, but after a time he had grown callous
+      to it, and accepted it as it was meant. But this was something different.
+      It was insolence&mdash;brutal, overbearing insolence, with physical menace
+      behind it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What name?" he asked coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Barton. Happen I may give thee cause to mind that name, yoong man. Mak'
+      oop t' wife's medicine this very moment, look ye, or it will be the worse
+      for thee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery smiled. A pleasant sense of relief thrilled softly through him.
+      What blessed safety-valve was this through which his jangled nerves might
+      find some outlet. The provocation was so gross, the insult so unprovoked,
+      that he could have none of those qualms which take the edge off a man's
+      mettle. He finished sealing the bottle upon which he was occupied, and he
+      addressed it and placed it carefully in the rack. "Look here!" said he,
+      turning round to the miner, "your medicine will be made up in its turn and
+      sent down to you. I don't allow folk in the surgery. Wait outside in the
+      waiting-room if you wish to wait at all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yoong man," said the miner, "thou's got to mak' t' wife's medicine here,
+      and now, and quick, while I wait and watch thee, or else happen thou might
+      need some medicine thysel' before all is over."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't advise you to fasten a quarrel upon me." Montgomery was
+      speaking in the hard, staccato voice of a man who is holding himself in
+      with difficulty. "You'll save trouble if you'll go quietly. If you don't
+      you'll be hurt. Ah, you would? Take it, then!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blows were almost simultaneous&mdash;a savage swing which whistled
+      past Montgomery's ear, and a straight drive which took the workman on the
+      chin. Luck was with the assistant. That single whizzing uppercut, and the
+      way in which it was delivered, warned him that he had a formidable man to
+      deal with. But if he had underrated his antagonist, his antagonist had
+      also underrated him, and had laid himself open to a fatal blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The miner's head had come with a crash against the corner of the surgery
+      shelves, and he had dropped heavily on to the ground. There he lay with
+      his bandy legs drawn up and his hands thrown abroad, the blood trickling
+      over the surgery tiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Had enough?" asked the assistant, breathing fiercely through his nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no answer came. The man was insensible. And then the danger of his
+      position came upon Montgomery, and he turned as white as his antagonist. A
+      Sunday, the immaculate Dr. Oldacre with his pious connection, a savage
+      brawl with a patient; he would irretrievably lose his situation if the
+      facts came out. It was not much of a situation, but he could not get
+      another without a reference, and Oldacre might refuse him one. Without
+      money for his classes, and without a situation&mdash;what was to become of
+      him? It was absolute ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But perhaps he could escape exposure after all. He seized his insensible
+      adversary, dragged him out into the centre of he room, loosened his
+      collar, and squeezed the surgery sponge over his face. He sat up at last
+      with a gasp and a scowl. "Domn thee, thou's spoilt my neck-tie," said he,
+      mopping up the water from his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm sorry I hit you so hard," said Montgomery, apologetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thou hit me hard! I could stan' such fly-flappin' all day. 'Twas this
+      here press that cracked my pate for me, and thou art a looky man to be
+      able to boast as thou hast outed me. And now I'd be obliged to thee if
+      thou wilt give me t' wife's medicine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery gladly made it up and handed it to the miner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are weak still," said he. "Won't you stay awhile and rest?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "T' wife wants her medicine," said the man, and lurched out at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assistant, looking after him, saw him rolling, with an uncertain step,
+      down the street, until a friend met him, and they walked on arm in arm.
+      The man seemed in his rough Northern fashion to bear no grudge, and so
+      Montgomery's fears left him. There was no reason why the doctor should
+      know anything about it. He wiped the blood from the floor, put the surgery
+      in order, and went on with his interrupted task, hoping that he had come
+      scathless out of a very dangerous business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet all day he was aware of a sense of vague uneasiness, which sharpened
+      into dismay when, late in the afternoon, he was informed that three
+      gentlemen had called and were waiting for him in the surgery. A coroner's
+      inquest, a descent of detectives, an invasion of angry relatives&mdash;all
+      sorts of possibilities rose to scare him. With tense nerves and a rigid
+      face he went to meet his visitors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were a very singular trio. Each was known to him by sight; but what
+      on earth the three could be doing together, and, above all, what they
+      could expect from <i>him</i>, was a most inexplicable problem. The first
+      was Sorley Wilson, the son of the owner of the Nonpareil Coalpit. He was a
+      young blood of twenty, heir to a fortune, a keen sportsman, and down for
+      the Easter Vacation from Magdalene College. He sat now upon the edge of
+      the surgery table, looking in thoughtful silence at Montgomery and
+      twisting the ends of his small, black, waxed moustache. The second was
+      Purvis, the publican, owner of the chief beer-shop, and well known as the
+      local bookmaker. He was a coarse, clean-shaven man, whose fiery face made
+      a singular contrast with his ivory-white bald head. He had shrewd,
+      light-blue eyes with foxy lashes, and he also leaned forward in silence
+      from his chair, a fat, red hand upon either knee, and stared critically at
+      the young assistant. So did the third visitor, Fawcett, the horse-breaker,
+      who leaned back, his long, thin legs, with their boxcloth riding-gaiters,
+      thrust out in front of him, tapping his protruding teeth with his
+      riding-whip, with anxious thought in every line of his rugged, bony face.
+      Publican, exquisite, and horse-breaker were all three equally silent,
+      equally earnest, and equally critical. Montgomery seated in the midst of
+      them, looked from one to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, gentlemen?" he observed, but no answer came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The position was embarrassing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said the horse-breaker, at last. "No. It's off. It's nowt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stand oop, lad; let's see thee standin'." It was the publican who spoke.
+      Montgomery obeyed. He would learn all about it, no doubt, if he were
+      patient. He stood up and turned slowly round, as if in front of his
+      tailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's off! It's off!" cried the horse-breaker. "Why, mon, the Master would
+      break him over his knee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, that be hanged for a yarn!" said the young Cantab. "You can drop out
+      if you like, Fawcett, but I'll see this thing through, if I have to do it
+      alone. I don't hedge a penny. I like the cut of him a great deal better
+      than I liked Ted Barton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look at Barton's shoulders, Mr. Wilson."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lumpiness isn't always strength. Give me nerve and fire and breed. That's
+      what wins."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, sir, you have it theer&mdash;you have it theer!" said the fat,
+      red-faced publican, in a thick suety voice. "It's the same wi' poops. Get
+      'em clean-bred an' fine, an' they'll yark the thick 'uns&mdash;yark 'em
+      out o' their skins."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's ten good pund on the light side," growled the horse-breaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's a welter weight, anyhow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hundred and thirty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hundred and fifty, if he's an ounce."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, the Master doesn't scale much more than that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hundred and seventy-five."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That was when he was hog-fat and living high. Work the grease out of him
+      and I lay there's no great difference between them. Have you been weighed
+      lately, Mr. Montgomery?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first direct question which had been asked him. He had stood in
+      the midst of them like a horse at a fair, and he was just beginning to
+      wonder whether he was more angry or amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am just eleven stone," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I said that he was a welter weight."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But suppose you was trained?" said the publican. "Wot then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am always in training."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In a manner of speakin', no doubt, he <i>is</i> always in trainin',"
+      remarked the horse-breaker. "But trainin' for everyday work ain't the same
+      as trainin' with a trainer; and I dare bet, with all respec' to your
+      opinion, Mr. Wilson, that there's half a stone of tallow on him at this
+      minute."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young Cantab put his fingers on the assistant's upper arm, then with
+      his other hand on his wrist, he bent the forearm sharply, and felt the
+      biceps, as round and hard as a cricket-ball, spring up under his fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Feel that!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The publican and horse-breaker felt it with an air of reverence. "Good
+      lad! He'll do yet!" cried Purvis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gentlemen," said Montgomery, "I think that you will acknowledge that I
+      have been very patient with you. I have listened to all that you have to
+      say about my personal appearance, and now I must really beg that you will
+      have the goodness to tell me what is the matter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all sat down in their serious, business-like way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's easy done, Mr. Montgomery," said the fat-voiced publican. "But
+      before sayin' anything we had to wait and see whether, in a way of
+      speakin', there was any need for us to say anything at all. Mr. Wilson
+      thinks there is. Mr. Fawcett, who has the same right to his opinion, bein'
+      also a backer and one o' the committee, thinks the other way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought him too light built, and I think so now," said the
+      horse-breaker, still tapping his prominent teeth with the metal head of
+      his riding-whip. "But happen he may pull through, and he's a fine-made,
+      buirdly young chap, so if you mean to back him, Mr. Wilson&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which I do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you, Purvis?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't one to go back, Fawcett."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I'll stan' to my share of the purse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And well I knew you would," said Purvis, "for it would be somethin' new
+      to find Isaac Fawcett as a spoil-sport. Well, then, we will make up the
+      hundred for the stake among us, and the fight stands&mdash;always
+      supposin' the young man is willin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Excuse all this rot, Mr. Montgomery," said the University man, in a
+      genial voice. "We've begun at the wrong end, I know, but we'll soon
+      straighten it out, and I hope that you will see your way to falling in
+      with our views. In the first place, you remember the man whom you knocked
+      out this morning? He is Barton&mdash;the famous Ted Barton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm sure, sir, you may well be proud to have outed him in one round,"
+      said the publican. "Why, it took Morris, the ten-stone-six champion, a
+      deal more trouble than that before he put Barton to sleep. You've done a
+      fine performance, sir, and happen you'll do a finer, if you give yourself
+      the chance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never heard of Ted Barton, beyond seeing the name on a medicine label,"
+      said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you may take it from me that he's a slaughterer," said the
+      horse-breaker. "You've taught him a lesson that he needed, for it was
+      always a word and a blow with him, and the word alone was worth five
+      shillin' in a public court. He won't be so ready now to shake his nief in
+      the face of everyone he meets. However, that's neither here nor there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery looked at them in bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For goodness' sake, gentlemen, tell me what it is you want me to do!" he
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We want you to fight Silas Craggs, better known as the Master of
+      Croxley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because Ted Barton was to have fought him next Saturday. He was the
+      champion of the Wilson coal-pits, and the other was the Master of the
+      iron-folk down at the Croxley smelters. We'd matched our man for a purse
+      of a hundred against the Master. But you've queered our man, and he can't
+      face such a battle with a two-inch cut at the back of his head. There's
+      only one thing to be done, sir, and that is for you to take his place. If
+      you can lick Ted Barton you may lick the Master of Croxley, but if you
+      don't we're done, for there's no one else who is in the same street with
+      him in this district. It's twenty rounds, two-ounce gloves, Queensberry
+      rules, and a decision on points if you fight to the finish."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the absurdity of the thing drove every other thought out of
+      Montgomery's head. But then there came a sudden revulsion. A hundred
+      pounds!&mdash;all he wanted to complete his education was lying there
+      ready to his hand, if only that hand were strong enough to pick it up. He
+      had thought bitterly that morning that there was no market for his
+      strength, but here was one where his muscle might earn more in an hour
+      than his brains in a year. But a chill of doubt came over him. "How can I
+      fight for the coal-pits?" said he. "I am not connected with them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Eh, lad, but thou art!" cried old Purvis. "We've got it down in writin',
+      and it's clear enough 'Anyone connected with the coal-pits.' Doctor
+      Oldacre is the coal-pit club doctor; thou art his assistant. What more can
+      they want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, that's right enough," said the Cantab. "It would be a very sporting
+      thing of you, Mr. Montgomery, if you would come to our help when we are in
+      such a hole. Of course, you might not like to take the hundred pounds; but
+      I have no doubt that, in the case of your winning, we could arrange that
+      it should take the form of a watch or piece of plate, or any other shape
+      which might suggest itself to you. You see, you are responsible for our
+      having lost our champion, so we really feel that we have a claim upon
+      you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Give me a moment, gentlemen. It is very unexpected. I am afraid the
+      doctor would never consent to my going&mdash;in fact, I am sure that he
+      would not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But he need never know&mdash;not before the fight, at any rate. We are
+      not bound to give the name of our man. So long as he is within the weight
+      limits on the day of the fight, that is all that concerns anyone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The adventure and the profit would either of them have attracted
+      Montgomery. The two combined were irresistible. "Gentlemen," said he,
+      "I'll do it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three sprang from their seats. The publican had seized his right hand,
+      the horse-dealer his left, and the Cantab slapped him on the back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good lad! good lad!" croaked the publican. "Eh, mon, but if thou yark
+      him, thou'll rise in one day from being just a common doctor to the
+      best-known mon 'twixt here and Bradford. Thou art a witherin' tyke, thou
+      art, and no mistake; and if thou beat the Master of Croxley, thou'll find
+      all the beer thou want for the rest of thy life waiting for thee at the
+      'Four Sacks.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is the most sporting thing I ever heard of in my life," said young
+      Wilson. "By George, sir, if you pull it off, you've got the constituency
+      in your pocket, if you care to stand. You know the out-house in my
+      garden?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Next the road?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Exactly. I turned it into a gymnasium for Ted Barton. You'll find all you
+      want there: clubs, punching ball, bars, dumb-bells, everything. Then
+      you'll want a sparring partner. Ogilvy has been acting for Barton, but we
+      don't think that he is class enough. Barton bears you no grudge. He's a
+      good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers. He looked upon
+      you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you now. He is quite
+      ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come any hour you will
+      name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you; I will let you know the hour," said Montgomery; and so the
+      committee departed jubilant upon their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The medical assistant sat for a time in the surgery turning it over a
+      little in his mind. He had been trained originally at the University by
+      the man who had been middle-weight champion in his day. It was true that
+      his teacher was long past his prime, slow upon his feet, and stiff in his
+      joints, but even so he was still a tough antagonist; but Montgomery had
+      found at last that he could more than hold his own with him. He had won
+      the University medal, and his teacher, who had trained so many students,
+      was emphatic in his opinion that he had never had one who was in the same
+      class with him. He had been exhorted to go in for the Amateur
+      Championships, but he had no particular ambition in that direction. Once
+      he had put on the gloves with Hammer Tunstall in a booth at a fair and had
+      fought three rattling rounds, in which he had the worst of it, but had
+      made the prize fighter stretch himself to the uttermost. There was his
+      whole record, and was it enough to encourage him to stand up to the Master
+      of Croxley? He had never heard of the Master before, but then he had lost
+      touch of the ring during the last few years of hard work. After all, what
+      did it matter? If he won, there was the money, which meant so much to him.
+      If he lost, it would only mean a thrashing. He could take punishment
+      without flinching, of that he was certain. If there were only one chance
+      in a hundred of pulling it off, then it was worth his while to attempt it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Oldacre, new come from church, with an ostentatious Prayer-book in his
+      kid-gloved hand, broke in upon his meditation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't go to service, I observe, Mr. Montgomery" said he, coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir; I have had some business to detain me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very near to my heart that my household should set a good example.
+      There are so few educated people in this district that a great
+      responsibility devolves upon us. If we do not live up to the highest, how
+      can we expect these poor workers to do so? It is a dreadful thing to
+      reflect that the parish takes a great deal more interest in an approaching
+      glove fight than in their religious duties."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A glove fight, sir?" said Montgomery, guiltily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe that to be the correct term. One of my patients tells me that
+      it is the talk of the district. A local ruffian, a patient of ours, by the
+      way, matched against a pugilist over at Croxley. I cannot understand why
+      the law does not step in and stop so degrading an exhibition. It is really
+      a prize fight."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A glove fight, you said."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am informed that a 2oz. glove is an evasion by which they dodge the
+      law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere. They contend for a
+      sum of money. It seems dreadful and almost incredible&mdash;does it not?&mdash;to
+      think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our peaceful
+      home. But you will realise, Mr. Montgomery, that while there are such
+      influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we should live
+      up to our highest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor's sermon would have had more effect if the assistant had not
+      once or twice had occasion to test his highest, and come upon it at
+      unexpectedly humble elevations. It is always so particularly easy to
+      "compound for sins we're most inclined to by damning those we have no mind
+      to." In any case, Montgomery felt that of all the men concerned in such a
+      fight&mdash;promoters, backers, spectators&mdash;it is the actual fighter
+      who holds the strongest and most honourable position. His conscience gave
+      him no concern upon the subject. Endurance and courage are virtues, not
+      vices, and brutality is, at least, better than effeminacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where
+      Montgomery got his bird's-eye and also his local information, for the
+      shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of the
+      district. The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in a
+      casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard of the Master of
+      Croxley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Heard of him! Heard of him!" the little man could hardly articulate in
+      his astonishment. "Why, sir, he's the first mon o' the district, an' his
+      name's as well known in the West Riding as the winner o' t' Derby. But
+      Lor,' sir,"&mdash;here he stopped and rummaged among a heap of papers.
+      "They are makin' a fuss about him on account o' his fight wi' Ted Barton,
+      and so the <i>Croxley Herald</i> has his life an' record, an' here it is,
+      an' thou canst read it for thysel'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheet of the paper which he held up was a lake of print around an
+      islet of illustration. The latter was a coarse wood-cut of a pugilist's
+      head and neck set in a cross-barred jersey. It was a sinister but powerful
+      face, the face of a debauched hero, clean-shaven, strongly eye-browed,
+      keen-eyed, with huge, aggressive jaw, and an animal dewlap beneath it. The
+      long, obstinate cheeks ran flush up to the narrow, sinister eyes. The
+      mighty neck came down square from the ears and curved outwards into
+      shoulders, which had lost nothing at the hands of the local artist. Above
+      was written "Silas Craggs," and beneath, "The Master of Croxley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thou'll find all about him there, sir," said the tobacconist. "He's a
+      witherin' tyke, he is, and we're proud to have him in the county. If he
+      hadn't broke his leg he'd have been champion of England."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Broke his leg, has he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, and it set badly. They ca' him owd K, behind his back, for that is
+      how his two legs look. But his arms&mdash;well, if they was both stropped
+      to a bench, as the sayin' is, I wonder where the champion of England would
+      be then."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll take this with me," said Montgomery; and putting the paper into his
+      pocket he returned home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not a cheering record which he read there. The whole history of the
+      Croxley Master was given in full, his many victories, his few defeats.
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Born in 1857 (said the provincial biographer), Silas Craggs, better
+   known in sporting circles as the Master of Croxley, is now in his
+   fortieth year.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      "Hang it, I'm only twenty-three!" said Montgomery to himself, and read on
+      more cheerfully.
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Having in his youth shown a surprising aptitude for the game, he
+   fought   his way up among his comrades, until he became the
+   recognised champion of the district and won the proud title which
+   he still holds.  Ambitious of a more than local fame, he secured a
+   patron, and fought his first fight against Jack Barton, of
+   Birmingham, in May 1880, at the old Loiterers' Club.  Craggs,
+   who fought at ten stone-two at the time, had the better of fifteen
+   rattling rounds, and gained an award on points against the Midlander.
+   Having disposed of James Dunn, of Rotherhithe, Cameron, of Glasgow,
+   and a youth named Fernie, he was thought so highly of by the fancy
+   that he was matched against Ernest Willox, at that time
+   middle-weight champion of the North of England, and defeated him in a
+   hard-fought battle, knocking him out in the tenth round after a
+   punishing contest.  At this period it looked as if the very highest
+   honours of the ring were within the reach of the young Yorkshireman,
+   but he was laid upon the shelf by a most unfortunate accident.  The
+   kick of a horse broke his thigh, and for a year he was compelled to
+   rest himself.  When he returned to his work the fracture had set
+   badly, and his activity was much impaired.  It was owing to this
+   that he was defeated in seven rounds by Willox, the man whom he had
+   previously beaten, and afterwards by James Shaw, of London, though
+   the latter acknowledged that he had found the toughest customer of
+   his career.  Undismayed by his reverses, the Master adapted the
+   style of his fighting to his physical disabilities and resumed his
+   career of victory&mdash;defeating Norton (the black), Hobby Wilson, and
+   Levi Cohen, the latter a heavy-weight.  Conceding two stone, he
+   fought a draw with the famous Billy McQuire, and afterwards, for
+   a purse of fifty pounds, he defeated Sam Hare at the Pelican Club,
+   London.  In 1891 a decision was given against him upon a foul when
+   fighting a winning fight against Jim Taylor, the Australian middle
+   weight, and so mortified was he by the decision, that he withdrew
+   from the ring.  Since then he has hardly fought at all save to
+   accommodate any local aspirant who may wish to learn the difference
+   between a bar-room scramble and a scientific contest.  The latest
+   of these ambitious souls comes from the Wilson coal-pits, which have
+   undertaken to put up a stake of 100 pounds and back their local
+   champion.  There are various rumours afloat as to who their
+   representative is to be, the name of Ted Barton being freely
+   mentioned; but the betting, which is seven to one on the Master
+   against any untried man, is a fair reflection of the feeling of
+   the community.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery read it over twice, and it left him with a very serious face.
+      No light matter this which he had undertaken; no battle with a
+      rough-and-tumble fighter who presumed upon a local reputation. The man's
+      record showed that he was first-class&mdash;or nearly so. There were a few
+      points in his favour, and he must make the most of them. There was age&mdash;twenty-three
+      against forty. There was an old ring proverb that "Youth will be served,"
+      but the annals of the ring offer a great number of exceptions. A hard
+      veteran full of cool valour and ring-craft, could give ten or fifteen
+      years and a beating to most striplings. He could not rely too much upon
+      his advantage in age. But then there was the lameness; that must surely
+      count for a great deal. And, lastly, there was the chance that the Master
+      might underrate his opponent, that he might be remiss in his training, and
+      refuse to abandon his usual way of life, if he thought that he had an easy
+      task before him. In a man of his age and habits this seemed very possible.
+      Montgomery prayed that it might be so. Meanwhile, if his opponent were the
+      best man who ever jumped the ropes into a ring, his own duty was clear. He
+      must prepare himself carefully, throw away no chance, and do the very best
+      that he could. But he knew enough to appreciate the difference which
+      exists in boxing, as in every sport, between the amateur and the
+      professional. The coolness, the power of hitting, above all the capability
+      of taking punishment, count for so much. Those specially developed,
+      gutta-percha-like abdominal muscles of the hardened pugilist will take
+      without flinching a blow which would leave another man writhing on the
+      ground. Such things are not to be acquired in a week, but all that could
+      be done in a week should be done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The medical assistant had a good basis to start from. He was 5ft. 11 ins.&mdash;tall
+      enough for anything on two legs, as the old ring men used to say&mdash;lithe
+      and spare, with the activity of a panther, and a strength which had hardly
+      yet ever found its limitations. His muscular development was finely hard,
+      but his power came rather from that higher nerve-energy which counts for
+      nothing upon a measuring tape. He had the well-curved nose and the widely
+      opened eye which never yet were seen upon the face of a craven, and behind
+      everything he had the driving force, which came from the knowledge that
+      his whole career was at stake upon the contest. The three backers rubbed
+      their hands when they saw him at work punching the ball in the gymnasium
+      next morning; and Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who had written to Leeds to
+      hedge his bets, sent a wire to cancel the letter, and to lay another fifty
+      at the market price of seven to one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery's chief difficulty was to find time for his training without
+      any interference from the doctor. His work took him a large part of the
+      day, but as the visiting was done on foot, and considerable distances had
+      to be traversed, it was a training in itself. For the rest, he punched the
+      swinging ball and worked with the dumb-bells for an hour every morning and
+      evening, and boxed twice a day with Ted Barton in the gymnasium, gaining
+      as much profit as could be got from a rushing, two-handed slogger. Barton
+      was full of admiration for his cleverness and quickness, but doubtful
+      about his strength. Hard hitting was the feature of his own style, and he
+      exacted it from others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lord, sir, that's a turble poor poonch for an eleven-stone man!" he would
+      cry. "Thou wilt have to hit harder than that afore t' Master will know
+      that thou art theer. All, thot's better, mon, thot's fine!" he would add,
+      as his opponent lifted him across the room on the end of a right counter.
+      "Thot's how I likes to feel 'em. Happen thou'lt pull through yet." He
+      chuckled with joy when Montgomery knocked him into a corner. "Eh, mon,
+      thou art coming along grand. Thou hast fair yarked me off my legs. Do it
+      again, lad, do it again!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only part of Montgomery's training which came within the doctor's
+      observation was his diet, and that puzzled him considerably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will excuse my remarking, Mr. Montgomery, that you are becoming
+      rather particular in your tastes. Such fads are not to be encouraged in
+      one's youth. Why do you eat toast with every meal?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I find that it suits me better than bread, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It entails unnecessary work upon the cook. I observe, also, that you have
+      turned against potatoes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir; I think that I am better without them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you no longer drink your beer?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These causeless whims and fancies are very much to be deprecated, Mr.
+      Montgomery. Consider how many there are to whom these very potatoes and
+      this very beer would be most acceptable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No doubt, sir, but at present I prefer to do without them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sitting alone at lunch, and the assistant thought that it would
+      be a good opportunity of asking leave for the day of the fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should be glad if you could let me have leave for Saturday, Dr.
+      Oldacre."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very inconvenient upon so busy a day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should do a double day's work on Friday so as to leave everything in
+      order. I should hope to be back in the evening."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid I cannot spare you, Mr. Montgomery."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a facer. If he could not get leave he would go without it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will remember, Dr. Oldacre, that when I came to you it was understood
+      that I should have a clear day every month. I have never claimed one. But
+      now there are reasons why I wish to have a holiday upon Saturday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Oldacre gave in with a very bad grace. "Of course, if you insist upon
+      your formal rights, there is no more to be said, Mr. Montgomery, though I
+      feel that it shows a certain indifference to my comfort and the welfare of
+      the practice. Do you still insist?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good. Have your way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was boiling over with anger, but Montgomery was a valuable
+      assistant&mdash;steady, capable, and hardworking&mdash;and he could not
+      afford to lose him. Even if he had been prompted to advance those class
+      fees, for which his assistant had appealed, it would have been against his
+      interests to do so, for he did not wish him to qualify, and he desired him
+      to remain in his subordinate position, in which he worked so hard for so
+      small a wage. There was something in the cool insistence of the young man,
+      a quiet resolution in his voice as he claimed his Saturday, which aroused
+      his curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no desire to interfere unduly with your affairs, Mr. Montgomery,
+      but were you thinking of having a day in Leeds upon Saturday?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the country?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are very wise. You will find a quiet day among the wild flowers a
+      very valuable restorative. Have you thought of any particular direction?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am going over Croxley way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, there is no prettier country when once you are past the iron-works.
+      What could be more delightful than to lie upon the Fells, basking in the
+      sunshine, with perhaps some instructive and elevating book as your
+      companion? I should recommend a visit to the ruins of St. Bridget's
+      Church, a very interesting relic of the early Norman era. By the way,
+      there is one objection which I see to your going to Croxley on Saturday.
+      It is upon that date, as I am informed, that that ruffianly glove fight
+      takes place. You may find yourself molested by the blackguards whom it
+      will attract."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will take my chance of that, sir," said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Friday night, which was the last night before the fight,
+      Montgomery's three backers assembled in the gymnasium and inspected their
+      man as he went through some light exercises to keep his muscles supple. He
+      was certainly in splendid condition, his skin shining with health, and his
+      eyes with energy and confidence. The three walked round him and exulted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's simply ripping!" said the undergraduate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By gad, you've come out of it splendidly. You're as hard as a pebble, and
+      fit to fight for your life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Happen he's a trifle on the fine side," said the publican. "Runs a bit
+      light at the loins, to my way of thinkin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What weight to-day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ten stone eleven," the assistant answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's only three pund off in a week's trainin'," said the horse-breaker.
+      "He said right when he said that he was in condition. Well, it's fine
+      stuff all there is of it, but I'm none so sure as there is enough." He
+      kept poking his finger into Montgomery as if he were one of his horses. "I
+      hear that the Master will scale a hundred and sixty odd at the ring-side."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But there's some of that which he'd like well to pull off and leave
+      behind wi' his shirt," said Purvis. "I hear they've had a rare job to get
+      him to drop his beer, and if it had not been for that great red-headed
+      wench of his they'd never ha' done it. She fair scratted the face off a
+      potman that had brought him a gallon from t' 'Chequers.' They say the
+      hussy is his sparrin' partner, as well as his sweetheart, and that his
+      poor wife is just breakin' her heart over it. Hullo, young 'un, what do
+      you want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door of the gymnasium had opened and a lad, about sixteen, grimy and
+      black with soot and iron, stepped into the yellow glare of the oil lamp.
+      Ted Barton seized him by the collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "See here, thou yoong whelp, this is private, and we want noan o' thy
+      spyin'!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I maun speak to Mr. Wilson."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young Cantab stepped forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, my lad, what is it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's aboot t' fight, Mr. Wilson, sir. I wanted to tell your mon somethin'
+      aboot t' Maister."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We've no time to listen to gossip, my boy. We know all about the Master."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But thou doan't, sir. Nobody knows but me and mother, and we thought as
+      we'd like thy mon to know, sir, for we want him to fair bray him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, you want the Master fair brayed, do you? So do we. Well, what have
+      you to say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is this your mon, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, suppose it is?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then it's him I want to tell aboot it. T' Maister is blind o' the left
+      eye."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nonsense!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's true, sir. Not stone blind, but rarely fogged. He keeps it secret,
+      but mother knows, and so do I. If thou slip him on the left side he can't
+      cop thee. Thou'll find it right as I tell thee. And mark him when he sinks
+      his right. 'Tis his best blow, his right upper-cut. T' Maister's finisher,
+      they ca' it at t' works. It's a turble blow when it do come home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, my boy. This is information worth having about his sight,"
+      said Wilson. "How came you to know so much? Who are you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm his son, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wilson whistled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And who sent you to us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My mother. I maun get back to her again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take this half-crown."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir, I don't seek money in comin' here. I do it&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For love?" suggested the publican.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For hate!" said the boy, and darted off into the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seems to me t' red-headed wench may do him more harm than good, after
+      all," remarked the publican. "And now, Mr. Montgomery, sir, you've done
+      enough for this evenin', an' a nine-hours' sleep is the best trainin'
+      before a battle. Happen this time to-morrow night you'll be safe back
+      again with your 100 pound in your pocket."
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             II
+</p>
+    <p>
+      Work was struck at one o'clock at the coal-pits and the iron-works, and
+      the fight was arranged for three. From the Croxley Furnaces, from Wilson's
+      Coal-pits, from the Heartsease Mine, from the Dodd Mills, from the
+      Leverworth Smelters the workmen came trooping, each with his fox-terrier
+      or his lurcher at his heels. Warped with labour and twisted by toil, bent
+      double by week-long work in the cramped coal galleries or half-blinded
+      with years spent in front of white-hot fluid metal, these men still gilded
+      their harsh and hopeless lives by their devotion to sport. It was their
+      one relief, the only thing which could distract their minds from sordid
+      surroundings, and give them an interest beyond the blackened circle which
+      enclosed them. Literature, art, science, all these things were beyond
+      their horizon; but the race, the football match, the cricket, the fight,
+      these were things which they could understand, which they could speculate
+      upon in advance and comment upon afterwards. Sometimes brutal, sometimes
+      grotesque, the love of sport is still one of the great agencies which make
+      for the happiness of our people. It lies very deeply in the springs of our
+      nature, and when it has been educated out, a higher, more refined nature
+      may be left, but it will not be of that robust British type which has left
+      its mark so deeply on the world. Every one of these raddled workers,
+      slouching with his dog at his heels to see something of the fight, was a
+      true unit of his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a squally May day, with bright sunbursts and driving showers.
+      Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting his medicine made up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The weather seems so very unsettled, Mr. Montgomery," remarked the
+      doctor, "that I am inclined to think that you had better postpone your
+      little country excursion until a later date."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid that I must go to-day, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have just had an intimation that Mrs. Potter, at the other side of
+      Angleton, wishes to see me. It is probable that I shall be there all day.
+      It will be extremely inconvenient to leave the house empty so long."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very sorry, sir, but I must go," said the assistant, doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor saw that it would be useless to argue, and departed in the
+      worst of bad tempers upon mission. Montgomery felt easier now that he was
+      gone. He went up to his room, and packed his running-shoes, his
+      fighting-drawers, and his cricket sash into a hand-bag. When he came down,
+      Mr. Wilson was waiting for him in the surgery. "I hear the doctor has
+      gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; he is likely to be away all day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't see that it matters much. It's bound to come to his ears by
+      to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; it's serious with me, Mr. Wilson. If I win, it's all right. I don't
+      mind telling you that the hundred pounds will make all the difference to
+      me. But if I lose, I shall lose my situation, for, as you say, I can't
+      keep it secret."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind. We'll see you through among us. I only wonder the doctor has
+      not heard, for it's all over the country that you are to fight the Croxley
+      Champion. We've had Armitage up about it already. He's the Master's
+      backer, you know. He wasn't sure that you were eligible. The Master said
+      he wanted you whether you were eligible or not. Armitage has money on, and
+      would have made trouble if he could. But I showed him that you came within
+      the conditions of the challenge, and he agreed that it was all right. They
+      think they have a soft thing on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I can only do my best," said Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They lunched together; a silent and rather nervous repast, for
+      Montgomery's mind was full of what was before him, and Wilson had himself
+      more money at stake than he cared to lose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wilson's carriage and pair were at the door, the horses with blue and
+      white rosettes at their ears, which were the colours of the Wilson
+      Coal-pits, well known, on many a football field. At the avenue gate a
+      crowd of some hundred pit-men and their wives gave a cheer as the carriage
+      passed. To the assistant it all seemed dream-like and extraordinary&mdash;the
+      strangest experience of his life, but with a thrill of human action and
+      interest in it which made it passionately absorbing. He lay back in the
+      open carriage and saw the fluttering handkerchiefs from the doors and
+      windows of the miners' cottages. Wilson had pinned a blue and white
+      rosette upon his coat, and everybody knew him as their champion. "Good
+      luck, sir! good luck to thee!" they shouted from the roadside. He felt
+      that it was like some unromantic knight riding down to sordid lists, but
+      there was something of chivalry in it all the same. He fought for others
+      as well as for himself. He might fail from want of skill or strength, but
+      deep in his sombre soul he vowed that it should never be for want of
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fawcett was just mounting into his high-wheeled, spidery dogcart, with
+      his little bit of blood between the shafts. He waved his whip and fell in
+      behind the carriage. They overtook Purvis, the tomato-faced publican, upon
+      the road, with his wife in her Sunday bonnet. They also dropped into the
+      procession, and then, as they traversed the seven miles of the high road
+      to Croxley, their two-horsed, rosetted carriage became gradually the
+      nucleus of a comet with a loosely radiating tail. From every side-road
+      came the miners' carts, the humble, ramshackle traps, black and bulging,
+      with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued, open-hearted partisans. They
+      trailed for a long quarter of a mile behind them&mdash;cracking, whipping,
+      shouting, galloping, swearing. Horsemen and runners were mixed with the
+      vehicles. And then suddenly a squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were
+      having their annual training in those parts, clattered and jingled out of
+      a field, and rode as an escort to the carriage. Through the dust-clouds
+      round him Montgomery saw the gleaming brass helmets, the bright coats, and
+      the tossing heads of the chargers, the delighted brown faces of the
+      troopers. It was more dream-like than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, as they approached the monstrous, uncouth line of bottle-shaped
+      buildings which marked the smelting-works of Croxley, their long, writhing
+      snake of dust was headed off by another but longer one which wound across
+      their path. The main road into which their own opened was filled by the
+      rushing current of traps. The Wilson contingent halted until the others
+      should get past. The iron-men cheered and groaned, according to their
+      humour, as they whirled past their antagonist. Rough chaff flew back and
+      forwards like iron nuts and splinters of coal. "Brought him up, then!"
+      "Got t' hearse for to fetch him back?" "Where's t' owd K-legs?" "Mon, mon,
+      have thy photograph took&mdash;'twill mind thee of what thou used to
+      look!" "He fight?&mdash;he's nowt but a half-baked doctor!" "Happen he'll
+      doctor thy Croxley Champion afore he's through wi't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they flashed at each other as the one side waited and the other passed.
+      Then there came a rolling murmur swelling into a shout, and a great brake
+      with four horses came clattering along, all streaming with salmon-pink
+      ribbons. The driver wore a white hat with pink rosette, and beside him, on
+      the high seat, were a man and a woman-she with her arm round his waist.
+      Montgomery had one glimpse of them as they flashed past; he with a furry
+      cap drawn low over his brow, a great frieze coat and a pink comforter
+      round his throat; she brazen, red-headed, bright-coloured, laughing
+      excitedly. The Master, for it was he, turned as he passed, gazed hard at
+      Montgomery, and gave him a menacing, gap-toothed grin. It was a hard,
+      wicked face, blue-jowled and craggy, with long, obstinate cheeks and
+      inexorable eyes. The brake behind was full of patrons of the sport-flushed
+      iron-foremen, heads of departments, managers. One was drinking from a
+      metal flask, and raised it to Montgomery as he passed; and then the crowd
+      thinned, and the Wilson cortege with their dragoons swept in at the rear
+      of the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road led away from Croxley, between curving green hills, gashed and
+      polluted by the searchers for coal and iron. The whole country had been
+      gutted, and vast piles of refuse and mountains of slag suggested the
+      mighty chambers which the labour of man had burrowed beneath. On the left
+      the road curved up to where a huge building, roofless and dismantled,
+      stood crumbling and forlorn, with the light shining through the windowless
+      squares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the old Arrowsmith's factory. That's where the fight is to be,"
+      said Wilson. "How are you feeling now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, I was never better in my life," Montgomery answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By Gad, I like your nerve!" said Wilson, who was himself flushed and
+      uneasy. "You'll give us a fight for our money, come what may. That place
+      on the right is the office, and that has been set aside as the dressing
+      and weighing room."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The carriage drove up to it amidst the shouts of the folk upon the
+      hillside. Lines of empty carriages and traps curved down upon the winding
+      road, and a black crowd surged round the door of the ruined factory. The
+      seats, as a huge placard announced, were five shillings, three shillings,
+      and a shilling, with half-price for dogs. The takings, deducting expenses,
+      were to go to the winner, and it was already evident that a larger stake
+      than a hundred pounds was in question. A babel of voices rose from the
+      door. The workers wished to bring their dogs in free. The men scuffled.
+      The dogs barked. The crowd was a whirling, eddying pool surging with a
+      roar up to the narrow cleft which was its only outlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brake, with its salmon-coloured streamers and four reeking horses,
+      stood empty before the door of the office; Wilson, Purvis, Fawcett and
+      Montgomery passed in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a large, bare room inside with square, clean patches upon the
+      grimy walls, where pictures and almanacs had once hung. Worn linoleum
+      covered the floor, but there was no furniture save some benches and a deal
+      table with an ewer and a basin upon it. Two of the corners were curtained
+      off. In the middle of the room was a weighing-chair. A hugely fat man,
+      with a salmon tie and a blue waistcoat with bird's-eye spots, came
+      bustling up to them. It was Armitage, the butcher and grazier, well known
+      for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal patron of sport in the
+      Riding. "Well, well," he grunted, in a thick, fussy, wheezy voice, "you
+      have come, then. Got your man? Got your man?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here he is, fit and well. Mr. Montgomery, let me present you to Mr.
+      Armitage."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Glad to meet you, sir. Happy to make your acquaintance. I make bold to
+      say, sir, that we of Croxley admire your courage, Mr. Montgomery, and that
+      our only hope is a fair fight and no favour, and the best man win. That's
+      our sentiments at Croxley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And it is my sentiment, also," said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you can't say fairer than that, Mr. Montgomery. You've taken a
+      large contrac' in hand, but a large contrac' may be carried through, sir,
+      as anyone that knows my dealings could testify. The Master is ready to
+      weigh in!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So am I."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must weigh in the buff." Montgomery looked askance at the tall,
+      red-headed woman who was standing gazing out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's all right," said Wilson. "Get behind the curtain and put on your
+      fighting kit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did so, and came out the picture of an athlete, in white, loose
+      drawers, canvas shoes, and the sash of a well-known cricket club round his
+      waist. He was trained to a hair, his skin gleaming like silk, and every
+      muscle rippling down his broad shoulders and along his beautiful arms as
+      he moved them. They bunched into ivory knobs, or slid into long, sinuous
+      curves, as he raised or lowered his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What thinkest thou o' that?" asked Ted Barton, his second, of the woman
+      in the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced contemptuously at the young athlete. "It's but a poor kindness
+      thou dost him to put a thread-paper yoong gentleman like yon against a mon
+      as is a mon. Why, my Jock would throttle him wi' one hond lashed behind
+      him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Happen he may&mdash;happen not," said Barton. "I have but twa pund in the
+      world, but it's on him, every penny, and no hedgin'. But here's t'
+      Maister, and rarely fine he do look."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prize-fighter had come out from his curtain, a squat, formidable
+      figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted
+      leg. His skin had none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery's, but
+      was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled black
+      hair which thatched his mighty breast. His weight bore no relation to his
+      strength, for those huge shoulders and great arms, with brown,
+      sledge-hammer fists, would have fitted the heaviest man that ever threw
+      his cap into a ring. But his loins and legs were slight in proportion.
+      Montgomery, on the other hand, was as symmetrical as a Greek statue. It
+      would be an encounter between a man who was specially fitted for one
+      sport, and one who was equally capable of any. The two looked curiously at
+      each other: a bulldog, and a high-bred clean-limbed terrier, each full of
+      spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do?" The Master grinned again, and his three jagged front teeth
+      gleamed for an instant. The rest had been beaten out of him in twenty
+      years of battle. He spat upon the floor. "We have a rare fine day for't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Capital," said Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the good feelin' I like," wheezed the fat butcher. "Good lads,
+      both of them!&mdash;prime lads!&mdash;hard meat an' good bone. There's no
+      ill-feelin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he downs me, Gawd bless him!" said the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "An' if we down him, Gawd help him!" interrupted the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Haud thy tongue, wench!" said the Master, impatiently. "Who art thou to
+      put in thy word? Happen I might draw my hand across thy face."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman did not take the threat amiss. "Wilt have enough for thy hand to
+      do, Jock," said she. "Get quit o' this gradely man afore thou turn on me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lovers' quarrel was interrupted by the entrance of a newcomer, a
+      gentleman with a fur-collared overcoat and a very shiny top-hat&mdash; a
+      top-hat of a degree of glossiness which is seldom seen five miles from
+      Hyde Park. This hat he wore at the extreme back of his head, so that the
+      lower surface of the brim made a kind of frame for his high, bald
+      forehead, his, keen eyes, his rugged and yet kindly face. He bustled in
+      with the quiet air of possession with which the ring master enters the
+      circus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's Mr. Stapleton, the referee from London," said Wilson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you do, Mr. Stapleton? I was introduced to you at the big fight at
+      the Corinthian Club in Piccadilly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! I dare say," said the other, shaking hands. "Fact is, I'm introduced
+      to so many that I can't undertake to carry their names. Wilson, is it?
+      Well, Mr. Wilson, glad to see you. Couldn't get a fly at the station, and
+      that's why I'm late."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm sure, sir," said Armitage, "we should be proud that anyone so well
+      known in the boxing world should come down to our little exhibition."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all. Not at all. Anything in the interests of boxin'. All ready?
+      Men weighed?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Weighing now, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! Just as well that I should see it done. Seen you before, Craggs. Saw
+      you fight your second battle against Willox. You had beaten him once, but
+      he came back on you. What does the indicator say&mdash;163lbs.&mdash; two
+      off for the kit&mdash;161lbs. Now, my lad, you jump. My goodness, what
+      colours are you wearing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Anonymi Cricket Club."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What right have you to wear them? I belong to the club myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So do I."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You an amateur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you are fighting for a money prize?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose you know what you are doing? You realise that you're a
+      professional pug from this onwards, and that if ever you fight again&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll never fight again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Happen you won't," said the woman, and the Master turned a terrible eye
+      upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I suppose you know your own business best. Up you jump. One hundred
+      and fifty-one, minus two, 149&mdash;12lbs. difference, but youth and
+      condition on the other scale. Well, the sooner we get to work the better,
+      for I wish to catch the seven o'clock express at Hellifield. Twenty
+      three-minute rounds, with one-minute intervals, and Queensberry rules.
+      Those are the conditions, are they not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good, then&mdash;we may go across."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two combatants had overcoats thrown over their shoulders, and the
+      whole party, backers, fighters, seconds, and the referee filed out of the
+      room. A police inspector was waiting for them in the road. He had a
+      note-book in his hand&mdash;that terrible weapon which awes even the
+      London cabman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must take your names, gentlemen, in case it should be necessary to
+      proceed for breach of peace."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't mean to stop the fight?" cried Armitage, in a passion of
+      indignation. "I'm Mr. Armitage, of Croxley, and this is Mr. Wilson, and
+      we'll be responsible that all is fair and as it should be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll take the names in case it should be necessary to proceed," said the
+      inspector, impassively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you know me well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you was a dook or even a judge it would be all the same," said the
+      inspector. "It's the law, and there's an end. I'll not take upon myself to
+      stop the fight, seeing that gloves are to be used, but I'll take the names
+      of all concerned. Silas Craggs, Robert Montgomery, Edward Barton, James
+      Stapleton, of London. Who seconds Silas Craggs?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do," said the woman. "Yes, you can stare, but it's my job, and no one
+      else's. Anastasia's the name&mdash;four a's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Craggs?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Johnson&mdash;Anastasia Johnson. If you jug him you can jug me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who talked of juggin', ye fool?" growled the Master. "Coom on, Mr.
+      Armitage, for I'm fair sick o' this loiterin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector fell in with the procession, and proceeded, as they walked
+      up the hill, to bargain in his official capacity for a front seat, where
+      he could safeguard the interests of the law, and in his private capacity
+      to lay out thirty shillings at seven to one with Mr. Armitage. Through the
+      door they passed, down a narrow lane walled with a dense bank of humanity,
+      up a wooden ladder to a platform, over a rope which was slung waist-high
+      from four corner-stakes, and then Montgomery realised that he was in that
+      ring in which his immediate destiny was to be worked out. On the stake at
+      one corner there hung a blue-and-white streamer. Barton led him across,
+      the overcoat dangling loosely from his shoulders, and he sat down on a
+      wooden stool. Barton and another man, both wearing white sweaters, stood
+      beside him. The so-called ring was a square, twenty feet each way. At the
+      opposite angle was the sinister figure of the Master, with his red-headed
+      woman and a rough-faced friend to look after him. At each corner were
+      metal basins, pitchers of water, and sponges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the hubbub and uproar of the entrance Montgomery was too bewildered
+      to take things in. But now there was a few minutes' delay, for the referee
+      had lingered behind, and so he looked quietly about him. It was a sight to
+      haunt him for a lifetime. Wooden seats had been built in, sloping upwards
+      to the tops of the walls. Above, instead of a ceiling, a great flight of
+      crows passed slowly across a square of grey cloud. Right up to the topmost
+      benches the folk were banked&mdash;broadcloth in front, corduroys and
+      fustian behind; faces turned everywhere upon him. The grey reek of the
+      pipes filled the building, and the air was pungent with the acrid smell of
+      cheap, strong tobacco. Everywhere among the human faces were to be seen
+      the heads of the dogs. They growled and yapped from the back benches. In
+      that dense mass of humanity, one could hardly pick out individuals, but
+      Montgomery's eyes caught the brazen gleam of the helmets held upon the
+      knees of the ten yeomen of his escort. At the very edge of the platform
+      sat the reporters, five of them&mdash;three locals and two all the way
+      from London. But where was the all-important referee? There was no sign of
+      him, unless he were in the centre of that angry swirl of men near the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Stapleton had stopped to examine the gloves which were to be used, and
+      entered the building after the combatants. He had started to come down
+      that narrow lane with the human walls which led to the ring. But already
+      it had gone abroad that the Wilson champion was a gentleman, and that
+      another gentleman had been appointed as referee. A wave of suspicion
+      passed through the Croxley folk. They would have one of their own people
+      for a referee. They would not have a stranger. His path was stopped as he
+      made for the ring. Excited men flung themselves in front of him; they
+      waved their fists in his face and cursed him. A woman howled vile names in
+      his ear. Somebody struck at him with an umbrella. "Go thou back to Lunnon.
+      We want noan o' thee. Go thou back!" they yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stapleton, with his shiny hat cocked backwards, and his large, bulging
+      forehead swelling from under it, looked round him from beneath his bushy
+      brows. He was in the centre of a savage and dangerous mob. Then he drew
+      his watch from his pocket and held it dial upwards in his palm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In three minutes," said he, "I will declare the fight off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They raged round him. His cool face and that aggressive top-hat irritated
+      them. Grimy hands were raised. But it was difficult, somehow, to strike a
+      man who was so absolutely indifferent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In two minutes I declare the fight off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They exploded into blasphemy. The breath of angry men smoked into his
+      placid face. A gnarled, grimy fist vibrated at the end of his nose. "We
+      tell thee we want noan o' thee. Get thou back where thou com'st from."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In one minute I declare the fight off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the calm persistence of the man conquered the swaying, mutable,
+      passionate crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let him through, mon. Happen there'll be no fight after a'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let him through."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bill, thou loomp, let him pass. Dost want the fight declared off?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Make room for the referee!&mdash;room for the Lunnon referee!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And half pushed, half carried, he was swept up to the ring. There were two
+      chairs by the side of it, one for him and one for the timekeeper. He sat
+      down, his hands on his knees, his hat at a more wonderful angle than ever,
+      impassive but solemn, with the aspect of one who appreciates his
+      responsibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Armitage, the portly butcher, made his way into the ring and held up
+      two fat hands, sparkling with rings, as a signal for silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gentlemen!" he yelled. And then in a crescendo shriek, "Gentlemen!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And ladies!" cried somebody, for, indeed, there was a fair sprinkling of
+      women among the crowd. "Speak up, owd man!" shouted another. "What price
+      pork chops?" cried somebody at the back. Everybody laughed, and the dogs
+      began to bark. Armitage waved his hands amidst the uproar as if he were
+      conducting an orchestra. At last the babel thinned into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gentlemen," he yelled, "the match is between Silas Craggs, whom we call
+      the Master of Croxley, and Robert Montgomery, of the Wilson Coal-pits. The
+      match was to be under eleven-eight. When they were weighed just now,
+      Craggs weighed eleven-seven, and Montgomery ten-nine. The conditions of
+      the contest are&mdash;the best of twenty three-minute rounds with
+      two-ounce gloves. Should the fight run to its full length, it will, of
+      course, be decided upon points. Mr. Stapleton, the well-known London
+      referee, has kindly consented to see fair play. I wish to say that Mr.
+      Wilson and I, the chief backers of the two men, have every confidence in
+      Mr. Stapleton, and that we beg that you will accept his rulings without
+      dispute."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then turned from one combatant to the other, with a wave of his hand.
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             III
+</p>
+    <p>
+      "Montgomery&mdash;Craggs!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great hush fell over the huge assembly. Even the dogs stopped yapping;
+      one might have thought that the monstrous room was empty. The two men had
+      stood up, the small white gloves over their hands. They advanced from their
+      corners and shook hands, Montgomery gravely, Craggs with a smile. Then
+      they fell into position. The crowd gave a long sigh&mdash;the intake of a
+      thousand excited breaths. The referee tilted his chair on to its back
+      legs, and looked moodily critical from the one to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was strength against activity&mdash;that was evident from the first.
+      The Master stood stolidly upon his K leg. It gave him a tremendous
+      pedestal; one could hardly imagine his being knocked down. And he could
+      pivot round upon it with extraordinary quickness; but his advance or
+      retreat was ungainly. His frame, however, was so much larger and broader
+      than that of the student, and his brown, massive face looked so resolute
+      and menacing that the hearts of the Wilson party sank within them. There
+      was one heart, however, which had not done so. It was that of Robert
+      Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Any nervousness which he may have had completely passed away now that he
+      had his work before him. Here was something definite&mdash;this
+      hard-faced, deformed Hercules to beat, with a career as the price of
+      beating him. He glowed with the joy of action; it thrilled through his
+      nerves. He faced his man with little in-and-out steps, breaking to the
+      left, breaking to the right, feeling his way, while Craggs, with a dull,
+      malignant eye, pivoted slowly upon his weak leg, his left arm half
+      extended, his right sunk low across the mark. Montgomery led with his
+      left, and then led again, getting lightly home each time. He tried again,
+      but the Master had his counter ready, and Montgomery reeled back from a
+      harder blow than he had given. Anastasia, the woman, gave a shrill cry of
+      encouragement, and her man let fly his right. Montgomery ducked under it,
+      and in an instant the two were in each other's arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Break away! Break away!" said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master struck upwards on the break, and shook Montgomery with the
+      blow. Then it was "time." It had been a spirited opening round. The people
+      buzzed into comment and applause. Montgomery was quite fresh, but the
+      hairy chest of the Master was rising and falling. The man passed a sponge
+      over his head while Anastasia flapped the towel before him. "Good lass!
+      good lass!" cried the crowd, and cheered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men were up again, the Master grimly watchful, Montgomery as alert as
+      a kitten. The Master tried a sudden rush, squattering along with his
+      awkward gait, but coming faster than one would think. The student slipped
+      aside and avoided him. The Master stopped, grinned, and shook his head.
+      Then he motioned with his hand as an invitation to Montgomery to come to
+      him. The student did so and led with his left, but got a swinging right
+      counter in the ribs in exchange. The heavy blow staggered him, and the
+      Master came scrambling in to complete his advantage; but Montgomery, with
+      his greater activity, kept out of danger until the call of "time." A tame
+      round, and the advantage with the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "T' Maister's too strong for him," said a smelter to his neighbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay; but t'other's a likely lad. Happen we'll see some sport yet. He can
+      joomp rarely."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But t' Maister can stop and hit rarely. Happen he'll mak' him joomp when
+      he gets his nief upon him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were up again, the water glistening upon their faces. Montgomery led
+      instantly, and got his right home with a sounding smack upon the master's
+      forehead. There was a shout from the colliers, and "Silence! Order!" from
+      the referee. Montgomery avoided the counter, and scored with his left.
+      Fresh applause, and the referee upon his feet in indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No comments, gentlemen, if <i>you</i> please, during the rounds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just bide a bit!" growled the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't talk&mdash;fight!" said the referee, angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery rubbed in the point by a flush hit upon the mouth, and the
+      Master shambled back to his corner like an angry bear, having had all the
+      worst of the round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where's thot seven to one?" shouted Purvis, the publican. "I'll take six
+      to one!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were no answers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Five to one!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were givers at that. Purvis booked them in a tattered notebook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery began to feel happy. He lay back with his legs outstretched,
+      his back against the corner-post, and one gloved hand upon each rope. What
+      a delicious minute it was between each round. If he could only keep out of
+      harm's way, he must surely wear this man out before the end of twenty
+      rounds. He was so slow that all his strength went for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're fightin' a winnin' fight&mdash;a winnin' fight," Ted Barton
+      whispered in his ear. "Go canny; tak' no chances; you have him proper."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Master was crafty. He had fought so many battles with his maimed
+      limb that he knew how to make the best of it. Warily and slowly he
+      manoeuvred round Montgomery, stepping forward and yet again forward until
+      he had imperceptibly backed him into his corner. The student suddenly saw
+      a flash of triumph upon the grim face, and a gleam in the dull, malignant
+      eyes. The Master was upon him. He sprang aside and was on the ropes. The
+      Master smashed in one of his terrible upper-cuts, and Montgomery half
+      broke it with his guard. The student sprang the other way and was against
+      the other converging rope. He was trapped in the angle. The Master sent in
+      another with a hoggish grunt which spoke of the energy behind it.
+      Montgomery ducked, but got a jab from the left upon the mark. He closed
+      with his man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Break away! Break away!" cried the referee. Montgomery disengaged, and
+      got a swinging blow on the ear as he did so. It had been a damaging round
+      for him, and the Croxley people were shouting their delight. "Gentlemen, I
+      will <i>not</i> have this noise!" Stapleton roared. "I have been
+      accustomed to preside at a well-conducted club, and not at a bear-garden."
+      This little man, with the tilted hat and the bulging forehead, dominated
+      the whole assembly. He was like a head-master among his boys. He glared
+      round him, and nobody cared to meet his eye. Anastasia had kissed the
+      Master when he resumed his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good lass. Do't again!" cried the laughing crowd, and the angry Master
+      shook his glove at her, as she flapped her towel in front of him.
+      Montgomery was weary and a little sore, but not depressed. He had learned
+      something. He would not again be tempted into danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three rounds the honours were fairly equal. The student's hitting was
+      the quicker, the Master's the harder. Profiting by his lesson, Montgomery
+      kept himself in the open, and refused to be herded into a corner.
+      Sometimes the Master succeeded in rushing him to the side-ropes, but the
+      younger man slipped away, or closed and then disengaged. The monotonous
+      "Break away! Break away!" of the referee broke in upon the quick, low
+      patter of rubber-soled shoes, the dull thud of the blows, and the sharp,
+      hissing breath of two tired men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ninth round found both of them in fairly good condition. Montgomery's
+      head was still singing from the blow that he had in the corner, and one of
+      his thumbs pained him acutely and seemed to be dislocated. The Master
+      showed no sign of a touch, but his breathing was the more laboured, and a
+      long line of ticks upon the referee's paper showed that the student had a
+      good show of points. But one of this iron-man's blows was worth three of
+      his, and he knew that without the gloves he could not have stood for three
+      rounds against him. All the amateur work that he had done was the merest
+      tapping and flapping when compared to those frightful blows, from arms
+      toughened by the shovel and the crowbar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the tenth round, and the fight was half over. The betting now was
+      only three to one, for the Wilson champion had held his own much better
+      than had been expected. But those who knew the ring-craft as well as the
+      staying power of the old prize-fighter knew that the odds were still a
+      long way in his favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have a care of him!" whispered Barton, as he sent his man up to the
+      scratch. "Have a care! He'll play thee a trick, if he can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery saw, or imagined he saw, that his antagonist was tiring. He
+      looked jaded and listless, and his hands drooped a little from their
+      position. His own youth and condition were beginning to tell. He sprang in
+      and brought off a fine left-handed lead. The Master's return lacked his
+      usual fire. Again Montgomery led, and again he got home. Then he tried his
+      right upon the mark, and the Master guarded it downwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Too low! Too low! A foul! A foul!" yelled a thousand voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The referee rolled his sardonic eyes slowly round. "Seems to me this
+      buildin' is chock-full of referees," said he. The people laughed and
+      applauded, but their favour was as immaterial to him as their anger. "No
+      applause, please! This is not a theatre!" he yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery was very pleased with himself. His adversary was evidently in a
+      bad way. He was piling on his points and establishing a lead. He might as
+      well make hay while the sun shone. The Master was looking all abroad.
+      Montgomery popped one upon his blue jowl and got away without a return.
+      And then the Master suddenly dropped both his hands and began rubbing his
+      thigh. Ah! that was it, was it? He had muscular cramp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go in! Go in!" cried Teddy Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery sprang wildly forward, and the next instant was lying half
+      senseless, with his neck nearly broken, in the middle of the ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole round had been a long conspiracy to tempt him within reach of
+      one of those terrible right-hand upper-cuts for which the Master was
+      famous. For this the listless, weary bearing, for this the cramp in the
+      thigh. When Montgomery had sprung in so hotly he had exposed himself to
+      such a blow as neither flesh nor blood could stand. Whizzing up from below
+      with a rigid arm, which put the Master's eleven stone into its force, it
+      struck him under the jaw; he whirled half round, and fell a helpless and
+      half-paralysed mass. A vague groan and murmur, inarticulate, too excited
+      for words, rose from the great audience. With open mouths and staring eyes
+      they gazed at the twitching and quivering figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stand back! Stand right back!" shrieked the referee, for the Master was
+      standing over his man ready to give him the <i>coup-de-grace</i> as he
+      rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stand back, Craggs, this instant!" Stapleton repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master sank his hands sulkily and walked backwards to the rope with
+      his ferocious eyes fixed upon his fallen antagonist. The timekeeper called
+      the seconds. If ten of them passed before Montgomery rose to his feet, the
+      fight was ended. Ted Barton wrung his hands and danced about in an agony
+      in his corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As if in a dream&mdash;a terrible nightmare&mdash;the student could hear
+      the voice of the timekeeper&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;he got
+      up on his hand&mdash;six&mdash; seven&mdash;he was on his knee, sick,
+      swimming, faint, but resolute to rise. Eight&mdash;he was up, and the
+      Master was on him like a tiger, lashing savagely at him with both hands.
+      Folk held their breath as they watched those terrible blows, and
+      anticipated the pitiful end&mdash;so much more pitiful where a game but
+      helpless man refuses to accept defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangely automatic is the human brain. Without volition, without effort,
+      there shot into the memory of this bewildered, staggering, half-stupefied
+      man the one thing which could have saved him&mdash;that blind eye of which
+      the Master's son had spoken. It was the same as the other to look at, but
+      Montgomery remembered that he had said that it was the left. He reeled to
+      the left side, half felled by a drive which lit upon his shoulder. The
+      Master pivoted round upon his leg and was at him in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yark him, lad! Yark him!" screamed the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hold your tongue!" said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery slipped to the left again and yet again, but the Master was too
+      quick and clever for him. He struck round and got him full on the face as
+      he tried once more to break away. Montgomery's knees weakened under him,
+      and he fell with a groan on the floor. This time he knew that he was done.
+      With bitter agony he realised, as he groped blindly with his hands, that
+      he could not possibly raise himself. Far away and muffled he heard, amid
+      the murmurs of the multitude, the fateful voice of the timekeeper counting
+      off the seconds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;six&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Time!" said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the pent-up passion of the great assembly broke loose. Croxley gave a
+      deep groan of disappointment. The Wilsons were on their feet, yelling with
+      delight. There was still a chance for them. In four more seconds their man
+      would have been solemnly counted out. But now he had a minute in which to
+      recover. The referee looked round with relaxed features and laughing eyes.
+      He loved this rough game, this school for humble heroes, and it was
+      pleasant to him to intervene as a <i>Deus ex machina</i> at so dramatic a
+      moment. His chair and his hat were both tilted at an extreme angle; he and
+      the timekeeper smiled at each other. Ted Barton and the other second had
+      rushed out and thrust an arm each under Montgomery's knee, the other
+      behind his loins, and so carried him back to his stool. His head lolled
+      upon his shoulder, but a douche of cold water sent a shiver through him,
+      and he started and looked round him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's a' right!" cried the people round. "He's a rare brave lad. Good lad!
+      Good lad!" Barton poured some brandy into his mouth. The mists cleared a
+      little, and he realised where he was and what he had to do. But he was
+      still very weak, and he hardly dared to hope that he could survive another
+      round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seconds out of the ring!" cried the referee. "Time!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Croxley Master sprang eagerly off his stool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Keep clear of him! Go easy for a bit," said Barton, and Montgomery walked
+      out to meet his man once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had had two lessons&mdash;the one when the Master got him into his
+      corner, the other when he had been lured into mixing it up with so
+      powerful an antagonist. Now he would be wary. Another blow would finish
+      him; he could afford to run no risks. The Master was determined to follow
+      up his advantage, and rushed at him, slogging furiously right and left.
+      But Montgomery was too young and active to be caught. He was strong upon
+      his legs once more, and his wits had all come back to him. It was a
+      gallant sight&mdash;the line-of-battleship trying to pour its overwhelming
+      broadside into the frigate, and the frigate manoeuvring always so as to
+      avoid it. The Master tried all his ring-craft. He coaxed the student up by
+      pretended inactivity; he rushed at him with furious rushes towards the
+      ropes. For three rounds he exhausted every wile in trying to get at him.
+      Montgomery during all this time was conscious that his strength was minute
+      by minute coming back to him. The spinal jar from an upper-cut is
+      overwhelming, but evanescent. He was losing all sense of it beyond a great
+      stiffness of the neck. For the first round after his downfall he had been
+      content to be entirely on the defensive, only too happy if he could stall
+      off the furious attacks of the Master. In the second he occasionally
+      ventured upon a light counter. In the third he was smacking back merrily
+      where he saw an opening. His people yelled their approval of him at the
+      end of every round. Even the iron-workers cheered him with that fine
+      unselfishness which true sport engenders. To most of them, unspiritual and
+      unimaginative, the sight of this clean-limbed young Apollo, rising above
+      disaster and holding on while consciousness was in him to his appointed
+      task, was the greatest thing their experience had ever known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Master's naturally morose temper became more and more murderous at
+      this postponement of his hopes. Three rounds ago the battle had been in
+      his hands; now it was all to do over again. Round by round his man was
+      recovering his strength. By the fifteenth he was strong again in wind and
+      limb. But the vigilant Anastasia saw something which encouraged her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That bash in t' ribs is telling on him, Jock," she whispered. "Why else
+      should he be gulping t' brandy? Go in, lad, and thou hast him yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had suddenly taken the flask from Barton's hand, and had a deep
+      pull at the contents. Then, with his face a little flushed, and with a
+      curious look of purpose, which made the referee stare hard at him, in his
+      eyes, he rose for the sixteenth round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Game as a pairtridge!" cried the publican, as he looked at the hard-set
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!" cried the iron-men to their Master. And
+      then a hum of exultation ran through their ranks as they realised that
+      their tougher, harder, stronger man held the vantage, after all. Neither
+      of the men showed much sign of punishment. Small gloves crush and numb,
+      but they do not cut. One of the Master's eyes was even more flush with his
+      cheek than Nature had made it. Montgomery had two or three livid marks
+      upon his body, and his face was haggard, save for that pink spot which the
+      brandy had brought into either cheek. He rocked a little as he stood
+      opposite his man, and his hands drooped as if he felt the gloves to be an
+      unutterable weight. It was evident that he was spent and desperately
+      weary. If he received one other blow it must surely be fatal to him. If he
+      brought one home, what power could there be behind it, and what chance was
+      there of its harming the colossus in front of him? It was the crisis of
+      the fight. This round must decide it. "Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!" the
+      iron-men whooped. Even the savage eyes of the referee were unable to
+      restrain the excited crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, at last, the chance had come for Montgomery. He had learned a lesson
+      from his more experienced rival. Why should he not play his own game upon
+      him? He was spent, but not nearly so spent as he pretended. That brandy
+      was to call up his reserves, to let him have strength to take full
+      advantage of the opening when it came. It was thrilling and tingling
+      through his veins at the very moment when he was lurching and rocking like
+      a beaten man. He acted his part admirably. The Master felt that there was
+      an easy task before him, and rushed in with ungainly activity to finish it
+      once for all. He slap-banged away left and right, boring Montgomery up
+      against the ropes, swinging in his ferocious blows with those animal
+      grunts which told of the vicious energy behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery was too cool to fall a victim to any of those murderous
+      upper-cuts. He kept out of harm's way with a rigid guard, an active foot,
+      and a head which was swift to duck. And yet he contrived to present the
+      same appearance of a man who is hopelessly done. The Master, weary from
+      his own shower of blows, and fearing nothing from so weak a man, dropped
+      his hand for an instant, and at that instant Montgomery's right came home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a magnificent blow, straight, clean, crisp, with the force of the
+      loins and the back behind it. And it landed where he had meant it to&mdash;
+      upon the exact point of that blue-grained chin. Flesh and blood could not
+      stand such a blow in such a place. Neither valour nor hardihood can save
+      the man to whom it comes. The Master fell backwards, flat, prostrate,
+      striking the ground with so simultaneous a clap that it was like a shutter
+      falling from a wall. A yell, which no referee could control, broke from
+      the crowded benches as the giant went down. He lay upon his back, his
+      knees a little drawn up, his huge chest panting. He twitched and shook,
+      but could not move. His feet pawed convulsively once or twice. It was no
+      use. He was done. "Eight&mdash;nine&mdash;ten!" said the timekeeper, and
+      the roar of a thousand voices, with a deafening clap like the broadside
+      of a ship, told that the Master of Croxley was the Master no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery stood half dazed, looking down at the huge, prostrate figure.
+      He could hardly realise that it was indeed all over. He saw the referee
+      motion towards him with his hand. He heard his name bellowed in triumph
+      from every side. And then he was aware of someone rushing towards him; he
+      caught a glimpse of a flushed face and an aureole of flying red hair, a
+      gloveless fist struck him between the eyes, and he was on his back in the
+      ring beside his antagonist, while a dozen of his supporters were
+      endeavouring to secure the frantic Anastasia. He heard the angry shouting
+      of the referee, the screaming of the furious woman, and the cries of the
+      mob. Then something seemed to break like an over-stretched banjo string,
+      and he sank into the deep, deep, mist-girt abyss of unconsciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dressing was like a thing in a dream, and so was a vision of the
+      Master with the grin of a bulldog upon his face, and his three teeth
+      amiably protruded. He shook Montgomery heartily by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would have been rare pleased to shake thee by the throttle, lad, a
+      short while syne," said he. "But I bear no ill-feeling again' thee. It was
+      a rare poonch that brought me down&mdash;I have not had a better since my
+      second fight wi' Billy Edwards in '89. Happen thou might think o' goin'
+      further wi' this business. If thou dost, and want a trainer, there's not
+      much inside t' ropes as I don't know. Or happen thou might like to try it
+      wi' me old style and bare knuckles. Thou hast but to write to t' iron-works
+      to find me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery disclaimed any such ambition. A canvas bag with his share&mdash;190
+      sovereigns&mdash;was handed to him, of which he gave ten to the Master,
+      who also received some share of the gate-money. Then, with young Wilson
+      escorting him on one side, Purvis on the other, and Fawcett carrying his
+      bag behind, he went in triumph to his carriage, and drove amid a long
+      roar, which lined the highway like a hedge for the seven miles, back to
+      his starting-point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's the greatest thing I ever saw in my life. By George, it's ripping!"
+      cried Wilson, who had been left in a kind of ecstasy by the events of the
+      day. "There's a chap over Barnsley way who fancies himself a bit. Let us
+      spring you on him, and let him see what he can make of you. We'll put up a
+      purse&mdash;won't we, Purvis? You shall never want a backer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At his weight," said the publican, "I'm behind him, I am, for twenty
+      rounds, and no age, country, or colour barred."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So am I," cried Fawcett; "middle-weight champion of the world, that's
+      what he is&mdash;here, in the same carriage with us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery was not to be beguiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; I have my own work to do now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what may that be?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll use this money to get my medical degree."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we've plenty of doctors, but you're the only man in the Riding that
+      could smack the Croxley Master off his legs. However, I suppose you know
+      your own business best. When you're a doctor, you'd best come down into
+      these parts, and you'll always find a job waiting for you at the Wilson
+      Coal-pits."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had returned by devious ways to the surgery. The horses were
+      smoking at the door, and the doctor was just back from his long journey.
+      Several patients had called in his absence, and he was in the worst of
+      tempers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose I should be glad that you have come back at all, Mr.
+      Montgomery!" he snarled. "When next you elect to take a holiday, I trust
+      it will not be at so busy a time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry, sir, that you should have been inconvenienced."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir, I have been exceedingly inconvenienced." Here, for the first
+      time, he looked hard at the assistant. "Good Heavens, Mr. Montgomery, what
+      have you been doing with your left eye?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was where Anastasia had lodged her protest. Montgomery laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is nothing, sir," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you have a livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that my
+      representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition. How
+      did you receive these injuries?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, sir, as you know, there was a little glove-fight to-day over at
+      Croxley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you got mixed up with that brutal crowd?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I <i>was</i> rather mixed up with them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And who assaulted you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One of the fighters."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which of them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Master of Croxley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good Heavens! Perhaps you interfered with him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, to tell the truth, I did a little."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Montgomery, in such a practice as mine, intimately associated as it
+      is with the highest and most progressive elements of our small community,
+      it is impossible&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just then the tentative bray of a cornet-player searching for his
+      key-note jarred upon their ears, and an instant later the Wilson Colliery
+      brass band was in full cry with, "See the Conquering Hero Comes," outside
+      the surgery window. There was a banner waving, and a shouting crowd of
+      miners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is it? What does it mean?" cried the angry doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It means, sir, that I have, in the only way which was open to me, earned
+      the money which is necessary for my education. It is my duty, Dr. Oldacre,
+      to warn you that I am about to return to the University, and that you
+      should lose no time in appointing my successor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was in the days when the German armies had broken their way across
+      France, and when the shattered forces of the young Republic had been swept
+      away to the north of the Aisne and to the south of the Loire. Three broad
+      streams of armed men had rolled slowly but irresistibly from the Rhine,
+      now meandering to the north, now to the south, dividing, coalescing, but
+      all uniting to form one great lake round Paris. And from this lake there
+      welled out smaller streams&mdash;one to the north, one southward, to
+      Orleans, and a third westward to Normandy. Many a German trooper saw the
+      sea for the first time when he rode his horse girth-deep into the waves at
+      Dieppe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Black and bitter were the thoughts of Frenchmen when they saw this weal of
+      dishonour slashed across the fair face of their country. They had fought
+      and they had been overborne. That swarming cavalry, those countless
+      footmen, the masterful guns&mdash;they had tried and tried to make head
+      against them. In battalions their invaders were not to be beaten, but man
+      to man, or ten to ten, they were their equals. A brave Frenchman might
+      still make a single German rue the day that he had left his own bank of
+      the Rhine. Thus, unchronicled amid the battles and the sieges, there broke
+      out another war, a war of individuals, with foul murder upon the one side
+      and brutal reprisal on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm, of the 24th Posen Infantry, had suffered severely
+      during this new development. He commanded in the little Norman town of Les
+      Andelys, and his outposts stretched amid the hamlets and farmhouses of the
+      district round. No French force was within fifty miles of him, and yet
+      morning after morning he had to listen to a black report of sentries found
+      dead at their posts, or of foraging parties which had never returned. Then
+      the colonel would go forth in his wrath, and farmsteadings would blaze and
+      villages tremble; but next morning there was still that same dismal tale
+      to be told. Do what he might, he could not shake off his invisible
+      enemies. And yet it should not have been so hard, for, from certain signs
+      in common, in the plan and in the deed, it was certain that all these
+      outrages came from a single source.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm had tried violence, and it had failed. Gold might be
+      more successful. He published it abroad over the countryside that 500frs.
+      would be paid for information. There was no response. Then 800frs. The
+      peasants were incorruptible. Then, goaded on by a murdered corporal, he
+      rose to a thousand, and so bought the soul of Francois Rejane, farm
+      labourer, whose Norman avarice was a stronger passion than his French
+      hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You say that you know who did these crimes?" asked the Prussian colonel,
+      eyeing with loathing the blue-bloused, rat-faced creature before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, colonel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And it was&mdash;?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Those thousand francs, colonel&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not a sou until your story has been tested. Come! Who is it who has
+      murdered my men?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is Count Eustace of Chateau Noir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You lie!" cried the colonel, angrily. "A gentleman and a nobleman could
+      not have done such crimes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasant shrugged his shoulders. "It is evident to me that you do not
+      know the count. It is this way, colonel. What I tell you is the truth, and
+      I am not afraid that you should test it. The Count of Chateau Noir is a
+      hard man, even at the best time he was a hard man. But of late he has been
+      terrible. It was his son's death, you know. His son was under Douay, and
+      he was taken, and then in escaping from Germany he met his death. It was
+      the count's only child, and indeed we all think that it has driven him
+      mad. With his peasants he follows the German armies. I do not know how
+      many he has killed, but it is he who cut the cross upon the foreheads, for
+      it is the badge of his house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true. The murdered sentries had each had a saltire cross slashed
+      across their brows, as by a hunting-knife. The colonel bent his stiff back
+      and ran his forefinger over the map which lay upon the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Chateau Noir is not more than four leagues," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Three and a kilometre, colonel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know the place?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I used to work there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm rang the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Give this man food and detain him," said he to the sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why detain me, colonel? I can tell you no more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We shall need you as guide."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As guide? But the count? If I were to fall into his hands? Ah, colonel&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prussian commander waved him away. "Send Captain Baumgarten to me at
+      once," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer who answered the summons was a man of middle-age, heavy-jawed,
+      blue-eyed, with a curving yellow moustache, and a brick-red face which
+      turned to an ivory white where his helmet had sheltered it. He was bald,
+      with a shining, tightly stretched scalp, at the back of which, as in a
+      mirror, it was a favourite mess-joke of the subalterns to trim their
+      moustaches. As a soldier he was slow, but reliable and brave. The colonel
+      could trust him where a more dashing officer might be in danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will proceed to Chateau Noir to-night, captain," said he. "A guide
+      has been provided. You will arrest the count and bring him back. If there
+      is an attempt at rescue, shoot him at once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How many men shall I take, colonel?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we are surrounded by spies, and our only chance is to pounce upon
+      him before he knows that we are on the way. A large force will attract
+      attention. On the other hand, you must not risk being cut off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I might march north, colonel, as if to join General Goeben. Then I could
+      turn down this road which I see upon your map, and get to Chateau Noir
+      before they could hear of us. In that case, with twenty men&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good, captain. I hope to see you with your prisoner to-morrow
+      morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold December night when Captain Baumgarten marched out of Les
+      Andelys with his twenty Poseners, and took the main road to the north
+      west. Two miles out he turned suddenly down a narrow, deeply rutted track,
+      and made swiftly for his man. A thin, cold rain was falling, swishing
+      among the tall poplar trees and rustling in the fields on either side. The
+      captain walked first with Moser, a veteran sergeant, beside him. The
+      sergeant's wrist was fastened to that of the French peasant, and it had
+      been whispered in his ear that in case of an ambush the first bullet fired
+      would be through his head. Behind them the twenty infantrymen plodded
+      along through the darkness with their faces sunk to the rain, and their
+      boots squeaking in the soft, wet clay. They knew where they were going,
+      and why, and the thought upheld them, for they were bitter at the loss of
+      their comrades. It was a cavalry job, they knew, but the cavalry were all
+      on with the advance, and, besides, it was more fitting that the regiment
+      should avenge its own dead men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly eight when they left Les Andelys. At half-past eleven their
+      guide stopped at a place where two high pillars, crowned with some
+      heraldic stonework, flanked a huge iron gate. The wall in which it had
+      been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered above
+      the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base. The Prussians made
+      their way round it and advanced stealthily, under the shadow of a tunnel
+      of oak branches, up the long avenue, which was still cumbered by the
+      leaves of last autumn. At the top they halted and reconnoitred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The black chateau lay in front of them. The moon had shone out between two
+      rain-clouds, and threw the old house into silver and shadow. It was shaped
+      like an L, with a low arched door in front, and lines of small windows
+      like the open ports of a man-of-war. Above was a dark roof, breaking at
+      the corners into little round overhanging turrets, the whole lying silent
+      in the moonshine, with a drift of ragged clouds blackening the heavens
+      behind it. A single light gleamed in one of the lower windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain whispered his orders to his men. Some were to creep to the
+      front door, some to the back. Some were to watch the east, and some the
+      west. He and the sergeant stole on tiptoe to the lighted window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a small room into which they looked, very meanly furnished. An
+      elderly man, in the dress of a menial, was reading a tattered paper by the
+      light of a guttering candle. He leaned back in his wooden chair with his
+      feet upon a box, while a bottle of white wine stood with a half-filled
+      tumbler upon a stool beside him. The sergeant thrust his needle-gun
+      through the glass, and the man sprang to his feet with a shriek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Silence, for your life! The house is surrounded, and you cannot escape.
+      Come round and open the door, or we will show you no mercy when we come
+      in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For God's sake, don't shoot! I will open it! I will open it!" He rushed
+      from the room with his paper still crumpled up in his hand. An instant
+      later, with a groaning of old locks and a rasping of bars, the low door
+      swung open, and the Prussians poured into the stone-flagged passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is Count Eustace de Chateau Noir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My master! He is out, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Out at this time of night? Your life for a lie!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is true, sir. He is out!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Doing what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot tell. No, it is no use your cocking your pistol, sir. You may
+      kill me, but you cannot make me tell you that which I do not know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he often out at this hour?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Frequently."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And when does he come home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Before daybreak."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten rasped out a German oath. He had had his journey for
+      nothing, then. The man's answers were only too likely to be true. It was
+      what he might have expected. But at least he would search the house and
+      make sure. Leaving a picket at the front door and another at the back, the
+      sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of them&mdash; his
+      shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the old tapestries
+      and the low, oak-raftered ceilings. They searched the whole house, from
+      the huge stone-flagged kitchen below to the dining-hall on the second
+      floor, with its gallery for musicians, and its panelling black with age,
+      but nowhere was there a living creature. Up above, in an attic, they found
+      Marie, the elderly wife of the butler; but the owner kept no other
+      servants, and of his own presence there was no trace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was long, however, before Captain Baumgarten had satisfied himself upon
+      the point. It was a difficult house to search. Thin stairs, which only one
+      man could ascend at a time, connected lines of tortuous corridors. The
+      walls were so thick that each room was cut off from its neighbour. Huge
+      fireplaces yawned in each, while the windows were 6ft. deep in the wall.
+      Captain Baumgarten stamped with his feet, tore down curtains, and struck
+      with the pommel of his sword. If there were secret hiding-places, he was
+      not fortunate enough to find them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have an idea," said he, at last, speaking in German to the sergeant.
+      "You will place a guard over this fellow, and make sure that he
+      communicates with no one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, captain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you will place four men in ambush at the front and at the back. It is
+      likely enough that about daybreak our bird may return to the nest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the others, captain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let them have their suppers in the kitchen. The fellow will serve you
+      with meat and wine. It is a wild night, and we shall be better here than
+      on the country road."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yourself, captain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will take my supper up here in the dining-hall. The logs are laid and
+      we can light the fire. You will call me if there is any alarm. What can
+      you give me for supper&mdash;you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Alas, monsieur, there was a time when I might have answered, 'What you
+      wish!' but now it is all that we can do to find a bottle of new claret and
+      a cold pullet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That will do very well. Let a guard go about with him, sergeant, and let
+      him feel the end of a bayonet if he plays us any tricks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten was an old campaigner. In the Eastern provinces, and
+      before that in Bohemia, he had learned the art of quartering himself upon
+      the enemy. While the butler brought his supper he occupied himself in
+      making his preparations for a comfortable night. He lit the candelabrum of
+      ten candles upon the centre table. The fire was already burning up,
+      crackling merrily, and sending spurts of blue, pungent smoke into the
+      room. The captain walked to the window and looked out. The moon had gone
+      in again, and it was raining heavily. He could hear the deep sough of the
+      wind, and see the dark loom of the trees, all swaying in the one
+      direction. It was a sight which gave a zest to his comfortable quarters,
+      and to the cold fowl and the bottle of wine which the butler had brought
+      up for him. He was tired and hungry after his long tramp, so he threw his
+      sword, his helmet, and his revolver-belt down upon a chair, and fell to
+      eagerly upon his supper. Then, with his glass of wine before him and his
+      cigar between his lips, he tilted his chair back and looked about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat within a small circle of brilliant light which gleamed upon his
+      silver shoulder-straps, and threw out his terra-cotta face, his heavy
+      eyebrows, and his yellow moustache. But outside that circle things were
+      vague and shadowy in the old dining-hall. Two sides were oak-panelled and
+      two were hung with faded tapestry, across which huntsmen and dogs and
+      stags were still dimly streaming. Above the fireplace were rows of
+      heraldic shields with the blazonings of the family and of its alliances,
+      the fatal saltire cross breaking out on each of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four paintings of old seigneurs of Chateau Noir faced the fireplace, all
+      men with hawk noses and bold, high features, so like each other that only
+      the dress could distinguish the Crusader from the Cavalier of the Fronde.
+      Captain Baumgarten, heavy with his repast, lay back in his chair looking
+      up at them through the clouds of his tobacco smoke, and pondering over the
+      strange chance which had sent him, a man from the Baltic coast, to eat his
+      supper in the ancestral hall of these proud Norman chieftains. But the
+      fire was hot, and the captain's eyes were heavy. His chin sank slowly upon
+      his chest, and the ten candles gleamed upon the broad, white scalp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a slight noise brought him to his feet. For an instant it seemed
+      to his dazed senses that one of the pictures opposite had walked from its
+      frame. There, beside the table, and almost within arm's length of him, was
+      standing a huge man, silent, motionless, with no sign of life save his
+      fierce-glinting eyes. He was black-haired, olive-skinned, with a pointed
+      tuft of black beard, and a great, fierce nose, towards which all his
+      features seemed to run. His cheeks were wrinkled like a last year's apple,
+      but his sweep of shoulder, and bony, corded hands, told of a strength
+      which was unsapped by age. His arms were folded across his arching chest,
+      and his mouth was set in a fixed smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pray do not trouble yourself to look for your weapons," he said, as the
+      Prussian cast a swift glance at the empty chair in which they had been
+      laid. "You have been, if you will allow me to say so, a little indiscreet
+      to make yourself so much at home in a house every wall of which is
+      honeycombed with secret passages. You will be amused to hear that forty
+      men were watching you at your supper. Ah! what then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten had taken a step forward with clenched fists. The
+      Frenchman held up the revolver which he grasped in his right hand, while
+      with the left he hurled the German back into his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pray keep your seat," said he. "You have no cause to trouble about your
+      men. They have already been provided for. It is astonishing with these
+      stone floors how little one can hear what goes on beneath. You have been
+      relieved of your command, and have now only to think of yourself. May I
+      ask what your name is?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am Captain Baumgarten of the 24th Posen Regiment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your French is excellent, though you incline, like most of your
+      countrymen, to turn the 'p' into a 'b.' I have been amused to hear them
+      cry '<i>Avez bitie sur moi!</i>' You know, doubtless, who it is who
+      addresses you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Count of Chateau Noir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Precisely. It would have been a misfortune if you had visited my chateau
+      and I had been unable to have a word with you. I have had to do with many
+      German soldiers, but never with an officer before. I have much to talk to
+      you about."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten sat still in his chair. Brave as he was, there was
+      something in this man's manner which made his skin creep with
+      apprehension. His eyes glanced to right and to left, but his weapons were
+      gone, and in a struggle he saw that he was but a child to this gigantic
+      adversary. The count had picked up the claret bottle and held it to the
+      light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tut! tut!" said he. "And was this the best that Pierre could do for you?
+      I am ashamed to look you in the face, Captain Baumgarten. We must improve
+      upon this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He blew a call upon a whistle which hung from his shooting-jacket. The old
+      manservant was in the room in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Chambertin from bin 15!" he cried, and a minute later a grey bottle,
+      streaked with cobwebs, was carried in as a nurse bears an infant. The
+      count filled two glasses to the brim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Drink!" said he. "It is the very best in my cellars, and not to be
+      matched between Rouen and Paris. Drink, sir, and be happy! There are cold
+      joints below. There are two lobsters, fresh from Honfleur. Will you not
+      venture upon a second and more savoury supper?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German officer shook his head. He drained the glass, however, and his
+      host filled it once more, pressing him to give an order for this or that
+      dainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is nothing in my house which is not at your disposal. You have but
+      to say the word. Well, then, you will allow me to tell you a story while
+      you drink your wine. I have so longed to tell it to some German officer.
+      It is about my son, my only child, Eustace, who was taken and died in
+      escaping. It is a curious little story, and I think that I can promise you
+      that you will never forget it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must know, then, that my boy was in the artillery&mdash;a fine young
+      fellow, Captain Baumgarten, and the pride of his mother. She died within a
+      week of the news of his death reaching us. It was brought by a brother
+      officer who was at his side throughout, and who escaped while my lad died.
+      I want to tell you all that he told me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Eustace was taken at Weissenburg on the 4th of August. The prisoners were
+      broken up into parties, and sent back into Germany by different routes.
+      Eustace was taken upon the 5th to a village called Lauterburg, where he
+      met with kindness from the German officer in command. This good colonel
+      had the hungry lad to supper, offered him the best he had, opened a bottle
+      of good wine, as I have tried to do for you, and gave him a cigar from his
+      own case. Might I entreat you to take one from mine?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German again shook his head. His horror of his companion had increased
+      as he sat watching the lips that smiled and the eyes that glared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The colonel, as I say, was good to my boy. But, unluckily, the prisoners
+      were moved next day across the Rhine into Ettlingen. They were not equally
+      fortunate there. The officer who guarded them was a ruffian and a villain,
+      Captain Baumgarten. He took a pleasure in humiliating and ill-treating the
+      brave men who had fallen into his power. That night, upon my son answering
+      fiercely back to some taunt of his, he struck him in the eye, like this!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crash of the blow rang through the hall. The German's face fell
+      forward, his hand up, and blood oozing through his fingers. The count
+      settled down in his chair once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My boy was disfigured by the blow, and this villain made his appearance
+      the object of his jeers. By the way, you look a little comical yourself at
+      the present moment, captain, and your colonel would certainly say that you
+      had been getting into mischief. To continue, however, my boy's youth and
+      his destitution&mdash;for his pockets were empty&mdash;moved the pity of a
+      kind-hearted major, and he advanced him ten Napoleons from his own pocket
+      without security of any kind. Into your hands, Captain Baumgarten, I
+      return these ten gold pieces, since I cannot learn the name of the lender.
+      I am grateful from my heart for this kindness shown to my boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The vile tyrant who commanded the escort accompanied the prisoners to
+      Durlack, and from there to Carlsruhe. He heaped every outrage upon my lad,
+      because the spirit of the Chateau Noirs would not stoop to turn away his
+      wrath by a feigned submission. Ay, this cowardly villain, whose heart's
+      blood shall yet clot upon this hand, dared to strike my son with his open
+      hand, to kick him, to tear hairs from his moustache&mdash; to use him thus&mdash;and
+      thus&mdash;and thus!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German writhed and struggled. He was helpless in the hands of this
+      huge giant whose blows were raining upon him. When at last, blinded and
+      half-senseless, he staggered to his feet, it was only to be hurled back
+      again into the great oaken chair. He sobbed in his impotent anger and
+      shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My boy was frequently moved to tears by the humiliation of his position,"
+      continued the count. "You will understand me when I say that it is a
+      bitter thing to be helpless in the hands of an insolent and remorseless
+      enemy. On arriving at Carlsruhe, however, his face, which had been wounded
+      by the brutality of his guard, was bound up by a young Bavarian subaltern
+      who was touched by his appearance. I regret to see that your eye is
+      bleeding so. Will you permit me to bind it with my silk handkerchief?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned forward, but the German dashed his hand aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am in your power, you monster!" he cried; "I can endure your
+      brutalities, but not your hypocrisy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The count shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am taking things in their order, just as they occurred," said he. "I
+      was under vow to tell it to the first German officer with whom I could
+      talk <i>tete-a-tete</i>. Let me see, I had got as far as the young
+      Bavarian at Carlsruhe. I regret extremely that you will not permit me to
+      use such slight skill in surgery as I possess. At Carlsruhe, my lad was
+      shut up in the old caserne, where he remained for a fortnight. The worst
+      pang of his captivity was that some unmannerly curs in the garrison would
+      taunt him with his position as he sat by his window in the evening. That
+      reminds me, captain, that you are not quite situated upon a bed of roses
+      yourself, are you now? You came to trap a wolf, my man, and now the beast
+      has you down with his fangs in your throat. A family man, too, I should
+      judge, by that well-filled tunic. Well, a widow the more will make little
+      matter, and they do not usually remain widows long. Get back into the
+      chair, you dog!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, to continue my story&mdash;at the end of a fortnight my son and his
+      friend escaped. I need not trouble you with the dangers which they ran, or
+      with the privations which they endured. Suffice it that to disguise
+      themselves they had to take the clothes of two peasants, whom they waylaid
+      in a wood. Hiding by day and travelling by night, they had got as far into
+      France as Remilly, and were within a mile&mdash;a single mile, captain&mdash;of
+      crossing the German lines when a patrol of Uhlans came right upon them.
+      Ah! it was hard, was it not, when they had come so far and were so near to
+      safety?" The count blew a double call upon his whistle, and three
+      hard-faced peasants entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These must represent my Uhlans," said he. "Well, then, the captain in
+      command, finding that these men were French soldiers in civilian dress
+      within the German lines, proceeded to hang them without trial or ceremony.
+      I think, Jean, that the centre beam is the strongest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unfortunate soldier was dragged from his chair to where a noosed rope
+      had been flung over one of the huge oaken rafters which spanned the room.
+      The cord was slipped over his head, and he felt its harsh grip round his
+      throat. The three peasants seized the other end, and looked to the count
+      for his orders. The officer, pale, but firm, folded his arms and stared
+      defiantly at the man who tortured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are now face to face with death, and I perceive from your lips that
+      you are praying. My son was also face to face with death, and he prayed,
+      also. It happened that a general officer came up, and he heard the lad
+      praying for his mother, and it moved him so&mdash;he being himself a
+      father&mdash;that he ordered his Uhlans away, and he remained with his
+      aide-de-camp only, beside the condemned men. And when he heard all the lad
+      had to tell&mdash;that he was the only child of an old family, and that
+      his mother was in failing health&mdash;he threw off the rope as I throw
+      off this, and he kissed him on either cheek, as I kiss you, and he bade
+      him go, as I bid you go, and may every kind wish of that noble general,
+      though it could not stave off the fever which slew my son, descend now
+      upon your head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was that Captain Baumgarten, disfigured, blinded, and bleeding,
+      staggered out into the wind and the rain of that wild December dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE STRIPED CHEST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      "What do you make of her, Allardyce?" I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My second mate was standing beside me upon the poop, with his short, thick
+      legs astretch, for the gale had left a considerable swell behind it, and
+      our two quarter-boats nearly touched the water with every roll. He
+      steadied his glass against the mizzen-shrouds, and he looked long and hard
+      at this disconsolate stranger every time she came reeling up on to the
+      crest of a roller and hung balanced for a few seconds before swooping down
+      upon the other side. She lay so low in the water that I could only catch
+      an occasional glimpse of a pea-green line of bulwark. She was a brig, but
+      her mainmast had been snapped short off some 10ft. above the deck, and no
+      effort seemed to have been made to cut away the wreckage, which floated,
+      sails and yards, like the broken wing of a wounded gull upon the water
+      beside her. The foremast was still standing, but the foretopsail was
+      flying loose, and the headsails were streaming out in long, white pennons
+      in front of her. Never have I seen a vessel which appeared to have gone
+      through rougher handling. But we could not be surprised at that, for there
+      had been times during the last three days when it was a question whether
+      our own barque would ever see land again. For thirty-six hours we had kept
+      her nose to it, and if the <i>Mary Sinclair</i> had not been as good a
+      seaboat as ever left the Clyde, we could not have gone through. And yet
+      here we were at the end of it with the loss only of our gig and of part of
+      the starboard bulwark. It did not astonish us, however, when the smother
+      had cleared away, to find that others had been less lucky, and that this
+      mutilated brig staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky,
+      had been left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the
+      terror which is past. Allardyce, who was a slow and methodical Scotchman,
+      stared long and hard at the little craft, while our seamen lined the
+      bulwark or clustered upon the fore shrouds to have a view of the stranger.
+      In latitude 20 degrees and longitude 10 degrees, which were about our
+      bearings, one becomes a little curious as to whom one meets, for one has
+      left the main lines of Atlantic commerce to the north. For ten days we had
+      been sailing over a solitary sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's derelict, I'm thinking," said the second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had come to the same conclusion, for I could see no signs of life upon
+      her deck, and there was no answer to the friendly wavings from our seamen.
+      The crew had probably deserted her under the impression that she was about
+      to founder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She can't last long," continued Allardyce, in his measured way. "She may
+      put her nose down and her tail up any minute. The water's lipping up to
+      the edge of her rail."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's her flag?" I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm trying to make out. It's got all twisted and tangled with the
+      halyards. Yes, I've got it now, clear enough. It's the Brazilian flag, but
+      it's wrong side up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had hoisted a signal of distress, then, before her people had
+      abandoned her. Perhaps they had only just gone. I took the mate's glass
+      and looked round over the tumultuous face of the deep blue Atlantic, still
+      veined and starred with white lines and spoutings of foam. But nowhere
+      could I see anything human beyond ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There may be living men aboard," said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There may be salvage," muttered the second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then we will run down upon her lee side, and lie to." We were not more
+      than a hundred yards from her when we swung our foreyard aback, and there
+      we were, the barque and the brig, ducking and bowing like two clowns in a
+      dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Drop one of the quarter-boats," said I. "Take four men, Mr. Allardyce,
+      and see what you can learn of her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just at that moment my first officer, Mr. Armstrong, came on deck, for
+      seven bells had struck, and it was but a few minutes off his watch. It
+      would interest me to go myself to this abandoned vessel and to see what
+      there might be aboard of her. So, with a word to Armstrong, I swung myself
+      over the side, slipped down the falls, and took my place in the sheets of
+      the boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was but a little distance, but it took some time to traverse, and so
+      heavy was the roll that often when we were in the trough of the sea, we
+      could not see either the barque which we had left or the brig which we
+      were approaching. The sinking sun did not penetrate down there, and it was
+      cold and dark in the hollows of the waves, but each passing billow heaved
+      us up into the warmth and the sunshine once more. At each of these
+      moments, as we hung upon a white-capped ridge between the two dark
+      valleys, I caught a glimpse of the long, pea-green line, and the nodding
+      foremast of the brig, and I steered so as to come round by her stern, so
+      that we might determine which was the best way of boarding her. As we
+      passed her we saw the name <i>Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria</i> painted across
+      her dripping counter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The weather side, sir," said the second mate. "Stand by with the
+      boat-hook, carpenter!" An instant later we had jumped over the bulwarks,
+      which were hardly higher than our boat, and found ourselves upon the deck
+      of the abandoned vessel. Our first thought was to provide for our own
+      safety in case&mdash;as seemed very probable&mdash;the vessel should
+      settle down beneath our feet. With this object two of our men held on to
+      the painter of the boat, and fended her off from the vessel's side, so
+      that she might be ready in case we had to make a hurried retreat. The
+      carpenter was sent to find out how much water there was, and whether it
+      was still gaming, while the other seaman, Allardyce and myself, made a
+      rapid inspection of the vessel and her cargo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deck was littered with wreckage and with hen-coops, in which the dead
+      birds were washing about. The boats were gone, with the exception of one,
+      the bottom of which had been stove, and it was certain that the crew had
+      abandoned the vessel. The cabin was in a deck-house, one side of which had
+      been beaten in by a heavy sea. Allardyce and I entered it, and found the
+      captain's table as he had left it, his books and papers&mdash; all Spanish
+      or Portuguese&mdash;scattered over it, with piles of cigarette ash
+      everywhere. I looked about for the log, but could not find it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As likely as not he never kept one," said Allardyce. "Things are pretty
+      slack aboard a South American trader, and they don't do more than they can
+      help. If there was one it must have been taken away with him in the boat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should like to take all these books and papers," said I. "Ask the
+      carpenter how much time we have."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His report was reassuring. The vessel was full of water, but some of the
+      cargo was buoyant, and there was no immediate danger of her sinking.
+      Probably she would never sink, but would drift about as one of those
+      terrible unmarked reefs which have sent so many stout vessels to the
+      bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case there is no danger in your going below, Mr. Allardyce," said
+      I. "See what you can make of her and find out how much of her cargo may be
+      saved. I'll look through these papers while you are gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bills of lading, and some notes and letters which lay upon the desk,
+      sufficed to inform me that the Brazilian brig <i>Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria</i>
+      had cleared from Bahia a month before. The name of the captain was
+      Texeira, but there was no record as to the number of the crew. She was
+      bound for London, and a glance at the bills of lading was sufficient to
+      show me that we were not likely to profit much in the way of salvage. Her
+      cargo consisted of nuts, ginger, and wood, the latter in the shape of
+      great logs of valuable tropical growths. It was these, no doubt, which had
+      prevented the ill-fated vessel from going to the bottom, but they were of
+      such a size as to make it impossible for us to extract them. Besides
+      these, there were a few fancy goods, such as a number of ornamental birds
+      for millinery purposes, and a hundred cases of preserved fruits. And then,
+      as I turned over the papers, I came upon a short note in English, which
+      arrested my attention.
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   It is requested (said the note) that the various old Spanish
+   and Indian curiosities, which came out of the Santarem
+   collection, and which are consigned to Prontfoot &amp; Neuman
+   of Oxford Street, London, should be put in some place where
+   there may be no danger of these very valuable and unique articles
+   being injured or tampered with.  This applies most particularly
+   to the treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, which must on
+   no account be placed where anyone can get at it.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez! Unique and valuable articles! Here was
+      a chance of salvage after all. I had risen to my feet with the paper in my
+      hand when my Scotch mate appeared in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm thinking all isn't quite as it should be aboard of this ship, sir,"
+      said he. He was a hard-faced man, and yet I could see that he had been
+      startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the matter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Murder's the matter, sir. There's a man here with his brains beaten out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Killed in the storm?" said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May be so, sir, but I'll be surprised if you think so after you have seen
+      him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is he, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This way, sir; here in the maindeck house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There appeared to have been no accommodation below in the brig, for there
+      was the after-house for the captain, another by the main hatchway, with
+      the cook's galley attached to it, and a third in the forecastle for the
+      men. It was to this middle one that the mate led me. As you entered, the
+      galley, with its litter of tumbled pots and dishes, was upon the right,
+      and upon the left was a small room with two bunks for the officers. Then
+      beyond there was a place about 12ft. square, which was littered with flags
+      and spare canvas. All round the walls were a number of packets done up in
+      coarse cloth and carefully lashed to the woodwork. At the other end was a
+      great box, striped red and white, though the red was so faded and the
+      white so dirty that it was only where the light fell directly upon it that
+      one could see the colouring. The box was, by subsequent measurement, 4ft.
+      3ins. in length, 3ft. 2ins. in height, and 3ft. across&mdash;considerably
+      larger than a seaman's chest. But it was not to the box that my eyes or my
+      thoughts were turned as I entered the store-room. On the floor, lying
+      across the litter of bunting, there was stretched a small, dark man with a
+      short, curling beard. He lay as far as it was possible from the box, with
+      his feet towards it and his head away. A crimson patch was printed upon
+      the white canvas on which his head was resting, and little red ribbons
+      wreathed themselves round his swarthy neck and trailed away on to the
+      floor, but there was no sign of a wound that I could see, and his face was
+      as placid as that of a sleeping child. It was only when I stooped that I
+      could perceive his injury, and then I turned away with an exclamation of
+      horror. He had been pole-axed; apparently by some person standing behind
+      him. A frightful blow had smashed in the top of his head and penetrated
+      deeply into his brains. His face might well be placid, for death must have
+      been absolutely instantaneous, and the position of the wound showed that
+      he could never have seen the person who had inflicted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that foul play or accident, Captain Barclay?" asked my second mate,
+      demurely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are quite right, Mr. Allardyce. The man has been murdered&mdash;struck
+      down from above by a sharp and heavy weapon. But who was he, and why did
+      they murder him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was a common seaman, sir," said the mate. "You can see that if you
+      look at his fingers." He turned out his pockets as he spoke and brought to
+      light a pack of cards, some tarred string, and a bundle of Brazilian
+      tobacco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hello, look at this!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a large, open knife with a stiff spring blade which he had picked
+      up from the floor. The steel was shining and bright, so that we could not
+      associate it with the crime, and yet the dead man had apparently held it
+      in his hand when he was struck down, for it still lay within his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It looks to me, sir, as if he knew he was in danger and kept his knife
+      handy," said the mate. "However, we can't help the poor beggar now. I
+      can't make out these things that are lashed to the wall. They seem to be
+      idols and weapons and curios of all sorts done up in old sacking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's right," said I. "They are the only things of value that we are
+      likely to get from the cargo. Hail the barque and tell them to send the
+      other quarter-boat to help us to get the stuff aboard."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was away I examined this curious plunder which had come into our
+      possession. The curiosities were so wrapped up that I could only form a
+      general idea as to their nature, but the striped box stood in a good light
+      where I could thoroughly examine it. On the lid, which was clamped and
+      cornered with metal-work, there was engraved a complex coat of arms, and
+      beneath it was a line of Spanish which I was able to decipher as meaning,
+      "The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, Knight of the Order of Saint
+      James, Governor and Captain-General of Terra Firma and of the Province of
+      Veraquas." In one corner was the date, 1606, and on the other a large
+      white label, upon which was written in English, "You are earnestly
+      requested, upon no account, to open this box." The same warning was
+      repeated underneath in Spanish. As to the lock, it was a very complex and
+      heavy one of engraved steel, with a Latin motto, which was above a
+      seaman's comprehension. By the time I had finished this examination of the
+      peculiar box, the other quarter-boat with Mr. Armstrong, the first
+      officer, had come alongside, and we began to carry out and place in her
+      the various curiosities which appeared to be the only objects worth moving
+      from the derelict ship. When she was full I sent her back to the barque,
+      and then Allardyce and I, with the carpenter and one seaman, shifted the
+      striped box, which was the only thing left, to our boat, and lowered it
+      over, balancing it upon the two middle thwarts, for it was so heavy that
+      it would have given the boat a dangerous tilt had we placed it at either
+      end. As to the dead man, we left him where we had found him. The mate had
+      a theory that, at the moment of the desertion of the ship, this fellow had
+      started plundering, and that the captain, in an attempt to preserve
+      discipline, had struck him down with a hatchet or some other heavy weapon.
+      It seemed more probable than any other explanation, and yet it did not
+      entirely satisfy me either. But the ocean is full of mysteries, and we
+      were content to leave the fate of the dead seaman of the Brazilian brig to
+      be added to that long list which every sailor can recall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavy box was slung up by ropes on to the deck of the <i>Mary Sinclair</i>,
+      and was carried by four seamen into the cabin, where, between the table
+      and the after-lockers, there was just space for it to stand. There it
+      remained during supper, and after that meal the mates remained with me,
+      and discussed over a glass of grog the event of the day. Mr. Armstrong was
+      a long, thin, vulture-like man, an excellent seaman, but famous for his
+      nearness and cupidity. Our treasure-trove had excited him greatly, and
+      already he had begun with glistening eyes to reckon up how much it might
+      be worth to each of us when the shares of the salvage came to be divided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If the paper said that they were unique, Mr. Barclay, then they may be
+      worth anything that you like to name. You wouldn't believe the sums that
+      the rich collectors give. A thousand pounds is nothing to them. We'll have
+      something to show for our voyage, or I am mistaken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think that," said I. "As far as I can see, they are not very
+      different from any other South American curios."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, sir, I've traded there for fourteen voyages, and I have never seen
+      anything like that chest before. That's worth a pile of money, just as it
+      stands. But it's so heavy that surely there must be something valuable
+      inside it. Don't you think that we ought to open it and see?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you break it open you will spoil it, as likely as not," said the
+      second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armstrong squatted down in front of it, with his head on one side, and his
+      long, thin nose within a few inches of the lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The wood is oak," said he, "and it has shrunk a little with age. If I had
+      a chisel or a strong-bladed knife I could force the lock back without
+      doing any damage at all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mention of a strong-bladed knife made me think of the dead seaman upon
+      the brig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder if he could have been on the job when someone came to interfere
+      with him," said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know about that, sir, but I am perfectly certain that I could
+      open the box. There's a screwdriver here in the locker. Just hold the
+      lamp, Allardyce, and I'll have it done in a brace of shakes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wait a bit," said I, for already, with eyes which gleamed with curiosity
+      and with avarice, he was stooping over the lid. "I don't see that there is
+      any hurry over this matter. You've read that card which warns us not to
+      open it. It may mean anything or it may mean nothing, but somehow I feel
+      inclined to obey it. After all, whatever is in it will keep, and if it is
+      valuable it will be worth as much if it is opened in the owner's offices
+      as in the cabin of the <i>Mary Sinclair</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first officer seemed bitterly disappointed at my decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Surely, sir, you are not superstitious about it," said he, with a slight
+      sneer upon his thin lips. "If it gets out of our own hands, and we don't
+      see for ourselves what is inside it, we may be done out of our rights;
+      besides&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's enough, Mr. Armstrong," said I, abruptly. "You may have every
+      confidence that you will get your rights, but I will not have that box
+      opened to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, the label itself shows that the box has been examined by Europeans,"
+      Allardyce added. "Because a box is a treasure-box is no reason that it has
+      treasures inside it now. A good many folk have had a peep into it since
+      the days of the old Governor of Terra Firma."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armstrong threw the screwdriver down upon the table and shrugged his
+      shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just as you like," said he; but for the rest of the evening, although we
+      spoke upon many subjects, I noticed that his eyes were continually coming
+      round, with the same expression of curiosity and greed, to the old striped
+      box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now I come to that portion of my story which fills me even now with a
+      shuddering horror when I think of it. The main cabin had the rooms of the
+      officers round it, but mine was the farthest away from it at the end of
+      the little passage which led to the companion. No regular watch was kept
+      by me, except in cases of emergency, and the three mates divided the
+      watches among them. Armstrong had the middle watch, which ends at four in
+      the morning, and he was relieved by Allardyce. For my part I have always
+      been one of the soundest of sleepers, and it is rare for anything less
+      than a hand upon my shoulder to arouse me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet I was aroused that night, or rather in the early grey of the
+      morning. It was just half-past four by my chronometer when something
+      caused me to sit up in my berth wide awake and with every nerve tingling.
+      It was a sound of some sort, a crash with a human cry at the end of it,
+      which still jarred on my ears. I sat listening, but all was now silent.
+      And yet it could not have been imagination, that hideous cry, for the echo
+      of it still rang in my head, and it seemed to have come from some place
+      quite close to me. I sprang from my bunk, and, pulling on some clothes, I
+      made my way into the cabin. At first I saw nothing unusual there. In the
+      cold, grey light I made out the red-clothed table, the six rotating
+      chairs, the walnut lockers, the swinging barometer, and there, at the end,
+      the big striped chest. I was turning away, with the intention of going
+      upon deck and asking the second mate if he had heard anything, when my
+      eyes fell suddenly upon something which projected from under the table. It
+      was the leg of a man&mdash;a leg with a long sea-boot upon it. I stooped,
+      and there was a figure sprawling upon his face, his arms thrown forward
+      and his body twisted. One glance told me that it was Armstrong, the first
+      officer, and a second that he was a dead man. For a few moments I stood
+      gasping. Then I rushed on to the deck, called Allardyce to my assistance,
+      and came back with him into the cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together we pulled the unfortunate fellow from under the table, and as we
+      looked at his dripping head we exchanged glances, and I do not know which
+      was the paler of the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The same as the Spanish sailor," said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The very same. God preserve us! It's that infernal chest! Look at
+      Armstrong's hand!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He held up the mate's right hand, and there was the screwdriver which he
+      had wished to use the night before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's been at the chest, sir. He knew that I was on deck and you were
+      asleep. He knelt down in front of it, and he pushed the lock back with
+      that tool. Then something happened to him, and he cried out so that you
+      heard him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Allardyce," I whispered, "what <i>could</i> have happened to him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second mate put his hand upon my sleeve and drew me into his cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We can talk here, sir, and we don't know who may be listening to us in
+      there. What do you suppose is in that box, Captain Barclay?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I give you my word, Allardyce, that I have no idea."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I can only find one theory which will fit all the facts. Look at
+      the size of the box. Look at all the carving and metal-work which may
+      conceal any number of holes. Look at the weight of it; it took four men to
+      carry it. On top of that, remember that two men have tried to open it, and
+      both have come to their end through it. Now, sir, what can it mean except
+      one thing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mean there is a man in it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course there is a man in it. You know how it is in these South
+      American States, sir. A man may be president one week and hunted like a
+      dog the next&mdash;they are for ever flying for their lives. My idea is
+      that there is some fellow in hiding there, who is armed and desperate, and
+      who will fight to the death before he is taken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But his food and drink?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a roomy chest, sir, and he may have some provisions stowed away. As
+      to his drink, he had a friend among the crew upon the brig who saw that he
+      had what he needed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You think, then, that the label asking people not to open the box was
+      simply written in his interest?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir, that is my idea. Have you any other way of explaining the
+      facts?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had to confess that I had not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The question is what we are to do?" I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The man's a dangerous ruffian, who sticks at nothing. I'm thinking it
+      wouldn't be a bad thing to put a rope round the chest and tow it alongside
+      for half an hour; then we could open it at our ease. Or if we just tied
+      the box up and kept him from getting any water maybe that would do as
+      well. Or the carpenter could put a coat of varnish over it and stop all
+      the blow-holes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, Allardyce," said I, angrily. "You don't seriously mean to say that
+      a whole ship's company are going to be terrorised by a single man in a
+      box. If he's there, I'll engage to fetch him out!" I went to my room and
+      came back with my revolver in my hand. "Now, Allardyce," said I, "do you
+      open the lock, and I'll stand on guard."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For God's sake, think what you are doing, sir!" cried the mate. "Two men
+      have lost their lives over it, and the blood of one not yet dry upon the
+      carpet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The more reason why we should revenge him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, sir, at least let me call the carpenter. Three are better than two,
+      and he is a good stout man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went off in search of him, and I was left alone with the striped chest
+      in the cabin. I don't think that I'm a nervous man, but I kept the table
+      between me and this solid old relic of the Spanish Main. In the growing
+      light of morning the red and white striping was beginning to appear, and
+      the curious scrolls and wreaths of metal and carving which showed the
+      loving pains which cunning craftsmen had expended upon it. Presently the
+      carpenter and the mate came back together, the former with a hammer in his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a bad business, this, sir," said he, shaking his head, as he looked
+      at the body of the mate. "And you think there's someone hiding in the
+      box?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's no doubt about it," said Allardyce, picking up the screwdriver
+      and setting his jaw like a man who needs to brace his courage. "I'll drive
+      the lock back if you will both stand by. If he rises let him have it on
+      the head with your hammer, carpenter. Shoot at once, sir, if he raises his
+      hand. Now!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had knelt down in front of the striped chest, and passed the blade of
+      the tool under the lid. With a sharp snick the lock flew back. "Stand by!"
+      yelled the mate, and with a heave he threw open the massive top of the
+      box. As it swung up we all three sprang back, I with my pistol levelled,
+      and the carpenter with the hammer above his head. Then, as nothing
+      happened, we each took a step forward and peeped in. The box was empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not quite empty either, for in one corner was lying an old yellow
+      candlestick, elaborately engraved, which appeared to be as old as the box
+      itself. Its rich yellow tone and artistic shape suggested that it was an
+      object of value. For the rest there was nothing more weighty or valuable
+      than dust in the old striped treasure-chest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I'm blessed!" cried Allardyce, staring blankly into it. "Where does
+      the weight come in, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look at the thickness of the sides, and look at the lid. Why, it's five
+      inches through. And see that great metal spring across it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's for holding the lid up," said the mate. "You see, it won't lean
+      back. What's that German printing on the inside?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It means that it was made by Johann Rothstein of Augsburg, in 1606."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And a solid bit of work, too. But it doesn't throw much light on what has
+      passed, does it, Captain Barclay? That candlestick looks like gold. We
+      shall have something for our trouble after all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He leant forward to grasp it, and from that moment I have never doubted as
+      to the reality of inspiration, for on the instant I caught him by the
+      collar and pulled him straight again. It may have been some story of the
+      Middle Ages which had come back to my mind, or it may have been that my
+      eye had caught some red which was not that of rust upon the upper part of
+      the lock, but to him and to me it will always seem an inspiration, so
+      prompt and sudden was my action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's devilry here," said I. "Give me the crooked stick from the
+      corner."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an ordinary walking-cane with a hooked top. I passed it over the
+      candlestick and gave it a pull. With a flash a row of polished steel fangs
+      shot out from below the upper lip, and the great striped chest snapped at
+      us like a wild animal. Clang came the huge lid into its place, and the
+      glasses on the swinging rack sang and tinkled with the shock. The mate sat
+      down on the edge of the table and shivered like a frightened horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've saved my life, Captain Barclay!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So this was the secret of the striped treasure-chest of old Don Ramirez di
+      Leyra, and this was how he preserved his ill-gotten gains from the Terra
+      Firma and the Province of Veraquas. Be the thief ever so cunning he could
+      not tell that golden candlestick from the other articles of value, and the
+      instant that he laid hand upon it the terrible spring was unloosed and the
+      murderous steel pikes were driven into his brain, while the shock of the
+      blow sent the victim backward and enabled the chest to automatically close
+      itself. How many, I wondered, had fallen victims to the ingenuity of the
+      mechanic of Ausgburg? And as I thought of the possible history of that
+      grim striped chest my resolution was very quickly taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Carpenter, bring three men, and carry this on deck."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Going to throw it overboard, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Mr. Allardyce. I'm not superstitious as a rule, but there are some
+      things which are more than a sailor can be called upon to stand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No wonder that brig made heavy weather, Captain Barclay, with such a
+      thing on board. The glass is dropping fast, sir, and we are only just in
+      time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we did not even wait for the three sailors, but we carried it out, the
+      mate, the carpenter, and I, and we pushed it with our own hands over the
+      bulwarks. There was a white spout of water, and it was gone. There it
+      lies, the striped chest, a thousand fathoms deep, and if, as they say, the
+      sea will some day be dry land, I grieve for the man who finds that old box
+      and tries to penetrate into its secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A SHADOW BEFORE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The 15th of July, 1870, found John Worlington Dodds a ruined gamester of
+      the Stock Exchange. Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man. And yet he
+      had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish townlet
+      of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter of the sum
+      which he had earned during the single day that he was within its walls.
+      There is a romance of finance yet to be written, a story of huge forces
+      which are for ever waxing and waning, of bold operations, of breathless
+      suspense, of agonised failure, of deep combinations which are baffled by
+      others still more subtle. The mighty debts of each great European Power
+      stand like so many columns of mercury, for ever rising and falling to
+      indicate the pressure upon each. He who can see far enough into the future
+      to tell how that ever-varying column will stand to-morrow is the man who
+      has fortune within his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Worlington Dodds had many of the gifts which lead a speculator to
+      success. He was quick in observing, just in estimating, prompt and
+      fearless in acting. But in finance there is always the element of luck,
+      which, however one may eliminate it, still remains, like the blank at
+      roulette, a constantly present handicap upon the operator. And so it was
+      that Worlington Dodds had come to grief. On the best advices he had
+      dabbled in the funds of a South American Republic in the days before South
+      American Republics had been found out. The Republic defaulted, and Dodds
+      lost his money. He had bulled the shares of a Scotch railway, and a four
+      months' strike had hit him hard. He had helped to underwrite a coffee
+      company in the hope that the public would come along upon the feed and
+      gradually nibble away some of his holding, but the political sky had been
+      clouded and the public had refused to invest. Everything which he had
+      touched had gone wrong, and now, on the eve of his marriage, young,
+      clear-headed, and energetic, he was actually a bankrupt had his creditors
+      chosen to make him one. But the Stock Exchange is an indulgent body. What
+      is the case of one to-day may be that of another to-morrow, and everyone
+      is interested in seeing that the stricken man is given time to rise again.
+      So the burden of Worlington Dodds was lightened for him; many shoulders
+      helped to bear it, and he was able to go for a little summer tour into
+      Ireland, for the doctors had ordered him rest and change of air to restore
+      his shaken nervous system. Thus it was that upon the 15th of July, 1870,
+      he found himself at his breakfast in the fly-blown coffee-room of the
+      "George Hotel" in the market square of Dunsloe. It is a dull and
+      depressing coffee-room, and one which is usually empty, but on this
+      particular day it was as crowded and noisy as that of any London hotel.
+      Every table was occupied, and a thick smell of fried bacon and of fish
+      hung in the air. Heavily booted men clattered in and out, spurs jingled,
+      riding-crops were stacked in corners, and there was a general atmosphere
+      of horse. The conversation, too, was of nothing else. From every side
+      Worlington Dodds heard of yearlings, of windgalls, of roarers, of spavins,
+      of cribsuckers, of a hundred other terms which were as unintelligible to
+      him as his own Stock Exchange jargon would have been to the company. He
+      asked the waiter for the reason of it all, and the waiter was an
+      astonished man that there should be any man in this world who did not know
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shure it's the Dunsloe horse fair, your honour&mdash;the greatest
+      horse-fair in all Oireland. It lasts for a wake, and the folk come from
+      far an' near&mdash;from England an' Scotland an' iverywhere. If you look
+      out of the winder, your honour, you'll see the horses, and it's asy your
+      honour's conscience must be, or you wouldn't slape so sound that the
+      creatures didn't rouse you with their clatter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds had a recollection that he had heard a confused murmur, which had
+      interwoven itself with his dreams&mdash;a sort of steady rhythmic beating
+      and clanking&mdash;and now, when he looked through the window, he saw the
+      cause of it. The square was packed with horses from end to end&mdash;greys,
+      bays, browns, blacks, chestnuts&mdash;young ones and old, fine ones and
+      coarse, horses of every conceivable sort and size. It seemed a huge
+      function for so small a town, and he remarked as much to the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you see, your honour, the horses don't live in the town, an' they
+      don't vex their heads how small it is. But it's in the very centre of the
+      horse-bradin' districts of Oireland, so where should they come to be sould
+      if it wasn't to Dunsloe?" The waiter had a telegram in his hand, and he
+      turned the address to Worlington Dodds. "Shure I niver heard such a name,
+      sorr. Maybe you could tell me who owns it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds looked at the envelope. Strellenhaus was the name. "No, I don't
+      know," said he. "I never heard it before. It's a foreign name. Perhaps if
+      you were&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at that moment a little round-faced, ruddy-cheeked gentleman, who was
+      breakfasting at the next table, leaned forward and interrupted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you say a foreign name, sir?" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Strellenhaus is the name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am Mr. Strellenhaus&mdash;Mr. Julius Strellenhaus, of Liverpool. I was
+      expecting a telegram. Thank you very much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat so near that Dodds, without any wish to play the spy, could not
+      help to some extent overlooking him as he opened the envelope. The message
+      was a very long one. Quite a wad of melon-tinted paper came out from the
+      tawny envelope. Mr. Strellenhaus arranged the sheets methodically upon the
+      table-cloth in front of him, so that no eye but his own could see them.
+      Then he took out a note-book, and, with an anxious face, he began to make
+      entries in it, glancing first at the telegram and then at the book, and
+      writing apparently one letter or figure at a time. Dodds was interested,
+      for he knew exactly what the man was doing. He was working out a cipher.
+      Dodds had often done it himself. And then suddenly the little man turned
+      very pale, as if the full purport of the message had been a shock to him.
+      Dodds had done that also, and his sympathies were all with his neighbors.
+      Then the stranger rose, and, leaving his breakfast untasted, he walked out
+      of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm thinkin' that the gintleman has had bad news, sorr," said the
+      confidential waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Looks like it," Dodds answered; and at that moment his thoughts were
+      suddenly drawn off into another direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boots had entered the room with a telegram in his hand. "Where's Mr.
+      Mancune?" said he to the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, there are some quare names about. What was it you said?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Mancune," said the boots, glancing round him. "Ah, there he is!" and
+      he handed the telegram to a gentleman who was sitting reading the paper in
+      a corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds's eyes had already fallen upon this man, and he had wondered vaguely
+      what he was doing in such company. He was a tall, white-haired,
+      eagle-nosed gentleman, with a waxed moustache and a carefully pointed
+      beard&mdash;an aristocratic type which seemed out of its element among the
+      rough, hearty, noisy dealers who surrounded him. This, then, was Mr.
+      Mancune, for whom the second telegram was intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he opened it, tearing it open with a feverish haste, Dodds could
+      perceive that it was as bulky as the first one. He observed also, from the
+      delay in reading it, that it was also in some sort of cipher. The
+      gentleman did not write down any translation of it, but he sat for some
+      time with his nervous, thin fingers twitching amongst the hairs of his
+      white beard, and his shaggy brows bent in the deepest and most absorbed
+      attention whilst he mastered the meaning of it. Then he sprang suddenly to
+      his feet, his eyes flashed, his cheeks flushed, and in his excitement he
+      crumpled the message up in his hand. With an effort he mastered his
+      emotion, put the paper into his pocket, and walked out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was enough to excite a less astute and imaginative man than
+      Worlington Dodds. Was there any connection between these two messages, or
+      was it merely a coincidence? Two men with strange names receive two
+      telegrams within a few minutes of each other, each of considerable length,
+      each in cipher, and each causing keen emotion to the man who received it.
+      One turned pale. The other sprang excitedly to his feet. It might be a
+      coincidence, but it was a very curious one. If it was not a coincidence,
+      then what could it mean? Were they confederates who pretended to work
+      apart, but who each received identical orders from some person at a
+      distance? That was possible, and yet there were difficulties in the way.
+      He puzzled and puzzled, but could find no satisfactory solution to the
+      problem. All breakfast he was turning it over in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When breakfast was over he sauntered out into the market square, where the
+      horse sale was already in progress. The yearlings were being sold first&mdash;tall,
+      long-legged, skittish, wild-eyed creatures, who had run free upon the
+      upland pastures, with ragged hair and towsie manes, but hardy, inured to
+      all weathers, and with the makings of splendid hunters and steeplechasers
+      when corn and time had brought them to maturity. They were largely of
+      thoroughbred blood, and were being bought by English dealers, who would
+      invest a few pounds now on what they might sell for fifty guineas in a
+      year, if all went well. It was legitimate speculation, for the horse is a
+      delicate creature, he is afflicted with many ailments, the least accident
+      may destroy his value, he is a certain expense and an uncertain profit,
+      and for one who comes safely to maturity several may bring no return at
+      all. So the English horse-dealers took their risks as they bought up the
+      shaggy Irish yearlings. One man with a ruddy face and a yellow overcoat
+      took them by the dozen, with as much <i>sang froid</i> as if they had been
+      oranges, entering each bargain in a bloated note-book. He bought forty or
+      fifty during the time that Dodds was watching him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is that?" he asked his neighbour, whose spurs and gaiters showed that
+      he was likely to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man stared in astonishment at the stranger's ignorance. "Why, that's
+      Jim Holloway, the great Jim Holloway," said he; then, seeing by the blank
+      look upon Dodds's face that even this information had not helped him much,
+      he went into details. "Sure he's the head of Holloway &amp; Morland, of
+      London," said he. "He's the buying partner, and he buys cheap; and the
+      other stays at home and sells, and he sells dear. He owns more horses than
+      any man in the world, and asks the best money for them. I dare say you'll
+      find that half of what are sold at the Dunsloe fair this day will go to
+      him, and he's got such a purse that there's not a man who can bid against
+      him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Worlington Dodds watched the doings of the great dealer with interest. He
+      had passed on now to the two-year-olds and three-year-olds, full-grown
+      horses, but still a little loose in the limb and weak in the bone. The
+      London buyer was choosing his animals carefully, but having chosen them,
+      the vigour of his competition drove all other bidders out of it. With a
+      careless nod he would run the figure up five pounds at a time, until he
+      was left in possession of the field. At the same time he was a shrewd
+      observer, and when, as happened more than once, he believed that someone
+      was bidding against him simply in order to run him up, the head would
+      cease suddenly to nod, the note-book would be closed with a snap, and the
+      intruder would be left with a purchase which he did not desire upon his
+      hands. All Dodds's business instincts were aroused by the tactics of this
+      great operator, and he stood in the crowd watching with the utmost
+      interest all that occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not to buy young horses, however, that the great dealers come to
+      Ireland, and the real business of the fair commenced when the four and
+      five-year-olds were reached; the full-grown, perfect horses, at their
+      prime, and ready for any work or any fatigue. Seventy magnificent
+      creatures had been brought down by a single breeder, a comfortable-looking, keen-eyed,
+      ruddy-cheeked gentleman who stood beside the salesman
+      and whispered cautions and precepts into his ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's Flynn of Kildare," said Dodds's informant. "Jack Flynn has brought
+      down that string of horses, and the other large string over yonder belongs
+      to Tom Flynn, his brother. The two of them together are the two first
+      breeders in Ireland." A crowd had gathered in front of the horses. By
+      common consent a place had been made for Mr. Holloway, and Dodds could
+      catch a glimpse of his florid face and yellow covert-coat in the front
+      rank. He had opened his note-book, and was tapping his teeth reflectively
+      with his pencil as he eyed the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll see a fight now between the first seller and the first buyer in
+      the country," said Dodds's acquaintance. "They are a beautiful string,
+      anyhow. I shouldn't be surprised if he didn't average five-and-thirty
+      pound apiece for the lot as they stand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The salesman had mounted upon a chair, and his keen, clean-shaven face
+      overlooked the crowd. Mr. Jack Flynn's grey whiskers were at his elbow,
+      and Mr. Holloway immediately in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've seen these horses, gentlemen," said the salesman, with a backward
+      sweep of his hand towards the line of tossing heads and streaming manes.
+      "When you know that they are bred by Mr. Jack Flynn, at his place in
+      Kildare, you will have a guarantee of their quality. They are the best
+      that Ireland can produce, and in this class of horse the best that Ireland
+      can produce are the best in the world, as every riding man knows well.
+      Hunters or carriage horses, all warranted sound, and bred from the best
+      stock. There are seventy in Mr. Jack Flynn's string, and he bids me say
+      that if any wholesale dealer would make one bid for the whole lot, to save
+      time, he would have the preference over any purchaser."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause and a whisper from the crowd in front, with some
+      expressions of discontent. By a single sweep all the small dealers had
+      been put out of it. It was only a long purse which could buy on such a
+      scale as that. The salesman looked round him inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, Mr. Holloway," said he, at last. "You didn't come over here for the
+      sake of the scenery. You may travel the country and not see such another
+      string of horses. Give us a starting bid."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great dealer was still rattling his pencil upon his front teeth.
+      "Well," said he, at last, "they <i>are</i> a fine lot of horses, and I
+      won't deny it. They do you credit, Mr. Flynn, I am sure. All the same I
+      didn't mean to fill a ship at a single bid in this fashion. I like to pick
+      and choose my horses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case Mr. Flynn is quite prepared to sell them in smaller lots,"
+      said the salesman. "It was rather for the convenience of a wholesale
+      customer that he was prepared to put them all up together. But if no
+      gentleman wishes to bid&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wait a minute," said a voice. "They are very fine horses, these, and I
+      will give you a bid to start you. I will give you twenty pounds each for
+      the string of seventy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a rustle as the crowd all swayed their heads to catch a glimpse
+      of the speaker. The salesman leaned forward. "May I ask your name, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Strellenhaus&mdash;Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a new firm," said Dodds's neighbour. "I thought I knew them all, but
+      I never heard of him before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The salesman's head had disappeared, for he was whispering with the
+      breeder. Now he suddenly straightened himself again. "Thank you for giving
+      us a lead, sir," said he. "Now, gentlemen, you have heard the offer of Mr.
+      Strellenhaus of Liverpool. It will give us a base to start from. Mr.
+      Strellenhaus has offered twenty pounds a head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Guineas," said Holloway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bravo, Mr. Holloway! I knew that you would take a hand. You are not the
+      man to let such a string of horses pass away from you. The bid is twenty
+      guineas a head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twenty-five pounds," said Mr. Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twenty-six."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was London against Liverpool, and it was the head of the trade against
+      an outsider. Still, the one man had increased his bids by fives and the
+      other only by ones. Those fives meant determination and also wealth.
+      Holloway had ruled the market so long that the crowd was delighted at
+      finding someone who would stand up to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The bid now stands at thirty pounds a head," said the salesman. "The word
+      lies with you, Mr. Holloway."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The London dealer was glancing keenly at his unknown opponent, and he was
+      asking himself whether this was a genuine rival, or whether it was a
+      device of some sort&mdash;an agent of Flynn's perhaps&mdash;for running up
+      the price. Little Mr. Strellenhaus, the same apple-faced gentleman whom
+      Dodds had noticed in the coffee-room, stood looking at the horses with the
+      sharp, quick glances of a man who knows what he is looking for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-one," said Holloway, with the air of a man who has gone to his
+      extreme limit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-two," said Strellenhaus, promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holloway grew angry at this persistent opposition. His red face flushed
+      redder still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-three!" he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-four," said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holloway became thoughtful, and entered a few figures in his note-book.
+      There were seventy horses. He knew that Flynn's stock was always of the
+      highest quality. With the hunting season coming on he might rely upon
+      selling them at an average of from forty-five to fifty. Some of them might
+      carry a heavy weight, and would run to three figures. On the other hand,
+      there was the feed and keep of them for three months, the danger of the
+      voyage, the chance of influenza or some of those other complaints which
+      run through an entire stable as measles go through a nursery. Deducting
+      all this, it was a question whether at the present price any profit would
+      be left upon the transaction. Every pound that he bid meant seventy out of
+      his pocket. And yet he could not submit to be beaten by this stranger
+      without a struggle. As a business matter it was important to him to be
+      recognised as the head of his profession. He would make one more effort,
+      if he sacrificed his profit by doing so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At the end of your rope, Mr. Holloway?" asked the salesman, with the
+      suspicion of a sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-five," cried Holloway gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-six," said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I wish you joy of your bargain," said Holloway. "I don't buy at that
+      price, but I should be glad to sell you some."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Strellenhaus took no notice of the irony. He was still looking
+      critically at the horses. The salesman glanced round him in a perfunctory
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-six pounds bid," said he. "Mr. Jack Flynn's lot is going to Mr.
+      Strellenhaus of Liverpool, at thirty-six pounds a head. Going&mdash;going&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forty!" cried a high, thin, clear voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A buzz rose from the crowd, and they were all on tiptoe again, trying to
+      catch a glimpse of this reckless buyer. Being a tall man, Dodds could see
+      over the others, and there, at the side of Holloway, he saw the masterful
+      nose and aristocratic beard of the second stranger in the coffee-room. A
+      sudden personal interest added itself to the scene. He felt that he was on
+      the verge of something&mdash;something dimly seen&mdash; which he could
+      himself turn to account. The two men with strange names, the telegrams,
+      the horses&mdash;what was underlying it all? The salesman was all
+      animation again, and Mr. Jack Flynn was sitting up with his white whiskers
+      bristling and his eyes twinkling. It was the best deal which he had ever
+      made in his fifty years of experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What name, sir?" asked the salesman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Mancune."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Address?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Mancune of Glasgow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you for your bid, sir. Forty pounds a head has been bid by Mr.
+      Mancune of Glasgow. Any advance upon forty?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forty-one," said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forty-five," said Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tactics had changed, and it was the turn of Strellenhaus now to
+      advance by ones, while his rival sprang up by fives. But the former was as
+      dogged as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forty-six," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fifty!" cried Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was unheard of. The most that the horses could possibly average at a
+      retail price was as much as these men were willing to pay wholesale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Two lunatics from Bedlam," whispered the angry Holloway. "If I was Flynn
+      I would see the colour of their money before I went any further."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same thought had occurred to the salesman. "As a mere matter of
+      business, gentlemen," said he, "it is usual in such cases to put down a
+      small deposit as a guarantee of <i>bona fides</i>. You will understand how
+      I am placed, and that I have not had the pleasure of doing business with
+      either of you before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How much?" asked Strellenhaus, briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Should we say five hundred?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here is a note for a thousand pounds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And here is another," said Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing could be more handsome, gentlemen," said the salesman. "It's a
+      treat to see such a spirited competition. The last bid was fifty pounds a
+      head from Mancune. The word lies with you, Mr. Strellenhaus."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jack Flynn whispered something to the salesman. "Quite so! Mr. Flynn
+      suggests, gentlemen, that as you are both large buyers, it would, perhaps,
+      be a convenience to you if he was to add the string of Mr. Tom Flynn,
+      which consists of seventy animals of precisely the same quality, making
+      one hundred and forty in all. Have you any objection, Mr. Mancune?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you, Mr. Strellenhaus?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should prefer it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very handsome! Very handsome indeed!" murmured the salesman. "Then I
+      understand, Mr. Mancune, that your offer of fifty pounds a head extends to
+      the whole of these horses?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long breath went up from the crowd. Seven thousand pounds at one deal.
+      It was a record for Dunsloe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Any advance, Mr. Strellenhaus?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fifty-one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fifty-five."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fifty-six."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sixty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They could hardly believe their ears. Holloway stood with his mouth open,
+      staring blankly in front of him. The salesman tried hard to look as if
+      such bidding and such prices were nothing unusual. Jack Flynn of Kildare
+      smiled benignly and rubbed his hands together. The crowd listened in dead
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sixty-one," said Strellenhaus. From the beginning he had stood without a
+      trace of emotion upon his round face, like a little automatic figure which
+      bid by clockwork. His rival was of a more excitable nature. His eyes were
+      shining, and he was for ever twitching at his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sixty-five," he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sixty-six."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seventy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the clockwork had run down. No answering bid came from Mr.
+      Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seventy bid, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Strellenhaus shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am buying for another, and I have reached his limit," said he. "If you
+      will permit me to send for instructions&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid, sir, that the sale must proceed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then the horses belong to this gentleman." For the first time he turned
+      towards his rival, and their glances crossed like sword-blades. "It is
+      possible that I may see the horses again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope so," said Mr. Mancune; and his white, waxed moustache gave a
+      feline upward bristle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, with a bow, they separated. Mr. Strellenhaus walked, down to the
+      telegraph-office, where his message was delayed because Mr. Worlington
+      Dodds was already at the end of the wires, for, after dim guesses and
+      vague conjecture, he had suddenly caught a clear view of this coming event
+      which had cast so curious a shadow before it in this little Irish town.
+      Political rumours, names, appearances, telegrams, seasoned horses at any
+      price, there could only be one meaning to it. He held a secret, and he
+      meant to use it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Warner, who was the partner of Mr. Worlington Dodds, and who was
+      suffering from the same eclipse, had gone down to the Stock Exchange, but
+      had found little consolation there, for the European system was in a
+      ferment, and rumours of peace and of war were succeeding each other with
+      such rapidity and assurance that it was impossible to know which to trust.
+      It was obvious that a fortune lay either way, for every rumour set the
+      funds fluctuating; but without special information it was impossible to
+      act, and no one dared to plunge heavily upon the strength of newspaper
+      surmise and the gossip of the street. Warner knew that an hour's work
+      might resuscitate the fallen fortunes of himself and his partner, and yet
+      he could not afford to make a mistake. He returned to his office in the
+      afternoon, half inclined to back the chances of peace, for of all war
+      scares not one in ten comes to pass. As he entered the office a telegram
+      lay upon the table. It was from Dunsloe, a place of which he had never
+      heard, and was signed by his absent partner. The message was in cipher,
+      but he soon translated it, for it was short and crisp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am a bear of everything German and French. Sell, sell, sell, keep on
+      selling."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Warner hesitated. What could Worlington Dodds know at Dunsloe
+      which was not known in Throgmorton Street? But he remembered the quickness
+      and decision of his partner. He would not have sent such a message without
+      very good grounds. If he was to act at all he must act at once, so,
+      hardening his heart, he went down to the house, and, dealing upon that
+      curious system by which a man can sell what he has not got, and what he
+      could not pay for if he had it, he disposed of heavy parcels of French and
+      German securities. He had caught the market in one of its little spasms of
+      hope, and there was no lack of buying until his own persistent selling
+      caused others to follow his lead, and so brought about a reaction. When
+      Warner returned to his offices it took him some hours to work out his
+      accounts, and he emerged into the streets in the evening with the absolute
+      certainty that the next settling-day would leave him either hopelessly
+      bankrupt or exceedingly prosperous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It all depended upon Worlington Dodds's information. What could he
+      possibly have found out at Dunsloe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly he saw a newspaper boy fasten a poster upon a lamp-post,
+      and a little crowd had gathered round it in an instant. One of them waved
+      his hat in the air; another shouted to a friend across the street. Warner
+      hurried up and caught a glimpse of the poster between two craning heads&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="center">
+           "FRANCE DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY."
+</p>
+    <p>
+      "By Jove!" cried Warner. "Old Dodds was right, after all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE KING OF THE FOXES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was after a hunting dinner, and there were as many scarlet coats as
+      black ones round the table. The conversation over the cigars had turned,
+      therefore, in the direction of horses and horsemen, with reminiscences of
+      phenomenal runs where foxes had led the pack from end to end of a county,
+      and been overtaken at last by two or three limping hounds and a huntsman
+      on foot, while every rider in the field had been pounded. As the port
+      circulated the runs became longer and more apocryphal, until we had the
+      whips inquiring their way and failing to understand the dialect of the
+      people who answered them. The foxes, too, became more eccentric, and we
+      had foxes up pollard willows, foxes which were dragged by the tail out of
+      horses' mangers, and foxes which had raced through an open front door and
+      gone to ground in a lady's bonnet-box. The master had told one or two tall
+      reminiscences, and when he cleared his throat for another we were all
+      curious, for he was a bit of an artist in his way, and produced his
+      effects in a <i>crescendo</i> fashion. His face wore the earnest,
+      practical, severely accurate expression which heralded some of his finest
+      efforts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was before I was master," said he. "Sir Charles Adair had the hounds
+      at that time, and then afterwards they passed to old Lathom, and then to
+      me. It may possibly have been just after Lathom took them over, but my
+      strong impression is that it was in Adair's time. That would be early in
+      the seventies&mdash;about seventy-two, I should say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The man I mean has moved to another part of the country, but I daresay
+      that some of you can remember him. Danbury was the name&mdash;Walter
+      Danbury, or Wat Danbury, as the people used to call him. He was the son of
+      old Joe Danbury, of High Ascombe, and when his father died he came into a
+      very good thing, for his only brother was drowned when the <i>Magna Charta</i>
+      foundered, so he inherited the whole estate. It was but a few hundred
+      acres, but it was good arable land, and those were the great days of
+      farming. Besides, it was freehold, and a yeoman farmer without a mortgage
+      was a warmish man before the great fall in wheat came. Foreign wheat and
+      barbed wire&mdash;those are the two curses of this country, for the one
+      spoils the farmer's work and the other spoils his play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This young Wat Danbury was a very fine fellow, a keen rider, and a
+      thorough sportsman, but his head was a little turned at having come, when
+      so young, into a comfortable fortune, and he went the pace for a year or
+      two. The lad had no vice in him, but there was a hard-drinking set in the
+      neighbourhood at that time, and Danbury got drawn in among them; and,
+      being an amiable fellow who liked to do what his friends were doing, he
+      very soon took to drinking a great deal more than was good for him. As a
+      rule, a man who takes his exercise may drink as much as he likes in the
+      evening, and do himself no very great harm, if he will leave it alone
+      during the day. Danbury had too many friends for that, however, and it
+      really looked as if the poor chap was going to the bad, when a very
+      curious thing happened which pulled him up with such a sudden jerk that he
+      never put his hand upon the neck of a whisky bottle again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He had a peculiarity which I have noticed in a good many other men, that
+      though he was always playing tricks with his own health, he was none the
+      less very anxious about it, and was extremely fidgety if ever he had any
+      trivial symptom. Being a tough, open-air fellow, who was always as hard as
+      a nail, it was seldom that there was anything amiss with him; but at last
+      the drink began to tell, and he woke one morning with his hands shaking
+      and all his nerves tingling like over-stretched fiddle-strings. He had
+      been dining at some very wet house the night before, and the wine had,
+      perhaps, been more plentiful than choice; at any rate, there he was, with
+      a tongue like a bath towel and a head that ticked like an eight-day clock.
+      He was very alarmed at his own condition, and he sent for Doctor
+      Middleton, of Ascombe, the father of the man who practises there now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Middleton had been a great friend of old Danbury's, and he was very sorry
+      to see his son going to the devil; so he improved the occasion by taking
+      his case very seriously, and lecturing him upon the danger of his ways. He
+      shook his head and talked about the possibility of <i>delirium tremens</i>,
+      or even of mania, if he continued to lead such a life. Wat Danbury was
+      horribly frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Do you think I am going to get anything of the sort?' he wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Well, really, I don't know,' said the doctor gravely. 'I cannot
+      undertake to say that you are out of danger. Your system is very much out
+      of order. At any time during the day you might have those grave symptoms
+      of which I warn you.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'You think I shall be safe by evening?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'If you drink nothing during the day, and have no nervous symptoms before
+      evening, I think you may consider yourself safe,' the doctor answered. A
+      little fright would, he thought, do his patient good, so he made the most
+      of the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'What symptoms may I expect?' asked Danbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It generally takes the form of optical delusions.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I see specks floating all about.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'That is mere biliousness,' said the doctor soothingly, for he saw that
+      the lad was highly strung, and he did not wish to overdo it. 'I daresay
+      that you will have no symptoms of the kind, but when they do come they
+      usually take the shape of insects, or reptiles, or curious animals.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'And if I see anything of the kind?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'If you do, you will at once send for me;' and so, with a promise of
+      medicine, the doctor departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Young Wat Danbury rose and dressed and moped about the room feeling very
+      miserable and unstrung, with a vision of the County Asylum for ever in his
+      mind. He had the doctor's word for it that if he could get through to
+      evening in safety he would be all right; but it is not very exhilarating
+      to be waiting for symptoms, and to keep on glancing at your bootjack to
+      see whether it is still a bootjack or whether it has begun to develop
+      antennae and legs. At last he could stand it no longer, and an
+      overpowering longing for the fresh air and the green grass came over him.
+      Why should he stay indoors when the Ascombe Hunt was meeting within half a
+      mile of him? If he was going to have these delusions which the doctor
+      talked of, he would not have them the sooner nor the worse because he was
+      on horseback in the open. He was sure, too, it would ease his aching head.
+      And so it came about that in ten minutes he was in his hunting-kit, and in
+      ten more he was riding out of his stable-yard with his roan mare 'Matilda'
+      between his knees. He was a little unsteady in his saddle just at first,
+      but the farther he went the better he felt, until by the time he reached
+      the meet his head was almost clear, and there was nothing troubling him
+      except those haunting words of the doctor's about the possibility of
+      delusions any time before nightfall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But soon he forgot that also, for as he came up the hounds were thrown
+      off, and they drew the Gravel Hanger, and afterwards the Hickory Copse. It
+      was just the morning for a scent&mdash;no wind to blow it away, no water
+      to wash it out, and just damp enough to make it cling. There was a field
+      of forty, all keen men and good riders, so when they came to the Black
+      Hanger they knew that there would be some sport, for that's a cover which
+      never draws blank. The woods were thicker in those days than now, and the
+      foxes were thicker also, and that great dark oak-grove was swarming with
+      them. The only difficulty was to make them break, for it is, as you know,
+      a very close country, and you must coax them out into the open before you
+      can hope for a run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When they came to the Black Hanger the field took their positions along
+      the cover-side wherever they thought that they were most likely to get a
+      good start. Some went in with the hounds, some clustered at the ends of
+      the drives, and some kept outside in the hope of the fox breaking in that
+      direction. Young Wat Danbury knew the country like the palm of his hand,
+      so he made for a place where several drives intersected, and there he
+      waited. He had a feeling that the faster and the farther he galloped the
+      better he should be, and so he was chafing to be off. His mare, too, was
+      in the height of fettle and one of the fastest goers in the county. Wat
+      was a splendid lightweight rider&mdash;under ten stone with his saddle&mdash;and
+      the mare was a powerful creature, all quarters and shoulders, fit to carry
+      a lifeguardsman; and so it was no wonder that there was hardly a man in
+      the field who could hope to stay with him. There he waited and listened to
+      the shouting of the huntsman and the whips, catching a glimpse now and
+      then in the darkness of the wood of a whisking tail, or the gleam of a
+      white-and-tan side amongst the underwood. It was a well-trained pack, and
+      there was not so much as a whine to tell you that forty hounds were
+      working all round you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then suddenly there came one long-drawn yell from one of them, and it
+      was taken up by another, and another, until within a few seconds the whole
+      pack was giving tongue together and running on a hot scent. Danbury saw
+      them stream across one of the drives and disappear upon the other side,
+      and an instant later the three red coats of the hunt servants flashed
+      after them upon the same line. He might have made a shorter cut down one
+      of the other drives, but he was afraid of heading the fox, so he followed
+      the lead of the huntsman. Right through the wood they went in a bee-line,
+      galloping with their faces brushed by their horses' manes as they stooped
+      under the branches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's ugly going, as you know, with the roots all wriggling about in the
+      darkness, but you can take a risk when you catch an occasional glimpse of
+      the pack running with a breast-high scent; so in and out they dodged until
+      the wood began to thin at the edges, and they found themselves in the long
+      bottom where the river runs. It is clear going there upon grassland, and
+      the hounds were running very strong about two hundred yards ahead, keeping
+      parallel with the stream. The field, who had come round the wood instead
+      of going through, were coming hard over the fields upon the left; but
+      Danbury, with the hunt servants, had a clear lead, and they never lost it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Two of the field got on terms with them&mdash;Parson Geddes on a big
+      seventeen-hand bay which he used to ride in those days, and Squire Foley,
+      who rode as a feather-weight, and made his hunters out of cast
+      thoroughbreds from the Newmarket sales; but the others never had a look-in
+      from start to finish, for there was no check and no pulling, and it was
+      clear cross-country racing from start to finish. If you had drawn a line
+      right across the map with a pencil you couldn't go straighter than that
+      fox ran, heading for the South Downs and the sea, and the hounds ran as
+      surely as if they were running to view, and yet from the beginning no one
+      ever saw the fox, and there was never a hallo forrard to tell them that he
+      had been spied. This, however, is not so surprising, for if you've been
+      over that line of country you will know that there are not very many
+      people about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There were six of them then in the front row&mdash;Parson Geddes, Squire
+      Foley, the huntsman, two whips, and Wat Danbury, who had forgotten all
+      about his head and the doctor by this time, and had not a thought for
+      anything but the run. All six were galloping just as hard as they could
+      lay hoofs to the ground. One of the whips dropped back, however, as some
+      of the hounds were tailing off, and that brought them down to five. Then
+      Foley's thoroughbred strained herself, as these slim-legged,
+      dainty-fetlocked thoroughbreds will do when the going is rough, and he had
+      to take a back seat. But the other four were still going strong, and they
+      did four or five miles down the river flat at a rasping pace. It had been
+      a wet winter, and the waters had been out a little time before, so there
+      was a deal of sliding and splashing; but by the time they came to the
+      bridge the whole field was out of sight, and these four had the hunt to
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The fox had crossed the bridge&mdash;for foxes do not care to swim a
+      chilly river any more than humans do&mdash;and from that point he had
+      streaked away southward as hard as he could tear. It is broken country,
+      rolling heaths, down one slope and up another, and it's hard to say
+      whether the up or the down is the more trying for the horses. This sort of
+      switchback work is all right for a cobby, short-backed, short-legged
+      little horse, but it is killing work for a big, long-striding hunter such
+      as one wants in the Midlands. Anyhow, it was too much for Parson Geddes'
+      seventeen-hand bay, and though he tried the Irish trick&mdash;for he was a
+      rare keen sportsman&mdash;of running up the hills by his horse's head, it
+      was all to no use, and he had to give it up. So then there were only the
+      huntsman, the whip, and Wat Danbury&mdash;all going strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But the country got worse and worse and the hills were steeper and more
+      thickly covered in heather and bracken. The horses were over their hocks
+      all the time, and the place was pitted with rabbit-holes; but the hounds
+      were still streaming along, and the riders could not afford to pick their
+      steps. As they raced down one slope, the hounds were always flowing up the
+      opposite one, until it looked like that game where the one figure in
+      falling makes the other one rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But never a glimpse did they get of the fox, although they knew very well
+      that he must be only a very short way ahead for the scent to be so strong.
+      And then Wat Danbury heard a crash and a thud at his elbow, and looking
+      round he saw a pair of white cords and top-boots kicking out of a tussock
+      of brambles. The whip's horse had stumbled, and the whip was out of the
+      running. Danbury and the huntsman eased down for an instant; and then,
+      seeing the man staggering to his feet all right, they turned and settled
+      into their saddles once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Joe Clarke, the huntsman, was a famous old rider, known for five counties
+      round; but he reckoned upon his second horse, and the second horses had
+      all been left many miles behind. However, the one he was riding was good
+      enough for anything with such a horseman upon his back, and he was going
+      as well as when he started. As to Wat Danbury, he was going better. With
+      every stride his own feelings improved, and the mind of the rider had its
+      influence upon the mind of the horse. The stout little roan was gathering
+      its muscular limbs under it, and stretching to the gallop as if it were
+      steel and whale-bone instead of flesh and blood. Wat had never come to the
+      end of its powers yet, and to-day he had such a chance of testing them as
+      he had never had before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There was a pasture country beyond the heather slopes, and for several
+      miles the two riders were either losing ground as they fumbled with their
+      crop-handles at the bars of gates, or gaining it again as they galloped
+      over the fields. Those were the days before this accursed wire came into
+      the country, and you could generally break a hedge where you could not fly
+      it, so they did not trouble the gates more than they could help. Then they
+      were down in a hard lane, where they had to slacken their pace, and
+      through a farm where a man came shouting excitedly after them; but they
+      had no time to stop and listen to him, for the hounds were on some
+      ploughland, only two fields ahead. It was sloping upwards, that
+      ploughland, and the horses were over their fetlocks in the red, soft soil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When they reached the top they were blowing badly, but a grand valley
+      sloped before them, leading up to the open country of the South Downs.
+      Between, there lay a belt of pine-woods, into which the hounds were
+      streaming, running now in a long, straggling line, and shedding one here
+      and one there as they ran. You could see the white-and-tan dots here and
+      there where the limpers were tailing away. But half the pack were still
+      going well, though the pace and distance had both been tremendous&mdash;two
+      clear hours now without a check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There was a drive through the pine-wood&mdash;one of those green,
+      slightly rutted drives where a horse can get the last yard out of itself,
+      for the ground is hard enough to give him clean going and yet springy
+      enough to help him. Wat Danbury got alongside of the huntsman and they
+      galloped together with their stirrup-irons touching, and the hounds within
+      a hundred yards of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'We have it all to ourselves,' said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Yes, sir, we've shook on the lot of 'em this time,' said old Joe Clarke.
+      'If we get this fox it's worth while 'aving 'im skinned an' stuffed, for
+      'e's a curiosity 'e is.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It's the fastest run I ever had in my life!' cried Danbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'And the fastest that ever I 'ad, an' that means more,' said the old
+      huntsman. 'But what licks me is that we've never 'ad a look at the beast.
+      'E must leave an amazin' scent be'ind 'im when these 'ounds can follow 'im
+      like this, and yet none of us have seen 'im when we've 'ad a clear 'alf
+      mile view in front of us.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I expect we'll have a view of him presently,' said Danbury; and in his
+      mind he added, 'at least, I shall,' for the huntsman's horse was gasping
+      as it ran, and the white foam was pouring down it like the side of a
+      washing-tub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They had followed the hounds on to one of the side tracks which led out
+      of the main drive, and that divided into a smaller track still, where the
+      branches switched across their faces as they went, and there was barely
+      room for one horse at a time. Wat Danbury took the lead, and he heard the
+      huntsman's horse clumping along heavily behind him, while his own mare was
+      going with less spring than when she had started. She answered to a touch
+      of his crop or spur, however, and he felt that there was something still
+      left to draw upon. And then he looked up, and there was a heavy wooden
+      stile at the end of the narrow track, with a lane of stiff young saplings
+      leading down to it, which was far too thick to break through. The hounds
+      were running clear upon the grassland on the other side, and you were
+      bound either to get over that stile or lose sight of them, for the pace
+      was too hot to let you go round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Wat Danbury was not the lad to flinch, and at it he went full
+      split, like a man who means what he is doing. She rose gallantly to it,
+      rapped it hard with her front hoof, shook him on to her withers, recovered
+      herself, and was over. Wat had hardly got back into his saddle when there
+      was a clatter behind him like the fall of a woodstack, and there was the
+      top bar in splinters, the horse on its belly, and the huntsman on hands
+      and knees half a dozen yards in front of him. Wat pulled up for an
+      instant, for the fall was a smasher; but he saw old Joe spring to his feet
+      and get to his horse's bridle. The horse staggered up, but the moment it
+      put one foot in front of the other, Wat saw that it was hopelessly lame&mdash;a
+      slipped shoulder and a six weeks' job. There was nothing he could do, and
+      Joe was shouting to him not to lose the hounds, so off he went again, the
+      one solitary survivor of the whole hunt. When a man finds himself there,
+      he can retire from fox-hunting, for he has tasted the highest which it has
+      to offer. I remember once when I was out with the Royal Surrey&mdash;but
+      I'll tell you that story afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The pack, or what was left of them, had got a bit ahead during this time;
+      but he had a clear view of them on the downland, and the mare seemed full
+      of pride at being the only one left, for she was stepping out rarely and
+      tossing her head as she went. They were two miles over the green shoulder
+      of a hill, a rattle down a stony, deep-rutted country lane, where the mare
+      stumbled and nearly came down, a jump over a 5ft. brook, a cut through a
+      hazel copse, another dose of heavy ploughland, a couple of gates to open,
+      and then the green, unbroken Downs beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Well,' said Wat Danbury to himself, 'I'll see this fox run into or I
+      shall see it drowned, for it's all clear going now between this and the
+      chalk cliffs which line the sea.' But he was wrong in that, as he speedily
+      discovered. In all the little hollows of the downs at that part there are
+      plantations of fir-woods, some of which have grown to a good size. You do
+      not see them until you come upon the edge of the valleys in which they
+      lie. Danbury was galloping hard over the short, springy turf when he came
+      over the lip of one of these depressions, and there was the dark clump of
+      wood lying in front of and beneath him. There were only a dozen hounds
+      still running, and they were just disappearing among the trees. The
+      sunlight was shining straight upon the long olive-green slopes which
+      curved down towards this wood, and Danbury, who had the eyes of a hawk,
+      swept them over this great expanse; but there was nothing moving upon it.
+      A few sheep were grazing far up on the right, but there was no other sight
+      of any living creature. He was certain then that he was very near to the
+      end, for either the fox must have gone to ground in the wood or the
+      hounds' noses must be at his very brush. The mare seemed to know also what
+      that great empty sweep of countryside meant, for she quickened her stride,
+      and a few minutes afterwards Danbury was galloping into the fir-wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He had come from bright sunshine, but the wood was very closely planted,
+      and so dim that he could hardly see to right or to left out of the narrow
+      path down which he was riding. You know what a solemn, churchyardy sort of
+      place a fir-wood is. I suppose it is the absence of any undergrowth, and
+      the fact that the trees never move at all. At any rate a kind of chill
+      suddenly struck Wat Danbury, and it flashed through his mind that there
+      had been some very singular points about this run&mdash; its length and
+      its straightness, and the fact that from the first find no one had ever
+      caught a glimpse of the creature. Some silly talk which had been going
+      round the country about the king of the foxes&mdash;a sort of demon fox,
+      so fast that it could outrun any pack, and so fierce that they could do
+      nothing with it if they overtook it&mdash;suddenly came back into his
+      mind, and it did not seem so laughable now in the dim fir-wood as it had
+      done when the story had been told over the wine and cigars. The
+      nervousness which had been on him in the morning, and which he had hoped
+      that he had shaken off, swept over him again in an overpowering wave. He
+      had been so proud of being alone, and yet he would have given 10 pounds
+      now to have had Joe Clarke's homely face beside him. And then, just at
+      that moment, there broke out from the thickest part of the wood the most
+      frantic hullabaloo that ever he had heard in his life. The hounds had run
+      into their fox.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you know, or you ought to know, what your duty is in such a case.
+      You have to be whip, huntsman, and everything else if you are the first
+      man up. You get in among the hounds, lash them off, and keep the brush and
+      pads from being destroyed. Of course, Wat Danbury knew all about that, and
+      he tried to force his mare through the trees to the place where all this
+      hideous screaming and howling came from, but the wood was so thick that it
+      was impossible to ride it. He sprang off, therefore, left the mare
+      standing, and broke his way through as best he could with his hunting-lash
+      ready over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But as he ran forward he felt his flesh go cold and creepy all over. He
+      had heard hounds run into foxes many times before, but he had never heard
+      such sounds as these. They were not the cries of triumph, but of fear.
+      Every now and then came a shrill yelp of mortal agony. Holding his breath,
+      he ran on until he broke through the interlacing branches, and found
+      himself in a little clearing with the hounds all crowding round a patch
+      of tangled bramble at the further end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When he first caught sight of them the hounds were standing in a
+      half-circle round this bramble patch, with their backs bristling and their
+      jaws gaping. In front of the brambles lay one of them with his throat torn
+      out, all crimson and white-and-tan. Wat came running out into the
+      clearing, and at the sight of him the hounds took heart again, and one of
+      them sprang with a growl into the bushes. At the same instant, a creature
+      the size of a donkey jumped on to its feet, a huge grey head, with
+      monstrous glistening fangs and tapering fox jaws, shot out from among the
+      branches, and the hound was thrown several feet into the air, and fell
+      howling among the cover. Then there was a clashing snap, like a rat-trap
+      closing, and the howls sharpened into a scream and then were still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Danbury had been on the look-out for symptoms all day, and now he had
+      found them. He looked once more at the thicket, saw a pair of savage red
+      eyes fixed upon him, and fairly took to his heels. It might only be a
+      passing delusion, or it might be the permanent mania of which the doctor
+      had spoken, but anyhow, the thing to do was to get back to bed and to
+      quiet, and to hope for the best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He forgot the hounds, the hunt, and everything else in his desperate
+      fears for his own reason. He sprang upon his mare, galloped her madly over
+      the downs, and only stopped when he found himself at a country station.
+      There he left his mare at the inn, and made back for home as quickly as
+      steam would take him. It was evening before he got there, shivering with
+      apprehension, and seeing those red eyes and savage teeth at every turn. He
+      went straight to bed and sent for Dr. Middleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I've got 'em, doctor,' said he. 'It came about exactly as you said&mdash;
+      strange creatures, optical delusions, and everything. All I ask you now is
+      to save my reason.' The doctor listened to his story, and was shocked as
+      he heard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It appears to be a very clear case,' said he. 'This must be a lesson to
+      you for life.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Never a drop again if I only come safely through this,' cried Wat
+      Danbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Well, my dear boy, if you will stick to that it may prove a blessing in
+      disguise. But the difficulty in this case is to know where fact ends and
+      fancy begins. You see, it is not as if there was only one delusion. There
+      have been several. The dead dogs, for example, must have been one as well
+      as the creature in the bush.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I saw it all as clearly as I see you.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'One of the characteristics of this form of delirium is that what you see
+      is even clearer than reality. I was wondering whether the whole run was
+      not a delusion also.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wat Danbury pointed to his hunting boots still lying upon the floor,
+      necked with the splashings of two counties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Hum! that looks very real, certainly. No doubt, in your weak state, you
+      over-exerted yourself and so brought this attack upon yourself. Well,
+      whatever the cause, our treatment is clear. You will take the soothing
+      mixture which I will send to you, and we shall put two leeches upon your
+      temples to-night to relieve any congestion of the brain.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So Wat Danbury spent the night in tossing about and reflecting what a
+      sensitive thing this machinery of ours is, and how very foolish it is to
+      play tricks with what is so easily put out of gear and so difficult to
+      mend. And so he repeated and repeated his oath that this first lesson
+      should be his last, and that from that time forward he would be a sober,
+      hard-working yeoman as his father had been before him. So he lay, tossing
+      and still repentant, when his door flew open in the morning and in rushed
+      the doctor with a newspaper crumpled up in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'My dear boy,' he cried, 'I owe you a thousand apologies. You're the most
+      ill-used lad and I the greatest numskull in the county. Listen to this!'
+      And he sat down upon the side of the bed, flattened out his paper upon his
+      knee, and began to read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The paragraph was headed, 'Disaster to the Ascombe Hounds,' and it went
+      on to say that four of the hounds, shockingly torn and mangled, had been
+      found in Winton Fir Wood upon the South Downs. The run had been so severe
+      that half the pack were lamed; but the four found in the wood were
+      actually dead, although the cause of their extraordinary injuries was
+      still unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'So, you see,' said the doctor, looking up, 'that I was wrong when I put
+      the dead hounds among the delusions.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'But the cause?' cried Wat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Well, I think we may guess the cause from an item which has been
+      inserted just as the paper went to press:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   "Late last night, Mr. Brown, of Smither's Farm, to the
+   east of Hastings, perceived what he imagined to be an enormous
+   dog worrying one of his sheep.  He shot the creature, which
+   proves to be a grey Siberian wolf of the variety known as
+   <i>Lupus Giganticus</i>.  It is supposed to have escaped from some
+   travelling menagerie.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the story, gentlemen, and Wat Danbury stuck to his good
+      resolutions, for the fright which he had cured him of all wish to run such
+      a risk again; and he never touches anything stronger than lime-juice&mdash;at
+      least, he hadn't before he left this part of the country, five years ago
+      next Lady Day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was only the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that
+      great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the
+      bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole
+      Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders which
+      studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was beating
+      down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims of the
+      pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a blast-furnace. It
+      had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were no larger than
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whew!" cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead, "you'd pay five shillings
+      for this at the hummums."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Precisely," said Scott. "But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in a
+      Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and a
+      whole Christmas-treeful of things dangling from you. The hot-house at Kew
+      is excellent as a conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon the
+      horizontal bar. I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and a halt until
+      evening."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward. Everywhere
+      were the same black burned rocks and deep orange sand. At one spot only an
+      intermittent line appeared to have been cut through the rugged spurs which
+      ran down to the river. It was the bed of the old railway, long destroyed
+      by the Arabs, but now in process of reconstruction by the advancing
+      Egyptians. There was no other sign of man's handiwork in all that desolate
+      scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's palm trees or nothing," said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I suppose we must; and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the
+      force up. What <i>would</i> our editors say if we were late for the
+      action?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn't need to be told that no sane
+      modern general would ever attack until the Press is up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't mean that?" said young Anerley. "I thought we were looked upon
+      as an unmitigated nuisance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Newspaper correspondents and travelling gentlemen, and all that tribe of
+      useless drones'&mdash;being an extract from Lord Wolseley's 'Soldier's
+      Pocket-Book,'" cried Scott. "We know all about <i>that</i>, Anerley;" and
+      he winked behind his blue spectacles. "If there was going to be a battle
+      we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up. I've been in
+      fifteen, and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a reporter's
+      table."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's very well; but the enemy may be less considerate," said Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are not strong enough to force a battle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A skirmish, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear. In that case we are just
+      where we should be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So we are! What a score over Reuter's man up with the advance! Well,
+      we'll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies.
+      Reuter's was thirty miles ahead; two evening pennies upon camels were
+      twenty miles behind. And among them they represented the eyes and ears of
+      the public&mdash;the great silent millions and millions who had paid for
+      everything, and who waited so patiently to know the result of their
+      outlay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were remarkable men these body-servants of the Press; two of them
+      already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first campaign,
+      and full of deference for his famous comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was
+      Mortimer, of the <i>Intelligence</i>&mdash;tall, straight, and hawk-faced,
+      with khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund,
+      and a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled
+      by the mosquito and the sand-fly. The other&mdash;small, quick, mercurial,
+      with blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch for ever flicking in
+      his left hand&mdash;was Scott, of the <i>Courier</i>, who had come through
+      more dangers and brought off more brilliant <i>coups</i> than any man in
+      the profession, save the eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to
+      take the field. They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and it
+      was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship lay.
+      Each dovetailed into the other. The strength of each was in the other's
+      weakness. Together they formed a perfect unit. Mortimer was Saxon&mdash;slow,
+      conscientious, and deliberate; Scott was Celtic&mdash;quick,
+      happy-go-lucky, and brilliant. Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the more
+      attractive. Mortimer was the deeper thinker, Scott the brighter talker. By
+      a curious coincidence, though each had seen much of warfare, their
+      campaigns had never coincided. Together they covered all recent military
+      history. Scott had done Plevna, the Shipka, the Zulus, Egypt, Suakim;
+      Mortimer had seen the Boer War, the Chilian, the Bulgaria and Servian, the
+      Gordon relief, the Indian frontier, Brazilian rebellion, and Madagascar.
+      This intimate personal knowledge gave a peculiar flavour to their talk.
+      There was none of the second-hand surmise and conjecture which form so
+      much of our conversation; it was all concrete and final. The speaker had
+      been there, had seen it, and there was an end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of their friendship there was the keenest professional rivalry
+      between the two men. Either would have sacrificed himself to help his
+      companion, but either would also have sacrificed his companion to help his
+      paper. Never did a jockey yearn for a winning mount as keenly as each of
+      them longed to have a full column in a morning edition whilst every other
+      daily was blank. They were perfectly frank about the matter. Each
+      professed himself ready to steal a march on his neighbour, and each
+      recognised that the other's duty to his employer was far higher than any
+      personal consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third man was Anerley, of the <i>Gazette</i>&mdash;young,
+      inexperienced, and rather simple-looking. He had a droop of the lip, which
+      some of his more intimate friends regarded as a libel upon his character,
+      and his eyes were so slow and so sleepy that they suggested an
+      affectation. A leaning towards soldiering had sent him twice to autumn
+      manoeuvres, and a touch of colour in his descriptions had induced the
+      proprietors of the <i>Gazette</i> to give him a trial as a war-special.
+      There was a pleasing diffidence about his bearing which recommended him to
+      his experienced companions, and if they had a smile sometimes at his
+      guileless ways, it was soothing to them to have a comrade from whom
+      nothing was to be feared. From the day that they left the telegraph-wire
+      behind them at Sarras, the man who was mounted upon a 15-guinea 13-4
+      Syrian was delivered over into the hands of the owners of the two fastest
+      polo-ponies that ever shot down the Ghezireh ground. The three had
+      dismounted and led their beasts under the welcome shade. In the brassy,
+      yellow glare every branch above threw so black and solid a shadow that the
+      men involuntarily raised their feet to step over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The palm makes an excellent hat-rack," said Scott, slinging his revolver
+      and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which bristle
+      from the trunk. "As a shade tree, however, it isn't an unqualified
+      success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means to ends
+      something a little less flimsy could not have been devised for the
+      tropics."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Like the banyan in India."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Or the fine hardwood trees in Ashantee, where a whole regiment could
+      picnic under the shade."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The teak tree isn't bad in Burmah, either. By Jove, the baccy has all
+      come loose in the saddle-bag! That long-cut mixture smokes rather hot for
+      this climate. How about the baggles, Anerley?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They'll be here in five minutes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down the winding path which curved among the rocks the little train of
+      baggage-camels was daintily picking its way. They came mincing and
+      undulating along, turning their heads slowly from side to side with the
+      air of a self-conscious woman. In front rode the three Berberee
+      body-servants upon donkeys, and behind walked the Arab camel-boys. They
+      had been travelling for nine long hours, ever since the first rising of
+      the moon, at the weary camel-drag of two and a half miles an hour, but now
+      they brightened, both beasts and men, at the sight of the grove and the
+      riderless horses. In a few minutes the loads were unstrapped, the animals
+      tethered, a fire lighted, fresh water carried up from the river, and each
+      camel-boy provided with his own little heap of tibbin laid in the centre
+      of the table-cloth, without which no well-bred Arabian will condescend to
+      feed. The dazzling light without, the subdued half-tones within, the green
+      palm-fronds outlined against the deep blue sky, the flitting,
+      silent-footed Arab servants, the crackling of sticks, the reek of a
+      lighting fire, the placid supercilious heads of the camels, they all come
+      back in their dreams to those who have known them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott was breaking eggs into a pan and rolling out a love-song in his
+      rich, deep voice. Anerley, with his head and arms buried in a deal
+      packing-case, was working his way through strata of tinned soups, bully
+      beef, potted chicken, and sardines to reach the jams which lay beneath.
+      The conscientious Mortimer, with his notebook upon his knee, was jotting
+      down what the railway engineer had told him at the line-end the day
+      before. Suddenly he raised his eyes and saw the man himself on his
+      chestnut pony, dipping and rising over the broken ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hullo! Here's Merryweather!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A pretty lather his pony is in! He's had her at that hand-gallop for
+      hours, by the look of her. Hullo, Merryweather, hullo!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The engineer, a small, compact man with a pointed red beard, had made as
+      though he would ride past their camp without word or halt. Now he swerved,
+      and easing his pony down to a canter, he headed her towards them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For God's sake, a drink!" he croaked. "My tongue is stuck to the roof of
+      my mouth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer ran with the water-bottle, Scott with the whisky-flask, and
+      Anerley with the tin pannikin. The engineer drank until his breath failed
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I must be off," said he, striking the drops from his red moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Any news?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hitch in the railway construction. I must see the general. It's the
+      devil not having a telegraph."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Anything we can report?" Out came three notebooks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll tell you after I've seen the general."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Any dervishes?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The usual shaves. Hud-up, Jinny! Good-bye!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a soft thudding upon the sand, and a clatter among the stones the
+      weary pony was off upon her journey once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing serious, I suppose?" said Mortimer, staring after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Deuced serious," cried Scott. "The ham and eggs are burned! No&mdash;it's
+      all right&mdash;saved, and done to a turn! Pull the box up, Anerley. Come
+      on, Mortimer, stow that notebook! The fork is mightier than the pen just
+      at present. What's the matter with you, Anerley?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was wondering whether what we have just seen was worth a telegram."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it's for the proprietors to say if it's worth it. Sordid money
+      considerations are not for us. We must wire about something just to
+      justify our khaki coats and our putties."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what is there to say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer's long, austere face broke into a smile over the youngster's
+      innocence. "It's not quite usual in our profession to give each other
+      tips," said he. "However, as my telegram is written, I've no objection to
+      your reading it. You may be sure that I would not show it to you if it
+      were of the slightest importance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley took up the slip of paper and read:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Merryweather obstacles stop journey confer general stop nature
+   difficulties later stop rumours dervishes.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      "This is very condensed," said Anerley, with wrinkled brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Condensed!" cried Scott. "Why, it's sinfully garrulous. If my old man got
+      a wire like that his language would crack the lamp-shades. I'd cut out
+      half this; for example, I'd have out 'journey,' and 'nature,' and
+      'rumours.' But my old man would make a ten-line paragraph of it for all
+      that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I'll do it myself just to show you. Lend me that stylo." He
+      scribbled for a minute in his notebook. "It works out somewhat on these
+      lines":&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Mr. Charles H.  Merryweather, the eminent railway engineer,
+   who is at present engaged in superintending the construction
+   of the line from Sarras to the front, has met with considerable
+   obstacles to the rapid completion of his important task&mdash;
+</p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course the old man knows who Merryweather is, and what he is about, so
+      the word 'obstacles' would suggest all that to him."
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   He has to-day been compelled to make a journey of forty
+   miles to the front, in order to confer with the general upon
+   the steps which are necessary in order to facilitate the work.
+   Further particulars of the exact nature of the difficulties
+   met with will be made public at a later date.  All is quiet
+   upon the line of communications, though the usual persistent
+   rumours of the presence of dervishes in the Eastern desert
+   continue to circulate.&mdash;<i>Our own correspondent</i>.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      "How's that?" cried Scott, triumphantly, and his white teeth gleamed
+      suddenly through his black beard. "That's the sort of flapdoodle for the
+      dear old public."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will it interest them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, everything interests them. They want to know all about it; and they
+      like to think that there is a man who is getting a hundred a month simply
+      in order to tell it to them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's very kind of you to teach me all this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it is a little unconventional, for, after all, we are here to score
+      over each other if we can. There are no more eggs, and you must take it
+      out in jam. Of course, as Mortimer says, such a telegram as this is of no
+      importance one way or another, except to prove to the office that we <i>are</i>
+      in the Soudan, and not at Monte Carlo. But when it comes to serious work
+      it must be every man for himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that quite necessary?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, of course it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should have thought if three men were to combine and to share their
+      news, they would do better than if they were each to act for himself, and
+      they would have a much pleasanter time of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two older men sat with their bread-and-jam in their hands, and an
+      expression of genuine disgust upon their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are not here to have a pleasant time," said Mortimer, with a flash
+      through his glasses. "We are here to do our best for our papers. How can
+      they score over each other if we do not do the same? If we all combine we
+      might as well amalgamate with Reuter at once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, it would take away the whole glory of the profession!" cried Scott.
+      "At present the smartest man gets his stuff first on the wires. What
+      inducement is there to be smart if we all share and share alike?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And at present the man with the best equipment has the best chance,"
+      remarked Mortimer, glancing across at the shot-silk polo ponies and the
+      cheap little Syrian grey. "That is the fair reward of foresight and
+      enterprise. Every man for himself, and let the best man win."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the way to find who the best man is. Look at Chandler. He would
+      never have got his chance if he had not played always off his own bat.
+      You've heard how he pretended to break his leg, sent his
+      fellow-correspondent off for the doctor, and so got a fair start for the
+      telegraph-office."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you mean to say that was legitimate?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Everything is legitimate. It's your wits against my wits."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should call it dishonourable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may call it what you like. Chandler's paper got the battle and the
+      other's didn't. It made Chandler's name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Or take Westlake," said Mortimer, cramming the tobacco into his pipe.
+      "Hi, Abdul, you may have the dishes! Westlake brought his stuff down by
+      pretending to be the Government courier, and using the relays of
+      Government horses. Westlake's paper sold half a million."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that legitimate also?" asked Anerley, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it looks a little like horse-stealing and lying."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, <i>I</i> think I should do a little horse-stealing and lying if I
+      could have a column to myself in a London daily. What do you say, Scott?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Anything short of manslaughter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I'm not sure that I'd trust you there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I don't think I should be guilty of newspaper-man-slaughter. That I
+      regard as a distinct breach of professional etiquette. But if any outsider
+      comes between a highly charged correspondent and an electric wire, he does
+      it at his peril. My dear Anerley, I tell you frankly that if you are going
+      to handicap yourself with scruple you may just as well be in Fleet Street
+      as in the Soudan. Our life is irregular. Our work has never been
+      systematised. No doubt it will be some day, but the time is not yet. Do
+      what you can and how you can, and be first on the wires; that's my advice
+      to you; and also, that when next you come upon a campaign you bring with
+      you the best horse that money can buy. Mortimer may beat me or I may beat
+      Mortimer, but at least we know that between us we have the fastest ponies
+      in the country. We have neglected no chance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not so certain of that," said Mortimer, slowly. "You are aware, of
+      course, that though a horse beats a camel on twenty miles, a camel beats a
+      horse on thirty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, one of those camels?" cried Anerley in astonishment. The two
+      seniors burst out laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no, the real high-bred trotter&mdash;the kind of beast the dervishes
+      ride when they make their lightning raids."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Faster than a galloping horse?" "Well, it tires a horse down. It goes the
+      same gait all the way, and it wants neither halt nor drink, and it takes
+      rough ground much better than a horse. They used to have long distance
+      races at Halfa, and the camel always won at thirty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Still, we need not reproach ourselves, Scott, for we are not very likely
+      to have to carry a thirty-mile message. They will have the field telegraph
+      next week."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite so. But at the present moment&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know, my dear chap; but there is no motion of urgency before the house.
+      Load baggles at five o'clock; so you have just three hours clear. Any sign
+      of the evening pennies?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer swept the northern horizon with his binoculars. "Not in sight
+      yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are quite capable of travelling during the heat of the day. Just the
+      sort of thing evening pennies <i>would</i> do. Take care of your match,
+      Anerley. These palm groves go up like a powder magazine if you set them
+      alight. Bye-bye." The two men crawled under their mosquito-nets and sank
+      instantly into the easy sleep of those whose lives are spent in the open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Anerley stood with his back against a palm tree and his briar
+      between his lips, thinking over the advice which he had received. After
+      all, they were the heads of the profession, these men, and it was not for
+      him, the newcomer, to reform their methods. If they served their papers in
+      this fashion, then he must do the same. They had at least been frank and
+      generous in teaching him the rules of the game. If it was good enough for
+      them it was good enough for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a broiling afternoon, and those thin frills of foam round the
+      black, glistening necks of the Nile boulders looked delightfully cool and
+      alluring. But it would not be safe to bathe for some hours to come. The
+      air shimmered and vibrated over the baking stretch of sand and rock. There
+      was not a breath of wind, and the droning and piping of the insects
+      inclined one for sleep. Somewhere above a hoopoe was calling. Anerley
+      knocked out his ashes, and was turning towards his couch, when his eye
+      caught something moving in the desert to the south. It was a horseman
+      riding towards them as swiftly as the broken ground would permit. A
+      messenger from the army, thought Anerley; and then, as he watched, the sun
+      suddenly struck the man on the side of the head, and his chin flamed into
+      gold. There could not be two horsemen with beards of such a colour. It was
+      Merryweather, the engineer, and he was returning. What on earth was he
+      returning for? He had been so keen to see the general, and yet he was
+      coming back with his mission unaccomplished. Was it that his pony was
+      hopelessly foundered? It seemed to be moving well. Anerley picked up
+      Mortimer's binoculars, and a foam-bespattered horse and a weary
+      koorbash-cracking man came cantering up the centre of the field. But there
+      was nothing in his appearance to explain the mystery of his return. Then
+      as he watched them they dipped into a hollow and disappeared. He could see
+      that it was one of those narrow khors which led to the river, and he
+      waited, glass in hand, for their immediate reappearance. But minute passed
+      after minute and there was no sign of them. That narrow gully appeared to
+      have swallowed them up. And then with a curious gulp and start he saw a
+      little grey cloud wreathe itself slowly from among the rocks and drift in
+      a long, hazy shred over the desert. In an instant he had torn Scott and
+      Mortimer from their slumbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Get up, you chaps!" he cried. "I believe Merryweather has been shot by
+      dervishes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Reuter not here!" cried the two veterans, exultantly clutching at
+      their notebooks. "Merryweather shot! Where? When? How?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few words Anerley explained what he had seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You heard nothing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, a shot loses itself very easily among rocks. By George, look at the
+      buzzards!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two large brown birds were soaring in the deep blue heaven. As Scott spoke
+      they circled down and dropped into the little khor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's good enough," said Mortimer, with his nose between the leaves of
+      his book. "'Merryweather headed dervishes stop return stop shot mutilated
+      stop raid communications.' How's that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You think he was headed off?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why else should he return?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case, if they were out in front of him and others cut him off,
+      there must be several small raiding parties."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should judge so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How about the 'mutilated'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've fought against Arabs before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where are you off to?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sarras."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I'll race you in," said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley stared in astonishment at the absolutely impersonal way in which
+      these men regarded the situation. In their zeal for news it had apparently
+      never struck them that they, their camp, and their servants were all in
+      the lion's mouth. But even as they talked there came the harsh,
+      importunate rat-tat-tat of an irregular volley from among the rocks, and
+      the high, keening whistle of bullets over their heads. A palm spray
+      fluttered down amongst them. At the same instant the six frightened
+      servants came running wildly in for protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the cool-headed Mortimer who organised the defence, for Scott's
+      Celtic soul was so aflame at all this "copy" in hand and more to come that
+      he was too exuberantly boisterous for a commander. The other, with his
+      spectacles and his stern face, soon had the servants in hand. "<i>Tali
+      henna! Egri!</i> What the deuce are you frightened about? Put the camels
+      between the palm trunks. That's right. Now get the knee-tethers on them.
+      <i>Quies</i>! Did you never hear bullets before? Now put the donkeys here.
+      Not much&mdash;you don't get my polo-pony to make a zareba with. Picket
+      the ponies between the grove and the river out of danger's way. These
+      fellows seem to fire even higher than they did in '85."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's got home, anyhow," said Scott, as they heard a soft, splashing
+      thud like a stone in a mud-bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who's hit, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The brown camel that's chewing the cud." As he spoke the creature, its
+      jaw still working, laid its long neck along the ground and closed its
+      large dark eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That shot cost me 15 pounds," said Mortimer, ruefully. "How many of them
+      do you make?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Four, I think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only four Bezingers, at any rate; there may be some spearmen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think not; it is a little raiding-party of rifle-men. By the way,
+      Anerley, you've never been under fire before, have you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never," said the young pressman, who was conscious of a curious feeling
+      of nervous elation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Love and poverty and war, they are all experiences necessary to make a
+      complete life. Pass over those cartridges. This is a very mild baptism
+      that you are undergoing, for behind these camels you are as safe as if you
+      were sitting in the back room of the Authors' Club."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As safe, but hardly as comfortable," said Scott. "A long glass of hock
+      and seltzer would be exceedingly acceptable. But oh, Mortimer, what a
+      chance! Think of the general's feelings when he hears that the first
+      action of the war has been fought by the Press column. Think of Reuter,
+      who has been stewing at the front for a week! Think of the evening pennies
+      just too late for the fun. By George, that slug brushed a mosquito off
+      me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And one of the donkeys is hit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is sinful. It will end in our having to carry our own kits to
+      Khartoum."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind, my boy, it all goes to make copy. I can see the headlines&mdash;'Raid
+      on Communications': 'Murder of British Engineer': 'Press Column Attacked.'
+      Won't it be ripping?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder what the next line will be," said Anerley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Our Special Wounded'!" cried Scott, rolling over on to his back. "No
+      harm done," he added, gathering himself up again; "only a chip off my
+      knee. This is getting sultry. I confess that the idea of that back room at
+      the Authors' Club begins to grow upon me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have some diachylon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Afterwards will do. We're having a 'appy day with Fuzzy on the rush. I
+      wish he <i>would</i> rush."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They're coming nearer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is an excellent revolver of mine if it didn't throw so devilish
+      high. I always aim at a man's toes if I want to stimulate his digestion. O
+      Lord, there's our kettle gone!" With a boom like a dinner-gong a Remington
+      bullet had passed through the kettle, and a cloud of steam hissed up from
+      the fire. A wild shout came from the rocks above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The idiots think that they have blown us up. They'll rush us now, as sure
+      as fate; then it will be our turn to lead. Got your revolver, Anerley?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have this double-barrelled fowling-piece."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sensible man! It's the best weapon in the world at this sort of
+      rough-and-tumble work. What cartridges?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Swan-shot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That will do all right. I carry this big bore double-barrelled pistol
+      loaded with slugs. You might as well try to stop one of these fellows with
+      a pea-shooter as with a service revolver."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are ways and means," said Scott. "The Geneva Convention does not
+      hold south of the first cataract. It's easy to make a bullet mushroom by a
+      little manipulation of the tip of it. When I was in the broken square at
+      Tamai&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wait a bit," cried Mortimer, adjusting his glasses. "I think they are
+      coming now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The time," said Scott, snapping up his watch, "being exactly seventeen
+      minutes past four."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley had been lying behind a camel staring with an interest which
+      bordered upon fascination at the rocks opposite. Here was a little woolly
+      puff of smoke, and there was another one, but never once had they caught a
+      glimpse of the attackers. To him there was something weird and awesome in
+      these unseen, persistent men who, minute by minute, were drawing closer to
+      them. He had heard them cry out when the kettle was broken, and once,
+      immediately afterwards, an enormously strong voice had roared something
+      which had set Scott shrugging his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They've got to take us first," said he, and Anerley thought his nerve
+      might be better if he did not ask for a translation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The firing had begun at a distance of some 100 yards, which put it out of
+      the question for them, with their lighter weapons, to make any reply to
+      it. Had their antagonists continued to keep that range the defenders must
+      either have made a hopeless sally or tried to shelter themselves behind
+      their zareba as best they might on the chance that the sound might bring
+      up help. But, luckily for them, the African has never taken kindly to the
+      rifle, and his primitive instinct to close with his enemy is always too
+      strong for his sense of strategy. They were drawing in, therefore, and
+      now, for the first time, Anerley caught sight of a face looking at them
+      from over a rock. It was a huge, virile, strong-jawed head of a pure negro
+      type, with silver trinkets gleaming in the ears. The man raised a great
+      arm from behind the rock, and shook his Remington at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shall I fire?" asked Anerley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no; it is too far. Your shot would scatter all over the place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a picturesque ruffian," said Scott. "Couldn't you kodak him,
+      Mortimer? There's another!" A fine-featured brown Arab, with a black,
+      pointed beard, was peeping from behind another boulder. He wore the green
+      turban which proclaimed him hadji, and his face showed the keen, nervous
+      exultation of the religious fanatic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They seem a piebald crowd," said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That last is one of the real fighting Baggara," remarked Mortimer. "He's
+      a dangerous man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He looks pretty vicious. There's another negro!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Two more! Dingas, by the look of them. Just the same chaps we get our own
+      black battalions from. As long as they get a fight they don't mind who
+      it's for; but if the idiots had only sense enough to understand, they
+      would know that the Arab is their hereditary enemy, and we their
+      hereditary friends. Look at the silly juggins, gnashing his teeth at the
+      very men who put down the slave trade!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Couldn't you explain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll explain with this pistol when he comes a little nearer. Now sit
+      tight, Anerley. They're off!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were indeed. It was the brown man with the green turban who headed
+      the rush. Close at his heels was the negro with the silver ear-rings&mdash;
+      a giant of a man, and the other two were only a little behind. As they
+      sprang over the rocks one after the other, it took Anerley back to the
+      school sports when he held the tape for the hurdle-race. It was
+      magnificent, the wild spirit and abandon of it, the flutter of the
+      chequered galabeeahs, the gleam of steel, the wave of black arms, the
+      frenzied faces, the quick pitter-patter of the rushing feet. The
+      law-abiding Briton is so imbued with the idea of the sanctity of human
+      life that it was hard for the young pressman to realise that these men had
+      every intention of killing him, and that he was at perfect liberty to do
+      as much for them. He lay staring as if this were a show and he a
+      spectator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, Anerley, now! Take the Arab!" cried somebody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put up the gun and saw the brown fierce face at the other end of the
+      barrel. He tugged at the trigger, but the face grew larger and fiercer
+      with every stride. Again and again he tugged. A revolver-shot rang out at
+      his elbow, then another one, and he saw a red spot spring out on the
+      Arab's brown breast. But he was still coming on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shoot, you ass, shoot!" screamed Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he strained unavailingly at the trigger. There were two more
+      pistol-shots, and the big negro had fallen and risen and fallen again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cock it, you fool!" shouted a furious voice; and at the same instant,
+      with a rush and flutter, the Arab bounded over the prostrate camel and
+      came down with his bare feet upon Anerley's chest. In a dream he seemed to
+      be struggling frantically with someone upon the ground, then he was
+      conscious of a tremendous explosion in his very face, and so ended for him
+      the first action of the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good-bye, old chap. You'll be all right. Give yourself time." It was
+      Mortimer's voice, and he became dimly conscious of a long, spectacled
+      face, and of a heavy hand upon his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sorry to leave you. We'll be lucky now if we are in time for the morning
+      editions." Scott was tightening his girth as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We'll put in our wire that you have been hurt, so your people will know
+      why they don't hear from you. If Reuter or the evening pennies come up,
+      don't give the thing away. Abbas will look after you, and we'll be back
+      to-morrow afternoon. Bye-bye!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley heard it all, though he did not feel energy enough to answer.
+      Then, as he watched two sleek, brown ponies with their yellow-clad riders
+      dwindling among the rocks, his memory cleared suddenly, and he realised
+      that the first great journalistic chance of his life was slipping away
+      from him. It was a small fight, but it was the first of the war, and the
+      great public at home were all athirst for news. They would have it in the
+      <i>Courier</i>; they would have it in the <i>Intelligence</i>, and not a
+      word in the <i>Gazette</i>. The thought brought him to his feet, though he
+      had to throw his arm round the stem of the palm tree to steady his
+      swimming head. There was a big black man lying where he had fallen, his
+      huge chest pocked with bullet-marks, every wound rosetted with its circle
+      of flies. The Arab was stretched out within a few yards of him, with two
+      hands clasped over the dreadful thing which had been his head. Across him
+      was lying Anerley's fowling-piece, one barrel discharged, the other at
+      half cock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Scott effendi shoot him your gun," said a voice. It was Abbas, his
+      English-speaking body-servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley groaned at the disgrace of it. He had lost his head so completely
+      that he had forgotten to cock his gun; and yet he knew that it was not
+      fear but interest which had so absorbed him. He put his hand up to his
+      head and felt that a wet handkerchief was bound round his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where are the two other dervishes?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They ran away. One got shot in arm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's happened to me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Effendi got cut on head. Effendi catch bad man by arms, and Scott effendi
+      shot him. Face burn very bad."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley became conscious suddenly that there was a pringling about his
+      skin and an overpowering smell of burned hair under his nostrils. He put
+      his hand to his moustache. It was gone. His eyebrows too? He could not
+      find them. His head, no doubt, was very near to the dervish's when they
+      were rolling upon the ground together, and this was the effect of the
+      explosion of his own gun. Well, he would have time to grow some more hair
+      before he saw Fleet Street again. But the cut, perhaps, was a more serious
+      matter. Was it enough to prevent him getting to the telegraph-office at
+      Sarras? The only way was to try and see. But there was only that poor
+      little Syrian grey of his. There it stood in the evening sunshine, with a
+      sunk head and a bent knee, as if its morning's work was still heavy upon
+      it. What hope was there of being able to do thirty-five miles of heavy
+      going upon that? It would be a strain upon the splendid ponies of his
+      companions&mdash;and they were the swiftest and most enduring in the
+      country. The most enduring? There was one creature more enduring, and that
+      was a real trotting camel. If he had had one he might have got to the
+      wires first after all, for Mortimer had said that over thirty miles they
+      have the better of any horse. Yes, if he had only had a real trotting
+      camel! And then like a flash came Mortimer's words, "It is the kind of
+      beast that the dervishes ride when they make their lightning raids."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beasts the dervishes ride! What had these dead dervishes ridden? In an
+      instant he was clambering up the rocks, with Abbas protesting at his
+      heels. Had the two fugitives carried away all the camels, or had they been
+      content to save themselves? The brass gleam from a litter of empty
+      Remington cases caught his eye, and showed where the enemy had been
+      crouching. And then he could have shouted for joy, for there, in the
+      hollow, some little distance off, rose the high, graceful white neck and
+      the elegant head of such a camel as he had never set eyes upon before&mdash;a
+      swanlike, beautiful creature, as far from the rough, clumsy baggles as the
+      cart-horse is from the racer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beast was kneeling under the shelter of the rocks with its waterskin
+      and bag of doora slung over its shoulders, and its forelegs tethered Arab
+      fashion with a rope around the knees. Anerley threw his leg over the front
+      pommel while Abbas slipped off the cord. Forward flew Anerley towards the
+      creature's neck, then violently backwards, clawing madly at anything which
+      might save him, and then, with a jerk which nearly snapped his loins, he
+      was thrown forward again. But the camel was on its legs now, and the young
+      pressman was safely seated upon one of the fliers of the desert. It was as
+      gentle as it was swift, and it stood oscillating its long neck and gazing
+      round with its large brown eyes, whilst Anerley coiled his legs round the
+      peg and grasped the curved camel-stick which Abbas had handed up to him.
+      There were two bridle-cords, one from the nostril and one from the neck,
+      but he remembered that Scott had said that it was the servant's and not
+      the house-bell which had to be pulled, so he kept his grasp upon the
+      lower. Then he touched the long, vibrating neck with his stick, and in an
+      instant Abbas' farewell seemed to come from far behind him, and the black
+      rocks and yellow sand were dancing past on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his first experience of a trotting camel, and at first the motion,
+      although irregular and abrupt, was not unpleasant. Having no stirrup or
+      fixed point of any kind, he could not rise to it, but he gripped as
+      tightly as he could with his knee, and he tried to sway backwards and
+      forwards as he had seen the Arabs do. It was a large, very concave
+      Makloofa saddle, and he was conscious that he was bouncing about on it
+      with as little power of adhesion as a billiard-ball upon a tea-tray. He
+      gripped the two sides with his hands to hold himself steady. The creature
+      had got into its long, swinging, stealthy trot, its sponge-like feet
+      making no sound upon the hard sand. Anerley leaned back with his two hands
+      gripping hard behind him, and he whooped the creature on. The sun had
+      already sunk behind the line of black volcanic peaks, which look like huge
+      slag-heaps at the mouth of a mine. The western sky had taken that lovely
+      light green and pale pink tint which makes evening beautiful upon the
+      Nile, and the old brown river itself, swirling down amongst the black
+      rocks, caught some shimmer of the colours above. The glare, the heat, and
+      the piping of the insects had all ceased together. In spite of his aching
+      head, Anerley could have cried out for pure physical joy as the swift
+      creature beneath him flew along with him through that cool, invigorating
+      air, with the virile north wind soothing his pringling face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had looked at his watch, and now he made a swift calculation of times
+      and distances. It was past six when he had left the camp. Over broken
+      ground it was impossible that he could hope to do more than seven miles an
+      hour&mdash;less on bad parts, more on the smooth. His recollection of the
+      track was that there were few smooth and many bad. He would be lucky,
+      then, if he reached Sarras anywhere from twelve to one. Then the messages
+      took a good two hours to go through, for they had to be transcribed at
+      Cairo. At the best he could only hope to have told his story in Fleet
+      Street at two or three in the morning. It was possible that he might
+      manage it, but the chances seemed enormously against him. About three the
+      morning edition would be made up, and his chance gone for ever. The one
+      thing clear was that only the first man at the wires would have any chance
+      at all, and Anerley meant to be first if hard riding could do it. So he
+      tapped away at the bird-like neck, and the creature's long, loose limbs
+      went faster and faster at every tap. Where the rocky spurs ran down to the
+      river, horses would have to go round, while camels might get across, so
+      that Anerley felt that he was always gaining upon his companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was a price to be paid for the feeling. He had heard of men who
+      had burst when on camel journeys, and he knew that the Arabs swathe their
+      bodies tightly in broad cloth bandages when they prepare for a long march.
+      It had seemed unnecessary and ridiculous when he first began to speed over
+      the level track, but now, when he got on the rocky paths, he understood
+      what it meant. Never for an instant was he at the same angle. Backwards,
+      forwards he swung, with a tingling jar at the end of each sway, until he
+      ached from his neck to his knees. It caught him across the shoulders, it
+      caught him down the spine, it gripped him over the loins, it marked the
+      lower line of his ribs with one heavy, dull throb. He clutched here and
+      there with his hand to try and ease the strain upon his muscles. He drew
+      up his knees, altered his seat, and set his teeth with a grim
+      determination to go through with it should it kill him. His head was
+      splitting, his flayed face smarting, and every joint in his body aching as
+      if it were dislocated. But he forgot all that when, with the rising of the
+      moon, he heard the clinking of horses' hoofs down upon the track by the
+      river, and knew that, unseen by them, he had already got well abreast of
+      his companions. But he was hardly halfway, and the time already eleven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day the needles had been ticking away without intermission in the
+      little corrugated iron hut which served as a telegraph station at Sarras.
+      With its bare walls and its packing-case seats, it was none the less for
+      the moment one of the vital spots upon the earth's surface, and the crisp,
+      importunate ticking might have come from the world-old clock of Destiny.
+      Many august people had been at the other end of those wires, and had
+      communed with the moist-faced military clerk. A French Premier had
+      demanded a pledge, and an English marquis had passed on the request to the
+      General in command, with a question as to how it would affect the
+      situation. Cipher telegrams had nearly driven the clerk out of his wits,
+      for of all crazy occupations the taking of a cipher message, when you are
+      without the key to the cipher, is the worst. Much high diplomacy had been
+      going on all day in the innermost chambers of European chancellories, and
+      the results of it had been whispered into this little corrugated-iron hut.
+      About two in the morning an enormous despatch had come at last to an end,
+      and the weary operator had opened the door, and was lighting his pipe in
+      the cool, fresh air, when he saw a camel plump down in the dust, and a
+      man, who seemed to be in the last stage of drunkenness, come rolling
+      towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the time?" he cried, in a voice which appeared to be the only
+      sober thing about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the clerk's lips to say that it was time that the questioner was
+      in his bed, but it is not safe upon a campaign to be ironical at the
+      expense of khaki-clad men. He contented himself, therefore, with the bald
+      statement that it was after two. But no retort that he could have devised
+      could have had a more crushing effect. The voice turned drunken also, and
+      the man caught at the door-post to uphold him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Two o'clock! I'm done after all!" said he. His head was tied up in a
+      bloody handkerchief, his face was crimson, and he stood with his legs
+      crooked as if the pith had all gone out of his back. The clerk began to
+      realise that something out of the ordinary was in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How long does it take to get a wire to London?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About two hours."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And it's two now. I could not get it there before four."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Before three."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Four."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, three."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you said two hours."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but there's more than an hour's difference in longitude."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By Heaven, I'll do it yet!" cried Anerley, and staggering to a
+      packing-case, he began the dictation of his famous despatch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it came about that the <i>Gazette</i> had a long column, with
+      headlines like an epitaph, when the sheets of the <i>Intelligence</i> and
+      the <i>Courier</i> were as blank as the faces of their editors. And so,
+      too, it happened that when two weary men, upon two foundered horses,
+      arrived about four in the morning at the Sarras post-office, they looked
+      at each other in silence and departed noiselessly, with the conviction
+      that there are some situations with which the English language is not
+      capable of dealing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE NEW CATACOMB
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Burger," said Kennedy, "I do wish that you would confide in
+      me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two famous students of Roman remains sat together in Kennedy's
+      comfortable room overlooking the Corso. The night was cold, and they had
+      both pulled up their chairs to the unsatisfactory Italian stove which
+      threw out a zone of stuffiness rather than of warmth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside under the bright winter stars lay the modern Rome, the long,
+      double chain of the electric lamps, the brilliantly lighted <i>cafes</i>,
+      the rushing carriages, and the dense throng upon the footpaths. But
+      inside, in the sumptuous chamber of the rich young English archaeologist,
+      there was only old Rome to be seen. Cracked and time-worn friezes hung
+      upon the walls, grey old busts of senators and soldiers with their
+      fighting heads and their hard, cruel faces peered out from the corners. On
+      the centre table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments, and
+      ornaments, there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths
+      of Caracalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was
+      exhibited in Berlin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amphorae hung from the ceiling, and a litter of curiosities strewed the
+      rich red Turkey carpet. And of them all there was not one which was not of
+      the most unimpeachable authenticity, and of the utmost rarity and value;
+      for Kennedy, though little more than thirty, had a European reputation in
+      this particular branch of research, and was, moreover, provided with that
+      long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap to the student's
+      energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him an
+      enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often been seduced by
+      whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one,
+      capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of
+      sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its
+      aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensuous mouth, was a fair
+      index of the compromise between strength and weakness in his nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger. He came of a
+      curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust
+      qualities of the North mingling strangely with the softer graces of the
+      South. Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above them
+      rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow curls lying
+      round it. His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his companion had
+      frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman busts which
+      peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber. Under its bluff
+      German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian subtlety, but the
+      smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one understood that this
+      was only an indication of his ancestry, with no actual bearing upon his
+      character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In age and in reputation he was on the same level as his English
+      companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous.
+      Twelve years before he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived
+      ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded
+      to him by the University of Bonn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and
+      singlemindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of fame,
+      until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was every
+      reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the Chair of the
+      greatest of German Universities. But the singleness of purpose which had
+      brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant Englishman,
+      had caused him in everything outside their work to stand infinitely below
+      him. He had never found a pause in his studies in which to cultivate the
+      social graces. It was only when he spoke of his own subject that his face
+      was filled with life and soul. At other times he was silent and
+      embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in larger subjects, and
+      impatient of that small talk which is the conventional refuge of those who
+      have no thoughts to express.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared
+      to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different
+      rivals. The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own
+      studies each was the only one of the younger men who had knowledge and
+      enthusiasm enough to properly appreciate the other. Their common interests
+      and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been attracted by the
+      other's knowledge. And then gradually something had been added to this.
+      Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and simplicity of his rival,
+      while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the brilliancy and vivacity
+      which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman society. I say "had,"
+      because just at the moment the young Englishman was somewhat under a
+      cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A love affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had
+      indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked many
+      of his friends. But in the bachelor circles of students and artists in
+      which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of honour in such
+      matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of shoulders shrugged
+      over the flight of two and the return of one, the general sentiment was
+      probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy rather than of reprobation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Burger," said Kennedy, looking hard at the placid face of his
+      companion, "I do wish that you would confide in me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he waved his hand in the direction of a rug which lay upon the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the rug stood a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wicker-work
+      which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of
+      objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn
+      papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have seemed
+      to have come straight from a dustman's bin, but which a specialist would
+      have speedily recognized as unique of their kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pile of odds and ends in the flat wicker-work basket supplied exactly
+      one of those missing links of social development which are of such
+      interest to the student. It was the German who had brought them in, and
+      the Englishman's eyes were hungry as he looked at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't interfere with your treasure-trove, but I should very much like
+      to hear about it," he continued, while Burger very deliberately lit a
+      cigar. "It is evidently a discovery of the first importance. These
+      inscriptions will make a sensation throughout Europe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For every one here there are a million there!" said the German. "There
+      are so many that a dozen savants might spend a lifetime over them, and
+      build up a reputation as solid as the Castle of St. Angelo."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy was thinking with his fine forehead wrinkled and his fingers
+      playing with his long, fair moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have given yourself away, Burger!" said he at last. "Your words can
+      only apply to one thing. You have discovered a new catacomb."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had no doubt that you had already come to that conclusion from an
+      examination of these objects."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, they certainly appeared to indicate it, but your last remarks make
+      it certain. There is no place except a catacomb which could contain so
+      vast a store of relics as you describe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite so. There is no mystery about that. I <i>have</i> discovered a new
+      catacomb."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, that is my secret, my dear Kennedy! Suffice it that it is so situated
+      that there is not one chance in a million of anyone else coming upon it.
+      Its date is different from that of any known catacomb, and it has been
+      reserved for the burial of the highest Christians, so that the remains and
+      the relics are quite different from anything which has ever been seen
+      before. If I was not aware of your knowledge and of your energy, my
+      friend, I would not hesitate, under the pledge of secrecy, to tell you
+      everything about it. But as it is I think that I must certainly prepare my
+      own report of the matter before I expose myself to such formidable
+      competition."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy loved his subject with a love which was almost a mania&mdash;a
+      love which held him true to it, amidst all the distractions which come to
+      a wealthy and dissipated young man. He had ambition, but his ambition was
+      secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which
+      concerned the old life and history of the city. He yearned to see this new
+      underworld which his companion had discovered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Burger," said he, earnestly, "I assure you that you can trust
+      me most implicitly in the matter. Nothing would induce me to put pen to
+      paper about anything which I see until I have your express permission. I
+      quite understand your feeling, and I think it is most natural, but you
+      have really nothing whatever to fear from me. On the other hand, if you
+      don't tell me I shall make a systematic search, and I shall most certainly
+      discover it. In that case, of course, I should make what use I liked of
+      it, since I should be under no obligation to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Burger smiled thoughtfully over his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have noticed, friend Kennedy," said he, "that when I want information
+      over any point you are not always so ready to supply it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When did you ever ask me anything that I did not tell you? You remember,
+      for example, my giving you the material for your paper about the temple of
+      the Vestals."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, well, that was not a matter of much importance. If I were to question
+      you upon some intimate thing, would you give me an answer, I wonder! This
+      new catacomb is a very intimate thing to me, and I should certainly expect
+      some sign of confidence in return."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What you are driving at I cannot imagine," said the Englishman, "but if
+      you mean that you will answer my question about the catacomb if I answer
+      any question which you may put to me, I can assure you that I will
+      certainly do so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, then," said Burger, leaning luxuriously back in his settee, and
+      puffing a blue tree of cigar-smoke into the air, "tell me all about your
+      relations with Miss Mary Saunderson."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy sprang up in his chair and glared angrily at his impassive
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What the devil do you mean?" he cried. "What sort of a question is this?
+      You may mean it as a joke, but you never made a worse one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I don't mean it as a joke," said Burger, simply. "I am really rather
+      interested in the details of the matter. I don't know much about the world
+      and women and social life and that sort of thing, and such an incident has
+      the fascination of the unknown for me. I know you, and I knew her by sight&mdash;I
+      had even spoken to her once or twice. I should very much like to hear from
+      your own lips exactly what it was which occurred between you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't tell you a word."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's all right. It was only my whim to see if you would give up a
+      secret as easily as you expected me to give up my secret of the new
+      catacomb. You wouldn't, and I didn't expect you to. But why should you
+      expect otherwise of me? There's St. John's clock striking ten. It is quite
+      time that I was going home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, wait a bit, Burger," said Kennedy; "this is really a ridiculous
+      caprice of yours to wish to know about an old love affair which has burned
+      out months ago. You know we look upon a man who kisses and tells as the
+      greatest coward and villain possible."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly," said the German, gathering up his basket of curiosities,
+      "when he tells anything about a girl which is previously unknown, he must
+      be so. But in this case, as you must be aware, it was a public matter
+      which was the common talk of Rome, so that you are not really doing Miss
+      Mary Saunderson any injury by discussing her case with me. But still, I
+      respect your scruples; and so good night!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wait a bit, Burger," said Kennedy, laying his hand upon the other's arm;
+      "I am very keen upon this catacomb business, and I can't let it drop quite
+      so easily. Would you mind asking me something else in return&mdash;something
+      not quite so eccentric this time?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no; you have refused, and there is an end of it," said Burger, with
+      his basket on his arm. "No doubt you are quite right not to answer, and no
+      doubt I am quite right also&mdash;and so again, my dear Kennedy, good
+      night!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman watched Burger cross the room, and he had his hand on the
+      handle of the door before his host sprang up with the air of a man who is
+      making the best of that which cannot be helped. "Hold on, old fellow,"
+      said he. "I think you are behaving in a most ridiculous fashion, but
+      still, if this is your condition, I suppose that I must submit to it. I
+      hate saying anything about a girl, but, as you say, it is all over Rome,
+      and I don't suppose I can tell you anything which you do not know already.
+      What was it you wanted to know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German came back to the stove, and, laying down his basket, he sank
+      into his chair once more. "May I have another cigar?" said he. "Thank you
+      very much! I never smoke when I work, but I enjoy a chat much more when I
+      am under the influence of tobacco. Now, as regards this young lady, with
+      whom you had this little adventure. What in the world has become of her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is at home with her own people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, really&mdash;in England?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What part of England&mdash;London?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Twickenham."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must excuse my curiosity, my dear Kennedy, and you must put it down
+      to my ignorance of the world. No doubt it is quite a simple thing to
+      persuade a young lady to go off with you for three weeks or so, and then
+      to hand her over to her own family at&mdash;what did you call the place?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twickenham."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite so&mdash;at Twickenham. But it is something so entirely outside my
+      own experience that I cannot even imagine how you set about it. For
+      example, if you had loved this girl your love could hardly disappear in
+      three weeks, so I presume that you could not have loved her at all. But if
+      you did not love her why should you make this great scandal which has
+      damaged you and ruined her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy looked moodily into the red eye of the stove. "That's a logical
+      way of looking at it, certainly," said he. "Love is a big word, and it
+      represents a good many different shades of feeling. I liked her, and&mdash;
+      well, you say you've seen her&mdash;you know how charming she can look.
+      But still I am willing to admit, looking back, that I could never have
+      really loved her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then, my dear Kennedy, why did you do it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The adventure of the thing had a great deal to do with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! You are so fond of adventures!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where would the variety of life be without them? It was for an adventure
+      that I first began to pay my attentions to her. I've chased a good deal of
+      game in my time, but there's no chase like that of a pretty woman. There
+      was the piquant difficulty of it also, for, as she was the companion of
+      Lady Emily Rood it was almost impossible to see her alone. On the top of
+      all the other obstacles which attracted me, I learned from her own lips
+      very early in the proceedings that she was engaged."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mein Gott! To whom?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She mentioned no names."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not think that anyone knows that. So that made the adventure more
+      alluring, did it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it did certainly give a spice to it. Don't you think so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I tell you that I am very ignorant about these things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear fellow, you can remember that the apple you stole from your
+      neighbour's tree was always sweeter than that which fell from your own.
+      And then I found that she cared for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What&mdash;at once?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, no, it took about three months of sapping and mining. But at last I
+      won her over. She understood that my judicial separation from my wife made
+      it impossible for me to do the right thing by her&mdash;but she came all
+      the same, and we had a delightful time, as long as it lasted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how about the other man?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose it is the survival of the
+      fittest," said he. "If he had been the better man she would not have
+      deserted him. Let's drop the subject, for I have had enough of it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only one other thing. How did you get rid of her in three weeks?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we had both cooled down a bit, you understand. She absolutely
+      refused, under any circumstances, to come back to face the people she had
+      known in Rome. Now, of course, Rome is necessary to me, and I was already
+      pining to be back at my work&mdash;so there was one obvious cause of
+      separation. Then, again, her old father turned up at the hotel in London,
+      and there was a scene, and the whole thing became so unpleasant that
+      really&mdash;though I missed her dreadfully at first&mdash;I was very glad
+      to slip out of it. Now, I rely upon you not to repeat anything of what I
+      have said."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Kennedy, I should not dream of repeating it. But all that you say
+      interests me very much, for it gives me an insight into your way of
+      looking at things, which is entirely different from mine, for I have seen
+      so little of life. And now you want to know about my new catacomb. There's
+      no use my trying to describe it, for you would never find it by that.
+      There is only one thing, and that is for me to take you there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That would be splendid."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When would you like to come?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The sooner the better. I am all impatience to see it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it is a beautiful night&mdash;though a trifle cold. Suppose we
+      start in an hour. We must be very careful to keep the matter to ourselves.
+      If anyone saw us hunting in couples they would suspect that there was
+      something going on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We can't be too cautious," said Kennedy. "Is it far?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some miles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not too far to walk?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, no, we could walk there easily."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We had better do so, then. A cabman's suspicions would be aroused if he
+      dropped us both at some lonely spot in the dead of the night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite so. I think it would be best for us to meet at the Gate of the
+      Appian Way at midnight. I must go back to my lodgings for the matches and
+      candles and things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All right, Burger! I think it is very kind of you to let me into this
+      secret, and I promise you that I will write nothing about it until you
+      have published your report. Good-bye for the present! You will find me at
+      the Gate at twelve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cold, clear air was filled with the musical chimes from that city of
+      clocks as Burger, wrapped in an Italian overcoat, with a lantern hanging
+      from his hand, walked up to the rendezvous. Kennedy stepped out of the
+      shadow to meet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are ardent in work as well as in love!" said the German, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope you left no clue as to where we were going."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not such a fool! By Jove, I am chilled to the bone! Come on, Burger, let
+      us warm ourselves by a spurt of hard walking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their footsteps sounded loud and crisp upon the rough stone paving of the
+      disappointing road which is all that is left of the most famous highway of
+      the world. A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop, and a few carts
+      of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only things which they met.
+      They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up through the darkness upon
+      each side of them, until they had come as far as the Catacombs of St.
+      Calixtus, and saw against a rising moon the great circular bastion of
+      Cecilia Metella in front of them. Then Burger stopped with his hand to his
+      side. "Your legs are longer than mine, and you are more accustomed to
+      walking," said he, laughing. "I think that the place where we turn off is
+      somewhere here. Yes, this is it, round the corner of the trattoria. Now,
+      it is a very narrow path, so perhaps I had better go in front, and you can
+      follow." He had lit his lantern, and by its light they were enabled to
+      follow a narrow and devious track which wound across the marshes of the
+      Campagna. The great Aqueduct of old Rome lay like a monstrous caterpillar
+      across the moonlit landscape, and their road led them under one of its
+      huge arches, and past the circle of crumbling bricks which marks the old
+      arena. At last Burger stopped at a solitary wooden cowhouse, and he drew a
+      key from his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Surely your catacomb is not inside a house!" cried Kennedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The entrance to it is. That is just the safeguard which we have against
+      anyone else discovering it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does the proprietor know of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not he. He had found one or two objects which made me almost certain that
+      his house was built on the entrance to such a place. So I rented it from
+      him, and did my excavations for myself. Come in, and shut the door behind
+      you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long, empty building, with the mangers of the cows along one
+      wall. Burger put his lantern down on the ground, and shaded its light in
+      all directions save one by draping his overcoat round it. "It might excite
+      remark if anyone saw a light in this lonely place," said he. "Just help me
+      to move this boarding." The flooring was loose in the corner, and plank by
+      plank the two savants raised it and leaned it against the wall. Below
+      there was a square aperture and a stair of old stone steps which led away
+      down into the bowels of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Be careful!" cried Burger, as Kennedy, in his impatience, hurried down
+      them. "It is a perfect rabbits'-warren below, and if you were once to lose
+      your way there, the chances would be a hundred to one against your ever
+      coming out again. Wait until I bring the light."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you find your own way if it is so complicated?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had some very narrow escapes at first, but I have gradually learned to
+      go about. There is a certain system to it, but it is one which a lost man,
+      if he were in the dark, could not possibly find out. Even now I always
+      spin out a ball of string behind me when I am going far into the catacomb.
+      You can see for yourself that it is difficult, but every one of these
+      passages divides and subdivides a dozen times before you go a hundred
+      yards." They had descended some twenty feet from the level of the byre,
+      and they were standing now in a square chamber cut out of the soft tufa.
+      The lantern cast a flickering light, bright below and dim above, over the
+      cracked brown walls. In every direction were the black openings of
+      passages which radiated from this common centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I want you to follow me closely, my friend," said Burger. "Do not loiter
+      to look at anything upon the way, for the place to which I will take you
+      contains all that you can see, and more. It will save time for us to go
+      there direct." He led the way down one of the corridors, and the
+      Englishman followed closely at his heels. Every now and then the passage
+      bifurcated, but Burger was evidently following some secret marks of his
+      own, for he neither stopped nor hesitated. Everywhere along the walls,
+      packed like the berths upon an emigrant ship, lay the Christians of old
+      Rome. The yellow light flickered over the shrivelled features of the
+      mummies, and gleamed upon rounded skulls and long, white arm-bones crossed
+      over fleshless chests. And everywhere as he passed Kennedy looked with
+      wistful eyes upon inscriptions, funeral vessels, pictures, vestments,
+      utensils, all lying as pious hands had placed them so many centuries ago.
+      It was apparent to him, even in those hurried, passing glances, that this
+      was the earliest and finest of the catacombs, containing such a storehouse
+      of Roman remains as had never before come at one time under the
+      observation of the student. "What would happen if the light went out?" he
+      asked, as they hurried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have a spare candle and a box of matches in my pocket. By the way,
+      Kennedy, have you any matches?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; you had better give me some."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, that is all right. There is no chance of our separating."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How far are we going? It seems to me that we have walked at least a
+      quarter of a mile."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "More than that, I think. There is really no limit to the tombs&mdash;at
+      least, I have never been able to find any. This is a very difficult place,
+      so I think that I will use our ball of string." He fastened one end of it
+      to a projecting stone and he carried the coil in the breast of his coat,
+      paying it out as he advanced. Kennedy saw that it was no unnecessary
+      precaution, for the passages had become more complexed and tortuous than
+      ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors. But these all
+      ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of tufa topped
+      with a slab of marble at one end of it. "By Jove!" cried Kennedy in an
+      ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble. "It is a Christian
+      altar&mdash;probably the first one in existence. Here is the little
+      consecration cross cut upon the corner of it. No doubt this circular space
+      was used as a church."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Precisely," said Burger. "If I had more time I should like to show you
+      all the bodies which are buried in these niches upon the walls, for they
+      are the early popes and bishops of the Church, with their mitres, their
+      croziers, and full canonicals. Go over to that one and look at it!"
+      Kennedy went across, and stared at the ghastly head which lay loosely on
+      the shredded and mouldering mitre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is most interesting," said he, and his voice seemed to boom against
+      the concave vault. "As far as my experience goes, it is unique. Bring the
+      lantern over, Burger, for I want to see them all." But the German had
+      strolled away, and was standing in the middle of a yellow circle of light
+      at the other side of the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know how many wrong turnings there are between this and the
+      stairs?" he asked. "There are over two thousand. No doubt it was one of
+      the means of protection which the Christians adopted. The odds are two
+      thousand to one against a man getting out, even if he had a light; but if
+      he were in the dark it would, of course, be far more difficult."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I should think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the darkness is something dreadful. I tried it once for an
+      experiment. Let us try it again!" He stooped to the lantern, and in an
+      instant it was as if an invisible hand was squeezed tightly over each of
+      Kennedy's eyes. Never had he known what such darkness was. It seemed to
+      press upon him and to smother him. It was a solid obstacle against which
+      the body shrank from advancing. He put his hands out to push it back from
+      him. "That will do, Burger," said he, "let's have the light again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his companion began to laugh, and in that circular room the sound
+      seemed to come from every side at once. "You seem uneasy, friend Kennedy,"
+      said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go on, man, light the candle!" said Kennedy, impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's very strange, Kennedy, but I could not in the least tell by the
+      sound in which direction you stand. Could you tell where I am?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; you seem to be on every side of me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If it were not for this string which I hold in my hand I should not have
+      a notion which way to go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say not. Strike a light, man, and have an end of this nonsense."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Kennedy, there are two things which I understand that you are very
+      fond of. The one is adventure, and the other is an obstacle to surmount.
+      The adventure must be the finding of your way out of this catacomb. The
+      obstacle will be the darkness and the two thousand wrong turns which make
+      the way a little difficult to find. But you need not hurry, for you have
+      plenty of time, and when you halt for a rest now and then, I should like
+      you just to think of Miss Mary Saunderson, and whether you treated her
+      quite fairly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You devil, what do you mean?" roared Kennedy. He was running about in
+      little circles and clasping at the solid blackness with both hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good-bye," said the mocking voice, and it was already at some distance.
+      "I really do not think, Kennedy, even by your own showing that you did the
+      right thing by that girl. There was only one little thing which you
+      appeared not to know, and I can supply it. Miss Saunderson was engaged to
+      a poor, ungainly devil of a student, and his name was Julius Burger."
+      There was a rustle somewhere&mdash;the vague sound of a foot striking a
+      stone&mdash;and then there fell silence upon that old Christian church&mdash;a
+      stagnant heavy silence which closed round Kennedy and shut him in like
+      water round a drowning man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some two months afterwards the following paragraph made the round of the
+      European Press:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   One of the most interesting discoveries of recent years is
+   that of the new catacomb in Rome, which lies some distance to the
+   east of the well-known vaults of St. Calixtus.  The finding of this
+   important burial-place, which is exceedingly rich in most
+   interesting early Christian remains, is due to the energy and
+   sagacity of Dr. Julius Burger, the young German specialist, who is
+   rapidly taking the first place as an authority upon ancient Rome.
+   Although the first to publish his discovery, it appears that a less
+   fortunate adventurer had anticipated Dr. Burger.  Some months ago
+   Mr. Kennedy, the well-known English student, disappeared suddenly
+   from his rooms in the "Corso", and it was conjectured that his
+   association with a recent scandal had driven him to leave Rome.  It
+   appears now that he had in reality fallen a victim to that fervid
+   love of archaeology which had raised him to a distinguished place
+   among living scholars.  His body was discovered in the heart of the
+   new catacomb, and it was evident from the condition of his feet and
+   boots that he had tramped for days through the tortuous corridors
+   which make these subterranean tombs so dangerous to explorers.  The
+   deceased gentleman had, with inexplicable rashness, made his way
+   into this labyrinth without, as far as can be discovered, taking
+   with him either candles or matches, so that his sad fate was the
+   natural result of his own temerity.  What makes the matter more
+   painful is that Dr. Julius Burger was an intimate friend of the
+   deceased.  His joy at the extraordinary find which he has been so
+   fortunate as to make has been greatly marred by the terrible fate
+   of his comrade and fellow-worker.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was in the days when the tide of Mahdism, which had swept in such a
+      flood from the great Lakes and Darfur to the confines of Egypt, had at
+      last come to its full, and even begun, as some hoped, to show signs of a
+      turn. At its outset it had been terrible. It had engulfed Hicks's army,
+      swept over Gordon and Khartoum, rolled behind the British forces as they
+      retired down the river, and finally cast up a spray of raiding parties as
+      far north as Assouan. Then it found other channels to east and west, to
+      Central Africa and to Abyssinia, and retired a little on the side of
+      Egypt. For ten years there ensued a lull, during which the frontier
+      garrisons looked out upon those distant blue hills of Dongola. Behind the
+      violet mists which draped them lay a land of blood and horror. From time
+      to time some adventurer went south towards those haze-girt mountains,
+      tempted by stories of gum and ivory, but none ever returned. Once a
+      mutilated Egyptian and once a Greek woman, mad with thirst and fear, made
+      their way to the lines. They were the only exports of that country of
+      darkness. Sometimes the sunset would turn those distant mists into a bank
+      of crimson, and the dark mountains would rise from that sinister reek like
+      islands in a sea of blood. It seemed a grim symbol in the southern heaven
+      when seen from the fort-capped hills by Wady Halfa. Ten years of lust in
+      Khartoum, ten years of silent work in Cairo, and then all was ready, and
+      it was time for civilisation to take a trip south once more, travelling as
+      her wont is in an armoured train. Everything was ready, down to the last
+      pack-saddle of the last camel, and yet no one suspected it, for an
+      unconstitutional Government has its advantage. A great administrator had
+      argued, and managed, and cajoled; a great soldier had organised and
+      planned, and made piastres do the work of pounds. And then one night these
+      two master spirits met and clasped hands, and the soldier vanished away
+      upon some business of his own. And just at that very time, Bimbashi Hilary
+      Joyce, seconded from the Royal Mallow Fusiliers, and temporarily attached
+      to the Ninth Soudanese, made his first appearance in Cairo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Napoleon had said, and Hilary Joyce had noted, that great reputations are
+      only to be made in the East. Here he was in the East with four tin cases
+      of baggage, a Wilkinson sword, a Bond's slug-throwing pistol, and a copy
+      of "Green's Introduction to the Study of Arabic." With such a start, and
+      the blood of youth running hot in his veins, everything seemed easy. He
+      was a little frightened of the general; he had heard stories of his
+      sternness to young officers, but with tact and suavity he hoped for the
+      best. So, leaving his effects at "Shepherd's Hotel," he reported himself
+      at headquarters. It was not the general, but the head of the Intelligence
+      Department who received him, the chief being still absent upon that
+      business which had called him. Hilary Joyce found himself in the presence
+      of a short, thick-set officer, with a gentle voice and a placid expression
+      which covered a remarkably acute and energetic spirit. With that quiet
+      smile and guileless manner he had undercut and outwitted the most cunning
+      of Orientals. He stood, a cigarette between his fingers, looking at the
+      newcomer. "I heard that you had come. Sorry the chief isn't here to see
+      you. Gone up to the frontier, you know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My regiment is at Wady Halfa. I suppose, sir, that I should report myself
+      there at once?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; I was to give you your orders." He led the way to a map upon the
+      wall, and pointed with the end of his cigarette. "You see this place. It's
+      the Oasis of Kurkur&mdash;a little quiet, I am afraid, but excellent air.
+      You are to get out there as quick as possible. You'll find a company of
+      the Ninth, and half a squadron of cavalry. You will be in command."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hilary Joyce looked at the name, printed at the intersection of two black
+      lines without another dot upon the map for several inches around it. "A
+      village, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, a well. Not very good water, I'm afraid, but you soon get accustomed
+      to natron. It's an important post, as being at the junction of two caravan
+      routes. All routes are closed now, of course, but still you never know who
+      <i>might</i> come along them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are there, I presume, to prevent raiding?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, between you and me, there's really nothing to raid. You are there
+      to intercept messengers. They must call at the wells. Of course you have
+      only just come out, but you probably understand already enough about the
+      conditions of this country to know that there is a great deal of
+      disaffection about, and that the Khalifa is likely to try and keep in
+      touch with his adherents. Then, again, Senoussi lives up that way"&mdash;he
+      waved his cigarette to the westward&mdash;"the Khalifa might send a
+      message to him along that route. Anyhow, your duty is to arrest everyone
+      coming along, and get some account of him before you let him go. You don't
+      talk Arabic, I suppose?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am learning, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, well, you'll have time enough for study there. And you'll have a
+      native officer, Ali something or other, who speaks English, and can
+      interpret for you. Well, good-bye&mdash;I'll tell the chief that you
+      reported yourself. Get on to your post now as quickly as you can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Railway to Baliani, the post-boat to Assouan, and then two days on a camel
+      in the Libyan desert, with an Ababdeh guide, and three baggage-camels to
+      tie one down to their own exasperating pace. However, even two and a half
+      miles an hour mount up in time, and at last, on the third evening, from
+      the blackened slag-heap of a hill which is called the Jebel Kurkur, Hilary
+      Joyce looked down upon a distant clump of palms, and thought that this
+      cool patch of green in the midst of the merciless blacks and yellows was
+      the fairest colour effect that he had ever seen. An hour later he had
+      ridden into the little camp, the guard had turned out to salute him, his
+      native subordinate had greeted him in excellent English, and he had fairly
+      entered into his own. It was not an exhilarating place for a lengthy
+      residence. There was one large, bowl-shaped, grassy depression sloping
+      down to the three pits of brown and brackish water. There was the grove of
+      palm trees also, beautiful to look upon, but exasperating in view of the
+      fact that Nature has provided her least shady trees on the very spot where
+      shade is needed most. A single wide-spread acacia did something to restore
+      the balance. Here Hilary Joyce slumbered in the heat, and in the cool he
+      inspected his square-shouldered, spindle-shanked Soudanese, with their
+      cheery black faces and their funny little pork-pie forage caps. Joyce was
+      a martinet at drill, and the blacks loved being drilled, so the Bimbashi
+      was soon popular among them. But one day was exactly like another. The
+      weather, the view, the employment, the food&mdash;everything was the same.
+      At the end of three weeks he felt that he had been there for interminable
+      years. And then at last there came something to break the monotony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, as the sun was sinking, Hilary Joyce rode slowly down the old
+      caravan road. It had a fascination for him, this narrow track, winding
+      among the boulders and curving up the nullahs, for he remembered how in
+      the map it had gone on and on, stretching away into the unknown heart of
+      Africa. The countless pads of innumerable camels through many centuries
+      had beaten it smooth, so that now, unused and deserted, it still wound
+      away, the strangest of roads, a foot broad, and perhaps two thousand miles
+      in length. Joyce wondered as he rode how long it was since any traveller
+      had journeyed up it from the south, and then he raised his eyes, and there
+      was a man coming along the path. For an instant Joyce thought that it
+      might be one of his own men, but a second glance assured him that this
+      could not be so. The stranger was dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab,
+      and not in the close-fitting khaki of a soldier. He was very tall, and a
+      high turban made him seem gigantic. He strode swiftly along, with head
+      erect, and the bearing of a man who knows no fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who could he be, this formidable giant coming out of the unknown? The
+      precursor possibly of a horde of savage spearmen. And where could he have
+      walked from? The nearest well was a long hundred miles down the track. At
+      any rate the frontier post of Kurkur could not afford to receive casual
+      visitors. Hilary Joyce whisked round his horse, galloped into camp, and
+      gave the alarm. Then, with twenty horsemen at his back, he rode out again
+      to reconnoitre. The man was still coming on in spite of these hostile
+      preparations. For an instant he hesitated when first he saw the cavalry,
+      but escape was out of the question, and he advanced with the air of one
+      who makes the best of a bad job. He made no resistance, and said nothing
+      when the hands of two troopers clutched at his shoulders, but walked
+      quietly between their horses into camp. Shortly afterwards the patrol came
+      in again. There were no signs of any dervishes. The man was alone. A
+      splendid trotting camel had been found lying dead a little way down the
+      track. The mystery of the stranger's arrival was explained. But why, and
+      whence, and whither?&mdash;these were questions for which a zealous
+      officer must find an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hilary Joyce was disappointed that there were no dervishes. It would have
+      been a great start for him in the Egyptian army had he fought a little
+      action on his own account. But even as it was, he had a rare chance of
+      impressing the authorities. He would love to show his capacity to the head
+      of the Intelligence, and even more to that grim Chief who never forgot
+      what was smart, or forgave what was slack. The prisoner's dress and
+      bearing showed that he was of importance. Mean men do not ride pure-bred
+      trotting camels. Joyce sponged his head with cold water, drank a cup of
+      strong coffee, put on an imposing official tarboosh instead of his
+      sun-helmet, and formed himself into a court of inquiry and judgment under
+      the acacia tree. He would have liked his people to have seen him now, with
+      his two black orderlies in waiting, and his Egyptian native officer at his
+      side. He sat behind a camp-table, and the prisoner, strongly guarded, was
+      led up to him. The man was a handsome fellow, with bold grey eyes and a
+      long black beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why!" cried Joyce, "the rascal is making faces at me." A curious
+      contraction had passed over the man's features, but so swiftly that it
+      might have been a nervous twitch. He was now a model of Oriental gravity.
+      "Ask him who he is, and what he wants?" The native officer did so, but the
+      stranger made no reply, save that the same sharp spasm passed once more
+      over his face. "Well, I'm blessed!" cried Hilary Joyce. "Of all the
+      impudent scoundrels! He keeps on winking at me. Who are you, you rascal?
+      Give an account of yourself! D'ye hear?" But the tall Arab was as
+      impervious to English as to Arabic. The Egyptian tried again and again.
+      The prisoner looked at Joyce with his inscrutable eyes, and occasionally
+      twitched his face at him, but never opened his mouth. The Bimbashi
+      scratched his head in bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Mahomet Ali, we've got to get some sense out of this fellow.
+      You say there are no papers on him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir; we found no papers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No clue of any kind?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has come far, sir. A trotting camel does not die easily. He has come
+      from Dongola, at least."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we must get him to talk."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is possible that he is deaf and dumb."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not he. I never saw a man look more all there in my life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You might send him across to Assouan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And give someone else the credit? No, thank you. This is my bird. But how
+      are we going to get him to find his tongue?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Egyptian's dark eyes skirted the encampment and rested on the cook's
+      fire. "Perhaps," said he, "if the Bimbashi thought fit&mdash;" He looked
+      at the prisoner and then at the burning wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no; it wouldn't do. No, by Jove, that's going too far."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A very little might do it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no. It's all very well here, but it would sound just awful if ever it
+      got as far as Fleet Street. But, I say," he whispered, "we might frighten
+      him a bit. There's no harm in that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell them to undo the man's galabeeah. Order them to put a horseshoe in
+      the fire and make it red-hot." The prisoner watched the proceedings with
+      an air which had more of amusement than of uneasiness. He never winced as
+      the black sergeant approached with the glowing shoe held upon two
+      bayonets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you speak now?" asked the Bimbashi, savagely. The prisoner smiled
+      gently and stroked his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, chuck the infernal thing away!" cried Joyce, jumping up in a passion.
+      "There's no use trying to bluff the fellow. He knows we won't do it. But I
+      <i>can</i> and I <i>will</i> flog him, and you can tell him from me that
+      if he hasn't found his tongue by to-morrow morning I'll take the skin off
+      his back as sure as my name's Joyce. Have you said all that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you can sleep upon it, you beauty, and a good night's rest may it
+      give you!" He adjourned the Court, and the prisoner, as imperturbable as
+      ever, was led away by the guard to his supper of rice and water. Hilary
+      Joyce was a kind-hearted man, and his own sleep was considerably disturbed
+      by the prospect of the punishment which he must inflict next day. He had
+      hopes that the mere sight of the koorbash and the thongs might prevail
+      over his prisoner's obstinacy. And then, again, he thought how shocking it
+      would be if the man proved to be really dumb after all. The possibility
+      shook him so that he had almost determined by daybreak that he would send
+      the stranger on unhurt to Assouan. And yet what a tame conclusion it would
+      be to the incident! He lay upon his angareeb still debating it when the
+      question suddenly and effectively settled itself. Ali Mahomet rushed into
+      his tent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sir," he cried, "the prisoner is gone!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gone!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir, and your own best riding camel as well. There is a slit cut in
+      the tent, and he got away unseen in the early morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bimbashi acted with all energy. Cavalry rode along every track; scouts
+      examined the soft sand of the wadys for signs of the fugitive, but no
+      trace was discovered. The man had utterly disappeared. With a heavy heart,
+      Hilary Joyce wrote an official report of the matter and forwarded it to
+      Assouan. Five days later there came a curt order from the chief that he
+      should report himself there. He feared the worst from the stern soldier,
+      who spared others as little as he spared himself. And his worst
+      forebodings were realised. Travel-stained and weary, he reported himself
+      one night at the general's quarters. Behind a table piled with papers and
+      strewn with maps the famous soldier and his Chief of Intelligence were
+      deep in plans and figures. Their greeting was a cold one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I understand, Captain Joyce," said the general, "that you have allowed a
+      very important prisoner to slip through your fingers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No doubt. But that will not mend matters. Did you ascertain anything
+      about him before you lost him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How was that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I could get nothing out of him, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you try?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir; I did what I could."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did you do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, sir, I threatened to use physical force."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did he say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He said nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was he like?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A tall man, sir. Rather a desperate character, I should think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Any way by which we could identify him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A long black beard, sir. Grey eyes. And a nervous way of twitching his
+      face."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Captain Joyce," said the general, in his stern, inflexible voice,
+      "I cannot congratulate you upon your first exploit in the Egyptian army.
+      You are aware that every English officer in this force is a picked man. I
+      have the whole British army from which to draw. It is necessary,
+      therefore, that I should insist upon the very highest efficiency. It would
+      be unfair upon the others to pass over any obvious want of zeal or
+      intelligence. You are seconded from the Royal Mallows, I understand?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no doubt that your colonel will be glad to see you fulfilling your
+      regimental duties again." Hilary Joyce's heart was too heavy for words. He
+      was silent. "I will let you know my final decision to-morrow morning."
+      Joyce saluted and turned upon his heel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can sleep upon that, you beauty, and a good night's rest may it give
+      you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joyce turned in bewilderment. Where had those words been used before? Who
+      was it who had used them? The general was standing erect. Both he and the
+      Chief of the Intelligence were laughing. Joyce stared at the tall figure,
+      the erect bearing, the inscrutable grey eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good Lord!" he gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, well, Captain Joyce, we are quits!" said the general, holding out
+      his hand. "You gave me a bad ten minutes with that infernal red-hot
+      horseshoe of yours. I've done as much for you. I don't think we can spare
+      you for the Royal Mallows just yet awhile."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, sir; but&mdash;!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The fewer questions the better, perhaps. But of course it must seem
+      rather amazing. I had a little private business with the Kabbabish. It
+      must be done in person. I did it, and came to your post in my return. I
+      kept on winking at you as a sign that I wanted a word with you alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, yes. I begin to understand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I couldn't give it away before all those blacks, or where should I have
+      been the next time I used my false beard and Arab dress? You put me in a
+      very awkward position. But at last I had a word alone with your Egyptian
+      officer, who managed my escape all right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He! Mahomet Ali!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ordered him to say nothing. I had a score to settle with you. But we
+      dine at eight, Captain Joyce. We live plainly here, but I think I can do
+      you a little better than you did me at Kurkur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There are many folk who knew Alphonse Lacour in his old age. From about
+      the time of the Revolution of '48 until he died in the second year of the
+      Crimean War he was always to be found in the same corner of the Cafe de
+      Provence, at the end of the Rue St. Honore, coming down about nine in the
+      evening, and going when he could find no one to talk with. It took some
+      self-restraint to listen to the old diplomatist, for his stories were
+      beyond all belief, and yet he was quick at detecting the shadow of a smile
+      or the slightest little raising of the eyebrows. Then his huge, rounded
+      back would straighten itself, his bulldog chin would project, and his r's
+      would burr like a kettledrum. When he got as far as, "Ah, monsieur
+      r-r-r-rit!" or "Vous ne me cr-r-r-royez pas donc!" it was quite time to
+      remember that you had a ticket for the opera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was his story of Talleyrand and the five oyster-shells, and there
+      was his utterly absurd account of Napoleon's second visit to Ajaccio. Then
+      there was that most circumstantial romance (which he never ventured upon
+      until his second bottle had been uncorked) of the Emperor's escape from
+      St. Helena&mdash;how he lived for a whole year in Philadelphia, while
+      Count Herbert de Bertrand, who was his living image, personated him at
+      Longwood. But of all his stories there was none which was more notorious
+      than that of the Koran and the Foreign Office messenger. And yet when
+      Monsieur Otto's memoirs were written it was found that there really was
+      some foundation for old Lacour's incredible statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must know, monsieur," he would say, "that I left Egypt after Kleber's
+      assassination. I would gladly have stayed on, for I was engaged in a
+      translation of the Koran, and between ourselves I had thoughts at the time
+      of embracing Mahometanism, for I was deeply struck by the wisdom of their
+      views about marriage. They had made an incredible mistake, however, upon
+      the subject of wine, and this was what the Mufti who attempted to convert
+      me could never get over. Then when old Kleber died and Menou came to the
+      top, I felt that it was time for me to go. It is not for me to speak of my
+      own capacities, monsieur, but you will readily understand that the man
+      does not care to be ridden by the mule. I carried my Koran and my papers
+      to London, where Monsieur Otto had been sent by the First Consul to
+      arrange a treaty of peace; for both nations were very weary of the war,
+      which had already lasted ten years. Here I was most useful to Monsieur
+      Otto on account of my knowledge of the English tongue, and also, if I may
+      say so, on account of my natural capacity. They were happy days during
+      which I lived in the square of Bloomsbury. The climate of monsieur's
+      country is, it must be confessed, detestable. But then what would you
+      have? Flowers grow best in the rain. One has but to point to monsieur's
+      fellow country-women to prove it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Monsieur Otto, our Ambassador, was kept terribly busy over that
+      treaty, and all of his staff were worked to death. We had not Pitt to deal
+      with, which was, perhaps, as well for us. He was a terrible man that Pitt,
+      and wherever half a dozen enemies of France were plotting together, there
+      was his sharp-pointed nose right in the middle of them. The nation,
+      however, had been thoughtful enough to put him out of office, and we had
+      to do with Monsieur Addington. But Milord Hawkesbury was the Foreign
+      Minister, and it was with him that we were obliged to do our bargaining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can understand that it was no child's play. After ten years of war
+      each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the other,
+      or to the other's allies. What was to be given back, and what was to be
+      kept? Is this island worth that peninsula? If we do this at Venice, will
+      you do that at Sierra Leone? If we give up Egypt to the Sultan, will you
+      restore the Cape of Good Hope, which you have taken from our allies the
+      Dutch? So we wrangled and wrestled, and I have seen Monsieur Otto come
+      back to the Embassy so exhausted that his secretary and I had to help him
+      from his carriage to his sofa. But at last things adjusted themselves, and
+      the night came round when the treaty was to be finally signed. Now, you
+      must know that the one great card which we held, and which we played,
+      played, played at every point of the game, was that we had Egypt. The
+      English were very nervous about our being there. It gave us a foot at each
+      end of the Mediterranean, you see. And they were not sure that that
+      wonderful little Napoleon of ours might not make it the base of an advance
+      against India. So whenever Lord Hawkesbury proposed to retain anything, we
+      had only to reply, 'In <i>that</i> case, of course, we cannot consent to
+      evacuate Egypt,' and in this way we quickly brought him to reason. It was
+      by the help of Egypt that we gained terms which were remarkably
+      favourable, and especially that we caused the English to consent to give
+      up the Cape of Good Hope. We did not wish your people, monsieur, to have
+      any foothold in South Africa, for history has taught us that the British
+      foothold of one half-century is the British Empire of the next. It is not
+      your army or your navy against which we have to guard, but it is your
+      terrible younger son and your man in search of a career. When we French
+      have a possession across the seas, we like to sit in Paris and to
+      felicitate ourselves upon it. With you it is different. You take your
+      wives and your children, and you run away to see what kind of place this
+      may be, and after that we might as well try to take that old Square of
+      Bloomsbury away from you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it was upon the first of October that the treaty was finally to be
+      signed. In the morning I was congratulating Monsieur Otto upon the happy
+      conclusion of his labours. He was a little pale shrimp of a man, very
+      quick and nervous, and he was so delighted now at his own success that he
+      could not sit still, but ran about the room chattering and laughing, while
+      I sat on a cushion in the corner, as I had learned to do in the East.
+      Suddenly, in came a messenger with a letter which had been forwarded from
+      Paris. Monsieur Otto cast his eye upon it, and then, without a word, his
+      knees gave way, and he fell senseless upon the floor. I ran to him, as did
+      the courier, and between us we carried him to the sofa. He might have been
+      dead from his appearance, but I could still feel his heart thrilling
+      beneath my palm. 'What is this, then?' I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I do not know,' answered the messenger. 'Monsieur Talleyrand told me to
+      hurry as never man hurried before, and to put this letter into the hands
+      of Monsieur Otto. I was in Paris at midday yesterday.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know that I am to blame, but I could not help glancing at the letter,
+      picking it out of the senseless hand of Monsieur Otto. My God! the
+      thunderbolt that it was! I did not faint, but I sat down beside my chief
+      and I burst into tears. It was but a few words, but they told us that
+      Egypt had been evacuated by our troops a month before. All our treaty was
+      undone then, and the one consideration which had induced our enemies to
+      give us good terms had vanished. In twelve hours it would not have
+      mattered. But now the treaty was not yet signed. We should have to give up
+      the Cape. We should have to let England have Malta. Now that Egypt was
+      gone we had nothing left to offer in exchange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But we are not so easily beaten, we Frenchmen. You English misjudge us
+      when you think that because we show emotions which you conceal, that we
+      are therefore of a weak and womanly nature. You cannot read your histories
+      and believe that. Monsieur Otto recovered his senses presently, and we
+      took counsel what we should do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It is useless to go on, Alphonse,' said he. 'This Englishman will laugh
+      at me when I ask him to sign.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Courage!' I cried; and then a sudden thought coming into my head&mdash;'How
+      do we know that the English will have news of this? Perhaps they may sign
+      the treaty before they know of it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Monsieur Otto sprang from the sofa and flung himself into my arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Alphonse,' he cried, 'you have saved me! Why should they know about it?
+      Our news has come from Toulon to Paris, and thence straight to London.
+      Theirs will come by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar. At this moment
+      it is unlikely that anyone in Paris knows of it, save only Talleyrand and
+      the First Consul. If we keep our secret, we may still get our treaty
+      signed.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! monsieur, you can imagine the horrible uncertainty in which we spent
+      the day. Never, never shall I forget those slow hours during which we sat
+      together, starting at every distant shout, lest it should be the first
+      sign of the rejoicing which this news would cause in London. Monsieur Otto
+      passed from youth to age in a day. As for me, I find it easier to go out
+      and meet danger than to wait for it. I set forth, therefore, towards
+      evening. I wandered here, and wandered there. I was in the fencing-rooms
+      of Monsieur Angelo, and in the salon-de-boxe of Monsieur Jackson, and in
+      the club of Brooks, and in the lobby of the Chamber of Deputies, but
+      nowhere did I hear any news. Still, it was possible that Milord Hawkesbury
+      had received it himself just as we had. He lived in Harley Street, and
+      there it was that the treaty was to be finally signed that night at eight.
+      I entreated Monsieur Otto to drink two glasses of Burgundy before he went,
+      for I feared lest his haggard face and trembling hands should rouse
+      suspicion in the English minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we went round together in one of the Embassy's carriages about
+      half-past seven. Monsieur Otto went in alone; but presently, on excuse of
+      getting his portfolio, he came out again, with his cheeks flushed with
+      joy, to tell me that all was well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'He knows nothing,' he whispered. 'Ah, if the next half-hour were over!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Give me a sign when it is settled,' said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'For what reason?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Because until then no messenger shall interrupt you. I give you my
+      promise&mdash;I, Alphonse Lacour.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He clasped my hand in both of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I shall make an excuse to move one of the candles on to the table in the
+      window,' said he, and hurried into the house, whilst I was left waiting
+      beside the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, if we could but secure ourselves from interruption for a single
+      half-hour the day would be our own. I had hardly begun to form my plans
+      when I saw the lights of a carriage coming swiftly from the direction of
+      Oxford Street. Ah! if it should be the messenger! What could I do? I was
+      prepared to kill him&mdash;yes, even to kill him&mdash;rather than at this
+      last moment allow our work to be undone. Thousands die to make a glorious
+      war. Why should not one die to make a glorious peace? What though they
+      hurried me to the scaffold? I should have sacrificed myself for my
+      country. I had a little curved Turkish knife strapped to my waist. My hand
+      was on the hilt of it when the carriage which had alarmed me so rattled
+      safely past me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But another might come. I must be prepared. Above all, I must not
+      compromise the Embassy. I ordered our carriage to move on, and I engaged
+      what you call a hackney coach. Then I spoke to the driver, and gave him a
+      guinea. He understood that it was a special service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'You shall have another guinea if you do what you are told,' said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'All right, master,' said he, turning his slow eyes upon me without a
+      trace of excitement or curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "' If I enter your coach with another gentleman, you will drive up and
+      down Harley Street, and take no orders from anyone but me. When I get out,
+      you will carry the other gentleman to Watier's Club, in Bruton Street.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'All right, master,' said he again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I stood outside Milord Hawkesbury's house, and you can think how often
+      my eyes went up to that window in the hope of seeing the candle twinkle in
+      it. Five minutes passed, and another five. Oh, how slowly they crept
+      along! It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a white fog
+      crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the dim
+      oil-lamps. I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my ears
+      were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the rumble of
+      wheels. It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of Harley, even
+      upon a sunny day. The houses are solid and very respectable over yonder,
+      but there is nothing of the feminine about them. It is a city to be
+      inhabited by males. But on that raw night, amid the damp and the fog, with
+      the anxiety gnawing at my heart, it seemed the saddest, weariest spot in
+      the whole wide world. I paced up and down slapping my hands to keep them
+      warm, and still straining my ears. And then suddenly out of the dull hum
+      of the traffic down in Oxford Street I heard a sound detach itself, and
+      grow louder and louder, and clearer and clearer with every instant, until
+      two yellow lights came flashing through the fog, and a light cabriolet
+      whirled up to the door of the Foreign Minister. It had not stopped before
+      a young fellow sprang out of it and hurried to the steps, while the driver
+      turned his horse and rattled off into the fog once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, it is in the moment of action that I am best, monsieur. You, who only
+      see me when I am drinking my wine in the Cafe de Provence, cannot conceive
+      the heights to which I rise. At that moment, when I knew that the fruits
+      of a ten years' war were at stake, I was magnificent. It was the last
+      French campaign and I the general and army in one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Sir," said I, touching him upon the arm, 'are you the messenger for Lord
+      Hawkesbury?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Yes,' said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I have been waiting for you half an hour,' said I. 'You are to follow me
+      at once. He is with the French Ambassador.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I spoke with such assurance that he never hesitated for an instant. When
+      he entered the hackney coach and I followed him in, my heart gave such a
+      thrill of joy that I could hardly keep from shouting aloud. He was a poor
+      little creature, this Foreign Office messenger, not much bigger than
+      Monsieur Otto, and I&mdash;monsieur can see my hands now, and imagine what
+      they were like when I was seven-and-twenty years of age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, now that I had him in my coach, the question was what I should do
+      with him. I did not wish to hurt him if I could help it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'This is a pressing business,' said he. 'I have a despatch which I must
+      deliver instantly.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Our coach had rattled down Harley Street now, in accordance with my
+      instruction, it turned and began to go up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Hullo!' he cried. 'What's this?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'What then? 'I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'We are driving back. Where is Lord Hawkesbury?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'We shall see him presently.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Let me out!' he shouted. 'There's some trickery in this. Coachman, stop
+      the coach! Let me out, I say!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dashed him back into his seat as he tried to turn the handle of the
+      door. He roared for help. I clapped my palm across his mouth. He made his
+      teeth meet through the side of it. I seized his own cravat and bound it
+      over his lips. He still mumbled and gurgled, but the noise was covered by
+      the rattle of our wheels. We were passing the minister's house, and there
+      was no candle in the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The messenger sat quiet for a little, and I could see the glint of his
+      eyes as he stared at me through the gloom. He was partly stunned, I think,
+      by the force with which I had hurled him into his seat. And also he was
+      pondering, perhaps, what he should do next. Presently he got his mouth
+      partly free from the cravat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'You shall have my watch and my purse if you will let me go,' said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Sir,' said I, 'I am as honourable a man as you are yourself.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Who are you, then?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'My name is of no importance.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'What do you want with me?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It is a bet.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'A bet? What d'you mean? Do you understand that I am on the Government
+      service, and that you will see the inside of a gaol for this?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'That is the bet. That is the sport, said I.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'You may find it poor sport before you finish,' he cried. 'What is this
+      insane bet of yours then?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I have bet,' I answered, 'that I will recite a chapter of the Koran to
+      the first gentleman whom I should meet in the street.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not know what made me think of it, save that my translation was
+      always running in my head. He clutched at the door-handle, and again I had
+      to hurl him back into his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'How long will it take?' he gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It depends on the chapter,' I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'A short one, then, and let me go!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'But is it fair?' I argued. 'When I say a chapter, I do not mean the
+      shortest chapter, but rather one which should be of average length.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Help! help! help!' he squealed, and I was compelled again to adjust his
+      cravat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'A little patience,' said I, 'and it will soon be over. I should like to
+      recite the chapter which would be of most interest to yourself. You will
+      confess that I am trying to make things as pleasant as I can for you?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He slipped his mouth free again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Quick, then, quick!' he groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'The Chapter of the Camel?' I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Yes, yes.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Or that of the Fleet Stallion?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Yes, yes. Only proceed!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We had passed the window and there was no candle. I settled down to
+      recite the Chapter of the Stallion to him. Perhaps you do not know your
+      Koran very well, monsieur? Well, I knew it by heart then, as I know it by
+      heart now. The style is a little exasperating for anyone who is in a
+      hurry. But, then, what would you have? The people in the East are never in
+      a hurry, and it was written for them. I repeated it all with the dignity
+      and solemnity which a sacred book demands, and the young Englishman he
+      wriggled and groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'When the horses, standing on three feet and placing the tip of their
+      fourth foot upon the ground, were mustered in front of him in the evening,
+      he said, I have loved the love of earthly good above the remembrance of
+      things on high, and have spent the time in viewing these horses. Bring the
+      horses back to me. And when they were brought back he began to cut off
+      their legs and&mdash;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was at this moment that the young Englishman sprang at me. My God! how
+      little can I remember of the next few minutes! He was a boxer, this shred
+      of a man. He had been trained to strike. I tried to catch him by the
+      hands. Pac, pac, he came upon my nose and upon my eye. I put down my head
+      and thrust at him with it. Pac, he came from below. But ah! I was too much
+      for him. I hurled myself upon him, and he had no place where he could
+      escape from my weight. He fell flat upon the cushions and I seated myself
+      upon him with such conviction that the wind flew from him as from a burst
+      bellows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I searched to see what there was with which I could tie him. I drew
+      the strings from my shoes, and with one I secured his wrists, and with
+      another his ankles. Then I tied the cravat round his mouth again, so that
+      he could only lie and glare at me. When I had done all this, and had
+      stopped the bleeding of my own nose, I looked out of the coach and ah,
+      monsieur, the very first thing which caught my eyes was that candle&mdash;that
+      dear little candle&mdash;glimmering in the window of the minister. Alone,
+      with these two hands, I had retrieved the capitulation of an army and the
+      loss of a province. Yes, monsieur, what Abercrombie and 5,000 men had done
+      upon the beach at Aboukir was undone by me, single-handed, in a hackney
+      coach in Harley Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I had no time to lose, for at any moment Monsieur Otto might be
+      down. I shouted to my driver, gave him his second guinea, and allowed him
+      to proceed to Watier's. For myself, I sprang into our Embassy's carriage,
+      and a moment later the door of the minister opened. He had himself
+      escorted Monsieur Otto downstairs, and now so deep was he in talk that he
+      walked out bareheaded as far as the carriage. As he stood there by the
+      open door, there came the rattle of wheels, and a man rushed down the
+      pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'A despatch of great importance for Milord Hawkesbury!' he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I could see that it was not my messenger, but a second one. Milord
+      Hawkesbury caught the paper from his hand, and read it by the light of the
+      carriage lamp. His face, monsieur, was as white as this plate, before he
+      had finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Monsieur Otto,' he cried, 'we have signed this treaty upon a false
+      understanding. Egypt is in our hands.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'What!' cried Monsieur Otto. 'Impossible!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It is certain. It fell to Abercrombie last month.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'In that case,' said Monsieur Otto, 'it is very fortunate that the treaty
+      is signed.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Very fortunate for you, sir,' cried Milord Hawkesbury, as he turned back
+      to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Next day, monsieur, what they call the Bow Street runners were after me,
+      but they could not run across salt water, and Alphonse Lacour was
+      receiving the congratulations of Monsieur Talleyrand and the First Consul
+      before ever his pursuers had got as far as Dover."
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10446 ***</div>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+THE GREEN FLAG.
+
+ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+THE GREEN FLAG.
+
+CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+
+THE CROXLEY MASTER.
+
+THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR.
+
+THE STRIPED CHEST.
+
+A SHADOW BEFORE.
+
+THE KING OF THE FOXES.
+
+THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS.
+
+THE NEW CATACOMB.
+
+THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE.
+
+A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREEN FLAG
+
+
+When Jack Conolly, of the Irish Shotgun Brigade, the Rory of the Hills
+Inner Circle, and the extreme left wing of the Land League, was
+incontinently shot by Sergeant Murdoch of the constabulary, in a little
+moonlight frolic near Kanturk, his twin-brother Dennis joined the
+British Army. The countryside had become too hot for him; and, as the
+seventy-five shillings were wanting which might have carried him to
+America, he took the only way handy of getting himself out of the way.
+Seldom has Her Majesty had a less promising recruit, for his hot Celtic
+blood seethed with hatred against Britain and all things British.
+The sergeant, however, smiling complacently over his 6 ft. of brawn and
+his 44 in. chest, whisked him off with a dozen other of the boys to the
+depot at Fermoy, whence in a few weeks they were sent on, with the
+spade-work kinks taken out of their backs, to the first battalion of the
+Royal Mallows, at the top of the roster for foreign service.
+
+The Royal Mallows, at about that date, were as strange a lot of men as
+ever were paid by a great empire to fight its battles. It was the
+darkest hour of the land struggle, when the one side came out with
+crow-bar and battering-ram by day, and the other with mask and with
+shot-gun by night. Men driven from their homes and potato-patches found
+their way even into the service of the Government, to which it seemed to
+them that they owed their troubles, and now and then they did wild
+things before they came. There were recruits in the Irish regiments who
+would forget to answer to their own names, so short had been their
+acquaintance with them. Of these the Royal Mallows had their full
+share; and, while they still retained their fame as being one of the
+smartest corps in the army, no one knew better than their officers that
+they were dry-rotted with treason and with bitter hatred of the flag
+under which they served.
+
+And the centre of all the disaffection was C Company, in which Dennis
+Conolly found himself enrolled. They were Celts, Catholics, and men of
+the tenant class to a man; and their whole experience of the British
+Government had been an inexorable landlord, and a constabulary who
+seemed to them to be always on the side of the rent-collector. Dennis
+was not the only moonlighter in the ranks, nor was he alone in having an
+intolerable family blood-feud to harden his heart. Savagery had
+begotten savagery in that veiled civil war. A landlord with an iron
+mortgage weighing down upon him had small bowels for his tenantry.
+He did but take what the law allowed, and yet, with men like Jim Holan,
+or Patrick McQuire, or Peter Flynn, who had seen the roofs torn from
+their cottages and their folk huddled among their pitiable furniture
+upon the roadside, it was ill to argue about abstract law. What matter
+that in that long and bitter struggle there was many another outrage on
+the part of the tenant, and many another grievance on the side of the
+landowner! A stricken man can only feel his own wound, and the rank and
+file of the C Company of the Royal Mallows were sore and savage to the
+soul. There were low whisperings in barrack-rooms and canteens,
+stealthy meetings in public-house parlours, bandying of passwords from
+mouth to mouth, and many other signs which made their officers right
+glad when the order came which sent them to foreign, and better still,
+to active service.
+
+For Irish regiments have before now been disaffected, and have at a
+distance looked upon the foe as though he might, in truth, be the
+friend; but when they have been put face on to him, and when their
+officers have dashed to the front with a wave and halloo, those rebel
+hearts have softened and their gallant Celtic blood has boiled with the
+mad joy of the fight, until the slower Britons have marvelled that they
+ever could have doubted the loyalty of their Irish comrades. So it
+would be again, according to the officers, and so it would not be if
+Dennis Conolly and a few others could have their way.
+
+It was a March morning upon the eastern fringe of the Nubian desert.
+The sun had not yet risen, but a tinge of pink flushed up as far as the
+cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon
+across the horizon. From the coast inland stretched dreary sand-plains,
+dotted over with thick clumps of mimosa scrub and mottled patches of
+thorny bush. No tree broke the monotony of that vast desert. The dull,
+dusty hue of the thickets, and the yellow glare of the sand, were the
+only colours, save at one point, where, from a distance, it seemed that
+a land-slip of snow-white stones had shot itself across a low foot-hill.
+But as the traveller approached he saw, with a thrill, that these were
+no stones, but the bleaching bones of a slaughtered army. With its dull
+tints, its gnarled, viprous bushes, its arid, barren soil, and this
+death streak trailed across it, it was indeed a nightmare country.
+
+Some eight or ten miles inland the rolling plain curved upwards with a
+steeper slope until it ran into a line of red basaltic rock which
+zigzagged from north to south, heaping itself up at one point into a
+fantastic knoll. On the summit of this there stood upon that March
+morning three Arab chieftains--the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas, Moussa
+Wad Aburhegel, who led the Berber dervishes, and Hamid Wad Hussein, who
+had come northward with his fighting men from the land of the Baggaras.
+They had all three just risen from their praying-carpets, and were
+peering out, with fierce, high-nosed faces thrust forwards, at the
+stretch of country revealed by the spreading dawn.
+
+The red rim of the sun was pushing itself now above the distant sea, and
+the whole coast-line stood out brilliantly yellow against the rich deep
+blue beyond. At one spot lay a huddle of white-walled houses, a mere
+splotch in the distance; while four tiny cock-boats, which lay beyond,
+marked the position of three of Her Majesty’s 10,000-ton troopers and
+the admiral’s flagship. But it was not upon the distant town, nor upon
+the great vessels, nor yet upon the sinister white litter which gleamed
+in the plain beneath them, that the Arab chieftains gazed. Two miles
+from where they stood, amid the sand-hills and the mimosa scrub, a great
+parallelogram had been marked by piled-up bushes. From the inside of
+this dozens of tiny blue smoke-reeks curled up into the still morning
+air; while there rose from it a confused deep murmur, the voices of men
+and the gruntings of camels blended into the same insect buzz.
+
+“The unbelievers have cooked their morning food,” said the Baggara
+chief, shading his eyes with his tawny, sinewy hand. “Truly their sleep
+has been scanty; for Hamid and a hundred of his men have fired upon them
+since the rising of the moon.”
+
+“So it was with these others,” answered the Sheik Kadra, pointing with
+his sheathed sword towards the old battle-field. “They also had a day
+of little water and a night of little rest, and the heart was gone out
+of them ere ever the sons of the Prophet had looked them in the eyes.
+This blade drank deep that day, and will again before the sun has
+travelled from the sea to the hill.”
+
+“And yet these are other men,” remarked the Berber dervish. “Well, I
+know that Allah has placed them in the clutch of our fingers, yet it may
+be that they with the big hats will stand firmer than the cursed men of
+Egypt.”
+
+“Pray Allah that it may be so,” cried the fierce Baggara, with a flash
+of his black eyes. “It was not to chase women that I brought 700 men
+from the river to the coast. See, my brother, already they are forming
+their array.”
+
+A fanfare of bugle-calls burst from the distant camp. At the same time
+the bank of bushes at one side had been thrown or trampled down, and the
+little army within began to move slowly out on to the plain. Once clear
+of the camp they halted, and the slant rays of the sun struck flashes
+from bayonet and from gun-barrel as the ranks closed up until the big
+pith helmets joined into a single long white ribbon. Two streaks of
+scarlet glowed on either side of the square, but elsewhere the fringe of
+fighting-men was of the dull yellow khaki tint which hardly shows
+against the desert sand. Inside their array was a dense mass of camels
+and mules bearing stores and ambulance needs. Outside a twinkling clump
+of cavalry was drawn up on each flank, and in front a thin, scattered
+line of mounted infantry was already slowly advancing over the
+bush-strewn plain, halting on every eminence, and peering warily round
+as men might who have to pick their steps among the bones of those who
+have preceded them.
+
+The three chieftains still lingered upon the knoll, looking down with
+hungry eyes and compressed lips at the dark steel-tipped patch.
+“They are slower to start than the men of Egypt,” the Sheik of the
+Hadendowas growled in his beard.
+
+“Slower also to go back, perchance, my brother,” murmured the dervish.
+
+“And yet they are not many--3,000 at the most.”
+
+“And we 10,000, with the Prophet’s grip upon our spear-hafts and his
+words upon our banner. See to their chieftain, how he rides upon the
+right and looks up at us with the glass that sees from afar! It may be
+that he sees this also.” The Arab shook his sword at the small clump of
+horsemen who had spurred out from the square.
+
+“Lo! he beckons,” cried the dervish; “and see those others at the
+corner, how they bend and heave. Ha! by the Prophet, I had thought it.”
+As he spoke, a little woolly puff of smoke spurted up at the corner of
+the square, and a 7 lb. shell burst with a hard metallic smack just over
+their heads. The splinters knocked chips from the red rocks around
+them.
+
+“Bismillah!” cried the Hadendowa; “if the gun can carry thus far, then
+ours can answer to it. Ride to the left, Moussa, and tell Ben Ali to
+cut the skin from the Egyptians if they cannot hit yonder mark.
+And you, Hamid, to the right, and see that 3,000 men lie close in the
+wady that we have chosen. Let the others beat the drum and show the
+banner of the Prophet, for by the black stone their spears will have
+drunk deep ere they look upon the stars again.”
+
+A long, straggling, boulder-strewn plateau lay on the summit of the red
+hills, sloping very precipitously to the plain, save at one point, where
+a winding gully curved downwards, its mouth choked with sand-mounds and
+olive-hued scrub. Along the edge of this position lay the Arab host--a
+motley crew of shock-headed desert clansmen, fierce predatory slave
+dealers of the interior, and wild dervishes from the Upper Nile, all
+blent together by their common fearlessness and fanaticism. Two races
+were there, as wide as the poles apart--the thin-lipped, straight-haired
+Arab and the thick-lipped, curly negro--yet the faith of Islam had bound
+them closer than a blood tie. Squatting among the rocks, or lying
+thickly in the shadow, they peered out at the slow-moving square beneath
+them, while women with water-skins and bags of dhoora fluttered from
+group to group, calling out to each other those fighting texts from the
+Koran which in the hour of battle are maddening as wine to the true
+believer. A score of banners waved over the ragged, valiant crew, and
+among them, upon desert horses and white Bishareen camels, were the
+Emirs and Sheiks who were to lead them against the infidels.
+
+As the Sheik Kadra sprang into his saddle and drew his sword there was a
+wild whoop and a clatter of waving spears, while the one-ended war-drums
+burst into a dull crash like a wave upon shingle. For a moment 10,000
+men were up on the rocks with brandished arms and leaping figures; the
+next they were under cover again, waiting sternly and silently for their
+chieftain’s orders. The square was less than half a mile from the ridge
+now, and shell after shell from the 7 lb. guns were pitching over it.
+A deep roar on the right, and then a second one showed that the Egyptian
+Krupps were in action. Sheik Kadra’s hawk eyes saw that the shells
+burst far beyond the mark, and he spurred his horse along to where a
+knot of mounted chiefs were gathered round the two guns, which were
+served by their captured crews.
+
+“How is this, Ben Ali?” he cried. “It was not thus that the dogs fired
+when it was their own brothers in faith at whom they aimed!”
+
+A chieftain reined his horse back, and thrust a blood-smeared sword into
+its sheath. Beside him two Egyptian artillerymen with their throats cut
+were sobbing out their lives upon the ground. “Who lays the gun this
+time?” asked the fierce chief, glaring at the frightened gunners.
+“Here, thou black-browed child of Shaitan, aim, and aim for thy life.”
+
+It may have been chance, or it may have been skill, but the third and
+fourth shells burst over the square. Sheik Kadra smiled grimly and
+galloped back to the left, where his spearmen were streaming down into
+the gully. As he joined them a deep growling rose from the plain
+beneath, like the snarling of a sullen wild beast, and a little knot of
+tribesmen fell into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead from
+a Gardner. Their comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down into
+the ravine. From all along the crest burst the hard, sharp crackle of
+Remington fire.
+
+The square had slowly advanced, rippling over the low sandhills, and
+halting every few minutes to re-arrange its formation. Now, having made
+sure that there was no force of the enemy in the scrub, it changed its
+direction, and began to take a line parallel to the Arab position.
+It was too steep to assail from the front, and if they moved far enough
+to the right the general hoped that he might turn it. On the top of
+those ruddy hills lay a baronetcy for him, and a few extra hundreds in
+his pension, and he meant having them both that day. The Remington fire
+was annoying, and so were those two Krupp guns; already there were more
+cacolets full than he cared to see. But on the whole he thought it
+better to hold his fire until he had more to aim at than a few hundred
+of fuzzy heads peeping over a razor-back ridge. He was a bulky,
+red-faced man, a fine whist-player, and a soldier who knew his work.
+His men believed in him, and he had good reason to believe in them, for
+he had excellent stuff under him that day. Being an ardent champion of
+the short-service system, he took particular care to work with veteran
+first battalions, and his little force was the compressed essence of an
+army corps.
+
+The left front of the square was formed by four companies of the Royal
+Wessex, and the right by four of the Royal Mallows. On either side the
+other halves of the same regiments marched in quarter column of
+companies. Behind them, on the right was a battalion of Guards, and on
+the left one of Marines, while the rear was closed in by a Rifle
+battalion. Two Royal Artillery 7 lb. screw-guns kept pace with the
+square, and a dozen white-bloused sailors, under their blue-coated,
+tight-waisted officers, trailed their Gardner in front, turning every
+now and then to spit up at the draggled banners which waved over the
+cragged ridge. Hussars and Lancers scouted in the scrub at each side,
+and within moved the clump of camels, with humorous eyes and
+supercilious lips, their comic faces a contrast to the blood-stained men
+who already lay huddled in the cacolets on either side.
+
+The square was now moving slowly on a line parallel with the rocks,
+stopping every few minutes to pick up wounded, and to allow the
+screw-guns and Gardner to make themselves felt. The men looked serious,
+for that spring on to the rocks of the Arab army had given them a vague
+glimpse of the number and ferocity of their foes; but their faces were
+set like stone, for they knew to a man that they must win or they must
+die--and die, too, in a particularly unlovely fashion. But most serious
+of all was the general, for he had seen that which brought a flush to
+his cheeks and a frown to his brow.
+
+“I say, Stephen,” said he to his galloper, “those Mallows seem a trifle
+jumpy. The right flank company bulged a bit when the niggers showed on
+the hill.”
+
+“Youngest troops in the square, sir,” murmured the aide, looking at them
+critically through his eye-glass.
+
+“Tell Colonel Flanagan to see to it, Stephen,” said the general; and the
+galloper sped upon his way. The colonel, a fine old Celtic warrior, was
+over at C Company in an instant.
+
+“How are the men, Captain Foley?”
+
+“Never better, sir,” answered the senior captain, in the spirit that
+makes a Madras officer look murder if you suggest recruiting his
+regiment from the Punjab.
+
+“Stiffen them up!” cried the colonel. As he rode away a colour-sergeant
+seemed to trip, and fell forward into a mimosa bush. He made no effort
+to rise, but lay in a heap among the thorns.
+
+“Sergeant O’Rooke’s gone, sorr,” cried a voice. “Never mind, lads,”
+said Captain Foley. “He’s died like a soldier, fighting for his Queen.”
+
+“Down with the Queen!” shouted a hoarse voice from the ranks.
+
+But the roar of the Gardner and the typewriter-like clicking of the
+hopper burst in at the tail of the words. Captain Foley heard them, and
+Subalterns Grice and Murphy heard them; but there are times when a deaf
+ear is a gift from the gods.
+
+“Steady, Mallows!” cried the captain, in a pause of the grunting
+machine-gun. “We have the honour of Ireland to guard this day.”
+
+“And well we know how to guard it, captin!” cried the same ominous
+voice; and there was a buzz from the length of the company.
+
+The captain and the two subs. came together behind the marching line.
+
+“They seem a bit out of hand,” murmured the captain.
+
+“Bedad,” said the Galway boy, “they mean to scoot like redshanks.”
+
+“They nearly broke when the blacks showed on the hill,” said Grice.
+
+“The first man that turns, my sword is through him,” cried Foley, loud
+enough to be heard by five files on either side of him. Then, in a
+lower voice, “It’s a bitter drop to swallow, but it’s my duty to report
+what you think to the chief, and have a company of Jollies put behind
+us.” He turned away with the safety of the square upon his mind, and
+before he had reached his goal the square had ceased to exist.
+
+In their march in front of what looked like a face of cliff, they had
+come opposite to the mouth of the gully, in which, screened by scrub and
+boulders, 3,000 chosen dervishes, under Hamid Wad Hussein, of the
+Baggaras, were crouching. Tat, tat, tat, went the rifles of three
+mounted infantrymen in front of the left shoulder of the square, and an
+instant later they were spurring it for their lives, crouching over the
+manes of their horses, and pelting over the sandhills with thirty or
+forty galloping chieftains at their heels. Rocks and scrub and mimosa
+swarmed suddenly into life. Rushing black figures came and went in the
+gaps of the bushes. A howl that drowned the shouts of the officers, a
+long quavering yell, burst from the ambuscade. Two rolling volleys from
+the Royal Wessex, one crash from the screw-gun firing shrapnel, and then
+before a second cartridge could be rammed in, a living, glistening black
+wave, tipped with steel, had rolled over the gun, the Royal Wessex had
+been dashed back among the camels, and 1,000 fanatics were hewing and
+hacking in the heart of what had been the square.
+
+The camels and mules in the centre, jammed more and more together as
+their leaders flinched from the rush of the tribesmen, shut out the view
+of the other three faces, who could only tell that the Arabs had got in
+by the yells upon Allah, which rose ever nearer and nearer amid the
+clouds of sand-dust, the struggling animals, and the dense mass of
+swaying, cursing men. Some of the Wessex fired back at the Arabs who
+had passed them, as excited Tommies will, and it is whispered among
+doctors that it was not always a Remington bullet which was cut from a
+wound that day. Some rallied in little knots, stabbing furiously with
+their bayonets at the rushing spearmen. Others turned at bay with their
+backs against the camels, and others round the general and his staff,
+who, revolver in hand, had flung themselves into the heart of it.
+But the whole square was sidling slowly away from the gorge, pushed back
+by the pressure at the shattered corner.
+
+The officers and men at the other faces were glancing nervously to the
+rear, uncertain what was going on, and unable to take help to their
+comrades without breaking the formation.
+
+“By Jove, they’ve got through the Wessex!” cried Grice of the Mallows.
+
+“The divils have hurrooshed us, Ted,” said his brother subaltern,
+cocking his revolver.
+
+The ranks were breaking, and crowding towards Private Conolly, all
+talking together as the officers peered back through the veil of dust.
+The sailors had run their Gardner out, and she was squirting death out
+of her five barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages.
+“Oh, this bloody gun!” shouted a voice. “She’s jammed again.”
+The fierce metallic grunting had ceased, and her crew were straining and
+hauling at the breech.
+
+“This damned vertical feed!” cried an officer.
+
+“The spanner, Wilson!--the spanner! Stand to your cutlasses, boys, or
+they’re into us.” His voice rose into a shriek as he ended, for a
+shovel-headed spear had been buried in his chest. A second wave of
+dervishes lapped over the hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and
+the right front of the line. The sailors were overborne in an instant,
+but the Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the yell of the
+Moslem with an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two hundred of them
+with a single point-blank volley. The howling, leaping crew swerved
+away to the right, and dashed on into the gap which had already been
+made for them.
+
+But C Company had drawn no trigger to stop that fiery rush. The men
+leaned moodily upon their Martinis. Some had even thrown them upon the
+ground. Conolly was talking fiercely to those about him. Captain
+Foley, thrusting his way through the press, rushed up to him with a
+revolver in his hand.
+
+“This is your doing, you villain!” he cried.
+
+“If you raise your pistol, Captin, your brains will be over your coat,”
+said a low voice at his side.
+
+He saw that several rifles were turned on him. The two subs. had
+pressed forward, and were by his side. “What is it, then?” he cried,
+looking round from one fierce mutinous face to another. “Are you
+Irishmen? Are you soldiers? What are you here for but to fight for
+your country?”
+
+“England is no country of ours,” cried several.
+
+“You are not fighting for England. You are fighting for Ireland, and
+for the Empire of which it as part.”
+
+“A black curse on the Impire!” shouted Private McQuire, throwing down
+his rifle. “’Twas the Impire that backed the man that druv me onto the
+roadside. May me hand stiffen before I draw trigger for it.
+
+“What’s the Impire to us, Captain Foley, and what’s the Widdy to us
+ayther?” cried a voice.
+
+“Let the constabulary foight for her.”
+
+“Ay, be God, they’d be better imployed than pullin’ a poor man’s thatch
+about his ears.”
+
+“Or shootin’ his brother, as they did mine.”
+
+“It was the Impire laid my groanin’ mother by the wayside. Her son will
+rot before he upholds it, and ye can put that in the charge-sheet in the
+next coort-martial.”
+
+In vain the three officers begged, menaced, persuaded. The square was
+still moving, ever moving, with the same bloody fight raging in its
+entrails. Even while they had been speaking they had been shuffling
+backwards, and the useless Gardner, with her slaughtered crew, was
+already a good hundred yards from them. And the pace was accelerating.
+The mass of men, tormented and writhing, was trying, by a common
+instinct, to reach some clearer ground where they could re-form. Three
+faces were still intact, but the fourth had been caved in, and badly
+mauled, without its comrades being able to help it. The Guards had met
+a fresh rush of the Hadendowas, and had blown back the tribesmen with a
+volley, and the cavalry had ridden over another stream of them, as they
+welled out of the gully. A litter of hamstrung horses, and haggled men
+behind them, showed that a spearman on his face among the bushes can
+show some sport to the man who charges him. But, in spite of all, the
+square was still reeling swiftly backwards, trying to shake itself clear
+of this torment which clung to its heart. Would it break or would it
+re-form? The lives of five regiments and the honour of the flag hung
+upon the answer.
+
+Some, at least, were breaking. The C Company of the Mallows had lost
+all military order, and was pushing back in spite of the haggard
+officers, who cursed, and shoved, and prayed in the vain attempt to hold
+them. The captain and the subs. were elbowed and jostled, while the men
+crowded towards Private Conolly for their orders. The confusion had not
+spread, for the other companies, in the dust and smoke and turmoil, had
+lost touch with their mutinous comrades. Captain Foley saw that even
+now there might be time to avert a disaster. “Think what you are doing,
+man,” he yelled, rushing towards the ringleader. “There are a thousand
+Irish in the square, and they are dead men if we break.”
+
+The words alone might have had little effect on the old moonlighter.
+It is possible that, in his scheming brain, he had already planned how
+he was to club his Irish together and lead them to the sea. But at that
+moment the Arabs broke through the screen of camels which had fended
+them off. There was a struggle, a screaming, a mule rolled over, a
+wounded man sprang up in a cacolet with a spear through him, and then
+through the narrow gap surged a stream of naked savages, mad with
+battle, drunk with slaughter, spotted and splashed with blood--blood
+dripping from their spears, their arms, their faces. Their yells, their
+bounds, their crouching, darting figures, the horrid energy of their
+spear-thrusts, made them look like a blast of fiends from the pit. And
+were these the Allies of Ireland? Were these the men who were to strike
+for her against her enemies? Conolly’s soul rose up in loathing at the
+thought.
+
+He was a man of firm purpose, and yet at the first sight of those
+howling fiends that purpose faltered, and at the second it was blown to
+the winds. He saw a huge coal-black negro seize a shrieking
+camel-driver and saw at his throat with a knife. He saw a shock-headed
+tribesman plunge his great spear through the back of their own little
+bugler from Mill-street. He saw a dozen deeds of blood--the murder of
+the wounded, the hacking of the unarmed--and caught, too, in a glance,
+the good wholesome faces of the faced-about rear rank of the Marines.
+The Mallows, too, had faced about, and in an instant Conolly had thrown
+himself into the heart of C Company, striving with the officers to form
+the men up with their comrades.
+
+But the mischief had gone too far. The rank and file had no heart in
+their work. They had broken before, and this last rush of murderous
+savages was a hard thing for broken men to stand against. They flinched
+from the furious faces and dripping forearms. Why should they throw
+away their lives for a flag for which they cared nothing? Why should
+their leader urge them to break, and now shriek to them to re-form?
+They would not re-form. They wanted to get to the sea and to safety.
+He flung himself among them with outstretched arms, with words of
+reason, with shouts, with gaspings. It was useless; the tide was beyond
+his control. They were shredding out into the desert with their faces
+set for the coast.
+
+“Bhoys, will ye stand for this?” screamed a voice. It was so ringing,
+so strenuous, that the breaking Mallows glanced backwards. They were
+held by what they saw. Private Conolly had planted his rifle-stock
+downwards in a mimosa bush. From the fixed bayonet there fluttered a
+little green flag with the crownless harp. God knows for what black
+mutiny, for what signal of revolt, that flag had been treasured up
+within the corporal’s tunic! Now its green wisp stood amid the rush,
+while three proud regimental colours were reeling slowly backwards.
+
+“What for the flag?” yelled the private.
+
+“My heart’s blood for it! and mine! and mine!” cried a score of voices.
+“God bless it! The flag, boys--the flag!”
+
+C Company were rallying upon it. The stragglers clutched at each
+other, and pointed. “Here, McQuire, Flynn, O’Hara,” ran the shoutings.
+“Close on the flag! Back to the flag!” The three standards reeled
+backwards, and the seething square strove for a clearer space where they
+could form their shattered ranks; but C Company, grim and
+powder-stained, choked with enemies and falling fast, still closed in on
+the little rebel ensign that flapped from the mimosa bush.
+
+It was a good half-hour before the square, having disentangled itself
+from its difficulties and dressed its ranks, began to slowly move
+forwards over the ground, across which in its labour and anguish it had
+been driven. The long trail of Wessex men and Arabs showed but too
+clearly the path they had come.
+
+“How many got into us, Stephen?” asked the general, tapping his
+snuff-box.
+
+“I should put them down at a thousand or twelve hundred, sir.”
+
+“I did not see any get out again. What the devil were the Wessex
+thinking about? The Guards stood well, though; so did the Mallows.”
+
+“Colonel Flanagan reports that his front flank company was cut off,
+sir.”
+
+“Why, that’s the company that was out of hand when we advanced!”
+
+“Colonel Flanagan reports, sir, that the company took the whole brunt of
+the attack, and gave the square time to re-form.”
+
+“Tell the Hussars to ride forward, Stephen,” said the general, “and try
+if they can see anything of them. There’s no firing, and I fear that
+the Mallows will want to do some recruiting. Let the square take ground
+by the right, and then advance!”
+
+But the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas saw from his knoll that the men
+with the big hats had rallied, and that they were coming back in the
+quiet business fashion of men whose work was before them. He took
+counsel with Moussa the Dervish and Hussein the Baggara, and a woestruck
+man was he when he learned that the third of his men were safe in the
+Moslem Paradise. So, having still some signs of victory to show, he
+gave the word, and the desert warriors flitted off unseen and unheard,
+even as they had come.
+
+A red rock plateau, a few hundred spears and Remingtons, and a plain
+which for the second time was strewn with slaughtered men, was all that
+his day’s fighting gave to the English general.
+
+It was a squadron of Hussars which came first to the spot where the
+rebel flag had waved. A dense litter of Arab dead marked the place.
+Within, the flag waved no longer, but the rifle stood in the mimosa
+bush, and round it, with their wounds in front, lay the Fenian private
+and the silent ranks of the Irishry. Sentiment is not an English
+failing, but the Hussar captain raised his hilt in a salute as he rode
+past the blood-soaked ring.
+
+The British general sent home dispatches to his Government, and so did
+the chief of the Hadendowas, though the style and manner differed
+somewhat in each.
+
+
+
+The Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowa people to Mohammed Ahmed, the chosen of
+Allah, homage and greeting, (began the latter). Know by this that on
+the fourth day of this moon we gave battle to the Kaffirs who call
+themselves Inglees, having with us the Chief Hussein with ten thousand
+of the faithful. By the blessing of Allah we have broken them, and
+chased them for a mile, though indeed these infidels are different from
+the dogs of Egypt, and have slain very many of our men. Yet we hope to
+smite them again ere the new moon be come, to which end I trust that
+thou wilt send us a thousand Dervishes from Omdurman. In token of our
+victory I send you by this messenger a flag which we have taken. By the
+colour it might well seem to have belonged to those of the true faith,
+but the Kaffirs gave their blood freely to save it, and so we think
+that, though small, it is very dear to them.
+
+
+
+
+CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+
+
+                             I
+
+HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT’S CAME HOME.
+
+
+When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end
+by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been
+fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some
+took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce,
+others were absorbed into the fishing fleets, and a few of the more
+reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at
+the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the
+whole human race.
+
+With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they scoured the seas,
+disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in
+for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants
+by their lavishness, and horrified them by their brutalities.
+
+On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above
+all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant
+menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations
+by the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer, and
+dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.
+
+They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that
+discipline and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers,
+both formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an
+account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken
+whim of the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with
+longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell
+into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after
+serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his
+cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and
+salt in front of him. It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his
+calling in the Caribbean Gulf.
+
+Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship _Morning Star_, and yet
+he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the
+falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the
+guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt’s was his final port of
+call, and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old
+England. He had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he
+had left Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red
+pepper, he had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet
+edge of the tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands,
+touching here and there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy
+and outrage.
+
+Captain Sharkey, of the twenty-gun pirate barque, _Happy Delivery_, had
+passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and with
+murdered men. Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim pleasantries
+and of his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main his
+coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with
+death and many things which are worse than death. So nervous was
+Captain Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship, and her full and
+valuable lading, that he struck out to the west as far as Bird’s Island
+to be out of the usual track of commerce. And yet even in those
+solitary waters he had been unable to shake off sinister traces of
+Captain Sharkey.
+
+One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
+ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as
+they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and
+wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon
+transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship.
+He was from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole
+survivor of a schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.
+
+For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath
+a tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late
+captain to be thrown into the boat, “as provisions for the voyage,” but
+the seaman had at once committed it to the deep, lest the temptation
+should be more than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge frame
+until, at the last moment, the _Morning Star_ had found him in that
+madness which is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for
+Captain Scarrow, for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this
+big New Englander was a prize worth having. He vowed that he was the
+only man whom Captain Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.
+
+Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the
+pirate was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the
+seaman’s mind as he watched the agent’s boat shooting out from the
+Custom-house quay.
+
+“I’ll lay you a wager, Morgan,” said he to the first mate, “that the
+agent will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his
+lips.”
+
+“Well, captain, I’ll have you a silver dollar, and chance it,” said the
+rough old Bristol man beside him.
+
+The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
+sprang up the ladder. “Welcome, Captain Scarrow!” he cried. “Have you
+heard about Sharkey?”
+
+The captain grinned at the mate.
+
+“What devilry has he been up to now?” he asked.
+
+“Devilry! You’ve not heard, then? Why, we’ve got him safe under lock
+and key at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be
+hanged to-morrow morning.”
+
+Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken
+up by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through
+the break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the
+front of them with a radiant face turned up to Heaven, for he came of
+the Puritan stock.
+
+“Sharkey to be hanged!” he cried. “You don’t know, Master Agent, if
+they lack a hangman, do you?”
+
+“Stand back!” cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was
+even stronger than his interest at the news. “I’ll pay that dollar,
+Captain Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet.
+How came the villain to be taken?”
+
+“Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and
+they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship.
+So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
+Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
+brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried,
+but our good little Governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it.
+‘He’s my meat,’ said he, ‘and I claim the cooking of it.’ If you can
+stay till to-morrow morning at ten, you’ll see the joint swinging.”
+
+“I wish I could,” said the captain, wistfully, “but I am sadly behind
+time now. I should start with the evening tide.”
+
+“That you can’t do,” said the agent with decision. “The Governor is
+going back with you.”
+
+“The Governor!”
+
+“Yes. He’s had a dispatch from Government to return without delay.
+The fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles
+has been waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains.”
+
+“Well, well!” cried the captain in some perplexity, “I’m a plain seaman,
+and I don’t know much of governors and baronets and their ways. I don’t
+remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it’s in King
+George’s service, and he asks a cast in the _Morning Star_ as far as
+London, I’ll do what I can for him. There’s my own cabin he can have
+and welcome. As to the cooking, it’s lobscouse and salmagundy six days
+in the week; but he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks
+our galley too rough for his taste.”
+
+“You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow,” said the agent.
+“Sir Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague,
+and it is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage.
+Dr. Larousse said that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not
+put fresh life into him. He has a great spirit in him, though, and you
+must not blame him if he is somewhat short in his speech.”
+
+“He may say what he likes, and do what he likes, so long as he does not
+come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship,” said the captain.
+“He is Governor of St. Kitt’s, but I am Governor of the _Morning Star_,
+and, by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to
+my employer, just as he does to King George.”
+
+“He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order
+before he leaves.”
+
+“The early morning tide, then.”
+
+“Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night; and he will follow
+them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt’s
+without seeing Sharkey do the rogue’s hornpipe. His own orders were
+instant, so it may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr.
+Larousse may attend him upon the journey.”
+
+Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations
+which they could for their illustrious passenger. The largest cabin was
+turned out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which
+barrels of fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary
+the plain food of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor’s
+baggage began to arrive--great iron-bound ant-proof trunks, and official
+tin packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested
+the cocked hat or the sword within. And then there came a note, with a
+heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made
+his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in
+the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.
+
+He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun
+to deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some
+difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard that the Governor was
+an eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came
+limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick
+bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails
+like a poodle’s coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large
+green glasses which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from
+it. A fierce beak of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in
+front of him. His ague had caused him to swathe his throat and chin
+with a broad linen cravat, and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown
+secured by a cord round the waist. As he advanced he carried his
+masterful nose high in the air, but his head turned slowly from side to
+side in the helpless manner of the purblind, and he called in a high,
+querulous voice for the captain.
+
+“You have my things?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, Sir Charles.”
+
+“Have you wine aboard?”
+
+“I have ordered five cases, sir.”
+
+“And tobacco?”
+
+“There is a keg of Trinidad.”
+
+“You play a hand at picquet?”
+
+“Passably well, sir.”
+
+“Then anchor up, and to sea!”
+
+There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly
+through the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands.
+The decrepit Governor still limped the deck, with one guiding hand upon
+the quarter rail.
+
+“You are on Government service now, captain,” said he. “They are
+counting the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you. Have you
+all that she will carry?”
+
+“Every inch, Sir Charles.”
+
+“Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, Captain Scarrow,
+that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your
+voyage.”
+
+“I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency’s society,” said the captain.
+“But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted.”
+
+“Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of
+Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out.”
+
+“I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague.”
+
+“Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much.”
+
+“We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon.”
+
+“Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he has a snug business
+amongst the merchants. But hark!” He raised his ring-covered band in
+the air. From far astern there came the low, deep thunder of cannon.
+
+“It is from the island!” cried the captain in astonishment. “Can it be
+a signal for us to put back?”
+
+The Governor laughed. “You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to
+be hanged this morning. I ordered the batteries to salute when the
+rascal was kicking his last, so that I might know of it out at sea.
+There’s an end of Sharkey!”
+
+“There’s an end of Sharkey!” cried the captain; and the crew took up the
+cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at
+the low, purple line of the vanishing land.
+
+It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the
+invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was
+generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial
+and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge
+and so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of
+the deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting
+his conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and
+Governor smoked their long pipes, and drank their claret as three good
+comrades should.
+
+“And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?” asked the captain.
+
+“He is a man of some presence,” said the Governor.
+
+“I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil,” remarked
+the mate.
+
+“Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions,” said the Governor.
+
+“I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his
+eyes,” said Captain Scarrow. “They were of the lightest filmy blue,
+with red-rimmed lids. Was that not so, Sir Charles?”
+
+“Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others!
+But I remember now that the adjutant-general said that he had such an
+eye as you describe, and added that the jury was so foolish as to be
+visibly discomposed when it was turned upon them. It is well for them
+that he is dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and
+if he had laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with
+straw and hung him for a figure-head.”
+
+The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a
+high, neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so
+heartily, for they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who
+sailed the western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be
+their own. Another bottle was broached to drink to a pleasant voyage,
+and the Governor would drink just one other on the top of it, so that
+the seamen were glad at last to stagger off--the one to his watch, and
+the other to his bunk. But when, after his four hours’ spell, the mate
+came down again, he was amazed to see the Governor, in his Ramillies
+wig, his glasses, and his powdering-gown, still seated sedately at the
+lonely table with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.
+
+“I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt’s when he was sick,” said
+he, “and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he
+is well.”
+
+The voyage of the _Morning Star_ was a successful one, and in about
+three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel. From the first
+day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before
+they were halfway across the Atlantic, he was, save only for his eyes,
+as well as any man upon the ship. Those who uphold the nourishing
+qualities of wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night
+passed that he did not repeat the performance of his first one. And yet
+he would be out upon deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the
+best of them, peering about with his weak eyes, and asking questions
+about the sails and the rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of
+the sea. And he made up for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining
+leave from the captain that the New England seaman--he who had been cast
+away in the boat--should lead him about, and, above all, that he should
+sit beside him when he played cards and count the number of the pips,
+for unaided he could not tell the king from the knave.
+
+It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service,
+since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey and the other was his
+avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to
+lend his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all
+respect behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed
+forefinger upon the card which he should play. Between them there was
+little in the pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first
+mate, by the time they sighted the Lizard.
+
+And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the
+high temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark. At a sign of
+opposition or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his
+cravat, his masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent
+angle, and his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulders.
+He cracked it once over the head of the carpenter when the man had
+accidentally jostled him upon the deck. Once, too, when there was some
+grumbling and talk of a mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was
+of opinion that they should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they
+should march forward and set upon them until they had trounced the
+devilment out of them. “Give me a knife and a bucket!” he cried with an
+oath, and could hardly be withheld from setting forth alone to deal with
+the spokesman of the seamen.
+
+Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only
+answerable to himself at St. Kitt’s, killing became murder upon the high
+seas. In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop
+of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met
+a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his
+vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a
+stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had
+never known a voyage pass so pleasantly.
+
+And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island,
+they had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As
+evening fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from
+Winchelsea, with the long, dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front
+of her. Next morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland,
+and Sir Charles might meet the King’s ministers at Westminster before
+the evening. The boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were
+met for a last turn of cards in the cabin, the faithful American still
+serving as eyes to the Governor. There was a good stake upon the table,
+for the sailors had tried on this last night to win their losses back
+from their passenger. Suddenly he threw his cards down, and swept all
+the money into the pocket of his long-flapped silken waistcoat.
+
+“The game’s mine!” said he.
+
+“Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!” cried Captain Scarrow; “you have not
+played out the hand, and we are not the losers.”
+
+“Sink you for a liar!” said the Governor. “I tell you I _have_ played
+out the hand, and that you _are_ a loser.” He whipped off his wig and
+his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a pair
+of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.
+
+“Good God!” cried the mate. “It’s Sharkey!”
+
+The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway
+had put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in
+each of his hands. The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the
+scattered cards in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing
+laugh. “Captain Sharkey is the name, gentlemen,” said he, “and this is
+Roaring Ned Galloway, the quartermaster of the _Happy Delivery_.
+We made it hot, and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and
+him in an oarless boat. You dogs--you poor, fond, water-hearted
+dogs--we hold you at the end of our pistols!”
+
+“You may shoot, or you may not!” cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon
+the breast of his frieze jacket. “If it’s my last breath, Sharkey, I
+tell you that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and
+hell-fire in store for you!”
+
+“There’s a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he’s going to
+make a very pretty death of it!” cried Sharkey. “There’s no one aft
+save the man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you’ll need
+it soon. Is the dinghy astern, Ned?”
+
+“Ay, ay, captain!”
+
+“And the other boats scuttled?”
+
+“I bored them all in three places.”
+
+“Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. You look as if you
+hadn’t quite got your bearings yet. Is there anything you’d like to ask
+me?”
+
+“I believe you’re the devil himself!” cried the captain. “Where is the
+Governor of St. Kitt’s?”
+
+“When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut.
+When I broke prison I learnt from my friends--for Captain Sharkey has
+those who love him in every port--that the Governor was starting for
+Europe under a master who had never seen him. I climbed his verandah,
+and I paid him the little debt that I owed him. Then I came aboard you
+with such of his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide
+these tell-tale eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a governor
+should. Now, Ned, you can get to work upon them.”
+
+“Help! Help! Watch ahoy!” yelled the mate; but the butt of the pirate’s
+pistol crashed down on his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox.
+Scarrow rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his
+mouth, and threw his other arm round his waist.
+
+“No use, Master Scarrow,” said Sharkey. “Let us see you go down on your
+knees and beg for your life.”
+
+“I’ll see you--” cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.
+
+“Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?”
+
+“No; not if you twist it off.”
+
+“Put an inch of your knife into him.”
+
+“You may put six inches, and then I won’t.”
+
+“Sink me, but I like his spirit!” cried Sharkey. “Put your knife in
+your pocket, Ned. You’ve saved your skin, Scarrow, and it’s a pity so
+stout a man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can
+pick up a living. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since
+you have lain at my mercy and lived to tell the story. Tie him up,
+Ned.”
+
+“To the stove, captain?”
+
+“Tut, tut! there’s a fire in the stove. None of your rover tricks, Ned
+Galloway, unless they are called for, or I’ll let you know which of us
+two is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the table.”
+
+“Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!” said the quartermaster.
+“You surely do not mean to let him go?”
+
+“If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still
+for me to command and for you to obey. Sink you for a villain, do you
+dare to question my orders?”
+
+“Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!” said the quartermaster,
+and, lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table. With the
+quick dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spread-eagled hands and feet
+with a rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with
+the long cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of
+St. Kitt’s.
+
+“Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you,” said the pirate.
+“If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had
+your cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand
+with the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small craft about, and
+we shall get one of them. When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a
+smack, when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can
+get a barque, and when he has a barque he’ll soon have a full-rigged
+ship of his own--so make haste into London town, or I may be coming
+back, after all, for the _Morning Star_.”
+
+Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin.
+Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the
+companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the
+stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the
+falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore
+and dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles,
+he rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way
+through the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.
+
+“Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!” he screamed. “Cutlasses and
+pistols! Clear away the long-boat! Clear away the gig! Sharkey, the
+pirate, is in yonder dinghy. Whistle up the larboard watch, bo’sun,
+and tumble into the boats, all hands.”
+
+Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant
+the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once
+more.
+
+“The boats are scuttled!” they cried. “They are leaking like a sieve.”
+
+The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten and outwitted at
+every point. Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor
+the promise of it. The sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away
+lay a fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net. Close to
+them was the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the shining swell.
+
+“They are dead men!” cried the captain. “A shout all together, boys,
+to warn them of their danger.” But it was too late. At that very
+moment the dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat. There were
+two rapid pistol-shots, a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed
+by silence. The clustering fishermen had disappeared. And then,
+suddenly, as the first puffs of a land-breeze came out from the Sussex
+shore, the boom swung out, the mainsail filled, and the little craft
+crept out with her nose to the Atlantic.
+
+
+                             II
+
+THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY WITH STEPHEN CRADDOCK
+
+
+Careening was a very necessary operation for the old pirate. On his
+superior speed he depended both for overhauling the trader and escaping
+the man-of-war. But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities
+unless he periodically--once a year, at the least--cleared his vessel’s
+bottom from the long, trailing plants and crusting barnacles which
+gather so rapidly in the tropical seas. For this purpose he lightened
+his vessel, thrust her into some narrow inlet where she would be left
+high and dry at low water, fastened blocks and tackles to her masts to
+pull her over on to her bilge, and then scraped her thoroughly from
+rudder-post to cut-water.
+
+During the weeks which were thus occupied the ship was, of course,
+defenceless; but, on the other hand, she was unapproachable by anything
+heavier than an empty hull, and the place for careening was chosen with
+an eye to secrecy, so that there was no great danger. So secure did the
+captains feel, that it was not uncommon for them, at such times, to
+leave their ships under a sufficient guard, and to start off in the
+long-boat, either upon a sporting expedition or, more frequently, upon a
+visit to some outlying town, where they burned the heads of the women by
+their swaggering gallantry, or broached pipes of wine in the market
+square, with a threat to pistol all who would not drink with them.
+
+Sometimes they would even appear in cities of the size of Charleston,
+and walk the streets with their clattering side-arms--an open scandal to
+the whole law-abiding colony. Such visits were not always paid with
+impunity. It was one of them, for example, which provoked Lieutenant
+Maynard to hack off Blackbeard’s head, and to spear it upon the end of
+his bowsprit. But, as a rule, the pirate ruffled and bullied and
+drabbed without let or hindrance, until it was time for him to go back
+to his ship once more.
+
+There was one pirate, however, who never crossed even the skirts of
+civilisation, and that was the sinister Sharkey, of the barque _Happy
+Delivery_. It may have been from his morose and solitary temper, or, as
+is more probable, that he knew that his name upon the coast was such
+that outraged humanity would, against all odds, have thrown themselves
+upon him, but never once did he show his face in a settlement.
+
+When his ship was laid up he would leave her under the charge of Ned
+Galloway--her New England quartermaster--and would take long voyages in
+his boat, sometimes, it was said, for the purpose of burying his share
+of the plunder, and sometimes to shoot the wild oxen of Hispaniola,
+which, when dressed and barbecued, provided provisions for his next
+voyage. In the latter case the barque would come round to some
+pre-arranged spot to pick him up, and take on board what he had shot.
+
+There had always been a hope in the islands that Sharkey might be taken
+on one of these occasions; and at last there came news to Kingston which
+seemed to justify an attempt upon him. It was brought by an elderly
+logwood-cutter who had fallen into the pirate’s hands, and in some freak
+of drunken benevolence had been allowed to get away with nothing worse
+than a slit nose and a drubbing. His account was recent and definite.
+The _Happy Delivery_ was careening at Torbec on the south-west of
+Hispaniola. Sharkey, with four men, was buccaneering on the outlying
+island of La Vache. The blood of a hundred murdered crews was calling
+out for vengeance, and now at last it seemed as if it might not call in
+vain.
+
+Sir Edward Compton, the high-nosed, red-faced Governor, sitting in
+solemn conclave with the commandant and the head of the council, was
+sorely puzzled in his mind as to how he should use this chance.
+There was no man-of-war nearer than Jamestown, and she was a clumsy old
+fly-boat, which could neither overhaul the pirate on the seas, nor reach
+her in a shallow inlet. There were forts and artillerymen both at
+Kingston and Port Royal, but no soldiers available for an expedition.
+
+A private venture might be fitted out--and there were many who had a
+blood-feud with Sharkey--but what could a private venture do?
+The pirates were numerous and desperate. As to taking Sharkey and his
+four companions, that, of course, would be easy if they could get at
+them; but how were they to get at them on a large well-wooded island
+like La Vache, full of wild hills and impenetrable jungles? A reward
+was offered to whoever could find a solution, and that brought a man to
+the front who had a singular plan, and was himself prepared to carry it
+out.
+
+Stephen Craddock had been that most formidable person, the Puritan gone
+wrong. Sprung from a decent Salem family, his ill-doing seemed to be a
+recoil from the austerity of their religion, and he brought to vice all
+the physical strength and energy with which the virtues of his ancestors
+had endowed him. He was ingenious, fearless, and exceedingly tenacious
+of purpose, so that when he was still young, his name became notorious
+upon the American coast. He was the same Craddock who was tried for his
+life in Virginia for the slaying of the Seminole Chief, and, though he
+escaped, it was well known that he had corrupted the witnesses and
+bribed the judge.
+
+Afterwards, as a slaver, and even, as it was hinted, as a pirate, he had
+left an evil name behind him in the Bight of Benin. Finally he had
+returned to Jamaica with a considerable fortune, and had settled down to
+a life of sombre dissipation. This was the man, gaunt, austere, and
+dangerous, who now waited upon the Governor with a plan for the
+extirpation of Sharkey. Sir Edward received him with little enthusiasm,
+for in spite of some rumours of conversion and reformation, he had
+always regarded him as an infected sheep who might taint the whole of
+his little flock. Craddock saw the Governor’s mistrust under his thin
+veil of formal and restrained courtesy.
+
+“You’ve no call to fear me, sir,” said he; “I’m a changed man from what
+you’ve known. I’ve seen the light again of late, after losing sight of
+it for many a black year. It was through the ministration of the Rev.
+John Simons, of our own people. Sir, if your spirit should be in need
+of quickening, you would find a very sweet savour in his discourse.”
+
+The Governor cocked his episcopalian nose at him.
+
+“You came here to speak of Sharkey, Master Craddock,” said he.
+
+“The man Sharkey is a vessel of wrath,” said Craddock. “His wicked
+horn has been exalted over long, and it is borne in upon me that if I
+can cut him off and utterly destroy him, it will be a goodly deed, and
+one which may atone for many backslidings in the past. A plan has been
+given to me whereby I may encompass his destruction.”
+
+The Governor was keenly interested, for there was a grim and practical
+air about the man’s freckled face which showed that he was in earnest.
+After all, he was a seaman and a fighter, and, if it were true that he
+was eager to atone for his past, no better man could be chosen for the
+business.
+
+“This will be a dangerous task, Master Craddock,” said he.
+
+“If I meet my death at it, it may be that it will cleanse the memory of
+an ill-spent life. I have much to atone for.”
+
+The Governor did not see his way to contradict him.
+
+“What was your plan?” he asked.
+
+“You have heard that Sharkey’s barque, the _Happy Delivery_, came from
+this very port of Kingston?”
+
+“It belonged to Mr. Codrington, and it was taken by Sharkey, who
+scuttled his own sloop and moved into her because she was faster,” said
+Sir Edward.
+
+“Yes; but it may be that you have lever heard that Mr. Codrington has a
+sister ship, the _White Rose_, which lies even now in the harbour, and
+which is so like the pirate, that, if it were not for a white paint
+line, none could tell them apart.”
+
+“Ah! and what of that?” asked the Governor keenly, with the air of one
+who is just on the edge of an idea.
+
+“By the help of it this man shall be delivered into our hands.”
+
+“And how?”
+
+“I will paint out the streak upon the _White Rose_, and make it in all
+things like the _Happy Delivery_. Then I will set sail for the Island
+of La Vache, where this man is slaying the wild oxen. When he sees me
+he will surely mistake me for his own vessel which he is awaiting, and
+he will come on board to his own undoing.”
+
+It was a simple plan, and yet it seemed to the Governor that it might be
+effective. Without hesitation he gave Craddock permission to carry it
+out, and to take any steps he liked in order to further the object which
+he had in view. Sir Edward was not very sanguine, for many attempts had
+been made upon Sharkey, and their results had shown that he was as
+cunning as he was ruthless. But this gaunt Puritan with the evil record
+was cunning and ruthless also. The contest of wits between two such men
+as Sharkey and Craddock appealed to the Governor’s acute sense of sport,
+and though he was inwardly convinced that the chances were against him,
+he backed his man with the same loyalty which he would have shown to his
+horse or his cock.
+
+Haste was, above all things, necessary, for upon any day the careening
+might be finished, and the pirates out at sea once more. But there was
+not very much to do, and there were many willing hands to do it, so the
+second day saw the _White Rose_ beating out for the open sea. There
+were many seamen in the port who knew the lines and rig of the pirate
+barque, and not one of them could see the slightest difference in this
+counterfeit. Her white side line had been painted out, her masts and
+yards were smoked, to give them the dingy appearance of the
+weather-beaten rover, and a large diamond-shaped patch was let into her
+foretopsail. Her crew were volunteers, many of them being men who had
+sailed with Stephen Craddock before--the mate, Joshua Hird, an old
+slaver, had been his accomplice in many voyages, and came now at the
+bidding of his chief.
+
+The avenging barque sped across the Caribbean Sea, and, at the sight of
+that patched topsail, the little craft which they met flew left and
+right like frightened trout in a pool. On the fourth evening Point
+Abacou bore five miles to the north and east of them. On the fifth they
+were at anchor in the Bay of Tortoises at the Island of La Vache, where
+Sharkey and his four men had been hunting. It was a well-wooded place,
+with the palms and underwood growing down to the thin crescent of silver
+sand which skirted the shore. They had hoisted the black flag and the
+red pennant, but no answer came from the shore. Craddock strained his
+eyes, hoping every instant to see a boat shoot out to them with Sharkey
+seated in the sheets. But the night passed away, and a day and yet
+another night, without any sign of the men whom they were endeavouring
+to trap. It looked as if they were already gone.
+
+On the second morning Craddock went ashore in search of some proof
+whether Sharkey and his men were still upon the island. What he found
+reassured him greatly. Close to the shore was a boucan of green wood,
+such as was used for preserving the meat, and a great store of barbecued
+strips of ox-flesh was hung upon lines all round it. The pirate ship
+had not taken off her provisions, and therefore the hunters were still
+upon the island.
+
+Why had they not shown themselves? Was it that they had detected that
+this was not their own ship? Or was it that they were hunting in the
+interior of the island, and were not on the look-out for a ship yet?
+Craddock was still hesitating between the two alternatives, when a Carib
+Indian came down with information. The pirates were in the island, he
+said, and their camp was a day’s march from the Sea. They had stolen
+his wife, and the marks of their stripes were still pink upon his brown
+back. Their enemies were his friends, and he would lead them to where
+they lay.
+
+Craddock could not have asked for anything better; so early next
+morning, with a small party armed to the teeth, he set off, under the
+guidance of the Carib. All day they struggled through brushwood and
+clambered over rocks, pushing their way further and further into the
+desolate heart of the island. Here and there they found traces of the
+hunters, the bones of a slain ox, or the marks of feet in a morass, and
+once, towards evening, it seemed to some of them that they heard the
+distant rattle of guns.
+
+That night they spent under the trees, and pushed on again with the
+earliest light. About noon they came to the huts of bark, which, the
+Carib told them, were the camp of the hunters, but they were silent and
+deserted. No doubt their occupants were away at the hunt and would
+return in the evening, so Craddock and his men lay in ambush in the
+brushwood around them. But no one came, and another night was spent in
+the forest. Nothing more could be done, and it seemed to Craddock that
+after the two days’ absence it was time that he returned to his ship
+once more.
+
+The return journey was less difficult, as they had already blazed a path
+for themselves. Before evening they found themselves once more at the
+Bay of Palms, and saw their ship riding at anchor where they had left
+her. Their boat and oars had been hauled up among the bushes, so they
+launched it and pulled out to the barque.
+
+“No luck, then!” cried Joshua Hird, the mate, looking down with a pale
+face from the poop.
+
+“His camp was empty, but he may come down to us yet,” said Craddock,
+with his hand on the ladder.
+
+Somebody upon deck began to laugh. “I think,” said the mate, “that
+these men had better stay in the boat.”
+
+“Why so?”
+
+“If you will come aboard, sir, you will understand it.” He spoke in a
+curious, hesitating fashion.
+
+The blood flushed to Craddock’s gaunt face. “How is this, Master Hird?”
+he cried, springing up the side. “What mean you by giving orders to my
+boat’s crew?”
+
+But as he passed over the bulwarks, with one foot upon the deck and one
+knee upon the rail, a tow-bearded man, whom he had never before observed
+aboard his vessel, grabbed suddenly at his pistol. Craddock clutched at
+the fellow’s wrist, but at the same instant his mate snatched the
+cutlass from his side.
+
+“What roguery is this?” shouted Craddock, looking furiously around him.
+But the crew stood in knots about the deck, laughing and whispering
+amongst themselves without showing any desire to go to his assistance.
+Even in that hurried glance Craddock noticed that they were dressed in
+the most singular manner, with long riding-coats, full-skirted velvet
+gowns and coloured ribands at their knees, more like men of fashion than
+seamen.
+
+As he looked at their grotesque figures he struck his brow with his
+clenched fist to be sure that he was awake. The deck seemed to be much
+dirtier than when he had left it, and there were strange, sun-blackened
+faces turned upon him from every side. Not one of them did he know save
+only Joshua Hird. Had the ship been captured in his absence? Were
+these Sharkey’s men who were around him? At the thought he broke
+furiously away and tried to climb over to his boat, but a dozen hands
+were on him in an instant, and he was pushed aft through the open door
+of his own cabin.
+
+And it was all different to the cabin which he had left. The floor was
+different, the ceiling was different, the furniture was different.
+His had been plain and austere. This was sumptuous and yet dirty, hung
+with rare velvet curtains splashed with wine-stains, and panelled with
+costly woods which were pocked with pistol-marks.
+
+On the table was a great chart of the Caribbean Sea, and beside it, with
+compasses in his hand, sat a clean-shaven, pale-faced man with a fur cap
+and a claret-coloured coat of damask. Craddock turned white under his
+freckles as he looked upon the long, thin high-nostrilled nose and the
+red-rimmed eyes which were turned upon him with the fixed, humorous gaze
+of the master player who has left his opponent without a move.
+“Sharkey!” cried Craddock.
+
+Sharkey’s thin lips opened, and he broke into his high, sniggering
+laugh.
+
+“You fool!” he cried, and, leaning over, he stabbed Craddock’s shoulder
+again and again with his compasses. “You poor, dull-witted fool, would
+you match yourself against me?”
+
+It was not the pain of the wounds, but it was the contempt in Sharkey’s
+voice which turned Craddock into a savage madman. He flew at the
+pirate, roaring with rage, striking, kicking, writhing, foaming.
+It took six men to drag him down on to the floor amidst the splintered
+remains of the table--and not one of the six who did not bear the
+prisoner’s mark upon him. But Sharkey still surveyed him with the same
+contemptuous eye. From outside there came the crash of breaking wood
+and the clamour of startled voices.
+
+“What is that?” asked Sharkey.
+
+“They have stove the boat with cold shot, and the men are in the water.”
+
+“Let them stay there,” said the pirate. “Now, Craddock, you know where
+you are. You are aboard my ship, the _Happy Delivery_, and you lie at
+my mercy. I knew you for a stout seaman, you rogue, before you took to
+this long-shore canting. Your hands then were no cleaner than my own.
+Will you sign articles, as your mate has done, and join us, or shall I
+heave you over to follow your ship’s company?”
+
+“Where is my ship?” asked Craddock.
+
+“Scuttled in the bay.”
+
+“And the hands?”
+
+“In the bay, too.”
+
+“Then I’m for the bay, also.”
+
+“Hock him and heave him over,” said Sharkey.
+
+Many rough hands had dragged Craddock out upon deck, and Galloway, the
+quartermaster, had already drawn his hanger to cripple him, when Sharkey
+came hurrying from his cabin with an eager face. “We can do better with
+the hound!” he cried. “Sink me if it is not a rare plan. Throw him
+into the sail-room with the irons on, and do you come here,
+quartermaster, that I may tell you what I have in my mind.”
+
+So Craddock, bruised and wounded in soul and body, was thrown into the
+dark sail-room, so fettered that he could not stir hand or foot, but his
+Northern blood was running strong in his veins, and his grim spirit
+aspired only to make such an ending as might go some way towards atoning
+for the evil of his life. All night he lay in the curve of the bilge
+listening to the rush of the water and the straining of the timbers
+which told him that the ship was at sea and driving fast. In the early
+morning someone came crawling to him in the darkness over the heap of
+sails.
+
+“Here’s rum and biscuits,” said the voice of his late mate. “It’s at
+the risk of my life, Master Craddock, that I bring them to you.”
+
+“It was you who trapped me and caught me as in a snare!” cried Craddock.
+“How shall you answer for what you have done?”
+
+“What I did I did with the point of a knife betwixt my blade-bones.”
+
+“God forgive you for a coward, Joshua Hird. How came you into their
+hands?”
+
+“Why, Master Craddock, the pirate ship came back from its careening upon
+the very day that you left us. They laid us aboard, and, short-handed
+as we were, with the best of the men ashore with you, we could offer but
+a poor defence. Some were cut down, and they were the happiest. The
+others were killed afterwards. As to me, I saved my life by signing on
+with them.”
+
+“And they scuttled my ship?”
+
+“They scuttled her, and then Sharkey and his men, who had been watching
+us from the brushwood, came off to the ship. His mainyard had been
+cracked and fished last voyage, so he had suspicions of us, seeing that
+ours was whole. Then he thought of laying the same trap for you which
+you had set for him.”
+
+Craddock groaned. “How came I not to see that fished mainyard?” he
+muttered. “But whither are we bound?”
+
+“We are running north and west.”
+
+“North and west! Then we are heading back towards Jamaica.”
+
+“With an eight-knot wind.”
+
+“Have you heard what they mean to do with me?”
+
+“I have not heard. If you would but sign the articles--”
+
+“Enough, Joshua Hird! I have risked my soul too often.”
+
+“As you wish. I have done what I could. Farewell!”
+
+All that night and the next day the _Happy Delivery_ ran before the
+easterly trades, and Stephen Craddock lay in the dark of the sail-room
+working patiently at his wrist-irons. One he had slipped off at the
+cost of a row of broken and bleeding knuckles, but, do what he would, he
+could not free the other, and his ankles were securely fastened.
+From hour to hour he heard the swish of the water, and knew that the
+barque must be driving with all set in front of the trade wind. In that
+case they must be nearly back again to Jamaica by now. What plan could
+Sharkey have in his head, and what use did he hope to make of him?
+Craddock set his teeth, and vowed that if he had once been a villain
+from choice he would, at least, never be one by compulsion.
+
+On the second morning Craddock became aware that sail had been reduced
+in the vessel, and that she was tacking slowly, with a light breeze on
+her beam. The varying slope of the sail-room and the sounds from the
+deck told his practised senses exactly what she was doing. The short
+reaches showed him that she was manoeuvring near shore, and making for
+some definite point. If so, she must have reached Jamaica. But what
+could she be doing there?
+
+And then suddenly there was a burst of hearty cheering from the deck,
+and then the crash of a gun above his head, and then the answering
+booming of guns from far over the water. Craddock sat up and strained
+his ears. Was the ship in action? Only the one gun had been fired, and
+though many had answered, there were none of the crashings which told of
+a shot coming home. Then, if it was not an action, it must be a salute.
+But who would salute Sharkey, the pirate? It could only be another
+pirate ship which would do so. So Craddock lay back again with a groan,
+and continued to work at the manacle which still held his right wrist.
+But suddenly there came the shuffling of steps outside, and he had
+hardly time to wrap the loose links round his free hand, when the door
+was unbolted and two pirates came in.
+
+“Got your hammer, carpenter?” asked one, whom Craddock recognised as the
+big quartermaster.
+
+“Knock off his leg shackles, then. Better leave the bracelets--he’s
+safer with them on.”
+
+With hammer and chisel the carpenter loosened the irons.
+
+“What are you going to do with me?” asked Craddock.
+
+“Come on deck and you’ll see.”
+
+The sailor seized him by the arm and dragged him roughly to the foot of
+the companion. Above him was a square of blue sky cut across by the
+mizzen gaff, with the colours flying at the peak. But it was the sight
+of those colours which struck the breath from Stephen Craddock’s lips.
+For there were two of them, and the British ensign was flying above the
+Jolly Rodger--the honest flag above that of the rogue.
+
+For an instant Craddock stopped in amazement, but a brutal push from the
+pirates behind drove him up the companion ladder. As he stepped out
+upon deck, his eyes turned up to the main, and there again were the
+British colours flying above the red pennant, and all the shrouds and
+rigging were garlanded with streamers.
+
+Had the ship been taken, then? But that was impossible, for there were
+the pirates clustering in swarms along the port bulwarks, and waving
+their hats joyously in the air. Most prominent of all was the renegade
+mate, standing on the foc’sle head, and gesticulating wildly. Craddock
+looked over the side to see what they were cheering at, and then in a
+flash he saw how critical was the moment.
+
+On the port bow, and about a mile off, lay the white houses and forts of
+Port Royal, with flags breaking out everywhere over their roofs.
+Right ahead was the opening of the palisades leading to the town of
+Kingston. Not more than a quarter of a mile off was a small sloop
+working out against the very slight wind. The British ensign was at her
+peak, and her rigging was all decorated. On her deck could be seen a
+dense crowd of people cheering and waving their hats, and the gleam of
+scarlet told that there were officers of the garrison among them.
+
+In an instant, with the quick perception of a man of action, Craddock
+saw through it all. Sharkey, with that diabolical cunning and audacity
+which were among his main characteristics, was simulating the part which
+Craddock would himself have played had he come back victorious. It was
+in _his_ honour that the salutes were firing and the flags flying.
+It was to welcome _him_ that this ship with the Governor, the
+commandant, and the chiefs of the island were approaching. In another
+ten minutes they would all be under the guns of the _Happy Delivery_,
+and Sharkey would have won the greatest stake that ever a pirate played
+for yet.
+
+“Bring him forward,” cried the pirate captain, as Craddock appeared
+between the carpenter and the quartermaster. “Keep the ports closed,
+but clear away the port guns, and stand by for a broadside. Another two
+cable lengths and we have them.”
+
+“They are edging away,” said the boatswain. “I think they smell us.”
+
+“That’s soon set right,” said Sharkey, turning his filmy eyes upon
+Craddock. “Stand there, you--right there, where they can recognise you,
+with your hand on the guy, and wave your hat to them. Quick, or your
+brains will be over your coat. Put an inch of your knife into him, Ned.
+Now, will you wave your hat? Try him again, then. Hey, shoot him! Stop
+him!”
+
+But it was too late. Relying upon the manacles, the quartermaster had
+taken his hands for a moment off Craddock’s arm. In that instant he had
+flung off the carpenter, and, amid a spatter of pistol bullets, had
+sprung the bulwarks and was swimming for his life. He had been hit and
+hit again, but it takes many pistols to kill a resolute and powerful man
+who has his mind set upon doing something before he dies. He was a
+strong swimmer, and, in spite of the red trail which he left in the
+water behind him, he was rapidly increasing his distance from the
+pirate. “Give me a musket!” cried Sharkey, with a savage oath.
+
+He was a famous shot, and his iron nerves never failed him in an
+emergency. The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then
+swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop.
+Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired. With the crack of the
+gun the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a
+gesture of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay.
+Then, as the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an
+impotent broadside, Stephen Craddock, smiling grimly in his death agony,
+sank slowly down to that golden couch which glimmered far beneath him.
+
+
+
+                             III
+
+HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY
+
+
+The Buccaneers were something higher than a mere band of marauders.
+They were a floating republic, with laws, usages, and discipline of
+their own. In their endless and remorseless quarrel with the
+Spaniards they had some semblance of right upon their side.
+Their bloody harryings of the cities of the Main were not more barbarous
+than the inroads of Spain upon the Netherlands--or upon the Caribs in
+these same American lands.
+
+The chief of the Buccaneers, were he English or French, a Morgan or a
+Granmont, was still a responsible person, whose country might
+countenance him, or even praise him, so long as he refrained from any
+deed which might shock the leathery seventeenth-century conscience too
+outrageously. Some of them were touched with religion, and it is still
+remembered how Sawkins threw the dice overboard upon the Sabbath, and
+Daniel pistolled a man before the altar for irreverence.
+
+But there came a day when the fleets of the Buccaneers no longer
+mustered at the Tortugas, and the solitary and outlawed pirate took
+their place. Yet even with him the tradition of restraint and of
+discipline still lingered; and among the early pirates, the Avorys, the
+Englands, and the Robertses, there remained some respect for human
+sentiment. They were more dangerous to the merchant than to the seaman.
+But they in turn were replaced by more savage and desperate men, who
+frankly recognised that they would get no quarter in their war with the
+human race, and who swore that they would give as little as they got.
+Of their histories we know little that is trustworthy. They wrote no
+memoirs and left no trace, save an occasional blackened and
+blood-stained derelict adrift upon the face of the Atlantic.
+Their deeds could only be surmised from the long roll of ships who never
+made their port.
+
+Searching the records of history, it is only here and there in an
+old-world trial that the veil that shrouds them seems for an instant to
+be lifted, and we catch a glimpse of some amazing and grotesque
+brutality behind. Such was the breed of Ned Low, of Gow the Scotchman,
+and of the infamous Sharkey, whose coal-black barque, the _Happy
+Delivery_, was known from the Newfoundland Banks to the mouths of the
+Orinoco as the dark forerunner of misery and of death.
+
+There were many men, both among the islands and on the Main, who had a
+blood feud with Sharkey, but not one who had suffered more bitterly than
+Copley Banks, of Kingston. Banks had been one of the leading sugar
+merchants of the West Indies. He was a man of position, a member of the
+Council, the husband of a Percival, and the cousin of the Governor of
+Virginia. His two sons had been sent to London to be educated, and
+their mother had gone over to bring them back. On their return voyage
+the ship, the _Duchess of Cornwall_, fell into the hands of Sharkey, and
+the whole family met with an infamous death.
+
+Copley Banks said little when he heard the news, but he sank into a
+morose and enduring melancholy. He neglected his business, avoided his
+friends, and spent much of his time in the low taverns of the fishermen
+and seamen. There, amidst riot and devilry, he sat silently puffing at
+his pipe, with a set face and a smouldering eye. It was generally
+supposed that his misfortunes had shaken his wits, and his old friends
+looked at him askance, for the company which he kept was enough to bar
+him from honest men.
+
+From time to time there came rumours of Sharkey over the sea. Sometimes
+it was from some schooner which had seen a great flame upon the horizon,
+and approaching to offer help to the burning ship, had fled away at the
+sight of the sleek, black barque, lurking like a wolf near a mangled
+sheep. Sometimes it was a frightened trader, which had come tearing in
+with her canvas curved like a lady’s bodice, because she had seen a
+patched foretopsail rising slowly above the violet water-line.
+Sometimes it was from a coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama cay
+littered with sun-dried bodies. Once there came a man who had been mate
+of a Guineaman, and who had escaped from the pirate’s hands. He could
+not speak--for reasons which Sharkey could best supply--but he could
+write, and he did write, to the very great interest of Copley Banks.
+For hours they sat together over the map, and the dumb man pointed here
+and there to outlying reefs and tortuous inlets, while his companion sat
+smoking in silence, with his unvarying face and his fiery eyes.
+
+One morning, some two years after his misfortunes, Mr. Copley Banks
+strode into his own office with his old air of energy and alertness.
+The manager stared at him in surprise, for it was months since he had
+shown any interest in business.
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Banks!” said he.
+
+“Good morning, Freeman. I see that _Ruffling Harry_ is in the Bay.”
+
+“Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday.”
+
+“I have other plans for her, Freeman. I have determined upon a slaving
+venture to Whydah.”
+
+“But her cargo is ready, sir.”
+
+“Then it must come out again, Freeman. My mind is made up, and the
+_Ruffling Harry_ must go slaving to Whydah.”
+
+All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to
+clear the ship once more. And then Copley Banks began to make
+preparations for his African voyage. It appeared that he relied upon
+force rather than barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried
+none of those showy trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted
+with eight nine-pounder guns, and racks full of muskets and cutlasses.
+The after-sailroom next the cabin was transformed into a powder
+magazine, and she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer.
+Water and provisions were shipped for a long voyage.
+
+But the preparation of his ship’s company was most surprising. It made
+Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that
+his master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or
+another, he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the
+firm for years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port--men
+whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been
+ashamed to furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known
+to have been present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his
+hideous scarlet disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a
+red afterglow from that great crime. He was first mate, and under him
+was Israel Martin, a little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell
+Davies at the taking of Cape Coast Castle.
+
+The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
+their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
+man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk. His beard had been
+shaved, and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom
+Sharkey had placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his
+experiences to Copley Banks. These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet
+uncommented upon in the town of Kingston. The Commandant of the
+troops--Major Harvey of the Artillery--made serious representations to
+the Governor.
+
+“She is not a trader, but a small warship,” said he.
+
+“I think it would be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the
+vessel.”
+
+“What do you suspect?” asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man,
+broken down with fevers and port wine.
+
+“I suspect,” said the soldier, “that it is Stede Bonnet over again.”
+
+Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious
+character who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in
+his blood, had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the
+Caribbean Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the
+utmost consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been
+accused of being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions
+upon their plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister
+construction.
+
+“Well, Major Harvey,” said he, “I am vastly sorry to do anything which
+may offend my friend Copley Banks, for many a time have my knees been
+under his mahogany, but in face of what you say there is no choice for
+me but to order you to board the vessel and to satisfy yourself as to
+her character and destination.”
+
+So at one in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers,
+paid a surprise visit to the _Ruffling Harry_, with the result that they
+picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the
+moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented
+danger. She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out
+against the north-east trades on a course for the Windward Passage.
+
+When upon the next morning the brig had left Morant Point a mere haze
+upon the Southern horizon, the men were called aft, and Copley Banks
+revealed his plans to them. He had chosen them, he said, as brisk boys
+and lads of spirit, who would rather run some risk upon the sea than
+starve for a living upon the shore. King’s ships were few and weak, and
+they could master any trader who might come their way. Others had done
+well at the business, and with a handy, well-found vessel, there was no
+reason why they should not turn their tarry jackets into velvet coats.
+If they were prepared to sail under the black flag, he was ready to
+command them; but if any wished to withdraw, they might have the gig and
+row back to Jamaica.
+
+Four men out of six-and-forty asked for their discharge, went over the
+ship’s side into the boat, and rowed away amidst the jeers and howlings
+of the crew. The rest assembled aft, and drew up the articles of their
+association. A square of black tarpaulin had the white skull painted
+upon it, and was hoisted amidst cheering at the main.
+
+Officers were elected, and the limits of their authority fixed. Copley
+Banks was chosen captain, but, as there are no mates upon a pirate
+craft, Birthmark Sweetlocks became quartermaster, and Israel Martin the
+boatswain. There was no difficulty in knowing what was the custom of
+the brotherhood, for half the men at least had served upon pirates
+before. Food should be the same for all, and no man should interfere
+with another man’s drink! The captain should have a cabin, but all
+hands should be welcome to enter it when they chose.
+
+All should share and share alike, save only the captain, quartermaster,
+boatswain, carpenter, and master-gunner, who had from a quarter to a
+whole share extra. He who saw a prize first should have the best weapon
+taken out of her. He who boarded her first should have the richest suit
+of clothes aboard of her. Every man might treat his own prisoner, be it
+man or woman, after his own fashion. If a man flinched from his gun,
+the quartermaster should pistol him. These were some of the rules which
+the crew of the _Ruffling Harry_ subscribed by putting forty-two crosses
+at the foot of the paper upon which they had been drawn.
+
+So a new rover was afloat upon the seas, and her name before a year was
+over became as well known as that of the _Happy Delivery_. From the
+Bahamas to the Leewards, and from the Leewards to the Windwards, Copley
+Banks became the rival of Sharkey and the terror of traders. For a long
+time the barque and the brig never met, which was the more singular as
+the _Ruffling Harry_ was for ever looking in at Sharkey’s resorts; but
+at last one day, when she was passing down the inlet of Coxon’s Hole, at
+the east end of Cuba, with the intention of careening, there was the
+_Happy Delivery_, with her blocks and tackle-falls already rigged for
+the same purpose. Copley Banks fired a shotted salute and hoisted the
+green trumpeter ensign, as the custom was among gentlemen of the sea.
+Then he dropped his boat and went aboard.
+
+Captain Sharkey was not a man of a genial mood, nor had he any kindly
+sympathy for those who were of the same trade as himself. Copley Banks
+found him seated astride upon one of the after guns, with his New
+England quartermaster, Ned Galloway, and a crowd of roaring ruffians
+standing about him. Yet none of them roared with quite such assurance
+when Sharkey’s pale face and filmy blue eyes were turned upon him.
+He was in his shirt-sleeves, with his cambric frills breaking through
+his open red satin long-flapped vest. The scorching sun seemed to have
+no power upon his fleshless frame, for he wore a low fur cap, as though
+it had been winter. A many-coloured band of silk passed across his body
+and supported a short, murderous sword, while his broad, brass-buckled
+belt was stuffed with pistols.
+
+“Sink you for a poacher!” he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the
+bulwarks. “I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch
+also! What mean you by fishing in my waters?”
+
+Copley Banks looked at him, and his eyes were like those of a traveller
+who sees his home at last. “I am glad that we are of one mind,” said
+he, “for I am myself of opinion that the seas are not large enough for
+the two of us. But if you will take your sword and pistols and come
+upon a sand-bank with me, then the world will be rid of a damned
+villain, whichever way it goes.”
+
+“Now, this is talking!” said Sharkey, jumping off the gun and holding
+out his hand. “I have not met many who could look John Sharkey in the
+eyes and speak with a full breath. May the devil seize me if I do not
+choose you as a consort! But if you play me false, then I will come
+aboard of you and gut you upon your own poop.”
+
+“And I pledge you the same!” said Copley Banks, and so the two pirates
+became sworn comrades to each other.
+
+That summer they went north as far as the Newfoundland Banks, and
+harried the New York traders and the whale ships from New England.
+It was Copley Banks who captured the Liverpool ship, _House of Hanover_,
+but it was Sharkey who fastened her master to the windlass and pelted
+him to death with empty claret-bottles.
+
+Together they engaged the King’s ship _Royal Fortune_, which had been
+sent in search of them, and beat her off after a night action of five
+hours, the drunken, raving crews fighting naked in the light of the
+battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles
+of every gun. They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and
+then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ready for a long
+cruise down the West Indies.
+
+By this time Sharkey and Copley Banks had become very excellent friends,
+for Sharkey loved a whole-hearted villain, and he loved a man of metal,
+and it seemed to him that the two met in the captain of the _Ruffling
+Harry_. It was long before he gave his confidence to him, for cold
+suspicion lay deep in his character. Never once would he trust himself
+outside his own ship and away from his own men. But Copley Banks came
+often on board the _Happy Delivery_, and joined Sharkey in many of his
+morose debauches, so that at last any lingering misgivings of the latter
+were set at rest. He knew nothing of the evil that he had done to his
+new boon companion, for of his many victims how could he remember the
+woman and the two boys whom he had slain with such levity so long ago!
+When, therefore, he received a challenge to himself and to his
+quartermaster for a carouse upon the last evening of their stay at the
+Caicos Bank he saw no reason to refuse.
+
+A well-found passenger ship had been rifled the week before, so their
+fare was of the best, and after supper five of them drank deeply
+together. There were the two captains, Birthmark Sweetlocks, Ned
+Galloway, and Israel Martin, the old buccaneers-man. To wait upon them
+was the dumb steward, whose head Sharkey split with a glass, because he
+had been too slow in the filling of it. The quartermaster has slipped
+Sharkey’s pistols away from him, for it was an old joke with him to fire
+them cross-handed under the table and see who was the luckiest man.
+It was a pleasantry which had cost his boatswain his leg, so now, when
+the table was cleared, they would coax Sharkey’s weapons away from him
+on the excuse of the heat, and lay them out of his reach.
+
+The captain’s cabin of the _Ruffling Harry_ was in a deck-house upon the
+poop, and a stern-chaser gun was mounted at the back of it. Round shot
+were racked round the wall, and three great hogsheads of powder made a
+stand for dishes and for bottles. In this grim room the five pirates
+sang and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up
+their glasses, and passed the box and the candle round for their
+tobacco-pipes. Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices
+hoarser, the curses and shoutings more incoherent, until three of the
+five had closed their blood-shot eyes, and dropped their swimming heads
+upon the table.
+
+Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had
+drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake
+his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the
+watchful steward, for ever filling up his waning glass. From without
+came the low lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor’s
+chanty from the barque. In the windless tropical night the words came
+clearly to their ears:--
+
+     A trader sailed from Stepney Town,
+   Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!
+     A trader sailed from Stepney Town
+   With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.
+     Ho, the bully Rover Jack,
+   Waiting with his yard aback
+     Out upon the Lowland Sea.
+
+The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks
+glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from
+the shot-rack behind him.
+
+“Captain Sharkey,” said Copley Banks, “do you remember the _Duchess of
+Cornwall_, hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago
+off the Statira Shoal?”
+
+“Curse me if I can bear their names in mind,” said Sharkey. “We did as
+many as ten ships a week about that time.”
+
+“There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. Maybe that will
+bring it back to your mind.”
+
+Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose
+jutting upwards. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing
+laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it.
+“But burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!” he cried. “How came
+you to think of it?”
+
+“It was of interest to me,” said Copley Banks, “for the woman was my
+wife, and the lads were my only sons.”
+
+Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering
+fire which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame.
+He read their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt.
+Then he turned to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round
+him, and in an instant his arms were bound to his side. He fought like
+a wild cat, and screamed for help. “Ned!” he yelled. “Ned! Wake up!
+Here’s damned villainy! Help, Ned!--help!”
+
+But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for
+any voice to wake them. Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey
+was swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and
+helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a
+handkerchief, but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at
+them. The dumb man chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for
+the first time when he saw the empty mouth before him. He understood
+that vengeance, slow and patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him
+at last.
+
+The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat
+elaborate. First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder
+barrels, and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor.
+They piled it round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled
+in a heap of it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun and they triced
+him sitting over the port-hole, with his body about a foot from the
+muzzle. Wriggle as he would he could not move an inch either to the
+right or left, and the dumb man trussed him up with a sailor’s cunning,
+so that there was no chance that he should work free.
+
+“Now, you bloody devil,” said Copley Banks, softly, “you must listen to
+what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will
+hear. You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have
+given all that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as
+well.
+
+“To reach you I have had to sink to your level. For two years I strove
+against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learnt that
+there was no other. I’ve robbed and I have murdered--worse still, I
+have laughed and lived with you--and all for the one end. And now my
+time has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the
+shadow creeping upon you and the devil waiting for you in the shadow.”
+
+Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty
+over the water.
+
+    Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
+  Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending!
+    Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
+    His gold’s on the capstan, his blood’s on his gown,
+      All for bully Rover Jack,
+      Reaching on the weather tack
+    Right across the Lowland Sea.
+
+The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men
+pacing backwards and forwards upon the deck. And yet he was helpless,
+staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to
+utter so much as a groan. Again there came the burst of voices from the
+deck of the barque.
+
+    So it’s up and it’s over to Stornoway Bay,
+  Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with stunsails!
+    It’s off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay,
+    Where the liquor is good and the lasses are gay,
+      Waiting for their bully Jack,
+      Watching for him sailing back,
+    Right across the Lowland Sea.
+
+To the dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own
+fate seem the harsher, but there was no softening in those venomous blue
+eyes. Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had
+sprinkled fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the
+candle and cut it to the length of about an inch. This he placed upon
+the loose powder at the breach of the gun. Thin he scattered powder
+thickly over the floor beneath, so that when the candle fell at the
+recoil it must explode the huge pile in which the three drunkards were
+wallowing.
+
+“You’ve made others look death in the face, Sharkey,” said he; “now it
+has come to be your own turn. You and these swine here shall go
+together!” He lit the candle-end as he spoke, and blew out the other
+lights upon the table. Then he passed out with the dumb man, and locked
+the cabin door upon the outer side. But before he closed it he took an
+exultant look backwards, and received one last curse from those
+unconquerable eyes. In the single dim circle of light that ivory-white
+face, with the gleam of moisture upon the high, bald forehead, was the
+last that was ever seen of Sharkey.
+
+There was a skiff alongside, and in it Copley Banks and the dumb steward
+made their way to the beach, and looked back upon the brig riding in the
+moonlight just outside the shadow of the palm trees. They waited and
+waited watching that dim light which shone through the stem port. And
+then at last there came the dull thud of a gun, and an instant later the
+shattering crash of an explosion. The long, sleek, black barque, the
+sweep of white sand, and the fringe of nodding feathery palm trees
+sprang into dazzling light and back into darkness again. Voices
+screamed and called upon the bay.
+
+Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him, touched his companion
+upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely jungle of
+the Caicos.
+
+
+
+
+THE CROXLEY MASTER
+
+
+                             I
+
+
+Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands,
+in a state of the blackest despondency. Before him was the open ledger
+with the long columns of Dr. Oldacre’s prescriptions. At his elbow lay
+the wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the
+lumps of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of bottles waited to
+be filled. But his spirits were too low for work. He sat in silence
+with his fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands.
+
+Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened
+brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars
+upheld the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank. For six days in the week
+they spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was
+Sunday. Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and
+blasted by the greed of man. There was nothing in the surroundings to
+cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment
+which weighed upon the medical assistant. His trouble was deeper and
+more personal. The winter session was approaching. He should be back
+again at the University completing the last year which would give him
+his medical degree; but, alas! he had not the money with which to pay
+his class fees, nor could he imagine how he could procure it.
+Sixty pounds were wanted to make his career, and it might have been as
+many thousand for any chance there seemed to be of his obtaining it.
+He was roused from his black meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre
+himself, a large, clean-shaven, respectable man, with a prim manner and
+an austere face. He had prospered exceedingly by the support of the
+local Church interest, and the rule of his life was never by word or
+action to run a risk of offending the sentiment which had made him.
+His standard of respectability and of dignity was exceedingly high, and
+he expected the same from his assistants. His appearance and words were
+always vaguely benevolent. A sudden impulse came over the despondent
+student. He would test the reality of this philanthropy.
+
+“I beg your pardon, Dr. Oldacre,” said he, rising from his chair;
+“I have a great favour to ask of you.”
+
+The doctor’s appearance was not encouraging. His mouth suddenly
+tightened, and his eyes fell.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Montgomery?”
+
+“You are aware, sir, that I need only one more session to complete my
+course.”
+
+“So you have told me.”
+
+“It is very important to me, sir.”
+
+“Naturally.”
+
+“The fees, Dr. Oldacre, would amount to about sixty pounds.”
+
+“I am afraid that my duties call me elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery.”
+
+“One moment, sir! I had hoped, sir, that perhaps, if I signed a paper
+promising you interest upon your money, you would advance this sum to
+me. I will pay you back, sir, I really will. Or, if you like, I will
+work it off after I am qualified.”
+
+The doctor’s lips had thinned into a narrow line. His eyes were raised
+again, and sparkled indignantly.
+
+“Your request is unreasonable, Mr. Montgomery. I am surprised that you
+should have made it. Consider, sir, how many thousands of medical
+students there are in this country. No doubt there are many of them who
+have a difficulty in finding their fees. Am I to provide for them all?
+Or why should I make an exception in your favour? I am grieved and
+disappointed, Mr. Montgomery, that you should have put me into the
+painful position of having to refuse you.” He turned upon his heel, and
+walked with offended dignity out of the surgery.
+
+The student smiled bitterly, and turned to his work of making up the
+morning prescriptions. It was poor and unworthy work--work which any
+weakling might have done as well, and this was a man of exceptional
+nerve and sinew. But, such as it was, it brought him his board and one
+pound a week--enough to help him during the summer months and let him
+save a few pounds towards his winter keep. But those class fees!
+Where were they to come from? He could not save them out of his scanty
+wage. Dr. Oldacre would not advance them. He saw no way of earning
+them. His brains were fairly good, but brains of that quality were a
+drug in the market. He only excelled in his strength, and where was he
+to find a customer for that? But the ways of Fate are strange, and his
+customer was at hand.
+
+“Look y’ere!” said a voice at the door. Montgomery looked up, for the
+voice was a loud and rasping one. A young man stood at the
+entrance--a stocky, bull-necked young miner, in tweed Sunday clothes
+and an aggressive neck-tie. He was a sinister-looking figure, with
+dark, insolent eyes, and the jaw and throat of a bulldog.
+
+“Look y’ere!” said he again. “Why hast thou not sent t’ medicine oop as
+thy master ordered?”
+
+Montgomery had become accustomed to the brutal frankness of the northern
+worker. At first it had enraged him, but after a time he had grown
+callous to it, and accepted it as it was meant. But this was something
+different. It was insolence--brutal, overbearing insolence, with
+physical menace behind it.
+
+“What name?” he asked coldly.
+
+“Barton. Happen I may give thee cause to mind that name, yoong man.
+Mak’ oop t’ wife’s medicine this very moment, look ye, or it will be the
+worse for thee.”
+
+Montgomery smiled. A pleasant sense of relief thrilled softly through
+him. What blessed safety-valve was this through which his jangled
+nerves might find some outlet. The provocation was so gross, the insult
+so unprovoked, that he could have none of those qualms which take the
+edge off a man’s mettle. He finished sealing the bottle upon which he
+was occupied, and he addressed it and placed it carefully in the rack.
+“Look here!” said he, turning round to the miner, “your medicine will be
+made up in its turn and sent down to you. I don’t allow folk in the
+surgery. Wait outside in the waiting-room if you wish to wait at all.”
+
+“Yoong man,” said the miner, “thou’s got to mak’ t’ wife’s medicine
+here, and now, and quick, while I wait and watch thee, or else happen
+thou might need some medicine thysel’ before all is over.”
+
+“I shouldn’t advise you to fasten a quarrel upon me.” Montgomery was
+speaking in the hard, staccato voice of a man who is holding himself in
+with difficulty. “You’ll save trouble if you’ll go quietly. If you
+don’t you’ll be hurt. Ah, you would? Take it, then!”
+
+The blows were almost simultaneous--a savage swing which whistled past
+Montgomery’s ear, and a straight drive which took the workman on the
+chin. Luck was with the assistant. That single whizzing uppercut, and
+the way in which it was delivered, warned him that he had a formidable
+man to deal with. But if he had underrated his antagonist, his
+antagonist had also underrated him, and had laid himself open to a fatal
+blow.
+
+The miner’s head had come with a crash against the corner of the surgery
+shelves, and he had dropped heavily on to the ground. There he lay with
+his bandy legs drawn up and his hands thrown abroad, the blood trickling
+over the surgery tiles.
+
+“Had enough?” asked the assistant, breathing fiercely through his nose.
+
+But no answer came. The man was insensible. And then the danger of his
+position came upon Montgomery, and he turned as white as his antagonist.
+A Sunday, the immaculate Dr. Oldacre with his pious connection, a savage
+brawl with a patient; he would irretrievably lose his situation if the
+facts came out. It was not much of a situation, but he could not get
+another without a reference, and Oldacre might refuse him one. Without
+money for his classes, and without a situation--what was to become of
+him? It was absolute ruin.
+
+But perhaps he could escape exposure after all. He seized his
+insensible adversary, dragged him out into the centre of he room,
+loosened his collar, and squeezed the surgery sponge over his face. He
+sat up at last with a gasp and a scowl. “Domn thee, thou’s spoilt my
+neck-tie,” said he, mopping up the water from his breast.
+
+“I’m sorry I hit you so hard,” said Montgomery, apologetically.
+
+“Thou hit me hard! I could stan’ such fly-flappin’ all day. ’Twas this
+here press that cracked my pate for me, and thou art a looky man to be
+able to boast as thou hast outed me. And now I’d be obliged to thee if
+thou wilt give me t’ wife’s medicine.”
+
+Montgomery gladly made it up and handed it to the miner.
+
+“You are weak still,” said he. “Won’t you stay awhile and rest?”
+
+“T’ wife wants her medicine,” said the man, and lurched out at the door.
+
+The assistant, looking after him, saw him rolling, with an uncertain
+step, down the street, until a friend met him, and they walked on arm in
+arm. The man seemed in his rough Northern fashion to bear no grudge,
+and so Montgomery’s fears left him. There was no reason why the doctor
+should know anything about it. He wiped the blood from the floor, put
+the surgery in order, and went on with his interrupted task, hoping that
+he had come scathless out of a very dangerous business.
+
+Yet all day he was aware of a sense of vague uneasiness, which sharpened
+into dismay when, late in the afternoon, he was informed that three
+gentlemen had called and were waiting for him in the surgery.
+A coroner’s inquest, a descent of detectives, an invasion of angry
+relatives--all sorts of possibilities rose to scare him. With tense
+nerves and a rigid face he went to meet his visitors.
+
+They were a very singular trio. Each was known to him by sight; but
+what on earth the three could be doing together, and, above all, what
+they could expect from _him_, was a most inexplicable problem.
+The first was Sorley Wilson, the son of the owner of the Nonpareil
+Coalpit. He was a young blood of twenty, heir to a fortune, a keen
+sportsman, and down for the Easter Vacation from Magdalene College.
+He sat now upon the edge of the surgery table, looking in thoughtful
+silence at Montgomery and twisting the ends of his small, black, waxed
+moustache. The second was Purvis, the publican, owner of the chief
+beer-shop, and well known as the local bookmaker. He was a coarse,
+clean-shaven man, whose fiery face made a singular contrast with his
+ivory-white bald head. He had shrewd, light-blue eyes with foxy lashes,
+and he also leaned forward in silence from his chair, a fat, red hand
+upon either knee, and stared critically at the young assistant. So did
+the third visitor, Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who leaned back, his
+long, thin legs, with their boxcloth riding-gaiters, thrust out in front
+of him, tapping his protruding teeth with his riding-whip, with anxious
+thought in every line of his rugged, bony face. Publican, exquisite,
+and horse-breaker were all three equally silent, equally earnest, and
+equally critical. Montgomery seated in the midst of them, looked from
+one to the other.
+
+“Well, gentlemen?” he observed, but no answer came.
+
+The position was embarrassing.
+
+“No,” said the horse-breaker, at last. “No. It’s off. It’s nowt.”
+
+“Stand oop, lad; let’s see thee standin’.” It was the publican who
+spoke. Montgomery obeyed. He would learn all about it, no doubt, if he
+were patient. He stood up and turned slowly round, as if in front of
+his tailor.
+
+“It’s off! It’s off!” cried the horse-breaker. “Why, mon, the Master
+would break him over his knee.”
+
+“Oh, that be hanged for a yarn!” said the young Cantab. “You can drop
+out if you like, Fawcett, but I’ll see this thing through, if I have to
+do it alone. I don’t hedge a penny. I like the cut of him a great deal
+better than I liked Ted Barton.”
+
+“Look at Barton’s shoulders, Mr. Wilson.”
+
+“Lumpiness isn’t always strength. Give me nerve and fire and breed.
+That’s what wins.”
+
+“Ay, sir, you have it theer--you have it theer!” said the fat, red-faced
+publican, in a thick suety voice. “It’s the same wi’ poops. Get ’em
+clean-bred an’ fine, an’ they’ll yark the thick ’uns--yark ’em out o’
+their skins.”
+
+“He’s ten good pund on the light side,” growled the horse-breaker.
+
+“He’s a welter weight, anyhow.”
+
+“A hundred and thirty.”
+
+“A hundred and fifty, if he’s an ounce.”
+
+“Well, the Master doesn’t scale much more than that.”
+
+“A hundred and seventy-five.”
+
+“That was when he was hog-fat and living high. Work the grease out of
+him and I lay there’s no great difference between them. Have you been
+weighed lately, Mr. Montgomery?”
+
+It was the first direct question which had been asked him. He had stood
+in the midst of them like a horse at a fair, and he was just beginning
+to wonder whether he was more angry or amused.
+
+“I am just eleven stone,” said he.
+
+“I said that he was a welter weight.”
+
+“But suppose you was trained?” said the publican. “Wot then?”
+
+“I am always in training.”
+
+“In a manner of speakin’, no doubt, he _is_ always in trainin’,”
+remarked the horse-breaker. “But trainin’ for everyday work ain’t the
+same as trainin’ with a trainer; and I dare bet, with all respec’ to
+your opinion, Mr. Wilson, that there’s half a stone of tallow on him at
+this minute.”
+
+The young Cantab put his fingers on the assistant’s upper arm, then with
+his other hand on his wrist, he bent the forearm sharply, and felt the
+biceps, as round and hard as a cricket-ball, spring up under his
+fingers.
+
+“Feel that!” said he.
+
+The publican and horse-breaker felt it with an air of reverence. “Good
+lad! He’ll do yet!” cried Purvis.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said Montgomery, “I think that you will acknowledge that I
+have been very patient with you. I have listened to all that you have
+to say about my personal appearance, and now I must really beg that you
+will have the goodness to tell me what is the matter.”
+
+They all sat down in their serious, business-like way.
+
+“That’s easy done, Mr. Montgomery,” said the fat-voiced publican.
+“But before sayin’ anything we had to wait and see whether, in a way of
+speakin’, there was any need for us to say anything at all. Mr. Wilson
+thinks there is. Mr. Fawcett, who has the same right to his opinion,
+bein’ also a backer and one o’ the committee, thinks the other way.”
+
+“I thought him too light built, and I think so now,” said the
+horse-breaker, still tapping his prominent teeth with the metal head of
+his riding-whip. “But happen he may pull through, and he’s a
+fine-made, buirdly young chap, so if you mean to back him, Mr.
+Wilson----”
+
+“Which I do.”
+
+“And you, Purvis?”
+
+“I ain’t one to go back, Fawcett.”
+
+“Well, I’ll stan’ to my share of the purse.”
+
+“And well I knew you would,” said Purvis, “for it would be somethin’ new
+to find Isaac Fawcett as a spoil-sport. Well, then, we will make up the
+hundred for the stake among us, and the fight stands--always supposin’
+the young man is willin’.”
+
+“Excuse all this rot, Mr. Montgomery,” said the University man, in a
+genial voice. “We’ve begun at the wrong end, I know, but we’ll soon
+straighten it out, and I hope that you will see your way to falling in
+with our views. In the first place, you remember the man whom you
+knocked out this morning? He is Barton--the famous Ted Barton.”
+
+“I’m sure, sir, you may well be proud to have outed him in one round,”
+said the publican. “Why, it took Morris, the ten-stone-six champion, a
+deal more trouble than that before he put Barton to sleep. You’ve done
+a fine performance, sir, and happen you’ll do a finer, if you give
+yourself the chance.”
+
+“I never heard of Ted Barton, beyond seeing the name on a medicine
+label,” said the assistant.
+
+“Well, you may take it from me that he’s a slaughterer,” said the
+horse-breaker. “You’ve taught him a lesson that he needed, for it was
+always a word and a blow with him, and the word alone was worth five
+shillin’ in a public court. He won’t be so ready now to shake his nief
+in the face of everyone he meets. However, that’s neither here nor
+there.”
+
+Montgomery looked at them in bewilderment.
+
+“For goodness’ sake, gentlemen, tell me what it is you want me to do!”
+he cried.
+
+“We want you to fight Silas Craggs, better known as the Master of
+Croxley.”
+
+“But why?”
+
+“Because Ted Barton was to have fought him next Saturday. He was the
+champion of the Wilson coal-pits, and the other was the Master of the
+iron-folk down at the Croxley smelters. We’d matched our man for a
+purse of a hundred against the Master. But you’ve queered our man, and
+he can’t face such a battle with a two-inch cut at the back of his head.
+There’s only one thing to be done, sir, and that is for you to take his
+place. If you can lick Ted Barton you may lick the Master of Croxley,
+but if you don’t we’re done, for there’s no one else who is in the same
+street with him in this district. It’s twenty rounds, two-ounce gloves,
+Queensberry rules, and a decision on points if you fight to the finish.”
+
+For a moment the absurdity of the thing drove every other thought out of
+Montgomery’s head. But then there came a sudden revulsion. A hundred
+pounds!--all he wanted to complete his education was lying there ready
+to his hand, if only that hand were strong enough to pick it up. He had
+thought bitterly that morning that there was no market for his strength,
+but here was one where his muscle might earn more in an hour than his
+brains in a year. But a chill of doubt came over him. “How can I fight
+for the coal-pits?” said he. “I am not connected with them.”
+
+“Eh, lad, but thou art!” cried old Purvis. “We’ve got it down in
+writin’, and it’s clear enough ‘Anyone connected with the coal-pits.’
+Doctor Oldacre is the coal-pit club doctor; thou art his assistant.
+What more can they want?”
+
+“Yes, that’s right enough,” said the Cantab. “It would be a very
+sporting thing of you, Mr. Montgomery, if you would come to our help
+when we are in such a hole. Of course, you might not like to take the
+hundred pounds; but I have no doubt that, in the case of your winning,
+we could arrange that it should take the form of a watch or piece of
+plate, or any other shape which might suggest itself to you. You see,
+you are responsible for our having lost our champion, so we really feel
+that we have a claim upon you.”
+
+“Give me a moment, gentlemen. It is very unexpected. I am afraid the
+doctor would never consent to my going--in fact, I am sure that he would
+not.”
+
+“But he need never know--not before the fight, at any rate. We are not
+bound to give the name of our man. So long as he is within the weight
+limits on the day of the fight, that is all that concerns anyone.”
+
+The adventure and the profit would either of them have attracted
+Montgomery. The two combined were irresistible. “Gentlemen,” said he,
+“I’ll do it!”
+
+The three sprang from their seats. The publican had seized his right
+hand, the horse-dealer his left, and the Cantab slapped him on the back.
+
+“Good lad! good lad!” croaked the publican. “Eh, mon, but if thou yark
+him, thou’ll rise in one day from being just a common doctor to the
+best-known mon ’twixt here and Bradford. Thou art a witherin’ tyke,
+thou art, and no mistake; and if thou beat the Master of Croxley,
+thou’ll find all the beer thou want for the rest of thy life waiting for
+thee at the ‘Four Sacks.’”
+
+“It is the most sporting thing I ever heard of in my life,” said young
+Wilson. “By George, sir, if you pull it off, you’ve got the
+constituency in your pocket, if you care to stand. You know the
+out-house in my garden?”
+
+“Next the road?”
+
+“Exactly. I turned it into a gymnasium for Ted Barton. You’ll find all
+you want there: clubs, punching ball, bars, dumb-bells, everything.
+Then you’ll want a sparring partner. Ogilvy has been acting for Barton,
+but we don’t think that he is class enough. Barton bears you no grudge.
+He’s a good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers. He
+looked upon you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you
+now. He is quite ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come
+any hour you will name.”
+
+“Thank you; I will let you know the hour,” said Montgomery; and so the
+committee departed jubilant upon their way.
+
+The medical assistant sat for a time in the surgery turning it over a
+little in his mind. He had been trained originally at the University by
+the man who had been middle-weight champion in his day. It was true
+that his teacher was long past his prime, slow upon his feet, and stiff
+in his joints, but even so he was still a tough antagonist; but
+Montgomery had found at last that he could more than hold his own with
+him. He had won the University medal, and his teacher, who had trained
+so many students, was emphatic in his opinion that he had never had one
+who was in the same class with him. He had been exhorted to go in for
+the Amateur Championships, but he had no particular ambition in that
+direction. Once he had put on the gloves with Hammer Tunstall in a
+booth at a fair and had fought three rattling rounds, in which he had
+the worst of it, but had made the prize fighter stretch himself to the
+uttermost. There was his whole record, and was it enough to encourage
+him to stand up to the Master of Croxley? He had never heard of the
+Master before, but then he had lost touch of the ring during the last
+few years of hard work. After all, what did it matter? If he won,
+there was the money, which meant so much to him. If he lost, it would
+only mean a thrashing. He could take punishment without flinching, of
+that he was certain. If there were only one chance in a hundred of
+pulling it off, then it was worth his while to attempt it.
+
+Dr. Oldacre, new come from church, with an ostentatious Prayer-book in
+his kid-gloved hand, broke in upon his meditation.
+
+“You don’t go to service, I observe, Mr. Montgomery” said he, coldly.
+
+“No, sir; I have had some business to detain me.”
+
+“It is very near to my heart that my household should set a good
+example. There are so few educated people in this district that a great
+responsibility devolves upon us. If we do not live up to the highest,
+how can we expect these poor workers to do so? It is a dreadful thing
+to reflect that the parish takes a great deal more interest in an
+approaching glove fight than in their religious duties.”
+
+“A glove fight, sir?” said Montgomery, guiltily.
+
+“I believe that to be the correct term. One of my patients tells me
+that it is the talk of the district. A local ruffian, a patient of
+ours, by the way, matched against a pugilist over at Croxley.
+I cannot understand why the law does not step in and stop so degrading
+an exhibition. It is really a prize fight.”
+
+“A glove fight, you said.”
+
+“I am informed that a 2oz. glove is an evasion by which they dodge the
+law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere. They contend
+for a sum of money. It seems dreadful and almost incredible--does it
+not?--to think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our
+peaceful home. But you will realise, Mr. Montgomery, that while there
+are such influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we
+should live up to our highest.”
+
+The doctor’s sermon would have had more effect if the assistant had not
+once or twice had occasion to test his highest, and come upon it at
+unexpectedly humble elevations. It is always so particularly easy to
+“compound for sins we’re most inclined to by damning those we have no
+mind to.” In any case, Montgomery felt that of all the men concerned in
+such a fight--promoters, backers, spectators--it is the actual fighter
+who holds the strongest and most honourable position. His conscience
+gave him no concern upon the subject. Endurance and courage are
+virtues, not vices, and brutality is, at least, better than effeminacy.
+
+There was a little tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where
+Montgomery got his bird’s-eye and also his local information, for the
+shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of
+the district. The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in
+a casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard of the Master of
+Croxley.
+
+“Heard of him! Heard of him!” the little man could hardly articulate in
+his astonishment. “Why, sir, he’s the first mon o’ the district, an’
+his name’s as well known in the West Riding as the winner o’ t’ Derby.
+But Lor,’ sir,”--here he stopped and rummaged among a heap of papers.
+“They are makin’ a fuss about him on account o’ his fight wi’ Ted
+Barton, and so the _Croxley Herald_ has his life an’ record, an’ here it
+is, an’ thou canst read it for thysel’.”
+
+The sheet of the paper which he held up was a lake of print around an
+islet of illustration. The latter was a coarse wood-cut of a pugilist’s
+head and neck set in a cross-barred jersey. It was a sinister but
+powerful face, the face of a debauched hero, clean-shaven, strongly
+eye-browed, keen-eyed, with huge, aggressive jaw, and an animal dewlap
+beneath it. The long, obstinate cheeks ran flush up to the narrow,
+sinister eyes. The mighty neck came down square from the ears and
+curved outwards into shoulders, which had lost nothing at the hands of
+the local artist. Above was written “Silas Craggs,” and beneath,
+“The Master of Croxley.”
+
+“Thou’ll find all about him there, sir,” said the tobacconist. “He’s a
+witherin’ tyke, he is, and we’re proud to have him in the county. If he
+hadn’t broke his leg he’d have been champion of England.”
+
+“Broke his leg, has he?”
+
+“Yes, and it set badly. They ca’ him owd K, behind his back, for that
+is how his two legs look. But his arms--well, if they was both stropped
+to a bench, as the sayin’ is, I wonder where the champion of England
+would be then.”
+
+“I’ll take this with me,” said Montgomery; and putting the paper into
+his pocket he returned home.
+
+It was not a cheering record which he read there. The whole history of
+the Croxley Master was given in full, his many victories, his few
+defeats.
+
+   Born in 1857 (said the provincial biographer), Silas Craggs, better
+   known in sporting circles as the Master of Croxley, is now in his
+   fortieth year.
+
+“Hang it, I’m only twenty-three!” said Montgomery to himself, and read
+on more cheerfully.
+
+   Having in his youth shown a surprising aptitude for the game, he
+   fought his way up among his comrades, until he became the
+   recognised champion of the district and won the proud title which
+   he still holds. Ambitious of a more than local fame, he secured a
+   patron, and fought his first fight against Jack Barton, of
+   Birmingham, in May 1880, at the old Loiterers’ Club. Craggs,
+   who fought at ten stone-two at the time, had the better of fifteen
+   rattling rounds, and gained an award on points against the Midlander.
+   Having disposed of James Dunn, of Rotherhithe, Cameron, of Glasgow,
+   and a youth named Fernie, he was thought so highly of by the fancy
+   that he was matched against Ernest Willox, at that time
+   middle-weight champion of the North of England, and defeated him in a
+   hard-fought battle, knocking him out in the tenth round after a
+   punishing contest. At this period it looked as if the very highest
+   honours of the ring were within the reach of the young Yorkshireman,
+   but he was laid upon the shelf by a most unfortunate accident. The
+   kick of a horse broke his thigh, and for a year he was compelled to
+   rest himself. When he returned to his work the fracture had set
+   badly, and his activity was much impaired. It was owing to this
+   that he was defeated in seven rounds by Willox, the man whom he had
+   previously beaten, and afterwards by James Shaw, of London, though
+   the latter acknowledged that he had found the toughest customer of
+   his career. Undismayed by his reverses, the Master adapted the
+   style of his fighting to his physical disabilities and resumed his
+   career of victory--defeating Norton (the black), Hobby Wilson, and
+   Levi Cohen, the latter a heavy-weight. Conceding two stone, he
+   fought a draw with the famous Billy McQuire, and afterwards, for
+   a purse of fifty pounds, he defeated Sam Hare at the Pelican Club,
+   London. In 1891 a decision was given against him upon a foul when
+   fighting a winning fight against Jim Taylor, the Australian middle
+   weight, and so mortified was he by the decision, that he withdrew
+   from the ring. Since then he has hardly fought at all save to
+   accommodate any local aspirant who may wish to learn the difference
+   between a bar-room scramble and a scientific contest. The latest
+   of these ambitious souls comes from the Wilson coal-pits, which have
+   undertaken to put up a stake of 100 pounds and back their local
+   champion. There are various rumours afloat as to who their
+   representative is to be, the name of Ted Barton being freely
+   mentioned; but the betting, which is seven to one on the Master
+   against any untried man, is a fair reflection of the feeling of
+   the community.
+
+Montgomery read it over twice, and it left him with a very serious face.
+No light matter this which he had undertaken; no battle with a
+rough-and-tumble fighter who presumed upon a local reputation.
+The man’s record showed that he was first-class--or nearly so. There
+were a few points in his favour, and he must make the most of them.
+There was age--twenty-three against forty. There was an old ring
+proverb that “Youth will be served,” but the annals of the ring offer a
+great number of exceptions. A hard veteran full of cool valour and
+ring-craft, could give ten or fifteen years and a beating to most
+striplings. He could not rely too much upon his advantage in age.
+But then there was the lameness; that must surely count for a great
+deal. And, lastly, there was the chance that the Master might underrate
+his opponent, that he might be remiss in his training, and refuse to
+abandon his usual way of life, if he thought that he had an easy task
+before him. In a man of his age and habits this seemed very possible.
+Montgomery prayed that it might be so. Meanwhile, if his opponent were
+the best man who ever jumped the ropes into a ring, his own duty was
+clear. He must prepare himself carefully, throw away no chance, and do
+the very best that he could. But he knew enough to appreciate the
+difference which exists in boxing, as in every sport, between the
+amateur and the professional. The coolness, the power of hitting, above
+all the capability of taking punishment, count for so much. Those
+specially developed, gutta-percha-like abdominal muscles of the hardened
+pugilist will take without flinching a blow which would leave another
+man writhing on the ground. Such things are not to be acquired in a
+week, but all that could be done in a week should be done.
+
+The medical assistant had a good basis to start from. He was 5ft. 11
+ins.--tall enough for anything on two legs, as the old ring men used to
+say--lithe and spare, with the activity of a panther, and a strength
+which had hardly yet ever found its limitations. His muscular
+development was finely hard, but his power came rather from that higher
+nerve-energy which counts for nothing upon a measuring tape. He had the
+well-curved nose and the widely opened eye which never yet were seen
+upon the face of a craven, and behind everything he had the driving
+force, which came from the knowledge that his whole career was at stake
+upon the contest. The three backers rubbed their hands when they saw
+him at work punching the ball in the gymnasium next morning; and
+Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who had written to Leeds to hedge his bets,
+sent a wire to cancel the letter, and to lay another fifty at the market
+price of seven to one.
+
+Montgomery’s chief difficulty was to find time for his training without
+any interference from the doctor. His work took him a large part of the
+day, but as the visiting was done on foot, and considerable distances
+had to be traversed, it was a training in itself. For the rest, he
+punched the swinging ball and worked with the dumb-bells for an hour
+every morning and evening, and boxed twice a day with Ted Barton in the
+gymnasium, gaining as much profit as could be got from a rushing,
+two-handed slogger. Barton was full of admiration for his cleverness
+and quickness, but doubtful about his strength. Hard hitting was the
+feature of his own style, and he exacted it from others.
+
+“Lord, sir, that’s a turble poor poonch for an eleven-stone man!” he
+would cry. “Thou wilt have to hit harder than that afore t’ Master will
+know that thou art theer. All, thot’s better, mon, thot’s fine!” he
+would add, as his opponent lifted him across the room on the end of a
+right counter. “Thot’s how I likes to feel ’em. Happen thou’lt pull
+through yet.” He chuckled with joy when Montgomery knocked him into a
+corner. “Eh, mon, thou art coming along grand. Thou hast fair yarked
+me off my legs. Do it again, lad, do it again!”
+
+The only part of Montgomery’s training which came within the doctor’s
+observation was his diet, and that puzzled him considerably.
+
+“You will excuse my remarking, Mr. Montgomery, that you are becoming
+rather particular in your tastes. Such fads are not to be encouraged in
+one’s youth. Why do you eat toast with every meal?”
+
+“I find that it suits me better than bread, sir.”
+
+“It entails unnecessary work upon the cook. I observe, also, that you
+have turned against potatoes.”
+
+“Yes, sir; I think that I am better without them.”
+
+“And you no longer drink your beer?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“These causeless whims and fancies are very much to be deprecated, Mr.
+Montgomery. Consider how many there are to whom these very potatoes and
+this very beer would be most acceptable.”
+
+“No doubt, sir, but at present I prefer to do without them.”
+
+They were sitting alone at lunch, and the assistant thought that it
+would be a good opportunity of asking leave for the day of the fight.
+
+“I should be glad if you could let me have leave for Saturday, Dr.
+Oldacre.”
+
+“It is very inconvenient upon so busy a day.”
+
+“I should do a double day’s work on Friday so as to leave everything in
+order. I should hope to be back in the evening.”
+
+“I am afraid I cannot spare you, Mr. Montgomery.”
+
+This was a facer. If he could not get leave he would go without it.
+
+“You will remember, Dr. Oldacre, that when I came to you it was
+understood that I should have a clear day every month. I have never
+claimed one. But now there are reasons why I wish to have a holiday
+upon Saturday.”
+
+Dr. Oldacre gave in with a very bad grace. “Of course, if you insist
+upon your formal rights, there is no more to be said, Mr. Montgomery,
+though I feel that it shows a certain indifference to my comfort and the
+welfare of the practice. Do you still insist?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Very good. Have your way.”
+
+The doctor was boiling over with anger, but Montgomery was a valuable
+assistant--steady, capable, and hardworking--and he could not afford to
+lose him. Even if he had been prompted to advance those class fees, for
+which his assistant had appealed, it would have been against his
+interests to do so, for he did not wish him to qualify, and he desired
+him to remain in his subordinate position, in which he worked so hard
+for so small a wage. There was something in the cool insistence of the
+young man, a quiet resolution in his voice as he claimed his Saturday,
+which aroused his curiosity.
+
+“I have no desire to interfere unduly with your affairs, Mr. Montgomery,
+but were you thinking of having a day in Leeds upon Saturday?”
+
+“No, sir.
+
+“In the country?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You are very wise. You will find a quiet day among the wild flowers a
+very valuable restorative. Have you thought of any particular
+direction?”
+
+“I am going over Croxley way.”
+
+“Well, there is no prettier country when once you are past the
+iron-works. What could be more delightful than to lie upon the Fells,
+basking in the sunshine, with perhaps some instructive and elevating
+book as your companion? I should recommend a visit to the ruins of St.
+Bridget’s Church, a very interesting relic of the early Norman era.
+By the way, there is one objection which I see to your going to Croxley
+on Saturday. It is upon that date, as I am informed, that that
+ruffianly glove fight takes place. You may find yourself molested by
+the blackguards whom it will attract.”
+
+“I will take my chance of that, sir,” said the assistant.
+
+On the Friday night, which was the last night before the fight,
+Montgomery’s three backers assembled in the gymnasium and inspected
+their man as he went through some light exercises to keep his muscles
+supple. He was certainly in splendid condition, his skin shining with
+health, and his eyes with energy and confidence. The three walked round
+him and exulted.
+
+“He’s simply ripping!” said the undergraduate.
+
+“By gad, you’ve come out of it splendidly. You’re as hard as a pebble,
+and fit to fight for your life.”
+
+“Happen he’s a trifle on the fine side,” said the publican. “Runs a bit
+light at the loins, to my way of thinkin’.”
+
+“What weight to-day?”
+
+“Ten stone eleven,” the assistant answered.
+
+“That’s only three pund off in a week’s trainin’,” said the
+horse-breaker. “He said right when he said that he was in condition.
+Well, it’s fine stuff all there is of it, but I’m none so sure as there
+is enough.” He kept poking his finger into Montgomery as if he were one
+of his horses. “I hear that the Master will scale a hundred and sixty
+odd at the ring-side.”
+
+“But there’s some of that which he’d like well to pull off and leave
+behind wi’ his shirt,” said Purvis. “I hear they’ve had a rare job to
+get him to drop his beer, and if it had not been for that great
+red-headed wench of his they’d never ha’ done it. She fair scratted the
+face off a potman that had brought him a gallon from t’ ‘Chequers.’
+They say the hussy is his sparrin’ partner, as well as his sweetheart,
+and that his poor wife is just breakin’ her heart over it. Hullo, young
+’un, what do you want?”
+
+The door of the gymnasium had opened and a lad, about sixteen, grimy and
+black with soot and iron, stepped into the yellow glare of the oil lamp.
+Ted Barton seized him by the collar.
+
+“See here, thou yoong whelp, this is private, and we want noan o’ thy
+spyin’!”
+
+“But I maun speak to Mr. Wilson.”
+
+The young Cantab stepped forward.
+
+“Well, my lad, what is it?”
+
+“It’s aboot t’ fight, Mr. Wilson, sir. I wanted to tell your mon
+somethin’ aboot t’ Maister.”
+
+“We’ve no time to listen to gossip, my boy. We know all about the
+Master.”
+
+“But thou doan’t, sir. Nobody knows but me and mother, and we thought
+as we’d like thy mon to know, sir, for we want him to fair bray him.”
+
+“Oh, you want the Master fair brayed, do you? So do we. Well, what
+have you to say?”
+
+“Is this your mon, sir?”
+
+“Well, suppose it is?”
+
+“Then it’s him I want to tell aboot it. T’ Maister is blind o’ the left
+eye.”
+
+“Nonsense!”
+
+“It’s true, sir. Not stone blind, but rarely fogged. He keeps it
+secret, but mother knows, and so do I. If thou slip him on the left
+side he can’t cop thee. Thou’ll find it right as I tell thee. And mark
+him when he sinks his right. ’Tis his best blow, his right upper-cut.
+T’ Maister’s finisher, they ca’ it at t’ works. It’s a turble blow when
+it do come home.”
+
+“Thank you, my boy. This is information worth having about his sight,”
+said Wilson. “How came you to know so much? Who are you?”
+
+“I’m his son, sir.”
+
+Wilson whistled.
+
+“And who sent you to us?”
+
+“My mother. I maun get back to her again.”
+
+“Take this half-crown.”
+
+“No, sir, I don’t seek money in comin’ here. I do it--”
+
+“For love?” suggested the publican.
+
+“For hate!” said the boy, and darted off into the darkness.
+
+“Seems to me t’ red-headed wench may do him more harm than good, after
+all,” remarked the publican. “And now, Mr. Montgomery, sir, you’ve done
+enough for this evenin’, an’ a nine-hours’ sleep is the best trainin’
+before a battle. Happen this time to-morrow night you’ll be safe back
+again with your 100 pound in your pocket.”
+
+
+                             II
+
+
+Work was struck at one o’clock at the coal-pits and the iron-works, and
+the fight was arranged for three. From the Croxley Furnaces, from
+Wilson’s Coal-pits, from the Heartsease Mine, from the Dodd Mills, from
+the Leverworth Smelters the workmen came trooping, each with his
+fox-terrier or his lurcher at his heels. Warped with labour and twisted
+by toil, bent double by week-long work in the cramped coal galleries or
+half-blinded with years spent in front of white-hot fluid metal, these
+men still gilded their harsh and hopeless lives by their devotion to
+sport. It was their one relief, the only thing which could distract
+their minds from sordid surroundings, and give them an interest beyond
+the blackened circle which enclosed them. Literature, art, science, all
+these things were beyond their horizon; but the race, the football
+match, the cricket, the fight, these were things which they could
+understand, which they could speculate upon in advance and comment upon
+afterwards. Sometimes brutal, sometimes grotesque, the love of sport is
+still one of the great agencies which make for the happiness of our
+people. It lies very deeply in the springs of our nature, and when it
+has been educated out, a higher, more refined nature may be left, but it
+will not be of that robust British type which has left its mark so
+deeply on the world. Every one of these raddled workers, slouching with
+his dog at his heels to see something of the fight, was a true unit of
+his race.
+
+It was a squally May day, with bright sunbursts and driving showers.
+Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting his medicine made
+up.
+
+“The weather seems so very unsettled, Mr. Montgomery,” remarked the
+doctor, “that I am inclined to think that you had better postpone your
+little country excursion until a later date.”
+
+“I am afraid that I must go to-day, sir.”
+
+“I have just had an intimation that Mrs. Potter, at the other side of
+Angleton, wishes to see me. It is probable that I shall be there all
+day. It will be extremely inconvenient to leave the house empty so
+long.”
+
+“I am very sorry, sir, but I must go,” said the assistant, doggedly.
+
+The doctor saw that it would be useless to argue, and departed in the
+worst of bad tempers upon mission. Montgomery felt easier now that he
+was gone. He went up to his room, and packed his running-shoes, his
+fighting-drawers, and his cricket sash into a hand-bag. When he came
+down, Mr. Wilson was waiting for him in the surgery. “I hear the doctor
+has gone.”
+
+“Yes; he is likely to be away all day.”
+
+“I don’t see that it matters much. It’s bound to come to his ears by
+to-night.”
+
+“Yes; it’s serious with me, Mr. Wilson. If I win, it’s all right.
+I don’t mind telling you that the hundred pounds will make all the
+difference to me. But if I lose, I shall lose my situation, for, as you
+say, I can’t keep it secret.”
+
+“Never mind. We’ll see you through among us. I only wonder the doctor
+has not heard, for it’s all over the country that you are to fight the
+Croxley Champion. We’ve had Armitage up about it already. He’s the
+Master’s backer, you know. He wasn’t sure that you were eligible.
+The Master said he wanted you whether you were eligible or not.
+Armitage has money on, and would have made trouble if he could. But I
+showed him that you came within the conditions of the challenge, and he
+agreed that it was all right. They think they have a soft thing on.”
+
+“Well, I can only do my best,” said Montgomery.
+
+They lunched together; a silent and rather nervous repast, for
+Montgomery’s mind was full of what was before him, and Wilson had
+himself more money at stake than he cared to lose.
+
+Wilson’s carriage and pair were at the door, the horses with blue and
+white rosettes at their ears, which were the colours of the Wilson
+Coal-pits, well known, on many a football field. At the avenue gate a
+crowd of some hundred pit-men and their wives gave a cheer as the
+carriage passed. To the assistant it all seemed dream-like and
+extraordinary--the strangest experience of his life, but with a thrill
+of human action and interest in it which made it passionately absorbing.
+He lay back in the open carriage and saw the fluttering handkerchiefs
+from the doors and windows of the miners’ cottages. Wilson had pinned a
+blue and white rosette upon his coat, and everybody knew him as their
+champion. “Good luck, sir! good luck to thee!” they shouted from the
+roadside. He felt that it was like some unromantic knight riding down
+to sordid lists, but there was something of chivalry in it all the same.
+He fought for others as well as for himself. He might fail from want of
+skill or strength, but deep in his sombre soul he vowed that it should
+never be for want of heart.
+
+Mr. Fawcett was just mounting into his high-wheeled, spidery dogcart,
+with his little bit of blood between the shafts. He waved his whip and
+fell in behind the carriage. They overtook Purvis, the tomato-faced
+publican, upon the road, with his wife in her Sunday bonnet. They also
+dropped into the procession, and then, as they traversed the seven miles
+of the high road to Croxley, their two-horsed, rosetted carriage became
+gradually the nucleus of a comet with a loosely radiating tail.
+From every side-road came the miners’ carts, the humble, ramshackle
+traps, black and bulging, with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued,
+open-hearted partisans. They trailed for a long quarter of a mile
+behind them--cracking, whipping, shouting, galloping, swearing.
+Horsemen and runners were mixed with the vehicles. And then suddenly a
+squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were having their annual training
+in those parts, clattered and jingled out of a field, and rode as an
+escort to the carriage. Through the dust-clouds round him Montgomery
+saw the gleaming brass helmets, the bright coats, and the tossing heads
+of the chargers, the delighted brown faces of the troopers. It was more
+dream-like than ever.
+
+And then, as they approached the monstrous, uncouth line of
+bottle-shaped buildings which marked the smelting-works of Croxley,
+their long, writhing snake of dust was headed off by another but longer
+one which wound across their path. The main road into which their own
+opened was filled by the rushing current of traps. The Wilson
+contingent halted until the others should get past. The iron-men
+cheered and groaned, according to their humour, as they whirled past
+their antagonist. Rough chaff flew back and forwards like iron nuts and
+splinters of coal. “Brought him up, then!” “Got t’ hearse for to fetch
+him back?” “Where’s t’ owd K-legs?” “Mon, mon, have thy photograph
+took--’twill mind thee of what thou used to look!” “He fight?--he’s
+nowt but a half-baked doctor!” “Happen he’ll doctor thy Croxley
+Champion afore he’s through wi’t.”
+
+So they flashed at each other as the one side waited and the other
+passed. Then there came a rolling murmur swelling into a shout, and a
+great brake with four horses came clattering along, all streaming with
+salmon-pink ribbons. The driver wore a white hat with pink rosette, and
+beside him, on the high seat, were a man and a woman-she with her arm
+round his waist. Montgomery had one glimpse of them as they flashed
+past; he with a furry cap drawn low over his brow, a great frieze coat
+and a pink comforter round his throat; she brazen, red-headed,
+bright-coloured, laughing excitedly. The Master, for it was he, turned
+as he passed, gazed hard at Montgomery, and gave him a menacing,
+gap-toothed grin. It was a hard, wicked face, blue-jowled and craggy,
+with long, obstinate cheeks and inexorable eyes. The brake behind was
+full of patrons of the sport-flushed iron-foremen, heads of departments,
+managers. One was drinking from a metal flask, and raised it to
+Montgomery as he passed; and then the crowd thinned, and the Wilson
+cortege with their dragoons swept in at the rear of the others.
+
+The road led away from Croxley, between curving green hills, gashed and
+polluted by the searchers for coal and iron. The whole country had been
+gutted, and vast piles of refuse and mountains of slag suggested the
+mighty chambers which the labour of man had burrowed beneath. On the
+left the road curved up to where a huge building, roofless and
+dismantled, stood crumbling and forlorn, with the light shining through
+the windowless squares.
+
+“That’s the old Arrowsmith’s factory. That’s where the fight is to be,”
+said Wilson. “How are you feeling now?”
+
+“Thank you, I was never better in my life,” Montgomery answered.
+
+“By Gad, I like your nerve!” said Wilson, who was himself flushed and
+uneasy. “You’ll give us a fight for our money, come what may.
+That place on the right is the office, and that has been set aside as
+the dressing and weighing room.”
+
+The carriage drove up to it amidst the shouts of the folk upon the
+hillside. Lines of empty carriages and traps curved down upon the
+winding road, and a black crowd surged round the door of the ruined
+factory. The seats, as a huge placard announced, were five shillings,
+three shillings, and a shilling, with half-price for dogs. The takings,
+deducting expenses, were to go to the winner, and it was already evident
+that a larger stake than a hundred pounds was in question. A babel of
+voices rose from the door. The workers wished to bring their dogs in
+free. The men scuffled. The dogs barked. The crowd was a whirling,
+eddying pool surging with a roar up to the narrow cleft which was its
+only outlet.
+
+The brake, with its salmon-coloured streamers and four reeking horses,
+stood empty before the door of the office; Wilson, Purvis, Fawcett and
+Montgomery passed in.
+
+There was a large, bare room inside with square, clean patches upon the
+grimy walls, where pictures and almanacs had once hung. Worn linoleum
+covered the floor, but there was no furniture save some benches and a
+deal table with an ewer and a basin upon it. Two of the corners were
+curtained off. In the middle of the room was a weighing-chair.
+A hugely fat man, with a salmon tie and a blue waistcoat with bird’s-eye
+spots, came bustling up to them. It was Armitage, the butcher and
+grazier, well known for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal
+patron of sport in the Riding. “Well, well,” he grunted, in a thick,
+fussy, wheezy voice, “you have come, then. Got your man? Got your man?”
+
+“Here he is, fit and well. Mr. Montgomery, let me present you to Mr.
+Armitage.”
+
+“Glad to meet you, sir. Happy to make your acquaintance. I make bold
+to say, sir, that we of Croxley admire your courage, Mr. Montgomery, and
+that our only hope is a fair fight and no favour, and the best man win.
+That’s our sentiments at Croxley.”
+
+“And it is my sentiment, also,” said the assistant.
+
+“Well, you can’t say fairer than that, Mr. Montgomery. You’ve taken a
+large contrac’ in hand, but a large contrac’ may be carried through,
+sir, as anyone that knows my dealings could testify. The Master is
+ready to weigh in!”
+
+“So am I.”
+
+“You must weigh in the buff.” Montgomery looked askance at the tall,
+red-headed woman who was standing gazing out of the window.
+
+“That’s all right,” said Wilson. “Get behind the curtain and put on
+your fighting kit.”
+
+He did so, and came out the picture of an athlete, in white, loose
+drawers, canvas shoes, and the sash of a well-known cricket club round
+his waist. He was trained to a hair, his skin gleaming like silk, and
+every muscle rippling down his broad shoulders and along his beautiful
+arms as he moved them. They bunched into ivory knobs, or slid into
+long, sinuous curves, as he raised or lowered his hands.
+
+“What thinkest thou o’ that?” asked Ted Barton, his second, of the woman
+in the window.
+
+She glanced contemptuously at the young athlete. “It’s but a poor
+kindness thou dost him to put a thread-paper yoong gentleman like yon
+against a mon as is a mon. Why, my Jock would throttle him wi’ one hond
+lashed behind him.”
+
+“Happen he may--happen not,” said Barton. “I have but twa pund in the
+world, but it’s on him, every penny, and no hedgin’. But here’s t’
+Maister, and rarely fine he do look.”
+
+The prize-fighter had come out from his curtain, a squat, formidable
+figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted
+leg. His skin had none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery’s,
+but was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled
+black hair which thatched his mighty breast. His weight bore no
+relation to his strength, for those huge shoulders and great arms, with
+brown, sledge-hammer fists, would have fitted the heaviest man that ever
+threw his cap into a ring. But his loins and legs were slight in
+proportion. Montgomery, on the other hand, was as symmetrical as a
+Greek statue. It would be an encounter between a man who was specially
+fitted for one sport, and one who was equally capable of any. The two
+looked curiously at each other: a bulldog, and a high-bred clean-limbed
+terrier, each full of spirit.
+
+“How do you do?”
+
+“How do?” The Master grinned again, and his three jagged front teeth
+gleamed for an instant. The rest had been beaten out of him in twenty
+years of battle. He spat upon the floor. “We have a rare fine day
+for’t.”
+
+“Capital,” said Montgomery.
+
+“That’s the good feelin’ I like,” wheezed the fat butcher. “Good lads,
+both of them!--prime lads!--hard meat an’ good bone. There’s no
+ill-feelin’.”
+
+“If he downs me, Gawd bless him!” said the Master.
+
+“An’ if we down him, Gawd help him!” interrupted the woman.
+
+“Haud thy tongue, wench!” said the Master, impatiently. “Who art thou
+to put in thy word? Happen I might draw my hand across thy face.”
+
+The woman did not take the threat amiss. “Wilt have enough for thy hand
+to do, Jock,” said she. “Get quit o’ this gradely man afore thou turn
+on me.”
+
+The lovers’ quarrel was interrupted by the entrance of a newcomer, a
+gentleman with a fur-collared overcoat and a very shiny top-hat--a
+top-hat of a degree of glossiness which is seldom seen five miles from
+Hyde Park. This hat he wore at the extreme back of his head, so that
+the lower surface of the brim made a kind of frame for his high, bald
+forehead, his, keen eyes, his rugged and yet kindly face. He bustled in
+with the quiet air of possession with which the ring master enters the
+circus.
+
+“It’s Mr. Stapleton, the referee from London,” said Wilson.
+
+“How do you do, Mr. Stapleton? I was introduced to you at the big fight
+at the Corinthian Club in Piccadilly.”
+
+“Ah! I dare say,” said the other, shaking hands. “Fact is, I’m
+introduced to so many that I can’t undertake to carry their names.
+Wilson, is it? Well, Mr. Wilson, glad to see you. Couldn’t get a fly
+at the station, and that’s why I’m late.”
+
+“I’m sure, sir,” said Armitage, “we should be proud that anyone so well
+known in the boxing world should come down to our little exhibition.”
+
+“Not at all. Not at all. Anything in the interests of boxin’. All
+ready? Men weighed?”
+
+“Weighing now, sir.”
+
+“Ah! Just as well that I should see it done. Seen you before,
+Craggs. Saw you fight your second battle against Willox. You had
+beaten him once, but he came back on you. What does the indicator
+say?--163lbs.--two off for the kit--161lbs. Now, my lad, you jump. My
+goodness, what colours are you wearing?”
+
+“The Anonymi Cricket Club.”
+
+“What right have you to wear them? I belong to the club myself.”
+
+“So do I.”
+
+“You an amateur?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And you are fighting for a money prize?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I suppose you know what you are doing? You realise that you’re a
+professional pug from this onwards, and that if ever you fight again--”
+
+“I’ll never fight again.”
+
+“Happen you won’t,” said the woman, and the Master turned a terrible eye
+upon her.
+
+“Well, I suppose you know your own business best. Up you jump. One
+hundred and fifty-one, minus two, 149--12lbs. difference, but youth and
+condition on the other scale. Well, the sooner we get to work the
+better, for I wish to catch the seven o’clock express at Hellifield.
+Twenty three-minute rounds, with one-minute intervals, and Queensberry
+rules. Those are the conditions, are they not?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Very good, then--we may go across.”
+
+The two combatants had overcoats thrown over their shoulders, and the
+whole party, backers, fighters, seconds, and the referee filed out of
+the room. A police inspector was waiting for them in the road. He had
+a note-book in his hand--that terrible weapon which awes even the
+London cabman.
+
+“I must take your names, gentlemen, in case it should be necessary to
+proceed for breach of peace.”
+
+“You don’t mean to stop the fight?” cried Armitage, in a passion of
+indignation. “I’m Mr. Armitage, of Croxley, and this is Mr. Wilson, and
+we’ll be responsible that all is fair and as it should be.”
+
+“I’ll take the names in case it should be necessary to proceed,” said
+the inspector, impassively.
+
+“But you know me well.”
+
+“If you was a dook or even a judge it would be all the same,” said the
+inspector. “It’s the law, and there’s an end. I’ll not take upon
+myself to stop the fight, seeing that gloves are to be used, but I’ll
+take the names of all concerned. Silas Craggs, Robert Montgomery,
+Edward Barton, James Stapleton, of London. Who seconds Silas Craggs?”
+
+“I do,” said the woman. “Yes, you can stare, but it’s my job, and no
+one else’s. Anastasia’s the name--four a’s.”
+
+“Craggs?”
+
+“Johnson--Anastasia Johnson. If you jug him you can jug me.”
+
+“Who talked of juggin’, ye fool?” growled the Master. “Coom on, Mr.
+Armitage, for I’m fair sick o’ this loiterin’.”
+
+The inspector fell in with the procession, and proceeded, as they walked
+up the hill, to bargain in his official capacity for a front seat, where
+he could safeguard the interests of the law, and in his private
+capacity to lay out thirty shillings at seven to one with Mr. Armitage.
+Through the door they passed, down a narrow lane walled with a dense
+bank of humanity, up a wooden ladder to a platform, over a rope which
+was slung waist-high from four corner-stakes, and then Montgomery
+realised that he was in that ring in which his immediate destiny was to
+be worked out. On the stake at one corner there hung a blue-and-white
+streamer. Barton led him across, the overcoat dangling loosely from his
+shoulders, and he sat down on a wooden stool. Barton and another man,
+both wearing white sweaters, stood beside him. The so-called ring was a
+square, twenty feet each way. At the opposite angle was the sinister
+figure of the Master, with his red-headed woman and a rough-faced friend
+to look after him. At each corner were metal basins, pitchers of water,
+and sponges.
+
+During the hubbub and uproar of the entrance Montgomery was too
+bewildered to take things in. But now there was a few minutes’ delay,
+for the referee had lingered behind, and so he looked quietly about him.
+It was a sight to haunt him for a lifetime. Wooden seats had been built
+in, sloping upwards to the tops of the walls. Above, instead of a
+ceiling, a great flight of crows passed slowly across a square of grey
+cloud. Right up to the topmost benches the folk were banked--broadcloth
+in front, corduroys and fustian behind; faces turned everywhere upon
+him. The grey reek of the pipes filled the building, and the air was
+pungent with the acrid smell of cheap, strong tobacco. Everywhere among
+the human faces were to be seen the heads of the dogs. They growled and
+yapped from the back benches. In that dense mass of humanity, one could
+hardly pick out individuals, but Montgomery’s eyes caught the brazen
+gleam of the helmets held upon the knees of the ten yeomen of his
+escort. At the very edge of the platform sat the reporters, five of
+them--three locals and two all the way from London. But where was the
+all-important referee? There was no sign of him, unless he were in the
+centre of that angry swirl of men near the door.
+
+Mr. Stapleton had stopped to examine the gloves which were to be used,
+and entered the building after the combatants. He had started to come
+down that narrow lane with the human walls which led to the ring.
+But already it had gone abroad that the Wilson champion was a gentleman,
+and that another gentleman had been appointed as referee. A wave of
+suspicion passed through the Croxley folk. They would have one of their
+own people for a referee. They would not have a stranger. His path was
+stopped as he made for the ring. Excited men flung themselves in front
+of him; they waved their fists in his face and cursed him. A woman
+howled vile names in his ear. Somebody struck at him with an umbrella.
+“Go thou back to Lunnon. We want noan o’ thee. Go thou back!” they
+yelled.
+
+Stapleton, with his shiny hat cocked backwards, and his large, bulging
+forehead swelling from under it, looked round him from beneath his bushy
+brows. He was in the centre of a savage and dangerous mob. Then he
+drew his watch from his pocket and held it dial upwards in his palm.
+
+“In three minutes,” said he, “I will declare the fight off.”
+
+They raged round him. His cool face and that aggressive top-hat
+irritated them. Grimy hands were raised. But it was difficult,
+somehow, to strike a man who was so absolutely indifferent.
+
+“In two minutes I declare the fight off.”
+
+They exploded into blasphemy. The breath of angry men smoked into his
+placid face. A gnarled, grimy fist vibrated at the end of his nose.
+“We tell thee we want noan o’ thee. Get thou back where thou com’st
+from.”
+
+“In one minute I declare the fight off.”
+
+Then the calm persistence of the man conquered the swaying, mutable,
+passionate crowd.
+
+“Let him through, mon. Happen there’ll be no fight after a’.”
+
+“Let him through.”
+
+“Bill, thou loomp, let him pass. Dost want the fight declared off?”
+
+“Make room for the referee!--room for the Lunnon referee!”
+
+And half pushed, half carried, he was swept up to the ring. There were
+two chairs by the side of it, one for him and one for the timekeeper.
+He sat down, his hands on his knees, his hat at a more wonderful angle
+than ever, impassive but solemn, with the aspect of one who appreciates
+his responsibilities.
+
+Mr. Armitage, the portly butcher, made his way into the ring and held up
+two fat hands, sparkling with rings, as a signal for silence.
+
+“Gentlemen!” he yelled. And then in a crescendo shriek, “Gentlemen!”
+
+“And ladies!” cried somebody, for, indeed, there was a fair sprinkling
+of women among the crowd. “Speak up, owd man!” shouted another. “What
+price pork chops?” cried somebody at the back. Everybody laughed, and
+the dogs began to bark. Armitage waved his hands amidst the uproar as
+if he were conducting an orchestra. At last the babel thinned into
+silence.
+
+“Gentlemen,” he yelled, “the match is between Silas Craggs, whom we
+call the Master of Croxley, and Robert Montgomery, of the Wilson
+Coal-pits. The match was to be under eleven-eight. When they were
+weighed just now, Craggs weighed eleven-seven, and Montgomery ten-nine.
+The conditions of the contest are--the best of twenty three-minute
+rounds with two-ounce gloves. Should the fight run to its full length,
+it will, of course, be decided upon points. Mr. Stapleton, the
+well-known London referee, has kindly consented to see fair play.
+I wish to say that Mr. Wilson and I, the chief backers of the two men,
+have every confidence in Mr. Stapleton, and that we beg that you will
+accept his rulings without dispute.”
+
+He then turned from one combatant to the other, with a wave of his hand.
+
+
+                             III
+
+
+“Montgomery--Craggs!” said he.
+
+A great hush fell over the huge assembly. Even the dogs stopped
+yapping; one might have thought that the monstrous room was empty.
+The two men had stood up, the small white gloves over their hands.
+They advanced from their corners and shook hands, Montgomery gravely,
+Craggs with a smile. Then they fell into position. The crowd gave a
+long sigh--the intake of a thousand excited breaths. The referee tilted
+his chair on to its back legs, and looked moodily critical from the one
+to the other.
+
+It was strength against activity--that was evident from the first.
+The Master stood stolidly upon his K leg. It gave him a tremendous
+pedestal; one could hardly imagine his being knocked down. And he could
+pivot round upon it with extraordinary quickness; but his advance or
+retreat was ungainly. His frame, however, was so much larger and
+broader than that of the student, and his brown, massive face looked so
+resolute and menacing that the hearts of the Wilson party sank within
+them. There was one heart, however, which had not done so. It was that
+of Robert Montgomery.
+
+Any nervousness which he may have had completely passed away now that he
+had his work before him. Here was something definite--this hard-faced,
+deformed Hercules to beat, with a career as the price of beating him.
+He glowed with the joy of action; it thrilled through his nerves.
+He faced his man with little in-and-out steps, breaking to the left,
+breaking to the right, feeling his way, while Craggs, with a dull,
+malignant eye, pivoted slowly upon his weak leg, his left arm half
+extended, his right sunk low across the mark. Montgomery led with his
+left, and then led again, getting lightly home each time. He tried
+again, but the Master had his counter ready, and Montgomery reeled back
+from a harder blow than he had given. Anastasia, the woman, gave a
+shrill cry of encouragement, and her man let fly his right. Montgomery
+ducked under it, and in an instant the two were in each other’s arms.
+
+“Break away! Break away!” said the referee.
+
+The Master struck upwards on the break, and shook Montgomery with the
+blow. Then it was “time.” It had been a spirited opening round.
+The people buzzed into comment and applause. Montgomery was quite
+fresh, but the hairy chest of the Master was rising and falling.
+The man passed a sponge over his head while Anastasia flapped the towel
+before him. “Good lass! good lass!” cried the crowd, and cheered her.
+
+The men were up again, the Master grimly watchful, Montgomery as alert
+as a kitten. The Master tried a sudden rush, squattering along with his
+awkward gait, but coming faster than one would think. The student
+slipped aside and avoided him. The Master stopped, grinned, and shook
+his head. Then he motioned with his hand as an invitation to
+Montgomery to come to him. The student did so and led with his left,
+but got a swinging right counter in the ribs in exchange. The heavy
+blow staggered him, and the Master came scrambling in to complete his
+advantage; but Montgomery, with his greater activity, kept out of danger
+until the call of “time.” A tame round, and the advantage with the
+Master.
+
+“T’ Maister’s too strong for him,” said a smelter to his neighbour.
+
+“Ay; but t’other’s a likely lad. Happen we’ll see some sport yet.
+He can joomp rarely.”
+
+“But t’ Maister can stop and hit rarely. Happen he’ll mak’ him joomp
+when he gets his nief upon him.”
+
+They were up again, the water glistening upon their faces. Montgomery
+led instantly, and got his right home with a sounding smack upon the
+master’s forehead. There was a shout from the colliers, and “Silence!
+Order!” from the referee. Montgomery avoided the counter, and scored
+with his left. Fresh applause, and the referee upon his feet in
+indignation.
+
+“No comments, gentlemen, if _you_ please, during the rounds.”
+
+“Just bide a bit!” growled the Master.
+
+“Don’t talk--fight!” said the referee, angrily.
+
+Montgomery rubbed in the point by a flush hit upon the mouth, and the
+Master shambled back to his corner like an angry bear, having had all
+the worst of the round.
+
+“Where’s thot seven to one?” shouted Purvis, the publican. “I’ll take
+six to one!”
+
+There were no answers.
+
+“Five to one!”
+
+There were givers at that. Purvis booked them in a tattered notebook.
+
+Montgomery began to feel happy. He lay back with his legs outstretched,
+his back against the corner-post, and one gloved hand upon each rope.
+What a delicious minute it was between each round. If he could only
+keep out of harm’s way, he must surely wear this man out before the end
+of twenty rounds. He was so slow that all his strength went for
+nothing.
+
+“You’re fightin’ a winnin’ fight--a winnin’ fight,” Ted Barton whispered
+in his ear. “Go canny; tak’ no chances; you have him proper.”
+
+But the Master was crafty. He had fought so many battles with his
+maimed limb that he knew how to make the best of it. Warily and slowly
+he manoeuvred round Montgomery, stepping forward and yet again forward
+until he had imperceptibly backed him into his corner. The student
+suddenly saw a flash of triumph upon the grim face, and a gleam in the
+dull, malignant eyes. The Master was upon him. He sprang aside and was
+on the ropes. The Master smashed in one of his terrible upper-cuts, and
+Montgomery half broke it with his guard. The student sprang the other
+way and was against the other converging rope. He was trapped in the
+angle. The Master sent in another with a hoggish grunt which spoke of
+the energy behind it. Montgomery ducked, but got a jab from the left
+upon the mark. He closed with his man.
+
+“Break away! Break away!” cried the referee. Montgomery disengaged,
+and got a swinging blow on the ear as he did so. It had been a damaging
+round for him, and the Croxley people were shouting their delight.
+“Gentlemen, I will _not_ have this noise!” Stapleton roared. “I have
+been accustomed to preside at a well-conducted club, and not at a
+bear-garden.” This little man, with the tilted hat and the bulging
+forehead, dominated the whole assembly. He was like a head-master among
+his boys. He glared round him, and nobody cared to meet his eye.
+Anastasia had kissed the Master when he resumed his seat.
+
+“Good lass. Do’t again!” cried the laughing crowd, and the angry Master
+shook his glove at her, as she flapped her towel in front of him.
+Montgomery was weary and a little sore, but not depressed. He had
+learned something. He would not again be tempted into danger.
+
+For three rounds the honours were fairly equal. The student’s hitting
+was the quicker, the Master’s the harder. Profiting by his lesson,
+Montgomery kept himself in the open, and refused to be herded into a
+corner. Sometimes the Master succeeded in rushing him to the
+side-ropes, but the younger man slipped away, or closed and then
+disengaged. The monotonous “Break away! Break away!” of the referee
+broke in upon the quick, low patter of rubber-soled shoes, the dull thud
+of the blows, and the sharp, hissing breath of two tired men.
+
+The ninth round found both of them in fairly good condition.
+Montgomery’s head was still singing from the blow that he had in the
+corner, and one of his thumbs pained him acutely and seemed to be
+dislocated. The Master showed no sign of a touch, but his breathing was
+the more laboured, and a long line of ticks upon the referee’s paper
+showed that the student had a good show of points. But one of this
+iron-man’s blows was worth three of his, and he knew that without the
+gloves he could not have stood for three rounds against him. All the
+amateur work that he had done was the merest tapping and flapping when
+compared to those frightful blows, from arms toughened by the shovel and
+the crowbar.
+
+It was the tenth round, and the fight was half over. The betting now
+was only three to one, for the Wilson champion had held his own much
+better than had been expected. But those who knew the ring-craft as
+well as the staying power of the old prize-fighter knew that the odds
+were still a long way in his favour.
+
+“Have a care of him!” whispered Barton, as he sent his man up to the
+scratch. “Have a care! He’ll play thee a trick, if he can.”
+
+But Montgomery saw, or imagined he saw, that his antagonist was tiring.
+He looked jaded and listless, and his hands drooped a little from their
+position. His own youth and condition were beginning to tell.
+He sprang in and brought off a fine left-handed lead. The Master’s
+return lacked his usual fire. Again Montgomery led, and again he got
+home. Then he tried his right upon the mark, and the Master guarded it
+downwards.
+
+“Too low! Too low! A foul! A foul!” yelled a thousand voices.
+
+The referee rolled his sardonic eyes slowly round. “Seems to me this
+buildin’ is chock-full of referees,” said he. The people laughed and
+applauded, but their favour was as immaterial to him as their anger.
+“No applause, please! This is not a theatre!” he yelled.
+
+Montgomery was very pleased with himself. His adversary was evidently
+in a bad way. He was piling on his points and establishing a lead.
+He might as well make hay while the sun shone. The Master was looking
+all abroad. Montgomery popped one upon his blue jowl and got away
+without a return. And then the Master suddenly dropped both his hands
+and began rubbing his thigh. Ah! that was it, was it? He had muscular
+cramp.
+
+“Go in! Go in!” cried Teddy Barton.
+
+Montgomery sprang wildly forward, and the next instant was lying half
+senseless, with his neck nearly broken, in the middle of the ring.
+
+The whole round had been a long conspiracy to tempt him within reach of
+one of those terrible right-hand upper-cuts for which the Master was
+famous. For this the listless, weary bearing, for this the cramp in the
+thigh. When Montgomery had sprung in so hotly he had exposed himself to
+such a blow as neither flesh nor blood could stand. Whizzing up from
+below with a rigid arm, which put the Master’s eleven stone into its
+force, it struck him under the jaw; he whirled half round, and fell a
+helpless and half-paralysed mass. A vague groan and murmur,
+inarticulate, too excited for words, rose from the great audience.
+With open mouths and staring eyes they gazed at the twitching and
+quivering figure.
+
+“Stand back! Stand right back!” shrieked the referee, for the Master
+was standing over his man ready to give him the _coup-de-grace_ as he
+rose.
+
+“Stand back, Craggs, this instant!” Stapleton repeated.
+
+The Master sank his hands sulkily and walked backwards to the rope with
+his ferocious eyes fixed upon his fallen antagonist. The timekeeper
+called the seconds. If ten of them passed before Montgomery rose to his
+feet, the fight was ended. Ted Barton wrung his hands and danced about
+in an agony in his corner.
+
+As if in a dream--a terrible nightmare--the student could hear the voice
+of the timekeeper--three--four--five--he got up on his hand--six--
+seven--he was on his knee, sick, swimming, faint, but resolute to rise.
+Eight--he was up, and the Master was on him like a tiger, lashing
+savagely at him with both hands. Folk held their breath as they watched
+those terrible blows, and anticipated the pitiful end--so much more
+pitiful where a game but helpless man refuses to accept defeat.
+
+Strangely automatic is the human brain. Without volition, without
+effort, there shot into the memory of this bewildered, staggering,
+half-stupefied man the one thing which could have saved him--that blind
+eye of which the Master’s son had spoken. It was the same as the other
+to look at, but Montgomery remembered that he had said that it was the
+left. He reeled to the left side, half felled by a drive which lit upon
+his shoulder. The Master pivoted round upon his leg and was at him in
+an instant.
+
+“Yark him, lad! Yark him!” screamed the woman.
+
+“Hold your tongue!” said the referee.
+
+Montgomery slipped to the left again and yet again, but the Master was
+too quick and clever for him. He struck round and got him full on the
+face as he tried once more to break away. Montgomery’s knees weakened
+under him, and he fell with a groan on the floor. This time he knew
+that he was done. With bitter agony he realised, as he groped blindly
+with his hands, that he could not possibly raise himself. Far away and
+muffled he heard, amid the murmurs of the multitude, the fateful voice
+of the timekeeper counting off the seconds.
+
+“One--two--three--four--five--six--”
+
+“Time!” said the referee.
+
+Then the pent-up passion of the great assembly broke loose. Croxley
+gave a deep groan of disappointment. The Wilsons were on their feet,
+yelling with delight. There was still a chance for them. In four more
+seconds their man would have been solemnly counted out. But now he had
+a minute in which to recover. The referee looked round with relaxed
+features and laughing eyes. He loved this rough game, this school for
+humble heroes, and it was pleasant to him to intervene as a _Deus ex
+machina_ at so dramatic a moment. His chair and his hat were both
+tilted at an extreme angle; he and the timekeeper smiled at each other.
+Ted Barton and the other second had rushed out and thrust an arm each
+under Montgomery’s knee, the other behind his loins, and so carried him
+back to his stool. His head lolled upon his shoulder, but a douche of
+cold water sent a shiver through him, and he started and looked round
+him.
+
+“He’s a’ right!” cried the people round. “He’s a rare brave lad.
+Good lad! Good lad!” Barton poured some brandy into his mouth.
+The mists cleared a little, and he realised where he was and what he had
+to do. But he was still very weak, and he hardly dared to hope that he
+could survive another round.
+
+“Seconds out of the ring!” cried the referee. “Time!”
+
+The Croxley Master sprang eagerly off his stool.
+
+“Keep clear of him! Go easy for a bit,” said Barton, and Montgomery
+walked out to meet his man once more.
+
+He had had two lessons--the one when the Master got him into his corner,
+the other when he had been lured into mixing it up with so powerful an
+antagonist. Now he would be wary. Another blow would finish him; he
+could afford to run no risks. The Master was determined to follow up
+his advantage, and rushed at him, slogging furiously right and left.
+But Montgomery was too young and active to be caught. He was strong
+upon his legs once more, and his wits had all come back to him. It was
+a gallant sight--the line-of-battleship trying to pour its overwhelming
+broadside into the frigate, and the frigate manoeuvring always so as to
+avoid it. The Master tried all his ring-craft. He coaxed the student
+up by pretended inactivity; he rushed at him with furious rushes
+towards the ropes. For three rounds he exhausted every wile in trying
+to get at him. Montgomery during all this time was conscious that his
+strength was minute by minute coming back to him. The spinal jar from
+an upper-cut is overwhelming, but evanescent. He was losing all sense
+of it beyond a great stiffness of the neck. For the first round after
+his downfall he had been content to be entirely on the defensive, only
+too happy if he could stall off the furious attacks of the Master.
+In the second he occasionally ventured upon a light counter. In the
+third he was smacking back merrily where he saw an opening. His people
+yelled their approval of him at the end of every round. Even the
+iron-workers cheered him with that fine unselfishness which true sport
+engenders. To most of them, unspiritual and unimaginative, the sight of
+this clean-limbed young Apollo, rising above disaster and holding on
+while consciousness was in him to his appointed task, was the greatest
+thing their experience had ever known.
+
+But the Master’s naturally morose temper became more and more murderous
+at this postponement of his hopes. Three rounds ago the battle had been
+in his hands; now it was all to do over again. Round by round his man
+was recovering his strength. By the fifteenth he was strong again in
+wind and limb. But the vigilant Anastasia saw something which
+encouraged her.
+
+“That bash in t’ ribs is telling on him, Jock,” she whispered.
+“Why else should he be gulping t’ brandy? Go in, lad, and thou hast him
+yet.”
+
+Montgomery had suddenly taken the flask from Barton’s hand, and had a
+deep pull at the contents. Then, with his face a little flushed, and
+with a curious look of purpose, which made the referee stare hard at
+him, in his eyes, he rose for the sixteenth round.
+
+“Game as a pairtridge!” cried the publican, as he looked at the hard-set
+face.
+
+“Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!” cried the iron-men to their Master.
+And then a hum of exultation ran through their ranks as they realised
+that their tougher, harder, stronger man held the vantage, after all.
+Neither of the men showed much sign of punishment. Small gloves crush
+and numb, but they do not cut. One of the Master’s eyes was even more
+flush with his cheek than Nature had made it. Montgomery had two or
+three livid marks upon his body, and his face was haggard, save for that
+pink spot which the brandy had brought into either cheek. He rocked a
+little as he stood opposite his man, and his hands drooped as if he felt
+the gloves to be an unutterable weight. It was evident that he was
+spent and desperately weary. If he received one other blow it must
+surely be fatal to him. If he brought one home, what power could there
+be behind it, and what chance was there of its harming the colossus in
+front of him? It was the crisis of the fight. This round must decide
+it. “Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!” the iron-men whooped. Even the
+savage eyes of the referee were unable to restrain the excited crowd.
+
+Now, at last, the chance had come for Montgomery. He had learned a
+lesson from his more experienced rival. Why should he not play his own
+game upon him? He was spent, but not nearly so spent as he pretended.
+That brandy was to call up his reserves, to let him have strength to
+take full advantage of the opening when it came. It was thrilling and
+tingling through his veins at the very moment when he was lurching and
+rocking like a beaten man. He acted his part admirably. The Master
+felt that there was an easy task before him, and rushed in with ungainly
+activity to finish it once for all. He slap-banged away left and right,
+boring Montgomery up against the ropes, swinging in his ferocious blows
+with those animal grunts which told of the vicious energy behind them.
+
+But Montgomery was too cool to fall a victim to any of those murderous
+upper-cuts. He kept out of harm’s way with a rigid guard, an active
+foot, and a head which was swift to duck. And yet he contrived to
+present the same appearance of a man who is hopelessly done. The
+Master, weary from his own shower of blows, and fearing nothing from so
+weak a man, dropped his hand for an instant, and at that instant
+Montgomery’s right came home.
+
+It was a magnificent blow, straight, clean, crisp, with the force of the
+loins and the back behind it. And it landed where he had meant it to--
+upon the exact point of that blue-grained chin. Flesh and blood could
+not stand such a blow in such a place. Neither valour nor hardihood can
+save the man to whom it comes. The Master fell backwards, flat,
+prostrate, striking the ground with so simultaneous a clap that it was
+like a shutter falling from a wall. A yell, which no referee could
+control, broke from the crowded benches as the giant went down. He lay
+upon his back, his knees a little drawn up, his huge chest panting.
+He twitched and shook, but could not move. His feet pawed convulsively
+once or twice. It was no use. He was done. “Eight--nine--ten!” said
+the timekeeper, and the roar of a thousand voices, with a deafening
+clap like the broadside of a ship, told that the Master of Croxley was
+the Master no more.
+
+Montgomery stood half dazed, looking down at the huge, prostrate figure.
+He could hardly realise that it was indeed all over. He saw the referee
+motion towards him with his hand. He heard his name bellowed in triumph
+from every side. And then he was aware of someone rushing towards him;
+he caught a glimpse of a flushed face and an aureole of flying red hair,
+a gloveless fist struck him between the eyes, and he was on his back in
+the ring beside his antagonist, while a dozen of his supporters were
+endeavouring to secure the frantic Anastasia. He heard the angry
+shouting of the referee, the screaming of the furious woman, and the
+cries of the mob. Then something seemed to break like an over-stretched
+banjo string, and he sank into the deep, deep, mist-girt abyss of
+unconsciousness.
+
+The dressing was like a thing in a dream, and so was a vision of the
+Master with the grin of a bulldog upon his face, and his three teeth
+amiably protruded. He shook Montgomery heartily by the hand.
+
+“I would have been rare pleased to shake thee by the throttle, lad, a
+short while syne,” said he. “But I bear no ill-feeling again’ thee.
+It was a rare poonch that brought me down--I have not had a better
+since my second fight wi’ Billy Edwards in ’89. Happen thou might think
+o’ goin’ further wi’ this business. If thou dost, and want a trainer,
+there’s not much inside t’ ropes as I don’t know. Or happen thou might
+like to try it wi’ me old style and bare knuckles. Thou hast but to
+write to t’ iron-works to find me.”
+
+But Montgomery disclaimed any such ambition. A canvas bag with his
+share--190 sovereigns--was handed to him, of which he gave ten to the
+Master, who also received some share of the gate-money. Then, with
+young Wilson escorting him on one side, Purvis on the other, and Fawcett
+carrying his bag behind, he went in triumph to his carriage, and drove
+amid a long roar, which lined the highway like a hedge for the seven
+miles, back to his starting-point.
+
+“It’s the greatest thing I ever saw in my life. By George, it’s
+ripping!” cried Wilson, who had been left in a kind of ecstasy by the
+events of the day. “There’s a chap over Barnsley way who fancies
+himself a bit. Let us spring you on him, and let him see what he can
+make of you. We’ll put up a purse--won’t we, Purvis? You shall never
+want a backer.”
+
+“At his weight,” said the publican, “I’m behind him, I am, for twenty
+rounds, and no age, country, or colour barred.”
+
+“So am I,” cried Fawcett; “middle-weight champion of the world, that’s
+what he is--here, in the same carriage with us.”
+
+But Montgomery was not to be beguiled.
+
+“No; I have my own work to do now.”
+
+“And what may that be?”
+
+“I’ll use this money to get my medical degree.”
+
+“Well, we’ve plenty of doctors, but you’re the only man in the Riding
+that could smack the Croxley Master off his legs. However, I suppose
+you know your own business best. When you’re a doctor, you’d best come
+down into these parts, and you’ll always find a job waiting for you at
+the Wilson Coal-pits.”
+
+Montgomery had returned by devious ways to the surgery. The horses were
+smoking at the door, and the doctor was just back from his long journey.
+Several patients had called in his absence, and he was in the worst of
+tempers.
+
+“I suppose I should be glad that you have come back at all,
+Mr. Montgomery!” he snarled. “When next you elect to take a holiday, I
+trust it will not be at so busy a time.”
+
+“I am sorry, sir, that you should have been inconvenienced.”
+
+“Yes, sir, I have been exceedingly inconvenienced.” Here, for the first
+time, he looked hard at the assistant. “Good Heavens, Mr. Montgomery,
+what have you been doing with your left eye?”
+
+It was where Anastasia had lodged her protest. Montgomery laughed.
+
+“It is nothing, sir,” said he.
+
+“And you have a livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that
+my representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition.
+How did you receive these injuries?”
+
+“Well, sir, as you know, there was a little glove-fight to-day over at
+Croxley.”
+
+“And you got mixed up with that brutal crowd?”
+
+“I _was_ rather mixed up with them.”
+
+“And who assaulted you?”
+
+“One of the fighters.”
+
+“Which of them?”
+
+“The Master of Croxley.”
+
+“Good Heavens! Perhaps you interfered with him?”
+
+“Well, to tell the truth, I did a little.”
+
+“Mr. Montgomery, in such a practice as mine, intimately associated as it
+is with the highest and most progressive elements of our small
+community, it is impossible--”
+
+But just then the tentative bray of a cornet-player searching for his
+key-note jarred upon their ears, and an instant later the Wilson
+Colliery brass band was in full cry with, “See the Conquering Hero
+Comes,” outside the surgery window. There was a banner waving, and a
+shouting crowd of miners.
+
+“What is it? What does it mean?” cried the angry doctor.
+
+“It means, sir, that I have, in the only way which was open to me,
+earned the money which is necessary for my education. It is my duty,
+Dr. Oldacre, to warn you that I am about to return to the University,
+and that you should lose no time in appointing my successor.”
+
+
+
+
+THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR
+
+It was in the days when the German armies had broken their way across
+France, and when the shattered forces of the young Republic had been
+swept away to the north of the Aisne and to the south of the Loire.
+Three broad streams of armed men had rolled slowly but irresistibly from
+the Rhine, now meandering to the north, now to the south, dividing,
+coalescing, but all uniting to form one great lake round Paris. And
+from this lake there welled out smaller streams--one to the north, one
+southward, to Orleans, and a third westward to Normandy. Many a German
+trooper saw the sea for the first time when he rode his horse girth-deep
+into the waves at Dieppe.
+
+Black and bitter were the thoughts of Frenchmen when they saw this weal
+of dishonour slashed across the fair face of their country. They had
+fought and they had been overborne. That swarming cavalry, those
+countless footmen, the masterful guns--they had tried and tried to make
+head against them. In battalions their invaders were not to be beaten,
+but man to man, or ten to ten, they were their equals. A brave
+Frenchman might still make a single German rue the day that he had left
+his own bank of the Rhine. Thus, unchronicled amid the battles and the
+sieges, there broke out another war, a war of individuals, with foul
+murder upon the one side and brutal reprisal on the other.
+
+Colonel von Gramm, of the 24th Posen Infantry, had suffered severely
+during this new development. He commanded in the little Norman town of
+Les Andelys, and his outposts stretched amid the hamlets and farmhouses
+of the district round. No French force was within fifty miles of him,
+and yet morning after morning he had to listen to a black report of
+sentries found dead at their posts, or of foraging parties which had
+never returned. Then the colonel would go forth in his wrath, and
+farmsteadings would blaze and villages tremble; but next morning there
+was still that same dismal tale to be told. Do what he might, he could
+not shake off his invisible enemies. And yet it should not have been so
+hard, for, from certain signs in common, in the plan and in the deed, it
+was certain that all these outrages came from a single source.
+
+Colonel von Gramm had tried violence, and it had failed. Gold might be
+more successful. He published it abroad over the countryside that
+500frs. would be paid for information. There was no response. Then
+800frs. The peasants were incorruptible. Then, goaded on by a murdered
+corporal, he rose to a thousand, and so bought the soul of Francois
+Rejane, farm labourer, whose Norman avarice was a stronger passion than
+his French hatred.
+
+“You say that you know who did these crimes?” asked the Prussian
+colonel, eyeing with loathing the blue-bloused, rat-faced creature
+before him.
+
+“Yes, colonel.”
+
+“And it was--?”
+
+“Those thousand francs, colonel--”
+
+“Not a sou until your story has been tested. Come! Who is it who has
+murdered my men?”
+
+“It is Count Eustace of Chateau Noir.”
+
+“You lie!” cried the colonel, angrily. “A gentleman and a nobleman
+could not have done such crimes.”
+
+The peasant shrugged his shoulders. “It is evident to me that you do
+not know the count. It is this way, colonel. What I tell you is the
+truth, and I am not afraid that you should test it. The Count of
+Chateau Noir is a hard man, even at the best time he was a hard man.
+But of late he has been terrible. It was his son’s death, you know.
+His son was under Douay, and he was taken, and then in escaping from
+Germany he met his death. It was the count’s only child, and indeed we
+all think that it has driven him mad. With his peasants he follows the
+German armies. I do not know how many he has killed, but it is he who
+cut the cross upon the foreheads, for it is the badge of his house.”
+
+It was true. The murdered sentries had each had a saltire cross slashed
+across their brows, as by a hunting-knife. The colonel bent his stiff
+back and ran his forefinger over the map which lay upon the table.
+
+“The Chateau Noir is not more than four leagues,” he said.
+
+“Three and a kilometre, colonel.”
+
+“You know the place?”
+
+“I used to work there.”
+
+Colonel von Gramm rang the bell.
+
+“Give this man food and detain him,” said he to the sergeant.
+
+“Why detain me, colonel? I can tell you no more.”
+
+“We shall need you as guide.”
+
+“As guide? But the count? If I were to fall into his hands?
+Ah, colonel--”
+
+The Prussian commander waved him away. “Send Captain Baumgarten to me
+at once,” said he.
+
+The officer who answered the summons was a man of middle-age,
+heavy-jawed, blue-eyed, with a curving yellow moustache, and a brick-red
+face which turned to an ivory white where his helmet had sheltered it.
+He was bald, with a shining, tightly stretched scalp, at the back of
+which, as in a mirror, it was a favourite mess-joke of the subalterns to
+trim their moustaches. As a soldier he was slow, but reliable and
+brave. The colonel could trust him where a more dashing officer might
+be in danger.
+
+“You will proceed to Chateau Noir to-night, captain,” said he. “A guide
+has been provided. You will arrest the count and bring him back.
+If there is an attempt at rescue, shoot him at once.”
+
+“How many men shall I take, colonel?”
+
+“Well, we are surrounded by spies, and our only chance is to pounce upon
+him before he knows that we are on the way. A large force will attract
+attention. On the other hand, you must not risk being cut off.”
+
+“I might march north, colonel, as if to join General Goeben. Then I
+could turn down this road which I see upon your map, and get to Chateau
+Noir before they could hear of us. In that case, with twenty men--”
+
+“Very good, captain. I hope to see you with your prisoner to-morrow
+morning.”
+
+It was a cold December night when Captain Baumgarten marched out of Les
+Andelys with his twenty Poseners, and took the main road to the north
+west. Two miles out he turned suddenly down a narrow, deeply rutted
+track, and made swiftly for his man. A thin, cold rain was falling,
+swishing among the tall poplar trees and rustling in the fields on
+either side. The captain walked first with Moser, a veteran sergeant,
+beside him. The sergeant’s wrist was fastened to that of the French
+peasant, and it had been whispered in his ear that in case of an
+ambush the first bullet fired would be through his head. Behind them
+the twenty infantrymen plodded along through the darkness with their
+faces sunk to the rain, and their boots squeaking in the soft, wet clay.
+They knew where they were going, and why, and the thought upheld them,
+for they were bitter at the loss of their comrades. It was a cavalry
+job, they knew, but the cavalry were all on with the advance, and,
+besides, it was more fitting that the regiment should avenge its own
+dead men.
+
+It was nearly eight when they left Les Andelys. At half-past eleven
+their guide stopped at a place where two high pillars, crowned with some
+heraldic stonework, flanked a huge iron gate. The wall in which it had
+been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered
+above the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base. The
+Prussians made their way round it and advanced stealthily, under the
+shadow of a tunnel of oak branches, up the long avenue, which was still
+cumbered by the leaves of last autumn. At the top they halted and
+reconnoitred.
+
+The black chateau lay in front of them. The moon had shone out between
+two rain-clouds, and threw the old house into silver and shadow. It was
+shaped like an L, with a low arched door in front, and lines of small
+windows like the open ports of a man-of-war. Above was a dark roof,
+breaking at the corners into little round overhanging turrets, the whole
+lying silent in the moonshine, with a drift of ragged clouds blackening
+the heavens behind it. A single light gleamed in one of the lower
+windows.
+
+The captain whispered his orders to his men. Some were to creep to the
+front door, some to the back. Some were to watch the east, and some the
+west. He and the sergeant stole on tiptoe to the lighted window.
+
+It was a small room into which they looked, very meanly furnished.
+An elderly man, in the dress of a menial, was reading a tattered paper
+by the light of a guttering candle. He leaned back in his wooden chair
+with his feet upon a box, while a bottle of white wine stood with a
+half-filled tumbler upon a stool beside him. The sergeant thrust his
+needle-gun through the glass, and the man sprang to his feet with a
+shriek.
+
+“Silence, for your life! The house is surrounded, and you cannot
+escape. Come round and open the door, or we will show you no mercy when
+we come in.”
+
+“For God’s sake, don’t shoot! I will open it! I will open it!”
+He rushed from the room with his paper still crumpled up in his hand.
+An instant later, with a groaning of old locks and a rasping of bars,
+the low door swung open, and the Prussians poured into the stone-flagged
+passage.
+
+“Where is Count Eustace de Chateau Noir?”
+
+“My master! He is out, sir.”
+
+“Out at this time of night? Your life for a lie!”
+
+“It is true, sir. He is out!”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“I do not know.”
+
+“Doing what?”
+
+“I cannot tell. No, it is no use your cocking your pistol, sir. You
+may kill me, but you cannot make me tell you that which I do not know.”
+
+“Is he often out at this hour?”
+
+“Frequently.”
+
+“And when does he come home?”
+
+“Before daybreak.”
+
+Captain Baumgarten rasped out a German oath. He had had his journey
+for nothing, then. The man’s answers were only too likely to be true.
+It was what he might have expected. But at least he would search the
+house and make sure. Leaving a picket at the front door and another at
+the back, the sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of
+them--his shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the
+old tapestries and the low, oak-raftered ceilings. They searched the
+whole house, from the huge stone-flagged kitchen below to the
+dining-hall on the second floor, with its gallery for musicians, and
+its panelling black with age, but nowhere was there a living creature.
+Up above, in an attic, they found Marie, the elderly wife of the
+butler; but the owner kept no other servants, and of his own presence
+there was no trace.
+
+It was long, however, before Captain Baumgarten had satisfied himself
+upon the point. It was a difficult house to search. Thin stairs, which
+only one man could ascend at a time, connected lines of tortuous
+corridors. The walls were so thick that each room was cut off from its
+neighbour. Huge fireplaces yawned in each, while the windows were 6ft.
+deep in the wall. Captain Baumgarten stamped with his feet, tore down
+curtains, and struck with the pommel of his sword. If there were secret
+hiding-places, he was not fortunate enough to find them.
+
+“I have an idea,” said he, at last, speaking in German to the sergeant.
+“You will place a guard over this fellow, and make sure that he
+communicates with no one.”
+
+“Yes, captain.”
+
+“And you will place four men in ambush at the front and at the back. It
+is likely enough that about daybreak our bird may return to the nest.”
+
+“And the others, captain?”
+
+“Let them have their suppers in the kitchen. The fellow will serve you
+with meat and wine. It is a wild night, and we shall be better here
+than on the country road.”
+
+“And yourself, captain?”
+
+“I will take my supper up here in the dining-hall. The logs are laid
+and we can light the fire. You will call me if there is any alarm.
+What can you give me for supper--you?”
+
+“Alas, monsieur, there was a time when I might have answered, ‘What you
+wish!’ but now it is all that we can do to find a bottle of new claret
+and a cold pullet.”
+
+“That will do very well. Let a guard go about with him, sergeant, and
+let him feel the end of a bayonet if he plays us any tricks.”
+
+Captain Baumgarten was an old campaigner. In the Eastern provinces, and
+before that in Bohemia, he had learned the art of quartering himself
+upon the enemy. While the butler brought his supper he occupied himself
+in making his preparations for a comfortable night. He lit the
+candelabrum of ten candles upon the centre table. The fire was already
+burning up, crackling merrily, and sending spurts of blue, pungent smoke
+into the room. The captain walked to the window and looked out.
+The moon had gone in again, and it was raining heavily. He could hear
+the deep sough of the wind, and see the dark loom of the trees, all
+swaying in the one direction. It was a sight which gave a zest to his
+comfortable quarters, and to the cold fowl and the bottle of wine which
+the butler had brought up for him. He was tired and hungry after his
+long tramp, so he threw his sword, his helmet, and his revolver-belt
+down upon a chair, and fell to eagerly upon his supper. Then, with his
+glass of wine before him and his cigar between his lips, he tilted his
+chair back and looked about him.
+
+He sat within a small circle of brilliant light which gleamed upon his
+silver shoulder-straps, and threw out his terra-cotta face, his heavy
+eyebrows, and his yellow moustache. But outside that circle things were
+vague and shadowy in the old dining-hall. Two sides were oak-panelled
+and two were hung with faded tapestry, across which huntsmen and dogs
+and stags were still dimly streaming. Above the fireplace were rows of
+heraldic shields with the blazonings of the family and of its alliances,
+the fatal saltire cross breaking out on each of them.
+
+Four paintings of old seigneurs of Chateau Noir faced the fireplace, all
+men with hawk noses and bold, high features, so like each other that
+only the dress could distinguish the Crusader from the Cavalier of the
+Fronde. Captain Baumgarten, heavy with his repast, lay back in his
+chair looking up at them through the clouds of his tobacco smoke, and
+pondering over the strange chance which had sent him, a man from the
+Baltic coast, to eat his supper in the ancestral hall of these proud
+Norman chieftains. But the fire was hot, and the captain’s eyes were
+heavy. His chin sank slowly upon his chest, and the ten candles gleamed
+upon the broad, white scalp.
+
+Suddenly a slight noise brought him to his feet. For an instant it
+seemed to his dazed senses that one of the pictures opposite had walked
+from its frame. There, beside the table, and almost within arm’s length
+of him, was standing a huge man, silent, motionless, with no sign of
+life save his fierce-glinting eyes. He was black-haired, olive-skinned,
+with a pointed tuft of black beard, and a great, fierce nose, towards
+which all his features seemed to run. His cheeks were wrinkled like a
+last year’s apple, but his sweep of shoulder, and bony, corded hands,
+told of a strength which was unsapped by age. His arms were folded
+across his arching chest, and his mouth was set in a fixed smile.
+
+“Pray do not trouble yourself to look for your weapons,” he said, as the
+Prussian cast a swift glance at the empty chair in which they had been
+laid. “You have been, if you will allow me to say so, a little
+indiscreet to make yourself so much at home in a house every wall of
+which is honeycombed with secret passages. You will be amused to hear
+that forty men were watching you at your supper. Ah! what then?”
+
+Captain Baumgarten had taken a step forward with clenched fists.
+The Frenchman held up the revolver which he grasped in his right hand,
+while with the left he hurled the German back into his chair.
+
+“Pray keep your seat,” said he. “You have no cause to trouble about
+your men. They have already been provided for. It is astonishing with
+these stone floors how little one can hear what goes on beneath.
+You have been relieved of your command, and have now only to think of
+yourself. May I ask what your name is?”
+
+“I am Captain Baumgarten of the 24th Posen Regiment.”
+
+“Your French is excellent, though you incline, like most of your
+countrymen, to turn the ‘p’ into a ‘b.’ I have been amused to hear them
+cry ‘_Avez bitie sur moi!_’ You know, doubtless, who it is who addresses
+you.”
+
+“The Count of Chateau Noir.”
+
+“Precisely. It would have been a misfortune if you had visited my
+chateau and I had been unable to have a word with you. I have had to do
+with many German soldiers, but never with an officer before. I have
+much to talk to you about.”
+
+Captain Baumgarten sat still in his chair. Brave as he was, there was
+something in this man’s manner which made his skin creep with
+apprehension. His eyes glanced to right and to left, but his weapons
+were gone, and in a struggle he saw that he was but a child to this
+gigantic adversary. The count had picked up the claret bottle and held
+it to the light.
+
+“Tut! tut!” said he. “And was this the best that Pierre could do for
+you? I am ashamed to look you in the face, Captain Baumgarten. We must
+improve upon this.”
+
+He blew a call upon a whistle which hung from his shooting-jacket.
+The old manservant was in the room in an instant.
+
+“Chambertin from bin 15!” he cried, and a minute later a grey bottle,
+streaked with cobwebs, was carried in as a nurse bears an infant.
+The count filled two glasses to the brim.
+
+“Drink!” said he. “It is the very best in my cellars, and not to be
+matched between Rouen and Paris. Drink, sir, and be happy! There are
+cold joints below. There are two lobsters, fresh from Honfleur. Will
+you not venture upon a second and more savoury supper?”
+
+The German officer shook his head. He drained the glass, however, and
+his host filled it once more, pressing him to give an order for this or
+that dainty.
+
+“There is nothing in my house which is not at your disposal. You have
+but to say the word. Well, then, you will allow me to tell you a story
+while you drink your wine. I have so longed to tell it to some
+German officer. It is about my son, my only child, Eustace, who was
+taken and died in escaping. It is a curious little story, and I think
+that I can promise you that you will never forget it.
+
+“You must know, then, that my boy was in the artillery--a fine young
+fellow, Captain Baumgarten, and the pride of his mother. She died
+within a week of the news of his death reaching us. It was brought by a
+brother officer who was at his side throughout, and who escaped while my
+lad died. I want to tell you all that he told me.
+
+“Eustace was taken at Weissenburg on the 4th of August. The prisoners
+were broken up into parties, and sent back into Germany by different
+routes. Eustace was taken upon the 5th to a village called Lauterburg,
+where he met with kindness from the German officer in command.
+This good colonel had the hungry lad to supper, offered him the best he
+had, opened a bottle of good wine, as I have tried to do for you, and
+gave him a cigar from his own case. Might I entreat you to take one
+from mine?”
+
+The German again shook his head. His horror of his companion had
+increased as he sat watching the lips that smiled and the eyes that
+glared.
+
+“The colonel, as I say, was good to my boy. But, unluckily, the
+prisoners were moved next day across the Rhine into Ettlingen.
+They were not equally fortunate there. The officer who guarded them was
+a ruffian and a villain, Captain Baumgarten. He took a pleasure in
+humiliating and ill-treating the brave men who had fallen into his
+power. That night, upon my son answering fiercely back to some taunt of
+his, he struck him in the eye, like this!”
+
+The crash of the blow rang through the hall. The German’s face fell
+forward, his hand up, and blood oozing through his fingers. The count
+settled down in his chair once more.
+
+“My boy was disfigured by the blow, and this villain made his appearance
+the object of his jeers. By the way, you look a little comical yourself
+at the present moment, captain, and your colonel would certainly say
+that you had been getting into mischief. To continue, however, my boy’s
+youth and his destitution--for his pockets were empty--moved the pity of
+a kind-hearted major, and he advanced him ten Napoleons from his own
+pocket without security of any kind. Into your hands, Captain
+Baumgarten, I return these ten gold pieces, since I cannot learn the
+name of the lender. I am grateful from my heart for this kindness shown
+to my boy.
+
+“The vile tyrant who commanded the escort accompanied the prisoners to
+Durlack, and from there to Carlsruhe. He heaped every outrage upon my
+lad, because the spirit of the Chateau Noirs would not stoop to turn
+away his wrath by a feigned submission. Ay, this cowardly villain,
+whose heart’s blood shall yet clot upon this hand, dared to strike my
+son with his open hand, to kick him, to tear hairs from his moustache--
+to use him thus--and thus--and thus!”
+
+The German writhed and struggled. He was helpless in the hands of this
+huge giant whose blows were raining upon him. When at last, blinded and
+half-senseless, he staggered to his feet, it was only to be hurled back
+again into the great oaken chair. He sobbed in his impotent anger and
+shame.
+
+“My boy was frequently moved to tears by the humiliation of his
+position,” continued the count. “You will understand me when I say that
+it is a bitter thing to be helpless in the hands of an insolent and
+remorseless enemy. On arriving at Carlsruhe, however, his face, which
+had been wounded by the brutality of his guard, was bound up by a young
+Bavarian subaltern who was touched by his appearance. I regret to see
+that your eye is bleeding so. Will you permit me to bind it with my
+silk handkerchief?”
+
+He leaned forward, but the German dashed his hand aside.
+
+“I am in your power, you monster!” he cried; “I can endure your
+brutalities, but not your hypocrisy.”
+
+The count shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I am taking things in their order, just as they occurred,” said he.
+“I was under vow to tell it to the first German officer with whom I
+could talk _tete-a-tete_. Let me see, I had got as far as the young
+Bavarian at Carlsruhe. I regret extremely that you will not permit me
+to use such slight skill in surgery as I possess. At Carlsruhe, my lad
+was shut up in the old caserne, where he remained for a fortnight.
+The worst pang of his captivity was that some unmannerly curs in the
+garrison would taunt him with his position as he sat by his window in
+the evening. That reminds me, captain, that you are not quite situated
+upon a bed of roses yourself, are you now? You came to trap a wolf, my
+man, and now the beast has you down with his fangs in your throat.
+A family man, too, I should judge, by that well-filled tunic. Well, a
+widow the more will make little matter, and they do not usually remain
+widows long. Get back into the chair, you dog!
+
+“Well, to continue my story--at the end of a fortnight my son and his
+friend escaped. I need not trouble you with the dangers which they ran,
+or with the privations which they endured. Suffice it that to disguise
+themselves they had to take the clothes of two peasants, whom they
+waylaid in a wood. Hiding by day and travelling by night, they had got
+as far into France as Remilly, and were within a mile--a single mile,
+captain--of crossing the German lines when a patrol of Uhlans came right
+upon them. Ah! it was hard, was it not, when they had come so far and
+were so near to safety?” The count blew a double call upon his whistle,
+and three hard-faced peasants entered the room.
+
+“These must represent my Uhlans,” said he. “Well, then, the captain in
+command, finding that these men were French soldiers in civilian dress
+within the German lines, proceeded to hang them without trial or
+ceremony. I think, Jean, that the centre beam is the strongest.”
+
+The unfortunate soldier was dragged from his chair to where a noosed
+rope had been flung over one of the huge oaken rafters which spanned the
+room. The cord was slipped over his head, and he felt its harsh grip
+round his throat. The three peasants seized the other end, and looked
+to the count for his orders. The officer, pale, but firm, folded his
+arms and stared defiantly at the man who tortured him.
+
+“You are now face to face with death, and I perceive from your lips
+that you are praying. My son was also face to face with death, and he
+prayed, also. It happened that a general officer came up, and he heard
+the lad praying for his mother, and it moved him so--he being himself
+a father--that he ordered his Uhlans away, and he remained with his
+aide-de-camp only, beside the condemned men. And when he heard all the
+lad had to tell--that he was the only child of an old family, and that
+his mother was in failing health--he threw off the rope as I throw off
+this, and he kissed him on either cheek, as I kiss you, and he bade him
+go, as I bid you go, and may every kind wish of that noble general,
+though it could not stave off the fever which slew my son, descend now
+upon your head.”
+
+And so it was that Captain Baumgarten, disfigured, blinded, and
+bleeding, staggered out into the wind and the rain of that wild
+December dawn.
+
+
+
+
+THE STRIPED CHEST
+
+
+“What do you make of her, Allardyce?” I asked.
+
+My second mate was standing beside me upon the poop, with his short,
+thick legs astretch, for the gale had left a considerable swell behind
+it, and our two quarter-boats nearly touched the water with every roll.
+He steadied his glass against the mizzen-shrouds, and he looked long and
+hard at this disconsolate stranger every time she came reeling up on to
+the crest of a roller and hung balanced for a few seconds before
+swooping down upon the other side. She lay so low in the water that I
+could only catch an occasional glimpse of a pea-green line of bulwark.
+She was a brig, but her mainmast had been snapped short off some 10ft.
+above the deck, and no effort seemed to have been made to cut away the
+wreckage, which floated, sails and yards, like the broken wing of a
+wounded gull upon the water beside her. The foremast was still
+standing, but the foretopsail was flying loose, and the headsails were
+streaming out in long, white pennons in front of her. Never have I seen
+a vessel which appeared to have gone through rougher handling. But we
+could not be surprised at that, for there had been times during the last
+three days when it was a question whether our own barque would ever see
+land again. For thirty-six hours we had kept her nose to it, and if the
+_Mary Sinclair_ had not been as good a seaboat as ever left the Clyde,
+we could not have gone through. And yet here we were at the end of it
+with the loss only of our gig and of part of the starboard bulwark.
+It did not astonish us, however, when the smother had cleared away, to
+find that others had been less lucky, and that this mutilated brig
+staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky, had been
+left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the terror
+which is past. Allardyce, who was a slow and methodical Scotchman,
+stared long and hard at the little craft, while our seamen lined the
+bulwark or clustered upon the fore shrouds to have a view of the
+stranger. In latitude 20 degrees and longitude 10 degrees, which were
+about our bearings, one becomes a little curious as to whom one meets,
+for one has left the main lines of Atlantic commerce to the north.
+For ten days we had been sailing over a solitary sea.
+
+“She’s derelict, I’m thinking,” said the second mate.
+
+I had come to the same conclusion, for I could see no signs of life
+upon her deck, and there was no answer to the friendly wavings from our
+seamen. The crew had probably deserted her under the impression that
+she was about to founder.
+
+“She can’t last long,” continued Allardyce, in his measured way.
+“She may put her nose down and her tail up any minute. The water’s
+lipping up to the edge of her rail.”
+
+“What’s her flag?” I asked.
+
+“I’m trying to make out. It’s got all twisted and tangled with the
+halyards. Yes, I’ve got it now, clear enough. It’s the Brazilian flag,
+but it’s wrong side up.”
+
+She had hoisted a signal of distress, then, before her people had
+abandoned her. Perhaps they had only just gone. I took the mate’s
+glass and looked round over the tumultuous face of the deep blue
+Atlantic, still veined and starred with white lines and spoutings of
+foam. But nowhere could I see anything human beyond ourselves.
+
+“There may be living men aboard,” said I.
+
+“There may be salvage,” muttered the second mate.
+
+“Then we will run down upon her lee side, and lie to.” We were not more
+than a hundred yards from her when we swung our foreyard aback, and
+there we were, the barque and the brig, ducking and bowing like two
+clowns in a dance.
+
+“Drop one of the quarter-boats,” said I. “Take four men, Mr. Allardyce,
+and see what you can learn of her.”
+
+But just at that moment my first officer, Mr. Armstrong, came on deck,
+for seven bells had struck, and it was but a few minutes off his watch.
+It would interest me to go myself to this abandoned vessel and to see
+what there might be aboard of her. So, with a word to Armstrong, I
+swung myself over the side, slipped down the falls, and took my place in
+the sheets of the boat.
+
+It was but a little distance, but it took some time to traverse, and so
+heavy was the roll that often when we were in the trough of the sea, we
+could not see either the barque which we had left or the brig which we
+were approaching. The sinking sun did not penetrate down there, and it
+was cold and dark in the hollows of the waves, but each passing billow
+heaved us up into the warmth and the sunshine once more. At each of
+these moments, as we hung upon a white-capped ridge between the two dark
+valleys, I caught a glimpse of the long, pea-green line, and the nodding
+foremast of the brig, and I steered so as to come round by her stern, so
+that we might determine which was the best way of boarding her. As we
+passed her we saw the name _Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria_ painted across
+her dripping counter.
+
+“The weather side, sir,” said the second mate. “Stand by with the
+boat-hook, carpenter!” An instant later we had jumped over the
+bulwarks, which were hardly higher than our boat, and found ourselves
+upon the deck of the abandoned vessel. Our first thought was to provide
+for our own safety in case--as seemed very probable--the vessel should
+settle down beneath our feet. With this object two of our men held on
+to the painter of the boat, and fended her off from the vessel’s side,
+so that she might be ready in case we had to make a hurried retreat.
+The carpenter was sent to find out how much water there was, and whether
+it was still gaming, while the other seaman, Allardyce and myself, made
+a rapid inspection of the vessel and her cargo.
+
+The deck was littered with wreckage and with hen-coops, in which the
+dead birds were washing about. The boats were gone, with the exception
+of one, the bottom of which had been stove, and it was certain that the
+crew had abandoned the vessel. The cabin was in a deck-house, one side
+of which had been beaten in by a heavy sea. Allardyce and I entered it,
+and found the captain’s table as he had left it, his books and papers--
+all Spanish or Portuguese--scattered over it, with piles of cigarette
+ash everywhere. I looked about for the log, but could not find it.
+
+“As likely as not he never kept one,” said Allardyce. “Things are
+pretty slack aboard a South American trader, and they don’t do more than
+they can help. If there was one it must have been taken away with him
+in the boat.”
+
+“I should like to take all these books and papers,” said I. “Ask the
+carpenter how much time we have.”
+
+His report was reassuring. The vessel was full of water, but some of
+the cargo was buoyant, and there was no immediate danger of her sinking.
+Probably she would never sink, but would drift about as one of those
+terrible unmarked reefs which have sent so many stout vessels to the
+bottom.
+
+“In that case there is no danger in your going below, Mr. Allardyce,”
+said I. “See what you can make of her and find out how much of her
+cargo may be saved. I’ll look through these papers while you are gone.”
+
+The bills of lading, and some notes and letters which lay upon the desk,
+sufficed to inform me that the Brazilian brig _Nossa Sehnora da
+Vittoria_ had cleared from Bahia a month before. The name of the
+captain was Texeira, but there was no record as to the number of the
+crew. She was bound for London, and a glance at the bills of lading was
+sufficient to show me that we were not likely to profit much in the way
+of salvage. Her cargo consisted of nuts, ginger, and wood, the latter
+in the shape of great logs of valuable tropical growths. It was these,
+no doubt, which had prevented the ill-fated vessel from going to the
+bottom, but they were of such a size as to make it impossible for us to
+extract them. Besides these, there were a few fancy goods, such as a
+number of ornamental birds for millinery purposes, and a hundred cases
+of preserved fruits. And then, as I turned over the papers, I came upon
+a short note in English, which arrested my attention.
+
+   It is requested (said the note) that the various old Spanish
+   and Indian curiosities, which came out of the Santarem
+   collection, and which are consigned to Prontfoot & Neuman
+   of Oxford Street, London, should be put in some place where
+   there may be no danger of these very valuable and unique articles
+   being injured or tampered with. This applies most particularly
+   to the treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, which must on
+   no account be placed where anyone can get at it.
+
+The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez! Unique and valuable articles!
+Here was a chance of salvage after all. I had risen to my feet with the
+paper in my hand when my Scotch mate appeared in the doorway.
+
+“I’m thinking all isn’t quite as it should be aboard of this ship,
+sir,” said he. He was a hard-faced man, and yet I could see that he had
+been startled.
+
+“What’s the matter?”
+
+“Murder’s the matter, sir. There’s a man here with his brains beaten
+out.”
+
+“Killed in the storm?” said I.
+
+“May be so, sir, but I’ll be surprised if you think so after you have
+seen him.”
+
+“Where is he, then?”
+
+“This way, sir; here in the maindeck house.”
+
+There appeared to have been no accommodation below in the brig, for
+there was the after-house for the captain, another by the main hatchway,
+with the cook’s galley attached to it, and a third in the forecastle for
+the men. It was to this middle one that the mate led me. As you
+entered, the galley, with its litter of tumbled pots and dishes, was
+upon the right, and upon the left was a small room with two bunks for
+the officers. Then beyond there was a place about 12ft. square, which
+was littered with flags and spare canvas. All round the walls were a
+number of packets done up in coarse cloth and carefully lashed to the
+woodwork. At the other end was a great box, striped red and white,
+though the red was so faded and the white so dirty that it was only
+where the light fell directly upon it that one could see the colouring.
+The box was, by subsequent measurement, 4ft. 3ins. in length, 3ft. 2ins.
+in height, and 3ft. across--considerably larger than a seaman’s chest.
+But it was not to the box that my eyes or my thoughts were turned as I
+entered the store-room. On the floor, lying across the litter of
+bunting, there was stretched a small, dark man with a short, curling
+beard. He lay as far as it was possible from the box, with his feet
+towards it and his head away. A crimson patch was printed upon the
+white canvas on which his head was resting, and little red ribbons
+wreathed themselves round his swarthy neck and trailed away on to the
+floor, but there was no sign of a wound that I could see, and his face
+was as placid as that of a sleeping child. It was only when I stooped
+that I could perceive his injury, and then I turned away with an
+exclamation of horror. He had been pole-axed; apparently by some person
+standing behind him. A frightful blow had smashed in the top of his
+head and penetrated deeply into his brains. His face might well be
+placid, for death must have been absolutely instantaneous, and the
+position of the wound showed that he could never have seen the person
+who had inflicted it.
+
+“Is that foul play or accident, Captain Barclay?” asked my second mate,
+demurely.
+
+“You are quite right, Mr. Allardyce. The man has been murdered--struck
+down from above by a sharp and heavy weapon. But who was he, and why
+did they murder him?”
+
+“He was a common seaman, sir,” said the mate. “You can see that if you
+look at his fingers.” He turned out his pockets as he spoke and brought
+to light a pack of cards, some tarred string, and a bundle of Brazilian
+tobacco.
+
+“Hello, look at this!” said he.
+
+It was a large, open knife with a stiff spring blade which he had picked
+up from the floor. The steel was shining and bright, so that we could
+not associate it with the crime, and yet the dead man had apparently
+held it in his hand when he was struck down, for it still lay within his
+grasp.
+
+“It looks to me, sir, as if he knew he was in danger and kept his knife
+handy,” said the mate. “However, we can’t help the poor beggar now.
+I can’t make out these things that are lashed to the wall. They seem
+to be idols and weapons and curios of all sorts done up in old sacking.”
+
+“That’s right,” said I. “They are the only things of value that we are
+likely to get from the cargo. Hail the barque and tell them to send the
+other quarter-boat to help us to get the stuff aboard.”
+
+While he was away I examined this curious plunder which had come into
+our possession. The curiosities were so wrapped up that I could only
+form a general idea as to their nature, but the striped box stood in a
+good light where I could thoroughly examine it. On the lid, which was
+clamped and cornered with metal-work, there was engraved a complex coat
+of arms, and beneath it was a line of Spanish which I was able to
+decipher as meaning, “The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, Knight
+of the Order of Saint James, Governor and Captain-General of Terra Firma
+and of the Province of Veraquas.” In one corner was the date, 1606, and
+on the other a large white label, upon which was written in English,
+“You are earnestly requested, upon no account, to open this box.”
+The same warning was repeated underneath in Spanish. As to the lock, it
+was a very complex and heavy one of engraved steel, with a Latin motto,
+which was above a seaman’s comprehension. By the time I had finished
+this examination of the peculiar box, the other quarter-boat with Mr.
+Armstrong, the first officer, had come alongside, and we began to carry
+out and place in her the various curiosities which appeared to be the
+only objects worth moving from the derelict ship. When she was full I
+sent her back to the barque, and then Allardyce and I, with the
+carpenter and one seaman, shifted the striped box, which was the only
+thing left, to our boat, and lowered it over, balancing it upon the two
+middle thwarts, for it was so heavy that it would have given the boat a
+dangerous tilt had we placed it at either end. As to the dead man, we
+left him where we had found him. The mate had a theory that, at the
+moment of the desertion of the ship, this fellow had started
+plundering, and that the captain, in an attempt to preserve discipline,
+had struck him down with a hatchet or some other heavy weapon.
+It seemed more probable than any other explanation, and yet it did not
+entirely satisfy me either. But the ocean is full of mysteries, and we
+were content to leave the fate of the dead seaman of the Brazilian brig
+to be added to that long list which every sailor can recall.
+
+The heavy box was slung up by ropes on to the deck of the _Mary
+Sinclair_, and was carried by four seamen into the cabin, where, between
+the table and the after-lockers, there was just space for it to stand.
+There it remained during supper, and after that meal the mates remained
+with me, and discussed over a glass of grog the event of the day.
+Mr. Armstrong was a long, thin, vulture-like man, an excellent seaman,
+but famous for his nearness and cupidity. Our treasure-trove had
+excited him greatly, and already he had begun with glistening eyes to
+reckon up how much it might be worth to each of us when the shares of
+the salvage came to be divided.
+
+“If the paper said that they were unique, Mr. Barclay, then they may be
+worth anything that you like to name. You wouldn’t believe the sums
+that the rich collectors give. A thousand pounds is nothing to them.
+We’ll have something to show for our voyage, or I am mistaken.”
+
+“I don’t think that,” said I. “As far as I can see, they are not very
+different from any other South American curios.”
+
+“Well, sir, I’ve traded there for fourteen voyages, and I have never
+seen anything like that chest before. That’s worth a pile of money,
+just as it stands. But it’s so heavy that surely there must be
+something valuable inside it. Don’t you think that we ought to open it
+and see?”
+
+“If you break it open you will spoil it, as likely as not,” said the
+second mate.
+
+Armstrong squatted down in front of it, with his head on one side, and
+his long, thin nose within a few inches of the lock.
+
+“The wood is oak,” said he, “and it has shrunk a little with age. If I
+had a chisel or a strong-bladed knife I could force the lock back
+without doing any damage at all.”
+
+The mention of a strong-bladed knife made me think of the dead seaman
+upon the brig.
+
+“I wonder if he could have been on the job when someone came to
+interfere with him,” said I.
+
+“I don’t know about that, sir, but I am perfectly certain that I could
+open the box. There’s a screwdriver here in the locker. Just hold the
+lamp, Allardyce, and I’ll have it done in a brace of shakes.”
+
+“Wait a bit,” said I, for already, with eyes which gleamed with
+curiosity and with avarice, he was stooping over the lid. “I don’t see
+that there is any hurry over this matter. You’ve read that card which
+warns us not to open it. It may mean anything or it may mean nothing,
+but somehow I feel inclined to obey it. After all, whatever is in it
+will keep, and if it is valuable it will be worth as much if it is
+opened in the owner’s offices as in the cabin of the _Mary Sinclair_.”
+
+The first officer seemed bitterly disappointed at my decision.
+
+“Surely, sir, you are not superstitious about it,” said he, with a
+slight sneer upon his thin lips. “If it gets out of our own hands, and
+we don’t see for ourselves what is inside it, we may be done out of our
+rights; besides--”
+
+“That’s enough, Mr. Armstrong,” said I, abruptly. “You may have every
+confidence that you will get your rights, but I will not have that box
+opened to-night.”
+
+“Why, the label itself shows that the box has been examined by
+Europeans,” Allardyce added. “Because a box is a treasure-box is no
+reason that it has treasures inside it now. A good many folk have had a
+peep into it since the days of the old Governor of Terra Firma.”
+
+Armstrong threw the screwdriver down upon the table and shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+“Just as you like,” said he; but for the rest of the evening, although
+we spoke upon many subjects, I noticed that his eyes were continually
+coming round, with the same expression of curiosity and greed, to the
+old striped box.
+
+And now I come to that portion of my story which fills me even now with
+a shuddering horror when I think of it. The main cabin had the rooms of
+the officers round it, but mine was the farthest away from it at the end
+of the little passage which led to the companion. No regular watch was
+kept by me, except in cases of emergency, and the three mates divided
+the watches among them. Armstrong had the middle watch, which ends at
+four in the morning, and he was relieved by Allardyce. For my part I
+have always been one of the soundest of sleepers, and it is rare for
+anything less than a hand upon my shoulder to arouse me.
+
+And yet I was aroused that night, or rather in the early grey of the
+morning. It was just half-past four by my chronometer when something
+caused me to sit up in my berth wide awake and with every nerve
+tingling. It was a sound of some sort, a crash with a human cry at the
+end of it, which still jarred on my ears. I sat listening, but all was
+now silent. And yet it could not have been imagination, that hideous
+cry, for the echo of it still rang in my head, and it seemed to have
+come from some place quite close to me. I sprang from my bunk, and,
+pulling on some clothes, I made my way into the cabin. At first I saw
+nothing unusual there. In the cold, grey light I made out the
+red-clothed table, the six rotating chairs, the walnut lockers, the
+swinging barometer, and there, at the end, the big striped chest. I was
+turning away, with the intention of going upon deck and asking the
+second mate if he had heard anything, when my eyes fell suddenly upon
+something which projected from under the table. It was the leg of a
+man--a leg with a long sea-boot upon it. I stooped, and there was a
+figure sprawling upon his face, his arms thrown forward and his body
+twisted. One glance told me that it was Armstrong, the first officer,
+and a second that he was a dead man. For a few moments I stood gasping.
+Then I rushed on to the deck, called Allardyce to my assistance, and
+came back with him into the cabin.
+
+Together we pulled the unfortunate fellow from under the table, and as
+we looked at his dripping head we exchanged glances, and I do not know
+which was the paler of the two.
+
+“The same as the Spanish sailor,” said I.
+
+“The very same. God preserve us! It’s that infernal chest! Look at
+Armstrong’s hand!”
+
+He held up the mate’s right hand, and there was the screwdriver which he
+had wished to use the night before.
+
+“He’s been at the chest, sir. He knew that I was on deck and you were
+asleep. He knelt down in front of it, and he pushed the lock back with
+that tool. Then something happened to him, and he cried out so that you
+heard him.”
+
+“Allardyce,” I whispered, “what _could_ have happened to him?”
+
+The second mate put his hand upon my sleeve and drew me into his cabin.
+
+“We can talk here, sir, and we don’t know who may be listening to us in
+there. What do you suppose is in that box, Captain Barclay?”
+
+“I give you my word, Allardyce, that I have no idea.”
+
+“Well, I can only find one theory which will fit all the facts. Look at
+the size of the box. Look at all the carving and metal-work which may
+conceal any number of holes. Look at the weight of it; it took four men
+to carry it. On top of that, remember that two men have tried to open
+it, and both have come to their end through it. Now, sir, what can it
+mean except one thing?”
+
+“You mean there is a man in it?”
+
+“Of course there is a man in it. You know how it is in these South
+American States, sir. A man may be president one week and hunted like a
+dog the next--they are for ever flying for their lives. My idea is that
+there is some fellow in hiding there, who is armed and desperate, and
+who will fight to the death before he is taken.”
+
+“But his food and drink?”
+
+“It’s a roomy chest, sir, and he may have some provisions stowed away.
+As to his drink, he had a friend among the crew upon the brig who saw
+that he had what he needed.”
+
+“You think, then, that the label asking people not to open the box was
+simply written in his interest?”
+
+“Yes, sir, that is my idea. Have you any other way of explaining the
+facts?”
+
+I had to confess that I had not.
+
+“The question is what we are to do?” I asked.
+
+“The man’s a dangerous ruffian, who sticks at nothing. I’m thinking it
+wouldn’t be a bad thing to put a rope round the chest and tow it
+alongside for half an hour; then we could open it at our ease. Or if we
+just tied the box up and kept him from getting any water maybe that
+would do as well. Or the carpenter could put a coat of varnish over it
+and stop all the blow-holes.”
+
+“Come, Allardyce,” said I, angrily. “You don’t seriously mean to say
+that a whole ship’s company are going to be terrorised by a single man
+in a box. If he’s there, I’ll engage to fetch him out!” I went to my
+room and came back with my revolver in my hand. “Now, Allardyce,” said
+I, “do you open the lock, and I’ll stand on guard.”
+
+“For God’s sake, think what you are doing, sir!” cried the mate. “Two
+men have lost their lives over it, and the blood of one not yet dry upon
+the carpet.”
+
+“The more reason why we should revenge him.”
+
+“Well, sir, at least let me call the carpenter. Three are better than
+two, and he is a good stout man.”
+
+He went off in search of him, and I was left alone with the striped
+chest in the cabin. I don’t think that I’m a nervous man, but I kept
+the table between me and this solid old relic of the Spanish Main.
+In the growing light of morning the red and white striping was beginning
+to appear, and the curious scrolls and wreaths of metal and carving
+which showed the loving pains which cunning craftsmen had expended upon
+it. Presently the carpenter and the mate came back together, the former
+with a hammer in his hand.
+
+“It’s a bad business, this, sir,” said he, shaking his head, as he
+looked at the body of the mate. “And you think there’s someone hiding
+in the box?”
+
+“There’s no doubt about it,” said Allardyce, picking up the screwdriver
+and setting his jaw like a man who needs to brace his courage.
+“I’ll drive the lock back if you will both stand by. If he rises let
+him have it on the head with your hammer, carpenter. Shoot at once,
+sir, if he raises his hand. Now!”
+
+He had knelt down in front of the striped chest, and passed the blade of
+the tool under the lid. With a sharp snick the lock flew back. “Stand
+by!” yelled the mate, and with a heave he threw open the massive top of
+the box. As it swung up we all three sprang back, I with my pistol
+levelled, and the carpenter with the hammer above his head. Then, as
+nothing happened, we each took a step forward and peeped in. The box
+was empty.
+
+Not quite empty either, for in one corner was lying an old yellow
+candlestick, elaborately engraved, which appeared to be as old as the
+box itself. Its rich yellow tone and artistic shape suggested that it
+was an object of value. For the rest there was nothing more weighty or
+valuable than dust in the old striped treasure-chest.
+
+“Well, I’m blessed!” cried Allardyce, staring blankly into it.
+“Where does the weight come in, then?”
+
+“Look at the thickness of the sides, and look at the lid. Why, it’s
+five inches through. And see that great metal spring across it.”
+
+“That’s for holding the lid up,” said the mate. “You see, it won’t lean
+back. What’s that German printing on the inside?”
+
+“It means that it was made by Johann Rothstein of Augsburg, in 1606.”
+
+“And a solid bit of work, too. But it doesn’t throw much light on what
+has passed, does it, Captain Barclay? That candlestick looks like gold.
+We shall have something for our trouble after all.”
+
+He leant forward to grasp it, and from that moment I have never doubted
+as to the reality of inspiration, for on the instant I caught him by the
+collar and pulled him straight again. It may have been some story of
+the Middle Ages which had come back to my mind, or it may have been that
+my eye had caught some red which was not that of rust upon the upper
+part of the lock, but to him and to me it will always seem an
+inspiration, so prompt and sudden was my action.
+
+“There’s devilry here,” said I. “Give me the crooked stick from the
+corner.”
+
+It was an ordinary walking-cane with a hooked top. I passed it over the
+candlestick and gave it a pull. With a flash a row of polished steel
+fangs shot out from below the upper lip, and the great striped chest
+snapped at us like a wild animal. Clang came the huge lid into its
+place, and the glasses on the swinging rack sang and tinkled with the
+shock. The mate sat down on the edge of the table and shivered like a
+frightened horse.
+
+“You’ve saved my life, Captain Barclay!” said he.
+
+So this was the secret of the striped treasure-chest of old Don Ramirez
+di Leyra, and this was how he preserved his ill-gotten gains from the
+Terra Firma and the Province of Veraquas. Be the thief ever so cunning
+he could not tell that golden candlestick from the other articles of
+value, and the instant that he laid hand upon it the terrible spring was
+unloosed and the murderous steel pikes were driven into his brain, while
+the shock of the blow sent the victim backward and enabled the chest to
+automatically close itself. How many, I wondered, had fallen victims to
+the ingenuity of the mechanic of Ausgburg? And as I thought of the
+possible history of that grim striped chest my resolution was very
+quickly taken.
+
+“Carpenter, bring three men, and carry this on deck.”
+
+“Going to throw it overboard, sir?”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Allardyce. I’m not superstitious as a rule, but there are
+some things which are more than a sailor can be called upon to stand.”
+
+“No wonder that brig made heavy weather, Captain Barclay, with such a
+thing on board. The glass is dropping fast, sir, and we are only just
+in time.”
+
+So we did not even wait for the three sailors, but we carried it out,
+the mate, the carpenter, and I, and we pushed it with our own hands over
+the bulwarks. There was a white spout of water, and it was gone. There
+it lies, the striped chest, a thousand fathoms deep, and if, as they
+say, the sea will some day be dry land, I grieve for the man who finds
+that old box and tries to penetrate into its secret.
+
+
+
+
+A SHADOW BEFORE
+
+
+The 15th of July, 1870, found John Worlington Dodds a ruined gamester of
+the Stock Exchange. Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man. And yet
+he had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish
+townlet of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter
+of the sum which he had earned during the single day that he was
+within its walls. There is a romance of finance yet to be written, a
+story of huge forces which are for ever waxing and waning, of bold
+operations, of breathless suspense, of agonised failure, of deep
+combinations which are baffled by others still more subtle. The mighty
+debts of each great European Power stand like so many columns of
+mercury, for ever rising and falling to indicate the pressure upon each.
+He who can see far enough into the future to tell how that ever-varying
+column will stand to-morrow is the man who has fortune within his grasp.
+
+John Worlington Dodds had many of the gifts which lead a speculator to
+success. He was quick in observing, just in estimating, prompt and
+fearless in acting. But in finance there is always the element of luck,
+which, however one may eliminate it, still remains, like the blank at
+roulette, a constantly present handicap upon the operator. And so it
+was that Worlington Dodds had come to grief. On the best advices he had
+dabbled in the funds of a South American Republic in the days before
+South American Republics had been found out. The Republic defaulted,
+and Dodds lost his money. He had bulled the shares of a Scotch railway,
+and a four months’ strike had hit him hard. He had helped to underwrite
+a coffee company in the hope that the public would come along upon the
+feed and gradually nibble away some of his holding, but the political
+sky had been clouded and the public had refused to invest. Everything
+which he had touched had gone wrong, and now, on the eve of his
+marriage, young, clear-headed, and energetic, he was actually a bankrupt
+had his creditors chosen to make him one. But the Stock Exchange is an
+indulgent body. What is the case of one to-day may be that of another
+to-morrow, and everyone is interested in seeing that the stricken man is
+given time to rise again. So the burden of Worlington Dodds was
+lightened for him; many shoulders helped to bear it, and he was able to
+go for a little summer tour into Ireland, for the doctors had ordered
+him rest and change of air to restore his shaken nervous system. Thus
+it was that upon the 15th of July, 1870, he found himself at his
+breakfast in the fly-blown coffee-room of the “George Hotel” in the
+market square of Dunsloe. It is a dull and depressing coffee-room, and
+one which is usually empty, but on this particular day it was as crowded
+and noisy as that of any London hotel. Every table was occupied, and a
+thick smell of fried bacon and of fish hung in the air. Heavily booted
+men clattered in and out, spurs jingled, riding-crops were stacked in
+corners, and there was a general atmosphere of horse. The conversation,
+too, was of nothing else. From every side Worlington Dodds heard of
+yearlings, of windgalls, of roarers, of spavins, of cribsuckers, of a
+hundred other terms which were as unintelligible to him as his own
+Stock Exchange jargon would have been to the company. He asked the
+waiter for the reason of it all, and the waiter was an astonished man
+that there should be any man in this world who did not know it.
+
+“Shure it’s the Dunsloe horse fair, your honour--the greatest
+horse-fair in all Oireland. It lasts for a wake, and the folk come from
+far an’ near--from England an’ Scotland an’ iverywhere. If you look out
+of the winder, your honour, you’ll see the horses, and it’s asy your
+honour’s conscience must be, or you wouldn’t slape so sound that the
+creatures didn’t rouse you with their clatter.”
+
+Dodds had a recollection that he had heard a confused murmur, which had
+interwoven itself with his dreams--a sort of steady rhythmic beating and
+clanking--and now, when he looked through the window, he saw the cause
+of it. The square was packed with horses from end to end--greys, bays,
+browns, blacks, chestnuts--young ones and old, fine ones and coarse,
+horses of every conceivable sort and size. It seemed a huge function
+for so small a town, and he remarked as much to the waiter.
+
+“Well, you see, your honour, the horses don’t live in the town, an’ they
+don’t vex their heads how small it is. But it’s in the very centre of
+the horse-bradin’ districts of Oireland, so where should they come to be
+sould if it wasn’t to Dunsloe?” The waiter had a telegram in his hand,
+and he turned the address to Worlington Dodds. “Shure I niver heard
+such a name, sorr. Maybe you could tell me who owns it?”
+
+Dodds looked at the envelope. Strellenhaus was the name. “No, I don’t
+know,” said he. “I never heard it before. It’s a foreign name.
+Perhaps if you were--”
+
+But at that moment a little round-faced, ruddy-cheeked gentleman, who
+was breakfasting at the next table, leaned forward and interrupted him.
+
+“Did you say a foreign name, sir?” said he.
+
+“Strellenhaus is the name.”
+
+“I am Mr. Strellenhaus--Mr. Julius Strellenhaus, of Liverpool. I was
+expecting a telegram. Thank you very much.”
+
+He sat so near that Dodds, without any wish to play the spy, could not
+help to some extent overlooking him as he opened the envelope.
+The message was a very long one. Quite a wad of melon-tinted paper came
+out from the tawny envelope. Mr. Strellenhaus arranged the sheets
+methodically upon the table-cloth in front of him, so that no eye but
+his own could see them. Then he took out a note-book, and, with an
+anxious face, he began to make entries in it, glancing first at the
+telegram and then at the book, and writing apparently one letter or
+figure at a time. Dodds was interested, for he knew exactly what the
+man was doing. He was working out a cipher. Dodds had often done it
+himself. And then suddenly the little man turned very pale, as if the
+full purport of the message had been a shock to him. Dodds had done
+that also, and his sympathies were all with his neighbors. Then the
+stranger rose, and, leaving his breakfast untasted, he walked out of the
+room.
+
+“I’m thinkin’ that the gintleman has had bad news, sorr,” said the
+confidential waiter.
+
+“Looks like it,” Dodds answered; and at that moment his thoughts were
+suddenly drawn off into another direction.
+
+The boots had entered the room with a telegram in his hand. “Where’s
+Mr. Mancune?” said he to the waiter.
+
+“Well, there are some quare names about. What was it you said?”
+
+“Mr. Mancune,” said the boots, glancing round him. “Ah, there he is!”
+and he handed the telegram to a gentleman who was sitting reading the
+paper in a corner.
+
+Dodds’s eyes had already fallen upon this man, and he had wondered
+vaguely what he was doing in such company. He was a tall, white-haired,
+eagle-nosed gentleman, with a waxed moustache and a carefully pointed
+beard--an aristocratic type which seemed out of its element among the
+rough, hearty, noisy dealers who surrounded him. This, then, was Mr.
+Mancune, for whom the second telegram was intended.
+
+As he opened it, tearing it open with a feverish haste, Dodds could
+perceive that it was as bulky as the first one. He observed also, from
+the delay in reading it, that it was also in some sort of cipher.
+The gentleman did not write down any translation of it, but he sat for
+some time with his nervous, thin fingers twitching amongst the hairs of
+his white beard, and his shaggy brows bent in the deepest and most
+absorbed attention whilst he mastered the meaning of it. Then he sprang
+suddenly to his feet, his eyes flashed, his cheeks flushed, and in his
+excitement he crumpled the message up in his hand. With an effort he
+mastered his emotion, put the paper into his pocket, and walked out of
+the room.
+
+This was enough to excite a less astute and imaginative man than
+Worlington Dodds. Was there any connection between these two messages,
+or was it merely a coincidence? Two men with strange names receive two
+telegrams within a few minutes of each other, each of considerable
+length, each in cipher, and each causing keen emotion to the man who
+received it. One turned pale. The other sprang excitedly to his feet.
+It might be a coincidence, but it was a very curious one. If it was not
+a coincidence, then what could it mean? Were they confederates who
+pretended to work apart, but who each received identical orders from
+some person at a distance? That was possible, and yet there were
+difficulties in the way. He puzzled and puzzled, but could find no
+satisfactory solution to the problem. All breakfast he was turning it
+over in his mind.
+
+When breakfast was over he sauntered out into the market square, where
+the horse sale was already in progress. The yearlings were being sold
+first--tall, long-legged, skittish, wild-eyed creatures, who had run
+free upon the upland pastures, with ragged hair and towsie manes, but
+hardy, inured to all weathers, and with the makings of splendid hunters
+and steeplechasers when corn and time had brought them to maturity.
+They were largely of thoroughbred blood, and were being bought by
+English dealers, who would invest a few pounds now on what they might
+sell for fifty guineas in a year, if all went well. It was legitimate
+speculation, for the horse is a delicate creature, he is afflicted with
+many ailments, the least accident may destroy his value, he is a certain
+expense and an uncertain profit, and for one who comes safely to
+maturity several may bring no return at all. So the English
+horse-dealers took their risks as they bought up the shaggy Irish
+yearlings. One man with a ruddy face and a yellow overcoat took them by
+the dozen, with as much _sang froid_ as if they had been oranges,
+entering each bargain in a bloated note-book. He bought forty or fifty
+during the time that Dodds was watching him.
+
+“Who is that?” he asked his neighbour, whose spurs and gaiters showed
+that he was likely to know.
+
+The man stared in astonishment at the stranger’s ignorance.
+“Why, that’s Jim Holloway, the great Jim Holloway,” said he; then,
+seeing by the blank look upon Dodds’s face that even this information
+had not helped him much, he went into details. “Sure he’s the head of
+Holloway & Morland, of London,” said he. “He’s the buying partner, and
+he buys cheap; and the other stays at home and sells, and he sells dear.
+He owns more horses than any man in the world, and asks the best money
+for them. I dare say you’ll find that half of what are sold at the
+Dunsloe fair this day will go to him, and he’s got such a purse that
+there’s not a man who can bid against him.”
+
+Worlington Dodds watched the doings of the great dealer with interest.
+He had passed on now to the two-year-olds and three-year-olds,
+full-grown horses, but still a little loose in the limb and weak in the
+bone. The London buyer was choosing his animals carefully, but having
+chosen them, the vigour of his competition drove all other bidders out
+of it. With a careless nod he would run the figure up five pounds at a
+time, until he was left in possession of the field. At the same time he
+was a shrewd observer, and when, as happened more than once, he believed
+that someone was bidding against him simply in order to run him up, the
+head would cease suddenly to nod, the note-book would be closed with a
+snap, and the intruder would be left with a purchase which he did not
+desire upon his hands. All Dodds’s business instincts were aroused by
+the tactics of this great operator, and he stood in the crowd watching
+with the utmost interest all that occurred.
+
+It is not to buy young horses, however, that the great dealers come
+to Ireland, and the real business of the fair commenced when the four
+and five-year-olds were reached; the full-grown, perfect horses,
+at their prime, and ready for any work or any fatigue. Seventy
+magnificent creatures had been brought down by a single breeder, a
+comfortable-looking, keen-eyed, ruddy-cheeked gentleman who stood
+beside the salesman and whispered cautions and precepts into his ear.
+
+“That’s Flynn of Kildare,” said Dodds’s informant. “Jack Flynn has
+brought down that string of horses, and the other large string over
+yonder belongs to Tom Flynn, his brother. The two of them together
+are the two first breeders in Ireland.” A crowd had gathered in
+front of the horses. By common consent a place had been made for Mr.
+Holloway, and Dodds could catch a glimpse of his florid face and yellow
+covert-coat in the front rank. He had opened his note-book, and was
+tapping his teeth reflectively with his pencil as he eyed the horses.
+
+“You’ll see a fight now between the first seller and the first buyer in
+the country,” said Dodds’s acquaintance. “They are a beautiful string,
+anyhow. I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t average five-and-thirty
+pound apiece for the lot as they stand.”
+
+The salesman had mounted upon a chair, and his keen, clean-shaven face
+overlooked the crowd. Mr. Jack Flynn’s grey whiskers were at his elbow,
+and Mr. Holloway immediately in front.
+
+“You’ve seen these horses, gentlemen,” said the salesman, with a
+backward sweep of his hand towards the line of tossing heads and
+streaming manes. “When you know that they are bred by Mr. Jack Flynn,
+at his place in Kildare, you will have a guarantee of their quality.
+They are the best that Ireland can produce, and in this class of horse
+the best that Ireland can produce are the best in the world, as every
+riding man knows well. Hunters or carriage horses, all warranted sound,
+and bred from the best stock. There are seventy in Mr. Jack Flynn’s
+string, and he bids me say that if any wholesale dealer would make one
+bid for the whole lot, to save time, he would have the preference over
+any purchaser.”
+
+There was a pause and a whisper from the crowd in front, with some
+expressions of discontent. By a single sweep all the small dealers had
+been put out of it. It was only a long purse which could buy on such a
+scale as that. The salesman looked round him inquiringly.
+
+“Come, Mr. Holloway,” said he, at last. “You didn’t come over here for
+the sake of the scenery. You may travel the country and not see such
+another string of horses. Give us a starting bid.”
+
+The great dealer was still rattling his pencil upon his front teeth.
+“Well,” said he, at last, “they _are_ a fine lot of horses, and I won’t
+deny it. They do you credit, Mr. Flynn, I am sure. All the same I
+didn’t mean to fill a ship at a single bid in this fashion. I like to
+pick and choose my horses.”
+
+“In that case Mr. Flynn is quite prepared to sell them in smaller lots,”
+said the salesman. “It was rather for the convenience of a wholesale
+customer that he was prepared to put them all up together. But if no
+gentleman wishes to bid--”
+
+“Wait a minute,” said a voice. “They are very fine horses, these, and I
+will give you a bid to start you. I will give you twenty pounds each
+for the string of seventy.”
+
+There was a rustle as the crowd all swayed their heads to catch a
+glimpse of the speaker. The salesman leaned forward. “May I ask your
+name, sir?”
+
+“Strellenhaus--Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool.”
+
+“It’s a new firm,” said Dodds’s neighbour. “I thought I knew them all,
+but I never heard of him before.”
+
+The salesman’s head had disappeared, for he was whispering with the
+breeder. Now he suddenly straightened himself again. “Thank you for
+giving us a lead, sir,” said he. “Now, gentlemen, you have heard the
+offer of Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool. It will give us a base to start
+from. Mr. Strellenhaus has offered twenty pounds a head.”
+
+“Guineas,” said Holloway.
+
+“Bravo, Mr. Holloway! I knew that you would take a hand. You are not
+the man to let such a string of horses pass away from you. The bid is
+twenty guineas a head.”
+
+“Twenty-five pounds,” said Mr. Strellenhaus.
+
+“Twenty-six.”
+
+“Thirty.”
+
+It was London against Liverpool, and it was the head of the trade
+against an outsider. Still, the one man had increased his bids by fives
+and the other only by ones. Those fives meant determination and also
+wealth. Holloway had ruled the market so long that the crowd was
+delighted at finding someone who would stand up to him.
+
+“The bid now stands at thirty pounds a head,” said the salesman.
+“The word lies with you, Mr. Holloway.”
+
+The London dealer was glancing keenly at his unknown opponent, and he
+was asking himself whether this was a genuine rival, or whether it was a
+device of some sort--an agent of Flynn’s perhaps--for running up the
+price. Little Mr. Strellenhaus, the same apple-faced gentleman whom
+Dodds had noticed in the coffee-room, stood looking at the horses with
+the sharp, quick glances of a man who knows what he is looking for.
+
+“Thirty-one,” said Holloway, with the air of a man who has gone to his
+extreme limit.
+
+“Thirty-two,” said Strellenhaus, promptly.
+
+Holloway grew angry at this persistent opposition. His red face flushed
+redder still.
+
+“Thirty-three!” he shouted.
+
+“Thirty-four,” said Strellenhaus.
+
+Holloway became thoughtful, and entered a few figures in his note-book.
+There were seventy horses. He knew that Flynn’s stock was always of the
+highest quality. With the hunting season coming on he might rely upon
+selling them at an average of from forty-five to fifty. Some of them
+might carry a heavy weight, and would run to three figures. On the
+other hand, there was the feed and keep of them for three months, the
+danger of the voyage, the chance of influenza or some of those other
+complaints which run through an entire stable as measles go through a
+nursery. Deducting all this, it was a question whether at the present
+price any profit would be left upon the transaction. Every pound that
+he bid meant seventy out of his pocket. And yet he could not submit to
+be beaten by this stranger without a struggle. As a business matter it
+was important to him to be recognised as the head of his profession.
+He would make one more effort, if he sacrificed his profit by doing so.
+
+“At the end of your rope, Mr. Holloway?” asked the salesman, with the
+suspicion of a sneer.
+
+“Thirty-five,” cried Holloway gruffly.
+
+“Thirty-six,” said Strellenhaus.
+
+“Then I wish you joy of your bargain,” said Holloway. “I don’t buy at
+that price, but I should be glad to sell you some.”
+
+Mr. Strellenhaus took no notice of the irony. He was still looking
+critically at the horses. The salesman glanced round him in a
+perfunctory way.
+
+“Thirty-six pounds bid,” said he. “Mr. Jack Flynn’s lot is going to Mr.
+Strellenhaus of Liverpool, at thirty-six pounds a head. Going--going--”
+
+“Forty!” cried a high, thin, clear voice.
+
+A buzz rose from the crowd, and they were all on tiptoe again, trying to
+catch a glimpse of this reckless buyer. Being a tall man, Dodds could
+see over the others, and there, at the side of Holloway, he saw the
+masterful nose and aristocratic beard of the second stranger in the
+coffee-room. A sudden personal interest added itself to the scene.
+He felt that he was on the verge of something--something dimly seen--
+which he could himself turn to account. The two men with strange names,
+the telegrams, the horses--what was underlying it all? The salesman was
+all animation again, and Mr. Jack Flynn was sitting up with his white
+whiskers bristling and his eyes twinkling. It was the best deal which
+he had ever made in his fifty years of experience.
+
+“What name, sir?” asked the salesman.
+
+“Mr. Mancune.”
+
+“Address?”
+
+“Mr. Mancune of Glasgow.”
+
+“Thank you for your bid, sir. Forty pounds a head has been bid by Mr.
+Mancune of Glasgow. Any advance upon forty?”
+
+“Forty-one,” said Strellenhaus.
+
+“Forty-five,” said Mancune.
+
+The tactics had changed, and it was the turn of Strellenhaus now to
+advance by ones, while his rival sprang up by fives. But the former was
+as dogged as ever.
+
+“Forty-six,” said he.
+
+“Fifty!” cried Mancune.
+
+It was unheard of. The most that the horses could possibly average at a
+retail price was as much as these men were willing to pay wholesale.
+
+“Two lunatics from Bedlam,” whispered the angry Holloway. “If I was
+Flynn I would see the colour of their money before I went any further.”
+
+The same thought had occurred to the salesman. “As a mere matter of
+business, gentlemen,” said he, “it is usual in such cases to put down a
+small deposit as a guarantee of _bona fides_. You will understand how I
+am placed, and that I have not had the pleasure of doing business with
+either of you before.”
+
+“How much?” asked Strellenhaus, briefly.
+
+“Should we say five hundred?”
+
+“Here is a note for a thousand pounds.”
+
+“And here is another,” said Mancune.
+
+“Nothing could be more handsome, gentlemen,” said the salesman. “It’s a
+treat to see such a spirited competition. The last bid was fifty pounds
+a head from Mancune. The word lies with you, Mr. Strellenhaus.”
+
+Mr. Jack Flynn whispered something to the salesman. “Quite so! Mr.
+Flynn suggests, gentlemen, that as you are both large buyers, it would,
+perhaps, be a convenience to you if he was to add the string of Mr. Tom
+Flynn, which consists of seventy animals of precisely the same quality,
+making one hundred and forty in all. Have you any objection, Mr.
+Mancune?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“And you, Mr. Strellenhaus?”
+
+“I should prefer it.”
+
+“Very handsome! Very handsome indeed!” murmured the salesman. “Then I
+understand, Mr. Mancune, that your offer of fifty pounds a head extends
+to the whole of these horses?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+A long breath went up from the crowd. Seven thousand pounds at one
+deal. It was a record for Dunsloe.
+
+“Any advance, Mr. Strellenhaus?”
+
+“Fifty-one.”
+
+“Fifty-five.”
+
+“Fifty-six.”
+
+“Sixty.”
+
+They could hardly believe their ears. Holloway stood with his mouth
+open, staring blankly in front of him. The salesman tried hard to look
+as if such bidding and such prices were nothing unusual. Jack Flynn of
+Kildare smiled benignly and rubbed his hands together. The crowd
+listened in dead silence.
+
+“Sixty-one,” said Strellenhaus. From the beginning he had stood without
+a trace of emotion upon his round face, like a little automatic figure
+which bid by clockwork. His rival was of a more excitable nature. His
+eyes were shining, and he was for ever twitching at his beard.
+
+“Sixty-five,” he cried.
+
+“Sixty-six.”
+
+“Seventy.”
+
+But the clockwork had run down. No answering bid came from Mr.
+Strellenhaus.
+
+“Seventy bid, sir.”
+
+Mr. Strellenhaus shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I am buying for another, and I have reached his limit,” said he.
+“If you will permit me to send for instructions--”
+
+“I am afraid, sir, that the sale must proceed.”
+
+“Then the horses belong to this gentleman.” For the first time he
+turned towards his rival, and their glances crossed like sword-blades.
+“It is possible that I may see the horses again.”
+
+“I hope so,” said Mr. Mancune; and his white, waxed moustache gave a
+feline upward bristle.
+
+So, with a bow, they separated. Mr. Strellenhaus walked, down to the
+telegraph-office, where his message was delayed because Mr. Worlington
+Dodds was already at the end of the wires, for, after dim guesses and
+vague conjecture, he had suddenly caught a clear view of this coming
+event which had cast so curious a shadow before it in this little Irish
+town. Political rumours, names, appearances, telegrams, seasoned horses
+at any price, there could only be one meaning to it. He held a secret,
+and he meant to use it.
+
+Mr. Warner, who was the partner of Mr. Worlington Dodds, and who was
+suffering from the same eclipse, had gone down to the Stock Exchange,
+but had found little consolation there, for the European system was in a
+ferment, and rumours of peace and of war were succeeding each other with
+such rapidity and assurance that it was impossible to know which to
+trust. It was obvious that a fortune lay either way, for every rumour
+set the funds fluctuating; but without special information it was
+impossible to act, and no one dared to plunge heavily upon the strength
+of newspaper surmise and the gossip of the street. Warner knew that an
+hour’s work might resuscitate the fallen fortunes of himself and his
+partner, and yet he could not afford to make a mistake. He returned to
+his office in the afternoon, half inclined to back the chances of peace,
+for of all war scares not one in ten comes to pass. As he entered the
+office a telegram lay upon the table. It was from Dunsloe, a place of
+which he had never heard, and was signed by his absent partner.
+The message was in cipher, but he soon translated it, for it was short
+and crisp.
+
+“I am a bear of everything German and French. Sell, sell, sell, keep on
+selling.”
+
+For a moment Warner hesitated. What could Worlington Dodds know at
+Dunsloe which was not known in Throgmorton Street? But he remembered
+the quickness and decision of his partner. He would not have sent such
+a message without very good grounds. If he was to act at all he must
+act at once, so, hardening his heart, he went down to the house, and,
+dealing upon that curious system by which a man can sell what he has not
+got, and what he could not pay for if he had it, he disposed of heavy
+parcels of French and German securities. He had caught the market in
+one of its little spasms of hope, and there was no lack of buying until
+his own persistent selling caused others to follow his lead, and so
+brought about a reaction. When Warner returned to his offices it took
+him some hours to work out his accounts, and he emerged into the streets
+in the evening with the absolute certainty that the next settling-day
+would leave him either hopelessly bankrupt or exceedingly prosperous.
+
+It all depended upon Worlington Dodds’s information. What could he
+possibly have found out at Dunsloe?
+
+And then suddenly he saw a newspaper boy fasten a poster upon a
+lamp-post, and a little crowd had gathered round it in an instant.
+One of them waved his hat in the air; another shouted to a friend across
+the street. Warner hurried up and caught a glimpse of the poster
+between two craning heads--
+
+           “FRANCE DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY.”
+
+“By Jove!” cried Warner. “Old Dodds was right, after all.”
+
+
+
+
+THE KING OF THE FOXES
+
+
+It was after a hunting dinner, and there were as many scarlet coats as
+black ones round the table. The conversation over the cigars had
+turned, therefore, in the direction of horses and horsemen, with
+reminiscences of phenomenal runs where foxes had led the pack from end
+to end of a county, and been overtaken at last by two or three limping
+hounds and a huntsman on foot, while every rider in the field had been
+pounded. As the port circulated the runs became longer and more
+apocryphal, until we had the whips inquiring their way and failing to
+understand the dialect of the people who answered them. The foxes, too,
+became more eccentric, and we had foxes up pollard willows, foxes which
+were dragged by the tail out of horses’ mangers, and foxes which had
+raced through an open front door and gone to ground in a lady’s
+bonnet-box. The master had told one or two tall reminiscences, and when
+he cleared his throat for another we were all curious, for he was a bit
+of an artist in his way, and produced his effects in a _crescendo_
+fashion. His face wore the earnest, practical, severely accurate
+expression which heralded some of his finest efforts.
+
+“It was before I was master,” said he. “Sir Charles Adair had the
+hounds at that time, and then afterwards they passed to old Lathom, and
+then to me. It may possibly have been just after Lathom took them over,
+but my strong impression is that it was in Adair’s time. That would be
+early in the seventies--about seventy-two, I should say.
+
+“The man I mean has moved to another part of the country, but I daresay
+that some of you can remember him. Danbury was the name--Walter
+Danbury, or Wat Danbury, as the people used to call him. He was the son
+of old Joe Danbury, of High Ascombe, and when his father died he came
+into a very good thing, for his only brother was drowned when the _Magna
+Charta_ foundered, so he inherited the whole estate. It was but a few
+hundred acres, but it was good arable land, and those were the great
+days of farming. Besides, it was freehold, and a yeoman farmer without
+a mortgage was a warmish man before the great fall in wheat came.
+Foreign wheat and barbed wire--those are the two curses of this country,
+for the one spoils the farmer’s work and the other spoils his play.
+
+“This young Wat Danbury was a very fine fellow, a keen rider, and a
+thorough sportsman, but his head was a little turned at having come,
+when so young, into a comfortable fortune, and he went the pace for a
+year or two. The lad had no vice in him, but there was a hard-drinking
+set in the neighbourhood at that time, and Danbury got drawn in among
+them; and, being an amiable fellow who liked to do what his friends were
+doing, he very soon took to drinking a great deal more than was good for
+him. As a rule, a man who takes his exercise may drink as much as he
+likes in the evening, and do himself no very great harm, if he will
+leave it alone during the day. Danbury had too many friends for that,
+however, and it really looked as if the poor chap was going to the bad,
+when a very curious thing happened which pulled him up with such a
+sudden jerk that he never put his hand upon the neck of a whisky bottle
+again.
+
+“He had a peculiarity which I have noticed in a good many other men,
+that though he was always playing tricks with his own health, he was
+none the less very anxious about it, and was extremely fidgety if ever
+he had any trivial symptom. Being a tough, open-air fellow, who was
+always as hard as a nail, it was seldom that there was anything amiss
+with him; but at last the drink began to tell, and he woke one morning
+with his hands shaking and all his nerves tingling like over-stretched
+fiddle-strings. He had been dining at some very wet house the night
+before, and the wine had, perhaps, been more plentiful than choice; at
+any rate, there he was, with a tongue like a bath towel and a head that
+ticked like an eight-day clock. He was very alarmed at his own
+condition, and he sent for Doctor Middleton, of Ascombe, the father of
+the man who practises there now.
+
+“Middleton had been a great friend of old Danbury’s, and he was very
+sorry to see his son going to the devil; so he improved the occasion by
+taking his case very seriously, and lecturing him upon the danger of his
+ways. He shook his head and talked about the possibility of _delirium
+tremens_, or even of mania, if he continued to lead such a life.
+Wat Danbury was horribly frightened.
+
+“‘Do you think I am going to get anything of the sort?’ he wailed.
+
+“‘Well, really, I don’t know,’ said the doctor gravely. ‘I cannot
+undertake to say that you are out of danger. Your system is very much
+out of order. At any time during the day you might have those grave
+symptoms of which I warn you.’
+
+“‘You think I shall be safe by evening?’
+
+“‘If you drink nothing during the day, and have no nervous symptoms
+before evening, I think you may consider yourself safe,’ the doctor
+answered. A little fright would, he thought, do his patient good, so he
+made the most of the matter.
+
+“‘What symptoms may I expect?’ asked Danbury.
+
+“‘It generally takes the form of optical delusions.’
+
+“‘I see specks floating all about.’
+
+“‘That is mere biliousness,’ said the doctor soothingly, for he saw that
+the lad was highly strung, and he did not wish to overdo it.
+‘I daresay that you will have no symptoms of the kind, but when they do
+come they usually take the shape of insects, or reptiles, or curious
+animals.’
+
+“‘And if I see anything of the kind?’
+
+“‘If you do, you will at once send for me;’ and so, with a promise of
+medicine, the doctor departed.
+
+“Young Wat Danbury rose and dressed and moped about the room feeling
+very miserable and unstrung, with a vision of the County Asylum for ever
+in his mind. He had the doctor’s word for it that if he could get
+through to evening in safety he would be all right; but it is not very
+exhilarating to be waiting for symptoms, and to keep on glancing at your
+bootjack to see whether it is still a bootjack or whether it has begun
+to develop antennae and legs. At last he could stand it no longer, and
+an overpowering longing for the fresh air and the green grass came over
+him. Why should he stay indoors when the Ascombe Hunt was meeting
+within half a mile of him? If he was going to have these delusions
+which the doctor talked of, he would not have them the sooner nor the
+worse because he was on horseback in the open. He was sure, too, it
+would ease his aching head. And so it came about that in ten minutes he
+was in his hunting-kit, and in ten more he was riding out of his
+stable-yard with his roan mare ‘Matilda’ between his knees. He was a
+little unsteady in his saddle just at first, but the farther he went the
+better he felt, until by the time he reached the meet his head was
+almost clear, and there was nothing troubling him except those haunting
+words of the doctor’s about the possibility of delusions any time before
+nightfall.
+
+“But soon he forgot that also, for as he came up the hounds were thrown
+off, and they drew the Gravel Hanger, and afterwards the Hickory Copse.
+It was just the morning for a scent--no wind to blow it away, no water
+to wash it out, and just damp enough to make it cling. There was a
+field of forty, all keen men and good riders, so when they came to the
+Black Hanger they knew that there would be some sport, for that’s a
+cover which never draws blank. The woods were thicker in those days
+than now, and the foxes were thicker also, and that great dark
+oak-grove was swarming with them. The only difficulty was to make them
+break, for it is, as you know, a very close country, and you must coax
+them out into the open before you can hope for a run.
+
+“When they came to the Black Hanger the field took their positions along
+the cover-side wherever they thought that they were most likely to get a
+good start. Some went in with the hounds, some clustered at the ends of
+the drives, and some kept outside in the hope of the fox breaking in
+that direction. Young Wat Danbury knew the country like the palm of his
+hand, so he made for a place where several drives intersected, and there
+he waited. He had a feeling that the faster and the farther he galloped
+the better he should be, and so he was chafing to be off. His mare,
+too, was in the height of fettle and one of the fastest goers in the
+county. Wat was a splendid lightweight rider--under ten stone with his
+saddle--and the mare was a powerful creature, all quarters and
+shoulders, fit to carry a lifeguardsman; and so it was no wonder that
+there was hardly a man in the field who could hope to stay with him.
+There he waited and listened to the shouting of the huntsman and the
+whips, catching a glimpse now and then in the darkness of the wood of a
+whisking tail, or the gleam of a white-and-tan side amongst the
+underwood. It was a well-trained pack, and there was not so much as a
+whine to tell you that forty hounds were working all round you.
+
+“And then suddenly there came one long-drawn yell from one of them, and
+it was taken up by another, and another, until within a few seconds the
+whole pack was giving tongue together and running on a hot scent.
+Danbury saw them stream across one of the drives and disappear upon the
+other side, and an instant later the three red coats of the hunt
+servants flashed after them upon the same line. He might have made a
+shorter cut down one of the other drives, but he was afraid of heading
+the fox, so he followed the lead of the huntsman. Right through the
+wood they went in a bee-line, galloping with their faces brushed by
+their horses’ manes as they stooped under the branches.
+
+“It’s ugly going, as you know, with the roots all wriggling about in the
+darkness, but you can take a risk when you catch an occasional glimpse
+of the pack running with a breast-high scent; so in and out they dodged
+until the wood began to thin at the edges, and they found themselves in
+the long bottom where the river runs. It is clear going there upon
+grassland, and the hounds were running very strong about two hundred
+yards ahead, keeping parallel with the stream. The field, who had come
+round the wood instead of going through, were coming hard over the
+fields upon the left; but Danbury, with the hunt servants, had a clear
+lead, and they never lost it.
+
+“Two of the field got on terms with them--Parson Geddes on a big
+seventeen-hand bay which he used to ride in those days, and Squire
+Foley, who rode as a feather-weight, and made his hunters out of cast
+thoroughbreds from the Newmarket sales; but the others never had a
+look-in from start to finish, for there was no check and no pulling, and
+it was clear cross-country racing from start to finish. If you had
+drawn a line right across the map with a pencil you couldn’t go
+straighter than that fox ran, heading for the South Downs and the sea,
+and the hounds ran as surely as if they were running to view, and yet
+from the beginning no one ever saw the fox, and there was never a hallo
+forrard to tell them that he had been spied. This, however, is not so
+surprising, for if you’ve been over that line of country you will know
+that there are not very many people about.
+
+“There were six of them then in the front row--Parson Geddes, Squire
+Foley, the huntsman, two whips, and Wat Danbury, who had forgotten all
+about his head and the doctor by this time, and had not a thought for
+anything but the run. All six were galloping just as hard as they could
+lay hoofs to the ground. One of the whips dropped back, however, as
+some of the hounds were tailing off, and that brought them down to five.
+Then Foley’s thoroughbred strained herself, as these slim-legged,
+dainty-fetlocked thoroughbreds will do when the going is rough, and he
+had to take a back seat. But the other four were still going strong,
+and they did four or five miles down the river flat at a rasping pace.
+It had been a wet winter, and the waters had been out a little time
+before, so there was a deal of sliding and splashing; but by the time
+they came to the bridge the whole field was out of sight, and these four
+had the hunt to themselves.
+
+“The fox had crossed the bridge--for foxes do not care to swim a chilly
+river any more than humans do--and from that point he had streaked away
+southward as hard as he could tear. It is broken country, rolling
+heaths, down one slope and up another, and it’s hard to say whether the
+up or the down is the more trying for the horses. This sort of
+switchback work is all right for a cobby, short-backed, short-legged
+little horse, but it is killing work for a big, long-striding hunter
+such as one wants in the Midlands. Anyhow, it was too much for Parson
+Geddes’ seventeen-hand bay, and though he tried the Irish trick--for he
+was a rare keen sportsman--of running up the hills by his horse’s head,
+it was all to no use, and he had to give it up. So then there were only
+the huntsman, the whip, and Wat Danbury--all going strong.
+
+“But the country got worse and worse and the hills were steeper and more
+thickly covered in heather and bracken. The horses were over their
+hocks all the time, and the place was pitted with rabbit-holes; but the
+hounds were still streaming along, and the riders could not afford to
+pick their steps. As they raced down one slope, the hounds were always
+flowing up the opposite one, until it looked like that game where the
+one figure in falling makes the other one rise.
+
+“But never a glimpse did they get of the fox, although they knew very
+well that he must be only a very short way ahead for the scent to be so
+strong. And then Wat Danbury heard a crash and a thud at his elbow, and
+looking round he saw a pair of white cords and top-boots kicking out of
+a tussock of brambles. The whip’s horse had stumbled, and the whip was
+out of the running. Danbury and the huntsman eased down for an instant;
+and then, seeing the man staggering to his feet all right, they turned
+and settled into their saddles once more.
+
+“Joe Clarke, the huntsman, was a famous old rider, known for five
+counties round; but he reckoned upon his second horse, and the second
+horses had all been left many miles behind. However, the one he was
+riding was good enough for anything with such a horseman upon his back,
+and he was going as well as when he started. As to Wat Danbury, he was
+going better. With every stride his own feelings improved, and the mind
+of the rider had its influence upon the mind of the horse. The stout
+little roan was gathering its muscular limbs under it, and stretching to
+the gallop as if it were steel and whale-bone instead of flesh and
+blood. Wat had never come to the end of its powers yet, and to-day he
+had such a chance of testing them as he had never had before.
+
+“There was a pasture country beyond the heather slopes, and for several
+miles the two riders were either losing ground as they fumbled with
+their crop-handles at the bars of gates, or gaining it again as they
+galloped over the fields. Those were the days before this accursed wire
+came into the country, and you could generally break a hedge where you
+could not fly it, so they did not trouble the gates more than they could
+help. Then they were down in a hard lane, where they had to slacken
+their pace, and through a farm where a man came shouting excitedly after
+them; but they had no time to stop and listen to him, for the hounds
+were on some ploughland, only two fields ahead. It was sloping upwards,
+that ploughland, and the horses were over their fetlocks in the red,
+soft soil.
+
+“When they reached the top they were blowing badly, but a grand valley
+sloped before them, leading up to the open country of the South Downs.
+Between, there lay a belt of pine-woods, into which the hounds were
+streaming, running now in a long, straggling line, and shedding one here
+and one there as they ran. You could see the white-and-tan dots here
+and there where the limpers were tailing away. But half the pack were
+still going well, though the pace and distance had both been
+tremendous--two clear hours now without a check.
+
+“There was a drive through the pine-wood--one of those green, slightly
+rutted drives where a horse can get the last yard out of itself, for the
+ground is hard enough to give him clean going and yet springy enough to
+help him. Wat Danbury got alongside of the huntsman and they galloped
+together with their stirrup-irons touching, and the hounds within a
+hundred yards of them.
+
+“‘We have it all to ourselves,’ said he.
+
+“‘Yes, sir, we’ve shook on the lot of ’em this time,’ said old Joe
+Clarke. ‘If we get this fox it’s worth while ’aving ’im skinned an’
+stuffed, for ’e’s a curiosity ’e is.’
+
+“‘It’s the fastest run I ever had in my life!’ cried Danbury.
+
+“‘And the fastest that ever I ’ad, an’ that means more,’ said the old
+huntsman. ‘But what licks me is that we’ve never ’ad a look at the
+beast. ’E must leave an amazin’ scent be’ind ’im when these ’ounds can
+follow ’im like this, and yet none of us have seen ’im when we’ve ’ad a
+clear ’alf mile view in front of us.’
+
+“‘I expect we’ll have a view of him presently,’ said Danbury; and in his
+mind he added, ‘at least, I shall,’ for the huntsman’s horse was gasping
+as it ran, and the white foam was pouring down it like the side of a
+washing-tub.
+
+“They had followed the hounds on to one of the side tracks which led out
+of the main drive, and that divided into a smaller track still, where
+the branches switched across their faces as they went, and there was
+barely room for one horse at a time. Wat Danbury took the lead, and he
+heard the huntsman’s horse clumping along heavily behind him, while his
+own mare was going with less spring than when she had started. She
+answered to a touch of his crop or spur, however, and he felt that there
+was something still left to draw upon. And then he looked up, and there
+was a heavy wooden stile at the end of the narrow track, with a lane of
+stiff young saplings leading down to it, which was far too thick to
+break through. The hounds were running clear upon the grassland on the
+other side, and you were bound either to get over that stile or lose
+sight of them, for the pace was too hot to let you go round.
+
+“Well, Wat Danbury was not the lad to flinch, and at it he went full
+split, like a man who means what he is doing. She rose gallantly to it,
+rapped it hard with her front hoof, shook him on to her withers,
+recovered herself, and was over. Wat had hardly got back into his
+saddle when there was a clatter behind him like the fall of a woodstack,
+and there was the top bar in splinters, the horse on its belly, and the
+huntsman on hands and knees half a dozen yards in front of him.
+Wat pulled up for an instant, for the fall was a smasher; but he saw old
+Joe spring to his feet and get to his horse’s bridle. The horse
+staggered up, but the moment it put one foot in front of the other, Wat
+saw that it was hopelessly lame--a slipped shoulder and a six weeks’
+job. There was nothing he could do, and Joe was shouting to him not to
+lose the hounds, so off he went again, the one solitary survivor of the
+whole hunt. When a man finds himself there, he can retire from
+fox-hunting, for he has tasted the highest which it has to offer.
+I remember once when I was out with the Royal Surrey--but I’ll tell you
+that story afterwards.
+
+“The pack, or what was left of them, had got a bit ahead during this
+time; but he had a clear view of them on the downland, and the mare
+seemed full of pride at being the only one left, for she was stepping
+out rarely and tossing her head as she went. They were two miles over
+the green shoulder of a hill, a rattle down a stony, deep-rutted country
+lane, where the mare stumbled and nearly came down, a jump over a 5ft.
+brook, a cut through a hazel copse, another dose of heavy ploughland, a
+couple of gates to open, and then the green, unbroken Downs beyond.
+
+“‘Well,’ said Wat Danbury to himself, ‘I’ll see this fox run into or I
+shall see it drowned, for it’s all clear going now between this and the
+chalk cliffs which line the sea.’ But he was wrong in that, as he
+speedily discovered. In all the little hollows of the downs at that
+part there are plantations of fir-woods, some of which have grown to a
+good size. You do not see them until you come upon the edge of the
+valleys in which they lie. Danbury was galloping hard over the short,
+springy turf when he came over the lip of one of these depressions, and
+there was the dark clump of wood lying in front of and beneath him.
+There were only a dozen hounds still running, and they were just
+disappearing among the trees. The sunlight was shining straight upon
+the long olive-green slopes which curved down towards this wood, and
+Danbury, who had the eyes of a hawk, swept them over this great expanse;
+but there was nothing moving upon it. A few sheep were grazing far up
+on the right, but there was no other sight of any living creature.
+He was certain then that he was very near to the end, for either the fox
+must have gone to ground in the wood or the hounds’ noses must be at his
+very brush. The mare seemed to know also what that great empty sweep of
+countryside meant, for she quickened her stride, and a few minutes
+afterwards Danbury was galloping into the fir-wood.
+
+“He had come from bright sunshine, but the wood was very closely
+planted, and so dim that he could hardly see to right or to left out of
+the narrow path down which he was riding. You know what a solemn,
+churchyardy sort of place a fir-wood is. I suppose it is the absence of
+any undergrowth, and the fact that the trees never move at all. At any
+rate a kind of chill suddenly struck Wat Danbury, and it flashed through
+his mind that there had been some very singular points about this run--
+its length and its straightness, and the fact that from the first find
+no one had ever caught a glimpse of the creature. Some silly talk which
+had been going round the country about the king of the foxes--a sort of
+demon fox, so fast that it could outrun any pack, and so fierce that
+they could do nothing with it if they overtook it--suddenly came back
+into his mind, and it did not seem so laughable now in the dim fir-wood
+as it had done when the story had been told over the wine and cigars.
+The nervousness which had been on him in the morning, and which he had
+hoped that he had shaken off, swept over him again in an overpowering
+wave. He had been so proud of being alone, and yet he would have given
+10 pounds now to have had Joe Clarke’s homely face beside him. And
+then, just at that moment, there broke out from the thickest part of the
+wood the most frantic hullabaloo that ever he had heard in his life.
+The hounds had run into their fox.
+
+“Well, you know, or you ought to know, what your duty is in such a case.
+You have to be whip, huntsman, and everything else if you are the first
+man up. You get in among the hounds, lash them off, and keep the brush
+and pads from being destroyed. Of course, Wat Danbury knew all about
+that, and he tried to force his mare through the trees to the place
+where all this hideous screaming and howling came from, but the wood was
+so thick that it was impossible to ride it. He sprang off, therefore,
+left the mare standing, and broke his way through as best he could with
+his hunting-lash ready over his shoulder.
+
+“But as he ran forward he felt his flesh go cold and creepy all over.
+He had heard hounds run into foxes many times before, but he had never
+heard such sounds as these. They were not the cries of triumph, but of
+fear. Every now and then came a shrill yelp of mortal agony. Holding
+his breath, he ran on until he broke through the interlacing branches,
+and found himself in a little clearing with the hounds all crowding
+round a patch of tangled bramble at the further end.
+
+“When he first caught sight of them the hounds were standing in a
+half-circle round this bramble patch, with their backs bristling and
+their jaws gaping. In front of the brambles lay one of them with his
+throat torn out, all crimson and white-and-tan. Wat came running out
+into the clearing, and at the sight of him the hounds took heart again,
+and one of them sprang with a growl into the bushes. At the same
+instant, a creature the size of a donkey jumped on to its feet, a huge
+grey head, with monstrous glistening fangs and tapering fox jaws, shot
+out from among the branches, and the hound was thrown several feet into
+the air, and fell howling among the cover. Then there was a clashing
+snap, like a rat-trap closing, and the howls sharpened into a scream and
+then were still.
+
+“Danbury had been on the look-out for symptoms all day, and now he had
+found them. He looked once more at the thicket, saw a pair of savage
+red eyes fixed upon him, and fairly took to his heels. It might only be
+a passing delusion, or it might be the permanent mania of which the
+doctor had spoken, but anyhow, the thing to do was to get back to bed
+and to quiet, and to hope for the best.
+
+“He forgot the hounds, the hunt, and everything else in his desperate
+fears for his own reason. He sprang upon his mare, galloped her madly
+over the downs, and only stopped when he found himself at a country
+station. There he left his mare at the inn, and made back for home as
+quickly as steam would take him. It was evening before he got there,
+shivering with apprehension, and seeing those red eyes and savage teeth
+at every turn. He went straight to bed and sent for Dr. Middleton.
+
+“‘I’ve got ’em, doctor,’ said he. ‘It came about exactly as you said--
+strange creatures, optical delusions, and everything. All I ask you now
+is to save my reason.’ The doctor listened to his story, and was
+shocked as he heard it.
+
+“‘It appears to be a very clear case,’ said he. ‘This must be a lesson
+to you for life.’
+
+“‘Never a drop again if I only come safely through this,’ cried Wat
+Danbury.
+
+“‘Well, my dear boy, if you will stick to that it may prove a blessing
+in disguise. But the difficulty in this case is to know where fact ends
+and fancy begins. You see, it is not as if there was only one delusion.
+There have been several. The dead dogs, for example, must have been one
+as well as the creature in the bush.’
+
+“‘I saw it all as clearly as I see you.’
+
+“‘One of the characteristics of this form of delirium is that what you
+see is even clearer than reality. I was wondering whether the whole run
+was not a delusion also.’
+
+“Wat Danbury pointed to his hunting boots still lying upon the floor,
+necked with the splashings of two counties.
+
+“‘Hum! that looks very real, certainly. No doubt, in your weak state,
+you over-exerted yourself and so brought this attack upon yourself.
+Well, whatever the cause, our treatment is clear. You will take the
+soothing mixture which I will send to you, and we shall put two leeches
+upon your temples to-night to relieve any congestion of the brain.’
+
+“So Wat Danbury spent the night in tossing about and reflecting what a
+sensitive thing this machinery of ours is, and how very foolish it is to
+play tricks with what is so easily put out of gear and so difficult to
+mend. And so he repeated and repeated his oath that this first lesson
+should be his last, and that from that time forward he would be a sober,
+hard-working yeoman as his father had been before him. So he lay,
+tossing and still repentant, when his door flew open in the morning and
+in rushed the doctor with a newspaper crumpled up in his hand.
+
+“‘My dear boy,’ he cried, ‘I owe you a thousand apologies. You’re the
+most ill-used lad and I the greatest numskull in the county. Listen to
+this!’ And he sat down upon the side of the bed, flattened out his
+paper upon his knee, and began to read.
+
+“The paragraph was headed, ‘Disaster to the Ascombe Hounds,’ and it went
+on to say that four of the hounds, shockingly torn and mangled, had been
+found in Winton Fir Wood upon the South Downs. The run had been so
+severe that half the pack were lamed; but the four found in the wood
+were actually dead, although the cause of their extraordinary injuries
+was still unknown.
+
+“‘So, you see,’ said the doctor, looking up, ‘that I was wrong when I
+put the dead hounds among the delusions.’
+
+“‘But the cause?’ cried Wat.
+
+“‘Well, I think we may guess the cause from an item which has been
+inserted just as the paper went to press:--
+
+   “Late last night, Mr. Brown, of Smither’s Farm, to the
+   east of Hastings, perceived what he imagined to be an enormous
+   dog worrying one of his sheep. He shot the creature, which
+   proves to be a grey Siberian wolf of the variety known as
+   _Lupus Giganticus_. It is supposed to have escaped from some
+   travelling menagerie.
+
+“That’s the story, gentlemen, and Wat Danbury stuck to his good
+resolutions, for the fright which he had cured him of all wish to run
+such a risk again; and he never touches anything stronger than
+lime-juice--at least, he hadn’t before he left this part of the country,
+five years ago next Lady Day.”
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS
+
+
+There was only the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that
+great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the
+bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole
+Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders
+which studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was
+beating down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims
+of the pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a
+blast-furnace. It had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were
+no larger than themselves.
+
+“Whew!” cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead, “you’d pay five shillings
+for this at the hummums.”
+
+“Precisely,” said Scott. “But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in
+a Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and
+a whole Christmas-treeful of things dangling from you. The hot-house at
+Kew is excellent as a conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon
+the horizontal bar. I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and a halt
+until evening.”
+
+Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward.
+Everywhere were the same black burned rocks and deep orange sand.
+At one spot only an intermittent line appeared to have been cut through
+the rugged spurs which ran down to the river. It was the bed of the old
+railway, long destroyed by the Arabs, but now in process of
+reconstruction by the advancing Egyptians. There was no other sign of
+man’s handiwork in all that desolate scene.
+
+“It’s palm trees or nothing,” said Scott.
+
+“Well, I suppose we must; and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the
+force up. What _would_ our editors say if we were late for the action?”
+
+“My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn’t need to be told that no sane
+modern general would ever attack until the Press is up.”
+
+“You don’t mean that?” said young Anerley. “I thought we were looked
+upon as an unmitigated nuisance.”
+
+“‘Newspaper correspondents and travelling gentlemen, and all that tribe
+of useless drones’--being an extract from Lord Wolseley’s ‘Soldier’s
+Pocket-Book,’” cried Scott. “We know all about _that_, Anerley;” and he
+winked behind his blue spectacles. “If there was going to be a battle
+we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up. I’ve been
+in fifteen, and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a
+reporter’s table.”
+
+“That’s very well; but the enemy may be less considerate,” said
+Mortimer.
+
+“They are not strong enough to force a battle.”
+
+“A skirmish, then?”
+
+“Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear. In that case we are just
+where we should be.”
+
+“So we are! What a score over Reuter’s man up with the advance!
+Well, we’ll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms.”
+
+There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies.
+Reuter’s was thirty miles ahead; two evening pennies upon camels were
+twenty miles behind. And among them they represented the eyes and ears
+of the public--the great silent millions and millions who had paid for
+everything, and who waited so patiently to know the result of their
+outlay.
+
+They were remarkable men these body-servants of the Press; two of them
+already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first
+campaign, and full of deference for his famous comrades.
+
+This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was
+Mortimer, of the _Intelligence_--tall, straight, and hawk-faced, with
+khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund, and
+a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled by
+the mosquito and the sand-fly. The other--small, quick, mercurial, with
+blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch for ever flicking in
+his left hand--was Scott, of the _Courier_, who had come through more
+dangers and brought off more brilliant _coups_ than any man in the
+profession, save the eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to
+take the field. They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and
+it was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship
+lay. Each dovetailed into the other. The strength of each was in the
+other’s weakness. Together they formed a perfect unit. Mortimer was
+Saxon--slow, conscientious, and deliberate; Scott was Celtic--quick,
+happy-go-lucky, and brilliant. Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the
+more attractive. Mortimer was the deeper thinker, Scott the brighter
+talker. By a curious coincidence, though each had seen much of warfare,
+their campaigns had never coincided. Together they covered all recent
+military history. Scott had done Plevna, the Shipka, the Zulus, Egypt,
+Suakim; Mortimer had seen the Boer War, the Chilian, the Bulgaria and
+Servian, the Gordon relief, the Indian frontier, Brazilian rebellion,
+and Madagascar. This intimate personal knowledge gave a peculiar
+flavour to their talk. There was none of the second-hand surmise and
+conjecture which form so much of our conversation; it was all concrete
+and final. The speaker had been there, had seen it, and there was an
+end of it.
+
+In spite of their friendship there was the keenest professional rivalry
+between the two men. Either would have sacrificed himself to help his
+companion, but either would also have sacrificed his companion to help
+his paper. Never did a jockey yearn for a winning mount as keenly as
+each of them longed to have a full column in a morning edition whilst
+every other daily was blank. They were perfectly frank about the
+matter. Each professed himself ready to steal a march on his neighbour,
+and each recognised that the other’s duty to his employer was far higher
+than any personal consideration.
+
+The third man was Anerley, of the _Gazette_--young, inexperienced, and
+rather simple-looking. He had a droop of the lip, which some of his
+more intimate friends regarded as a libel upon his character, and his
+eyes were so slow and so sleepy that they suggested an affectation.
+A leaning towards soldiering had sent him twice to autumn manoeuvres,
+and a touch of colour in his descriptions had induced the proprietors of
+the _Gazette_ to give him a trial as a war-special. There was a
+pleasing diffidence about his bearing which recommended him to his
+experienced companions, and if they had a smile sometimes at his
+guileless ways, it was soothing to them to have a comrade from whom
+nothing was to be feared. From the day that they left the
+telegraph-wire behind them at Sarras, the man who was mounted upon a
+15-guinea 13-4 Syrian was delivered over into the hands of the owners of
+the two fastest polo-ponies that ever shot down the Ghezireh ground.
+The three had dismounted and led their beasts under the welcome shade.
+In the brassy, yellow glare every branch above threw so black and solid
+a shadow that the men involuntarily raised their feet to step over
+them.
+
+“The palm makes an excellent hat-rack,” said Scott, slinging his
+revolver and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which
+bristle from the trunk. “As a shade tree, however, it isn’t an
+unqualified success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means
+to ends something a little less flimsy could not have been devised for
+the tropics.”
+
+“Like the banyan in India.”
+
+“Or the fine hardwood trees in Ashantee, where a whole regiment could
+picnic under the shade.”
+
+“The teak tree isn’t bad in Burmah, either. By Jove, the baccy has all
+come loose in the saddle-bag! That long-cut mixture smokes rather hot
+for this climate. How about the baggles, Anerley?”
+
+“They’ll be here in five minutes.”
+
+Down the winding path which curved among the rocks the little train of
+baggage-camels was daintily picking its way. They came mincing and
+undulating along, turning their heads slowly from side to side with the
+air of a self-conscious woman. In front rode the three Berberee
+body-servants upon donkeys, and behind walked the Arab camel-boys.
+They had been travelling for nine long hours, ever since the first
+rising of the moon, at the weary camel-drag of two and a half miles an
+hour, but now they brightened, both beasts and men, at the sight of the
+grove and the riderless horses. In a few minutes the loads were
+unstrapped, the animals tethered, a fire lighted, fresh water carried up
+from the river, and each camel-boy provided with his own little heap of
+tibbin laid in the centre of the table-cloth, without which no well-bred
+Arabian will condescend to feed. The dazzling light without, the
+subdued half-tones within, the green palm-fronds outlined against the
+deep blue sky, the flitting, silent-footed Arab servants, the crackling
+of sticks, the reek of a lighting fire, the placid supercilious heads of
+the camels, they all come back in their dreams to those who have known
+them.
+
+Scott was breaking eggs into a pan and rolling out a love-song in his
+rich, deep voice. Anerley, with his head and arms buried in a deal
+packing-case, was working his way through strata of tinned soups, bully
+beef, potted chicken, and sardines to reach the jams which lay beneath.
+The conscientious Mortimer, with his notebook upon his knee, was jotting
+down what the railway engineer had told him at the line-end the day
+before. Suddenly he raised his eyes and saw the man himself on his
+chestnut pony, dipping and rising over the broken ground.
+
+“Hullo! Here’s Merryweather!”
+
+“A pretty lather his pony is in! He’s had her at that hand-gallop for
+hours, by the look of her. Hullo, Merryweather, hullo!”
+
+The engineer, a small, compact man with a pointed red beard, had made as
+though he would ride past their camp without word or halt. Now he
+swerved, and easing his pony down to a canter, he headed her towards
+them.
+
+“For God’s sake, a drink!” he croaked. “My tongue is stuck to the roof
+of my mouth.”
+
+Mortimer ran with the water-bottle, Scott with the whisky-flask, and
+Anerley with the tin pannikin. The engineer drank until his breath
+failed him.
+
+“Well, I must be off,” said he, striking the drops from his red
+moustache.
+
+“Any news?”
+
+“A hitch in the railway construction. I must see the general.
+It’s the devil not having a telegraph.”
+
+“Anything we can report?” Out came three notebooks.
+
+“I’ll tell you after I’ve seen the general.”
+
+“Any dervishes?”
+
+“The usual shaves. Hud-up, Jinny! Good-bye!”
+
+With a soft thudding upon the sand, and a clatter among the stones the
+weary pony was off upon her journey once more.
+
+“Nothing serious, I suppose?” said Mortimer, staring after him.
+
+“Deuced serious,” cried Scott. “The ham and eggs are burned! No--it’s
+all right--saved, and done to a turn! Pull the box up, Anerley.
+Come on, Mortimer, stow that notebook! The fork is mightier than the
+pen just at present. What’s the matter with you, Anerley?”
+
+“I was wondering whether what we have just seen was worth a telegram.”
+
+“Well, it’s for the proprietors to say if it’s worth it. Sordid money
+considerations are not for us. We must wire about something just to
+justify our khaki coats and our putties.”
+
+“But what is there to say?”
+
+Mortimer’s long, austere face broke into a smile over the youngster’s
+innocence. “It’s not quite usual in our profession to give each other
+tips,” said he. “However, as my telegram is written, I’ve no objection
+to your reading it. You may be sure that I would not show it to you if
+it were of the slightest importance.”
+
+Anerley took up the slip of paper and read:--
+
+   Merryweather obstacles stop journey confer general stop nature
+   difficulties later stop rumours dervishes.
+
+“This is very condensed,” said Anerley, with wrinkled brows.
+
+“Condensed!” cried Scott. “Why, it’s sinfully garrulous. If my old man
+got a wire like that his language would crack the lamp-shades. I’d cut
+out half this; for example, I’d have out ‘journey,’ and ‘nature,’ and
+‘rumours.’ But my old man would make a ten-line paragraph of it for all
+that.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Well, I’ll do it myself just to show you. Lend me that stylo.” He
+scribbled for a minute in his notebook. “It works out somewhat on these
+lines”:--
+
+   Mr. Charles H. Merryweather, the eminent railway engineer,
+   who is at present engaged in superintending the construction
+   of the line from Sarras to the front, has met with considerable
+   obstacles to the rapid completion of his important task--
+
+“Of course the old man knows who Merryweather is, and what he is about,
+so the word ‘obstacles’ would suggest all that to him.”
+
+   He has to-day been compelled to make a journey of forty
+   miles to the front, in order to confer with the general upon
+   the steps which are necessary in order to facilitate the work.
+   Further particulars of the exact nature of the difficulties
+   met with will be made public at a later date. All is quiet
+   upon the line of communications, though the usual persistent
+   rumours of the presence of dervishes in the Eastern desert
+   continue to circulate.--_Our own correspondent_.
+
+“How’s that?” cried Scott, triumphantly, and his white teeth gleamed
+suddenly through his black beard. “That’s the sort of flapdoodle for
+the dear old public.”
+
+“Will it interest them?”
+
+“Oh, everything interests them. They want to know all about it; and
+they like to think that there is a man who is getting a hundred a month
+simply in order to tell it to them.”
+
+“It’s very kind of you to teach me all this.”
+
+“Well, it is a little unconventional, for, after all, we are here to
+score over each other if we can. There are no more eggs, and you must
+take it out in jam. Of course, as Mortimer says, such a telegram as
+this is of no importance one way or another, except to prove to the
+office that we _are_ in the Soudan, and not at Monte Carlo. But when it
+comes to serious work it must be every man for himself.”
+
+“Is that quite necessary?”
+
+“Why, of course it is.”
+
+“I should have thought if three men were to combine and to share their
+news, they would do better than if they were each to act for himself,
+and they would have a much pleasanter time of it.”
+
+The two older men sat with their bread-and-jam in their hands, and an
+expression of genuine disgust upon their faces.
+
+“We are not here to have a pleasant time,” said Mortimer, with a flash
+through his glasses. “We are here to do our best for our papers.
+How can they score over each other if we do not do the same? If we all
+combine we might as well amalgamate with Reuter at once.”
+
+“Why, it would take away the whole glory of the profession!” cried
+Scott. “At present the smartest man gets his stuff first on the wires.
+What inducement is there to be smart if we all share and share alike?”
+
+“And at present the man with the best equipment has the best chance,”
+remarked Mortimer, glancing across at the shot-silk polo ponies and the
+cheap little Syrian grey. “That is the fair reward of foresight and
+enterprise. Every man for himself, and let the best man win.”
+
+“That’s the way to find who the best man is. Look at Chandler.
+He would never have got his chance if he had not played always off his
+own bat. You’ve heard how he pretended to break his leg, sent his
+fellow-correspondent off for the doctor, and so got a fair start for the
+telegraph-office.”
+
+“Do you mean to say that was legitimate?”
+
+“Everything is legitimate. It’s your wits against my wits.”
+
+“I should call it dishonourable.”
+
+“You may call it what you like. Chandler’s paper got the battle and the
+other’s didn’t. It made Chandler’s name.”
+
+“Or take Westlake,” said Mortimer, cramming the tobacco into his pipe.
+“Hi, Abdul, you may have the dishes! Westlake brought his stuff down by
+pretending to be the Government courier, and using the relays of
+Government horses. Westlake’s paper sold half a million.”
+
+“Is that legitimate also?” asked Anerley, thoughtfully.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Well, it looks a little like horse-stealing and lying.”
+
+“Well, _I_ think I should do a little horse-stealing and lying if I
+could have a column to myself in a London daily. What do you say,
+Scott?”
+
+“Anything short of manslaughter.”
+
+“And I’m not sure that I’d trust you there.”
+
+“Well, I don’t think I should be guilty of newspaper-man-slaughter.
+That I regard as a distinct breach of professional etiquette. But if
+any outsider comes between a highly charged correspondent and an
+electric wire, he does it at his peril. My dear Anerley, I tell you
+frankly that if you are going to handicap yourself with scruple you may
+just as well be in Fleet Street as in the Soudan. Our life is
+irregular. Our work has never been systematised. No doubt it will be
+some day, but the time is not yet. Do what you can and how you can, and
+be first on the wires; that’s my advice to you; and also, that when next
+you come upon a campaign you bring with you the best horse that money
+can buy. Mortimer may beat me or I may beat Mortimer, but at least we
+know that between us we have the fastest ponies in the country. We have
+neglected no chance.”
+
+“I am not so certain of that,” said Mortimer, slowly. “You are aware,
+of course, that though a horse beats a camel on twenty miles, a camel
+beats a horse on thirty.”
+
+“What, one of those camels?” cried Anerley in astonishment. The two
+seniors burst out laughing.
+
+“No, no, the real high-bred trotter--the kind of beast the dervishes
+ride when they make their lightning raids.”
+
+“Faster than a galloping horse?”
+
+“Well, it tires a horse down. It goes the same gait all the way, and it
+wants neither halt nor drink, and it takes rough ground much better than
+a horse. They used to have long distance races at Halfa, and the camel
+always won at thirty.”
+
+“Still, we need not reproach ourselves, Scott, for we are not very
+likely to have to carry a thirty-mile message. They will have the field
+telegraph next week.”
+
+“Quite so. But at the present moment--”
+
+“I know, my dear chap; but there is no motion of urgency before the
+house. Load baggles at five o’clock; so you have just three hours
+clear. Any sign of the evening pennies?”
+
+Mortimer swept the northern horizon with his binoculars. “Not in sight
+yet.”
+
+“They are quite capable of travelling during the heat of the day.
+Just the sort of thing evening pennies _would_ do. Take care of your
+match, Anerley. These palm groves go up like a powder magazine if you
+set them alight. Bye-bye.” The two men crawled under their
+mosquito-nets and sank instantly into the easy sleep of those whose
+lives are spent in the open.
+
+Young Anerley stood with his back against a palm tree and his briar
+between his lips, thinking over the advice which he had received.
+After all, they were the heads of the profession, these men, and it was
+not for him, the newcomer, to reform their methods. If they served
+their papers in this fashion, then he must do the same. They had at
+least been frank and generous in teaching him the rules of the game.
+If it was good enough for them it was good enough for him.
+
+It was a broiling afternoon, and those thin frills of foam round the
+black, glistening necks of the Nile boulders looked delightfully cool
+and alluring. But it would not be safe to bathe for some hours to come.
+The air shimmered and vibrated over the baking stretch of sand and rock.
+There was not a breath of wind, and the droning and piping of the
+insects inclined one for sleep. Somewhere above a hoopoe was calling.
+Anerley knocked out his ashes, and was turning towards his couch, when
+his eye caught something moving in the desert to the south. It was a
+horseman riding towards them as swiftly as the broken ground would
+permit. A messenger from the army, thought Anerley; and then, as he
+watched, the sun suddenly struck the man on the side of the head, and
+his chin flamed into gold. There could not be two horsemen with beards
+of such a colour. It was Merryweather, the engineer, and he was
+returning. What on earth was he returning for? He had been so keen to
+see the general, and yet he was coming back with his mission
+unaccomplished. Was it that his pony was hopelessly foundered?
+It seemed to be moving well. Anerley picked up Mortimer’s binoculars,
+and a foam-bespattered horse and a weary koorbash-cracking man came
+cantering up the centre of the field. But there was nothing in his
+appearance to explain the mystery of his return. Then as he watched
+them they dipped into a hollow and disappeared. He could see that it
+was one of those narrow khors which led to the river, and he waited,
+glass in hand, for their immediate reappearance. But minute passed
+after minute and there was no sign of them. That narrow gully appeared
+to have swallowed them up. And then with a curious gulp and start he
+saw a little grey cloud wreathe itself slowly from among the rocks and
+drift in a long, hazy shred over the desert. In an instant he had torn
+Scott and Mortimer from their slumbers.
+
+“Get up, you chaps!” he cried. “I believe Merryweather has been shot by
+dervishes.”
+
+“And Reuter not here!” cried the two veterans, exultantly clutching at
+their notebooks. “Merryweather shot! Where? When? How?”
+
+In a few words Anerley explained what he had seen.
+
+“You heard nothing?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Well, a shot loses itself very easily among rocks. By George, look at
+the buzzards!”
+
+Two large brown birds were soaring in the deep blue heaven. As Scott
+spoke they circled down and dropped into the little khor.
+
+“That’s good enough,” said Mortimer, with his nose between the leaves of
+his book. “‘Merryweather headed dervishes stop return stop shot
+mutilated stop raid communications.’ How’s that?”
+
+“You think he was headed off?”
+
+“Why else should he return?”
+
+“In that case, if they were out in front of him and others cut him off,
+there must be several small raiding parties.”
+
+“I should judge so.”
+
+“How about the ‘mutilated’?”
+
+“I’ve fought against Arabs before.”
+
+“Where are you off to?”
+
+“Sarras.”
+
+“I think I’ll race you in,” said Scott.
+
+Anerley stared in astonishment at the absolutely impersonal way in which
+these men regarded the situation. In their zeal for news it had
+apparently never struck them that they, their camp, and their servants
+were all in the lion’s mouth. But even as they talked there came the
+harsh, importunate rat-tat-tat of an irregular volley from among the
+rocks, and the high, keening whistle of bullets over their heads.
+A palm spray fluttered down amongst them. At the same instant the six
+frightened servants came running wildly in for protection.
+
+It was the cool-headed Mortimer who organised the defence, for Scott’s
+Celtic soul was so aflame at all this “copy” in hand and more to come
+that he was too exuberantly boisterous for a commander. The other, with
+his spectacles and his stern face, soon had the servants in hand.
+“_Tali henna! Egri!_ What the deuce are you frightened about? Put the
+camels between the palm trunks. That’s right. Now get the knee-tethers
+on them. _Quies_! Did you never hear bullets before? Now put the
+donkeys here. Not much--you don’t get my polo-pony to make a zareba
+with. Picket the ponies between the grove and the river out of danger’s
+way. These fellows seem to fire even higher than they did in ’85.”
+
+“That’s got home, anyhow,” said Scott, as they heard a soft, splashing
+thud like a stone in a mud-bank.
+
+“Who’s hit, then?”
+
+“The brown camel that’s chewing the cud.” As he spoke the creature, its
+jaw still working, laid its long neck along the ground and closed its
+large dark eyes.
+
+“That shot cost me 15 pounds,” said Mortimer, ruefully. “How many of
+them do you make?”
+
+“Four, I think.”
+
+“Only four Bezingers, at any rate; there may be some spearmen.”
+
+“I think not; it is a little raiding-party of rifle-men. By the way,
+Anerley, you’ve never been under fire before, have you?”
+
+“Never,” said the young pressman, who was conscious of a curious feeling
+of nervous elation.
+
+“Love and poverty and war, they are all experiences necessary to make a
+complete life. Pass over those cartridges. This is a very mild baptism
+that you are undergoing, for behind these camels you are as safe as if
+you were sitting in the back room of the Authors’ Club.”
+
+“As safe, but hardly as comfortable,” said Scott. “A long glass of hock
+and seltzer would be exceedingly acceptable. But oh, Mortimer, what a
+chance! Think of the general’s feelings when he hears that the first
+action of the war has been fought by the Press column. Think of Reuter,
+who has been stewing at the front for a week! Think of the evening
+pennies just too late for the fun. By George, that slug brushed a
+mosquito off me!”
+
+“And one of the donkeys is hit.”
+
+“This is sinful. It will end in our having to carry our own kits to
+Khartoum.”
+
+“Never mind, my boy, it all goes to make copy. I can see the
+headlines--‘Raid on Communications’: ‘Murder of British Engineer’:
+‘Press Column Attacked.’ Won’t it be ripping?”
+
+“I wonder what the next line will be,” said Anerley.
+
+“‘Our Special Wounded’!” cried Scott, rolling over on to his back.
+“No harm done,” he added, gathering himself up again; “only a chip off
+my knee. This is getting sultry. I confess that the idea of that back
+room at the Authors’ Club begins to grow upon me.”
+
+“I have some diachylon.”
+
+“Afterwards will do. We’re having a ’appy day with Fuzzy on the rush.
+I wish he _would_ rush.”
+
+“They’re coming nearer.”
+
+“This is an excellent revolver of mine if it didn’t throw so devilish
+high. I always aim at a man’s toes if I want to stimulate his
+digestion. O Lord, there’s our kettle gone!” With a boom like a
+dinner-gong a Remington bullet had passed through the kettle, and a
+cloud of steam hissed up from the fire. A wild shout came from the
+rocks above.
+
+“The idiots think that they have blown us up. They’ll rush us now, as
+sure as fate; then it will be our turn to lead. Got your revolver,
+Anerley?”
+
+“I have this double-barrelled fowling-piece.”
+
+“Sensible man! It’s the best weapon in the world at this sort of
+rough-and-tumble work. What cartridges?”
+
+“Swan-shot.”
+
+“That will do all right. I carry this big bore double-barrelled pistol
+loaded with slugs. You might as well try to stop one of these fellows
+with a pea-shooter as with a service revolver.”
+
+“There are ways and means,” said Scott. “The Geneva Convention does not
+hold south of the first cataract. It’s easy to make a bullet mushroom
+by a little manipulation of the tip of it. When I was in the broken
+square at Tamai--”
+
+“Wait a bit,” cried Mortimer, adjusting his glasses. “I think they are
+coming now.”
+
+“The time,” said Scott, snapping up his watch, “being exactly seventeen
+minutes past four.”
+
+Anerley had been lying behind a camel staring with an interest which
+bordered upon fascination at the rocks opposite. Here was a little
+woolly puff of smoke, and there was another one, but never once had they
+caught a glimpse of the attackers. To him there was something weird and
+awesome in these unseen, persistent men who, minute by minute, were
+drawing closer to them. He had heard them cry out when the kettle was
+broken, and once, immediately afterwards, an enormously strong voice had
+roared something which had set Scott shrugging his shoulders.
+
+“They’ve got to take us first,” said he, and Anerley thought his nerve
+might be better if he did not ask for a translation.
+
+The firing had begun at a distance of some 100 yards, which put it out
+of the question for them, with their lighter weapons, to make any reply
+to it. Had their antagonists continued to keep that range the defenders
+must either have made a hopeless sally or tried to shelter themselves
+behind their zareba as best they might on the chance that the sound
+might bring up help. But, luckily for them, the African has never taken
+kindly to the rifle, and his primitive instinct to close with his enemy
+is always too strong for his sense of strategy. They were drawing in,
+therefore, and now, for the first time, Anerley caught sight of a face
+looking at them from over a rock. It was a huge, virile, strong-jawed
+head of a pure negro type, with silver trinkets gleaming in the ears.
+The man raised a great arm from behind the rock, and shook his Remington
+at them.
+
+“Shall I fire?” asked Anerley.
+
+“No, no; it is too far. Your shot would scatter all over the place.”
+
+“It’s a picturesque ruffian,” said Scott. “Couldn’t you kodak him,
+Mortimer? There’s another!” A fine-featured brown Arab, with a black,
+pointed beard, was peeping from behind another boulder. He wore the
+green turban which proclaimed him hadji, and his face showed the keen,
+nervous exultation of the religious fanatic.
+
+“They seem a piebald crowd,” said Scott.
+
+“That last is one of the real fighting Baggara,” remarked Mortimer.
+“He’s a dangerous man.”
+
+“He looks pretty vicious. There’s another negro!”
+
+“Two more! Dingas, by the look of them. Just the same chaps we get our
+own black battalions from. As long as they get a fight they don’t mind
+who it’s for; but if the idiots had only sense enough to understand,
+they would know that the Arab is their hereditary enemy, and we their
+hereditary friends. Look at the silly juggins, gnashing his teeth at
+the very men who put down the slave trade!”
+
+“Couldn’t you explain?”
+
+“I’ll explain with this pistol when he comes a little nearer. Now sit
+tight, Anerley. They’re off!”
+
+They were indeed. It was the brown man with the green turban who headed
+the rush. Close at his heels was the negro with the silver ear-rings--
+a giant of a man, and the other two were only a little behind. As they
+sprang over the rocks one after the other, it took Anerley back to the
+school sports when he held the tape for the hurdle-race. It was
+magnificent, the wild spirit and abandon of it, the flutter of the
+chequered galabeeahs, the gleam of steel, the wave of black arms, the
+frenzied faces, the quick pitter-patter of the rushing feet. The
+law-abiding Briton is so imbued with the idea of the sanctity of human
+life that it was hard for the young pressman to realise that these men
+had every intention of killing him, and that he was at perfect liberty
+to do as much for them. He lay staring as if this were a show and he a
+spectator.
+
+“Now, Anerley, now! Take the Arab!” cried somebody.
+
+He put up the gun and saw the brown fierce face at the other end of the
+barrel. He tugged at the trigger, but the face grew larger and fiercer
+with every stride. Again and again he tugged. A revolver-shot rang out
+at his elbow, then another one, and he saw a red spot spring out on the
+Arab’s brown breast. But he was still coming on.
+
+“Shoot, you ass, shoot!” screamed Scott.
+
+Again he strained unavailingly at the trigger. There were two more
+pistol-shots, and the big negro had fallen and risen and fallen again.
+
+“Cock it, you fool!” shouted a furious voice; and at the same instant,
+with a rush and flutter, the Arab bounded over the prostrate camel and
+came down with his bare feet upon Anerley’s chest. In a dream he seemed
+to be struggling frantically with someone upon the ground, then he was
+conscious of a tremendous explosion in his very face, and so ended for
+him the first action of the war.
+
+“Good-bye, old chap. You’ll be all right. Give yourself time.” It was
+Mortimer’s voice, and he became dimly conscious of a long, spectacled
+face, and of a heavy hand upon his shoulder.
+
+“Sorry to leave you. We’ll be lucky now if we are in time for the
+morning editions.” Scott was tightening his girth as he spoke.
+
+“We’ll put in our wire that you have been hurt, so your people will know
+why they don’t hear from you. If Reuter or the evening pennies come up,
+don’t give the thing away. Abbas will look after you, and we’ll be back
+to-morrow afternoon. Bye-bye!”
+
+Anerley heard it all, though he did not feel energy enough to answer.
+Then, as he watched two sleek, brown ponies with their yellow-clad
+riders dwindling among the rocks, his memory cleared suddenly, and he
+realised that the first great journalistic chance of his life was
+slipping away from him. It was a small fight, but it was the first of
+the war, and the great public at home were all athirst for news.
+They would have it in the _Courier_; they would have it in the
+_Intelligence_, and not a word in the _Gazette_. The thought brought
+him to his feet, though he had to throw his arm round the stem of the
+palm tree to steady his swimming head. There was a big black man lying
+where he had fallen, his huge chest pocked with bullet-marks, every
+wound rosetted with its circle of flies. The Arab was stretched out
+within a few yards of him, with two hands clasped over the dreadful
+thing which had been his head. Across him was lying Anerley’s
+fowling-piece, one barrel discharged, the other at half cock.
+
+“Scott effendi shoot him your gun,” said a voice. It was Abbas, his
+English-speaking body-servant.
+
+Anerley groaned at the disgrace of it. He had lost his head so
+completely that he had forgotten to cock his gun; and yet he knew that
+it was not fear but interest which had so absorbed him. He put his hand
+up to his head and felt that a wet handkerchief was bound round his
+forehead.
+
+“Where are the two other dervishes?”
+
+“They ran away. One got shot in arm.”
+
+“What’s happened to me?”
+
+“Effendi got cut on head. Effendi catch bad man by arms, and Scott
+effendi shot him. Face burn very bad.”
+
+Anerley became conscious suddenly that there was a pringling about his
+skin and an overpowering smell of burned hair under his nostrils. He
+put his hand to his moustache. It was gone. His eyebrows too?
+He could not find them. His head, no doubt, was very near to the
+dervish’s when they were rolling upon the ground together, and this was
+the effect of the explosion of his own gun. Well, he would have time to
+grow some more hair before he saw Fleet Street again. But the cut,
+perhaps, was a more serious matter. Was it enough to prevent him
+getting to the telegraph-office at Sarras? The only way was to try and
+see. But there was only that poor little Syrian grey of his. There it
+stood in the evening sunshine, with a sunk head and a bent knee, as if
+its morning’s work was still heavy upon it. What hope was there of
+being able to do thirty-five miles of heavy going upon that? It would
+be a strain upon the splendid ponies of his companions--and they were
+the swiftest and most enduring in the country. The most enduring?
+There was one creature more enduring, and that was a real trotting
+camel. If he had had one he might have got to the wires first after
+all, for Mortimer had said that over thirty miles they have the better
+of any horse. Yes, if he had only had a real trotting camel! And then
+like a flash came Mortimer’s words, “It is the kind of beast that the
+dervishes ride when they make their lightning raids.”
+
+The beasts the dervishes ride! What had these dead dervishes ridden?
+In an instant he was clambering up the rocks, with Abbas protesting at
+his heels. Had the two fugitives carried away all the camels, or had
+they been content to save themselves? The brass gleam from a litter of
+empty Remington cases caught his eye, and showed where the enemy had
+been crouching. And then he could have shouted for joy, for there, in
+the hollow, some little distance off, rose the high, graceful white neck
+and the elegant head of such a camel as he had never set eyes upon
+before--a swanlike, beautiful creature, as far from the rough, clumsy
+baggles as the cart-horse is from the racer.
+
+The beast was kneeling under the shelter of the rocks with its waterskin
+and bag of doora slung over its shoulders, and its forelegs tethered
+Arab fashion with a rope around the knees. Anerley threw his leg over
+the front pommel while Abbas slipped off the cord. Forward flew
+Anerley towards the creature’s neck, then violently backwards, clawing
+madly at anything which might save him, and then, with a jerk which
+nearly snapped his loins, he was thrown forward again. But the camel
+was on its legs now, and the young pressman was safely seated upon one
+of the fliers of the desert. It was as gentle as it was swift, and it
+stood oscillating its long neck and gazing round with its large brown
+eyes, whilst Anerley coiled his legs round the peg and grasped the
+curved camel-stick which Abbas had handed up to him. There were two
+bridle-cords, one from the nostril and one from the neck, but he
+remembered that Scott had said that it was the servant’s and not the
+house-bell which had to be pulled, so he kept his grasp upon the lower.
+Then he touched the long, vibrating neck with his stick, and in an
+instant Abbas’ farewell seemed to come from far behind him, and the
+black rocks and yellow sand were dancing past on either side.
+
+It was his first experience of a trotting camel, and at first the
+motion, although irregular and abrupt, was not unpleasant. Having no
+stirrup or fixed point of any kind, he could not rise to it, but he
+gripped as tightly as he could with his knee, and he tried to sway
+backwards and forwards as he had seen the Arabs do. It was a large,
+very concave Makloofa saddle, and he was conscious that he was bouncing
+about on it with as little power of adhesion as a billiard-ball upon a
+tea-tray. He gripped the two sides with his hands to hold himself
+steady. The creature had got into its long, swinging, stealthy trot,
+its sponge-like feet making no sound upon the hard sand. Anerley leaned
+back with his two hands gripping hard behind him, and he whooped the
+creature on. The sun had already sunk behind the line of black volcanic
+peaks, which look like huge slag-heaps at the mouth of a mine.
+The western sky had taken that lovely light green and pale pink tint
+which makes evening beautiful upon the Nile, and the old brown river
+itself, swirling down amongst the black rocks, caught some shimmer of
+the colours above. The glare, the heat, and the piping of the insects
+had all ceased together. In spite of his aching head, Anerley could
+have cried out for pure physical joy as the swift creature beneath him
+flew along with him through that cool, invigorating air, with the virile
+north wind soothing his pringling face.
+
+He had looked at his watch, and now he made a swift calculation of times
+and distances. It was past six when he had left the camp. Over broken
+ground it was impossible that he could hope to do more than seven miles
+an hour--less on bad parts, more on the smooth. His recollection of the
+track was that there were few smooth and many bad. He would be lucky,
+then, if he reached Sarras anywhere from twelve to one. Then the
+messages took a good two hours to go through, for they had to be
+transcribed at Cairo. At the best he could only hope to have told his
+story in Fleet Street at two or three in the morning. It was possible
+that he might manage it, but the chances seemed enormously against him.
+About three the morning edition would be made up, and his chance gone
+for ever. The one thing clear was that only the first man at the wires
+would have any chance at all, and Anerley meant to be first if hard
+riding could do it. So he tapped away at the bird-like neck, and the
+creature’s long, loose limbs went faster and faster at every tap.
+Where the rocky spurs ran down to the river, horses would have to go
+round, while camels might get across, so that Anerley felt that he was
+always gaining upon his companions.
+
+But there was a price to be paid for the feeling. He had heard of men
+who had burst when on camel journeys, and he knew that the Arabs swathe
+their bodies tightly in broad cloth bandages when they prepare for a
+long march. It had seemed unnecessary and ridiculous when he first
+began to speed over the level track, but now, when he got on the rocky
+paths, he understood what it meant. Never for an instant was he at the
+same angle. Backwards, forwards he swung, with a tingling jar at the
+end of each sway, until he ached from his neck to his knees. It caught
+him across the shoulders, it caught him down the spine, it gripped him
+over the loins, it marked the lower line of his ribs with one heavy,
+dull throb. He clutched here and there with his hand to try and ease
+the strain upon his muscles. He drew up his knees, altered his seat,
+and set his teeth with a grim determination to go through with it should
+it kill him. His head was splitting, his flayed face smarting, and
+every joint in his body aching as if it were dislocated. But he forgot
+all that when, with the rising of the moon, he heard the clinking of
+horses’ hoofs down upon the track by the river, and knew that, unseen by
+them, he had already got well abreast of his companions. But he was
+hardly halfway, and the time already eleven.
+
+All day the needles had been ticking away without intermission in the
+little corrugated iron hut which served as a telegraph station at
+Sarras. With its bare walls and its packing-case seats, it was none the
+less for the moment one of the vital spots upon the earth’s surface, and
+the crisp, importunate ticking might have come from the world-old clock
+of Destiny. Many august people had been at the other end of those
+wires, and had communed with the moist-faced military clerk. A French
+Premier had demanded a pledge, and an English marquis had passed on the
+request to the General in command, with a question as to how it would
+affect the situation. Cipher telegrams had nearly driven the clerk out
+of his wits, for of all crazy occupations the taking of a cipher
+message, when you are without the key to the cipher, is the worst.
+Much high diplomacy had been going on all day in the innermost chambers
+of European chancellories, and the results of it had been whispered into
+this little corrugated-iron hut. About two in the morning an enormous
+despatch had come at last to an end, and the weary operator had opened
+the door, and was lighting his pipe in the cool, fresh air, when he saw
+a camel plump down in the dust, and a man, who seemed to be in the last
+stage of drunkenness, come rolling towards him.
+
+“What’s the time?” he cried, in a voice which appeared to be the only
+sober thing about him.
+
+It was on the clerk’s lips to say that it was time that the questioner
+was in his bed, but it is not safe upon a campaign to be ironical at the
+expense of khaki-clad men. He contented himself, therefore, with the
+bald statement that it was after two. But no retort that he could have
+devised could have had a more crushing effect. The voice turned drunken
+also, and the man caught at the door-post to uphold him.
+
+“Two o’clock! I’m done after all!” said he. His head was tied up in a
+bloody handkerchief, his face was crimson, and he stood with his legs
+crooked as if the pith had all gone out of his back. The clerk began to
+realise that something out of the ordinary was in the wind.
+
+“How long does it take to get a wire to London?”
+
+“About two hours.”
+
+“And it’s two now. I could not get it there before four.”
+
+“Before three.”
+
+“Four.”
+
+“No, three.”
+
+“But you said two hours.”
+
+“Yes, but there’s more than an hour’s difference in longitude.”
+
+“By Heaven, I’ll do it yet!” cried Anerley, and staggering to a
+packing-case, he began the dictation of his famous despatch.
+
+And so it came about that the _Gazette_ had a long column, with
+headlines like an epitaph, when the sheets of the _Intelligence_ and the
+_Courier_ were as blank as the faces of their editors. And so, too, it
+happened that when two weary men, upon two foundered horses, arrived
+about four in the morning at the Sarras post-office, they looked at each
+other in silence and departed noiselessly, with the conviction that
+there are some situations with which the English language is not capable
+of dealing.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW CATACOMB
+
+
+“Look here, Burger,” said Kennedy, “I do wish that you would confide in
+me.”
+
+The two famous students of Roman remains sat together in Kennedy’s
+comfortable room overlooking the Corso. The night was cold, and they
+had both pulled up their chairs to the unsatisfactory Italian stove
+which threw out a zone of stuffiness rather than of warmth.
+
+Outside under the bright winter stars lay the modern Rome, the long,
+double chain of the electric lamps, the brilliantly lighted _cafes_, the
+rushing carriages, and the dense throng upon the footpaths. But inside,
+in the sumptuous chamber of the rich young English archaeologist, there
+was only old Rome to be seen. Cracked and time-worn friezes hung upon
+the walls, grey old busts of senators and soldiers with their fighting
+heads and their hard, cruel faces peered out from the corners. On the
+centre table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments, and ornaments,
+there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths of
+Caracalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was
+exhibited in Berlin.
+
+Amphorae hung from the ceiling, and a litter of curiosities strewed the
+rich red Turkey carpet. And of them all there was not one which was not
+of the most unimpeachable authenticity, and of the utmost rarity and
+value; for Kennedy, though little more than thirty, had a European
+reputation in this particular branch of research, and was, moreover,
+provided with that long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap
+to the student’s energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose,
+gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often
+been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an
+incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in
+sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high,
+white forehead, its aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensuous
+mouth, was a fair index of the compromise between strength and weakness
+in his nature.
+
+Of a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger. He came of a
+curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust
+qualities of the North mingling strangely with the softer graces of the
+South. Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above
+them rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow
+curls lying round it. His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his
+companion had frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman
+busts which peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber.
+Under its bluff German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian
+subtlety, but the smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one
+understood that this was only an indication of his ancestry, with no
+actual bearing upon his character.
+
+In age and in reputation he was on the same level as his English
+companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous.
+Twelve years before he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived
+ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded
+to him by the University of Bonn.
+
+Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and
+singlemindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of
+fame, until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was
+every reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the Chair
+of the greatest of German Universities. But the singleness of purpose
+which had brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant
+Englishman, had caused him in everything outside their work to stand
+infinitely below him. He had never found a pause in his studies in
+which to cultivate the social graces. It was only when he spoke of his
+own subject that his face was filled with life and soul. At other times
+he was silent and embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in
+larger subjects, and impatient of that small talk which is the
+conventional refuge of those who have no thoughts to express.
+
+And yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared
+to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different
+rivals. The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own
+studies each was the only one of the younger men who had knowledge and
+enthusiasm enough to properly appreciate the other. Their common
+interests and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been
+attracted by the other’s knowledge. And then gradually something had
+been added to this. Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and
+simplicity of his rival, while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the
+brilliancy and vivacity which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman
+society. I say “had,” because just at the moment the young Englishman
+was somewhat under a cloud.
+
+A love affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had
+indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked
+many of his friends. But in the bachelor circles of students and
+artists in which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of
+honour in such matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of
+shoulders shrugged over the flight of two and the return of one, the
+general sentiment was probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy
+rather than of reprobation.
+
+“Look here, Burger,” said Kennedy, looking hard at the placid face of
+his companion, “I do wish that you would confide in me.”
+
+As he spoke he waved his hand in the direction of a rug which
+lay upon the floor.
+
+On the rug stood a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wicker-work
+which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of
+objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn
+papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have
+seemed to have come straight from a dustman’s bin, but which a
+specialist would have speedily recognized as unique of their kind.
+
+The pile of odds and ends in the flat wicker-work basket supplied
+exactly one of those missing links of social development which are of
+such interest to the student. It was the German who had brought them
+in, and the Englishman’s eyes were hungry as he looked at them.
+
+“I won’t interfere with your treasure-trove, but I should very much like
+to hear about it,” he continued, while Burger very deliberately lit a
+cigar. “It is evidently a discovery of the first importance. These
+inscriptions will make a sensation throughout Europe.”
+
+“For every one here there are a million there!” said the German. “There
+are so many that a dozen savants might spend a lifetime over them, and
+build up a reputation as solid as the Castle of St. Angelo.”
+
+Kennedy was thinking with his fine forehead wrinkled and his fingers
+playing with his long, fair moustache.
+
+“You have given yourself away, Burger!” said he at last. “Your words
+can only apply to one thing. You have discovered a new catacomb.”
+
+“I had no doubt that you had already come to that conclusion from an
+examination of these objects.”
+
+“Well, they certainly appeared to indicate it, but your last remarks
+make it certain. There is no place except a catacomb which could
+contain so vast a store of relics as you describe.”
+
+“Quite so. There is no mystery about that. I _have_ discovered a new
+catacomb.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Ah, that is my secret, my dear Kennedy! Suffice it that it is so
+situated that there is not one chance in a million of anyone else coming
+upon it. Its date is different from that of any known catacomb, and it
+has been reserved for the burial of the highest Christians, so that the
+remains and the relics are quite different from anything which has ever
+been seen before. If I was not aware of your knowledge and of your
+energy, my friend, I would not hesitate, under the pledge of secrecy, to
+tell you everything about it. But as it is I think that I must
+certainly prepare my own report of the matter before I expose myself to
+such formidable competition.”
+
+Kennedy loved his subject with a love which was almost a mania--a love
+which held him true to it, amidst all the distractions which come to a
+wealthy and dissipated young man. He had ambition, but his ambition was
+secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which
+concerned the old life and history of the city. He yearned to see this
+new underworld which his companion had discovered.
+
+“Look here, Burger,” said he, earnestly, “I assure you that you can
+trust me most implicitly in the matter. Nothing would induce me to put
+pen to paper about anything which I see until I have your express
+permission. I quite understand your feeling, and I think it is most
+natural, but you have really nothing whatever to fear from me. On the
+other hand, if you don’t tell me I shall make a systematic search, and I
+shall most certainly discover it. In that case, of course, I should
+make what use I liked of it, since I should be under no obligation to
+you.”
+
+Burger smiled thoughtfully over his cigar.
+
+“I have noticed, friend Kennedy,” said he, “that when I want information
+over any point you are not always so ready to supply it.”
+
+“When did you ever ask me anything that I did not tell you? You
+remember, for example, my giving you the material for your paper about
+the temple of the Vestals.”
+
+“Ah, well, that was not a matter of much importance. If I were to
+question you upon some intimate thing, would you give me an answer, I
+wonder! This new catacomb is a very intimate thing to me, and I should
+certainly expect some sign of confidence in return.”
+
+“What you are driving at I cannot imagine,” said the Englishman, “but if
+you mean that you will answer my question about the catacomb if I answer
+any question which you may put to me, I can assure you that I will
+certainly do so.”
+
+“Well, then,” said Burger, leaning luxuriously back in his settee, and
+puffing a blue tree of cigar-smoke into the air, “tell me all about your
+relations with Miss Mary Saunderson.”
+
+Kennedy sprang up in his chair and glared angrily at his impassive
+companion.
+
+“What the devil do you mean?” he cried. “What sort of a question is
+this? You may mean it as a joke, but you never made a worse one.”
+
+“No, I don’t mean it as a joke,” said Burger, simply. “I am really
+rather interested in the details of the matter. I don’t know much about
+the world and women and social life and that sort of thing, and such an
+incident has the fascination of the unknown for me. I know you, and I
+knew her by sight--I had even spoken to her once or twice. I should
+very much like to hear from your own lips exactly what it was which
+occurred between you.”
+
+“I won’t tell you a word.”
+
+“That’s all right. It was only my whim to see if you would give up a
+secret as easily as you expected me to give up my secret of the new
+catacomb. You wouldn’t, and I didn’t expect you to. But why should you
+expect otherwise of me? There’s St. John’s clock striking ten. It is
+quite time that I was going home.”
+
+“No, wait a bit, Burger,” said Kennedy; “this is really a ridiculous
+caprice of yours to wish to know about an old love affair which has
+burned out months ago. You know we look upon a man who kisses and tells
+as the greatest coward and villain possible.”
+
+“Certainly,” said the German, gathering up his basket of curiosities,
+“when he tells anything about a girl which is previously unknown, he
+must be so. But in this case, as you must be aware, it was a public
+matter which was the common talk of Rome, so that you are not really
+doing Miss Mary Saunderson any injury by discussing her case with me.
+But still, I respect your scruples; and so good night!”
+
+“Wait a bit, Burger,” said Kennedy, laying his hand upon the other’s
+arm; “I am very keen upon this catacomb business, and I can’t let it
+drop quite so easily. Would you mind asking me something else in
+return--something not quite so eccentric this time?”
+
+“No, no; you have refused, and there is an end of it,” said Burger, with
+his basket on his arm. “No doubt you are quite right not to answer, and
+no doubt I am quite right also--and so again, my dear Kennedy, good
+night!”
+
+The Englishman watched Burger cross the room, and he had his hand on the
+handle of the door before his host sprang up with the air of a man who
+is making the best of that which cannot be helped. “Hold on, old
+fellow,” said he. “I think you are behaving in a most ridiculous
+fashion, but still, if this is your condition, I suppose that I must
+submit to it. I hate saying anything about a girl, but, as you say, it
+is all over Rome, and I don’t suppose I can tell you anything which you
+do not know already. What was it you wanted to know?”
+
+The German came back to the stove, and, laying down his basket, he sank
+into his chair once more. “May I have another cigar?” said he. “Thank
+you very much! I never smoke when I work, but I enjoy a chat much more
+when I am under the influence of tobacco. Now, as regards this young
+lady, with whom you had this little adventure. What in the world has
+become of her?”
+
+“She is at home with her own people.”
+
+“Oh, really--in England?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What part of England--London?”
+
+“No, Twickenham.”
+
+“You must excuse my curiosity, my dear Kennedy, and you must put it down
+to my ignorance of the world. No doubt it is quite a simple thing to
+persuade a young lady to go off with you for three weeks or so, and then
+to hand her over to her own family at--what did you call the place?”
+
+“Twickenham.”
+
+“Quite so--at Twickenham. But it is something so entirely outside my
+own experience that I cannot even imagine how you set about it. For
+example, if you had loved this girl your love could hardly disappear in
+three weeks, so I presume that you could not have loved her at all. But
+if you did not love her why should you make this great scandal which has
+damaged you and ruined her?”
+
+Kennedy looked moodily into the red eye of the stove. “That’s a logical
+way of looking at it, certainly,” said he. “Love is a big word, and it
+represents a good many different shades of feeling. I liked her, and--
+well, you say you’ve seen her--you know how charming she can look.
+But still I am willing to admit, looking back, that I could never have
+really loved her.”
+
+“Then, my dear Kennedy, why did you do it?”
+
+“The adventure of the thing had a great deal to do with it.”
+
+“What! You are so fond of adventures!”
+
+“Where would the variety of life be without them? It was for an
+adventure that I first began to pay my attentions to her. I’ve chased a
+good deal of game in my time, but there’s no chase like that of a pretty
+woman. There was the piquant difficulty of it also, for, as she was the
+companion of Lady Emily Rood it was almost impossible to see her alone.
+On the top of all the other obstacles which attracted me, I learned from
+her own lips very early in the proceedings that she was engaged.”
+
+“Mein Gott! To whom?”
+
+“She mentioned no names.”
+
+“I do not think that anyone knows that. So that made the adventure more
+alluring, did it?”
+
+“Well, it did certainly give a spice to it. Don’t you think so?”
+
+“I tell you that I am very ignorant about these things.”
+
+“My dear fellow, you can remember that the apple you stole from your
+neighbour’s tree was always sweeter than that which fell from your own.
+And then I found that she cared for me.”
+
+“What--at once?”
+
+“Oh, no, it took about three months of sapping and mining. But at last
+I won her over. She understood that my judicial separation from my wife
+made it impossible for me to do the right thing by her--but she came all
+the same, and we had a delightful time, as long as it lasted.”
+
+“But how about the other man?”
+
+Kennedy shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose it is the survival of the
+fittest,” said he. “If he had been the better man she would not have
+deserted him. Let’s drop the subject, for I have had enough of it!”
+
+“Only one other thing. How did you get rid of her in three weeks?”
+
+“Well, we had both cooled down a bit, you understand. She absolutely
+refused, under any circumstances, to come back to face the people she
+had known in Rome. Now, of course, Rome is necessary to me, and I was
+already pining to be back at my work--so there was one obvious cause of
+separation. Then, again, her old father turned up at the hotel in
+London, and there was a scene, and the whole thing became so unpleasant
+that really--though I missed her dreadfully at first--I was very glad to
+slip out of it. Now, I rely upon you not to repeat anything of what I
+have said.”
+
+“My dear Kennedy, I should not dream of repeating it. But all that you
+say interests me very much, for it gives me an insight into your way of
+looking at things, which is entirely different from mine, for I have
+seen so little of life. And now you want to know about my new catacomb.
+There’s no use my trying to describe it, for you would never find it by
+that. There is only one thing, and that is for me to take you there.”
+
+“That would be splendid.”
+
+“When would you like to come?”
+
+“The sooner the better. I am all impatience to see it.”
+
+“Well, it is a beautiful night--though a trifle cold. Suppose we start
+in an hour. We must be very careful to keep the matter to ourselves.
+If anyone saw us hunting in couples they would suspect that there was
+something going on.”
+
+“We can’t be too cautious,” said Kennedy. “Is it far?”
+
+“Some miles.”
+
+“Not too far to walk?”
+
+“Oh, no, we could walk there easily.”
+
+“We had better do so, then. A cabman’s suspicions would be aroused if
+he dropped us both at some lonely spot in the dead of the night.”
+
+“Quite so. I think it would be best for us to meet at the Gate of the
+Appian Way at midnight. I must go back to my lodgings for the matches
+and candles and things.”
+
+“All right, Burger! I think it is very kind of you to let me into this
+secret, and I promise you that I will write nothing about it until you
+have published your report. Good-bye for the present! You will find me
+at the Gate at twelve.”
+
+The cold, clear air was filled with the musical chimes from that city of
+clocks as Burger, wrapped in an Italian overcoat, with a lantern hanging
+from his hand, walked up to the rendezvous. Kennedy stepped out of the
+shadow to meet him.
+
+“You are ardent in work as well as in love!” said the German, laughing.
+
+“Yes; I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour.”
+
+“I hope you left no clue as to where we were going.”
+
+“Not such a fool! By Jove, I am chilled to the bone! Come on, Burger,
+let us warm ourselves by a spurt of hard walking.”
+
+Their footsteps sounded loud and crisp upon the rough stone paving of
+the disappointing road which is all that is left of the most famous
+highway of the world. A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop,
+and a few carts of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only
+things which they met. They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up
+through the darkness upon each side of them, until they had come as far
+as the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, and saw against a rising moon the
+great circular bastion of Cecilia Metella in front of them. Then Burger
+stopped with his hand to his side. “Your legs are longer than mine, and
+you are more accustomed to walking,” said he, laughing. “I think that
+the place where we turn off is somewhere here. Yes, this is it, round
+the corner of the trattoria. Now, it is a very narrow path, so perhaps
+I had better go in front, and you can follow.” He had lit his lantern,
+and by its light they were enabled to follow a narrow and devious track
+which wound across the marshes of the Campagna. The great Aqueduct of
+old Rome lay like a monstrous caterpillar across the moonlit landscape,
+and their road led them under one of its huge arches, and past the
+circle of crumbling bricks which marks the old arena. At last Burger
+stopped at a solitary wooden cowhouse, and he drew a key from his
+pocket.
+
+“Surely your catacomb is not inside a house!” cried Kennedy.
+
+“The entrance to it is. That is just the safeguard which we have
+against anyone else discovering it.”
+
+“Does the proprietor know of it?”
+
+“Not he. He had found one or two objects which made me almost certain
+that his house was built on the entrance to such a place. So I rented
+it from him, and did my excavations for myself. Come in, and shut the
+door behind you.”
+
+It was a long, empty building, with the mangers of the cows along one
+wall. Burger put his lantern down on the ground, and shaded its light
+in all directions save one by draping his overcoat round it. “It might
+excite remark if anyone saw a light in this lonely place,” said he.
+“Just help me to move this boarding.” The flooring was loose in the
+corner, and plank by plank the two savants raised it and leaned it
+against the wall. Below there was a square aperture and a stair of old
+stone steps which led away down into the bowels of the earth.
+
+“Be careful!” cried Burger, as Kennedy, in his impatience,
+hurried down them. “It is a perfect rabbits’-warren below, and if
+you were once to lose your way there, the chances would be a hundred
+to one against your ever coming out again. Wait until I bring the
+light.”
+
+“How do you find your own way if it is so complicated?”
+
+“I had some very narrow escapes at first, but I have gradually learned
+to go about. There is a certain system to it, but it is one which a
+lost man, if he were in the dark, could not possibly find out. Even now
+I always spin out a ball of string behind me when I am going far into
+the catacomb. You can see for yourself that it is difficult, but every
+one of these passages divides and subdivides a dozen times before you go
+a hundred yards.” They had descended some twenty feet from the level of
+the byre, and they were standing now in a square chamber cut out of the
+soft tufa. The lantern cast a flickering light, bright below and dim
+above, over the cracked brown walls. In every direction were the black
+openings of passages which radiated from this common centre.
+
+“I want you to follow me closely, my friend,” said Burger. “Do not
+loiter to look at anything upon the way, for the place to which I will
+take you contains all that you can see, and more. It will save time for
+us to go there direct.” He led the way down one of the corridors, and
+the Englishman followed closely at his heels. Every now and then the
+passage bifurcated, but Burger was evidently following some secret marks
+of his own, for he neither stopped nor hesitated. Everywhere along the
+walls, packed like the berths upon an emigrant ship, lay the Christians
+of old Rome. The yellow light flickered over the shrivelled features of
+the mummies, and gleamed upon rounded skulls and long, white arm-bones
+crossed over fleshless chests. And everywhere as he passed Kennedy
+looked with wistful eyes upon inscriptions, funeral vessels, pictures,
+vestments, utensils, all lying as pious hands had placed them so many
+centuries ago. It was apparent to him, even in those hurried, passing
+glances, that this was the earliest and finest of the catacombs,
+containing such a storehouse of Roman remains as had never before come
+at one time under the observation of the student. “What would happen if
+the light went out?” he asked, as they hurried on.
+
+“I have a spare candle and a box of matches in my pocket. By the way,
+Kennedy, have you any matches?”
+
+“No; you had better give me some.”
+
+“Oh, that is all right. There is no chance of our separating.”
+
+“How far are we going? It seems to me that we have walked at least a
+quarter of a mile.”
+
+“More than that, I think. There is really no limit to the tombs--at
+least, I have never been able to find any. This is a very difficult
+place, so I think that I will use our ball of string.” He fastened one
+end of it to a projecting stone and he carried the coil in the breast of
+his coat, paying it out as he advanced. Kennedy saw that it was no
+unnecessary precaution, for the passages had become more complexed and
+tortuous than ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors.
+But these all ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of
+tufa topped with a slab of marble at one end of it. “By Jove!” cried
+Kennedy in an ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble. “It
+is a Christian altar--probably the first one in existence. Here is the
+little consecration cross cut upon the corner of it. No doubt this
+circular space was used as a church.”
+
+“Precisely,” said Burger. “If I had more time I should like to show you
+all the bodies which are buried in these niches upon the walls, for they
+are the early popes and bishops of the Church, with their mitres, their
+croziers, and full canonicals. Go over to that one and look at it!”
+Kennedy went across, and stared at the ghastly head which lay loosely on
+the shredded and mouldering mitre.
+
+“This is most interesting,” said he, and his voice seemed to boom
+against the concave vault. “As far as my experience goes, it is unique.
+Bring the lantern over, Burger, for I want to see them all.” But the
+German had strolled away, and was standing in the middle of a yellow
+circle of light at the other side of the hall.
+
+“Do you know how many wrong turnings there are between this and the
+stairs?” he asked. “There are over two thousand. No doubt it was one
+of the means of protection which the Christians adopted. The odds are
+two thousand to one against a man getting out, even if he had a light;
+but if he were in the dark it would, of course, be far more difficult.”
+
+“So I should think.”
+
+“And the darkness is something dreadful. I tried it once for an
+experiment. Let us try it again!” He stooped to the lantern, and in an
+instant it was as if an invisible hand was squeezed tightly over each of
+Kennedy’s eyes. Never had he known what such darkness was. It seemed
+to press upon him and to smother him. It was a solid obstacle against
+which the body shrank from advancing. He put his hands out to push it
+back from him. “That will do, Burger,” said he, “let’s have the light
+again.”
+
+But his companion began to laugh, and in that circular room the sound
+seemed to come from every side at once. “You seem uneasy, friend
+Kennedy,” said he.
+
+“Go on, man, light the candle!” said Kennedy, impatiently.
+
+“It’s very strange, Kennedy, but I could not in the least tell by the
+sound in which direction you stand. Could you tell where I am?”
+
+“No; you seem to be on every side of me.”
+
+“If it were not for this string which I hold in my hand I should not
+have a notion which way to go.”
+
+“I dare say not. Strike a light, man, and have an end of this
+nonsense.”
+
+“Well, Kennedy, there are two things which I understand that you are
+very fond of. The one is adventure, and the other is an obstacle to
+surmount. The adventure must be the finding of your way out of this
+catacomb. The obstacle will be the darkness and the two thousand wrong
+turns which make the way a little difficult to find. But you need not
+hurry, for you have plenty of time, and when you halt for a rest now and
+then, I should like you just to think of Miss Mary Saunderson, and
+whether you treated her quite fairly.”
+
+“You devil, what do you mean?” roared Kennedy. He was running
+about in little circles and clasping at the solid blackness with
+both hands.
+
+“Good-bye,” said the mocking voice, and it was already at some distance.
+“I really do not think, Kennedy, even by your own showing that you did
+the right thing by that girl. There was only one little thing which you
+appeared not to know, and I can supply it. Miss Saunderson was engaged
+to a poor, ungainly devil of a student, and his name was Julius Burger.”
+There was a rustle somewhere--the vague sound of a foot striking a
+stone--and then there fell silence upon that old Christian church--a
+stagnant heavy silence which closed round Kennedy and shut him in like
+water round a drowning man.
+
+
+Some two months afterwards the following paragraph made the round of the
+European Press:--
+
+
+   One of the most interesting discoveries of recent years is
+   that of the new catacomb in Rome, which lies some distance to the
+   east of the well-known vaults of St. Calixtus. The finding of this
+   important burial-place, which is exceedingly rich in most
+   interesting early Christian remains, is due to the energy and
+   sagacity of Dr. Julius Burger, the young German specialist, who is
+   rapidly taking the first place as an authority upon ancient Rome.
+   Although the first to publish his discovery, it appears that a less
+   fortunate adventurer had anticipated Dr. Burger. Some months ago
+   Mr. Kennedy, the well-known English student, disappeared suddenly
+   from his rooms in the “Corso”, and it was conjectured that his
+   association with a recent scandal had driven him to leave Rome. It
+   appears now that he had in reality fallen a victim to that fervid
+   love of archaeology which had raised him to a distinguished place
+   among living scholars. His body was discovered in the heart of the
+   new catacomb, and it was evident from the condition of his feet and
+   boots that he had tramped for days through the tortuous corridors
+   which make these subterranean tombs so dangerous to explorers. The
+   deceased gentleman had, with inexplicable rashness, made his way
+   into this labyrinth without, as far as can be discovered, taking
+   with him either candles or matches, so that his sad fate was the
+   natural result of his own temerity. What makes the matter more
+   painful is that Dr. Julius Burger was an intimate friend of the
+   deceased. His joy at the extraordinary find which he has been so
+   fortunate as to make has been greatly marred by the terrible fate
+   of his comrade and fellow-worker.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE
+
+
+It was in the days when the tide of Mahdism, which had swept in such a
+flood from the great Lakes and Darfur to the confines of Egypt, had at
+last come to its full, and even begun, as some hoped, to show signs of a
+turn. At its outset it had been terrible. It had engulfed Hicks’s
+army, swept over Gordon and Khartoum, rolled behind the British forces
+as they retired down the river, and finally cast up a spray of raiding
+parties as far north as Assouan. Then it found other channels to east
+and west, to Central Africa and to Abyssinia, and retired a little on
+the side of Egypt. For ten years there ensued a lull, during which the
+frontier garrisons looked out upon those distant blue hills of Dongola.
+Behind the violet mists which draped them lay a land of blood and
+horror. From time to time some adventurer went south towards those
+haze-girt mountains, tempted by stories of gum and ivory, but none ever
+returned. Once a mutilated Egyptian and once a Greek woman, mad with
+thirst and fear, made their way to the lines. They were the only
+exports of that country of darkness. Sometimes the sunset would turn
+those distant mists into a bank of crimson, and the dark mountains would
+rise from that sinister reek like islands in a sea of blood. It seemed
+a grim symbol in the southern heaven when seen from the fort-capped
+hills by Wady Halfa. Ten years of lust in Khartoum, ten years of silent
+work in Cairo, and then all was ready, and it was time for civilisation
+to take a trip south once more, travelling as her wont is in an armoured
+train. Everything was ready, down to the last pack-saddle of the last
+camel, and yet no one suspected it, for an unconstitutional Government
+has its advantage. A great administrator had argued, and managed, and
+cajoled; a great soldier had organised and planned, and made piastres do
+the work of pounds. And then one night these two master spirits met and
+clasped hands, and the soldier vanished away upon some business of his
+own. And just at that very time, Bimbashi Hilary Joyce, seconded from
+the Royal Mallow Fusiliers, and temporarily attached to the Ninth
+Soudanese, made his first appearance in Cairo.
+
+Napoleon had said, and Hilary Joyce had noted, that great reputations
+are only to be made in the East. Here he was in the East with four tin
+cases of baggage, a Wilkinson sword, a Bond’s slug-throwing pistol, and
+a copy of “Green’s Introduction to the Study of Arabic.” With such a
+start, and the blood of youth running hot in his veins, everything
+seemed easy. He was a little frightened of the general; he had heard
+stories of his sternness to young officers, but with tact and suavity he
+hoped for the best. So, leaving his effects at “Shepherd’s Hotel,” he
+reported himself at headquarters. It was not the general, but the head
+of the Intelligence Department who received him, the chief being still
+absent upon that business which had called him. Hilary Joyce found
+himself in the presence of a short, thick-set officer, with a gentle
+voice and a placid expression which covered a remarkably acute and
+energetic spirit. With that quiet smile and guileless manner he had
+undercut and outwitted the most cunning of Orientals. He stood, a
+cigarette between his fingers, looking at the newcomer. “I heard that
+you had come. Sorry the chief isn’t here to see you. Gone up to the
+frontier, you know.”
+
+“My regiment is at Wady Halfa. I suppose, sir, that I should report
+myself there at once?”
+
+“No; I was to give you your orders.” He led the way to a map upon the
+wall, and pointed with the end of his cigarette. “You see this place.
+It’s the Oasis of Kurkur--a little quiet, I am afraid, but excellent
+air. You are to get out there as quick as possible. You’ll find a
+company of the Ninth, and half a squadron of cavalry. You will be in
+command.”
+
+Hilary Joyce looked at the name, printed at the intersection of two
+black lines without another dot upon the map for several inches around
+it. “A village, sir?”
+
+“No, a well. Not very good water, I’m afraid, but you soon get
+accustomed to natron. It’s an important post, as being at the junction
+of two caravan routes. All routes are closed now, of course, but still
+you never know who _might_ come along them.”
+
+“We are there, I presume, to prevent raiding?”
+
+“Well, between you and me, there’s really nothing to raid. You are
+there to intercept messengers. They must call at the wells. Of course
+you have only just come out, but you probably understand already enough
+about the conditions of this country to know that there is a great deal
+of disaffection about, and that the Khalifa is likely to try and keep in
+touch with his adherents. Then, again, Senoussi lives up that way”--he
+waved his cigarette to the westward--“the Khalifa might send a message
+to him along that route. Anyhow, your duty is to arrest everyone coming
+along, and get some account of him before you let him go. You don’t
+talk Arabic, I suppose?”
+
+“I am learning, sir.”
+
+“Well, well, you’ll have time enough for study there. And you’ll have a
+native officer, Ali something or other, who speaks English, and can
+interpret for you. Well, good-bye--I’ll tell the chief that you
+reported yourself. Get on to your post now as quickly as you can.”
+
+Railway to Baliani, the post-boat to Assouan, and then two days on a
+camel in the Libyan desert, with an Ababdeh guide, and three
+baggage-camels to tie one down to their own exasperating pace.
+However, even two and a half miles an hour mount up in time, and at
+last, on the third evening, from the blackened slag-heap of a hill which
+is called the Jebel Kurkur, Hilary Joyce looked down upon a distant
+clump of palms, and thought that this cool patch of green in the midst
+of the merciless blacks and yellows was the fairest colour effect that
+he had ever seen. An hour later he had ridden into the little camp, the
+guard had turned out to salute him, his native subordinate had greeted
+him in excellent English, and he had fairly entered into his own.
+It was not an exhilarating place for a lengthy residence. There was one
+large, bowl-shaped, grassy depression sloping down to the three pits of
+brown and brackish water. There was the grove of palm trees also,
+beautiful to look upon, but exasperating in view of the fact that Nature
+has provided her least shady trees on the very spot where shade is
+needed most. A single wide-spread acacia did something to restore the
+balance. Here Hilary Joyce slumbered in the heat, and in the cool he
+inspected his square-shouldered, spindle-shanked Soudanese, with their
+cheery black faces and their funny little pork-pie forage caps.
+Joyce was a martinet at drill, and the blacks loved being drilled, so
+the Bimbashi was soon popular among them. But one day was exactly like
+another. The weather, the view, the employment, the food--everything
+was the same. At the end of three weeks he felt that he had been there
+for interminable years. And then at last there came something to break
+the monotony.
+
+One evening, as the sun was sinking, Hilary Joyce rode slowly down the
+old caravan road. It had a fascination for him, this narrow track,
+winding among the boulders and curving up the nullahs, for he
+remembered how in the map it had gone on and on, stretching away into
+the unknown heart of Africa. The countless pads of innumerable camels
+through many centuries had beaten it smooth, so that now, unused and
+deserted, it still wound away, the strangest of roads, a foot broad, and
+perhaps two thousand miles in length. Joyce wondered as he rode how
+long it was since any traveller had journeyed up it from the south, and
+then he raised his eyes, and there was a man coming along the path.
+For an instant Joyce thought that it might be one of his own men, but a
+second glance assured him that this could not be so. The stranger was
+dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab, and not in the close-fitting
+khaki of a soldier. He was very tall, and a high turban made him seem
+gigantic. He strode swiftly along, with head erect, and the bearing of
+a man who knows no fear.
+
+Who could he be, this formidable giant coming out of the unknown?
+The precursor possibly of a horde of savage spearmen. And where could
+he have walked from? The nearest well was a long hundred miles down the
+track. At any rate the frontier post of Kurkur could not afford to
+receive casual visitors. Hilary Joyce whisked round his horse, galloped
+into camp, and gave the alarm. Then, with twenty horsemen at his back,
+he rode out again to reconnoitre. The man was still coming on in spite
+of these hostile preparations. For an instant he hesitated when first
+he saw the cavalry, but escape was out of the question, and he advanced
+with the air of one who makes the best of a bad job. He made no
+resistance, and said nothing when the hands of two troopers clutched at
+his shoulders, but walked quietly between their horses into camp.
+Shortly afterwards the patrol came in again. There were no signs of any
+dervishes. The man was alone. A splendid trotting camel had been found
+lying dead a little way down the track. The mystery of the stranger’s
+arrival was explained. But why, and whence, and whither?--these were
+questions for which a zealous officer must find an answer.
+
+Hilary Joyce was disappointed that there were no dervishes. It would
+have been a great start for him in the Egyptian army had he fought a
+little action on his own account. But even as it was, he had a rare
+chance of impressing the authorities. He would love to show his
+capacity to the head of the Intelligence, and even more to that grim
+Chief who never forgot what was smart, or forgave what was slack.
+The prisoner’s dress and bearing showed that he was of importance.
+Mean men do not ride pure-bred trotting camels. Joyce sponged his head
+with cold water, drank a cup of strong coffee, put on an imposing
+official tarboosh instead of his sun-helmet, and formed himself into a
+court of inquiry and judgment under the acacia tree. He would have
+liked his people to have seen him now, with his two black orderlies in
+waiting, and his Egyptian native officer at his side. He sat behind a
+camp-table, and the prisoner, strongly guarded, was led up to him.
+The man was a handsome fellow, with bold grey eyes and a long black
+beard.
+
+“Why!” cried Joyce, “the rascal is making faces at me.” A curious
+contraction had passed over the man’s features, but so swiftly that it
+might have been a nervous twitch. He was now a model of Oriental
+gravity. “Ask him who he is, and what he wants?” The native officer
+did so, but the stranger made no reply, save that the same sharp spasm
+passed once more over his face. “Well, I’m blessed!” cried Hilary
+Joyce. “Of all the impudent scoundrels! He keeps on winking at me.
+Who are you, you rascal? Give an account of yourself! D’ye hear?”
+But the tall Arab was as impervious to English as to Arabic.
+The Egyptian tried again and again. The prisoner looked at Joyce with
+his inscrutable eyes, and occasionally twitched his face at him, but
+never opened his mouth. The Bimbashi scratched his head in
+bewilderment.
+
+“Look here, Mahomet Ali, we’ve got to get some sense out of this fellow.
+You say there are no papers on him?”
+
+“No, sir; we found no papers.”
+
+“No clue of any kind?”
+
+“He has come far, sir. A trotting camel does not die easily. He has
+come from Dongola, at least.”
+
+“Well, we must get him to talk.”
+
+“It is possible that he is deaf and dumb.”
+
+“Not he. I never saw a man look more all there in my life.”
+
+“You might send him across to Assouan.”
+
+“And give someone else the credit? No, thank you. This is my bird.
+But how are we going to get him to find his tongue?”
+
+The Egyptian’s dark eyes skirted the encampment and rested on the cook’s
+fire. “Perhaps,” said he, “if the Bimbashi thought fit--” He looked at
+the prisoner and then at the burning wood.
+
+“No, no; it wouldn’t do. No, by Jove, that’s going too far.”
+
+“A very little might do it.”
+
+“No, no. It’s all very well here, but it would sound just awful if ever
+it got as far as Fleet Street. But, I say,” he whispered, “we might
+frighten him a bit. There’s no harm in that.”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Tell them to undo the man’s galabeeah. Order them to put a horseshoe
+in the fire and make it red-hot.” The prisoner watched the proceedings
+with an air which had more of amusement than of uneasiness. He never
+winced as the black sergeant approached with the glowing shoe held upon
+two bayonets.
+
+“Will you speak now?” asked the Bimbashi, savagely. The prisoner smiled
+gently and stroked his beard.
+
+“Oh, chuck the infernal thing away!” cried Joyce, jumping up in a
+passion. “There’s no use trying to bluff the fellow. He knows we won’t
+do it. But I _can_ and I _will_ flog him, and you can tell him from me
+that if he hasn’t found his tongue by to-morrow morning I’ll take the
+skin off his back as sure as my name’s Joyce. Have you said all that?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Well, you can sleep upon it, you beauty, and a good night’s rest may it
+give you!” He adjourned the Court, and the prisoner, as imperturbable
+as ever, was led away by the guard to his supper of rice and water.
+Hilary Joyce was a kind-hearted man, and his own sleep was considerably
+disturbed by the prospect of the punishment which he must inflict next
+day. He had hopes that the mere sight of the koorbash and the thongs
+might prevail over his prisoner’s obstinacy. And then, again, he
+thought how shocking it would be if the man proved to be really dumb
+after all. The possibility shook him so that he had almost determined
+by daybreak that he would send the stranger on unhurt to Assouan.
+And yet what a tame conclusion it would be to the incident! He lay upon
+his angareeb still debating it when the question suddenly and
+effectively settled itself. Ali Mahomet rushed into his tent.
+
+“Sir,” he cried, “the prisoner is gone!”
+
+“Gone!”
+
+“Yes, sir, and your own best riding camel as well. There is a slit cut
+in the tent, and he got away unseen in the early morning.”
+
+The Bimbashi acted with all energy. Cavalry rode along every track;
+scouts examined the soft sand of the wadys for signs of the fugitive,
+but no trace was discovered. The man had utterly disappeared. With a
+heavy heart, Hilary Joyce wrote an official report of the matter and
+forwarded it to Assouan. Five days later there came a curt order from
+the chief that he should report himself there. He feared the worst from
+the stern soldier, who spared others as little as he spared himself.
+And his worst forebodings were realised. Travel-stained and weary, he
+reported himself one night at the general’s quarters. Behind a table
+piled with papers and strewn with maps the famous soldier and his Chief
+of Intelligence were deep in plans and figures. Their greeting was a
+cold one.
+
+“I understand, Captain Joyce,” said the general, “that you have allowed
+a very important prisoner to slip through your fingers.”
+
+“I am sorry, sir.”
+
+“No doubt. But that will not mend matters. Did you ascertain anything
+about him before you lost him?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“How was that?”
+
+“I could get nothing out of him, sir.”
+
+“Did you try?”
+
+“Yes, sir; I did what I could.”
+
+“What did you do?”
+
+“Well, sir, I threatened to use physical force.”
+
+“What did he say?”
+
+“He said nothing.”
+
+“What was he like?”
+
+“A tall man, sir. Rather a desperate character, I should think.”
+
+“Any way by which we could identify him?”
+
+“A long black beard, sir. Grey eyes. And a nervous way of twitching
+his face.”
+
+“Well, Captain Joyce,” said the general, in his stern, inflexible voice,
+“I cannot congratulate you upon your first exploit in the Egyptian army.
+You are aware that every English officer in this force is a picked man.
+I have the whole British army from which to draw. It is necessary,
+therefore, that I should insist upon the very highest efficiency.
+It would be unfair upon the others to pass over any obvious want of zeal
+or intelligence. You are seconded from the Royal Mallows, I
+understand?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“I have no doubt that your colonel will be glad to see you fulfilling
+your regimental duties again.”
+
+Hilary Joyce’s heart was too heavy for words. He was silent.
+
+“I will let you know my final decision to-morrow morning.”
+
+Joyce saluted and turned upon his heel.
+
+“You can sleep upon that, you beauty, and a good night’s rest may it
+give you!”
+
+Joyce turned in bewilderment. Where had those words been used before?
+Who was it who had used them? The general was standing erect. Both he
+and the Chief of the Intelligence were laughing. Joyce stared at the
+tall figure, the erect bearing, the inscrutable grey eyes.
+
+“Good Lord!” he gasped.
+
+“Well, well, Captain Joyce, we are quits!” said the general, holding out
+his hand. “You gave me a bad ten minutes with that infernal red-hot
+horseshoe of yours. I’ve done as much for you. I don’t think we can
+spare you for the Royal Mallows just yet awhile.”
+
+“But, sir; but--!”
+
+“The fewer questions the better, perhaps. But of course it must seem
+rather amazing. I had a little private business with the Kabbabish.
+It must be done in person. I did it, and came to your post in my
+return. I kept on winking at you as a sign that I wanted a word with
+you alone.”
+
+“Yes, yes. I begin to understand.”
+
+“I couldn’t give it away before all those blacks, or where should I have
+been the next time I used my false beard and Arab dress? You put me in
+a very awkward position. But at last I had a word alone with your
+Egyptian officer, who managed my escape all right.”
+
+“He! Mahomet Ali!”
+
+“I ordered him to say nothing. I had a score to settle with you.
+But we dine at eight, Captain Joyce. We live plainly here, but I think
+I can do you a little better than you did me at Kurkur.”
+
+
+
+A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE
+
+
+There are many folk who knew Alphonse Lacour in his old age. From about
+the time of the Revolution of ’48 until he died in the second year of
+the Crimean War he was always to be found in the same corner of the Cafe
+de Provence, at the end of the Rue St. Honore, coming down about nine in
+the evening, and going when he could find no one to talk with. It took
+some self-restraint to listen to the old diplomatist, for his stories
+were beyond all belief, and yet he was quick at detecting the shadow of
+a smile or the slightest little raising of the eyebrows. Then his huge,
+rounded back would straighten itself, his bulldog chin would project,
+and his r’s would burr like a kettledrum. When he got as far as, “Ah,
+monsieur r-r-r-rit!” or “Vous ne me cr-r-r-royez pas donc!” it was quite
+time to remember that you had a ticket for the opera.
+
+There was his story of Talleyrand and the five oyster-shells, and there
+was his utterly absurd account of Napoleon’s second visit to Ajaccio.
+Then there was that most circumstantial romance (which he never ventured
+upon until his second bottle had been uncorked) of the Emperor’s escape
+from St. Helena--how he lived for a whole year in Philadelphia, while
+Count Herbert de Bertrand, who was his living image, personated him at
+Longwood. But of all his stories there was none which was more
+notorious than that of the Koran and the Foreign Office messenger. And
+yet when Monsieur Otto’s memoirs were written it was found that there
+really was some foundation for old Lacour’s incredible statement.
+
+“You must know, monsieur,” he would say, “that I left Egypt after
+Kleber’s assassination. I would gladly have stayed on, for I was
+engaged in a translation of the Koran, and between ourselves I had
+thoughts at the time of embracing Mahometanism, for I was deeply struck
+by the wisdom of their views about marriage. They had made an
+incredible mistake, however, upon the subject of wine, and this was what
+the Mufti who attempted to convert me could never get over. Then when
+old Kleber died and Menou came to the top, I felt that it was time for
+me to go. It is not for me to speak of my own capacities, monsieur, but
+you will readily understand that the man does not care to be ridden by
+the mule. I carried my Koran and my papers to London, where Monsieur
+Otto had been sent by the First Consul to arrange a treaty of peace; for
+both nations were very weary of the war, which had already lasted ten
+years. Here I was most useful to Monsieur Otto on account of my
+knowledge of the English tongue, and also, if I may say so, on account
+of my natural capacity. They were happy days during which I lived in
+the square of Bloomsbury. The climate of monsieur’s country is, it must
+be confessed, detestable. But then what would you have? Flowers grow
+best in the rain. One has but to point to monsieur’s fellow
+country-women to prove it.
+
+“Well, Monsieur Otto, our Ambassador, was kept terribly busy over that
+treaty, and all of his staff were worked to death. We had not Pitt to
+deal with, which was, perhaps, as well for us. He was a terrible man
+that Pitt, and wherever half a dozen enemies of France were plotting
+together, there was his sharp-pointed nose right in the middle of them.
+The nation, however, had been thoughtful enough to put him out of
+office, and we had to do with Monsieur Addington. But Milord Hawkesbury
+was the Foreign Minister, and it was with him that we were obliged to do
+our bargaining.
+
+“You can understand that it was no child’s play. After ten years of war
+each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the
+other, or to the other’s allies. What was to be given back, and what
+was to be kept? Is this island worth that peninsula? If we do this at
+Venice, will you do that at Sierra Leone? If we give up Egypt to the
+Sultan, will you restore the Cape of Good Hope, which you have taken
+from our allies the Dutch? So we wrangled and wrestled, and I have seen
+Monsieur Otto come back to the Embassy so exhausted that his secretary
+and I had to help him from his carriage to his sofa. But at last things
+adjusted themselves, and the night came round when the treaty was to be
+finally signed. Now, you must know that the one great card which we
+held, and which we played, played, played at every point of the game,
+was that we had Egypt. The English were very nervous about our being
+there. It gave us a foot at each end of the Mediterranean, you see.
+And they were not sure that that wonderful little Napoleon of ours might
+not make it the base of an advance against India. So whenever Lord
+Hawkesbury proposed to retain anything, we had only to reply, ‘In _that_
+case, of course, we cannot consent to evacuate Egypt,’ and in this way
+we quickly brought him to reason. It was by the help of Egypt that we
+gained terms which were remarkably favourable, and especially that we
+caused the English to consent to give up the Cape of Good Hope. We did
+not wish your people, monsieur, to have any foothold in South Africa,
+for history has taught us that the British foothold of one half-century
+is the British Empire of the next. It is not your army or your navy
+against which we have to guard, but it is your terrible younger son and
+your man in search of a career. When we French have a possession across
+the seas, we like to sit in Paris and to felicitate ourselves upon it.
+With you it is different. You take your wives and your children, and
+you run away to see what kind of place this may be, and after that we
+might as well try to take that old Square of Bloomsbury away from you.
+
+“Well, it was upon the first of October that the treaty was finally to
+be signed. In the morning I was congratulating Monsieur Otto upon the
+happy conclusion of his labours. He was a little pale shrimp of a man,
+very quick and nervous, and he was so delighted now at his own success
+that he could not sit still, but ran about the room chattering and
+laughing, while I sat on a cushion in the corner, as I had learned to do
+in the East. Suddenly, in came a messenger with a letter which had been
+forwarded from Paris. Monsieur Otto cast his eye upon it, and then,
+without a word, his knees gave way, and he fell senseless upon the
+floor. I ran to him, as did the courier, and between us we carried him
+to the sofa. He might have been dead from his appearance, but I could
+still feel his heart thrilling beneath my palm. ‘What is this, then?’ I
+asked.
+
+“‘I do not know,’ answered the messenger. ‘Monsieur Talleyrand told me
+to hurry as never man hurried before, and to put this letter into the
+hands of Monsieur Otto. I was in Paris at midday yesterday.’
+
+“I know that I am to blame, but I could not help glancing at the letter,
+picking it out of the senseless hand of Monsieur Otto. My God! the
+thunderbolt that it was! I did not faint, but I sat down beside my
+chief and I burst into tears. It was but a few words, but they told us
+that Egypt had been evacuated by our troops a month before. All our
+treaty was undone then, and the one consideration which had induced our
+enemies to give us good terms had vanished. In twelve hours it would
+not have mattered. But now the treaty was not yet signed. We should
+have to give up the Cape. We should have to let England have Malta.
+Now that Egypt was gone we had nothing left to offer in exchange.
+
+“But we are not so easily beaten, we Frenchmen. You English misjudge us
+when you think that because we show emotions which you conceal, that we
+are therefore of a weak and womanly nature. You cannot read your
+histories and believe that. Monsieur Otto recovered his senses
+presently, and we took counsel what we should do.
+
+“‘It is useless to go on, Alphonse,’ said he. ‘This Englishman will
+laugh at me when I ask him to sign.’
+
+“‘Courage!’ I cried; and then a sudden thought coming into my head--‘How
+do we know that the English will have news of this? Perhaps they may
+sign the treaty before they know of it.’
+
+“Monsieur Otto sprang from the sofa and flung himself into my arms.
+
+“‘Alphonse,’ he cried, ‘you have saved me! Why should they know about
+it? Our news has come from Toulon to Paris, and thence straight to
+London. Theirs will come by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar. At
+this moment it is unlikely that anyone in Paris knows of it, save only
+Talleyrand and the First Consul. If we keep our secret, we may still
+get our treaty signed.’
+
+“Ah! monsieur, you can imagine the horrible uncertainty in which we
+spent the day. Never, never shall I forget those slow hours during
+which we sat together, starting at every distant shout, lest it should
+be the first sign of the rejoicing which this news would cause in
+London. Monsieur Otto passed from youth to age in a day. As for me, I
+find it easier to go out and meet danger than to wait for it. I set
+forth, therefore, towards evening. I wandered here, and wandered there.
+I was in the fencing-rooms of Monsieur Angelo, and in the salon-de-boxe
+of Monsieur Jackson, and in the club of Brooks, and in the lobby of the
+Chamber of Deputies, but nowhere did I hear any news. Still, it was
+possible that Milord Hawkesbury had received it himself just as we had.
+He lived in Harley Street, and there it was that the treaty was to be
+finally signed that night at eight. I entreated Monsieur Otto to drink
+two glasses of Burgundy before he went, for I feared lest his haggard
+face and trembling hands should rouse suspicion in the English
+minister.
+
+“Well, we went round together in one of the Embassy’s carriages about
+half-past seven. Monsieur Otto went in alone; but presently, on excuse
+of getting his portfolio, he came out again, with his cheeks flushed
+with joy, to tell me that all was well.
+
+“‘He knows nothing,’ he whispered. ‘Ah, if the next half-hour were
+over!’
+
+“‘Give me a sign when it is settled,’ said I.
+
+“‘For what reason?’
+
+“‘Because until then no messenger shall interrupt you. I give you my
+promise--I, Alphonse Lacour.’
+
+“He clasped my hand in both of his.
+
+“‘I shall make an excuse to move one of the candles on to the table in
+the window,’ said he, and hurried into the house, whilst I was left
+waiting beside the carriage.
+
+“Well, if we could but secure ourselves from interruption for a single
+half-hour the day would be our own. I had hardly begun to form my plans
+when I saw the lights of a carriage coming swiftly from the direction of
+Oxford Street. Ah! if it should be the messenger! What could I do?
+I was prepared to kill him--yes, even to kill him--rather than at this
+last moment allow our work to be undone. Thousands die to make a
+glorious war. Why should not one die to make a glorious peace?
+What though they hurried me to the scaffold? I should have sacrificed
+myself for my country. I had a little curved Turkish knife strapped to
+my waist. My hand was on the hilt of it when the carriage which had
+alarmed me so rattled safely past me.
+
+“But another might come. I must be prepared. Above all, I must not
+compromise the Embassy. I ordered our carriage to move on, and I
+engaged what you call a hackney coach. Then I spoke to the driver, and
+gave him a guinea. He understood that it was a special service.
+
+“‘You shall have another guinea if you do what you are told,’ said I.
+
+“‘All right, master,’ said he, turning his slow eyes upon me without a
+trace of excitement or curiosity.
+
+“‘If I enter your coach with another gentleman, you will drive up and
+down Harley Street, and take no orders from anyone but me. When I get
+out, you will carry the other gentleman to Watier’s Club, in Bruton
+Street.’
+
+“‘All right, master,’ said he again.
+
+“So I stood outside Milord Hawkesbury’s house, and you can think how
+often my eyes went up to that window in the hope of seeing the candle
+twinkle in it. Five minutes passed, and another five. Oh, how slowly
+they crept along! It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a
+white fog crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the
+dim oil-lamps. I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my
+ears were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the
+rumble of wheels. It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of
+Harley, even upon a sunny day. The houses are solid and very
+respectable over yonder, but there is nothing of the feminine about
+them. It is a city to be inhabited by males. But on that raw night,
+amid the damp and the fog, with the anxiety gnawing at my heart, it
+seemed the saddest, weariest spot in the whole wide world. I paced up
+and down slapping my hands to keep them warm, and still straining my
+ears. And then suddenly out of the dull hum of the traffic down in
+Oxford Street I heard a sound detach itself, and grow louder and louder,
+and clearer and clearer with every instant, until two yellow lights came
+flashing through the fog, and a light cabriolet whirled up to the door
+of the Foreign Minister. It had not stopped before a young fellow
+sprang out of it and hurried to the steps, while the driver turned his
+horse and rattled off into the fog once more.
+
+“Ah, it is in the moment of action that I am best, monsieur. You, who
+only see me when I am drinking my wine in the Cafe de Provence, cannot
+conceive the heights to which I rise. At that moment, when I knew that
+the fruits of a ten years’ war were at stake, I was magnificent. It was
+the last French campaign and I the general and army in one.
+
+“‘Sir,” said I, touching him upon the arm, ‘are you the messenger for
+Lord Hawkesbury?’
+
+“‘Yes,’ said he.
+
+“‘I have been waiting for you half an hour,’ said I. ‘You are to follow
+me at once. He is with the French Ambassador.’
+
+“I spoke with such assurance that he never hesitated for an instant.
+When he entered the hackney coach and I followed him in, my heart gave
+such a thrill of joy that I could hardly keep from shouting aloud.
+He was a poor little creature, this Foreign Office messenger, not much
+bigger than Monsieur Otto, and I--monsieur can see my hands now, and
+imagine what they were like when I was seven-and-twenty years of age.
+
+“Well, now that I had him in my coach, the question was what I should do
+with him. I did not wish to hurt him if I could help it.
+
+“‘This is a pressing business,’ said he. ‘I have a despatch which I
+must deliver instantly.’
+
+“Our coach had rattled down Harley Street now, in accordance with my
+instruction, it turned and began to go up again.
+
+“‘Hullo!’ he cried. ‘What’s this?’
+
+“‘What then?’ I asked.
+
+“‘We are driving back. Where is Lord Hawkesbury?’
+
+“‘We shall see him presently.’
+
+“‘Let me out!’ he shouted. ‘There’s some trickery in this. Coachman,
+stop the coach! Let me out, I say!’
+
+“I dashed him back into his seat as he tried to turn the handle of the
+door. He roared for help. I clapped my palm across his mouth. He made
+his teeth meet through the side of it. I seized his own cravat and
+bound it over his lips. He still mumbled and gurgled, but the noise was
+covered by the rattle of our wheels. We were passing the minister’s
+house, and there was no candle in the window.
+
+“The messenger sat quiet for a little, and I could see the glint of his
+eyes as he stared at me through the gloom. He was partly stunned, I
+think, by the force with which I had hurled him into his seat. And also
+he was pondering, perhaps, what he should do next. Presently he got his
+mouth partly free from the cravat.
+
+“‘You shall have my watch and my purse if you will let me go,’ said he.
+
+“‘Sir,’ said I, ‘I am as honourable a man as you are yourself.’
+
+“‘Who are you, then?’
+
+“‘My name is of no importance.’
+
+“‘What do you want with me?’
+
+“‘It is a bet.’
+
+“‘A bet? What d’you mean? Do you understand that I am on the
+Government service, and that you will see the inside of a gaol for
+this?’
+
+“‘That is the bet. That is the sport, said I.’
+
+“‘You may find it poor sport before you finish,’ he cried. ‘What is
+this insane bet of yours then?’
+
+“‘I have bet,’ I answered, ‘that I will recite a chapter of the Koran to
+the first gentleman whom I should meet in the street.’
+
+“I do not know what made me think of it, save that my translation was
+always running in my head. He clutched at the door-handle, and again I
+had to hurl him back into his seat.
+
+“‘How long will it take?’ he gasped.
+
+“‘It depends on the chapter,’ I answered.
+
+“‘A short one, then, and let me go!’
+
+“‘But is it fair?’ I argued. ‘When I say a chapter, I do not mean the
+shortest chapter, but rather one which should be of average length.’
+
+“‘Help! help! help!’ he squealed, and I was compelled again to adjust
+his cravat.
+
+“‘A little patience,’ said I, ‘and it will soon be over. I should like
+to recite the chapter which would be of most interest to yourself. You
+will confess that I am trying to make things as pleasant as I can for
+you?’
+
+“He slipped his mouth free again.
+
+“‘Quick, then, quick!’ he groaned.
+
+“‘The Chapter of the Camel?’ I suggested.
+
+“‘Yes, yes.’
+
+“‘Or that of the Fleet Stallion?’
+
+“‘Yes, yes. Only proceed!’
+
+“We had passed the window and there was no candle. I settled down to
+recite the Chapter of the Stallion to him. Perhaps you do not know your
+Koran very well, monsieur? Well, I knew it by heart then, as I know it
+by heart now. The style is a little exasperating for anyone who is in a
+hurry. But, then, what would you have? The people in the East are
+never in a hurry, and it was written for them. I repeated it all with
+the dignity and solemnity which a sacred book demands, and the young
+Englishman he wriggled and groaned.
+
+“‘When the horses, standing on three feet and placing the tip of their
+fourth foot upon the ground, were mustered in front of him in the
+evening, he said, I have loved the love of earthly good above the
+remembrance of things on high, and have spent the time in viewing these
+horses. Bring the horses back to me. And when they were brought back
+he began to cut off their legs and--’
+
+“It was at this moment that the young Englishman sprang at me. My God!
+how little can I remember of the next few minutes! He was a boxer, this
+shred of a man. He had been trained to strike. I tried to catch him by
+the hands. Pac, pac, he came upon my nose and upon my eye. I put down
+my head and thrust at him with it. Pac, he came from below. But ah!
+I was too much for him. I hurled myself upon him, and he had no place
+where he could escape from my weight. He fell flat upon the cushions
+and I seated myself upon him with such conviction that the wind flew
+from him as from a burst bellows.
+
+“Then I searched to see what there was with which I could tie him. I
+drew the strings from my shoes, and with one I secured his wrists, and
+with another his ankles. Then I tied the cravat round his mouth again,
+so that he could only lie and glare at me. When I had done all this,
+and had stopped the bleeding of my own nose, I looked out of the coach
+and ah, monsieur, the very first thing which caught my eyes was that
+candle--that dear little candle--glimmering in the window of the
+minister. Alone, with these two hands, I had retrieved the capitulation
+of an army and the loss of a province. Yes, monsieur, what Abercrombie
+and 5,000 men had done upon the beach at Aboukir was undone by me,
+single-handed, in a hackney coach in Harley Street.
+
+“Well, I had no time to lose, for at any moment Monsieur Otto might be
+down. I shouted to my driver, gave him his second guinea, and allowed
+him to proceed to Watier’s. For myself, I sprang into our Embassy’s
+carriage, and a moment later the door of the minister opened. He had
+himself escorted Monsieur Otto downstairs, and now so deep was he in
+talk that he walked out bareheaded as far as the carriage. As he stood
+there by the open door, there came the rattle of wheels, and a man
+rushed down the pavement.
+
+“‘A despatch of great importance for Milord Hawkesbury!’ he cried.
+
+“I could see that it was not my messenger, but a second one. Milord
+Hawkesbury caught the paper from his hand, and read it by the light of
+the carriage lamp. His face, monsieur, was as white as this plate,
+before he had finished.
+
+“‘Monsieur Otto,’ he cried, ‘we have signed this treaty upon a false
+understanding. Egypt is in our hands.’
+
+“‘What!’ cried Monsieur Otto. ‘Impossible!’
+
+“‘It is certain. It fell to Abercrombie last month.’
+
+“‘In that case,’ said Monsieur Otto, ‘it is very fortunate that the
+treaty is signed.’
+
+“‘Very fortunate for you, sir,’ cried Milord Hawkesbury, as he turned
+back to the house.
+
+“Next day, monsieur, what they call the Bow Street runners were after
+me, but they could not run across salt water, and Alphonse Lacour was
+receiving the congratulations of Monsieur Talleyrand and the First
+Consul before ever his pursuers had got as far as Dover.”
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+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>
+     The Green Flag | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style> /* <![CDATA[ */
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+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
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+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
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+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE GREEN FLAG
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Arthur Conan Doyle
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> THE GREEN FLAG </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> CAPTAIN SHARKEY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE CROXLEY MASTER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE STRIPED CHEST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> A SHADOW BEFORE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> THE KING OF THE FOXES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> THE NEW CATACOMB </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE GREEN FLAG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Jack Conolly, of the Irish Shotgun Brigade, the Rory of the Hills
+      Inner Circle, and the extreme left wing of the Land League, was
+      incontinently shot by Sergeant Murdoch of the constabulary, in a little
+      moonlight frolic near Kanturk, his twin-brother Dennis joined the British
+      Army. The countryside had become too hot for him; and, as the seventy-five
+      shillings were wanting which might have carried him to America, he took
+      the only way handy of getting himself out of the way. Seldom has Her
+      Majesty had a less promising recruit, for his hot Celtic blood seethed
+      with hatred against Britain and all things British. The sergeant, however,
+      smiling complacently over his 6 ft. of brawn and his 44 in. chest, whisked
+      him off with a dozen other of the boys to the depot at Fermoy, whence in a
+      few weeks they were sent on, with the spade-work kinks taken out of their
+      backs, to the first battalion of the Royal Mallows, at the top of the
+      roster for foreign service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Royal Mallows, at about that date, were as strange a lot of men as
+      ever were paid by a great empire to fight its battles. It was the darkest
+      hour of the land struggle, when the one side came out with crow-bar and
+      battering-ram by day, and the other with mask and with shot-gun by night.
+      Men driven from their homes and potato-patches found their way even into
+      the service of the Government, to which it seemed to them that they owed
+      their troubles, and now and then they did wild things before they came.
+      There were recruits in the Irish regiments who would forget to answer to
+      their own names, so short had been their acquaintance with them. Of these
+      the Royal Mallows had their full share; and, while they still retained
+      their fame as being one of the smartest corps in the army, no one knew
+      better than their officers that they were dry-rotted with treason and with
+      bitter hatred of the flag under which they served.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the centre of all the disaffection was C Company, in which Dennis
+      Conolly found himself enrolled. They were Celts, Catholics, and men of the
+      tenant class to a man; and their whole experience of the British
+      Government had been an inexorable landlord, and a constabulary who seemed
+      to them to be always on the side of the rent-collector. Dennis was not the
+      only moonlighter in the ranks, nor was he alone in having an intolerable
+      family blood-feud to harden his heart. Savagery had begotten savagery in
+      that veiled civil war. A landlord with an iron mortgage weighing down upon
+      him had small bowels for his tenantry. He did but take what the law
+      allowed, and yet, with men like Jim Holan, or Patrick McQuire, or Peter
+      Flynn, who had seen the roofs torn from their cottages and their folk
+      huddled among their pitiable furniture upon the roadside, it was ill to
+      argue about abstract law. What matter that in that long and bitter
+      struggle there was many another outrage on the part of the tenant, and
+      many another grievance on the side of the landowner! A stricken man can
+      only feel his own wound, and the rank and file of the C Company of the
+      Royal Mallows were sore and savage to the soul. There were low whisperings
+      in barrack-rooms and canteens, stealthy meetings in public-house parlours,
+      bandying of passwords from mouth to mouth, and many other signs which made
+      their officers right glad when the order came which sent them to foreign,
+      and better still, to active service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Irish regiments have before now been disaffected, and have at a
+      distance looked upon the foe as though he might, in truth, be the friend;
+      but when they have been put face on to him, and when their officers have
+      dashed to the front with a wave and halloo, those rebel hearts have
+      softened and their gallant Celtic blood has boiled with the mad joy of the
+      fight, until the slower Britons have marvelled that they ever could have
+      doubted the loyalty of their Irish comrades. So it would be again,
+      according to the officers, and so it would not be if Dennis Conolly and a
+      few others could have their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a March morning upon the eastern fringe of the Nubian desert. The
+      sun had not yet risen, but a tinge of pink flushed up as far as the
+      cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon across
+      the horizon. From the coast inland stretched dreary sand-plains, dotted
+      over with thick clumps of mimosa scrub and mottled patches of thorny bush.
+      No tree broke the monotony of that vast desert. The dull, dusty hue of the
+      thickets, and the yellow glare of the sand, were the only colours, save at
+      one point, where, from a distance, it seemed that a land-slip of
+      snow-white stones had shot itself across a low foot-hill. But as the
+      traveller approached he saw, with a thrill, that these were no stones, but
+      the bleaching bones of a slaughtered army. With its dull tints, its
+      gnarled, viprous bushes, its arid, barren soil, and this death streak
+      trailed across it, it was indeed a nightmare country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some eight or ten miles inland the rolling plain curved upwards with a
+      steeper slope until it ran into a line of red basaltic rock which
+      zigzagged from north to south, heaping itself up at one point into a
+      fantastic knoll. On the summit of this there stood upon that March morning
+      three Arab chieftains&mdash;the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas, Moussa Wad
+      Aburhegel, who led the Berber dervishes, and Hamid Wad Hussein, who had
+      come northward with his fighting men from the land of the Baggaras. They
+      had all three just risen from their praying-carpets, and were peering out,
+      with fierce, high-nosed faces thrust forwards, at the stretch of country
+      revealed by the spreading dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red rim of the sun was pushing itself now above the distant sea, and
+      the whole coast-line stood out brilliantly yellow against the rich deep
+      blue beyond. At one spot lay a huddle of white-walled houses, a mere
+      splotch in the distance; while four tiny cock-boats, which lay beyond,
+      marked the position of three of Her Majesty’s 10,000-ton troopers and the
+      admiral’s flagship. But it was not upon the distant town, nor upon the
+      great vessels, nor yet upon the sinister white litter which gleamed in the
+      plain beneath them, that the Arab chieftains gazed. Two miles from where
+      they stood, amid the sand-hills and the mimosa scrub, a great
+      parallelogram had been marked by piled-up bushes. From the inside of this
+      dozens of tiny blue smoke-reeks curled up into the still morning air;
+      while there rose from it a confused deep murmur, the voices of men and the
+      gruntings of camels blended into the same insect buzz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The unbelievers have cooked their morning food,” said the Baggara chief,
+      shading his eyes with his tawny, sinewy hand. “Truly their sleep has been
+      scanty; for Hamid and a hundred of his men have fired upon them since the
+      rising of the moon.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So it was with these others,” answered the Sheik Kadra, pointing with his
+      sheathed sword towards the old battle-field. “They also had a day of
+      little water and a night of little rest, and the heart was gone out of
+      them ere ever the sons of the Prophet had looked them in the eyes. This
+      blade drank deep that day, and will again before the sun has travelled
+      from the sea to the hill.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And yet these are other men,” remarked the Berber dervish. “Well, I know
+      that Allah has placed them in the clutch of our fingers, yet it may be
+      that they with the big hats will stand firmer than the cursed men of
+      Egypt.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Pray Allah that it may be so,” cried the fierce Baggara, with a flash of
+      his black eyes. “It was not to chase women that I brought 700 men from the
+      river to the coast. See, my brother, already they are forming their
+      array.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fanfare of bugle-calls burst from the distant camp. At the same time the
+      bank of bushes at one side had been thrown or trampled down, and the
+      little army within began to move slowly out on to the plain. Once clear of
+      the camp they halted, and the slant rays of the sun struck flashes from
+      bayonet and from gun-barrel as the ranks closed up until the big pith
+      helmets joined into a single long white ribbon. Two streaks of scarlet
+      glowed on either side of the square, but elsewhere the fringe of
+      fighting-men was of the dull yellow khaki tint which hardly shows against
+      the desert sand. Inside their array was a dense mass of camels and mules
+      bearing stores and ambulance needs. Outside a twinkling clump of cavalry
+      was drawn up on each flank, and in front a thin, scattered line of mounted
+      infantry was already slowly advancing over the bush-strewn plain, halting
+      on every eminence, and peering warily round as men might who have to pick
+      their steps among the bones of those who have preceded them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three chieftains still lingered upon the knoll, looking down with
+      hungry eyes and compressed lips at the dark steel-tipped patch. “They are
+      slower to start than the men of Egypt,” the Sheik of the Hadendowas
+      growled in his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Slower also to go back, perchance, my brother,” murmured the dervish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And yet they are not many&mdash;3,000 at the most.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And we 10,000, with the Prophet’s grip upon our spear-hafts and his words
+      upon our banner. See to their chieftain, how he rides upon the right and
+      looks up at us with the glass that sees from afar! It may be that he sees
+      this also.” The Arab shook his sword at the small clump of horsemen who
+      had spurred out from the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Lo! he beckons,” cried the dervish; “and see those others at the corner,
+      how they bend and heave. Ha! by the Prophet, I had thought it.” As he
+      spoke, a little woolly puff of smoke spurted up at the corner of the
+      square, and a 7 lb. shell burst with a hard metallic smack just over their
+      heads. The splinters knocked chips from the red rocks around them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bismillah!” cried the Hadendowa; “if the gun can carry thus far, then
+      ours can answer to it. Ride to the left, Moussa, and tell Ben Ali to cut
+      the skin from the Egyptians if they cannot hit yonder mark. And you,
+      Hamid, to the right, and see that 3,000 men lie close in the wady that we
+      have chosen. Let the others beat the drum and show the banner of the
+      Prophet, for by the black stone their spears will have drunk deep ere they
+      look upon the stars again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long, straggling, boulder-strewn plateau lay on the summit of the red
+      hills, sloping very precipitously to the plain, save at one point, where a
+      winding gully curved downwards, its mouth choked with sand-mounds and
+      olive-hued scrub. Along the edge of this position lay the Arab host&mdash;a
+      motley crew of shock-headed desert clansmen, fierce predatory slave
+      dealers of the interior, and wild dervishes from the Upper Nile, all blent
+      together by their common fearlessness and fanaticism. Two races were
+      there, as wide as the poles apart&mdash;the thin-lipped, straight-haired
+      Arab and the thick-lipped, curly negro&mdash;yet the faith of Islam had
+      bound them closer than a blood tie. Squatting among the rocks, or lying
+      thickly in the shadow, they peered out at the slow-moving square beneath
+      them, while women with water-skins and bags of dhoora fluttered from group
+      to group, calling out to each other those fighting texts from the Koran
+      which in the hour of battle are maddening as wine to the true believer. A
+      score of banners waved over the ragged, valiant crew, and among them, upon
+      desert horses and white Bishareen camels, were the Emirs and Sheiks who
+      were to lead them against the infidels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Sheik Kadra sprang into his saddle and drew his sword there was a
+      wild whoop and a clatter of waving spears, while the one-ended war-drums
+      burst into a dull crash like a wave upon shingle. For a moment 10,000 men
+      were up on the rocks with brandished arms and leaping figures; the next
+      they were under cover again, waiting sternly and silently for their
+      chieftain’s orders. The square was less than half a mile from the ridge
+      now, and shell after shell from the 7 lb. guns were pitching over it. A
+      deep roar on the right, and then a second one showed that the Egyptian
+      Krupps were in action. Sheik Kadra’s hawk eyes saw that the shells burst
+      far beyond the mark, and he spurred his horse along to where a knot of
+      mounted chiefs were gathered round the two guns, which were served by
+      their captured crews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How is this, Ben Ali?” he cried. “It was not thus that the dogs fired
+      when it was their own brothers in faith at whom they aimed!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A chieftain reined his horse back, and thrust a blood-smeared sword into
+      its sheath. Beside him two Egyptian artillerymen with their throats cut
+      were sobbing out their lives upon the ground. “Who lays the gun this
+      time?” asked the fierce chief, glaring at the frightened gunners. “Here,
+      thou black-browed child of Shaitan, aim, and aim for thy life.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may have been chance, or it may have been skill, but the third and
+      fourth shells burst over the square. Sheik Kadra smiled grimly and
+      galloped back to the left, where his spearmen were streaming down into the
+      gully. As he joined them a deep growling rose from the plain beneath, like
+      the snarling of a sullen wild beast, and a little knot of tribesmen fell
+      into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead from a Gardner. Their
+      comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down into the ravine. From all
+      along the crest burst the hard, sharp crackle of Remington fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The square had slowly advanced, rippling over the low sandhills, and
+      halting every few minutes to re-arrange its formation. Now, having made
+      sure that there was no force of the enemy in the scrub, it changed its
+      direction, and began to take a line parallel to the Arab position. It was
+      too steep to assail from the front, and if they moved far enough to the
+      right the general hoped that he might turn it. On the top of those ruddy
+      hills lay a baronetcy for him, and a few extra hundreds in his pension,
+      and he meant having them both that day. The Remington fire was annoying,
+      and so were those two Krupp guns; already there were more cacolets full
+      than he cared to see. But on the whole he thought it better to hold his
+      fire until he had more to aim at than a few hundred of fuzzy heads peeping
+      over a razor-back ridge. He was a bulky, red-faced man, a fine
+      whist-player, and a soldier who knew his work. His men believed in him,
+      and he had good reason to believe in them, for he had excellent stuff
+      under him that day. Being an ardent champion of the short-service system,
+      he took particular care to work with veteran first battalions, and his
+      little force was the compressed essence of an army corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The left front of the square was formed by four companies of the Royal
+      Wessex, and the right by four of the Royal Mallows. On either side the
+      other halves of the same regiments marched in quarter column of companies.
+      Behind them, on the right was a battalion of Guards, and on the left one
+      of Marines, while the rear was closed in by a Rifle battalion. Two Royal
+      Artillery 7 lb. screw-guns kept pace with the square, and a dozen
+      white-bloused sailors, under their blue-coated, tight-waisted officers,
+      trailed their Gardner in front, turning every now and then to spit up at
+      the draggled banners which waved over the cragged ridge. Hussars and
+      Lancers scouted in the scrub at each side, and within moved the clump of
+      camels, with humorous eyes and supercilious lips, their comic faces a
+      contrast to the blood-stained men who already lay huddled in the cacolets
+      on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The square was now moving slowly on a line parallel with the rocks,
+      stopping every few minutes to pick up wounded, and to allow the screw-guns
+      and Gardner to make themselves felt. The men looked serious, for that
+      spring on to the rocks of the Arab army had given them a vague glimpse of
+      the number and ferocity of their foes; but their faces were set like
+      stone, for they knew to a man that they must win or they must die&mdash;and
+      die, too, in a particularly unlovely fashion. But most serious of all was
+      the general, for he had seen that which brought a flush to his cheeks and
+      a frown to his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I say, Stephen,” said he to his galloper, “those Mallows seem a trifle
+      jumpy. The right flank company bulged a bit when the niggers showed on the
+      hill.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Youngest troops in the square, sir,” murmured the aide, looking at them
+      critically through his eye-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Tell Colonel Flanagan to see to it, Stephen,” said the general; and the
+      galloper sped upon his way. The colonel, a fine old Celtic warrior, was
+      over at C Company in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How are the men, Captain Foley?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Never better, sir,” answered the senior captain, in the spirit that makes
+      a Madras officer look murder if you suggest recruiting his regiment from
+      the Punjab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stiffen them up!” cried the colonel. As he rode away a colour-sergeant
+      seemed to trip, and fell forward into a mimosa bush. He made no effort to
+      rise, but lay in a heap among the thorns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sergeant O’Rooke’s gone, sorr,” cried a voice. “Never mind, lads,” said
+      Captain Foley. “He’s died like a soldier, fighting for his Queen.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Down with the Queen!” shouted a hoarse voice from the ranks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the roar of the Gardner and the typewriter-like clicking of the hopper
+      burst in at the tail of the words. Captain Foley heard them, and
+      Subalterns Grice and Murphy heard them; but there are times when a deaf
+      ear is a gift from the gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Steady, Mallows!” cried the captain, in a pause of the grunting
+      machine-gun. “We have the honour of Ireland to guard this day.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And well we know how to guard it, captin!” cried the same ominous voice;
+      and there was a buzz from the length of the company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain and the two subs. came together behind the marching line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They seem a bit out of hand,” murmured the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bedad,” said the Galway boy, “they mean to scoot like redshanks.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They nearly broke when the blacks showed on the hill,” said Grice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The first man that turns, my sword is through him,” cried Foley, loud
+      enough to be heard by five files on either side of him. Then, in a lower
+      voice, “It’s a bitter drop to swallow, but it’s my duty to report what you
+      think to the chief, and have a company of Jollies put behind us.” He
+      turned away with the safety of the square upon his mind, and before he had
+      reached his goal the square had ceased to exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In their march in front of what looked like a face of cliff, they had come
+      opposite to the mouth of the gully, in which, screened by scrub and
+      boulders, 3,000 chosen dervishes, under Hamid Wad Hussein, of the
+      Baggaras, were crouching. Tat, tat, tat, went the rifles of three mounted
+      infantrymen in front of the left shoulder of the square, and an instant
+      later they were spurring it for their lives, crouching over the manes of
+      their horses, and pelting over the sandhills with thirty or forty
+      galloping chieftains at their heels. Rocks and scrub and mimosa swarmed
+      suddenly into life. Rushing black figures came and went in the gaps of the
+      bushes. A howl that drowned the shouts of the officers, a long quavering
+      yell, burst from the ambuscade. Two rolling volleys from the Royal Wessex,
+      one crash from the screw-gun firing shrapnel, and then before a second
+      cartridge could be rammed in, a living, glistening black wave, tipped with
+      steel, had rolled over the gun, the Royal Wessex had been dashed back
+      among the camels, and 1,000 fanatics were hewing and hacking in the heart
+      of what had been the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The camels and mules in the centre, jammed more and more together as their
+      leaders flinched from the rush of the tribesmen, shut out the view of the
+      other three faces, who could only tell that the Arabs had got in by the
+      yells upon Allah, which rose ever nearer and nearer amid the clouds of
+      sand-dust, the struggling animals, and the dense mass of swaying, cursing
+      men. Some of the Wessex fired back at the Arabs who had passed them, as
+      excited Tommies will, and it is whispered among doctors that it was not
+      always a Remington bullet which was cut from a wound that day. Some
+      rallied in little knots, stabbing furiously with their bayonets at the
+      rushing spearmen. Others turned at bay with their backs against the
+      camels, and others round the general and his staff, who, revolver in hand,
+      had flung themselves into the heart of it. But the whole square was
+      sidling slowly away from the gorge, pushed back by the pressure at the
+      shattered corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officers and men at the other faces were glancing nervously to the
+      rear, uncertain what was going on, and unable to take help to their
+      comrades without breaking the formation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By Jove, they’ve got through the Wessex!” cried Grice of the Mallows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The divils have hurrooshed us, Ted,” said his brother subaltern, cocking
+      his revolver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ranks were breaking, and crowding towards Private Conolly, all talking
+      together as the officers peered back through the veil of dust. The sailors
+      had run their Gardner out, and she was squirting death out of her five
+      barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages. “Oh, this bloody
+      gun!” shouted a voice. “She’s jammed again.” The fierce metallic grunting
+      had ceased, and her crew were straining and hauling at the breech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This damned vertical feed!” cried an officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The spanner, Wilson!&mdash;the spanner! Stand to your cutlasses, boys, or
+      they’re into us.” His voice rose into a shriek as he ended, for a
+      shovel-headed spear had been buried in his chest. A second wave of
+      dervishes lapped over the hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and the
+      right front of the line. The sailors were overborne in an instant, but the
+      Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the yell of the Moslem with
+      an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two hundred of them with a single
+      point-blank volley. The howling, leaping crew swerved away to the right,
+      and dashed on into the gap which had already been made for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But C Company had drawn no trigger to stop that fiery rush. The men leaned
+      moodily upon their Martinis. Some had even thrown them upon the ground.
+      Conolly was talking fiercely to those about him. Captain Foley, thrusting
+      his way through the press, rushed up to him with a revolver in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This is your doing, you villain!” he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If you raise your pistol, Captin, your brains will be over your coat,”
+      said a low voice at his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw that several rifles were turned on him. The two subs. had pressed
+      forward, and were by his side. “What is it, then?” he cried, looking round
+      from one fierce mutinous face to another. “Are you Irishmen? Are you
+      soldiers? What are you here for but to fight for your country?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “England is no country of ours,” cried several.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are not fighting for England. You are fighting for Ireland, and for
+      the Empire of which it as part.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A black curse on the Impire!” shouted Private McQuire, throwing down his
+      rifle. “’Twas the Impire that backed the man that druv me onto the
+      roadside. May me hand stiffen before I draw trigger for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What’s the Impire to us, Captain Foley, and what’s the Widdy to us
+      ayther?” cried a voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Let the constabulary foight for her.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay, be God, they’d be better imployed than pullin’ a poor man’s thatch
+      about his ears.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Or shootin’ his brother, as they did mine.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It was the Impire laid my groanin’ mother by the wayside. Her son will
+      rot before he upholds it, and ye can put that in the charge-sheet in the
+      next coort-martial.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain the three officers begged, menaced, persuaded. The square was
+      still moving, ever moving, with the same bloody fight raging in its
+      entrails. Even while they had been speaking they had been shuffling
+      backwards, and the useless Gardner, with her slaughtered crew, was already
+      a good hundred yards from them. And the pace was accelerating. The mass of
+      men, tormented and writhing, was trying, by a common instinct, to reach
+      some clearer ground where they could re-form. Three faces were still
+      intact, but the fourth had been caved in, and badly mauled, without its
+      comrades being able to help it. The Guards had met a fresh rush of the
+      Hadendowas, and had blown back the tribesmen with a volley, and the
+      cavalry had ridden over another stream of them, as they welled out of the
+      gully. A litter of hamstrung horses, and haggled men behind them, showed
+      that a spearman on his face among the bushes can show some sport to the
+      man who charges him. But, in spite of all, the square was still reeling
+      swiftly backwards, trying to shake itself clear of this torment which
+      clung to its heart. Would it break or would it re-form? The lives of five
+      regiments and the honour of the flag hung upon the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some, at least, were breaking. The C Company of the Mallows had lost all
+      military order, and was pushing back in spite of the haggard officers, who
+      cursed, and shoved, and prayed in the vain attempt to hold them. The
+      captain and the subs. were elbowed and jostled, while the men crowded
+      towards Private Conolly for their orders. The confusion had not spread,
+      for the other companies, in the dust and smoke and turmoil, had lost touch
+      with their mutinous comrades. Captain Foley saw that even now there might
+      be time to avert a disaster. “Think what you are doing, man,” he yelled,
+      rushing towards the ringleader. “There are a thousand Irish in the square,
+      and they are dead men if we break.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words alone might have had little effect on the old moonlighter. It is
+      possible that, in his scheming brain, he had already planned how he was to
+      club his Irish together and lead them to the sea. But at that moment the
+      Arabs broke through the screen of camels which had fended them off. There
+      was a struggle, a screaming, a mule rolled over, a wounded man sprang up
+      in a cacolet with a spear through him, and then through the narrow gap
+      surged a stream of naked savages, mad with battle, drunk with slaughter,
+      spotted and splashed with blood&mdash;blood dripping from their spears,
+      their arms, their faces. Their yells, their bounds, their crouching,
+      darting figures, the horrid energy of their spear-thrusts, made them look
+      like a blast of fiends from the pit. And were these the Allies of Ireland?
+      Were these the men who were to strike for her against her enemies?
+      Conolly’s soul rose up in loathing at the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a man of firm purpose, and yet at the first sight of those howling
+      fiends that purpose faltered, and at the second it was blown to the winds.
+      He saw a huge coal-black negro seize a shrieking camel-driver and saw at
+      his throat with a knife. He saw a shock-headed tribesman plunge his great
+      spear through the back of their own little bugler from Mill-street. He saw
+      a dozen deeds of blood&mdash;the murder of the wounded, the hacking of the
+      unarmed&mdash;and caught, too, in a glance, the good wholesome faces of
+      the faced-about rear rank of the Marines. The Mallows, too, had faced
+      about, and in an instant Conolly had thrown himself into the heart of C
+      Company, striving with the officers to form the men up with their
+      comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the mischief had gone too far. The rank and file had no heart in their
+      work. They had broken before, and this last rush of murderous savages was
+      a hard thing for broken men to stand against. They flinched from the
+      furious faces and dripping forearms. Why should they throw away their
+      lives for a flag for which they cared nothing? Why should their leader
+      urge them to break, and now shriek to them to re-form? They would not
+      re-form. They wanted to get to the sea and to safety. He flung himself
+      among them with outstretched arms, with words of reason, with shouts, with
+      gaspings. It was useless; the tide was beyond his control. They were
+      shredding out into the desert with their faces set for the coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bhoys, will ye stand for this?” screamed a voice. It was so ringing, so
+      strenuous, that the breaking Mallows glanced backwards. They were held by
+      what they saw. Private Conolly had planted his rifle-stock downwards in a
+      mimosa bush. From the fixed bayonet there fluttered a little green flag
+      with the crownless harp. God knows for what black mutiny, for what signal
+      of revolt, that flag had been treasured up within the corporal’s tunic!
+      Now its green wisp stood amid the rush, while three proud regimental
+      colours were reeling slowly backwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What for the flag?” yelled the private.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My heart’s blood for it! and mine! and mine!” cried a score of voices.
+      “God bless it! The flag, boys&mdash;the flag!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      C Company were rallying upon it. The stragglers clutched at each other,
+      and pointed. “Here, McQuire, Flynn, O’Hara,” ran the shoutings. “Close on
+      the flag! Back to the flag!” The three standards reeled backwards, and the
+      seething square strove for a clearer space where they could form their
+      shattered ranks; but C Company, grim and powder-stained, choked with
+      enemies and falling fast, still closed in on the little rebel ensign that
+      flapped from the mimosa bush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a good half-hour before the square, having disentangled itself from
+      its difficulties and dressed its ranks, began to slowly move forwards over
+      the ground, across which in its labour and anguish it had been driven. The
+      long trail of Wessex men and Arabs showed but too clearly the path they
+      had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How many got into us, Stephen?” asked the general, tapping his snuff-box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should put them down at a thousand or twelve hundred, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I did not see any get out again. What the devil were the Wessex thinking
+      about? The Guards stood well, though; so did the Mallows.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Colonel Flanagan reports that his front flank company was cut off, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, that’s the company that was out of hand when we advanced!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Colonel Flanagan reports, sir, that the company took the whole brunt of
+      the attack, and gave the square time to re-form.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Tell the Hussars to ride forward, Stephen,” said the general, “and try if
+      they can see anything of them. There’s no firing, and I fear that the
+      Mallows will want to do some recruiting. Let the square take ground by the
+      right, and then advance!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas saw from his knoll that the men with
+      the big hats had rallied, and that they were coming back in the quiet
+      business fashion of men whose work was before them. He took counsel with
+      Moussa the Dervish and Hussein the Baggara, and a woestruck man was he
+      when he learned that the third of his men were safe in the Moslem
+      Paradise. So, having still some signs of victory to show, he gave the
+      word, and the desert warriors flitted off unseen and unheard, even as they
+      had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A red rock plateau, a few hundred spears and Remingtons, and a plain which
+      for the second time was strewn with slaughtered men, was all that his
+      day’s fighting gave to the English general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a squadron of Hussars which came first to the spot where the rebel
+      flag had waved. A dense litter of Arab dead marked the place. Within, the
+      flag waved no longer, but the rifle stood in the mimosa bush, and round
+      it, with their wounds in front, lay the Fenian private and the silent
+      ranks of the Irishry. Sentiment is not an English failing, but the Hussar
+      captain raised his hilt in a salute as he rode past the blood-soaked ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The British general sent home dispatches to his Government, and so did the
+      chief of the Hadendowas, though the style and manner differed somewhat in
+      each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowa people to Mohammed Ahmed, the chosen of
+      Allah, homage and greeting, (began the latter). Know by this that on the
+      fourth day of this moon we gave battle to the Kaffirs who call themselves
+      Inglees, having with us the Chief Hussein with ten thousand of the
+      faithful. By the blessing of Allah we have broken them, and chased them
+      for a mile, though indeed these infidels are different from the dogs of
+      Egypt, and have slain very many of our men. Yet we hope to smite them
+      again ere the new moon be come, to which end I trust that thou wilt send
+      us a thousand Dervishes from Omdurman. In token of our victory I send you
+      by this messenger a flag which we have taken. By the colour it might well
+      seem to have belonged to those of the true faith, but the Kaffirs gave
+      their blood freely to save it, and so we think that, though small, it is
+      very dear to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+    </h2>
+<p class="center big">
+                             I
+</p>
+    <h3>
+      HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT’S CAME HOME.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end
+      by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been
+      fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some
+      took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce,
+      others were absorbed into the fishing fleets, and a few of the more
+      reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at
+      the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the whole
+      human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they scoured the seas,
+      disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in
+      for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants by
+      their lavishness, and horrified them by their brutalities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above
+      all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant
+      menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations by
+      the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer, and
+      dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that discipline
+      and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers, both
+      formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an account
+      to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken whim of
+      the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with longer
+      stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell into their
+      hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after serving as boon
+      companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his cabin table with
+      his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and salt in front of him.
+      It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his calling in the Caribbean
+      Gulf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship <i>Morning Star</i>, and
+      yet he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the
+      falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the
+      guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt’s was his final port of call,
+      and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old England. He
+      had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he had left
+      Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red pepper, he
+      had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet edge of the
+      tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands, touching here and
+      there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy and outrage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey, of the twenty-gun pirate barque, <i>Happy Delivery</i>,
+      had passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and
+      with murdered men. Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim
+      pleasantries and of his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main
+      his coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with
+      death and many things which are worse than death. So nervous was Captain
+      Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship, and her full and valuable lading,
+      that he struck out to the west as far as Bird’s Island to be out of the
+      usual track of commerce. And yet even in those solitary waters he had been
+      unable to shake off sinister traces of Captain Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
+      ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as
+      they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and
+      wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon
+      transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship. He was
+      from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole survivor of a
+      schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath a
+      tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late captain
+      to be thrown into the boat, “as provisions for the voyage,” but the seaman
+      had at once committed it to the deep, lest the temptation should be more
+      than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge frame until, at the
+      last moment, the <i>Morning Star</i> had found him in that madness which
+      is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for Captain Scarrow,
+      for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this big New Englander was
+      a prize worth having. He vowed that he was the only man whom Captain
+      Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the pirate
+      was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the seaman’s
+      mind as he watched the agent’s boat shooting out from the Custom-house
+      quay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll lay you a wager, Morgan,” said he to the first mate, “that the agent
+      will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his lips.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, captain, I’ll have you a silver dollar, and chance it,” said the
+      rough old Bristol man beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
+      sprang up the ladder. “Welcome, Captain Scarrow!” he cried. “Have you
+      heard about Sharkey?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain grinned at the mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What devilry has he been up to now?” he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Devilry! You’ve not heard, then? Why, we’ve got him safe under lock and
+      key at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be hanged
+      to-morrow morning.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken up
+      by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through the
+      break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the front of
+      them with a radiant face turned up to Heaven, for he came of the Puritan
+      stock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sharkey to be hanged!” he cried. “You don’t know, Master Agent, if they
+      lack a hangman, do you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stand back!” cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was even
+      stronger than his interest at the news. “I’ll pay that dollar, Captain
+      Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet. How came
+      the villain to be taken?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and
+      they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship.
+      So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
+      Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
+      brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried, but
+      our good little Governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it. ‘He’s my
+      meat,’ said he, ‘and I claim the cooking of it.’ If you can stay till
+      to-morrow morning at ten, you’ll see the joint swinging.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I wish I could,” said the captain, wistfully, “but I am sadly behind time
+      now. I should start with the evening tide.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That you can’t do,” said the agent with decision. “The Governor is going
+      back with you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The Governor!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes. He’s had a dispatch from Government to return without delay. The
+      fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles has been
+      waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, well!” cried the captain in some perplexity, “I’m a plain seaman,
+      and I don’t know much of governors and baronets and their ways. I don’t
+      remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it’s in King George’s
+      service, and he asks a cast in the <i>Morning Star</i> as far as London,
+      I’ll do what I can for him. There’s my own cabin he can have and welcome.
+      As to the cooking, it’s lobscouse and salmagundy six days in the week; but
+      he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks our galley too
+      rough for his taste.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow,” said the agent. “Sir
+      Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague, and it
+      is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage. Dr. Larousse said
+      that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not put fresh life into
+      him. He has a great spirit in him, though, and you must not blame him if
+      he is somewhat short in his speech.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He may say what he likes, and do what he likes, so long as he does not
+      come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship,” said the captain. “He
+      is Governor of St. Kitt’s, but I am Governor of the <i>Morning Star</i>,
+      and, by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to
+      my employer, just as he does to King George.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order
+      before he leaves.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The early morning tide, then.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night; and he will follow
+      them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt’s without
+      seeing Sharkey do the rogue’s hornpipe. His own orders were instant, so it
+      may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr. Larousse may
+      attend him upon the journey.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations which
+      they could for their illustrious passenger. The largest cabin was turned
+      out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which barrels of
+      fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary the plain food
+      of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor’s baggage began to
+      arrive&mdash;great iron-bound ant-proof trunks, and official tin
+      packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested the
+      cocked hat or the sword within. And then there came a note, with a
+      heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made
+      his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in
+      the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun to
+      deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some
+      difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard that the Governor was an
+      eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came
+      limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick
+      bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails like a
+      poodle’s coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large green glasses
+      which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from it. A fierce beak
+      of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in front of him. His ague
+      had caused him to swathe his throat and chin with a broad linen cravat,
+      and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown secured by a cord round the
+      waist. As he advanced he carried his masterful nose high in the air, but
+      his head turned slowly from side to side in the helpless manner of the
+      purblind, and he called in a high, querulous voice for the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You have my things?” he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, Sir Charles.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Have you wine aboard?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have ordered five cases, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And tobacco?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There is a keg of Trinidad.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You play a hand at picquet?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Passably well, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then anchor up, and to sea!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly through
+      the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands. The decrepit
+      Governor still limped the deck, with one guiding hand upon the quarter
+      rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are on Government service now, captain,” said he. “They are counting
+      the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you. Have you all that she
+      will carry?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Every inch, Sir Charles.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, Captain Scarrow,
+      that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your
+      voyage.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency’s society,” said the captain.
+      “But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of
+      Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he has a snug business
+      amongst the merchants. But hark!” He raised his ring-covered band in the
+      air. From far astern there came the low, deep thunder of cannon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is from the island!” cried the captain in astonishment. “Can it be a
+      signal for us to put back?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor laughed. “You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to be
+      hanged this morning. I ordered the batteries to salute when the rascal was
+      kicking his last, so that I might know of it out at sea. There’s an end of
+      Sharkey!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There’s an end of Sharkey!” cried the captain; and the crew took up the
+      cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at the
+      low, purple line of the vanishing land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the
+      invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was
+      generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial
+      and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge and
+      so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of the
+      deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting his
+      conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and Governor
+      smoked their long pipes, and drank their claret as three good comrades
+      should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?” asked the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He is a man of some presence,” said the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil,” remarked
+      the mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions,” said the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his
+      eyes,” said Captain Scarrow. “They were of the lightest filmy blue, with
+      red-rimmed lids. Was that not so, Sir Charles?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others! But
+      I remember now that the adjutant-general said that he had such an eye as
+      you describe, and added that the jury was so foolish as to be visibly
+      discomposed when it was turned upon them. It is well for them that he is
+      dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and if he had
+      laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with straw and
+      hung him for a figure-head.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a high,
+      neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so heartily, for
+      they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who sailed the
+      western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be their own.
+      Another bottle was broached to drink to a pleasant voyage, and the
+      Governor would drink just one other on the top of it, so that the seamen
+      were glad at last to stagger off&mdash;the one to his watch, and the other
+      to his bunk. But when, after his four hours’ spell, the mate came down
+      again, he was amazed to see the Governor, in his Ramillies wig, his
+      glasses, and his powdering-gown, still seated sedately at the lonely table
+      with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt’s when he was sick,” said he,
+      “and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he is
+      well.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voyage of the <i>Morning Star</i> was a successful one, and in about
+      three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel. From the first
+      day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before they
+      were halfway across the Atlantic, he was, save only for his eyes, as well
+      as any man upon the ship. Those who uphold the nourishing qualities of
+      wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night passed that he did
+      not repeat the performance of his first one. And yet he would be out upon
+      deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the best of them, peering
+      about with his weak eyes, and asking questions about the sails and the
+      rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of the sea. And he made up
+      for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining leave from the captain that
+      the New England seaman&mdash;he who had been cast away in the boat&mdash;should
+      lead him about, and, above all, that he should sit beside him when he
+      played cards and count the number of the pips, for unaided he could not
+      tell the king from the knave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service,
+      since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey and the other was his
+      avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to lend
+      his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all respect
+      behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed forefinger
+      upon the card which he should play. Between them there was little in the
+      pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first mate, by the
+      time they sighted the Lizard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the high
+      temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark. At a sign of opposition
+      or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his cravat, his
+      masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent angle, and
+      his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulders. He cracked it once
+      over the head of the carpenter when the man had accidentally jostled him
+      upon the deck. Once, too, when there was some grumbling and talk of a
+      mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was of opinion that they
+      should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they should march forward
+      and set upon them until they had trounced the devilment out of them. “Give
+      me a knife and a bucket!” he cried with an oath, and could hardly be
+      withheld from setting forth alone to deal with the spokesman of the
+      seamen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only answerable
+      to himself at St. Kitt’s, killing became murder upon the high seas. In
+      politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop of the
+      House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met a
+      Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his vapouring
+      and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a stream of strange
+      anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had never known a
+      voyage pass so pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island, they
+      had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As evening
+      fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from Winchelsea,
+      with the long, dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front of her. Next
+      morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland, and Sir Charles
+      might meet the King’s ministers at Westminster before the evening. The
+      boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were met for a last turn of
+      cards in the cabin, the faithful American still serving as eyes to the
+      Governor. There was a good stake upon the table, for the sailors had tried
+      on this last night to win their losses back from their passenger. Suddenly
+      he threw his cards down, and swept all the money into the pocket of his
+      long-flapped silken waistcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The game’s mine!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!” cried Captain Scarrow; “you have not
+      played out the hand, and we are not the losers.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sink you for a liar!” said the Governor. “I tell you I <i>have</i> played
+      out the hand, and that you <i>are</i> a loser.” He whipped off his wig and
+      his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a pair
+      of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good God!” cried the mate. “It’s Sharkey!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway had
+      put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in each of
+      his hands. The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the scattered cards
+      in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing laugh. “Captain
+      Sharkey is the name, gentlemen,” said he, “and this is Roaring Ned
+      Galloway, the quartermaster of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. We made it hot,
+      and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and him in an oarless
+      boat. You dogs&mdash;you poor, fond, water-hearted dogs&mdash;we hold you
+      at the end of our pistols!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You may shoot, or you may not!” cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon the
+      breast of his frieze jacket. “If it’s my last breath, Sharkey, I tell you
+      that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and hell-fire in
+      store for you!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There’s a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he’s going to make
+      a very pretty death of it!” cried Sharkey. “There’s no one aft save the
+      man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you’ll need it soon. Is
+      the dinghy astern, Ned?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay, ay, captain!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And the other boats scuttled?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I bored them all in three places.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. You look as if you
+      hadn’t quite got your bearings yet. Is there anything you’d like to ask
+      me?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I believe you’re the devil himself!” cried the captain. “Where is the
+      Governor of St. Kitt’s?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut. When I
+      broke prison I learnt from my friends&mdash;for Captain Sharkey has those
+      who love him in every port&mdash;that the Governor was starting for Europe
+      under a master who had never seen him. I climbed his verandah, and I paid
+      him the little debt that I owed him. Then I came aboard you with such of
+      his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide these tell-tale
+      eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a governor should. Now, Ned, you
+      can get to work upon them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Help! Help! Watch ahoy!” yelled the mate; but the butt of the pirate’s
+      pistol crashed down on his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox. Scarrow
+      rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his mouth, and
+      threw his other arm round his waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No use, Master Scarrow,” said Sharkey. “Let us see you go down on your
+      knees and beg for your life.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll see you&mdash;” cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No; not if you twist it off.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Put an inch of your knife into him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You may put six inches, and then I won’t.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sink me, but I like his spirit!” cried Sharkey. “Put your knife in your
+      pocket, Ned. You’ve saved your skin, Scarrow, and it’s a pity so stout a
+      man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can pick up a
+      living. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since you have lain
+      at my mercy and lived to tell the story. Tie him up, Ned.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “To the stove, captain?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Tut, tut! there’s a fire in the stove. None of your rover tricks, Ned
+      Galloway, unless they are called for, or I’ll let you know which of us two
+      is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the table.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!” said the quartermaster. “You
+      surely do not mean to let him go?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still for
+      me to command and for you to obey. Sink you for a villain, do you dare to
+      question my orders?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!” said the quartermaster, and,
+      lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table. With the quick
+      dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spread-eagled hands and feet with a
+      rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with the long
+      cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of St. Kitt’s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you,” said the pirate.
+      “If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had your
+      cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand with
+      the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small craft about, and we
+      shall get one of them. When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a smack,
+      when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can get a
+      barque, and when he has a barque he’ll soon have a full-rigged ship of his
+      own&mdash;so make haste into London town, or I may be coming back, after
+      all, for the <i>Morning Star</i>.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin.
+      Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the
+      companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the
+      stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the
+      falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and
+      dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he
+      rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way through
+      the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!” he screamed. “Cutlasses and pistols!
+      Clear away the long-boat! Clear away the gig! Sharkey, the pirate, is in
+      yonder dinghy. Whistle up the larboard watch, bo’sun, and tumble into the
+      boats, all hands.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant
+      the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The boats are scuttled!” they cried. “They are leaking like a sieve.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten and outwitted at every
+      point. Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor the
+      promise of it. The sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away lay a
+      fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net. Close to them was
+      the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the shining swell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They are dead men!” cried the captain. “A shout all together, boys, to
+      warn them of their danger.” But it was too late. At that very moment the
+      dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat. There were two rapid
+      pistol-shots, a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed by silence.
+      The clustering fishermen had disappeared. And then, suddenly, as the first
+      puffs of a land-breeze came out from the Sussex shore, the boom swung out,
+      the mainsail filled, and the little craft crept out with her nose to the
+      Atlantic.
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             II
+</p>
+    <h3>
+      THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY WITH STEPHEN CRADDOCK
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Careening was a very necessary operation for the old pirate. On his
+      superior speed he depended both for overhauling the trader and escaping
+      the man-of-war. But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities
+      unless he periodically&mdash;once a year, at the least&mdash;cleared his
+      vessel’s bottom from the long, trailing plants and crusting barnacles
+      which gather so rapidly in the tropical seas. For this purpose he
+      lightened his vessel, thrust her into some narrow inlet where she would be
+      left high and dry at low water, fastened blocks and tackles to her masts
+      to pull her over on to her bilge, and then scraped her thoroughly from
+      rudder-post to cut-water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the weeks which were thus occupied the ship was, of course,
+      defenceless; but, on the other hand, she was unapproachable by anything
+      heavier than an empty hull, and the place for careening was chosen with an
+      eye to secrecy, so that there was no great danger. So secure did the
+      captains feel, that it was not uncommon for them, at such times, to leave
+      their ships under a sufficient guard, and to start off in the long-boat,
+      either upon a sporting expedition or, more frequently, upon a visit to
+      some outlying town, where they burned the heads of the women by their
+      swaggering gallantry, or broached pipes of wine in the market square, with
+      a threat to pistol all who would not drink with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes they would even appear in cities of the size of Charleston, and
+      walk the streets with their clattering side-arms&mdash;an open scandal to
+      the whole law-abiding colony. Such visits were not always paid with
+      impunity. It was one of them, for example, which provoked Lieutenant
+      Maynard to hack off Blackbeard’s head, and to spear it upon the end of his
+      bowsprit. But, as a rule, the pirate ruffled and bullied and drabbed
+      without let or hindrance, until it was time for him to go back to his ship
+      once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one pirate, however, who never crossed even the skirts of
+      civilisation, and that was the sinister Sharkey, of the barque <i>Happy
+      Delivery</i>. It may have been from his morose and solitary temper, or, as
+      is more probable, that he knew that his name upon the coast was such that
+      outraged humanity would, against all odds, have thrown themselves upon
+      him, but never once did he show his face in a settlement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When his ship was laid up he would leave her under the charge of Ned
+      Galloway&mdash;her New England quartermaster&mdash;and would take long
+      voyages in his boat, sometimes, it was said, for the purpose of burying
+      his share of the plunder, and sometimes to shoot the wild oxen of
+      Hispaniola, which, when dressed and barbecued, provided provisions for his
+      next voyage. In the latter case the barque would come round to some
+      pre-arranged spot to pick him up, and take on board what he had shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had always been a hope in the islands that Sharkey might be taken on
+      one of these occasions; and at last there came news to Kingston which
+      seemed to justify an attempt upon him. It was brought by an elderly
+      logwood-cutter who had fallen into the pirate’s hands, and in some freak
+      of drunken benevolence had been allowed to get away with nothing worse
+      than a slit nose and a drubbing. His account was recent and definite. The
+      <i>Happy Delivery</i> was careening at Torbec on the south-west of
+      Hispaniola. Sharkey, with four men, was buccaneering on the outlying
+      island of La Vache. The blood of a hundred murdered crews was calling out
+      for vengeance, and now at last it seemed as if it might not call in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Edward Compton, the high-nosed, red-faced Governor, sitting in solemn
+      conclave with the commandant and the head of the council, was sorely
+      puzzled in his mind as to how he should use this chance. There was no
+      man-of-war nearer than Jamestown, and she was a clumsy old fly-boat, which
+      could neither overhaul the pirate on the seas, nor reach her in a shallow
+      inlet. There were forts and artillerymen both at Kingston and Port Royal,
+      but no soldiers available for an expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A private venture might be fitted out&mdash;and there were many who had a
+      blood-feud with Sharkey&mdash;but what could a private venture do? The
+      pirates were numerous and desperate. As to taking Sharkey and his four
+      companions, that, of course, would be easy if they could get at them; but
+      how were they to get at them on a large well-wooded island like La Vache,
+      full of wild hills and impenetrable jungles? A reward was offered to
+      whoever could find a solution, and that brought a man to the front who had
+      a singular plan, and was himself prepared to carry it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stephen Craddock had been that most formidable person, the Puritan gone
+      wrong. Sprung from a decent Salem family, his ill-doing seemed to be a
+      recoil from the austerity of their religion, and he brought to vice all
+      the physical strength and energy with which the virtues of his ancestors
+      had endowed him. He was ingenious, fearless, and exceedingly tenacious of
+      purpose, so that when he was still young, his name became notorious upon
+      the American coast. He was the same Craddock who was tried for his life in
+      Virginia for the slaying of the Seminole Chief, and, though he escaped, it
+      was well known that he had corrupted the witnesses and bribed the judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards, as a slaver, and even, as it was hinted, as a pirate, he had
+      left an evil name behind him in the Bight of Benin. Finally he had
+      returned to Jamaica with a considerable fortune, and had settled down to a
+      life of sombre dissipation. This was the man, gaunt, austere, and
+      dangerous, who now waited upon the Governor with a plan for the
+      extirpation of Sharkey. Sir Edward received him with little enthusiasm,
+      for in spite of some rumours of conversion and reformation, he had always
+      regarded him as an infected sheep who might taint the whole of his little
+      flock. Craddock saw the Governor’s mistrust under his thin veil of formal
+      and restrained courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ve no call to fear me, sir,” said he; “I’m a changed man from what
+      you’ve known. I’ve seen the light again of late, after losing sight of it
+      for many a black year. It was through the ministration of the Rev. John
+      Simons, of our own people. Sir, if your spirit should be in need of
+      quickening, you would find a very sweet savour in his discourse.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor cocked his episcopalian nose at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You came here to speak of Sharkey, Master Craddock,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The man Sharkey is a vessel of wrath,” said Craddock. “His wicked horn
+      has been exalted over long, and it is borne in upon me that if I can cut
+      him off and utterly destroy him, it will be a goodly deed, and one which
+      may atone for many backslidings in the past. A plan has been given to me
+      whereby I may encompass his destruction.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor was keenly interested, for there was a grim and practical air
+      about the man’s freckled face which showed that he was in earnest. After
+      all, he was a seaman and a fighter, and, if it were true that he was eager
+      to atone for his past, no better man could be chosen for the business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This will be a dangerous task, Master Craddock,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If I meet my death at it, it may be that it will cleanse the memory of an
+      ill-spent life. I have much to atone for.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor did not see his way to contradict him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What was your plan?” he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You have heard that Sharkey’s barque, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, came
+      from this very port of Kingston?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It belonged to Mr. Codrington, and it was taken by Sharkey, who scuttled
+      his own sloop and moved into her because she was faster,” said Sir Edward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes; but it may be that you have lever heard that Mr. Codrington has a
+      sister ship, the <i>White Rose</i>, which lies even now in the harbour,
+      and which is so like the pirate, that, if it were not for a white paint
+      line, none could tell them apart.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah! and what of that?” asked the Governor keenly, with the air of one who
+      is just on the edge of an idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By the help of it this man shall be delivered into our hands.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And how?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I will paint out the streak upon the <i>White Rose</i>, and make it in
+      all things like the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. Then I will set sail for the
+      Island of La Vache, where this man is slaying the wild oxen. When he sees
+      me he will surely mistake me for his own vessel which he is awaiting, and
+      he will come on board to his own undoing.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a simple plan, and yet it seemed to the Governor that it might be
+      effective. Without hesitation he gave Craddock permission to carry it out,
+      and to take any steps he liked in order to further the object which he had
+      in view. Sir Edward was not very sanguine, for many attempts had been made
+      upon Sharkey, and their results had shown that he was as cunning as he was
+      ruthless. But this gaunt Puritan with the evil record was cunning and
+      ruthless also. The contest of wits between two such men as Sharkey and
+      Craddock appealed to the Governor’s acute sense of sport, and though he
+      was inwardly convinced that the chances were against him, he backed his
+      man with the same loyalty which he would have shown to his horse or his
+      cock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Haste was, above all things, necessary, for upon any day the careening
+      might be finished, and the pirates out at sea once more. But there was not
+      very much to do, and there were many willing hands to do it, so the second
+      day saw the <i>White Rose</i> beating out for the open sea. There were
+      many seamen in the port who knew the lines and rig of the pirate barque,
+      and not one of them could see the slightest difference in this
+      counterfeit. Her white side line had been painted out, her masts and yards
+      were smoked, to give them the dingy appearance of the weather-beaten
+      rover, and a large diamond-shaped patch was let into her foretopsail. Her
+      crew were volunteers, many of them being men who had sailed with Stephen
+      Craddock before&mdash;the mate, Joshua Hird, an old slaver, had been his
+      accomplice in many voyages, and came now at the bidding of his chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The avenging barque sped across the Caribbean Sea, and, at the sight of
+      that patched topsail, the little craft which they met flew left and right
+      like frightened trout in a pool. On the fourth evening Point Abacou bore
+      five miles to the north and east of them. On the fifth they were at anchor
+      in the Bay of Tortoises at the Island of La Vache, where Sharkey and his
+      four men had been hunting. It was a well-wooded place, with the palms and
+      underwood growing down to the thin crescent of silver sand which skirted
+      the shore. They had hoisted the black flag and the red pennant, but no
+      answer came from the shore. Craddock strained his eyes, hoping every
+      instant to see a boat shoot out to them with Sharkey seated in the sheets.
+      But the night passed away, and a day and yet another night, without any
+      sign of the men whom they were endeavouring to trap. It looked as if they
+      were already gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the second morning Craddock went ashore in search of some proof whether
+      Sharkey and his men were still upon the island. What he found reassured
+      him greatly. Close to the shore was a boucan of green wood, such as was
+      used for preserving the meat, and a great store of barbecued strips of
+      ox-flesh was hung upon lines all round it. The pirate ship had not taken
+      off her provisions, and therefore the hunters were still upon the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why had they not shown themselves? Was it that they had detected that this
+      was not their own ship? Or was it that they were hunting in the interior
+      of the island, and were not on the look-out for a ship yet? Craddock was
+      still hesitating between the two alternatives, when a Carib Indian came
+      down with information. The pirates were in the island, he said, and their
+      camp was a day’s march from the Sea. They had stolen his wife, and the
+      marks of their stripes were still pink upon his brown back. Their enemies
+      were his friends, and he would lead them to where they lay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Craddock could not have asked for anything better; so early next morning,
+      with a small party armed to the teeth, he set off, under the guidance of
+      the Carib. All day they struggled through brushwood and clambered over
+      rocks, pushing their way further and further into the desolate heart of
+      the island. Here and there they found traces of the hunters, the bones of
+      a slain ox, or the marks of feet in a morass, and once, towards evening,
+      it seemed to some of them that they heard the distant rattle of guns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night they spent under the trees, and pushed on again with the
+      earliest light. About noon they came to the huts of bark, which, the Carib
+      told them, were the camp of the hunters, but they were silent and
+      deserted. No doubt their occupants were away at the hunt and would return
+      in the evening, so Craddock and his men lay in ambush in the brushwood
+      around them. But no one came, and another night was spent in the forest.
+      Nothing more could be done, and it seemed to Craddock that after the two
+      days’ absence it was time that he returned to his ship once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The return journey was less difficult, as they had already blazed a path
+      for themselves. Before evening they found themselves once more at the Bay
+      of Palms, and saw their ship riding at anchor where they had left her.
+      Their boat and oars had been hauled up among the bushes, so they launched
+      it and pulled out to the barque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No luck, then!” cried Joshua Hird, the mate, looking down with a pale
+      face from the poop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “His camp was empty, but he may come down to us yet,” said Craddock, with
+      his hand on the ladder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody upon deck began to laugh. “I think,” said the mate, “that these
+      men had better stay in the boat.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why so?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If you will come aboard, sir, you will understand it.” He spoke in a
+      curious, hesitating fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood flushed to Craddock’s gaunt face. “How is this, Master Hird?” he
+      cried, springing up the side. “What mean you by giving orders to my boat’s
+      crew?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he passed over the bulwarks, with one foot upon the deck and one
+      knee upon the rail, a tow-bearded man, whom he had never before observed
+      aboard his vessel, grabbed suddenly at his pistol. Craddock clutched at
+      the fellow’s wrist, but at the same instant his mate snatched the cutlass
+      from his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What roguery is this?” shouted Craddock, looking furiously around him.
+      But the crew stood in knots about the deck, laughing and whispering
+      amongst themselves without showing any desire to go to his assistance.
+      Even in that hurried glance Craddock noticed that they were dressed in the
+      most singular manner, with long riding-coats, full-skirted velvet gowns
+      and coloured ribands at their knees, more like men of fashion than seamen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he looked at their grotesque figures he struck his brow with his
+      clenched fist to be sure that he was awake. The deck seemed to be much
+      dirtier than when he had left it, and there were strange, sun-blackened
+      faces turned upon him from every side. Not one of them did he know save
+      only Joshua Hird. Had the ship been captured in his absence? Were these
+      Sharkey’s men who were around him? At the thought he broke furiously away
+      and tried to climb over to his boat, but a dozen hands were on him in an
+      instant, and he was pushed aft through the open door of his own cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was all different to the cabin which he had left. The floor was
+      different, the ceiling was different, the furniture was different. His had
+      been plain and austere. This was sumptuous and yet dirty, hung with rare
+      velvet curtains splashed with wine-stains, and panelled with costly woods
+      which were pocked with pistol-marks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the table was a great chart of the Caribbean Sea, and beside it, with
+      compasses in his hand, sat a clean-shaven, pale-faced man with a fur cap
+      and a claret-coloured coat of damask. Craddock turned white under his
+      freckles as he looked upon the long, thin high-nostrilled nose and the
+      red-rimmed eyes which were turned upon him with the fixed, humorous gaze
+      of the master player who has left his opponent without a move. “Sharkey!”
+      cried Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey’s thin lips opened, and he broke into his high, sniggering laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You fool!” he cried, and, leaning over, he stabbed Craddock’s shoulder
+      again and again with his compasses. “You poor, dull-witted fool, would you
+      match yourself against me?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not the pain of the wounds, but it was the contempt in Sharkey’s
+      voice which turned Craddock into a savage madman. He flew at the pirate,
+      roaring with rage, striking, kicking, writhing, foaming. It took six men
+      to drag him down on to the floor amidst the splintered remains of the
+      table&mdash;and not one of the six who did not bear the prisoner’s mark
+      upon him. But Sharkey still surveyed him with the same contemptuous eye.
+      From outside there came the crash of breaking wood and the clamour of
+      startled voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What is that?” asked Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They have stove the boat with cold shot, and the men are in the water.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Let them stay there,” said the pirate. “Now, Craddock, you know where you
+      are. You are aboard my ship, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and you lie at my
+      mercy. I knew you for a stout seaman, you rogue, before you took to this
+      long-shore canting. Your hands then were no cleaner than my own. Will you
+      sign articles, as your mate has done, and join us, or shall I heave you
+      over to follow your ship’s company?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where is my ship?” asked Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Scuttled in the bay.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And the hands?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In the bay, too.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then I’m for the bay, also.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hock him and heave him over,” said Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many rough hands had dragged Craddock out upon deck, and Galloway, the
+      quartermaster, had already drawn his hanger to cripple him, when Sharkey
+      came hurrying from his cabin with an eager face. “We can do better with
+      the hound!” he cried. “Sink me if it is not a rare plan. Throw him into
+      the sail-room with the irons on, and do you come here, quartermaster,
+      that I may tell you what I have in my mind.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Craddock, bruised and wounded in soul and body, was thrown into the
+      dark sail-room, so fettered that he could not stir hand or foot, but his
+      Northern blood was running strong in his veins, and his grim spirit
+      aspired only to make such an ending as might go some way towards atoning
+      for the evil of his life. All night he lay in the curve of the bilge
+      listening to the rush of the water and the straining of the timbers which
+      told him that the ship was at sea and driving fast. In the early morning
+      someone came crawling to him in the darkness over the heap of sails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Here’s rum and biscuits,” said the voice of his late mate. “It’s at the
+      risk of my life, Master Craddock, that I bring them to you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It was you who trapped me and caught me as in a snare!” cried Craddock.
+      “How shall you answer for what you have done?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What I did I did with the point of a knife betwixt my blade-bones.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “God forgive you for a coward, Joshua Hird. How came you into their
+      hands?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, Master Craddock, the pirate ship came back from its careening upon
+      the very day that you left us. They laid us aboard, and, short-handed as
+      we were, with the best of the men ashore with you, we could offer but a
+      poor defence. Some were cut down, and they were the happiest. The others
+      were killed afterwards. As to me, I saved my life by signing on with
+      them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And they scuttled my ship?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They scuttled her, and then Sharkey and his men, who had been watching us
+      from the brushwood, came off to the ship. His mainyard had been cracked
+      and fished last voyage, so he had suspicions of us, seeing that ours was
+      whole. Then he thought of laying the same trap for you which you had set
+      for him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Craddock groaned. “How came I not to see that fished mainyard?” he
+      muttered. “But whither are we bound?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We are running north and west.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “North and west! Then we are heading back towards Jamaica.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “With an eight-knot wind.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Have you heard what they mean to do with me?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have not heard. If you would but sign the articles&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Enough, Joshua Hird! I have risked my soul too often.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “As you wish. I have done what I could. Farewell!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that night and the next day the <i>Happy Delivery</i> ran before the
+      easterly trades, and Stephen Craddock lay in the dark of the sail-room
+      working patiently at his wrist-irons. One he had slipped off at the cost
+      of a row of broken and bleeding knuckles, but, do what he would, he could
+      not free the other, and his ankles were securely fastened. From hour to
+      hour he heard the swish of the water, and knew that the barque must be
+      driving with all set in front of the trade wind. In that case they must be
+      nearly back again to Jamaica by now. What plan could Sharkey have in his
+      head, and what use did he hope to make of him? Craddock set his teeth, and
+      vowed that if he had once been a villain from choice he would, at least,
+      never be one by compulsion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the second morning Craddock became aware that sail had been reduced in
+      the vessel, and that she was tacking slowly, with a light breeze on her
+      beam. The varying slope of the sail-room and the sounds from the deck told
+      his practised senses exactly what she was doing. The short reaches showed
+      him that she was manoeuvring near shore, and making for some definite
+      point. If so, she must have reached Jamaica. But what could she be doing
+      there?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly there was a burst of hearty cheering from the deck, and
+      then the crash of a gun above his head, and then the answering booming of
+      guns from far over the water. Craddock sat up and strained his ears. Was
+      the ship in action? Only the one gun had been fired, and though many had
+      answered, there were none of the crashings which told of a shot coming
+      home. Then, if it was not an action, it must be a salute. But who would
+      salute Sharkey, the pirate? It could only be another pirate ship which
+      would do so. So Craddock lay back again with a groan, and continued to
+      work at the manacle which still held his right wrist. But suddenly there
+      came the shuffling of steps outside, and he had hardly time to wrap the
+      loose links round his free hand, when the door was unbolted and two
+      pirates came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Got your hammer, carpenter?” asked one, whom Craddock recognised as the
+      big quartermaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Knock off his leg shackles, then. Better leave the bracelets&mdash;he’s
+      safer with them on.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With hammer and chisel the carpenter loosened the irons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What are you going to do with me?” asked Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Come on deck and you’ll see.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor seized him by the arm and dragged him roughly to the foot of
+      the companion. Above him was a square of blue sky cut across by the mizzen
+      gaff, with the colours flying at the peak. But it was the sight of those
+      colours which struck the breath from Stephen Craddock’s lips. For there
+      were two of them, and the British ensign was flying above the Jolly Rodger&mdash;the
+      honest flag above that of the rogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant Craddock stopped in amazement, but a brutal push from the
+      pirates behind drove him up the companion ladder. As he stepped out upon
+      deck, his eyes turned up to the main, and there again were the British
+      colours flying above the red pennant, and all the shrouds and rigging were
+      garlanded with streamers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the ship been taken, then? But that was impossible, for there were the
+      pirates clustering in swarms along the port bulwarks, and waving their
+      hats joyously in the air. Most prominent of all was the renegade mate,
+      standing on the foc’sle head, and gesticulating wildly. Craddock looked
+      over the side to see what they were cheering at, and then in a flash he
+      saw how critical was the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the port bow, and about a mile off, lay the white houses and forts of
+      Port Royal, with flags breaking out everywhere over their roofs. Right
+      ahead was the opening of the palisades leading to the town of Kingston.
+      Not more than a quarter of a mile off was a small sloop working out
+      against the very slight wind. The British ensign was at her peak, and her
+      rigging was all decorated. On her deck could be seen a dense crowd of
+      people cheering and waving their hats, and the gleam of scarlet told that
+      there were officers of the garrison among them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an instant, with the quick perception of a man of action, Craddock saw
+      through it all. Sharkey, with that diabolical cunning and audacity which
+      were among his main characteristics, was simulating the part which
+      Craddock would himself have played had he come back victorious. It was in
+      <i>his</i> honour that the salutes were firing and the flags flying. It
+      was to welcome <i>him</i> that this ship with the Governor, the
+      commandant, and the chiefs of the island were approaching. In another ten
+      minutes they would all be under the guns of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and
+      Sharkey would have won the greatest stake that ever a pirate played for
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bring him forward,” cried the pirate captain, as Craddock appeared
+      between the carpenter and the quartermaster. “Keep the ports closed, but
+      clear away the port guns, and stand by for a broadside. Another two cable
+      lengths and we have them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They are edging away,” said the boatswain. “I think they smell us.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s soon set right,” said Sharkey, turning his filmy eyes upon
+      Craddock. “Stand there, you&mdash;right there, where they can recognise
+      you, with your hand on the guy, and wave your hat to them. Quick, or your
+      brains will be over your coat. Put an inch of your knife into him, Ned.
+      Now, will you wave your hat? Try him again, then. Hey, shoot him! Stop
+      him!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was too late. Relying upon the manacles, the quartermaster had
+      taken his hands for a moment off Craddock’s arm. In that instant he had
+      flung off the carpenter, and, amid a spatter of pistol bullets, had sprung
+      the bulwarks and was swimming for his life. He had been hit and hit again,
+      but it takes many pistols to kill a resolute and powerful man who has his
+      mind set upon doing something before he dies. He was a strong swimmer,
+      and, in spite of the red trail which he left in the water behind him, he
+      was rapidly increasing his distance from the pirate. “Give me a musket!”
+      cried Sharkey, with a savage oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a famous shot, and his iron nerves never failed him in an
+      emergency. The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then
+      swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop.
+      Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired. With the crack of the gun
+      the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a gesture
+      of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay. Then, as
+      the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an impotent
+      broadside, Stephen Craddock, smiling grimly in his death agony, sank
+      slowly down to that golden couch which glimmered far beneath him.
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             III
+</p>
+    <h3>
+      HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Buccaneers were something higher than a mere band of marauders. They
+      were a floating republic, with laws, usages, and discipline of their own.
+      In their endless and remorseless quarrel with the Spaniards they had some
+      semblance of right upon their side. Their bloody harryings of the cities
+      of the Main were not more barbarous than the inroads of Spain upon the
+      Netherlands&mdash;or upon the Caribs in these same American lands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief of the Buccaneers, were he English or French, a Morgan or a
+      Granmont, was still a responsible person, whose country might countenance
+      him, or even praise him, so long as he refrained from any deed which might
+      shock the leathery seventeenth-century conscience too outrageously. Some
+      of them were touched with religion, and it is still remembered how Sawkins
+      threw the dice overboard upon the Sabbath, and Daniel pistolled a man
+      before the altar for irreverence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there came a day when the fleets of the Buccaneers no longer mustered
+      at the Tortugas, and the solitary and outlawed pirate took their place.
+      Yet even with him the tradition of restraint and of discipline still
+      lingered; and among the early pirates, the Avorys, the Englands, and the
+      Robertses, there remained some respect for human sentiment. They were more
+      dangerous to the merchant than to the seaman. But they in turn were
+      replaced by more savage and desperate men, who frankly recognised that
+      they would get no quarter in their war with the human race, and who swore
+      that they would give as little as they got. Of their histories we know
+      little that is trustworthy. They wrote no memoirs and left no trace, save
+      an occasional blackened and blood-stained derelict adrift upon the face of
+      the Atlantic. Their deeds could only be surmised from the long roll of
+      ships who never made their port.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Searching the records of history, it is only here and there in an
+      old-world trial that the veil that shrouds them seems for an instant to be
+      lifted, and we catch a glimpse of some amazing and grotesque brutality
+      behind. Such was the breed of Ned Low, of Gow the Scotchman, and of the
+      infamous Sharkey, whose coal-black barque, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, was
+      known from the Newfoundland Banks to the mouths of the Orinoco as the dark
+      forerunner of misery and of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were many men, both among the islands and on the Main, who had a
+      blood feud with Sharkey, but not one who had suffered more bitterly than
+      Copley Banks, of Kingston. Banks had been one of the leading sugar
+      merchants of the West Indies. He was a man of position, a member of the
+      Council, the husband of a Percival, and the cousin of the Governor of
+      Virginia. His two sons had been sent to London to be educated, and their
+      mother had gone over to bring them back. On their return voyage the ship,
+      the <i>Duchess of Cornwall</i>, fell into the hands of Sharkey, and the
+      whole family met with an infamous death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks said little when he heard the news, but he sank into a morose
+      and enduring melancholy. He neglected his business, avoided his friends,
+      and spent much of his time in the low taverns of the fishermen and seamen.
+      There, amidst riot and devilry, he sat silently puffing at his pipe, with
+      a set face and a smouldering eye. It was generally supposed that his
+      misfortunes had shaken his wits, and his old friends looked at him
+      askance, for the company which he kept was enough to bar him from honest
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time there came rumours of Sharkey over the sea. Sometimes it
+      was from some schooner which had seen a great flame upon the horizon, and
+      approaching to offer help to the burning ship, had fled away at the sight
+      of the sleek, black barque, lurking like a wolf near a mangled sheep.
+      Sometimes it was a frightened trader, which had come tearing in with her
+      canvas curved like a lady’s bodice, because she had seen a patched
+      foretopsail rising slowly above the violet water-line. Sometimes it was
+      from a coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama cay littered with
+      sun-dried bodies. Once there came a man who had been mate of a Guineaman,
+      and who had escaped from the pirate’s hands. He could not speak&mdash;for
+      reasons which Sharkey could best supply&mdash;but he could write, and he
+      did write, to the very great interest of Copley Banks. For hours they sat
+      together over the map, and the dumb man pointed here and there to outlying
+      reefs and tortuous inlets, while his companion sat smoking in silence,
+      with his unvarying face and his fiery eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, some two years after his misfortunes, Mr. Copley Banks strode
+      into his own office with his old air of energy and alertness. The manager
+      stared at him in surprise, for it was months since he had shown any
+      interest in business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good morning, Mr. Banks!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good morning, Freeman. I see that <i>Ruffling Harry</i> is in the Bay.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have other plans for her, Freeman. I have determined upon a slaving
+      venture to Whydah.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But her cargo is ready, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then it must come out again, Freeman. My mind is made up, and the <i>Ruffling
+      Harry</i> must go slaving to Whydah.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to
+      clear the ship once more. And then Copley Banks began to make preparations
+      for his African voyage. It appeared that he relied upon force rather than
+      barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried none of those showy
+      trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted with eight
+      nine-pounder guns, and racks full of muskets and cutlasses. The
+      after-sailroom next the cabin was transformed into a powder magazine, and
+      she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer. Water and
+      provisions were shipped for a long voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the preparation of his ship’s company was most surprising. It made
+      Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that his
+      master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or another,
+      he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the firm for
+      years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port&mdash;men whose
+      reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been ashamed to
+      furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known to have been
+      present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his hideous scarlet
+      disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a red afterglow from
+      that great crime. He was first mate, and under him was Israel Martin, a
+      little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell Davies at the taking
+      of Cape Coast Castle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
+      their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
+      man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk. His beard had been shaved,
+      and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom Sharkey had
+      placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his experiences to
+      Copley Banks. These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet uncommented upon in
+      the town of Kingston. The Commandant of the troops&mdash;Major Harvey of
+      the Artillery&mdash;made serious representations to the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “She is not a trader, but a small warship,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I think it would be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the
+      vessel.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What do you suspect?” asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man,
+      broken down with fevers and port wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I suspect,” said the soldier, “that it is Stede Bonnet over again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious character
+      who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in his blood,
+      had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the Caribbean
+      Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the utmost
+      consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been accused of
+      being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions upon their
+      plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister
+      construction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, Major Harvey,” said he, “I am vastly sorry to do anything which may
+      offend my friend Copley Banks, for many a time have my knees been under
+      his mahogany, but in face of what you say there is no choice for me but to
+      order you to board the vessel and to satisfy yourself as to her character
+      and destination.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So at one in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers,
+      paid a surprise visit to the <i>Ruffling Harry</i>, with the result that
+      they picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the
+      moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented danger.
+      She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out against the
+      north-east trades on a course for the Windward Passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When upon the next morning the brig had left Morant Point a mere haze upon
+      the Southern horizon, the men were called aft, and Copley Banks revealed
+      his plans to them. He had chosen them, he said, as brisk boys and lads of
+      spirit, who would rather run some risk upon the sea than starve for a
+      living upon the shore. King’s ships were few and weak, and they could
+      master any trader who might come their way. Others had done well at the
+      business, and with a handy, well-found vessel, there was no reason why
+      they should not turn their tarry jackets into velvet coats. If they were
+      prepared to sail under the black flag, he was ready to command them; but
+      if any wished to withdraw, they might have the gig and row back to
+      Jamaica.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four men out of six-and-forty asked for their discharge, went over the
+      ship’s side into the boat, and rowed away amidst the jeers and howlings of
+      the crew. The rest assembled aft, and drew up the articles of their
+      association. A square of black tarpaulin had the white skull painted upon
+      it, and was hoisted amidst cheering at the main.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Officers were elected, and the limits of their authority fixed. Copley
+      Banks was chosen captain, but, as there are no mates upon a pirate craft,
+      Birthmark Sweetlocks became quartermaster, and Israel Martin the
+      boatswain. There was no difficulty in knowing what was the custom of the
+      brotherhood, for half the men at least had served upon pirates before.
+      Food should be the same for all, and no man should interfere with another
+      man’s drink! The captain should have a cabin, but all hands should be
+      welcome to enter it when they chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All should share and share alike, save only the captain, quartermaster,
+      boatswain, carpenter, and master-gunner, who had from a quarter to a whole
+      share extra. He who saw a prize first should have the best weapon taken
+      out of her. He who boarded her first should have the richest suit of
+      clothes aboard of her. Every man might treat his own prisoner, be it man
+      or woman, after his own fashion. If a man flinched from his gun, the
+      quartermaster should pistol him. These were some of the rules which the
+      crew of the <i>Ruffling Harry</i> subscribed by putting forty-two crosses
+      at the foot of the paper upon which they had been drawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So a new rover was afloat upon the seas, and her name before a year was
+      over became as well known as that of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. From the
+      Bahamas to the Leewards, and from the Leewards to the Windwards, Copley
+      Banks became the rival of Sharkey and the terror of traders. For a long
+      time the barque and the brig never met, which was the more singular as the
+      <i>Ruffling Harry</i> was for ever looking in at Sharkey’s resorts; but at
+      last one day, when she was passing down the inlet of Coxon’s Hole, at the
+      east end of Cuba, with the intention of careening, there was the <i>Happy
+      Delivery</i>, with her blocks and tackle-falls already rigged for the same
+      purpose. Copley Banks fired a shotted salute and hoisted the green
+      trumpeter ensign, as the custom was among gentlemen of the sea. Then he
+      dropped his boat and went aboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey was not a man of a genial mood, nor had he any kindly
+      sympathy for those who were of the same trade as himself. Copley Banks
+      found him seated astride upon one of the after guns, with his New England
+      quartermaster, Ned Galloway, and a crowd of roaring ruffians standing
+      about him. Yet none of them roared with quite such assurance when
+      Sharkey’s pale face and filmy blue eyes were turned upon him. He was in his
+      shirt-sleeves, with his cambric frills breaking through his open red satin
+      long-flapped vest. The scorching sun seemed to have no power upon his
+      fleshless frame, for he wore a low fur cap, as though it had been winter.
+      A many-coloured band of silk passed across his body and supported a short,
+      murderous sword, while his broad, brass-buckled belt was stuffed with
+      pistols.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sink you for a poacher!” he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the
+      bulwarks. “I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch
+      also! What mean you by fishing in my waters?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks looked at him, and his eyes were like those of a traveller
+      who sees his home at last. “I am glad that we are of one mind,” said he,
+      “for I am myself of opinion that the seas are not large enough for the two
+      of us. But if you will take your sword and pistols and come upon a
+      sand-bank with me, then the world will be rid of a damned villain,
+      whichever way it goes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now, this is talking!” said Sharkey, jumping off the gun and holding out
+      his hand. “I have not met many who could look John Sharkey in the eyes and
+      speak with a full breath. May the devil seize me if I do not choose you as
+      a consort! But if you play me false, then I will come aboard of you and
+      gut you upon your own poop.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And I pledge you the same!” said Copley Banks, and so the two pirates
+      became sworn comrades to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That summer they went north as far as the Newfoundland Banks, and harried
+      the New York traders and the whale ships from New England. It was Copley
+      Banks who captured the Liverpool ship, <i>House of Hanover</i>, but it was
+      Sharkey who fastened her master to the windlass and pelted him to death
+      with empty claret-bottles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together they engaged the King’s ship <i>Royal Fortune</i>, which had been
+      sent in search of them, and beat her off after a night action of five
+      hours, the drunken, raving crews fighting naked in the light of the
+      battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles
+      of every gun. They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and
+      then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ready for a long cruise
+      down the West Indies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time Sharkey and Copley Banks had become very excellent friends,
+      for Sharkey loved a whole-hearted villain, and he loved a man of metal,
+      and it seemed to him that the two met in the captain of the <i>Ruffling
+      Harry</i>. It was long before he gave his confidence to him, for cold
+      suspicion lay deep in his character. Never once would he trust himself
+      outside his own ship and away from his own men. But Copley Banks came
+      often on board the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and joined Sharkey in many of
+      his morose debauches, so that at last any lingering misgivings of the
+      latter were set at rest. He knew nothing of the evil that he had done to
+      his new boon companion, for of his many victims how could he remember the
+      woman and the two boys whom he had slain with such levity so long ago!
+      When, therefore, he received a challenge to himself and to his
+      quartermaster for a carouse upon the last evening of their stay at the
+      Caicos Bank he saw no reason to refuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A well-found passenger ship had been rifled the week before, so their fare
+      was of the best, and after supper five of them drank deeply together.
+      There were the two captains, Birthmark Sweetlocks, Ned Galloway, and
+      Israel Martin, the old buccaneers-man. To wait upon them was the dumb
+      steward, whose head Sharkey split with a glass, because he had been too
+      slow in the filling of it. The quartermaster has slipped Sharkey’s
+      pistols away from him, for it was an old joke with him to fire them
+      cross-handed under the table and see who was the luckiest man. It was a
+      pleasantry which had cost his boatswain his leg, so now, when the table
+      was cleared, they would coax Sharkey’s weapons away from him on the excuse
+      of the heat, and lay them out of his reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain’s cabin of the <i>Ruffling Harry</i> was in a deck-house upon
+      the poop, and a stern-chaser gun was mounted at the back of it. Round shot
+      were racked round the wall, and three great hogsheads of powder made a
+      stand for dishes and for bottles. In this grim room the five pirates sang
+      and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up their
+      glasses, and passed the box and the candle round for their tobacco-pipes.
+      Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices hoarser, the curses and
+      shoutings more incoherent, until three of the five had closed their
+      blood-shot eyes, and dropped their swimming heads upon the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had
+      drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake
+      his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the watchful
+      steward, for ever filling up his waning glass. From without came the low
+      lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor’s chanty from the
+      barque. In the windless tropical night the words came clearly to their
+      ears:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="poetry">
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">A trader sailed from Stepney Town,</span><br>
+   Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!<br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">A trader sailed from Stepney Town</span><br>
+   With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.<br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ho, the bully Rover Jack,</span><br>
+   Waiting with his yard aback<br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 5em;">Out upon the Lowland Sea.</span><br>
+</p>
+    <p>
+      The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks
+      glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from the shot-rack
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Captain Sharkey,” said Copley Banks, “do you remember the <i>Duchess of
+      Cornwall</i>, hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago
+      off the Statira Shoal?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Curse me if I can bear their names in mind,” said Sharkey. “We did as
+      many as ten ships a week about that time.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. Maybe that will
+      bring it back to your mind.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose
+      jutting upwards. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing
+      laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it. “But
+      burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!” he cried. “How came you to
+      think of it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It was of interest to me,” said Copley Banks, “for the woman was my wife,
+      and the lads were my only sons.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering fire
+      which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame. He read
+      their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt. Then he turned
+      to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round him, and in an
+      instant his arms were bound to his side. He fought like a wild cat, and
+      screamed for help. “Ned!” he yelled. “Ned! Wake up! Here’s damned
+      villainy! Help, Ned!&mdash;help!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for any
+      voice to wake them. Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey was
+      swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and
+      helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a handkerchief,
+      but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at them. The dumb man
+      chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for the first time when he
+      saw the empty mouth before him. He understood that vengeance, slow and
+      patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat
+      elaborate. First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder
+      barrels, and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor. They
+      piled it round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled in a
+      heap of it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun and they triced him
+      sitting over the port-hole, with his body about a foot from the muzzle.
+      Wriggle as he would he could not move an inch either to the right or left,
+      and the dumb man trussed him up with a sailor’s cunning, so that there was
+      no chance that he should work free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now, you bloody devil,” said Copley Banks, softly, “you must listen to
+      what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will hear.
+      You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have given all
+      that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “To reach you I have had to sink to your level. For two years I strove
+      against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learnt that there
+      was no other. I’ve robbed and I have murdered&mdash;worse still, I have
+      laughed and lived with you&mdash;and all for the one end. And now my time
+      has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the shadow
+      creeping upon you and the devil waiting for you in the shadow.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty
+      over the water.
+    </p>
+<p class="poetry">
+   <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Where is the trader of Stepney Town?</span><br>
+  Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending!<br>
+   <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Where is the trader of Stepney Town?</span><br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;">His gold’s on the capstan, his blood’s on his gown,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">All for bully Rover Jack,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">Reaching on the weather tack</span><br>
+   <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Right across the Lowland Sea.</span><br>
+</p>
+    <p>
+      The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men
+      pacing backwards and forwards upon the deck. And yet he was helpless,
+      staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to
+      utter so much as a groan. Again there came the burst of voices from the
+      deck of the barque.
+    </p>
+<p class="poetry">
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> So it’s up and it’s over to Stornoway Bay,</span><br>
+  Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with stunsails!<br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> It’s off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay,</span><br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Where the liquor is good and the lasses are gay,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">Waiting for their bully Jack,</span><br>
+      <span style="margin-left: 10em;">Watching for him sailing back,</span><br>
+    <span style="margin-left: 5em;"> Right across the Lowland Sea.</span><br>
+</p>
+    <p>
+      To the dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own fate
+      seem the harsher, but there was no softening in those venomous blue eyes.
+      Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had sprinkled
+      fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the candle and cut
+      it to the length of about an inch. This he placed upon the loose powder at
+      the breach of the gun. Thin he scattered powder thickly over the floor
+      beneath, so that when the candle fell at the recoil it must explode the
+      huge pile in which the three drunkards were wallowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ve made others look death in the face, Sharkey,” said he; “now it has
+      come to be your own turn. You and these swine here shall go together!” He
+      lit the candle-end as he spoke, and blew out the other lights upon the
+      table. Then he passed out with the dumb man, and locked the cabin door
+      upon the outer side. But before he closed it he took an exultant look
+      backwards, and received one last curse from those unconquerable eyes. In
+      the single dim circle of light that ivory-white face, with the gleam of
+      moisture upon the high, bald forehead, was the last that was ever seen of
+      Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a skiff alongside, and in it Copley Banks and the dumb steward
+      made their way to the beach, and looked back upon the brig riding in the
+      moonlight just outside the shadow of the palm trees. They waited and
+      waited watching that dim light which shone through the stem port. And then
+      at last there came the dull thud of a gun, and an instant later the
+      shattering crash of an explosion. The long, sleek, black barque, the sweep
+      of white sand, and the fringe of nodding feathery palm trees sprang into
+      dazzling light and back into darkness again. Voices screamed and called
+      upon the bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him, touched his companion
+      upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely jungle of the
+      Caicos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE CROXLEY MASTER
+    </h2>
+<p class="center big">
+                             I
+</p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands, in
+      a state of the blackest despondency. Before him was the open ledger with
+      the long columns of Dr. Oldacre’s prescriptions. At his elbow lay the
+      wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the lumps
+      of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of bottles waited to be
+      filled. But his spirits were too low for work. He sat in silence with his
+      fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened
+      brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars upheld
+      the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank. For six days in the week they
+      spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was
+      Sunday. Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and
+      blasted by the greed of man. There was nothing in the surroundings to
+      cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment which
+      weighed upon the medical assistant. His trouble was deeper and more
+      personal. The winter session was approaching. He should be back again at
+      the University completing the last year which would give him his medical
+      degree; but, alas! he had not the money with which to pay his class fees,
+      nor could he imagine how he could procure it. Sixty pounds were wanted to
+      make his career, and it might have been as many thousand for any chance
+      there seemed to be of his obtaining it. He was roused from his black
+      meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre himself, a large, clean-shaven,
+      respectable man, with a prim manner and an austere face. He had prospered
+      exceedingly by the support of the local Church interest, and the rule of
+      his life was never by word or action to run a risk of offending the
+      sentiment which had made him. His standard of respectability and of
+      dignity was exceedingly high, and he expected the same from his
+      assistants. His appearance and words were always vaguely benevolent. A
+      sudden impulse came over the despondent student. He would test the reality
+      of this philanthropy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I beg your pardon, Dr. Oldacre,” said he, rising from his chair; “I have
+      a great favour to ask of you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor’s appearance was not encouraging. His mouth suddenly tightened,
+      and his eyes fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, Mr. Montgomery?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are aware, sir, that I need only one more session to complete my
+      course.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So you have told me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is very important to me, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Naturally.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The fees, Dr. Oldacre, would amount to about sixty pounds.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am afraid that my duties call me elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “One moment, sir! I had hoped, sir, that perhaps, if I signed a paper
+      promising you interest upon your money, you would advance this sum to me.
+      I will pay you back, sir, I really will. Or, if you like, I will work it
+      off after I am qualified.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor’s lips had thinned into a narrow line. His eyes were raised
+      again, and sparkled indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Your request is unreasonable, Mr. Montgomery. I am surprised that you
+      should have made it. Consider, sir, how many thousands of medical students
+      there are in this country. No doubt there are many of them who have a
+      difficulty in finding their fees. Am I to provide for them all? Or why
+      should I make an exception in your favour? I am grieved and disappointed,
+      Mr. Montgomery, that you should have put me into the painful position of
+      having to refuse you.” He turned upon his heel, and walked with offended
+      dignity out of the surgery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The student smiled bitterly, and turned to his work of making up the
+      morning prescriptions. It was poor and unworthy work&mdash;work which any
+      weakling might have done as well, and this was a man of exceptional nerve
+      and sinew. But, such as it was, it brought him his board and one pound a
+      week&mdash;enough to help him during the summer months and let him save a
+      few pounds towards his winter keep. But those class fees! Where were they
+      to come from? He could not save them out of his scanty wage. Dr. Oldacre
+      would not advance them. He saw no way of earning them. His brains were
+      fairly good, but brains of that quality were a drug in the market. He only
+      excelled in his strength, and where was he to find a customer for that?
+      But the ways of Fate are strange, and his customer was at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look y’ere!” said a voice at the door. Montgomery looked up, for the
+      voice was a loud and rasping one. A young man stood at the entrance&mdash;a
+      stocky, bull-necked young miner, in tweed Sunday clothes and an
+      aggressive neck-tie. He was a sinister-looking figure, with dark, insolent
+      eyes, and the jaw and throat of a bulldog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look y’ere!” said he again. “Why hast thou not sent t’ medicine oop as
+      thy master ordered?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had become accustomed to the brutal frankness of the northern
+      worker. At first it had enraged him, but after a time he had grown callous
+      to it, and accepted it as it was meant. But this was something different.
+      It was insolence&mdash;brutal, overbearing insolence, with physical menace
+      behind it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What name?” he asked coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Barton. Happen I may give thee cause to mind that name, yoong man. Mak’
+      oop t’ wife’s medicine this very moment, look ye, or it will be the worse
+      for thee.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery smiled. A pleasant sense of relief thrilled softly through him.
+      What blessed safety-valve was this through which his jangled nerves might
+      find some outlet. The provocation was so gross, the insult so unprovoked,
+      that he could have none of those qualms which take the edge off a man’s
+      mettle. He finished sealing the bottle upon which he was occupied, and he
+      addressed it and placed it carefully in the rack. “Look here!” said he,
+      turning round to the miner, “your medicine will be made up in its turn and
+      sent down to you. I don’t allow folk in the surgery. Wait outside in the
+      waiting-room if you wish to wait at all.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yoong man,” said the miner, “thou’s got to mak’ t’ wife’s medicine here,
+      and now, and quick, while I wait and watch thee, or else happen thou might
+      need some medicine thysel’ before all is over.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I shouldn’t advise you to fasten a quarrel upon me.” Montgomery was
+      speaking in the hard, staccato voice of a man who is holding himself in
+      with difficulty. “You’ll save trouble if you’ll go quietly. If you don’t
+      you’ll be hurt. Ah, you would? Take it, then!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blows were almost simultaneous&mdash;a savage swing which whistled
+      past Montgomery’s ear, and a straight drive which took the workman on the
+      chin. Luck was with the assistant. That single whizzing uppercut, and the
+      way in which it was delivered, warned him that he had a formidable man to
+      deal with. But if he had underrated his antagonist, his antagonist had
+      also underrated him, and had laid himself open to a fatal blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The miner’s head had come with a crash against the corner of the surgery
+      shelves, and he had dropped heavily on to the ground. There he lay with
+      his bandy legs drawn up and his hands thrown abroad, the blood trickling
+      over the surgery tiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Had enough?” asked the assistant, breathing fiercely through his nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no answer came. The man was insensible. And then the danger of his
+      position came upon Montgomery, and he turned as white as his antagonist. A
+      Sunday, the immaculate Dr. Oldacre with his pious connection, a savage
+      brawl with a patient; he would irretrievably lose his situation if the
+      facts came out. It was not much of a situation, but he could not get
+      another without a reference, and Oldacre might refuse him one. Without
+      money for his classes, and without a situation&mdash;what was to become of
+      him? It was absolute ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But perhaps he could escape exposure after all. He seized his insensible
+      adversary, dragged him out into the centre of he room, loosened his
+      collar, and squeezed the surgery sponge over his face. He sat up at last
+      with a gasp and a scowl. “Domn thee, thou’s spoilt my neck-tie,” said he,
+      mopping up the water from his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m sorry I hit you so hard,” said Montgomery, apologetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thou hit me hard! I could stan’ such fly-flappin’ all day. ’Twas this
+      here press that cracked my pate for me, and thou art a looky man to be
+      able to boast as thou hast outed me. And now I’d be obliged to thee if
+      thou wilt give me t’ wife’s medicine.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery gladly made it up and handed it to the miner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are weak still,” said he. “Won’t you stay awhile and rest?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “T’ wife wants her medicine,” said the man, and lurched out at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assistant, looking after him, saw him rolling, with an uncertain step,
+      down the street, until a friend met him, and they walked on arm in arm.
+      The man seemed in his rough Northern fashion to bear no grudge, and so
+      Montgomery’s fears left him. There was no reason why the doctor should
+      know anything about it. He wiped the blood from the floor, put the surgery
+      in order, and went on with his interrupted task, hoping that he had come
+      scathless out of a very dangerous business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet all day he was aware of a sense of vague uneasiness, which sharpened
+      into dismay when, late in the afternoon, he was informed that three
+      gentlemen had called and were waiting for him in the surgery. A coroner’s
+      inquest, a descent of detectives, an invasion of angry relatives&mdash;all
+      sorts of possibilities rose to scare him. With tense nerves and a rigid
+      face he went to meet his visitors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were a very singular trio. Each was known to him by sight; but what
+      on earth the three could be doing together, and, above all, what they
+      could expect from <i>him</i>, was a most inexplicable problem. The first
+      was Sorley Wilson, the son of the owner of the Nonpareil Coalpit. He was a
+      young blood of twenty, heir to a fortune, a keen sportsman, and down for
+      the Easter Vacation from Magdalene College. He sat now upon the edge of
+      the surgery table, looking in thoughtful silence at Montgomery and
+      twisting the ends of his small, black, waxed moustache. The second was
+      Purvis, the publican, owner of the chief beer-shop, and well known as the
+      local bookmaker. He was a coarse, clean-shaven man, whose fiery face made
+      a singular contrast with his ivory-white bald head. He had shrewd,
+      light-blue eyes with foxy lashes, and he also leaned forward in silence
+      from his chair, a fat, red hand upon either knee, and stared critically at
+      the young assistant. So did the third visitor, Fawcett, the horse-breaker,
+      who leaned back, his long, thin legs, with their boxcloth riding-gaiters,
+      thrust out in front of him, tapping his protruding teeth with his
+      riding-whip, with anxious thought in every line of his rugged, bony face.
+      Publican, exquisite, and horse-breaker were all three equally silent,
+      equally earnest, and equally critical. Montgomery seated in the midst of
+      them, looked from one to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, gentlemen?” he observed, but no answer came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The position was embarrassing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No,” said the horse-breaker, at last. “No. It’s off. It’s nowt.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stand oop, lad; let’s see thee standin’.” It was the publican who spoke.
+      Montgomery obeyed. He would learn all about it, no doubt, if he were
+      patient. He stood up and turned slowly round, as if in front of his
+      tailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s off! It’s off!” cried the horse-breaker. “Why, mon, the Master would
+      break him over his knee.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, that be hanged for a yarn!” said the young Cantab. “You can drop out
+      if you like, Fawcett, but I’ll see this thing through, if I have to do it
+      alone. I don’t hedge a penny. I like the cut of him a great deal better
+      than I liked Ted Barton.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look at Barton’s shoulders, Mr. Wilson.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Lumpiness isn’t always strength. Give me nerve and fire and breed. That’s
+      what wins.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay, sir, you have it theer&mdash;you have it theer!” said the fat,
+      red-faced publican, in a thick suety voice. “It’s the same wi’ poops. Get
+      ’em clean-bred an’ fine, an’ they’ll yark the thick ’uns&mdash;yark ’em
+      out o’ their skins.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He’s ten good pund on the light side,” growled the horse-breaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He’s a welter weight, anyhow.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A hundred and thirty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A hundred and fifty, if he’s an ounce.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, the Master doesn’t scale much more than that.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A hundred and seventy-five.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That was when he was hog-fat and living high. Work the grease out of him
+      and I lay there’s no great difference between them. Have you been weighed
+      lately, Mr. Montgomery?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first direct question which had been asked him. He had stood in
+      the midst of them like a horse at a fair, and he was just beginning to
+      wonder whether he was more angry or amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am just eleven stone,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I said that he was a welter weight.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But suppose you was trained?” said the publican. “Wot then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am always in training.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In a manner of speakin’, no doubt, he <i>is</i> always in trainin’,”
+      remarked the horse-breaker. “But trainin’ for everyday work ain’t the same
+      as trainin’ with a trainer; and I dare bet, with all respec’ to your
+      opinion, Mr. Wilson, that there’s half a stone of tallow on him at this
+      minute.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young Cantab put his fingers on the assistant’s upper arm, then with
+      his other hand on his wrist, he bent the forearm sharply, and felt the
+      biceps, as round and hard as a cricket-ball, spring up under his fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Feel that!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The publican and horse-breaker felt it with an air of reverence. “Good
+      lad! He’ll do yet!” cried Purvis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen,” said Montgomery, “I think that you will acknowledge that I
+      have been very patient with you. I have listened to all that you have to
+      say about my personal appearance, and now I must really beg that you will
+      have the goodness to tell me what is the matter.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all sat down in their serious, business-like way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s easy done, Mr. Montgomery,” said the fat-voiced publican. “But
+      before sayin’ anything we had to wait and see whether, in a way of
+      speakin’, there was any need for us to say anything at all. Mr. Wilson
+      thinks there is. Mr. Fawcett, who has the same right to his opinion, bein’
+      also a backer and one o’ the committee, thinks the other way.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I thought him too light built, and I think so now,” said the
+      horse-breaker, still tapping his prominent teeth with the metal head of
+      his riding-whip. “But happen he may pull through, and he’s a fine-made,
+      buirdly young chap, so if you mean to back him, Mr. Wilson&mdash;&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Which I do.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you, Purvis?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I ain’t one to go back, Fawcett.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I’ll stan’ to my share of the purse.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And well I knew you would,” said Purvis, “for it would be somethin’ new
+      to find Isaac Fawcett as a spoil-sport. Well, then, we will make up the
+      hundred for the stake among us, and the fight stands&mdash;always
+      supposin’ the young man is willin’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Excuse all this rot, Mr. Montgomery,” said the University man, in a
+      genial voice. “We’ve begun at the wrong end, I know, but we’ll soon
+      straighten it out, and I hope that you will see your way to falling in
+      with our views. In the first place, you remember the man whom you knocked
+      out this morning? He is Barton&mdash;the famous Ted Barton.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m sure, sir, you may well be proud to have outed him in one round,”
+      said the publican. “Why, it took Morris, the ten-stone-six champion, a
+      deal more trouble than that before he put Barton to sleep. You’ve done a
+      fine performance, sir, and happen you’ll do a finer, if you give yourself
+      the chance.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I never heard of Ted Barton, beyond seeing the name on a medicine label,”
+      said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, you may take it from me that he’s a slaughterer,” said the
+      horse-breaker. “You’ve taught him a lesson that he needed, for it was
+      always a word and a blow with him, and the word alone was worth five
+      shillin’ in a public court. He won’t be so ready now to shake his nief in
+      the face of everyone he meets. However, that’s neither here nor there.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery looked at them in bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For goodness’ sake, gentlemen, tell me what it is you want me to do!” he
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We want you to fight Silas Craggs, better known as the Master of
+      Croxley.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But why?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Because Ted Barton was to have fought him next Saturday. He was the
+      champion of the Wilson coal-pits, and the other was the Master of the
+      iron-folk down at the Croxley smelters. We’d matched our man for a purse
+      of a hundred against the Master. But you’ve queered our man, and he can’t
+      face such a battle with a two-inch cut at the back of his head. There’s
+      only one thing to be done, sir, and that is for you to take his place. If
+      you can lick Ted Barton you may lick the Master of Croxley, but if you
+      don’t we’re done, for there’s no one else who is in the same street with
+      him in this district. It’s twenty rounds, two-ounce gloves, Queensberry
+      rules, and a decision on points if you fight to the finish.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the absurdity of the thing drove every other thought out of
+      Montgomery’s head. But then there came a sudden revulsion. A hundred
+      pounds!&mdash;all he wanted to complete his education was lying there
+      ready to his hand, if only that hand were strong enough to pick it up. He
+      had thought bitterly that morning that there was no market for his
+      strength, but here was one where his muscle might earn more in an hour
+      than his brains in a year. But a chill of doubt came over him. “How can I
+      fight for the coal-pits?” said he. “I am not connected with them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Eh, lad, but thou art!” cried old Purvis. “We’ve got it down in writin’,
+      and it’s clear enough ‘Anyone connected with the coal-pits.’ Doctor
+      Oldacre is the coal-pit club doctor; thou art his assistant. What more can
+      they want?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, that’s right enough,” said the Cantab. “It would be a very sporting
+      thing of you, Mr. Montgomery, if you would come to our help when we are in
+      such a hole. Of course, you might not like to take the hundred pounds; but
+      I have no doubt that, in the case of your winning, we could arrange that
+      it should take the form of a watch or piece of plate, or any other shape
+      which might suggest itself to you. You see, you are responsible for our
+      having lost our champion, so we really feel that we have a claim upon
+      you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Give me a moment, gentlemen. It is very unexpected. I am afraid the
+      doctor would never consent to my going&mdash;in fact, I am sure that he
+      would not.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But he need never know&mdash;not before the fight, at any rate. We are
+      not bound to give the name of our man. So long as he is within the weight
+      limits on the day of the fight, that is all that concerns anyone.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The adventure and the profit would either of them have attracted
+      Montgomery. The two combined were irresistible. “Gentlemen,” said he,
+      “I’ll do it!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three sprang from their seats. The publican had seized his right hand,
+      the horse-dealer his left, and the Cantab slapped him on the back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good lad! good lad!” croaked the publican. “Eh, mon, but if thou yark
+      him, thou’ll rise in one day from being just a common doctor to the
+      best-known mon ’twixt here and Bradford. Thou art a witherin’ tyke, thou
+      art, and no mistake; and if thou beat the Master of Croxley, thou’ll find
+      all the beer thou want for the rest of thy life waiting for thee at the
+      ‘Four Sacks.’”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is the most sporting thing I ever heard of in my life,” said young
+      Wilson. “By George, sir, if you pull it off, you’ve got the constituency
+      in your pocket, if you care to stand. You know the out-house in my
+      garden?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Next the road?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Exactly. I turned it into a gymnasium for Ted Barton. You’ll find all you
+      want there: clubs, punching ball, bars, dumb-bells, everything. Then
+      you’ll want a sparring partner. Ogilvy has been acting for Barton, but we
+      don’t think that he is class enough. Barton bears you no grudge. He’s a
+      good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers. He looked upon
+      you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you now. He is quite
+      ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come any hour you will
+      name.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thank you; I will let you know the hour,” said Montgomery; and so the
+      committee departed jubilant upon their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The medical assistant sat for a time in the surgery turning it over a
+      little in his mind. He had been trained originally at the University by
+      the man who had been middle-weight champion in his day. It was true that
+      his teacher was long past his prime, slow upon his feet, and stiff in his
+      joints, but even so he was still a tough antagonist; but Montgomery had
+      found at last that he could more than hold his own with him. He had won
+      the University medal, and his teacher, who had trained so many students,
+      was emphatic in his opinion that he had never had one who was in the same
+      class with him. He had been exhorted to go in for the Amateur
+      Championships, but he had no particular ambition in that direction. Once
+      he had put on the gloves with Hammer Tunstall in a booth at a fair and had
+      fought three rattling rounds, in which he had the worst of it, but had
+      made the prize fighter stretch himself to the uttermost. There was his
+      whole record, and was it enough to encourage him to stand up to the Master
+      of Croxley? He had never heard of the Master before, but then he had lost
+      touch of the ring during the last few years of hard work. After all, what
+      did it matter? If he won, there was the money, which meant so much to him.
+      If he lost, it would only mean a thrashing. He could take punishment
+      without flinching, of that he was certain. If there were only one chance
+      in a hundred of pulling it off, then it was worth his while to attempt it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Oldacre, new come from church, with an ostentatious Prayer-book in his
+      kid-gloved hand, broke in upon his meditation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You don’t go to service, I observe, Mr. Montgomery” said he, coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir; I have had some business to detain me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is very near to my heart that my household should set a good example.
+      There are so few educated people in this district that a great
+      responsibility devolves upon us. If we do not live up to the highest, how
+      can we expect these poor workers to do so? It is a dreadful thing to
+      reflect that the parish takes a great deal more interest in an approaching
+      glove fight than in their religious duties.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A glove fight, sir?” said Montgomery, guiltily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I believe that to be the correct term. One of my patients tells me that
+      it is the talk of the district. A local ruffian, a patient of ours, by the
+      way, matched against a pugilist over at Croxley. I cannot understand why
+      the law does not step in and stop so degrading an exhibition. It is really
+      a prize fight.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A glove fight, you said.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am informed that a 2oz. glove is an evasion by which they dodge the
+      law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere. They contend for a
+      sum of money. It seems dreadful and almost incredible&mdash;does it not?&mdash;to
+      think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our peaceful
+      home. But you will realise, Mr. Montgomery, that while there are such
+      influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we should live
+      up to our highest.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor’s sermon would have had more effect if the assistant had not
+      once or twice had occasion to test his highest, and come upon it at
+      unexpectedly humble elevations. It is always so particularly easy to
+      “compound for sins we’re most inclined to by damning those we have no mind
+      to.” In any case, Montgomery felt that of all the men concerned in such a
+      fight&mdash;promoters, backers, spectators&mdash;it is the actual fighter
+      who holds the strongest and most honourable position. His conscience gave
+      him no concern upon the subject. Endurance and courage are virtues, not
+      vices, and brutality is, at least, better than effeminacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where
+      Montgomery got his bird’s-eye and also his local information, for the
+      shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of the
+      district. The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in a
+      casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard of the Master of
+      Croxley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Heard of him! Heard of him!” the little man could hardly articulate in
+      his astonishment. “Why, sir, he’s the first mon o’ the district, an’ his
+      name’s as well known in the West Riding as the winner o’ t’ Derby. But
+      Lor,’ sir,”&mdash;here he stopped and rummaged among a heap of papers.
+      “They are makin’ a fuss about him on account o’ his fight wi’ Ted Barton,
+      and so the <i>Croxley Herald</i> has his life an’ record, an’ here it is,
+      an’ thou canst read it for thysel’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheet of the paper which he held up was a lake of print around an
+      islet of illustration. The latter was a coarse wood-cut of a pugilist’s
+      head and neck set in a cross-barred jersey. It was a sinister but powerful
+      face, the face of a debauched hero, clean-shaven, strongly eye-browed,
+      keen-eyed, with huge, aggressive jaw, and an animal dewlap beneath it. The
+      long, obstinate cheeks ran flush up to the narrow, sinister eyes. The
+      mighty neck came down square from the ears and curved outwards into
+      shoulders, which had lost nothing at the hands of the local artist. Above
+      was written “Silas Craggs,” and beneath, “The Master of Croxley.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thou’ll find all about him there, sir,” said the tobacconist. “He’s a
+      witherin’ tyke, he is, and we’re proud to have him in the county. If he
+      hadn’t broke his leg he’d have been champion of England.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Broke his leg, has he?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, and it set badly. They ca’ him owd K, behind his back, for that is
+      how his two legs look. But his arms&mdash;well, if they was both stropped
+      to a bench, as the sayin’ is, I wonder where the champion of England would
+      be then.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll take this with me,” said Montgomery; and putting the paper into his
+      pocket he returned home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not a cheering record which he read there. The whole history of the
+      Croxley Master was given in full, his many victories, his few defeats.
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Born in 1857 (said the provincial biographer), Silas Craggs, better
+   known in sporting circles as the Master of Croxley, is now in his
+   fortieth year.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “Hang it, I’m only twenty-three!” said Montgomery to himself, and read on
+      more cheerfully.
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Having in his youth shown a surprising aptitude for the game, he
+   fought   his way up among his comrades, until he became the
+   recognised champion of the district and won the proud title which
+   he still holds.  Ambitious of a more than local fame, he secured a
+   patron, and fought his first fight against Jack Barton, of
+   Birmingham, in May 1880, at the old Loiterers’ Club.  Craggs,
+   who fought at ten stone-two at the time, had the better of fifteen
+   rattling rounds, and gained an award on points against the Midlander.
+   Having disposed of James Dunn, of Rotherhithe, Cameron, of Glasgow,
+   and a youth named Fernie, he was thought so highly of by the fancy
+   that he was matched against Ernest Willox, at that time
+   middle-weight champion of the North of England, and defeated him in a
+   hard-fought battle, knocking him out in the tenth round after a
+   punishing contest.  At this period it looked as if the very highest
+   honours of the ring were within the reach of the young Yorkshireman,
+   but he was laid upon the shelf by a most unfortunate accident.  The
+   kick of a horse broke his thigh, and for a year he was compelled to
+   rest himself.  When he returned to his work the fracture had set
+   badly, and his activity was much impaired.  It was owing to this
+   that he was defeated in seven rounds by Willox, the man whom he had
+   previously beaten, and afterwards by James Shaw, of London, though
+   the latter acknowledged that he had found the toughest customer of
+   his career.  Undismayed by his reverses, the Master adapted the
+   style of his fighting to his physical disabilities and resumed his
+   career of victory&mdash;defeating Norton (the black), Hobby Wilson, and
+   Levi Cohen, the latter a heavy-weight.  Conceding two stone, he
+   fought a draw with the famous Billy McQuire, and afterwards, for
+   a purse of fifty pounds, he defeated Sam Hare at the Pelican Club,
+   London.  In 1891 a decision was given against him upon a foul when
+   fighting a winning fight against Jim Taylor, the Australian middle
+   weight, and so mortified was he by the decision, that he withdrew
+   from the ring.  Since then he has hardly fought at all save to
+   accommodate any local aspirant who may wish to learn the difference
+   between a bar-room scramble and a scientific contest.  The latest
+   of these ambitious souls comes from the Wilson coal-pits, which have
+   undertaken to put up a stake of 100 pounds and back their local
+   champion.  There are various rumours afloat as to who their
+   representative is to be, the name of Ted Barton being freely
+   mentioned; but the betting, which is seven to one on the Master
+   against any untried man, is a fair reflection of the feeling of
+   the community.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery read it over twice, and it left him with a very serious face.
+      No light matter this which he had undertaken; no battle with a
+      rough-and-tumble fighter who presumed upon a local reputation. The man’s
+      record showed that he was first-class&mdash;or nearly so. There were a few
+      points in his favour, and he must make the most of them. There was age&mdash;twenty-three
+      against forty. There was an old ring proverb that “Youth will be served,”
+      but the annals of the ring offer a great number of exceptions. A hard
+      veteran full of cool valour and ring-craft, could give ten or fifteen
+      years and a beating to most striplings. He could not rely too much upon
+      his advantage in age. But then there was the lameness; that must surely
+      count for a great deal. And, lastly, there was the chance that the Master
+      might underrate his opponent, that he might be remiss in his training, and
+      refuse to abandon his usual way of life, if he thought that he had an easy
+      task before him. In a man of his age and habits this seemed very possible.
+      Montgomery prayed that it might be so. Meanwhile, if his opponent were the
+      best man who ever jumped the ropes into a ring, his own duty was clear. He
+      must prepare himself carefully, throw away no chance, and do the very best
+      that he could. But he knew enough to appreciate the difference which
+      exists in boxing, as in every sport, between the amateur and the
+      professional. The coolness, the power of hitting, above all the capability
+      of taking punishment, count for so much. Those specially developed,
+      gutta-percha-like abdominal muscles of the hardened pugilist will take
+      without flinching a blow which would leave another man writhing on the
+      ground. Such things are not to be acquired in a week, but all that could
+      be done in a week should be done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The medical assistant had a good basis to start from. He was 5ft. 11 ins.&mdash;tall
+      enough for anything on two legs, as the old ring men used to say&mdash;lithe
+      and spare, with the activity of a panther, and a strength which had hardly
+      yet ever found its limitations. His muscular development was finely hard,
+      but his power came rather from that higher nerve-energy which counts for
+      nothing upon a measuring tape. He had the well-curved nose and the widely
+      opened eye which never yet were seen upon the face of a craven, and behind
+      everything he had the driving force, which came from the knowledge that
+      his whole career was at stake upon the contest. The three backers rubbed
+      their hands when they saw him at work punching the ball in the gymnasium
+      next morning; and Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who had written to Leeds to
+      hedge his bets, sent a wire to cancel the letter, and to lay another fifty
+      at the market price of seven to one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery’s chief difficulty was to find time for his training without
+      any interference from the doctor. His work took him a large part of the
+      day, but as the visiting was done on foot, and considerable distances had
+      to be traversed, it was a training in itself. For the rest, he punched the
+      swinging ball and worked with the dumb-bells for an hour every morning and
+      evening, and boxed twice a day with Ted Barton in the gymnasium, gaining
+      as much profit as could be got from a rushing, two-handed slogger. Barton
+      was full of admiration for his cleverness and quickness, but doubtful
+      about his strength. Hard hitting was the feature of his own style, and he
+      exacted it from others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Lord, sir, that’s a turble poor poonch for an eleven-stone man!” he would
+      cry. “Thou wilt have to hit harder than that afore t’ Master will know
+      that thou art theer. All, thot’s better, mon, thot’s fine!” he would add,
+      as his opponent lifted him across the room on the end of a right counter.
+      “Thot’s how I likes to feel ’em. Happen thou’lt pull through yet.” He
+      chuckled with joy when Montgomery knocked him into a corner. “Eh, mon,
+      thou art coming along grand. Thou hast fair yarked me off my legs. Do it
+      again, lad, do it again!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only part of Montgomery’s training which came within the doctor’s
+      observation was his diet, and that puzzled him considerably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You will excuse my remarking, Mr. Montgomery, that you are becoming
+      rather particular in your tastes. Such fads are not to be encouraged in
+      one’s youth. Why do you eat toast with every meal?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I find that it suits me better than bread, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It entails unnecessary work upon the cook. I observe, also, that you have
+      turned against potatoes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir; I think that I am better without them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you no longer drink your beer?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “These causeless whims and fancies are very much to be deprecated, Mr.
+      Montgomery. Consider how many there are to whom these very potatoes and
+      this very beer would be most acceptable.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No doubt, sir, but at present I prefer to do without them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sitting alone at lunch, and the assistant thought that it would
+      be a good opportunity of asking leave for the day of the fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should be glad if you could let me have leave for Saturday, Dr.
+      Oldacre.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is very inconvenient upon so busy a day.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should do a double day’s work on Friday so as to leave everything in
+      order. I should hope to be back in the evening.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am afraid I cannot spare you, Mr. Montgomery.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a facer. If he could not get leave he would go without it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You will remember, Dr. Oldacre, that when I came to you it was understood
+      that I should have a clear day every month. I have never claimed one. But
+      now there are reasons why I wish to have a holiday upon Saturday.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Oldacre gave in with a very bad grace. “Of course, if you insist upon
+      your formal rights, there is no more to be said, Mr. Montgomery, though I
+      feel that it shows a certain indifference to my comfort and the welfare of
+      the practice. Do you still insist?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very good. Have your way.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was boiling over with anger, but Montgomery was a valuable
+      assistant&mdash;steady, capable, and hardworking&mdash;and he could not
+      afford to lose him. Even if he had been prompted to advance those class
+      fees, for which his assistant had appealed, it would have been against his
+      interests to do so, for he did not wish him to qualify, and he desired him
+      to remain in his subordinate position, in which he worked so hard for so
+      small a wage. There was something in the cool insistence of the young man,
+      a quiet resolution in his voice as he claimed his Saturday, which aroused
+      his curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have no desire to interfere unduly with your affairs, Mr. Montgomery,
+      but were you thinking of having a day in Leeds upon Saturday?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In the country?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are very wise. You will find a quiet day among the wild flowers a
+      very valuable restorative. Have you thought of any particular direction?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am going over Croxley way.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, there is no prettier country when once you are past the iron-works.
+      What could be more delightful than to lie upon the Fells, basking in the
+      sunshine, with perhaps some instructive and elevating book as your
+      companion? I should recommend a visit to the ruins of St. Bridget’s
+      Church, a very interesting relic of the early Norman era. By the way,
+      there is one objection which I see to your going to Croxley on Saturday.
+      It is upon that date, as I am informed, that that ruffianly glove fight
+      takes place. You may find yourself molested by the blackguards whom it
+      will attract.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I will take my chance of that, sir,” said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Friday night, which was the last night before the fight,
+      Montgomery’s three backers assembled in the gymnasium and inspected their
+      man as he went through some light exercises to keep his muscles supple. He
+      was certainly in splendid condition, his skin shining with health, and his
+      eyes with energy and confidence. The three walked round him and exulted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He’s simply ripping!” said the undergraduate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By gad, you’ve come out of it splendidly. You’re as hard as a pebble, and
+      fit to fight for your life.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Happen he’s a trifle on the fine side,” said the publican. “Runs a bit
+      light at the loins, to my way of thinkin’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What weight to-day?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ten stone eleven,” the assistant answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s only three pund off in a week’s trainin’,” said the horse-breaker.
+      “He said right when he said that he was in condition. Well, it’s fine
+      stuff all there is of it, but I’m none so sure as there is enough.” He
+      kept poking his finger into Montgomery as if he were one of his horses. “I
+      hear that the Master will scale a hundred and sixty odd at the ring-side.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But there’s some of that which he’d like well to pull off and leave
+      behind wi’ his shirt,” said Purvis. “I hear they’ve had a rare job to get
+      him to drop his beer, and if it had not been for that great red-headed
+      wench of his they’d never ha’ done it. She fair scratted the face off a
+      potman that had brought him a gallon from t’ ‘Chequers.’ They say the
+      hussy is his sparrin’ partner, as well as his sweetheart, and that his
+      poor wife is just breakin’ her heart over it. Hullo, young ’un, what do
+      you want?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door of the gymnasium had opened and a lad, about sixteen, grimy and
+      black with soot and iron, stepped into the yellow glare of the oil lamp.
+      Ted Barton seized him by the collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “See here, thou yoong whelp, this is private, and we want noan o’ thy
+      spyin’!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But I maun speak to Mr. Wilson.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young Cantab stepped forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, my lad, what is it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s aboot t’ fight, Mr. Wilson, sir. I wanted to tell your mon somethin’
+      aboot t’ Maister.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We’ve no time to listen to gossip, my boy. We know all about the Master.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But thou doan’t, sir. Nobody knows but me and mother, and we thought as
+      we’d like thy mon to know, sir, for we want him to fair bray him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, you want the Master fair brayed, do you? So do we. Well, what have
+      you to say?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Is this your mon, sir?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, suppose it is?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then it’s him I want to tell aboot it. T’ Maister is blind o’ the left
+      eye.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nonsense!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s true, sir. Not stone blind, but rarely fogged. He keeps it secret,
+      but mother knows, and so do I. If thou slip him on the left side he can’t
+      cop thee. Thou’ll find it right as I tell thee. And mark him when he sinks
+      his right. ’Tis his best blow, his right upper-cut. T’ Maister’s finisher,
+      they ca’ it at t’ works. It’s a turble blow when it do come home.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thank you, my boy. This is information worth having about his sight,”
+      said Wilson. “How came you to know so much? Who are you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m his son, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wilson whistled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And who sent you to us?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My mother. I maun get back to her again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Take this half-crown.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir, I don’t seek money in comin’ here. I do it&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For love?” suggested the publican.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For hate!” said the boy, and darted off into the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Seems to me t’ red-headed wench may do him more harm than good, after
+      all,” remarked the publican. “And now, Mr. Montgomery, sir, you’ve done
+      enough for this evenin’, an’ a nine-hours’ sleep is the best trainin’
+      before a battle. Happen this time to-morrow night you’ll be safe back
+      again with your 100 pound in your pocket.”
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             II
+</p>
+    <p>
+      Work was struck at one o’clock at the coal-pits and the iron-works, and
+      the fight was arranged for three. From the Croxley Furnaces, from Wilson’s
+      Coal-pits, from the Heartsease Mine, from the Dodd Mills, from the
+      Leverworth Smelters the workmen came trooping, each with his fox-terrier
+      or his lurcher at his heels. Warped with labour and twisted by toil, bent
+      double by week-long work in the cramped coal galleries or half-blinded
+      with years spent in front of white-hot fluid metal, these men still gilded
+      their harsh and hopeless lives by their devotion to sport. It was their
+      one relief, the only thing which could distract their minds from sordid
+      surroundings, and give them an interest beyond the blackened circle which
+      enclosed them. Literature, art, science, all these things were beyond
+      their horizon; but the race, the football match, the cricket, the fight,
+      these were things which they could understand, which they could speculate
+      upon in advance and comment upon afterwards. Sometimes brutal, sometimes
+      grotesque, the love of sport is still one of the great agencies which make
+      for the happiness of our people. It lies very deeply in the springs of our
+      nature, and when it has been educated out, a higher, more refined nature
+      may be left, but it will not be of that robust British type which has left
+      its mark so deeply on the world. Every one of these raddled workers,
+      slouching with his dog at his heels to see something of the fight, was a
+      true unit of his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a squally May day, with bright sunbursts and driving showers.
+      Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting his medicine made up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The weather seems so very unsettled, Mr. Montgomery,” remarked the
+      doctor, “that I am inclined to think that you had better postpone your
+      little country excursion until a later date.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am afraid that I must go to-day, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have just had an intimation that Mrs. Potter, at the other side of
+      Angleton, wishes to see me. It is probable that I shall be there all day.
+      It will be extremely inconvenient to leave the house empty so long.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am very sorry, sir, but I must go,” said the assistant, doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor saw that it would be useless to argue, and departed in the
+      worst of bad tempers upon mission. Montgomery felt easier now that he was
+      gone. He went up to his room, and packed his running-shoes, his
+      fighting-drawers, and his cricket sash into a hand-bag. When he came down,
+      Mr. Wilson was waiting for him in the surgery. “I hear the doctor has
+      gone.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes; he is likely to be away all day.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I don’t see that it matters much. It’s bound to come to his ears by
+      to-night.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes; it’s serious with me, Mr. Wilson. If I win, it’s all right. I don’t
+      mind telling you that the hundred pounds will make all the difference to
+      me. But if I lose, I shall lose my situation, for, as you say, I can’t
+      keep it secret.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Never mind. We’ll see you through among us. I only wonder the doctor has
+      not heard, for it’s all over the country that you are to fight the Croxley
+      Champion. We’ve had Armitage up about it already. He’s the Master’s
+      backer, you know. He wasn’t sure that you were eligible. The Master said
+      he wanted you whether you were eligible or not. Armitage has money on, and
+      would have made trouble if he could. But I showed him that you came within
+      the conditions of the challenge, and he agreed that it was all right. They
+      think they have a soft thing on.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I can only do my best,” said Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They lunched together; a silent and rather nervous repast, for
+      Montgomery’s mind was full of what was before him, and Wilson had himself
+      more money at stake than he cared to lose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wilson’s carriage and pair were at the door, the horses with blue and
+      white rosettes at their ears, which were the colours of the Wilson
+      Coal-pits, well known, on many a football field. At the avenue gate a
+      crowd of some hundred pit-men and their wives gave a cheer as the carriage
+      passed. To the assistant it all seemed dream-like and extraordinary&mdash;the
+      strangest experience of his life, but with a thrill of human action and
+      interest in it which made it passionately absorbing. He lay back in the
+      open carriage and saw the fluttering handkerchiefs from the doors and
+      windows of the miners’ cottages. Wilson had pinned a blue and white
+      rosette upon his coat, and everybody knew him as their champion. “Good
+      luck, sir! good luck to thee!” they shouted from the roadside. He felt
+      that it was like some unromantic knight riding down to sordid lists, but
+      there was something of chivalry in it all the same. He fought for others
+      as well as for himself. He might fail from want of skill or strength, but
+      deep in his sombre soul he vowed that it should never be for want of
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fawcett was just mounting into his high-wheeled, spidery dogcart, with
+      his little bit of blood between the shafts. He waved his whip and fell in
+      behind the carriage. They overtook Purvis, the tomato-faced publican, upon
+      the road, with his wife in her Sunday bonnet. They also dropped into the
+      procession, and then, as they traversed the seven miles of the high road
+      to Croxley, their two-horsed, rosetted carriage became gradually the
+      nucleus of a comet with a loosely radiating tail. From every side-road
+      came the miners’ carts, the humble, ramshackle traps, black and bulging,
+      with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued, open-hearted partisans. They
+      trailed for a long quarter of a mile behind them&mdash;cracking, whipping,
+      shouting, galloping, swearing. Horsemen and runners were mixed with the
+      vehicles. And then suddenly a squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were
+      having their annual training in those parts, clattered and jingled out of
+      a field, and rode as an escort to the carriage. Through the dust-clouds
+      round him Montgomery saw the gleaming brass helmets, the bright coats, and
+      the tossing heads of the chargers, the delighted brown faces of the
+      troopers. It was more dream-like than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, as they approached the monstrous, uncouth line of bottle-shaped
+      buildings which marked the smelting-works of Croxley, their long, writhing
+      snake of dust was headed off by another but longer one which wound across
+      their path. The main road into which their own opened was filled by the
+      rushing current of traps. The Wilson contingent halted until the others
+      should get past. The iron-men cheered and groaned, according to their
+      humour, as they whirled past their antagonist. Rough chaff flew back and
+      forwards like iron nuts and splinters of coal. “Brought him up, then!”
+      “Got t’ hearse for to fetch him back?” “Where’s t’ owd K-legs?” “Mon, mon,
+      have thy photograph took&mdash;’twill mind thee of what thou used to
+      look!” “He fight?&mdash;he’s nowt but a half-baked doctor!” “Happen he’ll
+      doctor thy Croxley Champion afore he’s through wi’t.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they flashed at each other as the one side waited and the other passed.
+      Then there came a rolling murmur swelling into a shout, and a great brake
+      with four horses came clattering along, all streaming with salmon-pink
+      ribbons. The driver wore a white hat with pink rosette, and beside him, on
+      the high seat, were a man and a woman-she with her arm round his waist.
+      Montgomery had one glimpse of them as they flashed past; he with a furry
+      cap drawn low over his brow, a great frieze coat and a pink comforter
+      round his throat; she brazen, red-headed, bright-coloured, laughing
+      excitedly. The Master, for it was he, turned as he passed, gazed hard at
+      Montgomery, and gave him a menacing, gap-toothed grin. It was a hard,
+      wicked face, blue-jowled and craggy, with long, obstinate cheeks and
+      inexorable eyes. The brake behind was full of patrons of the sport-flushed
+      iron-foremen, heads of departments, managers. One was drinking from a
+      metal flask, and raised it to Montgomery as he passed; and then the crowd
+      thinned, and the Wilson cortege with their dragoons swept in at the rear
+      of the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road led away from Croxley, between curving green hills, gashed and
+      polluted by the searchers for coal and iron. The whole country had been
+      gutted, and vast piles of refuse and mountains of slag suggested the
+      mighty chambers which the labour of man had burrowed beneath. On the left
+      the road curved up to where a huge building, roofless and dismantled,
+      stood crumbling and forlorn, with the light shining through the windowless
+      squares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s the old Arrowsmith’s factory. That’s where the fight is to be,”
+      said Wilson. “How are you feeling now?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thank you, I was never better in my life,” Montgomery answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By Gad, I like your nerve!” said Wilson, who was himself flushed and
+      uneasy. “You’ll give us a fight for our money, come what may. That place
+      on the right is the office, and that has been set aside as the dressing
+      and weighing room.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The carriage drove up to it amidst the shouts of the folk upon the
+      hillside. Lines of empty carriages and traps curved down upon the winding
+      road, and a black crowd surged round the door of the ruined factory. The
+      seats, as a huge placard announced, were five shillings, three shillings,
+      and a shilling, with half-price for dogs. The takings, deducting expenses,
+      were to go to the winner, and it was already evident that a larger stake
+      than a hundred pounds was in question. A babel of voices rose from the
+      door. The workers wished to bring their dogs in free. The men scuffled.
+      The dogs barked. The crowd was a whirling, eddying pool surging with a
+      roar up to the narrow cleft which was its only outlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brake, with its salmon-coloured streamers and four reeking horses,
+      stood empty before the door of the office; Wilson, Purvis, Fawcett and
+      Montgomery passed in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a large, bare room inside with square, clean patches upon the
+      grimy walls, where pictures and almanacs had once hung. Worn linoleum
+      covered the floor, but there was no furniture save some benches and a deal
+      table with an ewer and a basin upon it. Two of the corners were curtained
+      off. In the middle of the room was a weighing-chair. A hugely fat man,
+      with a salmon tie and a blue waistcoat with bird’s-eye spots, came
+      bustling up to them. It was Armitage, the butcher and grazier, well known
+      for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal patron of sport in the
+      Riding. “Well, well,” he grunted, in a thick, fussy, wheezy voice, “you
+      have come, then. Got your man? Got your man?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Here he is, fit and well. Mr. Montgomery, let me present you to Mr.
+      Armitage.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Glad to meet you, sir. Happy to make your acquaintance. I make bold to
+      say, sir, that we of Croxley admire your courage, Mr. Montgomery, and that
+      our only hope is a fair fight and no favour, and the best man win. That’s
+      our sentiments at Croxley.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And it is my sentiment, also,” said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, you can’t say fairer than that, Mr. Montgomery. You’ve taken a
+      large contrac’ in hand, but a large contrac’ may be carried through, sir,
+      as anyone that knows my dealings could testify. The Master is ready to
+      weigh in!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So am I.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You must weigh in the buff.” Montgomery looked askance at the tall,
+      red-headed woman who was standing gazing out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s all right,” said Wilson. “Get behind the curtain and put on your
+      fighting kit.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did so, and came out the picture of an athlete, in white, loose
+      drawers, canvas shoes, and the sash of a well-known cricket club round his
+      waist. He was trained to a hair, his skin gleaming like silk, and every
+      muscle rippling down his broad shoulders and along his beautiful arms as
+      he moved them. They bunched into ivory knobs, or slid into long, sinuous
+      curves, as he raised or lowered his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What thinkest thou o’ that?” asked Ted Barton, his second, of the woman
+      in the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced contemptuously at the young athlete. “It’s but a poor kindness
+      thou dost him to put a thread-paper yoong gentleman like yon against a mon
+      as is a mon. Why, my Jock would throttle him wi’ one hond lashed behind
+      him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Happen he may&mdash;happen not,” said Barton. “I have but twa pund in the
+      world, but it’s on him, every penny, and no hedgin’. But here’s t’
+      Maister, and rarely fine he do look.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prize-fighter had come out from his curtain, a squat, formidable
+      figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted
+      leg. His skin had none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery’s, but
+      was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled black
+      hair which thatched his mighty breast. His weight bore no relation to his
+      strength, for those huge shoulders and great arms, with brown,
+      sledge-hammer fists, would have fitted the heaviest man that ever threw
+      his cap into a ring. But his loins and legs were slight in proportion.
+      Montgomery, on the other hand, was as symmetrical as a Greek statue. It
+      would be an encounter between a man who was specially fitted for one
+      sport, and one who was equally capable of any. The two looked curiously at
+      each other: a bulldog, and a high-bred clean-limbed terrier, each full of
+      spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How do you do?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How do?” The Master grinned again, and his three jagged front teeth
+      gleamed for an instant. The rest had been beaten out of him in twenty
+      years of battle. He spat upon the floor. “We have a rare fine day for’t.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Capital,” said Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s the good feelin’ I like,” wheezed the fat butcher. “Good lads,
+      both of them!&mdash;prime lads!&mdash;hard meat an’ good bone. There’s no
+      ill-feelin’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If he downs me, Gawd bless him!” said the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “An’ if we down him, Gawd help him!” interrupted the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Haud thy tongue, wench!” said the Master, impatiently. “Who art thou to
+      put in thy word? Happen I might draw my hand across thy face.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman did not take the threat amiss. “Wilt have enough for thy hand to
+      do, Jock,” said she. “Get quit o’ this gradely man afore thou turn on me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lovers’ quarrel was interrupted by the entrance of a newcomer, a
+      gentleman with a fur-collared overcoat and a very shiny top-hat&mdash;a
+      top-hat of a degree of glossiness which is seldom seen five miles from
+      Hyde Park. This hat he wore at the extreme back of his head, so that the
+      lower surface of the brim made a kind of frame for his high, bald
+      forehead, his, keen eyes, his rugged and yet kindly face. He bustled in
+      with the quiet air of possession with which the ring master enters the
+      circus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s Mr. Stapleton, the referee from London,” said Wilson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How do you do, Mr. Stapleton? I was introduced to you at the big fight at
+      the Corinthian Club in Piccadilly.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah! I dare say,” said the other, shaking hands. “Fact is, I’m introduced
+      to so many that I can’t undertake to carry their names. Wilson, is it?
+      Well, Mr. Wilson, glad to see you. Couldn’t get a fly at the station, and
+      that’s why I’m late.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m sure, sir,” said Armitage, “we should be proud that anyone so well
+      known in the boxing world should come down to our little exhibition.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not at all. Not at all. Anything in the interests of boxin’. All ready?
+      Men weighed?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Weighing now, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah! Just as well that I should see it done. Seen you before, Craggs. Saw
+      you fight your second battle against Willox. You had beaten him once, but
+      he came back on you. What does the indicator say?&mdash;163lbs.&mdash;two
+      off for the kit&mdash;161lbs. Now, my lad, you jump. My goodness, what
+      colours are you wearing?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The Anonymi Cricket Club.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What right have you to wear them? I belong to the club myself.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So do I.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You an amateur?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you are fighting for a money prize?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I suppose you know what you are doing? You realise that you’re a
+      professional pug from this onwards, and that if ever you fight again&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll never fight again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Happen you won’t,” said the woman, and the Master turned a terrible eye
+      upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I suppose you know your own business best. Up you jump. One hundred
+      and fifty-one, minus two, 149&mdash;12lbs. difference, but youth and
+      condition on the other scale. Well, the sooner we get to work the better,
+      for I wish to catch the seven o’clock express at Hellifield. Twenty
+      three-minute rounds, with one-minute intervals, and Queensberry rules.
+      Those are the conditions, are they not?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very good, then&mdash;we may go across.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two combatants had overcoats thrown over their shoulders, and the
+      whole party, backers, fighters, seconds, and the referee filed out of the
+      room. A police inspector was waiting for them in the road. He had a
+      note-book in his hand&mdash;that terrible weapon which awes even the
+      London cabman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I must take your names, gentlemen, in case it should be necessary to
+      proceed for breach of peace.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You don’t mean to stop the fight?” cried Armitage, in a passion of
+      indignation. “I’m Mr. Armitage, of Croxley, and this is Mr. Wilson, and
+      we’ll be responsible that all is fair and as it should be.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll take the names in case it should be necessary to proceed,” said the
+      inspector, impassively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But you know me well.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If you was a dook or even a judge it would be all the same,” said the
+      inspector. “It’s the law, and there’s an end. I’ll not take upon myself to
+      stop the fight, seeing that gloves are to be used, but I’ll take the names
+      of all concerned. Silas Craggs, Robert Montgomery, Edward Barton, James
+      Stapleton, of London. Who seconds Silas Craggs?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I do,” said the woman. “Yes, you can stare, but it’s my job, and no one
+      else’s. Anastasia’s the name&mdash;four a’s.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Craggs?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Johnson&mdash;Anastasia Johnson. If you jug him you can jug me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Who talked of juggin’, ye fool?” growled the Master. “Coom on, Mr.
+      Armitage, for I’m fair sick o’ this loiterin’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector fell in with the procession, and proceeded, as they walked
+      up the hill, to bargain in his official capacity for a front seat, where
+      he could safeguard the interests of the law, and in his private capacity
+      to lay out thirty shillings at seven to one with Mr. Armitage. Through the
+      door they passed, down a narrow lane walled with a dense bank of humanity,
+      up a wooden ladder to a platform, over a rope which was slung waist-high
+      from four corner-stakes, and then Montgomery realised that he was in that
+      ring in which his immediate destiny was to be worked out. On the stake at
+      one corner there hung a blue-and-white streamer. Barton led him across,
+      the overcoat dangling loosely from his shoulders, and he sat down on a
+      wooden stool. Barton and another man, both wearing white sweaters, stood
+      beside him. The so-called ring was a square, twenty feet each way. At the
+      opposite angle was the sinister figure of the Master, with his red-headed
+      woman and a rough-faced friend to look after him. At each corner were
+      metal basins, pitchers of water, and sponges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the hubbub and uproar of the entrance Montgomery was too bewildered
+      to take things in. But now there was a few minutes’ delay, for the referee
+      had lingered behind, and so he looked quietly about him. It was a sight to
+      haunt him for a lifetime. Wooden seats had been built in, sloping upwards
+      to the tops of the walls. Above, instead of a ceiling, a great flight of
+      crows passed slowly across a square of grey cloud. Right up to the topmost
+      benches the folk were banked&mdash;broadcloth in front, corduroys and
+      fustian behind; faces turned everywhere upon him. The grey reek of the
+      pipes filled the building, and the air was pungent with the acrid smell of
+      cheap, strong tobacco. Everywhere among the human faces were to be seen
+      the heads of the dogs. They growled and yapped from the back benches. In
+      that dense mass of humanity, one could hardly pick out individuals, but
+      Montgomery’s eyes caught the brazen gleam of the helmets held upon the
+      knees of the ten yeomen of his escort. At the very edge of the platform
+      sat the reporters, five of them&mdash;three locals and two all the way
+      from London. But where was the all-important referee? There was no sign of
+      him, unless he were in the centre of that angry swirl of men near the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Stapleton had stopped to examine the gloves which were to be used, and
+      entered the building after the combatants. He had started to come down
+      that narrow lane with the human walls which led to the ring. But already
+      it had gone abroad that the Wilson champion was a gentleman, and that
+      another gentleman had been appointed as referee. A wave of suspicion
+      passed through the Croxley folk. They would have one of their own people
+      for a referee. They would not have a stranger. His path was stopped as he
+      made for the ring. Excited men flung themselves in front of him; they
+      waved their fists in his face and cursed him. A woman howled vile names in
+      his ear. Somebody struck at him with an umbrella. “Go thou back to Lunnon.
+      We want noan o’ thee. Go thou back!” they yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stapleton, with his shiny hat cocked backwards, and his large, bulging
+      forehead swelling from under it, looked round him from beneath his bushy
+      brows. He was in the centre of a savage and dangerous mob. Then he drew
+      his watch from his pocket and held it dial upwards in his palm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In three minutes,” said he, “I will declare the fight off.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They raged round him. His cool face and that aggressive top-hat irritated
+      them. Grimy hands were raised. But it was difficult, somehow, to strike a
+      man who was so absolutely indifferent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In two minutes I declare the fight off.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They exploded into blasphemy. The breath of angry men smoked into his
+      placid face. A gnarled, grimy fist vibrated at the end of his nose. “We
+      tell thee we want noan o’ thee. Get thou back where thou com’st from.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In one minute I declare the fight off.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the calm persistence of the man conquered the swaying, mutable,
+      passionate crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Let him through, mon. Happen there’ll be no fight after a’.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Let him through.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bill, thou loomp, let him pass. Dost want the fight declared off?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Make room for the referee!&mdash;room for the Lunnon referee!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And half pushed, half carried, he was swept up to the ring. There were two
+      chairs by the side of it, one for him and one for the timekeeper. He sat
+      down, his hands on his knees, his hat at a more wonderful angle than ever,
+      impassive but solemn, with the aspect of one who appreciates his
+      responsibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Armitage, the portly butcher, made his way into the ring and held up
+      two fat hands, sparkling with rings, as a signal for silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen!” he yelled. And then in a crescendo shriek, “Gentlemen!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And ladies!” cried somebody, for, indeed, there was a fair sprinkling of
+      women among the crowd. “Speak up, owd man!” shouted another. “What price
+      pork chops?” cried somebody at the back. Everybody laughed, and the dogs
+      began to bark. Armitage waved his hands amidst the uproar as if he were
+      conducting an orchestra. At last the babel thinned into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen,” he yelled, “the match is between Silas Craggs, whom we call
+      the Master of Croxley, and Robert Montgomery, of the Wilson Coal-pits. The
+      match was to be under eleven-eight. When they were weighed just now,
+      Craggs weighed eleven-seven, and Montgomery ten-nine. The conditions of
+      the contest are&mdash;the best of twenty three-minute rounds with
+      two-ounce gloves. Should the fight run to its full length, it will, of
+      course, be decided upon points. Mr. Stapleton, the well-known London
+      referee, has kindly consented to see fair play. I wish to say that Mr.
+      Wilson and I, the chief backers of the two men, have every confidence in
+      Mr. Stapleton, and that we beg that you will accept his rulings without
+      dispute.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then turned from one combatant to the other, with a wave of his hand.
+    </p>
+<p class="center big">
+                             III
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “Montgomery&mdash;Craggs!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great hush fell over the huge assembly. Even the dogs stopped yapping;
+      one might have thought that the monstrous room was empty. The two men had
+      stood up, the small white gloves over their hands. They advanced from their
+      corners and shook hands, Montgomery gravely, Craggs with a smile. Then
+      they fell into position. The crowd gave a long sigh&mdash;the intake of a
+      thousand excited breaths. The referee tilted his chair on to its back
+      legs, and looked moodily critical from the one to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was strength against activity&mdash;that was evident from the first.
+      The Master stood stolidly upon his K leg. It gave him a tremendous
+      pedestal; one could hardly imagine his being knocked down. And he could
+      pivot round upon it with extraordinary quickness; but his advance or
+      retreat was ungainly. His frame, however, was so much larger and broader
+      than that of the student, and his brown, massive face looked so resolute
+      and menacing that the hearts of the Wilson party sank within them. There
+      was one heart, however, which had not done so. It was that of Robert
+      Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Any nervousness which he may have had completely passed away now that he
+      had his work before him. Here was something definite&mdash;this
+      hard-faced, deformed Hercules to beat, with a career as the price of
+      beating him. He glowed with the joy of action; it thrilled through his
+      nerves. He faced his man with little in-and-out steps, breaking to the
+      left, breaking to the right, feeling his way, while Craggs, with a dull,
+      malignant eye, pivoted slowly upon his weak leg, his left arm half
+      extended, his right sunk low across the mark. Montgomery led with his
+      left, and then led again, getting lightly home each time. He tried again,
+      but the Master had his counter ready, and Montgomery reeled back from a
+      harder blow than he had given. Anastasia, the woman, gave a shrill cry of
+      encouragement, and her man let fly his right. Montgomery ducked under it,
+      and in an instant the two were in each other’s arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Break away! Break away!” said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master struck upwards on the break, and shook Montgomery with the
+      blow. Then it was “time.” It had been a spirited opening round. The people
+      buzzed into comment and applause. Montgomery was quite fresh, but the
+      hairy chest of the Master was rising and falling. The man passed a sponge
+      over his head while Anastasia flapped the towel before him. “Good lass!
+      good lass!” cried the crowd, and cheered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men were up again, the Master grimly watchful, Montgomery as alert as
+      a kitten. The Master tried a sudden rush, squattering along with his
+      awkward gait, but coming faster than one would think. The student slipped
+      aside and avoided him. The Master stopped, grinned, and shook his head.
+      Then he motioned with his hand as an invitation to Montgomery to come to
+      him. The student did so and led with his left, but got a swinging right
+      counter in the ribs in exchange. The heavy blow staggered him, and the
+      Master came scrambling in to complete his advantage; but Montgomery, with
+      his greater activity, kept out of danger until the call of “time.” A tame
+      round, and the advantage with the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “T’ Maister’s too strong for him,” said a smelter to his neighbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay; but t’other’s a likely lad. Happen we’ll see some sport yet. He can
+      joomp rarely.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But t’ Maister can stop and hit rarely. Happen he’ll mak’ him joomp when
+      he gets his nief upon him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were up again, the water glistening upon their faces. Montgomery led
+      instantly, and got his right home with a sounding smack upon the master’s
+      forehead. There was a shout from the colliers, and “Silence! Order!” from
+      the referee. Montgomery avoided the counter, and scored with his left.
+      Fresh applause, and the referee upon his feet in indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No comments, gentlemen, if <i>you</i> please, during the rounds.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Just bide a bit!” growled the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Don’t talk&mdash;fight!” said the referee, angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery rubbed in the point by a flush hit upon the mouth, and the
+      Master shambled back to his corner like an angry bear, having had all the
+      worst of the round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where’s thot seven to one?” shouted Purvis, the publican. “I’ll take six
+      to one!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were no answers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Five to one!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were givers at that. Purvis booked them in a tattered notebook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery began to feel happy. He lay back with his legs outstretched,
+      his back against the corner-post, and one gloved hand upon each rope. What
+      a delicious minute it was between each round. If he could only keep out of
+      harm’s way, he must surely wear this man out before the end of twenty
+      rounds. He was so slow that all his strength went for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’re fightin’ a winnin’ fight&mdash;a winnin’ fight,” Ted Barton
+      whispered in his ear. “Go canny; tak’ no chances; you have him proper.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Master was crafty. He had fought so many battles with his maimed
+      limb that he knew how to make the best of it. Warily and slowly he
+      manoeuvred round Montgomery, stepping forward and yet again forward until
+      he had imperceptibly backed him into his corner. The student suddenly saw
+      a flash of triumph upon the grim face, and a gleam in the dull, malignant
+      eyes. The Master was upon him. He sprang aside and was on the ropes. The
+      Master smashed in one of his terrible upper-cuts, and Montgomery half
+      broke it with his guard. The student sprang the other way and was against
+      the other converging rope. He was trapped in the angle. The Master sent in
+      another with a hoggish grunt which spoke of the energy behind it.
+      Montgomery ducked, but got a jab from the left upon the mark. He closed
+      with his man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Break away! Break away!” cried the referee. Montgomery disengaged, and
+      got a swinging blow on the ear as he did so. It had been a damaging round
+      for him, and the Croxley people were shouting their delight. “Gentlemen, I
+      will <i>not</i> have this noise!” Stapleton roared. “I have been
+      accustomed to preside at a well-conducted club, and not at a bear-garden.”
+      This little man, with the tilted hat and the bulging forehead, dominated
+      the whole assembly. He was like a head-master among his boys. He glared
+      round him, and nobody cared to meet his eye. Anastasia had kissed the
+      Master when he resumed his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good lass. Do’t again!” cried the laughing crowd, and the angry Master
+      shook his glove at her, as she flapped her towel in front of him.
+      Montgomery was weary and a little sore, but not depressed. He had learned
+      something. He would not again be tempted into danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three rounds the honours were fairly equal. The student’s hitting was
+      the quicker, the Master’s the harder. Profiting by his lesson, Montgomery
+      kept himself in the open, and refused to be herded into a corner.
+      Sometimes the Master succeeded in rushing him to the side-ropes, but the
+      younger man slipped away, or closed and then disengaged. The monotonous
+      “Break away! Break away!” of the referee broke in upon the quick, low
+      patter of rubber-soled shoes, the dull thud of the blows, and the sharp,
+      hissing breath of two tired men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ninth round found both of them in fairly good condition. Montgomery’s
+      head was still singing from the blow that he had in the corner, and one of
+      his thumbs pained him acutely and seemed to be dislocated. The Master
+      showed no sign of a touch, but his breathing was the more laboured, and a
+      long line of ticks upon the referee’s paper showed that the student had a
+      good show of points. But one of this iron-man’s blows was worth three of
+      his, and he knew that without the gloves he could not have stood for three
+      rounds against him. All the amateur work that he had done was the merest
+      tapping and flapping when compared to those frightful blows, from arms
+      toughened by the shovel and the crowbar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the tenth round, and the fight was half over. The betting now was
+      only three to one, for the Wilson champion had held his own much better
+      than had been expected. But those who knew the ring-craft as well as the
+      staying power of the old prize-fighter knew that the odds were still a
+      long way in his favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Have a care of him!” whispered Barton, as he sent his man up to the
+      scratch. “Have a care! He’ll play thee a trick, if he can.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery saw, or imagined he saw, that his antagonist was tiring. He
+      looked jaded and listless, and his hands drooped a little from their
+      position. His own youth and condition were beginning to tell. He sprang in
+      and brought off a fine left-handed lead. The Master’s return lacked his
+      usual fire. Again Montgomery led, and again he got home. Then he tried his
+      right upon the mark, and the Master guarded it downwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Too low! Too low! A foul! A foul!” yelled a thousand voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The referee rolled his sardonic eyes slowly round. “Seems to me this
+      buildin’ is chock-full of referees,” said he. The people laughed and
+      applauded, but their favour was as immaterial to him as their anger. “No
+      applause, please! This is not a theatre!” he yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery was very pleased with himself. His adversary was evidently in a
+      bad way. He was piling on his points and establishing a lead. He might as
+      well make hay while the sun shone. The Master was looking all abroad.
+      Montgomery popped one upon his blue jowl and got away without a return.
+      And then the Master suddenly dropped both his hands and began rubbing his
+      thigh. Ah! that was it, was it? He had muscular cramp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Go in! Go in!” cried Teddy Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery sprang wildly forward, and the next instant was lying half
+      senseless, with his neck nearly broken, in the middle of the ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole round had been a long conspiracy to tempt him within reach of
+      one of those terrible right-hand upper-cuts for which the Master was
+      famous. For this the listless, weary bearing, for this the cramp in the
+      thigh. When Montgomery had sprung in so hotly he had exposed himself to
+      such a blow as neither flesh nor blood could stand. Whizzing up from below
+      with a rigid arm, which put the Master’s eleven stone into its force, it
+      struck him under the jaw; he whirled half round, and fell a helpless and
+      half-paralysed mass. A vague groan and murmur, inarticulate, too excited
+      for words, rose from the great audience. With open mouths and staring eyes
+      they gazed at the twitching and quivering figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stand back! Stand right back!” shrieked the referee, for the Master was
+      standing over his man ready to give him the <i>coup-de-grace</i> as he
+      rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stand back, Craggs, this instant!” Stapleton repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master sank his hands sulkily and walked backwards to the rope with
+      his ferocious eyes fixed upon his fallen antagonist. The timekeeper called
+      the seconds. If ten of them passed before Montgomery rose to his feet, the
+      fight was ended. Ted Barton wrung his hands and danced about in an agony
+      in his corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As if in a dream&mdash;a terrible nightmare&mdash;the student could hear
+      the voice of the timekeeper&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;he got
+      up on his hand&mdash;six&mdash; seven&mdash;he was on his knee, sick,
+      swimming, faint, but resolute to rise. Eight&mdash;he was up, and the
+      Master was on him like a tiger, lashing savagely at him with both hands.
+      Folk held their breath as they watched those terrible blows, and
+      anticipated the pitiful end&mdash;so much more pitiful where a game but
+      helpless man refuses to accept defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangely automatic is the human brain. Without volition, without effort,
+      there shot into the memory of this bewildered, staggering, half-stupefied
+      man the one thing which could have saved him&mdash;that blind eye of which
+      the Master’s son had spoken. It was the same as the other to look at, but
+      Montgomery remembered that he had said that it was the left. He reeled to
+      the left side, half felled by a drive which lit upon his shoulder. The
+      Master pivoted round upon his leg and was at him in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yark him, lad! Yark him!” screamed the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hold your tongue!” said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery slipped to the left again and yet again, but the Master was too
+      quick and clever for him. He struck round and got him full on the face as
+      he tried once more to break away. Montgomery’s knees weakened under him,
+      and he fell with a groan on the floor. This time he knew that he was done.
+      With bitter agony he realised, as he groped blindly with his hands, that
+      he could not possibly raise himself. Far away and muffled he heard, amid
+      the murmurs of the multitude, the fateful voice of the timekeeper counting
+      off the seconds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;six&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Time!” said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the pent-up passion of the great assembly broke loose. Croxley gave a
+      deep groan of disappointment. The Wilsons were on their feet, yelling with
+      delight. There was still a chance for them. In four more seconds their man
+      would have been solemnly counted out. But now he had a minute in which to
+      recover. The referee looked round with relaxed features and laughing eyes.
+      He loved this rough game, this school for humble heroes, and it was
+      pleasant to him to intervene as a <i>Deus ex machina</i> at so dramatic a
+      moment. His chair and his hat were both tilted at an extreme angle; he and
+      the timekeeper smiled at each other. Ted Barton and the other second had
+      rushed out and thrust an arm each under Montgomery’s knee, the other
+      behind his loins, and so carried him back to his stool. His head lolled
+      upon his shoulder, but a douche of cold water sent a shiver through him,
+      and he started and looked round him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He’s a’ right!” cried the people round. “He’s a rare brave lad. Good lad!
+      Good lad!” Barton poured some brandy into his mouth. The mists cleared a
+      little, and he realised where he was and what he had to do. But he was
+      still very weak, and he hardly dared to hope that he could survive another
+      round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Seconds out of the ring!” cried the referee. “Time!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Croxley Master sprang eagerly off his stool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Keep clear of him! Go easy for a bit,” said Barton, and Montgomery walked
+      out to meet his man once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had had two lessons&mdash;the one when the Master got him into his
+      corner, the other when he had been lured into mixing it up with so
+      powerful an antagonist. Now he would be wary. Another blow would finish
+      him; he could afford to run no risks. The Master was determined to follow
+      up his advantage, and rushed at him, slogging furiously right and left.
+      But Montgomery was too young and active to be caught. He was strong upon
+      his legs once more, and his wits had all come back to him. It was a
+      gallant sight&mdash;the line-of-battleship trying to pour its overwhelming
+      broadside into the frigate, and the frigate manoeuvring always so as to
+      avoid it. The Master tried all his ring-craft. He coaxed the student up by
+      pretended inactivity; he rushed at him with furious rushes towards the
+      ropes. For three rounds he exhausted every wile in trying to get at him.
+      Montgomery during all this time was conscious that his strength was minute
+      by minute coming back to him. The spinal jar from an upper-cut is
+      overwhelming, but evanescent. He was losing all sense of it beyond a great
+      stiffness of the neck. For the first round after his downfall he had been
+      content to be entirely on the defensive, only too happy if he could stall
+      off the furious attacks of the Master. In the second he occasionally
+      ventured upon a light counter. In the third he was smacking back merrily
+      where he saw an opening. His people yelled their approval of him at the
+      end of every round. Even the iron-workers cheered him with that fine
+      unselfishness which true sport engenders. To most of them, unspiritual and
+      unimaginative, the sight of this clean-limbed young Apollo, rising above
+      disaster and holding on while consciousness was in him to his appointed
+      task, was the greatest thing their experience had ever known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Master’s naturally morose temper became more and more murderous at
+      this postponement of his hopes. Three rounds ago the battle had been in
+      his hands; now it was all to do over again. Round by round his man was
+      recovering his strength. By the fifteenth he was strong again in wind and
+      limb. But the vigilant Anastasia saw something which encouraged her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That bash in t’ ribs is telling on him, Jock,” she whispered. “Why else
+      should he be gulping t’ brandy? Go in, lad, and thou hast him yet.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had suddenly taken the flask from Barton’s hand, and had a deep
+      pull at the contents. Then, with his face a little flushed, and with a
+      curious look of purpose, which made the referee stare hard at him, in his
+      eyes, he rose for the sixteenth round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Game as a pairtridge!” cried the publican, as he looked at the hard-set
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!” cried the iron-men to their Master. And
+      then a hum of exultation ran through their ranks as they realised that
+      their tougher, harder, stronger man held the vantage, after all. Neither
+      of the men showed much sign of punishment. Small gloves crush and numb,
+      but they do not cut. One of the Master’s eyes was even more flush with his
+      cheek than Nature had made it. Montgomery had two or three livid marks
+      upon his body, and his face was haggard, save for that pink spot which the
+      brandy had brought into either cheek. He rocked a little as he stood
+      opposite his man, and his hands drooped as if he felt the gloves to be an
+      unutterable weight. It was evident that he was spent and desperately
+      weary. If he received one other blow it must surely be fatal to him. If he
+      brought one home, what power could there be behind it, and what chance was
+      there of its harming the colossus in front of him? It was the crisis of
+      the fight. This round must decide it. “Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!” the
+      iron-men whooped. Even the savage eyes of the referee were unable to
+      restrain the excited crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, at last, the chance had come for Montgomery. He had learned a lesson
+      from his more experienced rival. Why should he not play his own game upon
+      him? He was spent, but not nearly so spent as he pretended. That brandy
+      was to call up his reserves, to let him have strength to take full
+      advantage of the opening when it came. It was thrilling and tingling
+      through his veins at the very moment when he was lurching and rocking like
+      a beaten man. He acted his part admirably. The Master felt that there was
+      an easy task before him, and rushed in with ungainly activity to finish it
+      once for all. He slap-banged away left and right, boring Montgomery up
+      against the ropes, swinging in his ferocious blows with those animal
+      grunts which told of the vicious energy behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery was too cool to fall a victim to any of those murderous
+      upper-cuts. He kept out of harm’s way with a rigid guard, an active foot,
+      and a head which was swift to duck. And yet he contrived to present the
+      same appearance of a man who is hopelessly done. The Master, weary from
+      his own shower of blows, and fearing nothing from so weak a man, dropped
+      his hand for an instant, and at that instant Montgomery’s right came home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a magnificent blow, straight, clean, crisp, with the force of the
+      loins and the back behind it. And it landed where he had meant it to&mdash;
+      upon the exact point of that blue-grained chin. Flesh and blood could not
+      stand such a blow in such a place. Neither valour nor hardihood can save
+      the man to whom it comes. The Master fell backwards, flat, prostrate,
+      striking the ground with so simultaneous a clap that it was like a shutter
+      falling from a wall. A yell, which no referee could control, broke from
+      the crowded benches as the giant went down. He lay upon his back, his
+      knees a little drawn up, his huge chest panting. He twitched and shook,
+      but could not move. His feet pawed convulsively once or twice. It was no
+      use. He was done. “Eight&mdash;nine&mdash;ten!” said the timekeeper, and
+      the roar of a thousand voices, with a deafening clap like the broadside
+      of a ship, told that the Master of Croxley was the Master no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery stood half dazed, looking down at the huge, prostrate figure.
+      He could hardly realise that it was indeed all over. He saw the referee
+      motion towards him with his hand. He heard his name bellowed in triumph
+      from every side. And then he was aware of someone rushing towards him; he
+      caught a glimpse of a flushed face and an aureole of flying red hair, a
+      gloveless fist struck him between the eyes, and he was on his back in the
+      ring beside his antagonist, while a dozen of his supporters were
+      endeavouring to secure the frantic Anastasia. He heard the angry shouting
+      of the referee, the screaming of the furious woman, and the cries of the
+      mob. Then something seemed to break like an over-stretched banjo string,
+      and he sank into the deep, deep, mist-girt abyss of unconsciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dressing was like a thing in a dream, and so was a vision of the
+      Master with the grin of a bulldog upon his face, and his three teeth
+      amiably protruded. He shook Montgomery heartily by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I would have been rare pleased to shake thee by the throttle, lad, a
+      short while syne,” said he. “But I bear no ill-feeling again’ thee. It was
+      a rare poonch that brought me down&mdash;I have not had a better since my
+      second fight wi’ Billy Edwards in ’89. Happen thou might think o’ goin’
+      further wi’ this business. If thou dost, and want a trainer, there’s not
+      much inside t’ ropes as I don’t know. Or happen thou might like to try it
+      wi’ me old style and bare knuckles. Thou hast but to write to t’ iron-works
+      to find me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery disclaimed any such ambition. A canvas bag with his share&mdash;190
+      sovereigns&mdash;was handed to him, of which he gave ten to the Master,
+      who also received some share of the gate-money. Then, with young Wilson
+      escorting him on one side, Purvis on the other, and Fawcett carrying his
+      bag behind, he went in triumph to his carriage, and drove amid a long
+      roar, which lined the highway like a hedge for the seven miles, back to
+      his starting-point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s the greatest thing I ever saw in my life. By George, it’s ripping!”
+      cried Wilson, who had been left in a kind of ecstasy by the events of the
+      day. “There’s a chap over Barnsley way who fancies himself a bit. Let us
+      spring you on him, and let him see what he can make of you. We’ll put up a
+      purse&mdash;won’t we, Purvis? You shall never want a backer.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “At his weight,” said the publican, “I’m behind him, I am, for twenty
+      rounds, and no age, country, or colour barred.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So am I,” cried Fawcett; “middle-weight champion of the world, that’s
+      what he is&mdash;here, in the same carriage with us.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery was not to be beguiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No; I have my own work to do now.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And what may that be?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll use this money to get my medical degree.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we’ve plenty of doctors, but you’re the only man in the Riding that
+      could smack the Croxley Master off his legs. However, I suppose you know
+      your own business best. When you’re a doctor, you’d best come down into
+      these parts, and you’ll always find a job waiting for you at the Wilson
+      Coal-pits.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had returned by devious ways to the surgery. The horses were
+      smoking at the door, and the doctor was just back from his long journey.
+      Several patients had called in his absence, and he was in the worst of
+      tempers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I suppose I should be glad that you have come back at all, Mr.
+      Montgomery!” he snarled. “When next you elect to take a holiday, I trust
+      it will not be at so busy a time.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am sorry, sir, that you should have been inconvenienced.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir, I have been exceedingly inconvenienced.” Here, for the first
+      time, he looked hard at the assistant. “Good Heavens, Mr. Montgomery, what
+      have you been doing with your left eye?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was where Anastasia had lodged her protest. Montgomery laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is nothing, sir,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you have a livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that my
+      representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition. How
+      did you receive these injuries?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, sir, as you know, there was a little glove-fight to-day over at
+      Croxley.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you got mixed up with that brutal crowd?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I <i>was</i> rather mixed up with them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And who assaulted you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “One of the fighters.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Which of them?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The Master of Croxley.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good Heavens! Perhaps you interfered with him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, to tell the truth, I did a little.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mr. Montgomery, in such a practice as mine, intimately associated as it
+      is with the highest and most progressive elements of our small community,
+      it is impossible&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just then the tentative bray of a cornet-player searching for his
+      key-note jarred upon their ears, and an instant later the Wilson Colliery
+      brass band was in full cry with, “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” outside
+      the surgery window. There was a banner waving, and a shouting crowd of
+      miners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What is it? What does it mean?” cried the angry doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It means, sir, that I have, in the only way which was open to me, earned
+      the money which is necessary for my education. It is my duty, Dr. Oldacre,
+      to warn you that I am about to return to the University, and that you
+      should lose no time in appointing my successor.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was in the days when the German armies had broken their way across
+      France, and when the shattered forces of the young Republic had been swept
+      away to the north of the Aisne and to the south of the Loire. Three broad
+      streams of armed men had rolled slowly but irresistibly from the Rhine,
+      now meandering to the north, now to the south, dividing, coalescing, but
+      all uniting to form one great lake round Paris. And from this lake there
+      welled out smaller streams&mdash;one to the north, one southward, to
+      Orleans, and a third westward to Normandy. Many a German trooper saw the
+      sea for the first time when he rode his horse girth-deep into the waves at
+      Dieppe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Black and bitter were the thoughts of Frenchmen when they saw this weal of
+      dishonour slashed across the fair face of their country. They had fought
+      and they had been overborne. That swarming cavalry, those countless
+      footmen, the masterful guns&mdash;they had tried and tried to make head
+      against them. In battalions their invaders were not to be beaten, but man
+      to man, or ten to ten, they were their equals. A brave Frenchman might
+      still make a single German rue the day that he had left his own bank of
+      the Rhine. Thus, unchronicled amid the battles and the sieges, there broke
+      out another war, a war of individuals, with foul murder upon the one side
+      and brutal reprisal on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm, of the 24th Posen Infantry, had suffered severely
+      during this new development. He commanded in the little Norman town of Les
+      Andelys, and his outposts stretched amid the hamlets and farmhouses of the
+      district round. No French force was within fifty miles of him, and yet
+      morning after morning he had to listen to a black report of sentries found
+      dead at their posts, or of foraging parties which had never returned. Then
+      the colonel would go forth in his wrath, and farmsteadings would blaze and
+      villages tremble; but next morning there was still that same dismal tale
+      to be told. Do what he might, he could not shake off his invisible
+      enemies. And yet it should not have been so hard, for, from certain signs
+      in common, in the plan and in the deed, it was certain that all these
+      outrages came from a single source.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm had tried violence, and it had failed. Gold might be
+      more successful. He published it abroad over the countryside that 500frs.
+      would be paid for information. There was no response. Then 800frs. The
+      peasants were incorruptible. Then, goaded on by a murdered corporal, he
+      rose to a thousand, and so bought the soul of Francois Rejane, farm
+      labourer, whose Norman avarice was a stronger passion than his French
+      hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You say that you know who did these crimes?” asked the Prussian colonel,
+      eyeing with loathing the blue-bloused, rat-faced creature before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, colonel.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And it was&mdash;?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Those thousand francs, colonel&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not a sou until your story has been tested. Come! Who is it who has
+      murdered my men?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is Count Eustace of Chateau Noir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You lie!” cried the colonel, angrily. “A gentleman and a nobleman could
+      not have done such crimes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasant shrugged his shoulders. “It is evident to me that you do not
+      know the count. It is this way, colonel. What I tell you is the truth, and
+      I am not afraid that you should test it. The Count of Chateau Noir is a
+      hard man, even at the best time he was a hard man. But of late he has been
+      terrible. It was his son’s death, you know. His son was under Douay, and
+      he was taken, and then in escaping from Germany he met his death. It was
+      the count’s only child, and indeed we all think that it has driven him
+      mad. With his peasants he follows the German armies. I do not know how
+      many he has killed, but it is he who cut the cross upon the foreheads, for
+      it is the badge of his house.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true. The murdered sentries had each had a saltire cross slashed
+      across their brows, as by a hunting-knife. The colonel bent his stiff back
+      and ran his forefinger over the map which lay upon the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The Chateau Noir is not more than four leagues,” he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Three and a kilometre, colonel.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You know the place?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I used to work there.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm rang the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Give this man food and detain him,” said he to the sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why detain me, colonel? I can tell you no more.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We shall need you as guide.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “As guide? But the count? If I were to fall into his hands? Ah, colonel&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prussian commander waved him away. “Send Captain Baumgarten to me at
+      once,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer who answered the summons was a man of middle-age, heavy-jawed,
+      blue-eyed, with a curving yellow moustache, and a brick-red face which
+      turned to an ivory white where his helmet had sheltered it. He was bald,
+      with a shining, tightly stretched scalp, at the back of which, as in a
+      mirror, it was a favourite mess-joke of the subalterns to trim their
+      moustaches. As a soldier he was slow, but reliable and brave. The colonel
+      could trust him where a more dashing officer might be in danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You will proceed to Chateau Noir to-night, captain,” said he. “A guide
+      has been provided. You will arrest the count and bring him back. If there
+      is an attempt at rescue, shoot him at once.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How many men shall I take, colonel?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we are surrounded by spies, and our only chance is to pounce upon
+      him before he knows that we are on the way. A large force will attract
+      attention. On the other hand, you must not risk being cut off.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I might march north, colonel, as if to join General Goeben. Then I could
+      turn down this road which I see upon your map, and get to Chateau Noir
+      before they could hear of us. In that case, with twenty men&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very good, captain. I hope to see you with your prisoner to-morrow
+      morning.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold December night when Captain Baumgarten marched out of Les
+      Andelys with his twenty Poseners, and took the main road to the north
+      west. Two miles out he turned suddenly down a narrow, deeply rutted track,
+      and made swiftly for his man. A thin, cold rain was falling, swishing
+      among the tall poplar trees and rustling in the fields on either side. The
+      captain walked first with Moser, a veteran sergeant, beside him. The
+      sergeant’s wrist was fastened to that of the French peasant, and it had
+      been whispered in his ear that in case of an ambush the first bullet fired
+      would be through his head. Behind them the twenty infantrymen plodded
+      along through the darkness with their faces sunk to the rain, and their
+      boots squeaking in the soft, wet clay. They knew where they were going,
+      and why, and the thought upheld them, for they were bitter at the loss of
+      their comrades. It was a cavalry job, they knew, but the cavalry were all
+      on with the advance, and, besides, it was more fitting that the regiment
+      should avenge its own dead men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly eight when they left Les Andelys. At half-past eleven their
+      guide stopped at a place where two high pillars, crowned with some
+      heraldic stonework, flanked a huge iron gate. The wall in which it had
+      been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered above
+      the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base. The Prussians made
+      their way round it and advanced stealthily, under the shadow of a tunnel
+      of oak branches, up the long avenue, which was still cumbered by the
+      leaves of last autumn. At the top they halted and reconnoitred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The black chateau lay in front of them. The moon had shone out between two
+      rain-clouds, and threw the old house into silver and shadow. It was shaped
+      like an L, with a low arched door in front, and lines of small windows
+      like the open ports of a man-of-war. Above was a dark roof, breaking at
+      the corners into little round overhanging turrets, the whole lying silent
+      in the moonshine, with a drift of ragged clouds blackening the heavens
+      behind it. A single light gleamed in one of the lower windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain whispered his orders to his men. Some were to creep to the
+      front door, some to the back. Some were to watch the east, and some the
+      west. He and the sergeant stole on tiptoe to the lighted window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a small room into which they looked, very meanly furnished. An
+      elderly man, in the dress of a menial, was reading a tattered paper by the
+      light of a guttering candle. He leaned back in his wooden chair with his
+      feet upon a box, while a bottle of white wine stood with a half-filled
+      tumbler upon a stool beside him. The sergeant thrust his needle-gun
+      through the glass, and the man sprang to his feet with a shriek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Silence, for your life! The house is surrounded, and you cannot escape.
+      Come round and open the door, or we will show you no mercy when we come
+      in.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For God’s sake, don’t shoot! I will open it! I will open it!” He rushed
+      from the room with his paper still crumpled up in his hand. An instant
+      later, with a groaning of old locks and a rasping of bars, the low door
+      swung open, and the Prussians poured into the stone-flagged passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where is Count Eustace de Chateau Noir?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My master! He is out, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Out at this time of night? Your life for a lie!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is true, sir. He is out!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I do not know.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Doing what?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I cannot tell. No, it is no use your cocking your pistol, sir. You may
+      kill me, but you cannot make me tell you that which I do not know.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Is he often out at this hour?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Frequently.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And when does he come home?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Before daybreak.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten rasped out a German oath. He had had his journey for
+      nothing, then. The man’s answers were only too likely to be true. It was
+      what he might have expected. But at least he would search the house and
+      make sure. Leaving a picket at the front door and another at the back, the
+      sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of them&mdash;his
+      shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the old tapestries
+      and the low, oak-raftered ceilings. They searched the whole house, from
+      the huge stone-flagged kitchen below to the dining-hall on the second
+      floor, with its gallery for musicians, and its panelling black with age,
+      but nowhere was there a living creature. Up above, in an attic, they found
+      Marie, the elderly wife of the butler; but the owner kept no other
+      servants, and of his own presence there was no trace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was long, however, before Captain Baumgarten had satisfied himself upon
+      the point. It was a difficult house to search. Thin stairs, which only one
+      man could ascend at a time, connected lines of tortuous corridors. The
+      walls were so thick that each room was cut off from its neighbour. Huge
+      fireplaces yawned in each, while the windows were 6ft. deep in the wall.
+      Captain Baumgarten stamped with his feet, tore down curtains, and struck
+      with the pommel of his sword. If there were secret hiding-places, he was
+      not fortunate enough to find them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have an idea,” said he, at last, speaking in German to the sergeant.
+      “You will place a guard over this fellow, and make sure that he
+      communicates with no one.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, captain.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you will place four men in ambush at the front and at the back. It is
+      likely enough that about daybreak our bird may return to the nest.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And the others, captain?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Let them have their suppers in the kitchen. The fellow will serve you
+      with meat and wine. It is a wild night, and we shall be better here than
+      on the country road.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And yourself, captain?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I will take my supper up here in the dining-hall. The logs are laid and
+      we can light the fire. You will call me if there is any alarm. What can
+      you give me for supper&mdash;you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Alas, monsieur, there was a time when I might have answered, ‘What you
+      wish!’ but now it is all that we can do to find a bottle of new claret and
+      a cold pullet.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That will do very well. Let a guard go about with him, sergeant, and let
+      him feel the end of a bayonet if he plays us any tricks.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten was an old campaigner. In the Eastern provinces, and
+      before that in Bohemia, he had learned the art of quartering himself upon
+      the enemy. While the butler brought his supper he occupied himself in
+      making his preparations for a comfortable night. He lit the candelabrum of
+      ten candles upon the centre table. The fire was already burning up,
+      crackling merrily, and sending spurts of blue, pungent smoke into the
+      room. The captain walked to the window and looked out. The moon had gone
+      in again, and it was raining heavily. He could hear the deep sough of the
+      wind, and see the dark loom of the trees, all swaying in the one
+      direction. It was a sight which gave a zest to his comfortable quarters,
+      and to the cold fowl and the bottle of wine which the butler had brought
+      up for him. He was tired and hungry after his long tramp, so he threw his
+      sword, his helmet, and his revolver-belt down upon a chair, and fell to
+      eagerly upon his supper. Then, with his glass of wine before him and his
+      cigar between his lips, he tilted his chair back and looked about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat within a small circle of brilliant light which gleamed upon his
+      silver shoulder-straps, and threw out his terra-cotta face, his heavy
+      eyebrows, and his yellow moustache. But outside that circle things were
+      vague and shadowy in the old dining-hall. Two sides were oak-panelled and
+      two were hung with faded tapestry, across which huntsmen and dogs and
+      stags were still dimly streaming. Above the fireplace were rows of
+      heraldic shields with the blazonings of the family and of its alliances,
+      the fatal saltire cross breaking out on each of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four paintings of old seigneurs of Chateau Noir faced the fireplace, all
+      men with hawk noses and bold, high features, so like each other that only
+      the dress could distinguish the Crusader from the Cavalier of the Fronde.
+      Captain Baumgarten, heavy with his repast, lay back in his chair looking
+      up at them through the clouds of his tobacco smoke, and pondering over the
+      strange chance which had sent him, a man from the Baltic coast, to eat his
+      supper in the ancestral hall of these proud Norman chieftains. But the
+      fire was hot, and the captain’s eyes were heavy. His chin sank slowly upon
+      his chest, and the ten candles gleamed upon the broad, white scalp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a slight noise brought him to his feet. For an instant it seemed
+      to his dazed senses that one of the pictures opposite had walked from its
+      frame. There, beside the table, and almost within arm’s length of him, was
+      standing a huge man, silent, motionless, with no sign of life save his
+      fierce-glinting eyes. He was black-haired, olive-skinned, with a pointed
+      tuft of black beard, and a great, fierce nose, towards which all his
+      features seemed to run. His cheeks were wrinkled like a last year’s apple,
+      but his sweep of shoulder, and bony, corded hands, told of a strength
+      which was unsapped by age. His arms were folded across his arching chest,
+      and his mouth was set in a fixed smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Pray do not trouble yourself to look for your weapons,” he said, as the
+      Prussian cast a swift glance at the empty chair in which they had been
+      laid. “You have been, if you will allow me to say so, a little indiscreet
+      to make yourself so much at home in a house every wall of which is
+      honeycombed with secret passages. You will be amused to hear that forty
+      men were watching you at your supper. Ah! what then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten had taken a step forward with clenched fists. The
+      Frenchman held up the revolver which he grasped in his right hand, while
+      with the left he hurled the German back into his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Pray keep your seat,” said he. “You have no cause to trouble about your
+      men. They have already been provided for. It is astonishing with these
+      stone floors how little one can hear what goes on beneath. You have been
+      relieved of your command, and have now only to think of yourself. May I
+      ask what your name is?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am Captain Baumgarten of the 24th Posen Regiment.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Your French is excellent, though you incline, like most of your
+      countrymen, to turn the ‘p’ into a ‘b.’ I have been amused to hear them
+      cry ‘<i>Avez bitie sur moi!</i>’ You know, doubtless, who it is who
+      addresses you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The Count of Chateau Noir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Precisely. It would have been a misfortune if you had visited my chateau
+      and I had been unable to have a word with you. I have had to do with many
+      German soldiers, but never with an officer before. I have much to talk to
+      you about.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten sat still in his chair. Brave as he was, there was
+      something in this man’s manner which made his skin creep with
+      apprehension. His eyes glanced to right and to left, but his weapons were
+      gone, and in a struggle he saw that he was but a child to this gigantic
+      adversary. The count had picked up the claret bottle and held it to the
+      light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Tut! tut!” said he. “And was this the best that Pierre could do for you?
+      I am ashamed to look you in the face, Captain Baumgarten. We must improve
+      upon this.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He blew a call upon a whistle which hung from his shooting-jacket. The old
+      manservant was in the room in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Chambertin from bin 15!” he cried, and a minute later a grey bottle,
+      streaked with cobwebs, was carried in as a nurse bears an infant. The
+      count filled two glasses to the brim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Drink!” said he. “It is the very best in my cellars, and not to be
+      matched between Rouen and Paris. Drink, sir, and be happy! There are cold
+      joints below. There are two lobsters, fresh from Honfleur. Will you not
+      venture upon a second and more savoury supper?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German officer shook his head. He drained the glass, however, and his
+      host filled it once more, pressing him to give an order for this or that
+      dainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There is nothing in my house which is not at your disposal. You have but
+      to say the word. Well, then, you will allow me to tell you a story while
+      you drink your wine. I have so longed to tell it to some German officer.
+      It is about my son, my only child, Eustace, who was taken and died in
+      escaping. It is a curious little story, and I think that I can promise you
+      that you will never forget it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You must know, then, that my boy was in the artillery&mdash;a fine young
+      fellow, Captain Baumgarten, and the pride of his mother. She died within a
+      week of the news of his death reaching us. It was brought by a brother
+      officer who was at his side throughout, and who escaped while my lad died.
+      I want to tell you all that he told me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Eustace was taken at Weissenburg on the 4th of August. The prisoners were
+      broken up into parties, and sent back into Germany by different routes.
+      Eustace was taken upon the 5th to a village called Lauterburg, where he
+      met with kindness from the German officer in command. This good colonel
+      had the hungry lad to supper, offered him the best he had, opened a bottle
+      of good wine, as I have tried to do for you, and gave him a cigar from his
+      own case. Might I entreat you to take one from mine?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German again shook his head. His horror of his companion had increased
+      as he sat watching the lips that smiled and the eyes that glared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The colonel, as I say, was good to my boy. But, unluckily, the prisoners
+      were moved next day across the Rhine into Ettlingen. They were not equally
+      fortunate there. The officer who guarded them was a ruffian and a villain,
+      Captain Baumgarten. He took a pleasure in humiliating and ill-treating the
+      brave men who had fallen into his power. That night, upon my son answering
+      fiercely back to some taunt of his, he struck him in the eye, like this!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crash of the blow rang through the hall. The German’s face fell
+      forward, his hand up, and blood oozing through his fingers. The count
+      settled down in his chair once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My boy was disfigured by the blow, and this villain made his appearance
+      the object of his jeers. By the way, you look a little comical yourself at
+      the present moment, captain, and your colonel would certainly say that you
+      had been getting into mischief. To continue, however, my boy’s youth and
+      his destitution&mdash;for his pockets were empty&mdash;moved the pity of a
+      kind-hearted major, and he advanced him ten Napoleons from his own pocket
+      without security of any kind. Into your hands, Captain Baumgarten, I
+      return these ten gold pieces, since I cannot learn the name of the lender.
+      I am grateful from my heart for this kindness shown to my boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The vile tyrant who commanded the escort accompanied the prisoners to
+      Durlack, and from there to Carlsruhe. He heaped every outrage upon my lad,
+      because the spirit of the Chateau Noirs would not stoop to turn away his
+      wrath by a feigned submission. Ay, this cowardly villain, whose heart’s
+      blood shall yet clot upon this hand, dared to strike my son with his open
+      hand, to kick him, to tear hairs from his moustache&mdash; to use him thus&mdash;and
+      thus&mdash;and thus!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German writhed and struggled. He was helpless in the hands of this
+      huge giant whose blows were raining upon him. When at last, blinded and
+      half-senseless, he staggered to his feet, it was only to be hurled back
+      again into the great oaken chair. He sobbed in his impotent anger and
+      shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My boy was frequently moved to tears by the humiliation of his position,”
+      continued the count. “You will understand me when I say that it is a
+      bitter thing to be helpless in the hands of an insolent and remorseless
+      enemy. On arriving at Carlsruhe, however, his face, which had been wounded
+      by the brutality of his guard, was bound up by a young Bavarian subaltern
+      who was touched by his appearance. I regret to see that your eye is
+      bleeding so. Will you permit me to bind it with my silk handkerchief?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned forward, but the German dashed his hand aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am in your power, you monster!” he cried; “I can endure your
+      brutalities, but not your hypocrisy.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The count shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am taking things in their order, just as they occurred,” said he. “I
+      was under vow to tell it to the first German officer with whom I could
+      talk <i>tete-a-tete</i>. Let me see, I had got as far as the young
+      Bavarian at Carlsruhe. I regret extremely that you will not permit me to
+      use such slight skill in surgery as I possess. At Carlsruhe, my lad was
+      shut up in the old caserne, where he remained for a fortnight. The worst
+      pang of his captivity was that some unmannerly curs in the garrison would
+      taunt him with his position as he sat by his window in the evening. That
+      reminds me, captain, that you are not quite situated upon a bed of roses
+      yourself, are you now? You came to trap a wolf, my man, and now the beast
+      has you down with his fangs in your throat. A family man, too, I should
+      judge, by that well-filled tunic. Well, a widow the more will make little
+      matter, and they do not usually remain widows long. Get back into the
+      chair, you dog!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, to continue my story&mdash;at the end of a fortnight my son and his
+      friend escaped. I need not trouble you with the dangers which they ran, or
+      with the privations which they endured. Suffice it that to disguise
+      themselves they had to take the clothes of two peasants, whom they waylaid
+      in a wood. Hiding by day and travelling by night, they had got as far into
+      France as Remilly, and were within a mile&mdash;a single mile, captain&mdash;of
+      crossing the German lines when a patrol of Uhlans came right upon them.
+      Ah! it was hard, was it not, when they had come so far and were so near to
+      safety?” The count blew a double call upon his whistle, and three
+      hard-faced peasants entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “These must represent my Uhlans,” said he. “Well, then, the captain in
+      command, finding that these men were French soldiers in civilian dress
+      within the German lines, proceeded to hang them without trial or ceremony.
+      I think, Jean, that the centre beam is the strongest.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unfortunate soldier was dragged from his chair to where a noosed rope
+      had been flung over one of the huge oaken rafters which spanned the room.
+      The cord was slipped over his head, and he felt its harsh grip round his
+      throat. The three peasants seized the other end, and looked to the count
+      for his orders. The officer, pale, but firm, folded his arms and stared
+      defiantly at the man who tortured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are now face to face with death, and I perceive from your lips that
+      you are praying. My son was also face to face with death, and he prayed,
+      also. It happened that a general officer came up, and he heard the lad
+      praying for his mother, and it moved him so&mdash;he being himself a
+      father&mdash;that he ordered his Uhlans away, and he remained with his
+      aide-de-camp only, beside the condemned men. And when he heard all the lad
+      had to tell&mdash;that he was the only child of an old family, and that
+      his mother was in failing health&mdash;he threw off the rope as I throw
+      off this, and he kissed him on either cheek, as I kiss you, and he bade
+      him go, as I bid you go, and may every kind wish of that noble general,
+      though it could not stave off the fever which slew my son, descend now
+      upon your head.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was that Captain Baumgarten, disfigured, blinded, and bleeding,
+      staggered out into the wind and the rain of that wild December dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE STRIPED CHEST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      “What do you make of her, Allardyce?” I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My second mate was standing beside me upon the poop, with his short, thick
+      legs astretch, for the gale had left a considerable swell behind it, and
+      our two quarter-boats nearly touched the water with every roll. He
+      steadied his glass against the mizzen-shrouds, and he looked long and hard
+      at this disconsolate stranger every time she came reeling up on to the
+      crest of a roller and hung balanced for a few seconds before swooping down
+      upon the other side. She lay so low in the water that I could only catch
+      an occasional glimpse of a pea-green line of bulwark. She was a brig, but
+      her mainmast had been snapped short off some 10ft. above the deck, and no
+      effort seemed to have been made to cut away the wreckage, which floated,
+      sails and yards, like the broken wing of a wounded gull upon the water
+      beside her. The foremast was still standing, but the foretopsail was
+      flying loose, and the headsails were streaming out in long, white pennons
+      in front of her. Never have I seen a vessel which appeared to have gone
+      through rougher handling. But we could not be surprised at that, for there
+      had been times during the last three days when it was a question whether
+      our own barque would ever see land again. For thirty-six hours we had kept
+      her nose to it, and if the <i>Mary Sinclair</i> had not been as good a
+      seaboat as ever left the Clyde, we could not have gone through. And yet
+      here we were at the end of it with the loss only of our gig and of part of
+      the starboard bulwark. It did not astonish us, however, when the smother
+      had cleared away, to find that others had been less lucky, and that this
+      mutilated brig staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky,
+      had been left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the
+      terror which is past. Allardyce, who was a slow and methodical Scotchman,
+      stared long and hard at the little craft, while our seamen lined the
+      bulwark or clustered upon the fore shrouds to have a view of the stranger.
+      In latitude 20 degrees and longitude 10 degrees, which were about our
+      bearings, one becomes a little curious as to whom one meets, for one has
+      left the main lines of Atlantic commerce to the north. For ten days we had
+      been sailing over a solitary sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “She’s derelict, I’m thinking,” said the second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had come to the same conclusion, for I could see no signs of life upon
+      her deck, and there was no answer to the friendly wavings from our seamen.
+      The crew had probably deserted her under the impression that she was about
+      to founder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “She can’t last long,” continued Allardyce, in his measured way. “She may
+      put her nose down and her tail up any minute. The water’s lipping up to
+      the edge of her rail.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What’s her flag?” I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m trying to make out. It’s got all twisted and tangled with the
+      halyards. Yes, I’ve got it now, clear enough. It’s the Brazilian flag, but
+      it’s wrong side up.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had hoisted a signal of distress, then, before her people had
+      abandoned her. Perhaps they had only just gone. I took the mate’s glass
+      and looked round over the tumultuous face of the deep blue Atlantic, still
+      veined and starred with white lines and spoutings of foam. But nowhere
+      could I see anything human beyond ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There may be living men aboard,” said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There may be salvage,” muttered the second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then we will run down upon her lee side, and lie to.” We were not more
+      than a hundred yards from her when we swung our foreyard aback, and there
+      we were, the barque and the brig, ducking and bowing like two clowns in a
+      dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Drop one of the quarter-boats,” said I. “Take four men, Mr. Allardyce,
+      and see what you can learn of her.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just at that moment my first officer, Mr. Armstrong, came on deck, for
+      seven bells had struck, and it was but a few minutes off his watch. It
+      would interest me to go myself to this abandoned vessel and to see what
+      there might be aboard of her. So, with a word to Armstrong, I swung myself
+      over the side, slipped down the falls, and took my place in the sheets of
+      the boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was but a little distance, but it took some time to traverse, and so
+      heavy was the roll that often when we were in the trough of the sea, we
+      could not see either the barque which we had left or the brig which we
+      were approaching. The sinking sun did not penetrate down there, and it was
+      cold and dark in the hollows of the waves, but each passing billow heaved
+      us up into the warmth and the sunshine once more. At each of these
+      moments, as we hung upon a white-capped ridge between the two dark
+      valleys, I caught a glimpse of the long, pea-green line, and the nodding
+      foremast of the brig, and I steered so as to come round by her stern, so
+      that we might determine which was the best way of boarding her. As we
+      passed her we saw the name <i>Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria</i> painted across
+      her dripping counter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The weather side, sir,” said the second mate. “Stand by with the
+      boat-hook, carpenter!” An instant later we had jumped over the bulwarks,
+      which were hardly higher than our boat, and found ourselves upon the deck
+      of the abandoned vessel. Our first thought was to provide for our own
+      safety in case&mdash;as seemed very probable&mdash;the vessel should
+      settle down beneath our feet. With this object two of our men held on to
+      the painter of the boat, and fended her off from the vessel’s side, so
+      that she might be ready in case we had to make a hurried retreat. The
+      carpenter was sent to find out how much water there was, and whether it
+      was still gaming, while the other seaman, Allardyce and myself, made a
+      rapid inspection of the vessel and her cargo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deck was littered with wreckage and with hen-coops, in which the dead
+      birds were washing about. The boats were gone, with the exception of one,
+      the bottom of which had been stove, and it was certain that the crew had
+      abandoned the vessel. The cabin was in a deck-house, one side of which had
+      been beaten in by a heavy sea. Allardyce and I entered it, and found the
+      captain’s table as he had left it, his books and papers&mdash; all Spanish
+      or Portuguese&mdash;scattered over it, with piles of cigarette ash
+      everywhere. I looked about for the log, but could not find it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “As likely as not he never kept one,” said Allardyce. “Things are pretty
+      slack aboard a South American trader, and they don’t do more than they can
+      help. If there was one it must have been taken away with him in the boat.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should like to take all these books and papers,” said I. “Ask the
+      carpenter how much time we have.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His report was reassuring. The vessel was full of water, but some of the
+      cargo was buoyant, and there was no immediate danger of her sinking.
+      Probably she would never sink, but would drift about as one of those
+      terrible unmarked reefs which have sent so many stout vessels to the
+      bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In that case there is no danger in your going below, Mr. Allardyce,” said
+      I. “See what you can make of her and find out how much of her cargo may be
+      saved. I’ll look through these papers while you are gone.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bills of lading, and some notes and letters which lay upon the desk,
+      sufficed to inform me that the Brazilian brig <i>Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria</i>
+      had cleared from Bahia a month before. The name of the captain was
+      Texeira, but there was no record as to the number of the crew. She was
+      bound for London, and a glance at the bills of lading was sufficient to
+      show me that we were not likely to profit much in the way of salvage. Her
+      cargo consisted of nuts, ginger, and wood, the latter in the shape of
+      great logs of valuable tropical growths. It was these, no doubt, which had
+      prevented the ill-fated vessel from going to the bottom, but they were of
+      such a size as to make it impossible for us to extract them. Besides
+      these, there were a few fancy goods, such as a number of ornamental birds
+      for millinery purposes, and a hundred cases of preserved fruits. And then,
+      as I turned over the papers, I came upon a short note in English, which
+      arrested my attention.
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   It is requested (said the note) that the various old Spanish
+   and Indian curiosities, which came out of the Santarem
+   collection, and which are consigned to Prontfoot &amp; Neuman
+   of Oxford Street, London, should be put in some place where
+   there may be no danger of these very valuable and unique articles
+   being injured or tampered with.  This applies most particularly
+   to the treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, which must on
+   no account be placed where anyone can get at it.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez! Unique and valuable articles! Here was
+      a chance of salvage after all. I had risen to my feet with the paper in my
+      hand when my Scotch mate appeared in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m thinking all isn’t quite as it should be aboard of this ship, sir,”
+      said he. He was a hard-faced man, and yet I could see that he had been
+      startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What’s the matter?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Murder’s the matter, sir. There’s a man here with his brains beaten out.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Killed in the storm?” said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “May be so, sir, but I’ll be surprised if you think so after you have seen
+      him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where is he, then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This way, sir; here in the maindeck house.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There appeared to have been no accommodation below in the brig, for there
+      was the after-house for the captain, another by the main hatchway, with
+      the cook’s galley attached to it, and a third in the forecastle for the
+      men. It was to this middle one that the mate led me. As you entered, the
+      galley, with its litter of tumbled pots and dishes, was upon the right,
+      and upon the left was a small room with two bunks for the officers. Then
+      beyond there was a place about 12ft. square, which was littered with flags
+      and spare canvas. All round the walls were a number of packets done up in
+      coarse cloth and carefully lashed to the woodwork. At the other end was a
+      great box, striped red and white, though the red was so faded and the
+      white so dirty that it was only where the light fell directly upon it that
+      one could see the colouring. The box was, by subsequent measurement, 4ft.
+      3ins. in length, 3ft. 2ins. in height, and 3ft. across&mdash;considerably
+      larger than a seaman’s chest. But it was not to the box that my eyes or my
+      thoughts were turned as I entered the store-room. On the floor, lying
+      across the litter of bunting, there was stretched a small, dark man with a
+      short, curling beard. He lay as far as it was possible from the box, with
+      his feet towards it and his head away. A crimson patch was printed upon
+      the white canvas on which his head was resting, and little red ribbons
+      wreathed themselves round his swarthy neck and trailed away on to the
+      floor, but there was no sign of a wound that I could see, and his face was
+      as placid as that of a sleeping child. It was only when I stooped that I
+      could perceive his injury, and then I turned away with an exclamation of
+      horror. He had been pole-axed; apparently by some person standing behind
+      him. A frightful blow had smashed in the top of his head and penetrated
+      deeply into his brains. His face might well be placid, for death must have
+      been absolutely instantaneous, and the position of the wound showed that
+      he could never have seen the person who had inflicted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Is that foul play or accident, Captain Barclay?” asked my second mate,
+      demurely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are quite right, Mr. Allardyce. The man has been murdered&mdash;struck
+      down from above by a sharp and heavy weapon. But who was he, and why did
+      they murder him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He was a common seaman, sir,” said the mate. “You can see that if you
+      look at his fingers.” He turned out his pockets as he spoke and brought to
+      light a pack of cards, some tarred string, and a bundle of Brazilian
+      tobacco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hello, look at this!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a large, open knife with a stiff spring blade which he had picked
+      up from the floor. The steel was shining and bright, so that we could not
+      associate it with the crime, and yet the dead man had apparently held it
+      in his hand when he was struck down, for it still lay within his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It looks to me, sir, as if he knew he was in danger and kept his knife
+      handy,” said the mate. “However, we can’t help the poor beggar now. I
+      can’t make out these things that are lashed to the wall. They seem to be
+      idols and weapons and curios of all sorts done up in old sacking.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s right,” said I. “They are the only things of value that we are
+      likely to get from the cargo. Hail the barque and tell them to send the
+      other quarter-boat to help us to get the stuff aboard.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was away I examined this curious plunder which had come into our
+      possession. The curiosities were so wrapped up that I could only form a
+      general idea as to their nature, but the striped box stood in a good light
+      where I could thoroughly examine it. On the lid, which was clamped and
+      cornered with metal-work, there was engraved a complex coat of arms, and
+      beneath it was a line of Spanish which I was able to decipher as meaning,
+      “The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, Knight of the Order of Saint
+      James, Governor and Captain-General of Terra Firma and of the Province of
+      Veraquas.” In one corner was the date, 1606, and on the other a large
+      white label, upon which was written in English, “You are earnestly
+      requested, upon no account, to open this box.” The same warning was
+      repeated underneath in Spanish. As to the lock, it was a very complex and
+      heavy one of engraved steel, with a Latin motto, which was above a
+      seaman’s comprehension. By the time I had finished this examination of the
+      peculiar box, the other quarter-boat with Mr. Armstrong, the first
+      officer, had come alongside, and we began to carry out and place in her
+      the various curiosities which appeared to be the only objects worth moving
+      from the derelict ship. When she was full I sent her back to the barque,
+      and then Allardyce and I, with the carpenter and one seaman, shifted the
+      striped box, which was the only thing left, to our boat, and lowered it
+      over, balancing it upon the two middle thwarts, for it was so heavy that
+      it would have given the boat a dangerous tilt had we placed it at either
+      end. As to the dead man, we left him where we had found him. The mate had
+      a theory that, at the moment of the desertion of the ship, this fellow had
+      started plundering, and that the captain, in an attempt to preserve
+      discipline, had struck him down with a hatchet or some other heavy weapon.
+      It seemed more probable than any other explanation, and yet it did not
+      entirely satisfy me either. But the ocean is full of mysteries, and we
+      were content to leave the fate of the dead seaman of the Brazilian brig to
+      be added to that long list which every sailor can recall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavy box was slung up by ropes on to the deck of the <i>Mary Sinclair</i>,
+      and was carried by four seamen into the cabin, where, between the table
+      and the after-lockers, there was just space for it to stand. There it
+      remained during supper, and after that meal the mates remained with me,
+      and discussed over a glass of grog the event of the day. Mr. Armstrong was
+      a long, thin, vulture-like man, an excellent seaman, but famous for his
+      nearness and cupidity. Our treasure-trove had excited him greatly, and
+      already he had begun with glistening eyes to reckon up how much it might
+      be worth to each of us when the shares of the salvage came to be divided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If the paper said that they were unique, Mr. Barclay, then they may be
+      worth anything that you like to name. You wouldn’t believe the sums that
+      the rich collectors give. A thousand pounds is nothing to them. We’ll have
+      something to show for our voyage, or I am mistaken.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I don’t think that,” said I. “As far as I can see, they are not very
+      different from any other South American curios.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, sir, I’ve traded there for fourteen voyages, and I have never seen
+      anything like that chest before. That’s worth a pile of money, just as it
+      stands. But it’s so heavy that surely there must be something valuable
+      inside it. Don’t you think that we ought to open it and see?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If you break it open you will spoil it, as likely as not,” said the
+      second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armstrong squatted down in front of it, with his head on one side, and his
+      long, thin nose within a few inches of the lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The wood is oak,” said he, “and it has shrunk a little with age. If I had
+      a chisel or a strong-bladed knife I could force the lock back without
+      doing any damage at all.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mention of a strong-bladed knife made me think of the dead seaman upon
+      the brig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I wonder if he could have been on the job when someone came to interfere
+      with him,” said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I don’t know about that, sir, but I am perfectly certain that I could
+      open the box. There’s a screwdriver here in the locker. Just hold the
+      lamp, Allardyce, and I’ll have it done in a brace of shakes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Wait a bit,” said I, for already, with eyes which gleamed with curiosity
+      and with avarice, he was stooping over the lid. “I don’t see that there is
+      any hurry over this matter. You’ve read that card which warns us not to
+      open it. It may mean anything or it may mean nothing, but somehow I feel
+      inclined to obey it. After all, whatever is in it will keep, and if it is
+      valuable it will be worth as much if it is opened in the owner’s offices
+      as in the cabin of the <i>Mary Sinclair</i>.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first officer seemed bitterly disappointed at my decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Surely, sir, you are not superstitious about it,” said he, with a slight
+      sneer upon his thin lips. “If it gets out of our own hands, and we don’t
+      see for ourselves what is inside it, we may be done out of our rights;
+      besides&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s enough, Mr. Armstrong,” said I, abruptly. “You may have every
+      confidence that you will get your rights, but I will not have that box
+      opened to-night.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, the label itself shows that the box has been examined by Europeans,”
+      Allardyce added. “Because a box is a treasure-box is no reason that it has
+      treasures inside it now. A good many folk have had a peep into it since
+      the days of the old Governor of Terra Firma.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armstrong threw the screwdriver down upon the table and shrugged his
+      shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Just as you like,” said he; but for the rest of the evening, although we
+      spoke upon many subjects, I noticed that his eyes were continually coming
+      round, with the same expression of curiosity and greed, to the old striped
+      box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now I come to that portion of my story which fills me even now with a
+      shuddering horror when I think of it. The main cabin had the rooms of the
+      officers round it, but mine was the farthest away from it at the end of
+      the little passage which led to the companion. No regular watch was kept
+      by me, except in cases of emergency, and the three mates divided the
+      watches among them. Armstrong had the middle watch, which ends at four in
+      the morning, and he was relieved by Allardyce. For my part I have always
+      been one of the soundest of sleepers, and it is rare for anything less
+      than a hand upon my shoulder to arouse me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet I was aroused that night, or rather in the early grey of the
+      morning. It was just half-past four by my chronometer when something
+      caused me to sit up in my berth wide awake and with every nerve tingling.
+      It was a sound of some sort, a crash with a human cry at the end of it,
+      which still jarred on my ears. I sat listening, but all was now silent.
+      And yet it could not have been imagination, that hideous cry, for the echo
+      of it still rang in my head, and it seemed to have come from some place
+      quite close to me. I sprang from my bunk, and, pulling on some clothes, I
+      made my way into the cabin. At first I saw nothing unusual there. In the
+      cold, grey light I made out the red-clothed table, the six rotating
+      chairs, the walnut lockers, the swinging barometer, and there, at the end,
+      the big striped chest. I was turning away, with the intention of going
+      upon deck and asking the second mate if he had heard anything, when my
+      eyes fell suddenly upon something which projected from under the table. It
+      was the leg of a man&mdash;a leg with a long sea-boot upon it. I stooped,
+      and there was a figure sprawling upon his face, his arms thrown forward
+      and his body twisted. One glance told me that it was Armstrong, the first
+      officer, and a second that he was a dead man. For a few moments I stood
+      gasping. Then I rushed on to the deck, called Allardyce to my assistance,
+      and came back with him into the cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together we pulled the unfortunate fellow from under the table, and as we
+      looked at his dripping head we exchanged glances, and I do not know which
+      was the paler of the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The same as the Spanish sailor,” said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The very same. God preserve us! It’s that infernal chest! Look at
+      Armstrong’s hand!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He held up the mate’s right hand, and there was the screwdriver which he
+      had wished to use the night before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He’s been at the chest, sir. He knew that I was on deck and you were
+      asleep. He knelt down in front of it, and he pushed the lock back with
+      that tool. Then something happened to him, and he cried out so that you
+      heard him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Allardyce,” I whispered, “what <i>could</i> have happened to him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second mate put his hand upon my sleeve and drew me into his cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We can talk here, sir, and we don’t know who may be listening to us in
+      there. What do you suppose is in that box, Captain Barclay?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I give you my word, Allardyce, that I have no idea.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I can only find one theory which will fit all the facts. Look at
+      the size of the box. Look at all the carving and metal-work which may
+      conceal any number of holes. Look at the weight of it; it took four men to
+      carry it. On top of that, remember that two men have tried to open it, and
+      both have come to their end through it. Now, sir, what can it mean except
+      one thing?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You mean there is a man in it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Of course there is a man in it. You know how it is in these South
+      American States, sir. A man may be president one week and hunted like a
+      dog the next&mdash;they are for ever flying for their lives. My idea is
+      that there is some fellow in hiding there, who is armed and desperate, and
+      who will fight to the death before he is taken.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But his food and drink?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s a roomy chest, sir, and he may have some provisions stowed away. As
+      to his drink, he had a friend among the crew upon the brig who saw that he
+      had what he needed.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You think, then, that the label asking people not to open the box was
+      simply written in his interest?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir, that is my idea. Have you any other way of explaining the
+      facts?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had to confess that I had not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The question is what we are to do?” I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The man’s a dangerous ruffian, who sticks at nothing. I’m thinking it
+      wouldn’t be a bad thing to put a rope round the chest and tow it alongside
+      for half an hour; then we could open it at our ease. Or if we just tied
+      the box up and kept him from getting any water maybe that would do as
+      well. Or the carpenter could put a coat of varnish over it and stop all
+      the blow-holes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Come, Allardyce,” said I, angrily. “You don’t seriously mean to say that
+      a whole ship’s company are going to be terrorised by a single man in a
+      box. If he’s there, I’ll engage to fetch him out!” I went to my room and
+      came back with my revolver in my hand. “Now, Allardyce,” said I, “do you
+      open the lock, and I’ll stand on guard.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For God’s sake, think what you are doing, sir!” cried the mate. “Two men
+      have lost their lives over it, and the blood of one not yet dry upon the
+      carpet.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The more reason why we should revenge him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, sir, at least let me call the carpenter. Three are better than two,
+      and he is a good stout man.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went off in search of him, and I was left alone with the striped chest
+      in the cabin. I don’t think that I’m a nervous man, but I kept the table
+      between me and this solid old relic of the Spanish Main. In the growing
+      light of morning the red and white striping was beginning to appear, and
+      the curious scrolls and wreaths of metal and carving which showed the
+      loving pains which cunning craftsmen had expended upon it. Presently the
+      carpenter and the mate came back together, the former with a hammer in his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s a bad business, this, sir,” said he, shaking his head, as he looked
+      at the body of the mate. “And you think there’s someone hiding in the
+      box?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There’s no doubt about it,” said Allardyce, picking up the screwdriver
+      and setting his jaw like a man who needs to brace his courage. “I’ll drive
+      the lock back if you will both stand by. If he rises let him have it on
+      the head with your hammer, carpenter. Shoot at once, sir, if he raises his
+      hand. Now!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had knelt down in front of the striped chest, and passed the blade of
+      the tool under the lid. With a sharp snick the lock flew back. “Stand by!”
+      yelled the mate, and with a heave he threw open the massive top of the
+      box. As it swung up we all three sprang back, I with my pistol levelled,
+      and the carpenter with the hammer above his head. Then, as nothing
+      happened, we each took a step forward and peeped in. The box was empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not quite empty either, for in one corner was lying an old yellow
+      candlestick, elaborately engraved, which appeared to be as old as the box
+      itself. Its rich yellow tone and artistic shape suggested that it was an
+      object of value. For the rest there was nothing more weighty or valuable
+      than dust in the old striped treasure-chest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I’m blessed!” cried Allardyce, staring blankly into it. “Where does
+      the weight come in, then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look at the thickness of the sides, and look at the lid. Why, it’s five
+      inches through. And see that great metal spring across it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s for holding the lid up,” said the mate. “You see, it won’t lean
+      back. What’s that German printing on the inside?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It means that it was made by Johann Rothstein of Augsburg, in 1606.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And a solid bit of work, too. But it doesn’t throw much light on what has
+      passed, does it, Captain Barclay? That candlestick looks like gold. We
+      shall have something for our trouble after all.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He leant forward to grasp it, and from that moment I have never doubted as
+      to the reality of inspiration, for on the instant I caught him by the
+      collar and pulled him straight again. It may have been some story of the
+      Middle Ages which had come back to my mind, or it may have been that my
+      eye had caught some red which was not that of rust upon the upper part of
+      the lock, but to him and to me it will always seem an inspiration, so
+      prompt and sudden was my action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There’s devilry here,” said I. “Give me the crooked stick from the
+      corner.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an ordinary walking-cane with a hooked top. I passed it over the
+      candlestick and gave it a pull. With a flash a row of polished steel fangs
+      shot out from below the upper lip, and the great striped chest snapped at
+      us like a wild animal. Clang came the huge lid into its place, and the
+      glasses on the swinging rack sang and tinkled with the shock. The mate sat
+      down on the edge of the table and shivered like a frightened horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ve saved my life, Captain Barclay!” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So this was the secret of the striped treasure-chest of old Don Ramirez di
+      Leyra, and this was how he preserved his ill-gotten gains from the Terra
+      Firma and the Province of Veraquas. Be the thief ever so cunning he could
+      not tell that golden candlestick from the other articles of value, and the
+      instant that he laid hand upon it the terrible spring was unloosed and the
+      murderous steel pikes were driven into his brain, while the shock of the
+      blow sent the victim backward and enabled the chest to automatically close
+      itself. How many, I wondered, had fallen victims to the ingenuity of the
+      mechanic of Ausgburg? And as I thought of the possible history of that
+      grim striped chest my resolution was very quickly taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Carpenter, bring three men, and carry this on deck.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Going to throw it overboard, sir?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, Mr. Allardyce. I’m not superstitious as a rule, but there are some
+      things which are more than a sailor can be called upon to stand.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No wonder that brig made heavy weather, Captain Barclay, with such a
+      thing on board. The glass is dropping fast, sir, and we are only just in
+      time.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we did not even wait for the three sailors, but we carried it out, the
+      mate, the carpenter, and I, and we pushed it with our own hands over the
+      bulwarks. There was a white spout of water, and it was gone. There it
+      lies, the striped chest, a thousand fathoms deep, and if, as they say, the
+      sea will some day be dry land, I grieve for the man who finds that old box
+      and tries to penetrate into its secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A SHADOW BEFORE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The 15th of July, 1870, found John Worlington Dodds a ruined gamester of
+      the Stock Exchange. Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man. And yet he
+      had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish townlet
+      of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter of the sum
+      which he had earned during the single day that he was within its walls.
+      There is a romance of finance yet to be written, a story of huge forces
+      which are for ever waxing and waning, of bold operations, of breathless
+      suspense, of agonised failure, of deep combinations which are baffled by
+      others still more subtle. The mighty debts of each great European Power
+      stand like so many columns of mercury, for ever rising and falling to
+      indicate the pressure upon each. He who can see far enough into the future
+      to tell how that ever-varying column will stand to-morrow is the man who
+      has fortune within his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Worlington Dodds had many of the gifts which lead a speculator to
+      success. He was quick in observing, just in estimating, prompt and
+      fearless in acting. But in finance there is always the element of luck,
+      which, however one may eliminate it, still remains, like the blank at
+      roulette, a constantly present handicap upon the operator. And so it was
+      that Worlington Dodds had come to grief. On the best advices he had
+      dabbled in the funds of a South American Republic in the days before South
+      American Republics had been found out. The Republic defaulted, and Dodds
+      lost his money. He had bulled the shares of a Scotch railway, and a four
+      months’ strike had hit him hard. He had helped to underwrite a coffee
+      company in the hope that the public would come along upon the feed and
+      gradually nibble away some of his holding, but the political sky had been
+      clouded and the public had refused to invest. Everything which he had
+      touched had gone wrong, and now, on the eve of his marriage, young,
+      clear-headed, and energetic, he was actually a bankrupt had his creditors
+      chosen to make him one. But the Stock Exchange is an indulgent body. What
+      is the case of one to-day may be that of another to-morrow, and everyone
+      is interested in seeing that the stricken man is given time to rise again.
+      So the burden of Worlington Dodds was lightened for him; many shoulders
+      helped to bear it, and he was able to go for a little summer tour into
+      Ireland, for the doctors had ordered him rest and change of air to restore
+      his shaken nervous system. Thus it was that upon the 15th of July, 1870,
+      he found himself at his breakfast in the fly-blown coffee-room of the
+      “George Hotel” in the market square of Dunsloe. It is a dull and
+      depressing coffee-room, and one which is usually empty, but on this
+      particular day it was as crowded and noisy as that of any London hotel.
+      Every table was occupied, and a thick smell of fried bacon and of fish
+      hung in the air. Heavily booted men clattered in and out, spurs jingled,
+      riding-crops were stacked in corners, and there was a general atmosphere
+      of horse. The conversation, too, was of nothing else. From every side
+      Worlington Dodds heard of yearlings, of windgalls, of roarers, of spavins,
+      of cribsuckers, of a hundred other terms which were as unintelligible to
+      him as his own Stock Exchange jargon would have been to the company. He
+      asked the waiter for the reason of it all, and the waiter was an
+      astonished man that there should be any man in this world who did not know
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Shure it’s the Dunsloe horse fair, your honour&mdash;the greatest
+      horse-fair in all Oireland. It lasts for a wake, and the folk come from
+      far an’ near&mdash;from England an’ Scotland an’ iverywhere. If you look
+      out of the winder, your honour, you’ll see the horses, and it’s asy your
+      honour’s conscience must be, or you wouldn’t slape so sound that the
+      creatures didn’t rouse you with their clatter.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds had a recollection that he had heard a confused murmur, which had
+      interwoven itself with his dreams&mdash;a sort of steady rhythmic beating
+      and clanking&mdash;and now, when he looked through the window, he saw the
+      cause of it. The square was packed with horses from end to end&mdash;greys,
+      bays, browns, blacks, chestnuts&mdash;young ones and old, fine ones and
+      coarse, horses of every conceivable sort and size. It seemed a huge
+      function for so small a town, and he remarked as much to the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, you see, your honour, the horses don’t live in the town, an’ they
+      don’t vex their heads how small it is. But it’s in the very centre of the
+      horse-bradin’ districts of Oireland, so where should they come to be sould
+      if it wasn’t to Dunsloe?” The waiter had a telegram in his hand, and he
+      turned the address to Worlington Dodds. “Shure I niver heard such a name,
+      sorr. Maybe you could tell me who owns it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds looked at the envelope. Strellenhaus was the name. “No, I don’t
+      know,” said he. “I never heard it before. It’s a foreign name. Perhaps if
+      you were&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at that moment a little round-faced, ruddy-cheeked gentleman, who was
+      breakfasting at the next table, leaned forward and interrupted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Did you say a foreign name, sir?” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Strellenhaus is the name.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am Mr. Strellenhaus&mdash;Mr. Julius Strellenhaus, of Liverpool. I was
+      expecting a telegram. Thank you very much.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat so near that Dodds, without any wish to play the spy, could not
+      help to some extent overlooking him as he opened the envelope. The message
+      was a very long one. Quite a wad of melon-tinted paper came out from the
+      tawny envelope. Mr. Strellenhaus arranged the sheets methodically upon the
+      table-cloth in front of him, so that no eye but his own could see them.
+      Then he took out a note-book, and, with an anxious face, he began to make
+      entries in it, glancing first at the telegram and then at the book, and
+      writing apparently one letter or figure at a time. Dodds was interested,
+      for he knew exactly what the man was doing. He was working out a cipher.
+      Dodds had often done it himself. And then suddenly the little man turned
+      very pale, as if the full purport of the message had been a shock to him.
+      Dodds had done that also, and his sympathies were all with his neighbors.
+      Then the stranger rose, and, leaving his breakfast untasted, he walked out
+      of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m thinkin’ that the gintleman has had bad news, sorr,” said the
+      confidential waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Looks like it,” Dodds answered; and at that moment his thoughts were
+      suddenly drawn off into another direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boots had entered the room with a telegram in his hand. “Where’s Mr.
+      Mancune?” said he to the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, there are some quare names about. What was it you said?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mr. Mancune,” said the boots, glancing round him. “Ah, there he is!” and
+      he handed the telegram to a gentleman who was sitting reading the paper in
+      a corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds’s eyes had already fallen upon this man, and he had wondered vaguely
+      what he was doing in such company. He was a tall, white-haired,
+      eagle-nosed gentleman, with a waxed moustache and a carefully pointed
+      beard&mdash;an aristocratic type which seemed out of its element among the
+      rough, hearty, noisy dealers who surrounded him. This, then, was Mr.
+      Mancune, for whom the second telegram was intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he opened it, tearing it open with a feverish haste, Dodds could
+      perceive that it was as bulky as the first one. He observed also, from the
+      delay in reading it, that it was also in some sort of cipher. The
+      gentleman did not write down any translation of it, but he sat for some
+      time with his nervous, thin fingers twitching amongst the hairs of his
+      white beard, and his shaggy brows bent in the deepest and most absorbed
+      attention whilst he mastered the meaning of it. Then he sprang suddenly to
+      his feet, his eyes flashed, his cheeks flushed, and in his excitement he
+      crumpled the message up in his hand. With an effort he mastered his
+      emotion, put the paper into his pocket, and walked out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was enough to excite a less astute and imaginative man than
+      Worlington Dodds. Was there any connection between these two messages, or
+      was it merely a coincidence? Two men with strange names receive two
+      telegrams within a few minutes of each other, each of considerable length,
+      each in cipher, and each causing keen emotion to the man who received it.
+      One turned pale. The other sprang excitedly to his feet. It might be a
+      coincidence, but it was a very curious one. If it was not a coincidence,
+      then what could it mean? Were they confederates who pretended to work
+      apart, but who each received identical orders from some person at a
+      distance? That was possible, and yet there were difficulties in the way.
+      He puzzled and puzzled, but could find no satisfactory solution to the
+      problem. All breakfast he was turning it over in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When breakfast was over he sauntered out into the market square, where the
+      horse sale was already in progress. The yearlings were being sold first&mdash;tall,
+      long-legged, skittish, wild-eyed creatures, who had run free upon the
+      upland pastures, with ragged hair and towsie manes, but hardy, inured to
+      all weathers, and with the makings of splendid hunters and steeplechasers
+      when corn and time had brought them to maturity. They were largely of
+      thoroughbred blood, and were being bought by English dealers, who would
+      invest a few pounds now on what they might sell for fifty guineas in a
+      year, if all went well. It was legitimate speculation, for the horse is a
+      delicate creature, he is afflicted with many ailments, the least accident
+      may destroy his value, he is a certain expense and an uncertain profit,
+      and for one who comes safely to maturity several may bring no return at
+      all. So the English horse-dealers took their risks as they bought up the
+      shaggy Irish yearlings. One man with a ruddy face and a yellow overcoat
+      took them by the dozen, with as much <i>sang froid</i> as if they had been
+      oranges, entering each bargain in a bloated note-book. He bought forty or
+      fifty during the time that Dodds was watching him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Who is that?” he asked his neighbour, whose spurs and gaiters showed that
+      he was likely to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man stared in astonishment at the stranger’s ignorance. “Why, that’s
+      Jim Holloway, the great Jim Holloway,” said he; then, seeing by the blank
+      look upon Dodds’s face that even this information had not helped him much,
+      he went into details. “Sure he’s the head of Holloway &amp; Morland, of
+      London,” said he. “He’s the buying partner, and he buys cheap; and the
+      other stays at home and sells, and he sells dear. He owns more horses than
+      any man in the world, and asks the best money for them. I dare say you’ll
+      find that half of what are sold at the Dunsloe fair this day will go to
+      him, and he’s got such a purse that there’s not a man who can bid against
+      him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Worlington Dodds watched the doings of the great dealer with interest. He
+      had passed on now to the two-year-olds and three-year-olds, full-grown
+      horses, but still a little loose in the limb and weak in the bone. The
+      London buyer was choosing his animals carefully, but having chosen them,
+      the vigour of his competition drove all other bidders out of it. With a
+      careless nod he would run the figure up five pounds at a time, until he
+      was left in possession of the field. At the same time he was a shrewd
+      observer, and when, as happened more than once, he believed that someone
+      was bidding against him simply in order to run him up, the head would
+      cease suddenly to nod, the note-book would be closed with a snap, and the
+      intruder would be left with a purchase which he did not desire upon his
+      hands. All Dodds’s business instincts were aroused by the tactics of this
+      great operator, and he stood in the crowd watching with the utmost
+      interest all that occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not to buy young horses, however, that the great dealers come to
+      Ireland, and the real business of the fair commenced when the four and
+      five-year-olds were reached; the full-grown, perfect horses, at their
+      prime, and ready for any work or any fatigue. Seventy magnificent
+      creatures had been brought down by a single breeder, a comfortable-looking, keen-eyed,
+      ruddy-cheeked gentleman who stood beside the salesman
+      and whispered cautions and precepts into his ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s Flynn of Kildare,” said Dodds’s informant. “Jack Flynn has brought
+      down that string of horses, and the other large string over yonder belongs
+      to Tom Flynn, his brother. The two of them together are the two first
+      breeders in Ireland.” A crowd had gathered in front of the horses. By
+      common consent a place had been made for Mr. Holloway, and Dodds could
+      catch a glimpse of his florid face and yellow covert-coat in the front
+      rank. He had opened his note-book, and was tapping his teeth reflectively
+      with his pencil as he eyed the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ll see a fight now between the first seller and the first buyer in
+      the country,” said Dodds’s acquaintance. “They are a beautiful string,
+      anyhow. I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t average five-and-thirty
+      pound apiece for the lot as they stand.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The salesman had mounted upon a chair, and his keen, clean-shaven face
+      overlooked the crowd. Mr. Jack Flynn’s grey whiskers were at his elbow,
+      and Mr. Holloway immediately in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ve seen these horses, gentlemen,” said the salesman, with a backward
+      sweep of his hand towards the line of tossing heads and streaming manes.
+      “When you know that they are bred by Mr. Jack Flynn, at his place in
+      Kildare, you will have a guarantee of their quality. They are the best
+      that Ireland can produce, and in this class of horse the best that Ireland
+      can produce are the best in the world, as every riding man knows well.
+      Hunters or carriage horses, all warranted sound, and bred from the best
+      stock. There are seventy in Mr. Jack Flynn’s string, and he bids me say
+      that if any wholesale dealer would make one bid for the whole lot, to save
+      time, he would have the preference over any purchaser.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause and a whisper from the crowd in front, with some
+      expressions of discontent. By a single sweep all the small dealers had
+      been put out of it. It was only a long purse which could buy on such a
+      scale as that. The salesman looked round him inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Come, Mr. Holloway,” said he, at last. “You didn’t come over here for the
+      sake of the scenery. You may travel the country and not see such another
+      string of horses. Give us a starting bid.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great dealer was still rattling his pencil upon his front teeth.
+      “Well,” said he, at last, “they <i>are</i> a fine lot of horses, and I
+      won’t deny it. They do you credit, Mr. Flynn, I am sure. All the same I
+      didn’t mean to fill a ship at a single bid in this fashion. I like to pick
+      and choose my horses.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In that case Mr. Flynn is quite prepared to sell them in smaller lots,”
+      said the salesman. “It was rather for the convenience of a wholesale
+      customer that he was prepared to put them all up together. But if no
+      gentleman wishes to bid&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Wait a minute,” said a voice. “They are very fine horses, these, and I
+      will give you a bid to start you. I will give you twenty pounds each for
+      the string of seventy.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a rustle as the crowd all swayed their heads to catch a glimpse
+      of the speaker. The salesman leaned forward. “May I ask your name, sir?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Strellenhaus&mdash;Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s a new firm,” said Dodds’s neighbour. “I thought I knew them all, but
+      I never heard of him before.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The salesman’s head had disappeared, for he was whispering with the
+      breeder. Now he suddenly straightened himself again. “Thank you for giving
+      us a lead, sir,” said he. “Now, gentlemen, you have heard the offer of Mr.
+      Strellenhaus of Liverpool. It will give us a base to start from. Mr.
+      Strellenhaus has offered twenty pounds a head.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Guineas,” said Holloway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bravo, Mr. Holloway! I knew that you would take a hand. You are not the
+      man to let such a string of horses pass away from you. The bid is twenty
+      guineas a head.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Twenty-five pounds,” said Mr. Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Twenty-six.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was London against Liverpool, and it was the head of the trade against
+      an outsider. Still, the one man had increased his bids by fives and the
+      other only by ones. Those fives meant determination and also wealth.
+      Holloway had ruled the market so long that the crowd was delighted at
+      finding someone who would stand up to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The bid now stands at thirty pounds a head,” said the salesman. “The word
+      lies with you, Mr. Holloway.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The London dealer was glancing keenly at his unknown opponent, and he was
+      asking himself whether this was a genuine rival, or whether it was a
+      device of some sort&mdash;an agent of Flynn’s perhaps&mdash;for running up
+      the price. Little Mr. Strellenhaus, the same apple-faced gentleman whom
+      Dodds had noticed in the coffee-room, stood looking at the horses with the
+      sharp, quick glances of a man who knows what he is looking for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-one,” said Holloway, with the air of a man who has gone to his
+      extreme limit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-two,” said Strellenhaus, promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holloway grew angry at this persistent opposition. His red face flushed
+      redder still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-three!” he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-four,” said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holloway became thoughtful, and entered a few figures in his note-book.
+      There were seventy horses. He knew that Flynn’s stock was always of the
+      highest quality. With the hunting season coming on he might rely upon
+      selling them at an average of from forty-five to fifty. Some of them might
+      carry a heavy weight, and would run to three figures. On the other hand,
+      there was the feed and keep of them for three months, the danger of the
+      voyage, the chance of influenza or some of those other complaints which
+      run through an entire stable as measles go through a nursery. Deducting
+      all this, it was a question whether at the present price any profit would
+      be left upon the transaction. Every pound that he bid meant seventy out of
+      his pocket. And yet he could not submit to be beaten by this stranger
+      without a struggle. As a business matter it was important to him to be
+      recognised as the head of his profession. He would make one more effort,
+      if he sacrificed his profit by doing so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “At the end of your rope, Mr. Holloway?” asked the salesman, with the
+      suspicion of a sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-five,” cried Holloway gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-six,” said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then I wish you joy of your bargain,” said Holloway. “I don’t buy at that
+      price, but I should be glad to sell you some.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Strellenhaus took no notice of the irony. He was still looking
+      critically at the horses. The salesman glanced round him in a perfunctory
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thirty-six pounds bid,” said he. “Mr. Jack Flynn’s lot is going to Mr.
+      Strellenhaus of Liverpool, at thirty-six pounds a head. Going&mdash;going&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Forty!” cried a high, thin, clear voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A buzz rose from the crowd, and they were all on tiptoe again, trying to
+      catch a glimpse of this reckless buyer. Being a tall man, Dodds could see
+      over the others, and there, at the side of Holloway, he saw the masterful
+      nose and aristocratic beard of the second stranger in the coffee-room. A
+      sudden personal interest added itself to the scene. He felt that he was on
+      the verge of something&mdash;something dimly seen&mdash; which he could
+      himself turn to account. The two men with strange names, the telegrams,
+      the horses&mdash;what was underlying it all? The salesman was all
+      animation again, and Mr. Jack Flynn was sitting up with his white whiskers
+      bristling and his eyes twinkling. It was the best deal which he had ever
+      made in his fifty years of experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What name, sir?” asked the salesman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mr. Mancune.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Address?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mr. Mancune of Glasgow.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thank you for your bid, sir. Forty pounds a head has been bid by Mr.
+      Mancune of Glasgow. Any advance upon forty?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Forty-one,” said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Forty-five,” said Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tactics had changed, and it was the turn of Strellenhaus now to
+      advance by ones, while his rival sprang up by fives. But the former was as
+      dogged as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Forty-six,” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Fifty!” cried Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was unheard of. The most that the horses could possibly average at a
+      retail price was as much as these men were willing to pay wholesale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Two lunatics from Bedlam,” whispered the angry Holloway. “If I was Flynn
+      I would see the colour of their money before I went any further.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same thought had occurred to the salesman. “As a mere matter of
+      business, gentlemen,” said he, “it is usual in such cases to put down a
+      small deposit as a guarantee of <i>bona fides</i>. You will understand how
+      I am placed, and that I have not had the pleasure of doing business with
+      either of you before.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How much?” asked Strellenhaus, briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Should we say five hundred?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Here is a note for a thousand pounds.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And here is another,” said Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nothing could be more handsome, gentlemen,” said the salesman. “It’s a
+      treat to see such a spirited competition. The last bid was fifty pounds a
+      head from Mancune. The word lies with you, Mr. Strellenhaus.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jack Flynn whispered something to the salesman. “Quite so! Mr. Flynn
+      suggests, gentlemen, that as you are both large buyers, it would, perhaps,
+      be a convenience to you if he was to add the string of Mr. Tom Flynn,
+      which consists of seventy animals of precisely the same quality, making
+      one hundred and forty in all. Have you any objection, Mr. Mancune?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And you, Mr. Strellenhaus?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should prefer it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very handsome! Very handsome indeed!” murmured the salesman. “Then I
+      understand, Mr. Mancune, that your offer of fifty pounds a head extends to
+      the whole of these horses?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long breath went up from the crowd. Seven thousand pounds at one deal.
+      It was a record for Dunsloe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Any advance, Mr. Strellenhaus?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Fifty-one.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Fifty-five.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Fifty-six.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sixty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They could hardly believe their ears. Holloway stood with his mouth open,
+      staring blankly in front of him. The salesman tried hard to look as if
+      such bidding and such prices were nothing unusual. Jack Flynn of Kildare
+      smiled benignly and rubbed his hands together. The crowd listened in dead
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sixty-one,” said Strellenhaus. From the beginning he had stood without a
+      trace of emotion upon his round face, like a little automatic figure which
+      bid by clockwork. His rival was of a more excitable nature. His eyes were
+      shining, and he was for ever twitching at his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sixty-five,” he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sixty-six.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Seventy.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the clockwork had run down. No answering bid came from Mr.
+      Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Seventy bid, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Strellenhaus shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am buying for another, and I have reached his limit,” said he. “If you
+      will permit me to send for instructions&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am afraid, sir, that the sale must proceed.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then the horses belong to this gentleman.” For the first time he turned
+      towards his rival, and their glances crossed like sword-blades. “It is
+      possible that I may see the horses again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I hope so,” said Mr. Mancune; and his white, waxed moustache gave a
+      feline upward bristle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, with a bow, they separated. Mr. Strellenhaus walked, down to the
+      telegraph-office, where his message was delayed because Mr. Worlington
+      Dodds was already at the end of the wires, for, after dim guesses and
+      vague conjecture, he had suddenly caught a clear view of this coming event
+      which had cast so curious a shadow before it in this little Irish town.
+      Political rumours, names, appearances, telegrams, seasoned horses at any
+      price, there could only be one meaning to it. He held a secret, and he
+      meant to use it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Warner, who was the partner of Mr. Worlington Dodds, and who was
+      suffering from the same eclipse, had gone down to the Stock Exchange, but
+      had found little consolation there, for the European system was in a
+      ferment, and rumours of peace and of war were succeeding each other with
+      such rapidity and assurance that it was impossible to know which to trust.
+      It was obvious that a fortune lay either way, for every rumour set the
+      funds fluctuating; but without special information it was impossible to
+      act, and no one dared to plunge heavily upon the strength of newspaper
+      surmise and the gossip of the street. Warner knew that an hour’s work
+      might resuscitate the fallen fortunes of himself and his partner, and yet
+      he could not afford to make a mistake. He returned to his office in the
+      afternoon, half inclined to back the chances of peace, for of all war
+      scares not one in ten comes to pass. As he entered the office a telegram
+      lay upon the table. It was from Dunsloe, a place of which he had never
+      heard, and was signed by his absent partner. The message was in cipher,
+      but he soon translated it, for it was short and crisp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am a bear of everything German and French. Sell, sell, sell, keep on
+      selling.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Warner hesitated. What could Worlington Dodds know at Dunsloe
+      which was not known in Throgmorton Street? But he remembered the quickness
+      and decision of his partner. He would not have sent such a message without
+      very good grounds. If he was to act at all he must act at once, so,
+      hardening his heart, he went down to the house, and, dealing upon that
+      curious system by which a man can sell what he has not got, and what he
+      could not pay for if he had it, he disposed of heavy parcels of French and
+      German securities. He had caught the market in one of its little spasms of
+      hope, and there was no lack of buying until his own persistent selling
+      caused others to follow his lead, and so brought about a reaction. When
+      Warner returned to his offices it took him some hours to work out his
+      accounts, and he emerged into the streets in the evening with the absolute
+      certainty that the next settling-day would leave him either hopelessly
+      bankrupt or exceedingly prosperous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It all depended upon Worlington Dodds’s information. What could he
+      possibly have found out at Dunsloe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly he saw a newspaper boy fasten a poster upon a lamp-post,
+      and a little crowd had gathered round it in an instant. One of them waved
+      his hat in the air; another shouted to a friend across the street. Warner
+      hurried up and caught a glimpse of the poster between two craning heads&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="center">
+           “FRANCE DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY.”
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “By Jove!” cried Warner. “Old Dodds was right, after all.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE KING OF THE FOXES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was after a hunting dinner, and there were as many scarlet coats as
+      black ones round the table. The conversation over the cigars had turned,
+      therefore, in the direction of horses and horsemen, with reminiscences of
+      phenomenal runs where foxes had led the pack from end to end of a county,
+      and been overtaken at last by two or three limping hounds and a huntsman
+      on foot, while every rider in the field had been pounded. As the port
+      circulated the runs became longer and more apocryphal, until we had the
+      whips inquiring their way and failing to understand the dialect of the
+      people who answered them. The foxes, too, became more eccentric, and we
+      had foxes up pollard willows, foxes which were dragged by the tail out of
+      horses’ mangers, and foxes which had raced through an open front door and
+      gone to ground in a lady’s bonnet-box. The master had told one or two tall
+      reminiscences, and when he cleared his throat for another we were all
+      curious, for he was a bit of an artist in his way, and produced his
+      effects in a <i>crescendo</i> fashion. His face wore the earnest,
+      practical, severely accurate expression which heralded some of his finest
+      efforts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It was before I was master,” said he. “Sir Charles Adair had the hounds
+      at that time, and then afterwards they passed to old Lathom, and then to
+      me. It may possibly have been just after Lathom took them over, but my
+      strong impression is that it was in Adair’s time. That would be early in
+      the seventies&mdash;about seventy-two, I should say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The man I mean has moved to another part of the country, but I daresay
+      that some of you can remember him. Danbury was the name&mdash;Walter
+      Danbury, or Wat Danbury, as the people used to call him. He was the son of
+      old Joe Danbury, of High Ascombe, and when his father died he came into a
+      very good thing, for his only brother was drowned when the <i>Magna Charta</i>
+      foundered, so he inherited the whole estate. It was but a few hundred
+      acres, but it was good arable land, and those were the great days of
+      farming. Besides, it was freehold, and a yeoman farmer without a mortgage
+      was a warmish man before the great fall in wheat came. Foreign wheat and
+      barbed wire&mdash;those are the two curses of this country, for the one
+      spoils the farmer’s work and the other spoils his play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This young Wat Danbury was a very fine fellow, a keen rider, and a
+      thorough sportsman, but his head was a little turned at having come, when
+      so young, into a comfortable fortune, and he went the pace for a year or
+      two. The lad had no vice in him, but there was a hard-drinking set in the
+      neighbourhood at that time, and Danbury got drawn in among them; and,
+      being an amiable fellow who liked to do what his friends were doing, he
+      very soon took to drinking a great deal more than was good for him. As a
+      rule, a man who takes his exercise may drink as much as he likes in the
+      evening, and do himself no very great harm, if he will leave it alone
+      during the day. Danbury had too many friends for that, however, and it
+      really looked as if the poor chap was going to the bad, when a very
+      curious thing happened which pulled him up with such a sudden jerk that he
+      never put his hand upon the neck of a whisky bottle again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He had a peculiarity which I have noticed in a good many other men, that
+      though he was always playing tricks with his own health, he was none the
+      less very anxious about it, and was extremely fidgety if ever he had any
+      trivial symptom. Being a tough, open-air fellow, who was always as hard as
+      a nail, it was seldom that there was anything amiss with him; but at last
+      the drink began to tell, and he woke one morning with his hands shaking
+      and all his nerves tingling like over-stretched fiddle-strings. He had
+      been dining at some very wet house the night before, and the wine had,
+      perhaps, been more plentiful than choice; at any rate, there he was, with
+      a tongue like a bath towel and a head that ticked like an eight-day clock.
+      He was very alarmed at his own condition, and he sent for Doctor
+      Middleton, of Ascombe, the father of the man who practises there now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Middleton had been a great friend of old Danbury’s, and he was very sorry
+      to see his son going to the devil; so he improved the occasion by taking
+      his case very seriously, and lecturing him upon the danger of his ways. He
+      shook his head and talked about the possibility of <i>delirium tremens</i>,
+      or even of mania, if he continued to lead such a life. Wat Danbury was
+      horribly frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Do you think I am going to get anything of the sort?’ he wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Well, really, I don’t know,’ said the doctor gravely. ‘I cannot
+      undertake to say that you are out of danger. Your system is very much out
+      of order. At any time during the day you might have those grave symptoms
+      of which I warn you.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘You think I shall be safe by evening?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘If you drink nothing during the day, and have no nervous symptoms before
+      evening, I think you may consider yourself safe,’ the doctor answered. A
+      little fright would, he thought, do his patient good, so he made the most
+      of the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘What symptoms may I expect?’ asked Danbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It generally takes the form of optical delusions.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I see specks floating all about.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘That is mere biliousness,’ said the doctor soothingly, for he saw that
+      the lad was highly strung, and he did not wish to overdo it. ‘I daresay
+      that you will have no symptoms of the kind, but when they do come they
+      usually take the shape of insects, or reptiles, or curious animals.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘And if I see anything of the kind?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘If you do, you will at once send for me;’ and so, with a promise of
+      medicine, the doctor departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Young Wat Danbury rose and dressed and moped about the room feeling very
+      miserable and unstrung, with a vision of the County Asylum for ever in his
+      mind. He had the doctor’s word for it that if he could get through to
+      evening in safety he would be all right; but it is not very exhilarating
+      to be waiting for symptoms, and to keep on glancing at your bootjack to
+      see whether it is still a bootjack or whether it has begun to develop
+      antennae and legs. At last he could stand it no longer, and an
+      overpowering longing for the fresh air and the green grass came over him.
+      Why should he stay indoors when the Ascombe Hunt was meeting within half a
+      mile of him? If he was going to have these delusions which the doctor
+      talked of, he would not have them the sooner nor the worse because he was
+      on horseback in the open. He was sure, too, it would ease his aching head.
+      And so it came about that in ten minutes he was in his hunting-kit, and in
+      ten more he was riding out of his stable-yard with his roan mare ‘Matilda’
+      between his knees. He was a little unsteady in his saddle just at first,
+      but the farther he went the better he felt, until by the time he reached
+      the meet his head was almost clear, and there was nothing troubling him
+      except those haunting words of the doctor’s about the possibility of
+      delusions any time before nightfall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But soon he forgot that also, for as he came up the hounds were thrown
+      off, and they drew the Gravel Hanger, and afterwards the Hickory Copse. It
+      was just the morning for a scent&mdash;no wind to blow it away, no water
+      to wash it out, and just damp enough to make it cling. There was a field
+      of forty, all keen men and good riders, so when they came to the Black
+      Hanger they knew that there would be some sport, for that’s a cover which
+      never draws blank. The woods were thicker in those days than now, and the
+      foxes were thicker also, and that great dark oak-grove was swarming with
+      them. The only difficulty was to make them break, for it is, as you know,
+      a very close country, and you must coax them out into the open before you
+      can hope for a run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When they came to the Black Hanger the field took their positions along
+      the cover-side wherever they thought that they were most likely to get a
+      good start. Some went in with the hounds, some clustered at the ends of
+      the drives, and some kept outside in the hope of the fox breaking in that
+      direction. Young Wat Danbury knew the country like the palm of his hand,
+      so he made for a place where several drives intersected, and there he
+      waited. He had a feeling that the faster and the farther he galloped the
+      better he should be, and so he was chafing to be off. His mare, too, was
+      in the height of fettle and one of the fastest goers in the county. Wat
+      was a splendid lightweight rider&mdash;under ten stone with his saddle&mdash;and
+      the mare was a powerful creature, all quarters and shoulders, fit to carry
+      a lifeguardsman; and so it was no wonder that there was hardly a man in
+      the field who could hope to stay with him. There he waited and listened to
+      the shouting of the huntsman and the whips, catching a glimpse now and
+      then in the darkness of the wood of a whisking tail, or the gleam of a
+      white-and-tan side amongst the underwood. It was a well-trained pack, and
+      there was not so much as a whine to tell you that forty hounds were
+      working all round you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And then suddenly there came one long-drawn yell from one of them, and it
+      was taken up by another, and another, until within a few seconds the whole
+      pack was giving tongue together and running on a hot scent. Danbury saw
+      them stream across one of the drives and disappear upon the other side,
+      and an instant later the three red coats of the hunt servants flashed
+      after them upon the same line. He might have made a shorter cut down one
+      of the other drives, but he was afraid of heading the fox, so he followed
+      the lead of the huntsman. Right through the wood they went in a bee-line,
+      galloping with their faces brushed by their horses’ manes as they stooped
+      under the branches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s ugly going, as you know, with the roots all wriggling about in the
+      darkness, but you can take a risk when you catch an occasional glimpse of
+      the pack running with a breast-high scent; so in and out they dodged until
+      the wood began to thin at the edges, and they found themselves in the long
+      bottom where the river runs. It is clear going there upon grassland, and
+      the hounds were running very strong about two hundred yards ahead, keeping
+      parallel with the stream. The field, who had come round the wood instead
+      of going through, were coming hard over the fields upon the left; but
+      Danbury, with the hunt servants, had a clear lead, and they never lost it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Two of the field got on terms with them&mdash;Parson Geddes on a big
+      seventeen-hand bay which he used to ride in those days, and Squire Foley,
+      who rode as a feather-weight, and made his hunters out of cast
+      thoroughbreds from the Newmarket sales; but the others never had a look-in
+      from start to finish, for there was no check and no pulling, and it was
+      clear cross-country racing from start to finish. If you had drawn a line
+      right across the map with a pencil you couldn’t go straighter than that
+      fox ran, heading for the South Downs and the sea, and the hounds ran as
+      surely as if they were running to view, and yet from the beginning no one
+      ever saw the fox, and there was never a hallo forrard to tell them that he
+      had been spied. This, however, is not so surprising, for if you’ve been
+      over that line of country you will know that there are not very many
+      people about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There were six of them then in the front row&mdash;Parson Geddes, Squire
+      Foley, the huntsman, two whips, and Wat Danbury, who had forgotten all
+      about his head and the doctor by this time, and had not a thought for
+      anything but the run. All six were galloping just as hard as they could
+      lay hoofs to the ground. One of the whips dropped back, however, as some
+      of the hounds were tailing off, and that brought them down to five. Then
+      Foley’s thoroughbred strained herself, as these slim-legged,
+      dainty-fetlocked thoroughbreds will do when the going is rough, and he had
+      to take a back seat. But the other four were still going strong, and they
+      did four or five miles down the river flat at a rasping pace. It had been
+      a wet winter, and the waters had been out a little time before, so there
+      was a deal of sliding and splashing; but by the time they came to the
+      bridge the whole field was out of sight, and these four had the hunt to
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The fox had crossed the bridge&mdash;for foxes do not care to swim a
+      chilly river any more than humans do&mdash;and from that point he had
+      streaked away southward as hard as he could tear. It is broken country,
+      rolling heaths, down one slope and up another, and it’s hard to say
+      whether the up or the down is the more trying for the horses. This sort of
+      switchback work is all right for a cobby, short-backed, short-legged
+      little horse, but it is killing work for a big, long-striding hunter such
+      as one wants in the Midlands. Anyhow, it was too much for Parson Geddes’
+      seventeen-hand bay, and though he tried the Irish trick&mdash;for he was a
+      rare keen sportsman&mdash;of running up the hills by his horse’s head, it
+      was all to no use, and he had to give it up. So then there were only the
+      huntsman, the whip, and Wat Danbury&mdash;all going strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But the country got worse and worse and the hills were steeper and more
+      thickly covered in heather and bracken. The horses were over their hocks
+      all the time, and the place was pitted with rabbit-holes; but the hounds
+      were still streaming along, and the riders could not afford to pick their
+      steps. As they raced down one slope, the hounds were always flowing up the
+      opposite one, until it looked like that game where the one figure in
+      falling makes the other one rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But never a glimpse did they get of the fox, although they knew very well
+      that he must be only a very short way ahead for the scent to be so strong.
+      And then Wat Danbury heard a crash and a thud at his elbow, and looking
+      round he saw a pair of white cords and top-boots kicking out of a tussock
+      of brambles. The whip’s horse had stumbled, and the whip was out of the
+      running. Danbury and the huntsman eased down for an instant; and then,
+      seeing the man staggering to his feet all right, they turned and settled
+      into their saddles once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Joe Clarke, the huntsman, was a famous old rider, known for five counties
+      round; but he reckoned upon his second horse, and the second horses had
+      all been left many miles behind. However, the one he was riding was good
+      enough for anything with such a horseman upon his back, and he was going
+      as well as when he started. As to Wat Danbury, he was going better. With
+      every stride his own feelings improved, and the mind of the rider had its
+      influence upon the mind of the horse. The stout little roan was gathering
+      its muscular limbs under it, and stretching to the gallop as if it were
+      steel and whale-bone instead of flesh and blood. Wat had never come to the
+      end of its powers yet, and to-day he had such a chance of testing them as
+      he had never had before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There was a pasture country beyond the heather slopes, and for several
+      miles the two riders were either losing ground as they fumbled with their
+      crop-handles at the bars of gates, or gaining it again as they galloped
+      over the fields. Those were the days before this accursed wire came into
+      the country, and you could generally break a hedge where you could not fly
+      it, so they did not trouble the gates more than they could help. Then they
+      were down in a hard lane, where they had to slacken their pace, and
+      through a farm where a man came shouting excitedly after them; but they
+      had no time to stop and listen to him, for the hounds were on some
+      ploughland, only two fields ahead. It was sloping upwards, that
+      ploughland, and the horses were over their fetlocks in the red, soft soil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When they reached the top they were blowing badly, but a grand valley
+      sloped before them, leading up to the open country of the South Downs.
+      Between, there lay a belt of pine-woods, into which the hounds were
+      streaming, running now in a long, straggling line, and shedding one here
+      and one there as they ran. You could see the white-and-tan dots here and
+      there where the limpers were tailing away. But half the pack were still
+      going well, though the pace and distance had both been tremendous&mdash;two
+      clear hours now without a check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There was a drive through the pine-wood&mdash;one of those green,
+      slightly rutted drives where a horse can get the last yard out of itself,
+      for the ground is hard enough to give him clean going and yet springy
+      enough to help him. Wat Danbury got alongside of the huntsman and they
+      galloped together with their stirrup-irons touching, and the hounds within
+      a hundred yards of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘We have it all to ourselves,’ said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Yes, sir, we’ve shook on the lot of ’em this time,’ said old Joe Clarke.
+      ‘If we get this fox it’s worth while ’aving ’im skinned an’ stuffed, for
+      ’e’s a curiosity ’e is.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It’s the fastest run I ever had in my life!’ cried Danbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘And the fastest that ever I ’ad, an’ that means more,’ said the old
+      huntsman. ‘But what licks me is that we’ve never ’ad a look at the beast.
+      ’E must leave an amazin’ scent be’ind ’im when these ’ounds can follow ’im
+      like this, and yet none of us have seen ’im when we’ve ’ad a clear ’alf
+      mile view in front of us.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I expect we’ll have a view of him presently,’ said Danbury; and in his
+      mind he added, ‘at least, I shall,’ for the huntsman’s horse was gasping
+      as it ran, and the white foam was pouring down it like the side of a
+      washing-tub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They had followed the hounds on to one of the side tracks which led out
+      of the main drive, and that divided into a smaller track still, where the
+      branches switched across their faces as they went, and there was barely
+      room for one horse at a time. Wat Danbury took the lead, and he heard the
+      huntsman’s horse clumping along heavily behind him, while his own mare was
+      going with less spring than when she had started. She answered to a touch
+      of his crop or spur, however, and he felt that there was something still
+      left to draw upon. And then he looked up, and there was a heavy wooden
+      stile at the end of the narrow track, with a lane of stiff young saplings
+      leading down to it, which was far too thick to break through. The hounds
+      were running clear upon the grassland on the other side, and you were
+      bound either to get over that stile or lose sight of them, for the pace
+      was too hot to let you go round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, Wat Danbury was not the lad to flinch, and at it he went full
+      split, like a man who means what he is doing. She rose gallantly to it,
+      rapped it hard with her front hoof, shook him on to her withers, recovered
+      herself, and was over. Wat had hardly got back into his saddle when there
+      was a clatter behind him like the fall of a woodstack, and there was the
+      top bar in splinters, the horse on its belly, and the huntsman on hands
+      and knees half a dozen yards in front of him. Wat pulled up for an
+      instant, for the fall was a smasher; but he saw old Joe spring to his feet
+      and get to his horse’s bridle. The horse staggered up, but the moment it
+      put one foot in front of the other, Wat saw that it was hopelessly lame&mdash;a
+      slipped shoulder and a six weeks’ job. There was nothing he could do, and
+      Joe was shouting to him not to lose the hounds, so off he went again, the
+      one solitary survivor of the whole hunt. When a man finds himself there,
+      he can retire from fox-hunting, for he has tasted the highest which it has
+      to offer. I remember once when I was out with the Royal Surrey&mdash;but
+      I’ll tell you that story afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The pack, or what was left of them, had got a bit ahead during this time;
+      but he had a clear view of them on the downland, and the mare seemed full
+      of pride at being the only one left, for she was stepping out rarely and
+      tossing her head as she went. They were two miles over the green shoulder
+      of a hill, a rattle down a stony, deep-rutted country lane, where the mare
+      stumbled and nearly came down, a jump over a 5ft. brook, a cut through a
+      hazel copse, another dose of heavy ploughland, a couple of gates to open,
+      and then the green, unbroken Downs beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Well,’ said Wat Danbury to himself, ‘I’ll see this fox run into or I
+      shall see it drowned, for it’s all clear going now between this and the
+      chalk cliffs which line the sea.’ But he was wrong in that, as he speedily
+      discovered. In all the little hollows of the downs at that part there are
+      plantations of fir-woods, some of which have grown to a good size. You do
+      not see them until you come upon the edge of the valleys in which they
+      lie. Danbury was galloping hard over the short, springy turf when he came
+      over the lip of one of these depressions, and there was the dark clump of
+      wood lying in front of and beneath him. There were only a dozen hounds
+      still running, and they were just disappearing among the trees. The
+      sunlight was shining straight upon the long olive-green slopes which
+      curved down towards this wood, and Danbury, who had the eyes of a hawk,
+      swept them over this great expanse; but there was nothing moving upon it.
+      A few sheep were grazing far up on the right, but there was no other sight
+      of any living creature. He was certain then that he was very near to the
+      end, for either the fox must have gone to ground in the wood or the
+      hounds’ noses must be at his very brush. The mare seemed to know also what
+      that great empty sweep of countryside meant, for she quickened her stride,
+      and a few minutes afterwards Danbury was galloping into the fir-wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He had come from bright sunshine, but the wood was very closely planted,
+      and so dim that he could hardly see to right or to left out of the narrow
+      path down which he was riding. You know what a solemn, churchyardy sort of
+      place a fir-wood is. I suppose it is the absence of any undergrowth, and
+      the fact that the trees never move at all. At any rate a kind of chill
+      suddenly struck Wat Danbury, and it flashed through his mind that there
+      had been some very singular points about this run&mdash; its length and
+      its straightness, and the fact that from the first find no one had ever
+      caught a glimpse of the creature. Some silly talk which had been going
+      round the country about the king of the foxes&mdash;a sort of demon fox,
+      so fast that it could outrun any pack, and so fierce that they could do
+      nothing with it if they overtook it&mdash;suddenly came back into his
+      mind, and it did not seem so laughable now in the dim fir-wood as it had
+      done when the story had been told over the wine and cigars. The
+      nervousness which had been on him in the morning, and which he had hoped
+      that he had shaken off, swept over him again in an overpowering wave. He
+      had been so proud of being alone, and yet he would have given 10 pounds
+      now to have had Joe Clarke’s homely face beside him. And then, just at
+      that moment, there broke out from the thickest part of the wood the most
+      frantic hullabaloo that ever he had heard in his life. The hounds had run
+      into their fox.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, you know, or you ought to know, what your duty is in such a case.
+      You have to be whip, huntsman, and everything else if you are the first
+      man up. You get in among the hounds, lash them off, and keep the brush and
+      pads from being destroyed. Of course, Wat Danbury knew all about that, and
+      he tried to force his mare through the trees to the place where all this
+      hideous screaming and howling came from, but the wood was so thick that it
+      was impossible to ride it. He sprang off, therefore, left the mare
+      standing, and broke his way through as best he could with his hunting-lash
+      ready over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But as he ran forward he felt his flesh go cold and creepy all over. He
+      had heard hounds run into foxes many times before, but he had never heard
+      such sounds as these. They were not the cries of triumph, but of fear.
+      Every now and then came a shrill yelp of mortal agony. Holding his breath,
+      he ran on until he broke through the interlacing branches, and found
+      himself in a little clearing with the hounds all crowding round a patch
+      of tangled bramble at the further end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When he first caught sight of them the hounds were standing in a
+      half-circle round this bramble patch, with their backs bristling and their
+      jaws gaping. In front of the brambles lay one of them with his throat torn
+      out, all crimson and white-and-tan. Wat came running out into the
+      clearing, and at the sight of him the hounds took heart again, and one of
+      them sprang with a growl into the bushes. At the same instant, a creature
+      the size of a donkey jumped on to its feet, a huge grey head, with
+      monstrous glistening fangs and tapering fox jaws, shot out from among the
+      branches, and the hound was thrown several feet into the air, and fell
+      howling among the cover. Then there was a clashing snap, like a rat-trap
+      closing, and the howls sharpened into a scream and then were still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Danbury had been on the look-out for symptoms all day, and now he had
+      found them. He looked once more at the thicket, saw a pair of savage red
+      eyes fixed upon him, and fairly took to his heels. It might only be a
+      passing delusion, or it might be the permanent mania of which the doctor
+      had spoken, but anyhow, the thing to do was to get back to bed and to
+      quiet, and to hope for the best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He forgot the hounds, the hunt, and everything else in his desperate
+      fears for his own reason. He sprang upon his mare, galloped her madly over
+      the downs, and only stopped when he found himself at a country station.
+      There he left his mare at the inn, and made back for home as quickly as
+      steam would take him. It was evening before he got there, shivering with
+      apprehension, and seeing those red eyes and savage teeth at every turn. He
+      went straight to bed and sent for Dr. Middleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I’ve got ’em, doctor,’ said he. ‘It came about exactly as you said&mdash;
+      strange creatures, optical delusions, and everything. All I ask you now is
+      to save my reason.’ The doctor listened to his story, and was shocked as
+      he heard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It appears to be a very clear case,’ said he. ‘This must be a lesson to
+      you for life.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Never a drop again if I only come safely through this,’ cried Wat
+      Danbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Well, my dear boy, if you will stick to that it may prove a blessing in
+      disguise. But the difficulty in this case is to know where fact ends and
+      fancy begins. You see, it is not as if there was only one delusion. There
+      have been several. The dead dogs, for example, must have been one as well
+      as the creature in the bush.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I saw it all as clearly as I see you.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘One of the characteristics of this form of delirium is that what you see
+      is even clearer than reality. I was wondering whether the whole run was
+      not a delusion also.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Wat Danbury pointed to his hunting boots still lying upon the floor,
+      necked with the splashings of two counties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Hum! that looks very real, certainly. No doubt, in your weak state, you
+      over-exerted yourself and so brought this attack upon yourself. Well,
+      whatever the cause, our treatment is clear. You will take the soothing
+      mixture which I will send to you, and we shall put two leeches upon your
+      temples to-night to relieve any congestion of the brain.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So Wat Danbury spent the night in tossing about and reflecting what a
+      sensitive thing this machinery of ours is, and how very foolish it is to
+      play tricks with what is so easily put out of gear and so difficult to
+      mend. And so he repeated and repeated his oath that this first lesson
+      should be his last, and that from that time forward he would be a sober,
+      hard-working yeoman as his father had been before him. So he lay, tossing
+      and still repentant, when his door flew open in the morning and in rushed
+      the doctor with a newspaper crumpled up in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘My dear boy,’ he cried, ‘I owe you a thousand apologies. You’re the most
+      ill-used lad and I the greatest numskull in the county. Listen to this!’
+      And he sat down upon the side of the bed, flattened out his paper upon his
+      knee, and began to read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The paragraph was headed, ‘Disaster to the Ascombe Hounds,’ and it went
+      on to say that four of the hounds, shockingly torn and mangled, had been
+      found in Winton Fir Wood upon the South Downs. The run had been so severe
+      that half the pack were lamed; but the four found in the wood were
+      actually dead, although the cause of their extraordinary injuries was
+      still unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘So, you see,’ said the doctor, looking up, ‘that I was wrong when I put
+      the dead hounds among the delusions.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘But the cause?’ cried Wat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Well, I think we may guess the cause from an item which has been
+      inserted just as the paper went to press:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   “Late last night, Mr. Brown, of Smither’s Farm, to the
+   east of Hastings, perceived what he imagined to be an enormous
+   dog worrying one of his sheep.  He shot the creature, which
+   proves to be a grey Siberian wolf of the variety known as
+   <i>Lupus Giganticus</i>.  It is supposed to have escaped from some
+   travelling menagerie.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s the story, gentlemen, and Wat Danbury stuck to his good
+      resolutions, for the fright which he had cured him of all wish to run such
+      a risk again; and he never touches anything stronger than lime-juice&mdash;at
+      least, he hadn’t before he left this part of the country, five years ago
+      next Lady Day.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was only the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that
+      great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the
+      bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole
+      Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders which
+      studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was beating
+      down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims of the
+      pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a blast-furnace. It
+      had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were no larger than
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Whew!” cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead, “you’d pay five shillings
+      for this at the hummums.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Precisely,” said Scott. “But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in a
+      Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and a
+      whole Christmas-treeful of things dangling from you. The hot-house at Kew
+      is excellent as a conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon the
+      horizontal bar. I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and a halt until
+      evening.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward. Everywhere
+      were the same black burned rocks and deep orange sand. At one spot only an
+      intermittent line appeared to have been cut through the rugged spurs which
+      ran down to the river. It was the bed of the old railway, long destroyed
+      by the Arabs, but now in process of reconstruction by the advancing
+      Egyptians. There was no other sign of man’s handiwork in all that desolate
+      scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s palm trees or nothing,” said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I suppose we must; and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the
+      force up. What <i>would</i> our editors say if we were late for the
+      action?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn’t need to be told that no sane
+      modern general would ever attack until the Press is up.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You don’t mean that?” said young Anerley. “I thought we were looked upon
+      as an unmitigated nuisance.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Newspaper correspondents and travelling gentlemen, and all that tribe of
+      useless drones’&mdash;being an extract from Lord Wolseley’s ‘Soldier’s
+      Pocket-Book,’” cried Scott. “We know all about <i>that</i>, Anerley;” and
+      he winked behind his blue spectacles. “If there was going to be a battle
+      we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up. I’ve been in
+      fifteen, and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a reporter’s
+      table.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s very well; but the enemy may be less considerate,” said Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They are not strong enough to force a battle.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A skirmish, then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear. In that case we are just
+      where we should be.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So we are! What a score over Reuter’s man up with the advance! Well,
+      we’ll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies.
+      Reuter’s was thirty miles ahead; two evening pennies upon camels were
+      twenty miles behind. And among them they represented the eyes and ears of
+      the public&mdash;the great silent millions and millions who had paid for
+      everything, and who waited so patiently to know the result of their
+      outlay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were remarkable men these body-servants of the Press; two of them
+      already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first campaign,
+      and full of deference for his famous comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was
+      Mortimer, of the <i>Intelligence</i>&mdash;tall, straight, and hawk-faced,
+      with khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund,
+      and a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled
+      by the mosquito and the sand-fly. The other&mdash;small, quick, mercurial,
+      with blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch for ever flicking in
+      his left hand&mdash;was Scott, of the <i>Courier</i>, who had come through
+      more dangers and brought off more brilliant <i>coups</i> than any man in
+      the profession, save the eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to
+      take the field. They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and it
+      was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship lay.
+      Each dovetailed into the other. The strength of each was in the other’s
+      weakness. Together they formed a perfect unit. Mortimer was Saxon&mdash;slow,
+      conscientious, and deliberate; Scott was Celtic&mdash;quick,
+      happy-go-lucky, and brilliant. Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the more
+      attractive. Mortimer was the deeper thinker, Scott the brighter talker. By
+      a curious coincidence, though each had seen much of warfare, their
+      campaigns had never coincided. Together they covered all recent military
+      history. Scott had done Plevna, the Shipka, the Zulus, Egypt, Suakim;
+      Mortimer had seen the Boer War, the Chilian, the Bulgaria and Servian, the
+      Gordon relief, the Indian frontier, Brazilian rebellion, and Madagascar.
+      This intimate personal knowledge gave a peculiar flavour to their talk.
+      There was none of the second-hand surmise and conjecture which form so
+      much of our conversation; it was all concrete and final. The speaker had
+      been there, had seen it, and there was an end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of their friendship there was the keenest professional rivalry
+      between the two men. Either would have sacrificed himself to help his
+      companion, but either would also have sacrificed his companion to help his
+      paper. Never did a jockey yearn for a winning mount as keenly as each of
+      them longed to have a full column in a morning edition whilst every other
+      daily was blank. They were perfectly frank about the matter. Each
+      professed himself ready to steal a march on his neighbour, and each
+      recognised that the other’s duty to his employer was far higher than any
+      personal consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third man was Anerley, of the <i>Gazette</i>&mdash;young,
+      inexperienced, and rather simple-looking. He had a droop of the lip, which
+      some of his more intimate friends regarded as a libel upon his character,
+      and his eyes were so slow and so sleepy that they suggested an
+      affectation. A leaning towards soldiering had sent him twice to autumn
+      manoeuvres, and a touch of colour in his descriptions had induced the
+      proprietors of the <i>Gazette</i> to give him a trial as a war-special.
+      There was a pleasing diffidence about his bearing which recommended him to
+      his experienced companions, and if they had a smile sometimes at his
+      guileless ways, it was soothing to them to have a comrade from whom
+      nothing was to be feared. From the day that they left the telegraph-wire
+      behind them at Sarras, the man who was mounted upon a 15-guinea 13-4
+      Syrian was delivered over into the hands of the owners of the two fastest
+      polo-ponies that ever shot down the Ghezireh ground. The three had
+      dismounted and led their beasts under the welcome shade. In the brassy,
+      yellow glare every branch above threw so black and solid a shadow that the
+      men involuntarily raised their feet to step over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The palm makes an excellent hat-rack,” said Scott, slinging his revolver
+      and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which bristle
+      from the trunk. “As a shade tree, however, it isn’t an unqualified
+      success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means to ends
+      something a little less flimsy could not have been devised for the
+      tropics.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Like the banyan in India.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Or the fine hardwood trees in Ashantee, where a whole regiment could
+      picnic under the shade.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The teak tree isn’t bad in Burmah, either. By Jove, the baccy has all
+      come loose in the saddle-bag! That long-cut mixture smokes rather hot for
+      this climate. How about the baggles, Anerley?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They’ll be here in five minutes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down the winding path which curved among the rocks the little train of
+      baggage-camels was daintily picking its way. They came mincing and
+      undulating along, turning their heads slowly from side to side with the
+      air of a self-conscious woman. In front rode the three Berberee
+      body-servants upon donkeys, and behind walked the Arab camel-boys. They
+      had been travelling for nine long hours, ever since the first rising of
+      the moon, at the weary camel-drag of two and a half miles an hour, but now
+      they brightened, both beasts and men, at the sight of the grove and the
+      riderless horses. In a few minutes the loads were unstrapped, the animals
+      tethered, a fire lighted, fresh water carried up from the river, and each
+      camel-boy provided with his own little heap of tibbin laid in the centre
+      of the table-cloth, without which no well-bred Arabian will condescend to
+      feed. The dazzling light without, the subdued half-tones within, the green
+      palm-fronds outlined against the deep blue sky, the flitting,
+      silent-footed Arab servants, the crackling of sticks, the reek of a
+      lighting fire, the placid supercilious heads of the camels, they all come
+      back in their dreams to those who have known them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott was breaking eggs into a pan and rolling out a love-song in his
+      rich, deep voice. Anerley, with his head and arms buried in a deal
+      packing-case, was working his way through strata of tinned soups, bully
+      beef, potted chicken, and sardines to reach the jams which lay beneath.
+      The conscientious Mortimer, with his notebook upon his knee, was jotting
+      down what the railway engineer had told him at the line-end the day
+      before. Suddenly he raised his eyes and saw the man himself on his
+      chestnut pony, dipping and rising over the broken ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hullo! Here’s Merryweather!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A pretty lather his pony is in! He’s had her at that hand-gallop for
+      hours, by the look of her. Hullo, Merryweather, hullo!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The engineer, a small, compact man with a pointed red beard, had made as
+      though he would ride past their camp without word or halt. Now he swerved,
+      and easing his pony down to a canter, he headed her towards them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For God’s sake, a drink!” he croaked. “My tongue is stuck to the roof of
+      my mouth.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer ran with the water-bottle, Scott with the whisky-flask, and
+      Anerley with the tin pannikin. The engineer drank until his breath failed
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I must be off,” said he, striking the drops from his red moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Any news?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A hitch in the railway construction. I must see the general. It’s the
+      devil not having a telegraph.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Anything we can report?” Out came three notebooks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll tell you after I’ve seen the general.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Any dervishes?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The usual shaves. Hud-up, Jinny! Good-bye!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a soft thudding upon the sand, and a clatter among the stones the
+      weary pony was off upon her journey once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nothing serious, I suppose?” said Mortimer, staring after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Deuced serious,” cried Scott. “The ham and eggs are burned! No&mdash;it’s
+      all right&mdash;saved, and done to a turn! Pull the box up, Anerley. Come
+      on, Mortimer, stow that notebook! The fork is mightier than the pen just
+      at present. What’s the matter with you, Anerley?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I was wondering whether what we have just seen was worth a telegram.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it’s for the proprietors to say if it’s worth it. Sordid money
+      considerations are not for us. We must wire about something just to
+      justify our khaki coats and our putties.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But what is there to say?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer’s long, austere face broke into a smile over the youngster’s
+      innocence. “It’s not quite usual in our profession to give each other
+      tips,” said he. “However, as my telegram is written, I’ve no objection to
+      your reading it. You may be sure that I would not show it to you if it
+      were of the slightest importance.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley took up the slip of paper and read:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Merryweather obstacles stop journey confer general stop nature
+   difficulties later stop rumours dervishes.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “This is very condensed,” said Anerley, with wrinkled brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Condensed!” cried Scott. “Why, it’s sinfully garrulous. If my old man got
+      a wire like that his language would crack the lamp-shades. I’d cut out
+      half this; for example, I’d have out ‘journey,’ and ‘nature,’ and
+      ‘rumours.’ But my old man would make a ten-line paragraph of it for all
+      that.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I’ll do it myself just to show you. Lend me that stylo.” He
+      scribbled for a minute in his notebook. “It works out somewhat on these
+      lines”:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   Mr. Charles H.  Merryweather, the eminent railway engineer,
+   who is at present engaged in superintending the construction
+   of the line from Sarras to the front, has met with considerable
+   obstacles to the rapid completion of his important task&mdash;
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “Of course the old man knows who Merryweather is, and what he is about, so
+      the word ‘obstacles’ would suggest all that to him.”
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   He has to-day been compelled to make a journey of forty
+   miles to the front, in order to confer with the general upon
+   the steps which are necessary in order to facilitate the work.
+   Further particulars of the exact nature of the difficulties
+   met with will be made public at a later date.  All is quiet
+   upon the line of communications, though the usual persistent
+   rumours of the presence of dervishes in the Eastern desert
+   continue to circulate.&mdash;<i>Our own correspondent</i>.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      “How’s that?” cried Scott, triumphantly, and his white teeth gleamed
+      suddenly through his black beard. “That’s the sort of flapdoodle for the
+      dear old public.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Will it interest them?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, everything interests them. They want to know all about it; and they
+      like to think that there is a man who is getting a hundred a month simply
+      in order to tell it to them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s very kind of you to teach me all this.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it is a little unconventional, for, after all, we are here to score
+      over each other if we can. There are no more eggs, and you must take it
+      out in jam. Of course, as Mortimer says, such a telegram as this is of no
+      importance one way or another, except to prove to the office that we <i>are</i>
+      in the Soudan, and not at Monte Carlo. But when it comes to serious work
+      it must be every man for himself.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Is that quite necessary?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, of course it is.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should have thought if three men were to combine and to share their
+      news, they would do better than if they were each to act for himself, and
+      they would have a much pleasanter time of it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two older men sat with their bread-and-jam in their hands, and an
+      expression of genuine disgust upon their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We are not here to have a pleasant time,” said Mortimer, with a flash
+      through his glasses. “We are here to do our best for our papers. How can
+      they score over each other if we do not do the same? If we all combine we
+      might as well amalgamate with Reuter at once.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, it would take away the whole glory of the profession!” cried Scott.
+      “At present the smartest man gets his stuff first on the wires. What
+      inducement is there to be smart if we all share and share alike?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And at present the man with the best equipment has the best chance,”
+      remarked Mortimer, glancing across at the shot-silk polo ponies and the
+      cheap little Syrian grey. “That is the fair reward of foresight and
+      enterprise. Every man for himself, and let the best man win.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s the way to find who the best man is. Look at Chandler. He would
+      never have got his chance if he had not played always off his own bat.
+      You’ve heard how he pretended to break his leg, sent his
+      fellow-correspondent off for the doctor, and so got a fair start for the
+      telegraph-office.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Do you mean to say that was legitimate?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Everything is legitimate. It’s your wits against my wits.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should call it dishonourable.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You may call it what you like. Chandler’s paper got the battle and the
+      other’s didn’t. It made Chandler’s name.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Or take Westlake,” said Mortimer, cramming the tobacco into his pipe.
+      “Hi, Abdul, you may have the dishes! Westlake brought his stuff down by
+      pretending to be the Government courier, and using the relays of
+      Government horses. Westlake’s paper sold half a million.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Is that legitimate also?” asked Anerley, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why not?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it looks a little like horse-stealing and lying.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, <i>I</i> think I should do a little horse-stealing and lying if I
+      could have a column to myself in a London daily. What do you say, Scott?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Anything short of manslaughter.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And I’m not sure that I’d trust you there.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I don’t think I should be guilty of newspaper-man-slaughter. That I
+      regard as a distinct breach of professional etiquette. But if any outsider
+      comes between a highly charged correspondent and an electric wire, he does
+      it at his peril. My dear Anerley, I tell you frankly that if you are going
+      to handicap yourself with scruple you may just as well be in Fleet Street
+      as in the Soudan. Our life is irregular. Our work has never been
+      systematised. No doubt it will be some day, but the time is not yet. Do
+      what you can and how you can, and be first on the wires; that’s my advice
+      to you; and also, that when next you come upon a campaign you bring with
+      you the best horse that money can buy. Mortimer may beat me or I may beat
+      Mortimer, but at least we know that between us we have the fastest ponies
+      in the country. We have neglected no chance.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am not so certain of that,” said Mortimer, slowly. “You are aware, of
+      course, that though a horse beats a camel on twenty miles, a camel beats a
+      horse on thirty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What, one of those camels?” cried Anerley in astonishment. The two
+      seniors burst out laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, no, the real high-bred trotter&mdash;the kind of beast the dervishes
+      ride when they make their lightning raids.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Faster than a galloping horse?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it tires a horse down. It goes the
+      same gait all the way, and it wants neither halt nor drink, and it takes
+      rough ground much better than a horse. They used to have long distance
+      races at Halfa, and the camel always won at thirty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Still, we need not reproach ourselves, Scott, for we are not very likely
+      to have to carry a thirty-mile message. They will have the field telegraph
+      next week.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Quite so. But at the present moment&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I know, my dear chap; but there is no motion of urgency before the house.
+      Load baggles at five o’clock; so you have just three hours clear. Any sign
+      of the evening pennies?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer swept the northern horizon with his binoculars. “Not in sight
+      yet.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They are quite capable of travelling during the heat of the day. Just the
+      sort of thing evening pennies <i>would</i> do. Take care of your match,
+      Anerley. These palm groves go up like a powder magazine if you set them
+      alight. Bye-bye.” The two men crawled under their mosquito-nets and sank
+      instantly into the easy sleep of those whose lives are spent in the open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Anerley stood with his back against a palm tree and his briar
+      between his lips, thinking over the advice which he had received. After
+      all, they were the heads of the profession, these men, and it was not for
+      him, the newcomer, to reform their methods. If they served their papers in
+      this fashion, then he must do the same. They had at least been frank and
+      generous in teaching him the rules of the game. If it was good enough for
+      them it was good enough for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a broiling afternoon, and those thin frills of foam round the
+      black, glistening necks of the Nile boulders looked delightfully cool and
+      alluring. But it would not be safe to bathe for some hours to come. The
+      air shimmered and vibrated over the baking stretch of sand and rock. There
+      was not a breath of wind, and the droning and piping of the insects
+      inclined one for sleep. Somewhere above a hoopoe was calling. Anerley
+      knocked out his ashes, and was turning towards his couch, when his eye
+      caught something moving in the desert to the south. It was a horseman
+      riding towards them as swiftly as the broken ground would permit. A
+      messenger from the army, thought Anerley; and then, as he watched, the sun
+      suddenly struck the man on the side of the head, and his chin flamed into
+      gold. There could not be two horsemen with beards of such a colour. It was
+      Merryweather, the engineer, and he was returning. What on earth was he
+      returning for? He had been so keen to see the general, and yet he was
+      coming back with his mission unaccomplished. Was it that his pony was
+      hopelessly foundered? It seemed to be moving well. Anerley picked up
+      Mortimer’s binoculars, and a foam-bespattered horse and a weary
+      koorbash-cracking man came cantering up the centre of the field. But there
+      was nothing in his appearance to explain the mystery of his return. Then
+      as he watched them they dipped into a hollow and disappeared. He could see
+      that it was one of those narrow khors which led to the river, and he
+      waited, glass in hand, for their immediate reappearance. But minute passed
+      after minute and there was no sign of them. That narrow gully appeared to
+      have swallowed them up. And then with a curious gulp and start he saw a
+      little grey cloud wreathe itself slowly from among the rocks and drift in
+      a long, hazy shred over the desert. In an instant he had torn Scott and
+      Mortimer from their slumbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Get up, you chaps!” he cried. “I believe Merryweather has been shot by
+      dervishes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And Reuter not here!” cried the two veterans, exultantly clutching at
+      their notebooks. “Merryweather shot! Where? When? How?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few words Anerley explained what he had seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You heard nothing?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nothing.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, a shot loses itself very easily among rocks. By George, look at the
+      buzzards!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two large brown birds were soaring in the deep blue heaven. As Scott spoke
+      they circled down and dropped into the little khor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s good enough,” said Mortimer, with his nose between the leaves of
+      his book. “‘Merryweather headed dervishes stop return stop shot mutilated
+      stop raid communications.’ How’s that?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You think he was headed off?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why else should he return?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In that case, if they were out in front of him and others cut him off,
+      there must be several small raiding parties.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should judge so.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How about the ‘mutilated’?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ve fought against Arabs before.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where are you off to?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sarras.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I think I’ll race you in,” said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley stared in astonishment at the absolutely impersonal way in which
+      these men regarded the situation. In their zeal for news it had apparently
+      never struck them that they, their camp, and their servants were all in
+      the lion’s mouth. But even as they talked there came the harsh,
+      importunate rat-tat-tat of an irregular volley from among the rocks, and
+      the high, keening whistle of bullets over their heads. A palm spray
+      fluttered down amongst them. At the same instant the six frightened
+      servants came running wildly in for protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the cool-headed Mortimer who organised the defence, for Scott’s
+      Celtic soul was so aflame at all this “copy” in hand and more to come that
+      he was too exuberantly boisterous for a commander. The other, with his
+      spectacles and his stern face, soon had the servants in hand. “<i>Tali
+      henna! Egri!</i> What the deuce are you frightened about? Put the camels
+      between the palm trunks. That’s right. Now get the knee-tethers on them.
+      <i>Quies</i>! Did you never hear bullets before? Now put the donkeys here.
+      Not much&mdash;you don’t get my polo-pony to make a zareba with. Picket
+      the ponies between the grove and the river out of danger’s way. These
+      fellows seem to fire even higher than they did in ’85.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s got home, anyhow,” said Scott, as they heard a soft, splashing
+      thud like a stone in a mud-bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Who’s hit, then?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The brown camel that’s chewing the cud.” As he spoke the creature, its
+      jaw still working, laid its long neck along the ground and closed its
+      large dark eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That shot cost me 15 pounds,” said Mortimer, ruefully. “How many of them
+      do you make?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Four, I think.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Only four Bezingers, at any rate; there may be some spearmen.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I think not; it is a little raiding-party of rifle-men. By the way,
+      Anerley, you’ve never been under fire before, have you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Never,” said the young pressman, who was conscious of a curious feeling
+      of nervous elation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Love and poverty and war, they are all experiences necessary to make a
+      complete life. Pass over those cartridges. This is a very mild baptism
+      that you are undergoing, for behind these camels you are as safe as if you
+      were sitting in the back room of the Authors’ Club.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “As safe, but hardly as comfortable,” said Scott. “A long glass of hock
+      and seltzer would be exceedingly acceptable. But oh, Mortimer, what a
+      chance! Think of the general’s feelings when he hears that the first
+      action of the war has been fought by the Press column. Think of Reuter,
+      who has been stewing at the front for a week! Think of the evening pennies
+      just too late for the fun. By George, that slug brushed a mosquito off
+      me!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And one of the donkeys is hit.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This is sinful. It will end in our having to carry our own kits to
+      Khartoum.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Never mind, my boy, it all goes to make copy. I can see the headlines&mdash;‘Raid
+      on Communications’: ‘Murder of British Engineer’: ‘Press Column Attacked.’
+      Won’t it be ripping?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I wonder what the next line will be,” said Anerley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Our Special Wounded’!” cried Scott, rolling over on to his back. “No
+      harm done,” he added, gathering himself up again; “only a chip off my
+      knee. This is getting sultry. I confess that the idea of that back room at
+      the Authors’ Club begins to grow upon me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have some diachylon.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Afterwards will do. We’re having a ’appy day with Fuzzy on the rush. I
+      wish he <i>would</i> rush.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They’re coming nearer.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This is an excellent revolver of mine if it didn’t throw so devilish
+      high. I always aim at a man’s toes if I want to stimulate his digestion. O
+      Lord, there’s our kettle gone!” With a boom like a dinner-gong a Remington
+      bullet had passed through the kettle, and a cloud of steam hissed up from
+      the fire. A wild shout came from the rocks above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The idiots think that they have blown us up. They’ll rush us now, as sure
+      as fate; then it will be our turn to lead. Got your revolver, Anerley?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have this double-barrelled fowling-piece.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sensible man! It’s the best weapon in the world at this sort of
+      rough-and-tumble work. What cartridges?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Swan-shot.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That will do all right. I carry this big bore double-barrelled pistol
+      loaded with slugs. You might as well try to stop one of these fellows with
+      a pea-shooter as with a service revolver.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There are ways and means,” said Scott. “The Geneva Convention does not
+      hold south of the first cataract. It’s easy to make a bullet mushroom by a
+      little manipulation of the tip of it. When I was in the broken square at
+      Tamai&mdash;”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Wait a bit,” cried Mortimer, adjusting his glasses. “I think they are
+      coming now.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The time,” said Scott, snapping up his watch, “being exactly seventeen
+      minutes past four.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley had been lying behind a camel staring with an interest which
+      bordered upon fascination at the rocks opposite. Here was a little woolly
+      puff of smoke, and there was another one, but never once had they caught a
+      glimpse of the attackers. To him there was something weird and awesome in
+      these unseen, persistent men who, minute by minute, were drawing closer to
+      them. He had heard them cry out when the kettle was broken, and once,
+      immediately afterwards, an enormously strong voice had roared something
+      which had set Scott shrugging his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They’ve got to take us first,” said he, and Anerley thought his nerve
+      might be better if he did not ask for a translation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The firing had begun at a distance of some 100 yards, which put it out of
+      the question for them, with their lighter weapons, to make any reply to
+      it. Had their antagonists continued to keep that range the defenders must
+      either have made a hopeless sally or tried to shelter themselves behind
+      their zareba as best they might on the chance that the sound might bring
+      up help. But, luckily for them, the African has never taken kindly to the
+      rifle, and his primitive instinct to close with his enemy is always too
+      strong for his sense of strategy. They were drawing in, therefore, and
+      now, for the first time, Anerley caught sight of a face looking at them
+      from over a rock. It was a huge, virile, strong-jawed head of a pure negro
+      type, with silver trinkets gleaming in the ears. The man raised a great
+      arm from behind the rock, and shook his Remington at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Shall I fire?” asked Anerley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, no; it is too far. Your shot would scatter all over the place.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s a picturesque ruffian,” said Scott. “Couldn’t you kodak him,
+      Mortimer? There’s another!” A fine-featured brown Arab, with a black,
+      pointed beard, was peeping from behind another boulder. He wore the green
+      turban which proclaimed him hadji, and his face showed the keen, nervous
+      exultation of the religious fanatic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They seem a piebald crowd,” said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That last is one of the real fighting Baggara,” remarked Mortimer. “He’s
+      a dangerous man.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He looks pretty vicious. There’s another negro!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Two more! Dingas, by the look of them. Just the same chaps we get our own
+      black battalions from. As long as they get a fight they don’t mind who
+      it’s for; but if the idiots had only sense enough to understand, they
+      would know that the Arab is their hereditary enemy, and we their
+      hereditary friends. Look at the silly juggins, gnashing his teeth at the
+      very men who put down the slave trade!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Couldn’t you explain?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll explain with this pistol when he comes a little nearer. Now sit
+      tight, Anerley. They’re off!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were indeed. It was the brown man with the green turban who headed
+      the rush. Close at his heels was the negro with the silver ear-rings&mdash;
+      a giant of a man, and the other two were only a little behind. As they
+      sprang over the rocks one after the other, it took Anerley back to the
+      school sports when he held the tape for the hurdle-race. It was
+      magnificent, the wild spirit and abandon of it, the flutter of the
+      chequered galabeeahs, the gleam of steel, the wave of black arms, the
+      frenzied faces, the quick pitter-patter of the rushing feet. The
+      law-abiding Briton is so imbued with the idea of the sanctity of human
+      life that it was hard for the young pressman to realise that these men had
+      every intention of killing him, and that he was at perfect liberty to do
+      as much for them. He lay staring as if this were a show and he a
+      spectator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now, Anerley, now! Take the Arab!” cried somebody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put up the gun and saw the brown fierce face at the other end of the
+      barrel. He tugged at the trigger, but the face grew larger and fiercer
+      with every stride. Again and again he tugged. A revolver-shot rang out at
+      his elbow, then another one, and he saw a red spot spring out on the
+      Arab’s brown breast. But he was still coming on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Shoot, you ass, shoot!” screamed Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he strained unavailingly at the trigger. There were two more
+      pistol-shots, and the big negro had fallen and risen and fallen again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Cock it, you fool!” shouted a furious voice; and at the same instant,
+      with a rush and flutter, the Arab bounded over the prostrate camel and
+      came down with his bare feet upon Anerley’s chest. In a dream he seemed to
+      be struggling frantically with someone upon the ground, then he was
+      conscious of a tremendous explosion in his very face, and so ended for him
+      the first action of the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good-bye, old chap. You’ll be all right. Give yourself time.” It was
+      Mortimer’s voice, and he became dimly conscious of a long, spectacled
+      face, and of a heavy hand upon his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sorry to leave you. We’ll be lucky now if we are in time for the morning
+      editions.” Scott was tightening his girth as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We’ll put in our wire that you have been hurt, so your people will know
+      why they don’t hear from you. If Reuter or the evening pennies come up,
+      don’t give the thing away. Abbas will look after you, and we’ll be back
+      to-morrow afternoon. Bye-bye!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley heard it all, though he did not feel energy enough to answer.
+      Then, as he watched two sleek, brown ponies with their yellow-clad riders
+      dwindling among the rocks, his memory cleared suddenly, and he realised
+      that the first great journalistic chance of his life was slipping away
+      from him. It was a small fight, but it was the first of the war, and the
+      great public at home were all athirst for news. They would have it in the
+      <i>Courier</i>; they would have it in the <i>Intelligence</i>, and not a
+      word in the <i>Gazette</i>. The thought brought him to his feet, though he
+      had to throw his arm round the stem of the palm tree to steady his
+      swimming head. There was a big black man lying where he had fallen, his
+      huge chest pocked with bullet-marks, every wound rosetted with its circle
+      of flies. The Arab was stretched out within a few yards of him, with two
+      hands clasped over the dreadful thing which had been his head. Across him
+      was lying Anerley’s fowling-piece, one barrel discharged, the other at
+      half cock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Scott effendi shoot him your gun,” said a voice. It was Abbas, his
+      English-speaking body-servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley groaned at the disgrace of it. He had lost his head so completely
+      that he had forgotten to cock his gun; and yet he knew that it was not
+      fear but interest which had so absorbed him. He put his hand up to his
+      head and felt that a wet handkerchief was bound round his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where are the two other dervishes?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They ran away. One got shot in arm.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What’s happened to me?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Effendi got cut on head. Effendi catch bad man by arms, and Scott effendi
+      shot him. Face burn very bad.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley became conscious suddenly that there was a pringling about his
+      skin and an overpowering smell of burned hair under his nostrils. He put
+      his hand to his moustache. It was gone. His eyebrows too? He could not
+      find them. His head, no doubt, was very near to the dervish’s when they
+      were rolling upon the ground together, and this was the effect of the
+      explosion of his own gun. Well, he would have time to grow some more hair
+      before he saw Fleet Street again. But the cut, perhaps, was a more serious
+      matter. Was it enough to prevent him getting to the telegraph-office at
+      Sarras? The only way was to try and see. But there was only that poor
+      little Syrian grey of his. There it stood in the evening sunshine, with a
+      sunk head and a bent knee, as if its morning’s work was still heavy upon
+      it. What hope was there of being able to do thirty-five miles of heavy
+      going upon that? It would be a strain upon the splendid ponies of his
+      companions&mdash;and they were the swiftest and most enduring in the
+      country. The most enduring? There was one creature more enduring, and that
+      was a real trotting camel. If he had had one he might have got to the
+      wires first after all, for Mortimer had said that over thirty miles they
+      have the better of any horse. Yes, if he had only had a real trotting
+      camel! And then like a flash came Mortimer’s words, “It is the kind of
+      beast that the dervishes ride when they make their lightning raids.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beasts the dervishes ride! What had these dead dervishes ridden? In an
+      instant he was clambering up the rocks, with Abbas protesting at his
+      heels. Had the two fugitives carried away all the camels, or had they been
+      content to save themselves? The brass gleam from a litter of empty
+      Remington cases caught his eye, and showed where the enemy had been
+      crouching. And then he could have shouted for joy, for there, in the
+      hollow, some little distance off, rose the high, graceful white neck and
+      the elegant head of such a camel as he had never set eyes upon before&mdash;a
+      swanlike, beautiful creature, as far from the rough, clumsy baggles as the
+      cart-horse is from the racer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beast was kneeling under the shelter of the rocks with its waterskin
+      and bag of doora slung over its shoulders, and its forelegs tethered Arab
+      fashion with a rope around the knees. Anerley threw his leg over the front
+      pommel while Abbas slipped off the cord. Forward flew Anerley towards the
+      creature’s neck, then violently backwards, clawing madly at anything which
+      might save him, and then, with a jerk which nearly snapped his loins, he
+      was thrown forward again. But the camel was on its legs now, and the young
+      pressman was safely seated upon one of the fliers of the desert. It was as
+      gentle as it was swift, and it stood oscillating its long neck and gazing
+      round with its large brown eyes, whilst Anerley coiled his legs round the
+      peg and grasped the curved camel-stick which Abbas had handed up to him.
+      There were two bridle-cords, one from the nostril and one from the neck,
+      but he remembered that Scott had said that it was the servant’s and not
+      the house-bell which had to be pulled, so he kept his grasp upon the
+      lower. Then he touched the long, vibrating neck with his stick, and in an
+      instant Abbas’ farewell seemed to come from far behind him, and the black
+      rocks and yellow sand were dancing past on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his first experience of a trotting camel, and at first the motion,
+      although irregular and abrupt, was not unpleasant. Having no stirrup or
+      fixed point of any kind, he could not rise to it, but he gripped as
+      tightly as he could with his knee, and he tried to sway backwards and
+      forwards as he had seen the Arabs do. It was a large, very concave
+      Makloofa saddle, and he was conscious that he was bouncing about on it
+      with as little power of adhesion as a billiard-ball upon a tea-tray. He
+      gripped the two sides with his hands to hold himself steady. The creature
+      had got into its long, swinging, stealthy trot, its sponge-like feet
+      making no sound upon the hard sand. Anerley leaned back with his two hands
+      gripping hard behind him, and he whooped the creature on. The sun had
+      already sunk behind the line of black volcanic peaks, which look like huge
+      slag-heaps at the mouth of a mine. The western sky had taken that lovely
+      light green and pale pink tint which makes evening beautiful upon the
+      Nile, and the old brown river itself, swirling down amongst the black
+      rocks, caught some shimmer of the colours above. The glare, the heat, and
+      the piping of the insects had all ceased together. In spite of his aching
+      head, Anerley could have cried out for pure physical joy as the swift
+      creature beneath him flew along with him through that cool, invigorating
+      air, with the virile north wind soothing his pringling face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had looked at his watch, and now he made a swift calculation of times
+      and distances. It was past six when he had left the camp. Over broken
+      ground it was impossible that he could hope to do more than seven miles an
+      hour&mdash;less on bad parts, more on the smooth. His recollection of the
+      track was that there were few smooth and many bad. He would be lucky,
+      then, if he reached Sarras anywhere from twelve to one. Then the messages
+      took a good two hours to go through, for they had to be transcribed at
+      Cairo. At the best he could only hope to have told his story in Fleet
+      Street at two or three in the morning. It was possible that he might
+      manage it, but the chances seemed enormously against him. About three the
+      morning edition would be made up, and his chance gone for ever. The one
+      thing clear was that only the first man at the wires would have any chance
+      at all, and Anerley meant to be first if hard riding could do it. So he
+      tapped away at the bird-like neck, and the creature’s long, loose limbs
+      went faster and faster at every tap. Where the rocky spurs ran down to the
+      river, horses would have to go round, while camels might get across, so
+      that Anerley felt that he was always gaining upon his companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was a price to be paid for the feeling. He had heard of men who
+      had burst when on camel journeys, and he knew that the Arabs swathe their
+      bodies tightly in broad cloth bandages when they prepare for a long march.
+      It had seemed unnecessary and ridiculous when he first began to speed over
+      the level track, but now, when he got on the rocky paths, he understood
+      what it meant. Never for an instant was he at the same angle. Backwards,
+      forwards he swung, with a tingling jar at the end of each sway, until he
+      ached from his neck to his knees. It caught him across the shoulders, it
+      caught him down the spine, it gripped him over the loins, it marked the
+      lower line of his ribs with one heavy, dull throb. He clutched here and
+      there with his hand to try and ease the strain upon his muscles. He drew
+      up his knees, altered his seat, and set his teeth with a grim
+      determination to go through with it should it kill him. His head was
+      splitting, his flayed face smarting, and every joint in his body aching as
+      if it were dislocated. But he forgot all that when, with the rising of the
+      moon, he heard the clinking of horses’ hoofs down upon the track by the
+      river, and knew that, unseen by them, he had already got well abreast of
+      his companions. But he was hardly halfway, and the time already eleven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day the needles had been ticking away without intermission in the
+      little corrugated iron hut which served as a telegraph station at Sarras.
+      With its bare walls and its packing-case seats, it was none the less for
+      the moment one of the vital spots upon the earth’s surface, and the crisp,
+      importunate ticking might have come from the world-old clock of Destiny.
+      Many august people had been at the other end of those wires, and had
+      communed with the moist-faced military clerk. A French Premier had
+      demanded a pledge, and an English marquis had passed on the request to the
+      General in command, with a question as to how it would affect the
+      situation. Cipher telegrams had nearly driven the clerk out of his wits,
+      for of all crazy occupations the taking of a cipher message, when you are
+      without the key to the cipher, is the worst. Much high diplomacy had been
+      going on all day in the innermost chambers of European chancellories, and
+      the results of it had been whispered into this little corrugated-iron hut.
+      About two in the morning an enormous despatch had come at last to an end,
+      and the weary operator had opened the door, and was lighting his pipe in
+      the cool, fresh air, when he saw a camel plump down in the dust, and a
+      man, who seemed to be in the last stage of drunkenness, come rolling
+      towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What’s the time?” he cried, in a voice which appeared to be the only
+      sober thing about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the clerk’s lips to say that it was time that the questioner was
+      in his bed, but it is not safe upon a campaign to be ironical at the
+      expense of khaki-clad men. He contented himself, therefore, with the bald
+      statement that it was after two. But no retort that he could have devised
+      could have had a more crushing effect. The voice turned drunken also, and
+      the man caught at the door-post to uphold him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Two o’clock! I’m done after all!” said he. His head was tied up in a
+      bloody handkerchief, his face was crimson, and he stood with his legs
+      crooked as if the pith had all gone out of his back. The clerk began to
+      realise that something out of the ordinary was in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How long does it take to get a wire to London?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “About two hours.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And it’s two now. I could not get it there before four.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Before three.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Four.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, three.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But you said two hours.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, but there’s more than an hour’s difference in longitude.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By Heaven, I’ll do it yet!” cried Anerley, and staggering to a
+      packing-case, he began the dictation of his famous despatch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it came about that the <i>Gazette</i> had a long column, with
+      headlines like an epitaph, when the sheets of the <i>Intelligence</i> and
+      the <i>Courier</i> were as blank as the faces of their editors. And so,
+      too, it happened that when two weary men, upon two foundered horses,
+      arrived about four in the morning at the Sarras post-office, they looked
+      at each other in silence and departed noiselessly, with the conviction
+      that there are some situations with which the English language is not
+      capable of dealing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE NEW CATACOMB
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      “Look here, Burger,” said Kennedy, “I do wish that you would confide in
+      me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two famous students of Roman remains sat together in Kennedy’s
+      comfortable room overlooking the Corso. The night was cold, and they had
+      both pulled up their chairs to the unsatisfactory Italian stove which
+      threw out a zone of stuffiness rather than of warmth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside under the bright winter stars lay the modern Rome, the long,
+      double chain of the electric lamps, the brilliantly lighted <i>cafes</i>,
+      the rushing carriages, and the dense throng upon the footpaths. But
+      inside, in the sumptuous chamber of the rich young English archaeologist,
+      there was only old Rome to be seen. Cracked and time-worn friezes hung
+      upon the walls, grey old busts of senators and soldiers with their
+      fighting heads and their hard, cruel faces peered out from the corners. On
+      the centre table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments, and
+      ornaments, there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths
+      of Caracalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was
+      exhibited in Berlin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amphorae hung from the ceiling, and a litter of curiosities strewed the
+      rich red Turkey carpet. And of them all there was not one which was not of
+      the most unimpeachable authenticity, and of the utmost rarity and value;
+      for Kennedy, though little more than thirty, had a European reputation in
+      this particular branch of research, and was, moreover, provided with that
+      long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap to the student’s
+      energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him an
+      enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often been seduced by
+      whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one,
+      capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of
+      sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its
+      aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensuous mouth, was a fair
+      index of the compromise between strength and weakness in his nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger. He came of a
+      curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust
+      qualities of the North mingling strangely with the softer graces of the
+      South. Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above them
+      rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow curls lying
+      round it. His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his companion had
+      frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman busts which
+      peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber. Under its bluff
+      German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian subtlety, but the
+      smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one understood that this
+      was only an indication of his ancestry, with no actual bearing upon his
+      character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In age and in reputation he was on the same level as his English
+      companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous.
+      Twelve years before he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived
+      ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded
+      to him by the University of Bonn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and
+      singlemindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of fame,
+      until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was every
+      reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the Chair of the
+      greatest of German Universities. But the singleness of purpose which had
+      brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant Englishman,
+      had caused him in everything outside their work to stand infinitely below
+      him. He had never found a pause in his studies in which to cultivate the
+      social graces. It was only when he spoke of his own subject that his face
+      was filled with life and soul. At other times he was silent and
+      embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in larger subjects, and
+      impatient of that small talk which is the conventional refuge of those who
+      have no thoughts to express.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared
+      to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different
+      rivals. The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own
+      studies each was the only one of the younger men who had knowledge and
+      enthusiasm enough to properly appreciate the other. Their common interests
+      and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been attracted by the
+      other’s knowledge. And then gradually something had been added to this.
+      Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and simplicity of his rival,
+      while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the brilliancy and vivacity
+      which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman society. I say “had,”
+      because just at the moment the young Englishman was somewhat under a
+      cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A love affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had
+      indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked many
+      of his friends. But in the bachelor circles of students and artists in
+      which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of honour in such
+      matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of shoulders shrugged
+      over the flight of two and the return of one, the general sentiment was
+      probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy rather than of reprobation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look here, Burger,” said Kennedy, looking hard at the placid face of his
+      companion, “I do wish that you would confide in me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he waved his hand in the direction of a rug which lay upon the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the rug stood a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wicker-work
+      which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of
+      objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn
+      papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have seemed
+      to have come straight from a dustman’s bin, but which a specialist would
+      have speedily recognized as unique of their kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pile of odds and ends in the flat wicker-work basket supplied exactly
+      one of those missing links of social development which are of such
+      interest to the student. It was the German who had brought them in, and
+      the Englishman’s eyes were hungry as he looked at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I won’t interfere with your treasure-trove, but I should very much like
+      to hear about it,” he continued, while Burger very deliberately lit a
+      cigar. “It is evidently a discovery of the first importance. These
+      inscriptions will make a sensation throughout Europe.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For every one here there are a million there!” said the German. “There
+      are so many that a dozen savants might spend a lifetime over them, and
+      build up a reputation as solid as the Castle of St. Angelo.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy was thinking with his fine forehead wrinkled and his fingers
+      playing with his long, fair moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You have given yourself away, Burger!” said he at last. “Your words can
+      only apply to one thing. You have discovered a new catacomb.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I had no doubt that you had already come to that conclusion from an
+      examination of these objects.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, they certainly appeared to indicate it, but your last remarks make
+      it certain. There is no place except a catacomb which could contain so
+      vast a store of relics as you describe.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Quite so. There is no mystery about that. I <i>have</i> discovered a new
+      catacomb.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah, that is my secret, my dear Kennedy! Suffice it that it is so situated
+      that there is not one chance in a million of anyone else coming upon it.
+      Its date is different from that of any known catacomb, and it has been
+      reserved for the burial of the highest Christians, so that the remains and
+      the relics are quite different from anything which has ever been seen
+      before. If I was not aware of your knowledge and of your energy, my
+      friend, I would not hesitate, under the pledge of secrecy, to tell you
+      everything about it. But as it is I think that I must certainly prepare my
+      own report of the matter before I expose myself to such formidable
+      competition.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy loved his subject with a love which was almost a mania&mdash;a
+      love which held him true to it, amidst all the distractions which come to
+      a wealthy and dissipated young man. He had ambition, but his ambition was
+      secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which
+      concerned the old life and history of the city. He yearned to see this new
+      underworld which his companion had discovered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look here, Burger,” said he, earnestly, “I assure you that you can trust
+      me most implicitly in the matter. Nothing would induce me to put pen to
+      paper about anything which I see until I have your express permission. I
+      quite understand your feeling, and I think it is most natural, but you
+      have really nothing whatever to fear from me. On the other hand, if you
+      don’t tell me I shall make a systematic search, and I shall most certainly
+      discover it. In that case, of course, I should make what use I liked of
+      it, since I should be under no obligation to you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Burger smiled thoughtfully over his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have noticed, friend Kennedy,” said he, “that when I want information
+      over any point you are not always so ready to supply it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When did you ever ask me anything that I did not tell you? You remember,
+      for example, my giving you the material for your paper about the temple of
+      the Vestals.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah, well, that was not a matter of much importance. If I were to question
+      you upon some intimate thing, would you give me an answer, I wonder! This
+      new catacomb is a very intimate thing to me, and I should certainly expect
+      some sign of confidence in return.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What you are driving at I cannot imagine,” said the Englishman, “but if
+      you mean that you will answer my question about the catacomb if I answer
+      any question which you may put to me, I can assure you that I will
+      certainly do so.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, then,” said Burger, leaning luxuriously back in his settee, and
+      puffing a blue tree of cigar-smoke into the air, “tell me all about your
+      relations with Miss Mary Saunderson.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy sprang up in his chair and glared angrily at his impassive
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What the devil do you mean?” he cried. “What sort of a question is this?
+      You may mean it as a joke, but you never made a worse one.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, I don’t mean it as a joke,” said Burger, simply. “I am really rather
+      interested in the details of the matter. I don’t know much about the world
+      and women and social life and that sort of thing, and such an incident has
+      the fascination of the unknown for me. I know you, and I knew her by sight&mdash;I
+      had even spoken to her once or twice. I should very much like to hear from
+      your own lips exactly what it was which occurred between you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I won’t tell you a word.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s all right. It was only my whim to see if you would give up a
+      secret as easily as you expected me to give up my secret of the new
+      catacomb. You wouldn’t, and I didn’t expect you to. But why should you
+      expect otherwise of me? There’s St. John’s clock striking ten. It is quite
+      time that I was going home.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, wait a bit, Burger,” said Kennedy; “this is really a ridiculous
+      caprice of yours to wish to know about an old love affair which has burned
+      out months ago. You know we look upon a man who kisses and tells as the
+      greatest coward and villain possible.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Certainly,” said the German, gathering up his basket of curiosities,
+      “when he tells anything about a girl which is previously unknown, he must
+      be so. But in this case, as you must be aware, it was a public matter
+      which was the common talk of Rome, so that you are not really doing Miss
+      Mary Saunderson any injury by discussing her case with me. But still, I
+      respect your scruples; and so good night!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Wait a bit, Burger,” said Kennedy, laying his hand upon the other’s arm;
+      “I am very keen upon this catacomb business, and I can’t let it drop quite
+      so easily. Would you mind asking me something else in return&mdash;something
+      not quite so eccentric this time?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, no; you have refused, and there is an end of it,” said Burger, with
+      his basket on his arm. “No doubt you are quite right not to answer, and no
+      doubt I am quite right also&mdash;and so again, my dear Kennedy, good
+      night!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman watched Burger cross the room, and he had his hand on the
+      handle of the door before his host sprang up with the air of a man who is
+      making the best of that which cannot be helped. “Hold on, old fellow,”
+      said he. “I think you are behaving in a most ridiculous fashion, but
+      still, if this is your condition, I suppose that I must submit to it. I
+      hate saying anything about a girl, but, as you say, it is all over Rome,
+      and I don’t suppose I can tell you anything which you do not know already.
+      What was it you wanted to know?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German came back to the stove, and, laying down his basket, he sank
+      into his chair once more. “May I have another cigar?” said he. “Thank you
+      very much! I never smoke when I work, but I enjoy a chat much more when I
+      am under the influence of tobacco. Now, as regards this young lady, with
+      whom you had this little adventure. What in the world has become of her?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “She is at home with her own people.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, really&mdash;in England?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What part of England&mdash;London?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, Twickenham.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You must excuse my curiosity, my dear Kennedy, and you must put it down
+      to my ignorance of the world. No doubt it is quite a simple thing to
+      persuade a young lady to go off with you for three weeks or so, and then
+      to hand her over to her own family at&mdash;what did you call the place?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Twickenham.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Quite so&mdash;at Twickenham. But it is something so entirely outside my
+      own experience that I cannot even imagine how you set about it. For
+      example, if you had loved this girl your love could hardly disappear in
+      three weeks, so I presume that you could not have loved her at all. But if
+      you did not love her why should you make this great scandal which has
+      damaged you and ruined her?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy looked moodily into the red eye of the stove. “That’s a logical
+      way of looking at it, certainly,” said he. “Love is a big word, and it
+      represents a good many different shades of feeling. I liked her, and&mdash;
+      well, you say you’ve seen her&mdash;you know how charming she can look.
+      But still I am willing to admit, looking back, that I could never have
+      really loved her.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then, my dear Kennedy, why did you do it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The adventure of the thing had a great deal to do with it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What! You are so fond of adventures!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where would the variety of life be without them? It was for an adventure
+      that I first began to pay my attentions to her. I’ve chased a good deal of
+      game in my time, but there’s no chase like that of a pretty woman. There
+      was the piquant difficulty of it also, for, as she was the companion of
+      Lady Emily Rood it was almost impossible to see her alone. On the top of
+      all the other obstacles which attracted me, I learned from her own lips
+      very early in the proceedings that she was engaged.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mein Gott! To whom?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “She mentioned no names.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I do not think that anyone knows that. So that made the adventure more
+      alluring, did it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it did certainly give a spice to it. Don’t you think so?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I tell you that I am very ignorant about these things.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My dear fellow, you can remember that the apple you stole from your
+      neighbour’s tree was always sweeter than that which fell from your own.
+      And then I found that she cared for me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What&mdash;at once?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, no, it took about three months of sapping and mining. But at last I
+      won her over. She understood that my judicial separation from my wife made
+      it impossible for me to do the right thing by her&mdash;but she came all
+      the same, and we had a delightful time, as long as it lasted.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But how about the other man?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose it is the survival of the
+      fittest,” said he. “If he had been the better man she would not have
+      deserted him. Let’s drop the subject, for I have had enough of it!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Only one other thing. How did you get rid of her in three weeks?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we had both cooled down a bit, you understand. She absolutely
+      refused, under any circumstances, to come back to face the people she had
+      known in Rome. Now, of course, Rome is necessary to me, and I was already
+      pining to be back at my work&mdash;so there was one obvious cause of
+      separation. Then, again, her old father turned up at the hotel in London,
+      and there was a scene, and the whole thing became so unpleasant that
+      really&mdash;though I missed her dreadfully at first&mdash;I was very glad
+      to slip out of it. Now, I rely upon you not to repeat anything of what I
+      have said.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My dear Kennedy, I should not dream of repeating it. But all that you say
+      interests me very much, for it gives me an insight into your way of
+      looking at things, which is entirely different from mine, for I have seen
+      so little of life. And now you want to know about my new catacomb. There’s
+      no use my trying to describe it, for you would never find it by that.
+      There is only one thing, and that is for me to take you there.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That would be splendid.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When would you like to come?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The sooner the better. I am all impatience to see it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it is a beautiful night&mdash;though a trifle cold. Suppose we
+      start in an hour. We must be very careful to keep the matter to ourselves.
+      If anyone saw us hunting in couples they would suspect that there was
+      something going on.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We can’t be too cautious,” said Kennedy. “Is it far?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Some miles.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not too far to walk?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, no, we could walk there easily.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We had better do so, then. A cabman’s suspicions would be aroused if he
+      dropped us both at some lonely spot in the dead of the night.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Quite so. I think it would be best for us to meet at the Gate of the
+      Appian Way at midnight. I must go back to my lodgings for the matches and
+      candles and things.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “All right, Burger! I think it is very kind of you to let me into this
+      secret, and I promise you that I will write nothing about it until you
+      have published your report. Good-bye for the present! You will find me at
+      the Gate at twelve.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cold, clear air was filled with the musical chimes from that city of
+      clocks as Burger, wrapped in an Italian overcoat, with a lantern hanging
+      from his hand, walked up to the rendezvous. Kennedy stepped out of the
+      shadow to meet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You are ardent in work as well as in love!” said the German, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes; I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I hope you left no clue as to where we were going.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not such a fool! By Jove, I am chilled to the bone! Come on, Burger, let
+      us warm ourselves by a spurt of hard walking.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their footsteps sounded loud and crisp upon the rough stone paving of the
+      disappointing road which is all that is left of the most famous highway of
+      the world. A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop, and a few carts
+      of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only things which they met.
+      They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up through the darkness upon
+      each side of them, until they had come as far as the Catacombs of St.
+      Calixtus, and saw against a rising moon the great circular bastion of
+      Cecilia Metella in front of them. Then Burger stopped with his hand to his
+      side. “Your legs are longer than mine, and you are more accustomed to
+      walking,” said he, laughing. “I think that the place where we turn off is
+      somewhere here. Yes, this is it, round the corner of the trattoria. Now,
+      it is a very narrow path, so perhaps I had better go in front, and you can
+      follow.” He had lit his lantern, and by its light they were enabled to
+      follow a narrow and devious track which wound across the marshes of the
+      Campagna. The great Aqueduct of old Rome lay like a monstrous caterpillar
+      across the moonlit landscape, and their road led them under one of its
+      huge arches, and past the circle of crumbling bricks which marks the old
+      arena. At last Burger stopped at a solitary wooden cowhouse, and he drew a
+      key from his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Surely your catacomb is not inside a house!” cried Kennedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The entrance to it is. That is just the safeguard which we have against
+      anyone else discovering it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Does the proprietor know of it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not he. He had found one or two objects which made me almost certain that
+      his house was built on the entrance to such a place. So I rented it from
+      him, and did my excavations for myself. Come in, and shut the door behind
+      you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long, empty building, with the mangers of the cows along one
+      wall. Burger put his lantern down on the ground, and shaded its light in
+      all directions save one by draping his overcoat round it. “It might excite
+      remark if anyone saw a light in this lonely place,” said he. “Just help me
+      to move this boarding.” The flooring was loose in the corner, and plank by
+      plank the two savants raised it and leaned it against the wall. Below
+      there was a square aperture and a stair of old stone steps which led away
+      down into the bowels of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Be careful!” cried Burger, as Kennedy, in his impatience, hurried down
+      them. “It is a perfect rabbits’-warren below, and if you were once to lose
+      your way there, the chances would be a hundred to one against your ever
+      coming out again. Wait until I bring the light.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How do you find your own way if it is so complicated?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I had some very narrow escapes at first, but I have gradually learned to
+      go about. There is a certain system to it, but it is one which a lost man,
+      if he were in the dark, could not possibly find out. Even now I always
+      spin out a ball of string behind me when I am going far into the catacomb.
+      You can see for yourself that it is difficult, but every one of these
+      passages divides and subdivides a dozen times before you go a hundred
+      yards.” They had descended some twenty feet from the level of the byre,
+      and they were standing now in a square chamber cut out of the soft tufa.
+      The lantern cast a flickering light, bright below and dim above, over the
+      cracked brown walls. In every direction were the black openings of
+      passages which radiated from this common centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I want you to follow me closely, my friend,” said Burger. “Do not loiter
+      to look at anything upon the way, for the place to which I will take you
+      contains all that you can see, and more. It will save time for us to go
+      there direct.” He led the way down one of the corridors, and the
+      Englishman followed closely at his heels. Every now and then the passage
+      bifurcated, but Burger was evidently following some secret marks of his
+      own, for he neither stopped nor hesitated. Everywhere along the walls,
+      packed like the berths upon an emigrant ship, lay the Christians of old
+      Rome. The yellow light flickered over the shrivelled features of the
+      mummies, and gleamed upon rounded skulls and long, white arm-bones crossed
+      over fleshless chests. And everywhere as he passed Kennedy looked with
+      wistful eyes upon inscriptions, funeral vessels, pictures, vestments,
+      utensils, all lying as pious hands had placed them so many centuries ago.
+      It was apparent to him, even in those hurried, passing glances, that this
+      was the earliest and finest of the catacombs, containing such a storehouse
+      of Roman remains as had never before come at one time under the
+      observation of the student. “What would happen if the light went out?” he
+      asked, as they hurried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have a spare candle and a box of matches in my pocket. By the way,
+      Kennedy, have you any matches?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No; you had better give me some.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, that is all right. There is no chance of our separating.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How far are we going? It seems to me that we have walked at least a
+      quarter of a mile.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “More than that, I think. There is really no limit to the tombs&mdash;at
+      least, I have never been able to find any. This is a very difficult place,
+      so I think that I will use our ball of string.” He fastened one end of it
+      to a projecting stone and he carried the coil in the breast of his coat,
+      paying it out as he advanced. Kennedy saw that it was no unnecessary
+      precaution, for the passages had become more complexed and tortuous than
+      ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors. But these all
+      ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of tufa topped
+      with a slab of marble at one end of it. “By Jove!” cried Kennedy in an
+      ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble. “It is a Christian
+      altar&mdash;probably the first one in existence. Here is the little
+      consecration cross cut upon the corner of it. No doubt this circular space
+      was used as a church.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Precisely,” said Burger. “If I had more time I should like to show you
+      all the bodies which are buried in these niches upon the walls, for they
+      are the early popes and bishops of the Church, with their mitres, their
+      croziers, and full canonicals. Go over to that one and look at it!”
+      Kennedy went across, and stared at the ghastly head which lay loosely on
+      the shredded and mouldering mitre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This is most interesting,” said he, and his voice seemed to boom against
+      the concave vault. “As far as my experience goes, it is unique. Bring the
+      lantern over, Burger, for I want to see them all.” But the German had
+      strolled away, and was standing in the middle of a yellow circle of light
+      at the other side of the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Do you know how many wrong turnings there are between this and the
+      stairs?” he asked. “There are over two thousand. No doubt it was one of
+      the means of protection which the Christians adopted. The odds are two
+      thousand to one against a man getting out, even if he had a light; but if
+      he were in the dark it would, of course, be far more difficult.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So I should think.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And the darkness is something dreadful. I tried it once for an
+      experiment. Let us try it again!” He stooped to the lantern, and in an
+      instant it was as if an invisible hand was squeezed tightly over each of
+      Kennedy’s eyes. Never had he known what such darkness was. It seemed to
+      press upon him and to smother him. It was a solid obstacle against which
+      the body shrank from advancing. He put his hands out to push it back from
+      him. “That will do, Burger,” said he, “let’s have the light again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his companion began to laugh, and in that circular room the sound
+      seemed to come from every side at once. “You seem uneasy, friend Kennedy,”
+      said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Go on, man, light the candle!” said Kennedy, impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s very strange, Kennedy, but I could not in the least tell by the
+      sound in which direction you stand. Could you tell where I am?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No; you seem to be on every side of me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If it were not for this string which I hold in my hand I should not have
+      a notion which way to go.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I dare say not. Strike a light, man, and have an end of this nonsense.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, Kennedy, there are two things which I understand that you are very
+      fond of. The one is adventure, and the other is an obstacle to surmount.
+      The adventure must be the finding of your way out of this catacomb. The
+      obstacle will be the darkness and the two thousand wrong turns which make
+      the way a little difficult to find. But you need not hurry, for you have
+      plenty of time, and when you halt for a rest now and then, I should like
+      you just to think of Miss Mary Saunderson, and whether you treated her
+      quite fairly.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You devil, what do you mean?” roared Kennedy. He was running about in
+      little circles and clasping at the solid blackness with both hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good-bye,” said the mocking voice, and it was already at some distance.
+      “I really do not think, Kennedy, even by your own showing that you did the
+      right thing by that girl. There was only one little thing which you
+      appeared not to know, and I can supply it. Miss Saunderson was engaged to
+      a poor, ungainly devil of a student, and his name was Julius Burger.”
+      There was a rustle somewhere&mdash;the vague sound of a foot striking a
+      stone&mdash;and then there fell silence upon that old Christian church&mdash;a
+      stagnant heavy silence which closed round Kennedy and shut him in like
+      water round a drowning man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some two months afterwards the following paragraph made the round of the
+      European Press:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<p class="bq">
+   One of the most interesting discoveries of recent years is
+   that of the new catacomb in Rome, which lies some distance to the
+   east of the well-known vaults of St. Calixtus.  The finding of this
+   important burial-place, which is exceedingly rich in most
+   interesting early Christian remains, is due to the energy and
+   sagacity of Dr. Julius Burger, the young German specialist, who is
+   rapidly taking the first place as an authority upon ancient Rome.
+   Although the first to publish his discovery, it appears that a less
+   fortunate adventurer had anticipated Dr. Burger.  Some months ago
+   Mr. Kennedy, the well-known English student, disappeared suddenly
+   from his rooms in the “Corso”, and it was conjectured that his
+   association with a recent scandal had driven him to leave Rome.  It
+   appears now that he had in reality fallen a victim to that fervid
+   love of archaeology which had raised him to a distinguished place
+   among living scholars.  His body was discovered in the heart of the
+   new catacomb, and it was evident from the condition of his feet and
+   boots that he had tramped for days through the tortuous corridors
+   which make these subterranean tombs so dangerous to explorers.  The
+   deceased gentleman had, with inexplicable rashness, made his way
+   into this labyrinth without, as far as can be discovered, taking
+   with him either candles or matches, so that his sad fate was the
+   natural result of his own temerity.  What makes the matter more
+   painful is that Dr. Julius Burger was an intimate friend of the
+   deceased.  His joy at the extraordinary find which he has been so
+   fortunate as to make has been greatly marred by the terrible fate
+   of his comrade and fellow-worker.
+</p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was in the days when the tide of Mahdism, which had swept in such a
+      flood from the great Lakes and Darfur to the confines of Egypt, had at
+      last come to its full, and even begun, as some hoped, to show signs of a
+      turn. At its outset it had been terrible. It had engulfed Hicks’s army,
+      swept over Gordon and Khartoum, rolled behind the British forces as they
+      retired down the river, and finally cast up a spray of raiding parties as
+      far north as Assouan. Then it found other channels to east and west, to
+      Central Africa and to Abyssinia, and retired a little on the side of
+      Egypt. For ten years there ensued a lull, during which the frontier
+      garrisons looked out upon those distant blue hills of Dongola. Behind the
+      violet mists which draped them lay a land of blood and horror. From time
+      to time some adventurer went south towards those haze-girt mountains,
+      tempted by stories of gum and ivory, but none ever returned. Once a
+      mutilated Egyptian and once a Greek woman, mad with thirst and fear, made
+      their way to the lines. They were the only exports of that country of
+      darkness. Sometimes the sunset would turn those distant mists into a bank
+      of crimson, and the dark mountains would rise from that sinister reek like
+      islands in a sea of blood. It seemed a grim symbol in the southern heaven
+      when seen from the fort-capped hills by Wady Halfa. Ten years of lust in
+      Khartoum, ten years of silent work in Cairo, and then all was ready, and
+      it was time for civilisation to take a trip south once more, travelling as
+      her wont is in an armoured train. Everything was ready, down to the last
+      pack-saddle of the last camel, and yet no one suspected it, for an
+      unconstitutional Government has its advantage. A great administrator had
+      argued, and managed, and cajoled; a great soldier had organised and
+      planned, and made piastres do the work of pounds. And then one night these
+      two master spirits met and clasped hands, and the soldier vanished away
+      upon some business of his own. And just at that very time, Bimbashi Hilary
+      Joyce, seconded from the Royal Mallow Fusiliers, and temporarily attached
+      to the Ninth Soudanese, made his first appearance in Cairo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Napoleon had said, and Hilary Joyce had noted, that great reputations are
+      only to be made in the East. Here he was in the East with four tin cases
+      of baggage, a Wilkinson sword, a Bond’s slug-throwing pistol, and a copy
+      of “Green’s Introduction to the Study of Arabic.” With such a start, and
+      the blood of youth running hot in his veins, everything seemed easy. He
+      was a little frightened of the general; he had heard stories of his
+      sternness to young officers, but with tact and suavity he hoped for the
+      best. So, leaving his effects at “Shepherd’s Hotel,” he reported himself
+      at headquarters. It was not the general, but the head of the Intelligence
+      Department who received him, the chief being still absent upon that
+      business which had called him. Hilary Joyce found himself in the presence
+      of a short, thick-set officer, with a gentle voice and a placid expression
+      which covered a remarkably acute and energetic spirit. With that quiet
+      smile and guileless manner he had undercut and outwitted the most cunning
+      of Orientals. He stood, a cigarette between his fingers, looking at the
+      newcomer. “I heard that you had come. Sorry the chief isn’t here to see
+      you. Gone up to the frontier, you know.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My regiment is at Wady Halfa. I suppose, sir, that I should report myself
+      there at once?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No; I was to give you your orders.” He led the way to a map upon the
+      wall, and pointed with the end of his cigarette. “You see this place. It’s
+      the Oasis of Kurkur&mdash;a little quiet, I am afraid, but excellent air.
+      You are to get out there as quick as possible. You’ll find a company of
+      the Ninth, and half a squadron of cavalry. You will be in command.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hilary Joyce looked at the name, printed at the intersection of two black
+      lines without another dot upon the map for several inches around it. “A
+      village, sir?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, a well. Not very good water, I’m afraid, but you soon get accustomed
+      to natron. It’s an important post, as being at the junction of two caravan
+      routes. All routes are closed now, of course, but still you never know who
+      <i>might</i> come along them.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We are there, I presume, to prevent raiding?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, between you and me, there’s really nothing to raid. You are there
+      to intercept messengers. They must call at the wells. Of course you have
+      only just come out, but you probably understand already enough about the
+      conditions of this country to know that there is a great deal of
+      disaffection about, and that the Khalifa is likely to try and keep in
+      touch with his adherents. Then, again, Senoussi lives up that way”&mdash;he
+      waved his cigarette to the westward&mdash;“the Khalifa might send a
+      message to him along that route. Anyhow, your duty is to arrest everyone
+      coming along, and get some account of him before you let him go. You don’t
+      talk Arabic, I suppose?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am learning, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, well, you’ll have time enough for study there. And you’ll have a
+      native officer, Ali something or other, who speaks English, and can
+      interpret for you. Well, good-bye&mdash;I’ll tell the chief that you
+      reported yourself. Get on to your post now as quickly as you can.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Railway to Baliani, the post-boat to Assouan, and then two days on a camel
+      in the Libyan desert, with an Ababdeh guide, and three baggage-camels to
+      tie one down to their own exasperating pace. However, even two and a half
+      miles an hour mount up in time, and at last, on the third evening, from
+      the blackened slag-heap of a hill which is called the Jebel Kurkur, Hilary
+      Joyce looked down upon a distant clump of palms, and thought that this
+      cool patch of green in the midst of the merciless blacks and yellows was
+      the fairest colour effect that he had ever seen. An hour later he had
+      ridden into the little camp, the guard had turned out to salute him, his
+      native subordinate had greeted him in excellent English, and he had fairly
+      entered into his own. It was not an exhilarating place for a lengthy
+      residence. There was one large, bowl-shaped, grassy depression sloping
+      down to the three pits of brown and brackish water. There was the grove of
+      palm trees also, beautiful to look upon, but exasperating in view of the
+      fact that Nature has provided her least shady trees on the very spot where
+      shade is needed most. A single wide-spread acacia did something to restore
+      the balance. Here Hilary Joyce slumbered in the heat, and in the cool he
+      inspected his square-shouldered, spindle-shanked Soudanese, with their
+      cheery black faces and their funny little pork-pie forage caps. Joyce was
+      a martinet at drill, and the blacks loved being drilled, so the Bimbashi
+      was soon popular among them. But one day was exactly like another. The
+      weather, the view, the employment, the food&mdash;everything was the same.
+      At the end of three weeks he felt that he had been there for interminable
+      years. And then at last there came something to break the monotony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, as the sun was sinking, Hilary Joyce rode slowly down the old
+      caravan road. It had a fascination for him, this narrow track, winding
+      among the boulders and curving up the nullahs, for he remembered how in
+      the map it had gone on and on, stretching away into the unknown heart of
+      Africa. The countless pads of innumerable camels through many centuries
+      had beaten it smooth, so that now, unused and deserted, it still wound
+      away, the strangest of roads, a foot broad, and perhaps two thousand miles
+      in length. Joyce wondered as he rode how long it was since any traveller
+      had journeyed up it from the south, and then he raised his eyes, and there
+      was a man coming along the path. For an instant Joyce thought that it
+      might be one of his own men, but a second glance assured him that this
+      could not be so. The stranger was dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab,
+      and not in the close-fitting khaki of a soldier. He was very tall, and a
+      high turban made him seem gigantic. He strode swiftly along, with head
+      erect, and the bearing of a man who knows no fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who could he be, this formidable giant coming out of the unknown? The
+      precursor possibly of a horde of savage spearmen. And where could he have
+      walked from? The nearest well was a long hundred miles down the track. At
+      any rate the frontier post of Kurkur could not afford to receive casual
+      visitors. Hilary Joyce whisked round his horse, galloped into camp, and
+      gave the alarm. Then, with twenty horsemen at his back, he rode out again
+      to reconnoitre. The man was still coming on in spite of these hostile
+      preparations. For an instant he hesitated when first he saw the cavalry,
+      but escape was out of the question, and he advanced with the air of one
+      who makes the best of a bad job. He made no resistance, and said nothing
+      when the hands of two troopers clutched at his shoulders, but walked
+      quietly between their horses into camp. Shortly afterwards the patrol came
+      in again. There were no signs of any dervishes. The man was alone. A
+      splendid trotting camel had been found lying dead a little way down the
+      track. The mystery of the stranger’s arrival was explained. But why, and
+      whence, and whither?&mdash;these were questions for which a zealous
+      officer must find an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hilary Joyce was disappointed that there were no dervishes. It would have
+      been a great start for him in the Egyptian army had he fought a little
+      action on his own account. But even as it was, he had a rare chance of
+      impressing the authorities. He would love to show his capacity to the head
+      of the Intelligence, and even more to that grim Chief who never forgot
+      what was smart, or forgave what was slack. The prisoner’s dress and
+      bearing showed that he was of importance. Mean men do not ride pure-bred
+      trotting camels. Joyce sponged his head with cold water, drank a cup of
+      strong coffee, put on an imposing official tarboosh instead of his
+      sun-helmet, and formed himself into a court of inquiry and judgment under
+      the acacia tree. He would have liked his people to have seen him now, with
+      his two black orderlies in waiting, and his Egyptian native officer at his
+      side. He sat behind a camp-table, and the prisoner, strongly guarded, was
+      led up to him. The man was a handsome fellow, with bold grey eyes and a
+      long black beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why!” cried Joyce, “the rascal is making faces at me.” A curious
+      contraction had passed over the man’s features, but so swiftly that it
+      might have been a nervous twitch. He was now a model of Oriental gravity.
+      “Ask him who he is, and what he wants?” The native officer did so, but the
+      stranger made no reply, save that the same sharp spasm passed once more
+      over his face. “Well, I’m blessed!” cried Hilary Joyce. “Of all the
+      impudent scoundrels! He keeps on winking at me. Who are you, you rascal?
+      Give an account of yourself! D’ye hear?” But the tall Arab was as
+      impervious to English as to Arabic. The Egyptian tried again and again.
+      The prisoner looked at Joyce with his inscrutable eyes, and occasionally
+      twitched his face at him, but never opened his mouth. The Bimbashi
+      scratched his head in bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look here, Mahomet Ali, we’ve got to get some sense out of this fellow.
+      You say there are no papers on him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir; we found no papers.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No clue of any kind?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He has come far, sir. A trotting camel does not die easily. He has come
+      from Dongola, at least.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we must get him to talk.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is possible that he is deaf and dumb.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not he. I never saw a man look more all there in my life.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You might send him across to Assouan.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And give someone else the credit? No, thank you. This is my bird. But how
+      are we going to get him to find his tongue?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Egyptian’s dark eyes skirted the encampment and rested on the cook’s
+      fire. “Perhaps,” said he, “if the Bimbashi thought fit&mdash;” He looked
+      at the prisoner and then at the burning wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, no; it wouldn’t do. No, by Jove, that’s going too far.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A very little might do it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, no. It’s all very well here, but it would sound just awful if ever it
+      got as far as Fleet Street. But, I say,” he whispered, “we might frighten
+      him a bit. There’s no harm in that.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Tell them to undo the man’s galabeeah. Order them to put a horseshoe in
+      the fire and make it red-hot.” The prisoner watched the proceedings with
+      an air which had more of amusement than of uneasiness. He never winced as
+      the black sergeant approached with the glowing shoe held upon two
+      bayonets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Will you speak now?” asked the Bimbashi, savagely. The prisoner smiled
+      gently and stroked his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, chuck the infernal thing away!” cried Joyce, jumping up in a passion.
+      “There’s no use trying to bluff the fellow. He knows we won’t do it. But I
+      <i>can</i> and I <i>will</i> flog him, and you can tell him from me that
+      if he hasn’t found his tongue by to-morrow morning I’ll take the skin off
+      his back as sure as my name’s Joyce. Have you said all that?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, you can sleep upon it, you beauty, and a good night’s rest may it
+      give you!” He adjourned the Court, and the prisoner, as imperturbable as
+      ever, was led away by the guard to his supper of rice and water. Hilary
+      Joyce was a kind-hearted man, and his own sleep was considerably disturbed
+      by the prospect of the punishment which he must inflict next day. He had
+      hopes that the mere sight of the koorbash and the thongs might prevail
+      over his prisoner’s obstinacy. And then, again, he thought how shocking it
+      would be if the man proved to be really dumb after all. The possibility
+      shook him so that he had almost determined by daybreak that he would send
+      the stranger on unhurt to Assouan. And yet what a tame conclusion it would
+      be to the incident! He lay upon his angareeb still debating it when the
+      question suddenly and effectively settled itself. Ali Mahomet rushed into
+      his tent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sir,” he cried, “the prisoner is gone!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gone!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir, and your own best riding camel as well. There is a slit cut in
+      the tent, and he got away unseen in the early morning.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bimbashi acted with all energy. Cavalry rode along every track; scouts
+      examined the soft sand of the wadys for signs of the fugitive, but no
+      trace was discovered. The man had utterly disappeared. With a heavy heart,
+      Hilary Joyce wrote an official report of the matter and forwarded it to
+      Assouan. Five days later there came a curt order from the chief that he
+      should report himself there. He feared the worst from the stern soldier,
+      who spared others as little as he spared himself. And his worst
+      forebodings were realised. Travel-stained and weary, he reported himself
+      one night at the general’s quarters. Behind a table piled with papers and
+      strewn with maps the famous soldier and his Chief of Intelligence were
+      deep in plans and figures. Their greeting was a cold one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I understand, Captain Joyce,” said the general, “that you have allowed a
+      very important prisoner to slip through your fingers.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am sorry, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No doubt. But that will not mend matters. Did you ascertain anything
+      about him before you lost him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How was that?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I could get nothing out of him, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Did you try?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir; I did what I could.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What did you do?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, sir, I threatened to use physical force.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What did he say?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He said nothing.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What was he like?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A tall man, sir. Rather a desperate character, I should think.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Any way by which we could identify him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A long black beard, sir. Grey eyes. And a nervous way of twitching his
+      face.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, Captain Joyce,” said the general, in his stern, inflexible voice,
+      “I cannot congratulate you upon your first exploit in the Egyptian army.
+      You are aware that every English officer in this force is a picked man. I
+      have the whole British army from which to draw. It is necessary,
+      therefore, that I should insist upon the very highest efficiency. It would
+      be unfair upon the others to pass over any obvious want of zeal or
+      intelligence. You are seconded from the Royal Mallows, I understand?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I have no doubt that your colonel will be glad to see you fulfilling your
+      regimental duties again.”
+    <p>Hilary Joyce’s heart was too heavy for words. He was silent.</p>
+    <p>“I will let you know my final decision to-morrow morning.”</p>
+    <p>Joyce saluted and turned upon his heel.</p>
+    <p>
+      “You can sleep upon that, you beauty, and a good night’s rest may it give
+      you!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joyce turned in bewilderment. Where had those words been used before? Who
+      was it who had used them? The general was standing erect. Both he and the
+      Chief of the Intelligence were laughing. Joyce stared at the tall figure,
+      the erect bearing, the inscrutable grey eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good Lord!” he gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, well, Captain Joyce, we are quits!” said the general, holding out
+      his hand. “You gave me a bad ten minutes with that infernal red-hot
+      horseshoe of yours. I’ve done as much for you. I don’t think we can spare
+      you for the Royal Mallows just yet awhile.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But, sir; but&mdash;!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The fewer questions the better, perhaps. But of course it must seem
+      rather amazing. I had a little private business with the Kabbabish. It
+      must be done in person. I did it, and came to your post in my return. I
+      kept on winking at you as a sign that I wanted a word with you alone.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, yes. I begin to understand.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I couldn’t give it away before all those blacks, or where should I have
+      been the next time I used my false beard and Arab dress? You put me in a
+      very awkward position. But at last I had a word alone with your Egyptian
+      officer, who managed my escape all right.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He! Mahomet Ali!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I ordered him to say nothing. I had a score to settle with you. But we
+      dine at eight, Captain Joyce. We live plainly here, but I think I can do
+      you a little better than you did me at Kurkur.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There are many folk who knew Alphonse Lacour in his old age. From about
+      the time of the Revolution of ’48 until he died in the second year of the
+      Crimean War he was always to be found in the same corner of the Cafe de
+      Provence, at the end of the Rue St. Honore, coming down about nine in the
+      evening, and going when he could find no one to talk with. It took some
+      self-restraint to listen to the old diplomatist, for his stories were
+      beyond all belief, and yet he was quick at detecting the shadow of a smile
+      or the slightest little raising of the eyebrows. Then his huge, rounded
+      back would straighten itself, his bulldog chin would project, and his r’s
+      would burr like a kettledrum. When he got as far as, “Ah, monsieur
+      r-r-r-rit!” or “Vous ne me cr-r-r-royez pas donc!” it was quite time to
+      remember that you had a ticket for the opera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was his story of Talleyrand and the five oyster-shells, and there
+      was his utterly absurd account of Napoleon’s second visit to Ajaccio. Then
+      there was that most circumstantial romance (which he never ventured upon
+      until his second bottle had been uncorked) of the Emperor’s escape from
+      St. Helena&mdash;how he lived for a whole year in Philadelphia, while
+      Count Herbert de Bertrand, who was his living image, personated him at
+      Longwood. But of all his stories there was none which was more notorious
+      than that of the Koran and the Foreign Office messenger. And yet when
+      Monsieur Otto’s memoirs were written it was found that there really was
+      some foundation for old Lacour’s incredible statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You must know, monsieur,” he would say, “that I left Egypt after Kleber’s
+      assassination. I would gladly have stayed on, for I was engaged in a
+      translation of the Koran, and between ourselves I had thoughts at the time
+      of embracing Mahometanism, for I was deeply struck by the wisdom of their
+      views about marriage. They had made an incredible mistake, however, upon
+      the subject of wine, and this was what the Mufti who attempted to convert
+      me could never get over. Then when old Kleber died and Menou came to the
+      top, I felt that it was time for me to go. It is not for me to speak of my
+      own capacities, monsieur, but you will readily understand that the man
+      does not care to be ridden by the mule. I carried my Koran and my papers
+      to London, where Monsieur Otto had been sent by the First Consul to
+      arrange a treaty of peace; for both nations were very weary of the war,
+      which had already lasted ten years. Here I was most useful to Monsieur
+      Otto on account of my knowledge of the English tongue, and also, if I may
+      say so, on account of my natural capacity. They were happy days during
+      which I lived in the square of Bloomsbury. The climate of monsieur’s
+      country is, it must be confessed, detestable. But then what would you
+      have? Flowers grow best in the rain. One has but to point to monsieur’s
+      fellow country-women to prove it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, Monsieur Otto, our Ambassador, was kept terribly busy over that
+      treaty, and all of his staff were worked to death. We had not Pitt to deal
+      with, which was, perhaps, as well for us. He was a terrible man that Pitt,
+      and wherever half a dozen enemies of France were plotting together, there
+      was his sharp-pointed nose right in the middle of them. The nation,
+      however, had been thoughtful enough to put him out of office, and we had
+      to do with Monsieur Addington. But Milord Hawkesbury was the Foreign
+      Minister, and it was with him that we were obliged to do our bargaining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You can understand that it was no child’s play. After ten years of war
+      each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the other,
+      or to the other’s allies. What was to be given back, and what was to be
+      kept? Is this island worth that peninsula? If we do this at Venice, will
+      you do that at Sierra Leone? If we give up Egypt to the Sultan, will you
+      restore the Cape of Good Hope, which you have taken from our allies the
+      Dutch? So we wrangled and wrestled, and I have seen Monsieur Otto come
+      back to the Embassy so exhausted that his secretary and I had to help him
+      from his carriage to his sofa. But at last things adjusted themselves, and
+      the night came round when the treaty was to be finally signed. Now, you
+      must know that the one great card which we held, and which we played,
+      played, played at every point of the game, was that we had Egypt. The
+      English were very nervous about our being there. It gave us a foot at each
+      end of the Mediterranean, you see. And they were not sure that that
+      wonderful little Napoleon of ours might not make it the base of an advance
+      against India. So whenever Lord Hawkesbury proposed to retain anything, we
+      had only to reply, ‘In <i>that</i> case, of course, we cannot consent to
+      evacuate Egypt,’ and in this way we quickly brought him to reason. It was
+      by the help of Egypt that we gained terms which were remarkably
+      favourable, and especially that we caused the English to consent to give
+      up the Cape of Good Hope. We did not wish your people, monsieur, to have
+      any foothold in South Africa, for history has taught us that the British
+      foothold of one half-century is the British Empire of the next. It is not
+      your army or your navy against which we have to guard, but it is your
+      terrible younger son and your man in search of a career. When we French
+      have a possession across the seas, we like to sit in Paris and to
+      felicitate ourselves upon it. With you it is different. You take your
+      wives and your children, and you run away to see what kind of place this
+      may be, and after that we might as well try to take that old Square of
+      Bloomsbury away from you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it was upon the first of October that the treaty was finally to be
+      signed. In the morning I was congratulating Monsieur Otto upon the happy
+      conclusion of his labours. He was a little pale shrimp of a man, very
+      quick and nervous, and he was so delighted now at his own success that he
+      could not sit still, but ran about the room chattering and laughing, while
+      I sat on a cushion in the corner, as I had learned to do in the East.
+      Suddenly, in came a messenger with a letter which had been forwarded from
+      Paris. Monsieur Otto cast his eye upon it, and then, without a word, his
+      knees gave way, and he fell senseless upon the floor. I ran to him, as did
+      the courier, and between us we carried him to the sofa. He might have been
+      dead from his appearance, but I could still feel his heart thrilling
+      beneath my palm. ‘What is this, then?’ I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I do not know,’ answered the messenger. ‘Monsieur Talleyrand told me to
+      hurry as never man hurried before, and to put this letter into the hands
+      of Monsieur Otto. I was in Paris at midday yesterday.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I know that I am to blame, but I could not help glancing at the letter,
+      picking it out of the senseless hand of Monsieur Otto. My God! the
+      thunderbolt that it was! I did not faint, but I sat down beside my chief
+      and I burst into tears. It was but a few words, but they told us that
+      Egypt had been evacuated by our troops a month before. All our treaty was
+      undone then, and the one consideration which had induced our enemies to
+      give us good terms had vanished. In twelve hours it would not have
+      mattered. But now the treaty was not yet signed. We should have to give up
+      the Cape. We should have to let England have Malta. Now that Egypt was
+      gone we had nothing left to offer in exchange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But we are not so easily beaten, we Frenchmen. You English misjudge us
+      when you think that because we show emotions which you conceal, that we
+      are therefore of a weak and womanly nature. You cannot read your histories
+      and believe that. Monsieur Otto recovered his senses presently, and we
+      took counsel what we should do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It is useless to go on, Alphonse,’ said he. ‘This Englishman will laugh
+      at me when I ask him to sign.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Courage!’ I cried; and then a sudden thought coming into my head&mdash;‘How
+      do we know that the English will have news of this? Perhaps they may sign
+      the treaty before they know of it.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Monsieur Otto sprang from the sofa and flung himself into my arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Alphonse,’ he cried, ‘you have saved me! Why should they know about it?
+      Our news has come from Toulon to Paris, and thence straight to London.
+      Theirs will come by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar. At this moment
+      it is unlikely that anyone in Paris knows of it, save only Talleyrand and
+      the First Consul. If we keep our secret, we may still get our treaty
+      signed.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah! monsieur, you can imagine the horrible uncertainty in which we spent
+      the day. Never, never shall I forget those slow hours during which we sat
+      together, starting at every distant shout, lest it should be the first
+      sign of the rejoicing which this news would cause in London. Monsieur Otto
+      passed from youth to age in a day. As for me, I find it easier to go out
+      and meet danger than to wait for it. I set forth, therefore, towards
+      evening. I wandered here, and wandered there. I was in the fencing-rooms
+      of Monsieur Angelo, and in the salon-de-boxe of Monsieur Jackson, and in
+      the club of Brooks, and in the lobby of the Chamber of Deputies, but
+      nowhere did I hear any news. Still, it was possible that Milord Hawkesbury
+      had received it himself just as we had. He lived in Harley Street, and
+      there it was that the treaty was to be finally signed that night at eight.
+      I entreated Monsieur Otto to drink two glasses of Burgundy before he went,
+      for I feared lest his haggard face and trembling hands should rouse
+      suspicion in the English minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we went round together in one of the Embassy’s carriages about
+      half-past seven. Monsieur Otto went in alone; but presently, on excuse of
+      getting his portfolio, he came out again, with his cheeks flushed with
+      joy, to tell me that all was well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘He knows nothing,’ he whispered. ‘Ah, if the next half-hour were over!’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Give me a sign when it is settled,’ said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘For what reason?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Because until then no messenger shall interrupt you. I give you my
+      promise&mdash;I, Alphonse Lacour.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He clasped my hand in both of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I shall make an excuse to move one of the candles on to the table in the
+      window,’ said he, and hurried into the house, whilst I was left waiting
+      beside the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, if we could but secure ourselves from interruption for a single
+      half-hour the day would be our own. I had hardly begun to form my plans
+      when I saw the lights of a carriage coming swiftly from the direction of
+      Oxford Street. Ah! if it should be the messenger! What could I do? I was
+      prepared to kill him&mdash;yes, even to kill him&mdash;rather than at this
+      last moment allow our work to be undone. Thousands die to make a glorious
+      war. Why should not one die to make a glorious peace? What though they
+      hurried me to the scaffold? I should have sacrificed myself for my
+      country. I had a little curved Turkish knife strapped to my waist. My hand
+      was on the hilt of it when the carriage which had alarmed me so rattled
+      safely past me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But another might come. I must be prepared. Above all, I must not
+      compromise the Embassy. I ordered our carriage to move on, and I engaged
+      what you call a hackney coach. Then I spoke to the driver, and gave him a
+      guinea. He understood that it was a special service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘You shall have another guinea if you do what you are told,’ said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘All right, master,’ said he, turning his slow eyes upon me without a
+      trace of excitement or curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘If I enter your coach with another gentleman, you will drive up and
+      down Harley Street, and take no orders from anyone but me. When I get out,
+      you will carry the other gentleman to Watier’s Club, in Bruton Street.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘All right, master,’ said he again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So I stood outside Milord Hawkesbury’s house, and you can think how often
+      my eyes went up to that window in the hope of seeing the candle twinkle in
+      it. Five minutes passed, and another five. Oh, how slowly they crept
+      along! It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a white fog
+      crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the dim
+      oil-lamps. I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my ears
+      were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the rumble of
+      wheels. It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of Harley, even
+      upon a sunny day. The houses are solid and very respectable over yonder,
+      but there is nothing of the feminine about them. It is a city to be
+      inhabited by males. But on that raw night, amid the damp and the fog, with
+      the anxiety gnawing at my heart, it seemed the saddest, weariest spot in
+      the whole wide world. I paced up and down slapping my hands to keep them
+      warm, and still straining my ears. And then suddenly out of the dull hum
+      of the traffic down in Oxford Street I heard a sound detach itself, and
+      grow louder and louder, and clearer and clearer with every instant, until
+      two yellow lights came flashing through the fog, and a light cabriolet
+      whirled up to the door of the Foreign Minister. It had not stopped before
+      a young fellow sprang out of it and hurried to the steps, while the driver
+      turned his horse and rattled off into the fog once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah, it is in the moment of action that I am best, monsieur. You, who only
+      see me when I am drinking my wine in the Cafe de Provence, cannot conceive
+      the heights to which I rise. At that moment, when I knew that the fruits
+      of a ten years’ war were at stake, I was magnificent. It was the last
+      French campaign and I the general and army in one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Sir,” said I, touching him upon the arm, ‘are you the messenger for Lord
+      Hawkesbury?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Yes,’ said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I have been waiting for you half an hour,’ said I. ‘You are to follow me
+      at once. He is with the French Ambassador.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I spoke with such assurance that he never hesitated for an instant. When
+      he entered the hackney coach and I followed him in, my heart gave such a
+      thrill of joy that I could hardly keep from shouting aloud. He was a poor
+      little creature, this Foreign Office messenger, not much bigger than
+      Monsieur Otto, and I&mdash;monsieur can see my hands now, and imagine what
+      they were like when I was seven-and-twenty years of age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, now that I had him in my coach, the question was what I should do
+      with him. I did not wish to hurt him if I could help it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘This is a pressing business,’ said he. ‘I have a despatch which I must
+      deliver instantly.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Our coach had rattled down Harley Street now, in accordance with my
+      instruction, it turned and began to go up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Hullo!’ he cried. ‘What’s this?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘What then?’ I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘We are driving back. Where is Lord Hawkesbury?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘We shall see him presently.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Let me out!’ he shouted. ‘There’s some trickery in this. Coachman, stop
+      the coach! Let me out, I say!’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I dashed him back into his seat as he tried to turn the handle of the
+      door. He roared for help. I clapped my palm across his mouth. He made his
+      teeth meet through the side of it. I seized his own cravat and bound it
+      over his lips. He still mumbled and gurgled, but the noise was covered by
+      the rattle of our wheels. We were passing the minister’s house, and there
+      was no candle in the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The messenger sat quiet for a little, and I could see the glint of his
+      eyes as he stared at me through the gloom. He was partly stunned, I think,
+      by the force with which I had hurled him into his seat. And also he was
+      pondering, perhaps, what he should do next. Presently he got his mouth
+      partly free from the cravat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘You shall have my watch and my purse if you will let me go,’ said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Sir,’ said I, ‘I am as honourable a man as you are yourself.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Who are you, then?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘My name is of no importance.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘What do you want with me?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It is a bet.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘A bet? What d’you mean? Do you understand that I am on the Government
+      service, and that you will see the inside of a gaol for this?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘That is the bet. That is the sport, said I.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘You may find it poor sport before you finish,’ he cried. ‘What is this
+      insane bet of yours then?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘I have bet,’ I answered, ‘that I will recite a chapter of the Koran to
+      the first gentleman whom I should meet in the street.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I do not know what made me think of it, save that my translation was
+      always running in my head. He clutched at the door-handle, and again I had
+      to hurl him back into his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘How long will it take?’ he gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It depends on the chapter,’ I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘A short one, then, and let me go!’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘But is it fair?’ I argued. ‘When I say a chapter, I do not mean the
+      shortest chapter, but rather one which should be of average length.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Help! help! help!’ he squealed, and I was compelled again to adjust his
+      cravat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘A little patience,’ said I, ‘and it will soon be over. I should like to
+      recite the chapter which would be of most interest to yourself. You will
+      confess that I am trying to make things as pleasant as I can for you?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He slipped his mouth free again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Quick, then, quick!’ he groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘The Chapter of the Camel?’ I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Yes, yes.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Or that of the Fleet Stallion?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Yes, yes. Only proceed!’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We had passed the window and there was no candle. I settled down to
+      recite the Chapter of the Stallion to him. Perhaps you do not know your
+      Koran very well, monsieur? Well, I knew it by heart then, as I know it by
+      heart now. The style is a little exasperating for anyone who is in a
+      hurry. But, then, what would you have? The people in the East are never in
+      a hurry, and it was written for them. I repeated it all with the dignity
+      and solemnity which a sacred book demands, and the young Englishman he
+      wriggled and groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘When the horses, standing on three feet and placing the tip of their
+      fourth foot upon the ground, were mustered in front of him in the evening,
+      he said, I have loved the love of earthly good above the remembrance of
+      things on high, and have spent the time in viewing these horses. Bring the
+      horses back to me. And when they were brought back he began to cut off
+      their legs and&mdash;’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It was at this moment that the young Englishman sprang at me. My God! how
+      little can I remember of the next few minutes! He was a boxer, this shred
+      of a man. He had been trained to strike. I tried to catch him by the
+      hands. Pac, pac, he came upon my nose and upon my eye. I put down my head
+      and thrust at him with it. Pac, he came from below. But ah! I was too much
+      for him. I hurled myself upon him, and he had no place where he could
+      escape from my weight. He fell flat upon the cushions and I seated myself
+      upon him with such conviction that the wind flew from him as from a burst
+      bellows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then I searched to see what there was with which I could tie him. I drew
+      the strings from my shoes, and with one I secured his wrists, and with
+      another his ankles. Then I tied the cravat round his mouth again, so that
+      he could only lie and glare at me. When I had done all this, and had
+      stopped the bleeding of my own nose, I looked out of the coach and ah,
+      monsieur, the very first thing which caught my eyes was that candle&mdash;that
+      dear little candle&mdash;glimmering in the window of the minister. Alone,
+      with these two hands, I had retrieved the capitulation of an army and the
+      loss of a province. Yes, monsieur, what Abercrombie and 5,000 men had done
+      upon the beach at Aboukir was undone by me, single-handed, in a hackney
+      coach in Harley Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I had no time to lose, for at any moment Monsieur Otto might be
+      down. I shouted to my driver, gave him his second guinea, and allowed him
+      to proceed to Watier’s. For myself, I sprang into our Embassy’s carriage,
+      and a moment later the door of the minister opened. He had himself
+      escorted Monsieur Otto downstairs, and now so deep was he in talk that he
+      walked out bareheaded as far as the carriage. As he stood there by the
+      open door, there came the rattle of wheels, and a man rushed down the
+      pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘A despatch of great importance for Milord Hawkesbury!’ he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I could see that it was not my messenger, but a second one. Milord
+      Hawkesbury caught the paper from his hand, and read it by the light of the
+      carriage lamp. His face, monsieur, was as white as this plate, before he
+      had finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Monsieur Otto,’ he cried, ‘we have signed this treaty upon a false
+      understanding. Egypt is in our hands.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘What!’ cried Monsieur Otto. ‘Impossible!’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘It is certain. It fell to Abercrombie last month.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘In that case,’ said Monsieur Otto, ‘it is very fortunate that the treaty
+      is signed.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Very fortunate for you, sir,’ cried Milord Hawkesbury, as he turned back
+      to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Next day, monsieur, what they call the Bow Street runners were after me,
+      but they could not run across salt water, and Alphonse Lacour was
+      receiving the congratulations of Monsieur Talleyrand and the First Consul
+      before ever his pursuers had got as far as Dover.”
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+    <title>
+      The Green Flag, by Arthur Conan Doyle
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
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+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em; }
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Green Flag, by Arthur Conan Doyle
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+Title: The Green Flag
+
+Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2003  [eBook #10446]
+Last Updated: December 10, 2018
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN FLAG***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Lionel G. Sear of Truro, Cornwall, England
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE GREEN FLAG
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Arthur Conan Doyle
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> THE GREEN FLAG </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> CAPTAIN SHARKEY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE CROXLEY MASTER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE STRIPED CHEST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> A SHADOW BEFORE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> THE KING OF THE FOXES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> THE NEW CATACOMB </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE GREEN FLAG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Jack Conolly, of the Irish Shotgun Brigade, the Rory of the Hills
+      Inner Circle, and the extreme left wing of the Land League, was
+      incontinently shot by Sergeant Murdoch of the constabulary, in a little
+      moonlight frolic near Kanturk, his twin-brother Dennis joined the British
+      Army. The countryside had become too hot for him; and, as the seventy-five
+      shillings were wanting which might have carried him to America, he took
+      the only way handy of getting himself out of the way. Seldom has Her
+      Majesty had a less promising recruit, for his hot Celtic blood seethed
+      with hatred against Britain and all things British. The sergeant, however,
+      smiling complacently over his 6 ft. of brawn and his 44 in. chest, whisked
+      him off with a dozen other of the boys to the depot at Fermoy, whence in a
+      few weeks they were sent on, with the spade-work kinks taken out of their
+      backs, to the first battalion of the Royal Mallows, at the top of the
+      roster for foreign service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Royal Mallows, at about that date, were as strange a lot of men as
+      ever were paid by a great empire to fight its battles. It was the darkest
+      hour of the land struggle, when the one side came out with crow-bar and
+      battering-ram by day, and the other with mask and with shot-gun by night.
+      Men driven from their homes and potato-patches found their way even into
+      the service of the Government, to which it seemed to them that they owed
+      their troubles, and now and then they did wild things before they came.
+      There were recruits in the Irish regiments who would forget to answer to
+      their own names, so short had been their acquaintance with them. Of these
+      the Royal Mallows had their full share; and, while they still retained
+      their fame as being one of the smartest corps in the army, no one knew
+      better than their officers that they were dry-rotted with treason and with
+      bitter hatred of the flag under which they served.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the centre of all the disaffection was C Company, in which Dennis
+      Conolly found himself enrolled. They were Celts, Catholics, and men of the
+      tenant class to a man; and their whole experience of the British
+      Government had been an inexorable landlord, and a constabulary who seemed
+      to them to be always on the side of the rent-collector. Dennis was not the
+      only moonlighter in the ranks, nor was he alone in having an intolerable
+      family blood-feud to harden his heart. Savagery had begotten savagery in
+      that veiled civil war. A landlord with an iron mortgage weighing down upon
+      him had small bowels for his tenantry. He did but take what the law
+      allowed, and yet, with men like Jim Holan, or Patrick McQuire, or Peter
+      Flynn, who had seen the roofs torn from their cottages and their folk
+      huddled among their pitiable furniture upon the roadside, it was ill to
+      argue about abstract law. What matter that in that long and bitter
+      struggle there was many another outrage on the part of the tenant, and
+      many another grievance on the side of the landowner! A stricken man can
+      only feel his own wound, and the rank and file of the C Company of the
+      Royal Mallows were sore and savage to the soul. There were low whisperings
+      in barrack-rooms and canteens, stealthy meetings in public-house parlours,
+      bandying of passwords from mouth to mouth, and many other signs which made
+      their officers right glad when the order came which sent them to foreign,
+      and better still, to active service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Irish regiments have before now been disaffected, and have at a
+      distance looked upon the foe as though he might, in truth, be the friend;
+      but when they have been put face on to him, and when their officers have
+      dashed to the front with a wave and halloo, those rebel hearts have
+      softened and their gallant Celtic blood has boiled with the mad Joy of the
+      fight, until the slower Britons have marvelled that they ever could have
+      doubted the loyalty of their Irish comrades. So it would be again,
+      according to the officers, and so it would not be if Dennis Conolly and a
+      few others could have their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a March morning upon the eastern fringe of the Nubian desert. The
+      sun had not yet risen, but a tinge of pink flushed up as far as the
+      cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon across
+      the horizon. From the coast inland stretched dreary sand-plains, dotted
+      over with thick clumps at mimosa scrub and mottled patches of thorny bush.
+      No tree broke the monotony of that vast desert. The dull, dusty hue of the
+      thickets, and the yellow glare of the sand, were the only colours, save at
+      one point, where, from a distance, it seemed that a land-slip of
+      snow-white stones had shot itself across a low foot-hill. But as the
+      traveller approached he saw, with a thrill, that these were no stones, but
+      the bleaching bones of a slaughtered army. With its dull tints, its
+      gnarled, viprous bushes, its arid, barren soil, and this death streak
+      trailed across it, it was indeed a nightmare country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some eight or ten miles inland the rolling plain curved upwards with a
+      steeper slope until it ran into a line of red basaltic rock which
+      zigzagged from north to south, heaping itself up at one point into a
+      fantastic knoll. On the summit of this there stood upon that March morning
+      three Arab chieftains&mdash;the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas, Moussa Wad
+      Aburhegel, who led the Berber dervishes, and Hamid Wad Hussein, who had
+      come northward with his fighting men from the land of the Baggaras. They
+      had all three just risen from their praying-carpets, and were peering out,
+      with fierce, high-nosed faces thrust forwards, at the stretch of country
+      revealed by the spreading dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red rim of the sun was pushing itself now above the distant sea, and
+      the whole coast-line stood out brilliantly yellow against the rich deep
+      blue beyond. At one spot lay a huddle of white-walled houses, a mere
+      splotch in the distance; while four tiny cock-boats, which lay beyond,
+      marked the position of three of Her Majesty's 10,000-ton troopers and the
+      admiral's flagship. But it was not upon the distant town, nor upon the
+      great vessels, nor yet upon the sinister white litter which gleamed in the
+      plain beneath them, that the Arab chieftains gazed. Two miles from where
+      they stood, amid the sand-hills and the mimosa scrub, a great
+      parallelogram had been marked by piled-up bushes. From the inside of this
+      dozens of tiny blue smoke-reeks curled up into the still morning air;
+      while there rose from it a confused deep murmur, the voices of men and the
+      gruntings of camels blended into the same insect buzz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The unbelievers have cooked their morning food," said the Baggara chief,
+      shading his eyes with his tawny, sinewy hand. "Truly their sleep has been
+      scanty; for Hamid and a hundred of his men have fired upon them since the
+      rising of the moon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So it was with these others," answered the Sheik Kadra, pointing with his
+      sheathed sword towards the old battle-field. "They also had a day of
+      little water and a night of little rest, and the heart was gone out of
+      them ere ever the sons of the Prophet had looked them in the eyes. This
+      blade drank deep that day, and will again before the sun has travelled
+      from the sea to the hill."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yet these are other men," remarked the Berber dervish. "Well, I know
+      that Allah has placed them in the clutch of our fingers, yet it may be
+      that they with the big hats will stand firmer than the cursed men of
+      Egypt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pray Allah that it may be so," cried the fierce Baggara, with a flash of
+      his black eyes. "It was not to chase women that I brought 700 men from the
+      river to the coast. See, my brother, already they are forming their
+      array."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fanfare of bugle-calls burst from the distant camp. At the same time the
+      bank of bushes at one side had been thrown or trampled down, and the
+      little army within began to move slowly out on to the plain. Once clear of
+      the camp they halted, and the slant rays of the sun struck flashes from
+      bayonet and from gun-barrel as the ranks closed up until the big pith
+      helmets joined into a single long white ribbon. Two streaks of scarlet
+      glowed on either side of the square, but elsewhere the fringe of
+      fighting-men was of the dull yellow khaki tint which hardly shows against
+      the desert sand. Inside their array was a dense mass of camels and mules
+      bearing stores and ambulance needs. Outside a twinkling clump of cavalry
+      was drawn up on each flank, and in front a thin, scattered line of mounted
+      infantry was already slowly advancing over the bush-strewn plain, halting
+      on every eminence, and peering warily round as men might who have to pick
+      their steps among the bones of those who have preceded them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three chieftains still lingered upon the knoll, looking down with
+      hungry eyes and compressed lips at the dark steel-tipped patch. "They are
+      slower to start than the men of Egypt," the Sheik of the Hadendowas
+      growled in his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Slower also to go back, perchance, my brother," murmured the dervish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yet they are not many&mdash;3,000 at the most."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And we 10,000, with the Prophet's grip upon our spear-hafts and his words
+      upon our banner. See to their chieftain, how he rides upon the right and
+      looks up at us with the glass that sees from afar! It may be that he sees
+      this also." The Arab shook his sword at the small clump of horsemen who
+      had spurred out from the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lo! he beckons," cried the dervish; "and see those others at the corner,
+      how they bend and heave. Ha! by the Prophet, I had thought it." As he
+      spoke, a little woolly puff of smoke spurted up at the corner of the
+      square, and a 7 lb. shell burst with a hard metallic smack just over their
+      heads. The splinters knocked chips from the red rocks around them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bismillah!" cried the Hadendowa; "if the gun can carry thus far, then
+      ours can answer to it. Ride to the left, Moussa, and tell Ben Ali to cut
+      the skin from the Egyptians if they cannot hit yonder mark. And you,
+      Hamid, to the right, and see that 3,000 men lie close in the wady that we
+      have chosen. Let the others beat the drum and show the banner of the
+      Prophet, for by the black stone their spears will have drunk deep ere they
+      look upon the stars again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long, straggling, boulder-strewn plateau lay on the summit of the red
+      hills, sloping very precipitously to the plain, save at one point, where a
+      winding gully curved downwards, its mouth choked with sand-mounds and
+      olive-hued scrub. Along the edge of this position lay the Arab host&mdash;a
+      motley crew of shock-headed desert clansmen, fierce predatory slave
+      dealers of the interior, and wild dervishes from the Upper Nile, all blent
+      together by their common fearlessness and fanaticism. Two races were
+      there, as wide as the poles apart&mdash;the thin-lipped, straight-haired
+      Arab and the thick-lipped, curly negro&mdash;yet the faith of Islam had
+      bound them closer than a blood tie. Squatting among the rocks, or lying
+      thickly in the shadow, they peered out at the slow-moving square beneath
+      them, while women with water-skins and bags of dhoora fluttered from group
+      to group, calling out to each other those fighting texts from the Koran
+      which in the hour of battle are maddening as wine to the true believer. A
+      score of banners waved over the ragged, valiant crew, and among them, upon
+      desert horses and white Bishareen camels, were the Emirs and Sheiks who
+      were to lead them against the infidels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Sheik Kadra sprang into his saddle and drew his sword there was a
+      wild whoop and a clatter of waving spears, while the one-ended war-drums
+      burst into a dull crash like a wave upon shingle. For a moment 10,000 men
+      were up on the rocks with brandished arms and leaping figures; the next
+      they were under cover again, waiting sternly and silently for their
+      chieftain's orders. The square was less than half a mile from the ridge
+      now, and shell after shell from the 7 lb. guns were pitching over it. A
+      deep roar on the right, and then a second one showed that the Egyptian
+      Krupps were in action. Sheik Kadra's hawk eyes saw that the shells burst
+      far beyond the mark, and he spurred his horse along to where a knot of
+      mounted chiefs were gathered round the two guns, which were served by
+      their captured crews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How is this, Ben Ali?" he cried. "It was not thus that the dogs fired
+      when it was their own brothers in faith at whom they aimed!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A chieftain reined his horse back, and thrust a blood-smeared sword into
+      its sheath. Beside him two Egyptian artillerymen with their throats cut
+      were sobbing out their lives upon the ground. "Who lays the gun this
+      time?" asked the fierce chief, glaring at the frightened gunners." Here,
+      thou black-browed child of Shaitan, aim, and aim for thy life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may have been chance, or it may have been skill, but the third and
+      fourth shells burst over the square. Sheik Kadra smiled grimly and
+      galloped back to the left, where his spearmen were streaming down into the
+      gully. As he joined them a deep growling rose from the plain beneath, like
+      the snarling of a sullen wild beast, and a little knot of tribesmen fell
+      into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead from a Gardner. Their
+      comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down into the ravine. From all
+      along the crest burst the hard, sharp crackle of Remington fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The square had slowly advanced, rippling over the low sandhills, and
+      halting every few minutes to re-arrange its formation. Now, having made
+      sure that there was no force of the enemy in the scrub, it changed its
+      direction, and began to take a line parallel to the Arab position. It was
+      too steep to assail from the front, and if they moved far enough to the
+      right the general hoped that he might turn it. On the top of those ruddy
+      hills lay a baronetcy for him, and a few extra hundreds in his pension,
+      and he meant having them both that day. The Remington fire was annoying,
+      and so were those two Krupp guns; already there were more cacolets full
+      than he cared to see. But on the whole he thought it better to hold his
+      fire until he had more to aim at than a few hundred of fuzzy heads peeping
+      over a razor-back ridge. He was a bulky, red-faced man, a fine
+      whist-player, and a soldier who knew his work. His men believed in him,
+      and he had good reason to believe in them, for he had excellent stuff
+      under him that day. Being an ardent champion of the short-service system,
+      he took particular care to work with veteran first battalions, and his
+      little force was the compressed essence of an army corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The left front of the square was formed by four companies of the Royal
+      Wessex, and the right by four of the Royal Mallows. On either side the
+      other halves of the same regiments marched in quarter column of companies.
+      Behind them, on the right was a battalion of Guards, and on the left one
+      of Marines, while the rear was closed in by a Rifle battalion. Two Royal
+      Artillery 7 lb. screw-guns kept pace with the square, and a dozen
+      white-bloused sailors, under their blue-coated, tight-waisted officers,
+      trailed their Gardner in front, turning every now and then to spit up at
+      the draggled banners which waved over the cragged ridge. Hussars and
+      Lancers scouted in the scrub at each side, and within moved the clump of
+      camels, with humorous eyes and supercilious lips, their comic faces a
+      contrast to the blood-stained men who already lay huddled in the cacolets
+      on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The square was now moving slowly on a line parallel with the rocks,
+      stopping every few minutes to pick up wounded, and to allow the screw-guns
+      and Gardner to make themselves felt. The men looked serious, for that
+      spring on to the rocks of the Arab army had given them a vague glimpse of
+      the number and ferocity of their foes; but their faces were set like
+      stone, for they knew to a man that they must win or they must die&mdash;and
+      die, too, in a particularly unlovely fashion. But most serious of all was
+      the general, for he had seen that which brought a flush to his cheeks and
+      a frown to his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I say, Stephen," said he to his galloper, "those Mallows seem a trifle
+      jumpy. The right flank company bulged a bit when the niggers showed on the
+      hill."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Youngest troops in the square, sir," murmured the aide, looking at them
+      critically through his eye-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell Colonel Flanagan to see to it, Stephen," said the general; and the
+      galloper sped upon his way. The colonel, a fine old Celtic warrior, was
+      over at C Company in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How are the men, Captain Foley?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never better, sir," answered the senior captain, in the spirit that makes
+      a Madras officer look murder if you suggest recruiting his regiment from
+      the Punjab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stiffen them up!" cried the colonel. As he rode away a colour-sergeant
+      seemed to trip, and fell forward into a mimosa bush. He made no effort to
+      rise, but lay in a heap among the thorns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sergeant O'Rooke's gone, sorr," cried a voice. "Never mind, lads," said
+      Captain Foley. "He's died like a soldier, fighting for his Queen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Down with the Queen!" shouted a hoarse voice from the ranks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the roar of the Gardner and the typewriter-like clicking of the hopper
+      burst in at the tail of the words. Captain Foley heard them, and
+      Subalterns Grice and Murphy heard them; but there are times when a deaf
+      ear is a gift from the gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Steady, Mallows!" cried the captain, in a pause of the grunting
+      machine-gun. "We have the honour of Ireland to guard this day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And well we know how to guard it, captin!" cried the same ominous voice;
+      and there was a buzz from the length of the company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain and the two subs. came together behind the marching line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They seem a bit out of hand," murmured the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bedad," said the Galway boy, "they mean to scoot like redshanks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They nearly broke when the blacks showed on the hill," said Grice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The first man that turns, my sword is through him," cried Foley, loud
+      enough to be heard by five files on either side of him. Then, in a lower
+      voice, "It's a bitter drop to swallow, but it's my duty to report what you
+      think to the chief, and have a company of Jollies put behind us." He
+      turned away with the safety of the square upon his mind, and before he had
+      reached his goal the square had ceased to exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In their march in front of what looked like a face of cliff, they had come
+      opposite to the mouth of the gully, in which, screened by scrub and
+      boulders, 3,000 chosen dervishes, under Hamid Wad Hussein, of the
+      Baggaras, were crouching. Tat, tat, tat, went the rifles of three mounted
+      infantrymen in front of the left shoulder of the square, and an instant
+      later they wore spurring it for their lives, crouching over the manes of
+      their horses, and pelting over the sandhills with thirty or forty
+      galloping chieftains at their heels. Rocks and scrub and mimosa swarmed
+      suddenly into life. Rushing black figures came and went in the gaps of the
+      bushes. A howl that drowned the shouts of the officers, a long quavering
+      yell, burst from the ambuscade. Two rolling volleys from the Royal Wessex,
+      one crash from the screw-gun firing shrapnel, and then before a second
+      cartridge could be rammed in, a living, glistening black wave, tipped with
+      steel, had rolled over the gun, the Royal Wessex had been dashed back
+      among the camels, and 1,000 fanatics were hewing and hacking in the heart
+      of what had been the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The camels and mules in the centre, jammed more and more together as their
+      leaders flinched from the rush of the tribesmen, shut out the view of the
+      other three faces, who could only tell that the Arabs had got in by the
+      yells upon Allah, which rose ever nearer and nearer amid the clouds of
+      sand-dust, the struggling animals, and the dense mass of swaying, cursing
+      men. Some of the Wessex fired back at the Arabs who had passed them, as
+      excited Tommies will, and it is whispered among doctors that it was not
+      always a Remington bullet which was cut from a wound that day. Some
+      rallied in little knots, stabbing furiously with their bayonets at the
+      rushing spearmen. Others turned at bay with their backs against the
+      camels, and others round the general and his staff, who, revolver in hand,
+      had flung themselves into the heart of it. But the whole square was
+      sidling slowly away from the gorge, pushed back by the pressure at the
+      shattered corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officers and men at the other faces were glancing nervously to the
+      rear, uncertain what was going on, and unable to take help to their
+      comrades without breaking the formation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By Jove, they've got through the Wessex!" cried Grice of the Mallows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The divils have hurrooshed us, Ted," said his brother subaltern, cocking
+      his revolver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ranks were breaking, and crowding towards Private Conolly, all talking
+      together as the officers peered back through the veil of dust. The sailors
+      had run their Gardner out, and she was squirting death out of her five
+      barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages. "Oh, this bloody
+      gun!" shouted a voice. "She's jammed again." The fierce metallic grunting
+      had ceased, and her crew were straining and hauling at the breech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This damned vertical feed!" cried an officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The spanner, Wilson!&mdash;the spanner! Stand to your cutlasses, boys, or
+      they're into us." His voice rose into a shriek as he ended, for a
+      shovel-headed spear had been buried in his chest. A second wave of
+      dervishes lapped over the hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and the
+      right front of the line. The sailors were overborne in an instant, but the
+      Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the yell of the Moslem with
+      an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two hundred of them with a single
+      point-blank volley. The howling, leaping crew swerved away to the right,
+      and dashed on into the gap which had already been made for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But C Company had drawn no trigger to stop that fiery rush. The men leaned
+      moodily upon their Martinis. Some had even thrown them upon the ground.
+      Conolly was talking fiercely to those about him. Captain Foley, thrusting
+      his way through the press, rushed up to him with a revolver in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is your doing, you villain!" he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you raise your pistol, Captin, your brains will be over your coat,"
+      said a low voice at his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw that several rifles were turned on him. The two subs. had pressed
+      forward, and were by his side. "What is it, then?" he cried, looking round
+      from one fierce mutinous face to another. "Are you Irishmen? Are you
+      soldiers? What are you here for but to fight for your country?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "England is no country of ours," cried several.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not fighting for England. You are fighting for Ireland, and for
+      the Empire of which it as part."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A black curse on the Impire!" shouted Private McQuire, throwing down his
+      rifle. "'Twas the Impire that backed the man that druv me onto the
+      roadside. May me hand stiffen before I draw trigger for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the Impire to us, Captain Foley, and what's the Widdy to us
+      ayther?" cried a voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let the constabulary foight for her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, be God, they'd be better imployed than pullin' a poor man's thatch
+      about his ears."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Or shootin' his brother, as they did mine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was the Impire laid my groanin' mother by the wayside. Her son will
+      rot before he upholds it, and ye can put that in the charge-sheet in the
+      next coort-martial."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain the three officers begged, menaced, persuaded. The square was
+      still moving, ever moving, with the same bloody fight raging in its
+      entrails. Even while they had been speaking they had been shuffling
+      backwards, and the useless Gardner, with her slaughtered crew, was already
+      a good hundred yards from them. And the pace was accelerating. The mass of
+      men, tormented and writhing, was trying, by a common instinct, to reach
+      some clearer ground where they could re-form. Three faces were still
+      intact, but the fourth had been caved in, and badly mauled, without its
+      comrades being able to help it. The Guards had met a fresh rush of the
+      Hadendowas, and had blown back the tribesmen with a volley, and the
+      cavalry had ridden over another stream of them, as they welled out of the
+      gully. A litter of hamstrung horses, and haggled men behind them, showed
+      that a spearman on his face among the bushes can show some sport to the
+      man who charges him. But, in spite of all, the square was still reeling
+      swiftly backwards, trying to shake itself clear of this torment which
+      clung to its heart. Would it break or would it re-form? The lives of five
+      regiments and the honour of the flag hung upon the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some, at least, were breaking. The C Company of the Mallows had lost all
+      military order, and was pushing back in spite of the haggard officers, who
+      cursed, and shoved, and prayed in the vain attempt to hold them. The
+      captain and the subs. were elbowed and jostled, while the men crowded
+      towards Private Conolly for their orders. The confusion had not spread,
+      for the other companies, in the dust and smoke and turmoil, had lost touch
+      with their mutinous comrades. Captain Foley saw that even now there might
+      be time to avert a disaster. "Think what you are doing, man," he yelled,
+      rushing towards the ringleader. "There are a thousand Irish in the square,
+      and they are dead men if we break."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words alone might have had little effect on the old moonlighter. It is
+      possible that, in his scheming brain, he had already planned how he was to
+      club his Irish together and lead them to the sea. But at that moment the
+      Arabs broke through the screen of camels which had fended them off. There
+      was a Struggle, a screaming, a mule rolled over, a wounded man sprang up
+      in a cacolet with a spear through him, and then through the narrow gap
+      surged a stream of naked savages, mad with battle, drunk with slaughter,
+      spotted and splashed with blood&mdash;blood dripping from their spears,
+      their arms, their faces. Their yells, their bounds, their crouching,
+      darting figures, the horrid energy of their spear-thrusts, made them look
+      like a blast of fiends from the pit. And were these the Allies of Ireland?
+      Were these the men who were to strike for her against her enemies?
+      Conolly's soul rose up in loathing at the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a man of firm purpose, and yet at the first sight of those howling
+      fiends that purpose faltered, and at the second it was blown to the winds.
+      He saw a huge coal-black negro seize a shrieking camel-driver and saw at
+      his throat with a knife. He saw a shock-headed tribesman plunge his great
+      spear through the back of their own little bugler from Mill-street. He saw
+      a dozen deeds of blood&mdash;the murder of the wounded, the hacking of the
+      unarmed&mdash;and caught, too, in a glance, the good wholesome faces of
+      the faced-about rear rank of the Marines. The Mallows, too, had faced
+      about, and in an instant Conolly had thrown himself into the heart of C
+      Company, striving with the officers to form the men up with their
+      comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the mischief had gone too far. The rank and file had no heart in their
+      work. They had broken before, and this last rush of murderous savages was
+      a hard thing for broken men to stand against. They flinched from the
+      furious faces and dripping forearms. Why should they throw away their
+      lives for a flag for which they cared nothing? Why should their leader
+      urge them to break, and now shriek to them to re-form? They would not
+      re-form. They wanted to get to the sea and to safety. He flung himself
+      among them with outstretched arms, with words of reason, with shouts, with
+      gaspings. It was useless; the tide was beyond his control. They were
+      shredding out into the desert with their faces set for the coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bhoys, will ye stand for this?" screamed a voice. It was so ringing, so
+      strenuous, that the breaking Mallows glanced backwards. They were held by
+      what they saw. Private Conolly had planted his rifle-stock downwards in a
+      mimosa bush. From the fixed bayonet there fluttered a little green flag
+      with the crownless harp. God knows for what black mutiny, for what signal
+      of revolt, that flag had been treasured up within the corporal's tunic!
+      Now its green wisp stood amid the rush, while three proud regimental
+      colours were reeling slowly backwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What for the flag?" yelled the private.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My heart's blood for it! and mine! and mine!" cried a score of voices.
+      "God bless it! The flag, boys&mdash;the flag!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      C Company were rallying upon it. The stragglers clutched at each other,
+      and pointed. "Here, McQuire, Flynn, O'Hara," ran the shoutings. "Close on
+      the flag! Back to the flag!" The three standards reeled backwards, and the
+      seething square strove for a clearer space where they could form their
+      shattered ranks; but C Company, grim and powder-stained, choked with
+      enemies and falling fast, still closed in on the little rebel ensign that
+      flapped from the mimosa bush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a good half-hour before the square, having disentangled itself from
+      its difficulties and dressed its ranks, began to slowly move forwards over
+      the ground, across which in its labour and anguish it had been driven. The
+      long trail of Wessex men and Arabs showed but too clearly the path they
+      had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How many got into us, Stephen?" asked the general, tapping his snuff-box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should put them down at a thousand or twelve hundred, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did not see any get out again. What the devil were the Wessex thinking
+      about? The Guards stood well, though; so did the Mallows."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Colonel Flanagan reports that his front flank company was cut off, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, that's the company that was out of hand when we advanced!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Colonel Flanagan reports, sir, that the company took the whole brunt of
+      the attack, and gave the square time to re-form."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell the Hussars to ride forward, Stephen," said the general, "and try if
+      they can see anything of them. There's no firing, and I fear that the
+      Mallows will want to do some recruiting. Let the square take ground by the
+      right, and then advance!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas saw from his knoll that the men with
+      the big hats had rallied, and that they were coming back in the quiet
+      business fashion of men whose work was before them. He took counsel with
+      Moussa the Dervish and Hussein the Baggara, and a woestruck man was he
+      when he learned that the third of his men were safe in the Moslem
+      Paradise. So, having still some signs of victory to show, he gave the
+      word, and the desert warriors flitted off unseen and unheard, even as they
+      had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A red rock plateau, a few hundred spears and Remingtons, and a plain which
+      for the second time was strewn with slaughtered men, was all that his
+      day's fighting gave to the English general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a squadron of Hussars which came first to the spot where the rebel
+      flag had waved. A dense litter of Arab dead marked the place. Within, the
+      flag waved no longer, but the rifle stood in the mimosa bush, and round
+      it, with their wounds in front, lay the Fenian private and the silent
+      ranks of the Irishry. Sentiment is not an English failing, but the Hussar
+      captain raised his hilt in a salute as he rode past the blood-soaked ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The British general sent home dispatches to his Government, and so did the
+      chief of the Hadendowas, though the style and manner differed somewhat in
+      each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowa people to Mohammed Ahmed, the chosen of
+      Allah, homage and greeting, (began the latter). Know by this that on the
+      fourth day of this moon we gave battle to the Kaffirs who call themselves
+      Inglees, having with us the Chief Hussein with ten thousand of the
+      faithful. By the blessing of Allah we have broken them, and chased them
+      for a mile, though indeed these infidels are different from the dogs of
+      Egypt, and have slain very many of our men. Yet we hope to smite them
+      again ere the new moon be come, to which end I trust that thou wilt send
+      us a thousand Dervishes from Omdurman. In token of our victory I send you
+      by this messenger a flag which we have taken. By the colour it might well
+      seem to have belonged to those of the true faith, but the Kaffirs gave
+      their blood freely to save it, and so we think that, though small, it is
+      very dear to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                             I
+</pre>
+    <h3>
+      HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT'S CAME HOME.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end
+      by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been
+      fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some
+      took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce,
+      others were absorbed into the fishing fleets, and a few of the more
+      reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen, and the bloody flag at
+      the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the whole
+      human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they scoured the seas,
+      disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in
+      for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants by
+      their lavishness, and horrified them by their brutalities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above
+      all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant
+      menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations by
+      the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer, and
+      dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that discipline
+      and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers, both
+      formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an account
+      to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken whim of
+      the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with longer
+      stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell into their
+      hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after serving as boon
+      companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his cabin table with
+      his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and salt in front of him.
+      It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his calling in the Caribbean
+      Gulf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship <i>Morning Star</i>, and
+      yet he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the
+      falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the
+      guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt's was his final port of call,
+      and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old England. He
+      had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he had left
+      Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red pepper, he
+      had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet edge of the
+      tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands, touching here and
+      there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy and outrage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey, of the twenty-gun pirate barque, <i>Happy Delivery</i>,
+      had passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and
+      with murdered men. Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim
+      pleasantries and of his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main
+      his coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with
+      death and many things which are worse than death. So nervous was Captain
+      Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship, and her full and valuable lading,
+      that he struck out to the west as far as Bird's Island to be out of the
+      usual track of commerce. And yet even in those solitary waters he had been
+      unable to shake off sinister traces of Captain Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
+      ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as
+      they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and
+      wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon
+      transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship. He was
+      from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole survivor of a
+      schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath a
+      tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late captain
+      to be thrown into the boat, "as provisions for the voyage," but the seaman
+      had at once committed it to the deep, lest the temptation should be more
+      than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge frame until, at the
+      last moment, the <i>Morning Star</i> had found him in that madness which
+      is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for Captain Scarrow,
+      for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this big New Englander was
+      a prize worth having. He vowed that he was the only man whom Captain
+      Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the pirate
+      was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the seaman's
+      mind as he watched the agent's boat shooting out from the Custom-house
+      quay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll lay you a wager, Morgan," said he to the first mate, "that the agent
+      will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his lips."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, captain, I'll have you a silver dollar, and chance it," said the
+      rough old Bristol man beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
+      sprang up the ladder. "Welcome, Captain Scarrow!" he cried. "Have you
+      heard about Sharkey?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain grinned at the mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What devilry has he been up to now?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Devilry! You've not heard, then? Why, we've got him safe under lock and
+      key at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be hanged
+      to-morrow morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken up
+      by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through the
+      break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the front of
+      them with a radiant face turned up to Heaven, for he came of the Puritan
+      stock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sharkey to be hanged!" he cried. "You don't know, Master Agent, if they
+      lack a hangman, do you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stand back!" cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was even
+      stronger than his interest at the news. "I'll pay that dollar, Captain
+      Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet. How came
+      the villain to be taken?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and
+      they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship.
+      So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
+      Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
+      brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried, but
+      our good little Governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it. 'He's my
+      meat,' said he, 'and I claim the cooking of it.' If you can stay till
+      to-morrow morning at ten, you'll see the joint swinging."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish I could," said the captain, wistfully, "but I am sadly behind time
+      now. I should start with the evening tide."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That you can't do," said the agent with decision. "The Governor is going
+      back with you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Governor!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes. He's had a dispatch from Government to return without delay. The
+      fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles has been
+      waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, well!" cried the captain in some perplexity, "I'm a plain seaman,
+      and I don't know much of governors and baronets and their ways. I don't
+      remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it's in King George's
+      service, and he asks a cast in the <i>Morning Star</i> as far as London,
+      I'll do what I can for him. There's my own cabin he can have and welcome.
+      As to the cooking, it's lobscouse and salmagundy six days in the week; but
+      he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks our galley too
+      rough for his taste."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow," said the agent. "Sir
+      Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague, and it
+      is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage. Dr. Larousse said
+      that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not put fresh life into
+      him. He has a great spirit in him, though, and you must not blame him if
+      he is somewhat short in his speech."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He may say what he likes, and do what he likes, so long as he does not
+      come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship," said the captain. "He
+      is Governor of St. Kitt's, but I am Governor of the <i>Morning Star</i>,
+      and, by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to
+      my employer, just as he does to King George."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order
+      before he leaves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The early morning tide, then."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night; and he will follow
+      them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt's without
+      seeing Sharkey do the rogue's hornpipe. His own orders were instant, so it
+      may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr. Larousse may
+      attend him upon the journey."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations which
+      they could for their illustrious passenger. The largest cabin was turned
+      out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which barrels of
+      fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary the plain food
+      of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor's baggage began to
+      arrive&mdash;great iron-bound ant-proof trunks, and official tin
+      packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested the
+      cocked hat or the sword within. And then there came a note, with a
+      heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made
+      his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in
+      the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun to
+      deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some
+      difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard that the Governor was an
+      eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came
+      limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick
+      bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails like a
+      poodle's coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large green glasses
+      which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from it. A fierce beak
+      of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in front of him. His ague
+      had caused him to swathe his throat and chin with a broad linen cravat,
+      and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown secured by a cord round the
+      waist. As he advanced he carried his masterful nose high in the air, but
+      his head turned slowly from side to side in the helpless manner of the
+      purblind, and he called in a high, querulous voice for the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have my things?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Sir Charles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you wine aboard?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have ordered five cases, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And tobacco?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is a keg of Trinidad."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You play a hand at picquet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Passably well, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then anchor up, and to sea!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly through
+      the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands. The decrepit
+      Governor still limpid the deck, with one guiding hand upon the quarter
+      rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are on Government service now, captain," said he. "They are counting
+      the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you. Have you all that she
+      will carry?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Every inch, Sir Charles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, Captain Scarrow,
+      that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your
+      voyage."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency's society," said the captain.
+      "But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of
+      Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he has a snug business
+      amongst the merchants. But hark!" He raised his ring-covered band in the
+      air. From far astern there came the low, deep thunder of cannon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is from the island!" cried the captain in astonishment. "Can it be a
+      signal for us to put back?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor laughed. "You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to be
+      hanged this morning. I ordered the batteries to salute when the rascal was
+      kicking his last, so that I might know of it out at sea. There's an end of
+      Sharkey!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's an end of Sharkey!" cried the captain; and the crew took up the
+      cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at the
+      low, purple line of the vanishing land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the
+      invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was
+      generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial
+      and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge and
+      so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of the
+      deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting his
+      conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and Governor
+      smoked their long pipes, and drank their claret as three good comrades
+      should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?" asked the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is a man of some presence," said the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil," remarked
+      the mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions," said the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his
+      eyes," said Captain Scarrow. "They were of the lightest filmy blue, with
+      red-rimmed lids. Was that not so, Sir Charles?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others! But
+      I remember now that the adjutant-general said that he had such an eye as
+      you describe, and added that the jury was so foolish as to be visibly
+      discomposed when it was turned upon them. It is well for them that he is
+      dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and if he had
+      laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with straw and
+      hung him for a figure-head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a high,
+      neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so heartily, for
+      they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who sailed the
+      western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be their own.
+      Another bottle was broached to drink to a pleasant voyage, and the
+      Governor would drink just one other on the top of it, so that the seamen
+      were glad at last to stagger off&mdash;the one to his watch, and the other
+      to his bunk. But when, after his four hours' spell, the mate came down
+      again, he was amazed to see the Governor, in his Ramillies wig, his
+      glasses, and his powdering-gown, still seated sedately at the lonely table
+      with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt's when he was sick," said he,
+      "and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he is
+      well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voyage of the <i>Morning Star</i> was a successful one, and in about
+      three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel. From the first
+      day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before they
+      were halfway across the Atlantic, he was, save only for his eyes, as well
+      as any man upon the ship. Those who uphold the nourishing qualities of
+      wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night passed that he did
+      not repeat the performance of his first one. And yet be would be out upon
+      deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the best of them, peering
+      about with his weak eyes, and asking questions about the sails and the
+      rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of the sea. And he made up
+      for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining leave from the captain that
+      the New England seaman&mdash;he who had been cast away in the boat&mdash;should
+      lead him about, and, above all, that he should sit beside him when he
+      played cards and count the number of the pips, for unaided he could not
+      tell the king from the knave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service,
+      since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey and the other was his
+      avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to lend
+      his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all respect
+      behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed forefinger
+      upon the card which he should play. Between them there was little in the
+      pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first mate, by the
+      time they sighted the Lizard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the high
+      temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark. At a sign of opposition
+      or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his cravat, his
+      masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent angle, and
+      his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulders. He cracked it once
+      over the head of the carpenter when the man had accidentally jostled him
+      upon the deck. Once, too, when there was some grumbling and talk of a
+      mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was of opinion that they
+      should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they should march forward
+      and set upon them until they had trounced the devilment out of them. "Give
+      me a knife and a bucket!" he cried with an oath, and could hardly be
+      withheld from setting forth alone to deal with the spokesman of the
+      seamen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only answerable
+      to himself at St. Kitt's, killing became murder upon the high seas. In
+      politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop of the
+      House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met a
+      Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his vapouring
+      and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a stream of strange
+      anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had never known a
+      voyage pass so pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island, they
+      had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As evening
+      fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from Winchelsea,
+      with the long, dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front of her. Next
+      morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland, and Sir Charles
+      might meet the King's ministers at Westminster before the evening. The
+      boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were met for a last turn of
+      cards in the cabin, the faithful American still serving as eyes to the
+      Governor. There was a good stake upon the table, for the sailors had tried
+      on this last night to win their losses back from their passenger. Suddenly
+      he threw his cards down, and swept all the money into the pocket of his
+      long-flapped silken waistcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The game's mine!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!" cried Captain Scarrow; "you have not
+      played out the hand, and we are not the losers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sink you for a liar!" said the Governor. "I tell you I <i>have</i> played
+      out the hand, and that you <i>are</i> a loser." He whipped off his wig and
+      his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a pair
+      of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good God!" cried the mate. "It's Sharkey!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway had
+      put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in each of
+      his hands. The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the scattered cards
+      in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing laugh. "Captain
+      Sharkey is the name, gentlemen," said he, "and this is Roaring Ned
+      Galloway, the quartermaster of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. We made it hot,
+      and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and him in an oarless
+      boat. You dogs&mdash;you poor, fond, water-hearted dogs&mdash; we hold you
+      at the end of our pistols!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may shoot, or you may not!" cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon the
+      breast of his frieze jacket. "If it's my last breath, Sharkey, I tell you
+      that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and hell-fire in
+      store for you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he's going to make
+      a very pretty death of it!" cried Sharkey. "There's no one aft save the
+      man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you'll need it soon. Is
+      the dinghy astern, Ned?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, ay, captain!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the other boats scuttled?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I bored them all in three places."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. You look as if you
+      hadn't quite got your bearings yet. Is there anything you'd like to ask
+      me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe you're the devil himself!" cried the captain. "Where is the
+      Governor of St. Kitt's?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut. When I
+      broke prison I learnt from my friends&mdash;for Captain Sharkey has those
+      who love him in every port&mdash;that the Governor was starting for Europe
+      under a master who had never seen him. I climbed his verandah, and I paid
+      him the little debt that I owed him. Then I came aboard you with such of
+      his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide these tell-tale
+      eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a governor should. Now, Ned, you
+      can get to work upon them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Help! help! Watch ahoy!" yelled the mate; but the butt of the pirate's
+      pistol crashed down on his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox. Scarrow
+      rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his mouth, and
+      threw his other arm round his waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No use, Master Scarrow," said Sharkey. "Let us see you go down on your
+      knees and beg for your life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll see you&mdash;" cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; not if you twist it off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Put an inch of your knife into him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may put six inches, and then I won't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sink me, but I like his spirit!" cried Sharkey. "Put your knife in your
+      pocket, Ned. You've saved your skin, Scarrow, and it's a pity so stout a
+      man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can pick up a
+      living. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since you have lain
+      at my mercy and lived to tell the story. Tie him up, Ned."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To the stove, captain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tut, tut! there's a fire in the stove. None of your rover tricks, Ned
+      Galloway, unless they are called for, or I'll let you know which of us two
+      is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the table."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!" said the quartermaster. "You
+      surely do not mean to let him go?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still for
+      me to command and for you to obey. Sink you for a villain, do you dare to
+      question my orders?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!" said the quartermaster, and,
+      lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table. With the quick
+      dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spread-eagled hands and feet with a
+      rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with the long
+      cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of St. Kitt's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you," said the pirate.
+      "If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had your
+      cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand with
+      the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small craft about, and we
+      shall get one of them. When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a smack,
+      when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can get a
+      barque, and when he has a barque he'll soon have a full-rigged ship of his
+      own&mdash;so make haste into London town, or I may be coming back, after
+      all, for the <i>Morning Star</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin.
+      Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the
+      companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the
+      stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the
+      falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and
+      dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he
+      rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way through
+      the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!" he screamed. "Cutlasses and pistols!
+      Clear away the long-boat! Clear away the gig! Sharkey, the pirate, is in
+      yonder dinghy. Whistle up the larboard watch, bo'sun, and tumble into the
+      boats, all hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant
+      the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The boats are scuttled!" they cried. "They are leaking like a sieve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten and outwitted at every
+      point. Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor the
+      promise of it. The sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away lay a
+      fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net. Close to them was
+      the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the shining swell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are dead men!" cried the captain. "A shout all together, boys, to
+      warn them of their danger." But it was too late. At that very moment the
+      dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat. There were two rapid
+      pistol-shots, a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed by silence.
+      The clustering fishermen had disappeared. And then, suddenly, as the first
+      puffs of a land-breeze came out from the Sussex shore, the boom swung out,
+      the mainsail filled, and the little craft crept out with her nose to the
+      Atlantic.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                             II
+</pre>
+    <h3>
+      THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY WITH STEPHEN CRADDOCK
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Careening was a very necessary operation for the old pirate. On his
+      superior speed he depended both for overhauling the trader and escaping
+      the man-of-war. But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities
+      unless he periodically&mdash;once a year, at the least&mdash;cleared his
+      vessel's bottom from the long, trailing plants and crusting barnacles
+      which gather so rapidly in the tropical seas. For this purpose he
+      lightened his vessel, thrust her into some narrow inlet where she would be
+      left high and dry at low water, fastened blocks and tackles to her masts
+      to pull her over on to her bilge, and then scraped her thoroughly from
+      rudder-post to cut-water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the weeks which were thus occupied the ship was, of course,
+      defenceless; but, on the other hand, she was unapproachable by anything
+      heavier than an empty hull, and the place for careening was chosen with an
+      eye to secrecy, so that there was no great danger. So secure did the
+      captains feel, that it was not uncommon for them, at such times, to leave
+      their ships under a sufficient guard, and to start off in the long-boat,
+      either upon a sporting expedition or, more frequently, upon a visit to
+      some outlying town, where they burned the heads of the women by their
+      swaggering gallantry, or broached pipes of wine in the market square, with
+      a threat to pistol all who would not drink with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes they would even appear in cities of the size of Charleston, and
+      walk the streets with their clattering side-arms&mdash;an open scandal to
+      the whole law-abiding colony. Such visits were not always paid with
+      impunity. It was one of them, for example, which provoked Lieutenant
+      Maynard to hack off Blackbeard's head, and to spear it upon the end of his
+      bowsprit. But, as a rule, the pirate ruffled and bullied and drabbed
+      without let or hindrance, until it was time for him to go back to his ship
+      once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one pirate, however, who never crossed even the skirts of
+      civilisation, and that was the sinister Sharkey, of the barque <i>Happy
+      Delivery</i>. It may have been from his morose and solitary temper, or, as
+      is more probable, that he knew that his name upon the coast was such that
+      outraged humanity would, against all odds, have thrown themselves upon
+      him, but never once did he show his face in a settlement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When his ship was laid up he would leave her under the charge of Ned
+      Galloway&mdash;her New England quartermaster&mdash;and would take long
+      voyages in his boat, sometimes, it was said, for the purpose of burying
+      his share of the plunder, and sometimes to shoot the wild oxen of
+      Hispaniola, which, when dressed and barbecued, provided provisions for his
+      next voyage. In the latter case the barque would come round to some
+      pre-arranged spot to pick him up, and take on board what he had shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had always been a hope in the islands that Sharkey might be taken on
+      one of these occasions; and at last there came news to Kingston which
+      seemed to justify an attempt upon him. It was brought by an elderly
+      logwood-cutter who had fallen into the pirate's hands, and in some freak
+      of drunken benevolence had been allowed to get away with nothing worse
+      than a slit nose and a drubbing. His account was recent and definite. The
+      <i>Happy Delivery</i> was careening at Torbec on the south-west of
+      Hispaniola. Sharkey, with four men, was buccaneering on the outlying
+      island of La Vache. The blood of a hundred murdered crews was calling out
+      for vengeance, and now at last it seemed as if it might not call in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Edward Compton, the high-nosed, red-faced Governor, sitting in solemn
+      conclave with the commandant and the head of the council, was sorely
+      puzzled in his mind as to how he should use this chance. There was no
+      man-of-war nearer than Jamestown, and she was a clumsy old fly-boat, which
+      could neither overhaul the pirate on the seas, nor reach her in a shallow
+      inlet. There were forts and artillerymen both at Kingston and Port Royal,
+      but no soldiers available for an expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A private venture might be fitted out&mdash;and there were many who had a
+      blood-feud with Sharkey&mdash;but what could a private venture do? The
+      pirates were numerous and desperate. As to taking Sharkey and his four
+      companions, that, of course, would be easy if they could get at them; but
+      how were they to get at them on a large well-wooded island like La Vache,
+      full of wild hills and impenetrable jungles? A reward was offered to
+      whoever could find a solution, and that brought a man to the front who had
+      a singular plan, and was himself prepared to carry it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stephen Craddock had been that most formidable person, the Puritan gone
+      wrong. Sprung from a decent Salem family, his ill-doing seemed to be a
+      recoil from the austerity of their religion, and he brought to vice all
+      the physical strength and energy with which the virtues of his ancestors
+      had endowed him. He was ingenious, fearless, and exceedingly tenacious of
+      purpose, so that when he was still young, his name became notorious upon
+      the American coast. He was the same Craddock who was tried for his life in
+      Virginia for the slaying of the Seminole Chief, and, though he escaped, it
+      was well known that he had corrupted the witnesses and bribed the judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards, as a slaver, and even, as it was hinted, as a pirate, he had
+      left an evil name behind him in the Bight of Benin. Finally he had
+      returned to Jamaica with a considerable fortune, and had settled down to a
+      life of sombre dissipation. This was the man, gaunt, austere, and
+      dangerous, who now waited upon the Governor with a plan for the
+      extirpation of Sharkey. Sir Edward received him with little enthusiasm,
+      for in spite of some rumours of conversion and reformation, he had always
+      regarded him as an infected sheep who might taint the whole of his little
+      flock. Craddock saw the Governor's mistrust under his thin veil of formal
+      and restrained courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've no call to fear me, sir," said he; "I'm a changed man from what
+      you've known. I've seen the light again of late, after losing sight of it
+      for many a black year. It was through the ministration of the Rev. John
+      Simons, of our own people. Sir, if your spirit should be in need of
+      quickening, you would find a very sweet savour in his discourse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor cocked his episcopalian nose at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You came here to speak of Sharkey, Master Craddock," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The man Sharkey is a vessel of wrath," said Craddock. "His wicked horn
+      has been exalted over long, and it is borne in upon me that if I can cut
+      him off and utterly destroy him, it will be a goodly deed, and one which
+      may atone for many backslidings in the past. A plan has been given to me
+      whereby I may encompass his destruction."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor was keenly interested, for there was a grim and practical air
+      about the man's freckled face which showed that he was in earnest. After
+      all, he was a seaman and a fighter, and, if it were true that he was eager
+      to atone for his past, no better man could be chosen for the business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This will be a dangerous task, Master Craddock," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I meet my death at it, it may be that it will cleanse the memory of an
+      ill-spent life. I have much to atone for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor did not see his way to contradict him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was your plan?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have heard that Sharkey's barque, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, came
+      from this very port of Kingston?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It belonged to Mr. Codrington, and it was taken by Sharkey, who scuttled
+      his own sloop and moved into her because she was faster," said Sir Edward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; but it may be that you have lever heard that Mr. Codrington has a
+      sister ship, the <i>White Rose</i>, which lies even now in the harbour,
+      and which is so like the pirate, that, if it were not for a white paint
+      line, none could tell them apart."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! and what of that?" asked the Governor keenly, with the air of one who
+      is just on the edge of an idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By the help of it this man shall be delivered into our hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will paint out the streak upon the <i>White Rose</i>, and make it in
+      all things like the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. Then I will set sail for the
+      Island of La Vache, where this man is slaying the wild oxen. When he sees
+      me he will surely mistake me for his own vessel which he is awaiting, and
+      he will come on board to his own undoing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a simple plan, and yet it seemed to the Governor that it might be
+      effective. Without hesitation he gave Craddock permission to carry it out,
+      and to take any steps he liked in order to further the object which he had
+      in view. Sir Edward was not very sanguine, for many attempts had been made
+      upon Sharkey, and their results had shown that he was as cunning as he was
+      ruthless. But this gaunt Puritan with the evil record was cunning aid
+      ruthless also. The contest of wits between two such men as Sharkey and
+      Craddock appealed to the Governor's acute sense of sport, and though he
+      was inwardly convinced that the chances were against him, he backed his
+      man with the same loyalty which he would have shown to his horse or his
+      cock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Haste was, above all things, necessary, for upon any day the careening
+      might be finished, and the pirates out at sea once more. But there was not
+      very much to do, and there were many willing hands to do it, so the second
+      day saw the <i>White Rose</i> beating out for the open sea. There were
+      many seamen in the port who knew the lines and rig of the pirate barque,
+      and not one of them could see the slightest difference in this
+      counterfeit. Her white side line had been painted out, her masts and yards
+      were smoked, to give them the dingy appearance of the weather-beaten
+      rover, and a large diamond-shaped patch was let into her foretopsail. Her
+      crew were volunteers, many of them being men who had sailed with Stephen
+      Craddock before&mdash;the mate, Joshua Hird, an old slaver, had been his
+      accomplice in many voyages, and came now at the bidding of his chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The avenging barque sped across the Caribbean Sea, and, at the sight of
+      that patched topsail, the little craft which they met flew left and right
+      like frightened trout in a pool. On the fourth evening Point Abacou bore
+      five miles to the north and east of them. On the fifth they were at anchor
+      in the Bay of Tortoises at the Island of La Vache, where Sharkey and his
+      four men had been hunting. It was a well-wooded place, with the palms and
+      underwood growing down to the thin crescent of silver sand which skirted
+      the shore. They had hoisted the black flag and the red pennant, but no
+      answer came from the shore. Craddock strained his eyes, hoping every
+      instant to see a boat shoot out to them with Sharkey seated in the sheets.
+      But the night passed away, and a day and yet another night, without any
+      sign of the men whom they were endeavouring to trap. It looked as if they
+      were already gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the second morning Craddock went ashore in search of some proof whether
+      Sharkey and his men were still upon the island. What he found reassured
+      him greatly. Close to the shore was a boucan of green wood, such as was
+      used for preserving the meat, and a great store of barbecued strips of
+      ox-flesh was hung upon lines all round it. The pirate ship had not taken
+      off her provisions, and therefore the hunters were still upon the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why had they not shown themselves? Was it that they had detected that this
+      was not their own ship? Or was it that they were hunting in the interior
+      of the island, and were not on the look-out for a ship yet? Craddock was
+      still hesitating between the two alternatives, when a Carib Indian came
+      down with information. The pirates were in the island, he said, and their
+      camp was a day's march from the Sea. They had stolen his wife, and the
+      marks of their stripes were still pink upon his brown back. Their enemies
+      were his friends, and he would lead them to where they lay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Craddock could not have asked for anything better; so early next morning,
+      with a small party armed to the teeth, he set off, under the guidance of
+      the Carib. All day they struggled through brushwood and clambered over
+      rocks, pushing their way further and further into the desolate heart of
+      the island. Here and there they found traces of the hunters, the bones of
+      a slain ox, or the marks of feet in a morass, and once, towards evening,
+      it seemed to some of them that they heard the distant rattle of guns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night they spent under the trees, and pushed on again with the
+      earliest light. About noon they came to the huts of bark, which, the Carib
+      told them, were the camp of the hunters, but they were silent and
+      deserted. No doubt their occupants were away at the hunt and would return
+      in the evening, so Craddock and his men lay in ambush in the brushwood
+      around them. But no one came, and another night was spent in the forest.
+      Nothing more could be done, and it seemed to Craddock that after the two
+      days' absence it was time that he returned to his ship once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The return journey was less difficult, as they had already blazed a path
+      for themselves. Before evening they found themselves once more at the Bay
+      of Palms, and saw their ship riding at anchor where they had left her.
+      Their boat and oars had been hauled up among the bushes, so they launched
+      it and pulled out to the barque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No luck, then!" cried Joshua Hird, the mate, looking down with a pale
+      face from the poop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His camp was empty, but he may come down to us yet," said Craddock, with
+      his hand on the ladder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody upon deck began to laugh. "I think," said the mate, "that these
+      men had better stay in the boat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you will come aboard, sir, you will understand it." He spoke in a
+      curious, hesitating fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood flushed to Craddock's gaunt face. "How is this, Master Hird?" he
+      cried, springing up the side. "What mean you by giving orders to my boat's
+      crew?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he passed over the bulwarks, with one foot upon the deck and one
+      knee upon the rail, a tow-bearded man, whom he had never before observed
+      aboard his vessel, grabbed suddenly at his pistol. Craddock clutched at
+      the fellow's wrist, but at the same instant his mate snatched the cutlass
+      from his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What roguery is this?" shouted Craddock, looking furiously around him.
+      But the crew stood in knots about the deck, laughing and whispering
+      amongst themselves without showing any desire to go to his assistance.
+      Even in that hurried glance Craddock noticed that they were dressed in the
+      most singular manner, with long riding-coats, full-skirted velvet gowns
+      and coloured ribands at their knees, more like men of fashion than seamen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he looked at their grotesque figures he struck his brow with his
+      clenched fist to be sure that he was awake. The deck seemed to be much
+      dirtier than when he had left it, and there were strange, sun-blackened
+      faces turned upon him from every side. Not one of them did he know save
+      only Joshua Hird. Had the ship been captured in his absence? Were these
+      Sharkey's men who were around him? At the thought he broke furiously away
+      and tried to climb over to his boat, but a dozen hands were on him in an
+      instant, and he was pushed aft through the open door of his own cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was all different to the cabin which he had left. The floor was
+      different, the ceiling was different, the furniture was different. His had
+      been plain and austere. This was sumptuous and yet dirty, hung with rare
+      velvet curtains splashed with wine-stains, and panelled with costly woods
+      which were pocked with pistol-marks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the table was a great chart of the Caribbean Sea, and beside it, with
+      compasses in his hand, sat a clean-shaven, pale-faced man with a fur cap
+      and a claret-coloured coat of damask. Craddock turned white under his
+      freckles as he looked upon the long, thin high-nostrilled nose and the
+      red-rimmed eyes which were turned upon him with the fixed, humorous gaze
+      of the master player who has left his opponent without a move. "Sharkey!"
+      cried Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey's thin lips opened, and he broke into his high, sniggering laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You fool!" he cried, and, leaning over, he stabbed Craddock's shoulder
+      again and again with his compasses. "You poor, dull-witted fool, would you
+      match yourself against me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not the pain of the wounds, but it was the contempt in Sharkey's
+      voice which turned Craddock into a savage madman. He flew at the pirate,
+      roaring with rage, striking, kicking, writhing, foaming. It took six men
+      to drag him down on to the floor amidst the splintered remains of the
+      table&mdash;and not one of the six who did not bear the prisoner's mark
+      upon him. But Sharkey still surveyed him with the same contemptuous eye.
+      From outside there came the crash of breaking wood and the clamour of
+      startled voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is that?" asked Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They have stove the boat with cold shot, and the men are in the water."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let them stay there," said the pirate. "Now, Craddock, you know where you
+      are. You are aboard my ship, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and you lie at my
+      mercy. I knew you for a stout seaman, you rogue, before you took to this
+      long-shore canting. Your hands then were no cleaner than my own. Will you
+      sign articles, as your mate has done, and join us, or shall I heave you
+      over to follow your ship's company?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is my ship?" asked Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Scuttled in the bay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the hands?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the bay, too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I'm for the bay, also."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hock him and heave him over," said Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many rough hands had dragged Craddock out upon deck, and Galloway, the
+      quartermaster, had already drawn his hanger to cripple him, when Sharkey
+      came hurrying from his cabin with an eager face. "We can do better with
+      the hound!" he cried. "Sink me if it is not a rare plan. Throw him into
+      the sail-room with the irons on, and do you come here, quarter-master,
+      that I may tell you what I have in my mind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Craddock, bruised and wounded in soul and body, was thrown into the
+      dark sail-room, so fettered that he could not stir hand or foot, but his
+      Northern blood was running strong in his veins, and his grim spirit
+      aspired only to make such an ending as might go some way towards atoning
+      for the evil of his life. All night he lay in the curve of the bilge
+      listening to the rush of the water and the straining of the timbers which
+      told him that the ship was at sea and driving fast. In the early morning
+      someone came crawling to him in the darkness over the heap of sails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here's rum and biscuits," said the voice of his late mate. "It's at the
+      risk of my life, Master Craddock, that I bring them to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was you who trapped me and caught me as in a snare!" cried Craddock.
+      "How shall you answer for what you have done?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What I did I did with the point of a knife betwixt my blade-bones."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "God forgive you for a coward, Joshua Hird. How came you into their
+      hands?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, Master Craddock, the pirate ship came back from its careening upon
+      the very day that you left us. They laid us aboard, and, short-handed as
+      we were, with the best of the men ashore with you, we could offer but a
+      poor defence. Some were cut down, and they were the happiest. The others
+      were killed afterwards. As to me, I saved my life by signing on with
+      them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And they scuttled my ship?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They scuttled her, and then Sharkey and his men, who had been watching us
+      from the brushwood, came off to the ship. His mainyard had been cracked
+      and fished last voyage, so he had suspicions of us, seeing that ours was
+      whole. Then he thought of laying the same trap for you which you had set
+      for him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Craddock groaned. "How came I not to see that fished mainyard?" he
+      muttered. "But whither are we bound?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are running north and west."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "North and west! Then we are heading back towards Jamaica."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With an eight-knot wind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you heard what they mean to do with me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have not heard. If you would but sign the articles&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Enough, Joshua Hird! I have risked my soul too often."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As you wish. I have done what I could. Farewell!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that night and the next day the <i>Happy Delivery</i> ran before the
+      easterly trades, and Stephen Craddock lay in the dark of the sail-room
+      working patiently at his wrist-irons. One he had slipped off at the cost
+      of a row of broken and bleeding knuckles, but, do what he would, he could
+      not free the other, and his ankles were securely fastened. From hour to
+      hour he heard the swish of the water, and knew that the barque must be
+      driving with all set in front of the trade wind. In that case they must be
+      nearly back again to Jamaica by now. What plan could Sharkey have in his
+      head, and what use did he hope to make of him? Craddock set his teeth, and
+      vowed that if he had once been a villain from choice he would, at least,
+      never be one by compulsion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the second morning Craddock became aware that sail had been reduced in
+      the vessel, and that she was tacking slowly, with a light breeze on her
+      beam. The varying slope of the sail room and the sounds from the deck told
+      his practised senses exactly what she was doing. The short reaches showed
+      him that she was manoeuvring near shore, and making for some definite
+      point. If so, she must have reached Jamaica. But what could she be doing
+      there?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly there was a burst of hearty cheering from the deck, and
+      then the crash of a gun above his head, and then the answering booming of
+      guns from far over the water. Craddock sat up and strained his ears. Was
+      the ship in action? Only the one gun had been fired, and though many had
+      answered, there were none of the crashings which told of a shot coming
+      home. Then, if it was not an action, it must be a salute. But who would
+      salute Sharkey, the pirate? It could only be another pirate ship which
+      would do so. So Craddock lay back again with a groan, and continued to
+      work at the manacle which still held his right wrist. But suddenly there
+      came the shuffling of steps outside, and he had hardly time to wrap the
+      loose links round his free hand, when the door was unbolted and two
+      pirates came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Got your hammer, carpenter?" asked one, whom Craddock recognised as the
+      big quartermaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Knock off his leg shackles, then. Better leave the bracelets&mdash;he's
+      safer with them on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With hammer and chisel the carpenter loosened the irons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you going to do with me?" asked Craddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come on deck and you'll see."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor seized him by the arm and dragged him roughly to the foot of
+      the companion. Above him was a square of blue sky cut across by the mizzen
+      gaff, with the colours flying at the peak. But it was the sight of those
+      colours which struck the breath from Stephen Craddock's lips. For there
+      were two of them, and the British ensign was flying above the Jolly Rodger&mdash;the
+      honest flag above that of the rogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant Craddock stopped in amazement, but a brutal push from the
+      pirates behind drove him up the companion ladder. As he stepped out upon
+      deck, his eyes turned up to the main, and there again were the British
+      colours flying above the red pennant, and all the shrouds and rigging were
+      garlanded with streamers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the ship been taken, then? But that was impossible, for there were the
+      pirates clustering in swarms along the port bulwarks, and waving their
+      hats joyously in the air. Most prominent of all was the renegade mate,
+      standing on the foc'sle head, and gesticulating wildly. Craddock looked
+      over the side to see what they were cheering at, and then in a flash he
+      saw how critical was the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the port bow, and about a mile off, lay the white houses and forts of
+      Port Royal, with flags breaking out everywhere over their roofs. Right
+      ahead was the opening of the palisades leading to the town of Kingston.
+      Not more than a quarter of a mile off was a small sloop working out
+      against the very slight wind. The British ensign was at her peak, and her
+      rigging was all decorated. On her deck could be seen a dense crowd of
+      people cheering and waving their hats, and the gleam of scarlet told that
+      there were officers of the garrison among them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an instant, with the quick perception of a man of action, Craddock saw
+      through it all. Sharkey, with that diabolical cunning and audacity which
+      were among his main characteristics, was simulating the part which
+      Craddock would himself have played had he come back victorious. It was in
+      <i>his</i> honour that the salutes were firing and the flags flying. It
+      was to welcome <i>him</i> that this ship with the Governor, the
+      commandant, and the chiefs of the island were approaching. In another ten
+      minutes they would all be under the guns of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and
+      Sharkey would have won the greatest stake that ever a pirate played for
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bring him forward," cried the pirate captain, as Craddock appeared
+      between the carpenter and the quartermaster. "Keep the ports closed, but
+      clear away the port guns, and stand by for a broadside. Another two cable
+      lengths and we have them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are edging away," said the boatswain. "I think they smell us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's soon set right," said Sharkey, turning his filmy eyes upon
+      Craddock. "Stand there, you&mdash;right there, where they can recognise
+      you, with your hand on the guy, and wave your hat to them. Quick, or your
+      brains will be over your coat. Put an inch of your knife into him, Ned.
+      Now, will you wave your hat? Try him again, then. Hey, shoot him! Stop
+      him!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was too late. Relying upon the manacles, the quartermaster had
+      taken his hands for a moment off Craddock's arm. In that instant he had
+      flung off the carpenter, and, amid a spatter of pistol bullets, had sprung
+      the bulwarks and was swimming for his life. He had been hit and hit again,
+      but it takes many pistols to kill a resolute and powerful man who has his
+      mind set upon doing something before he dies. He was a strong swimmer,
+      and, in spite of the red trail which he left in the water behind him, he
+      was rapidly increasing his distance from the pirate. "Give me a musket!"
+      cried Sharkey, with a savage oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a famous shot, and his iron nerves never failed him in an
+      emergency. The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then
+      swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop.
+      Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired. With the crack of the gun
+      the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a gesture
+      of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay. Then, as
+      the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an impotent
+      broadside, Stephen Craddock, smiling grimly in his death agony, sank
+      slowly down to that golden couch which glimmered far beneath him.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                             III
+</pre>
+    <h3>
+      HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Buccaneers were something higher than a mere band of marauders. They
+      were a floating republic, with laws, usages, and discipline of their own.
+      In their endless and remorseless quarrel with the Spaniards they had some
+      semblance of right upon their side. Their bloody harryings of the cities
+      of the Main were not more barbarous than the inroads of Spain upon the
+      Netherlands&mdash;or upon the Caribs in these same American lands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief of the Buccaneers, were he English or French, a Morgan or a
+      Granmont, was still a responsible person, whose country might countenance
+      him, or even praise him, so long as he refrained from any deed which might
+      shock the leathery seventeenth-century conscience too outrageously. Some
+      of them were touched with religion, and it is still remembered how Sawkins
+      threw the dice overboard upon the Sabbath, and Daniel pistolled a man
+      before the altar for irreverence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there came a day when the fleets of the Buccaneers no longer mustered
+      at the Tortugas, and the solitary and outlawed pirate took their place.
+      Yet even with him the tradition of restraint and of discipline still
+      lingered; and among the early pirates, the Avorys, the Englands, and the
+      Robertses, there remained some respect for human sentiment. They were more
+      dangerous to the merchant than to the seaman. But they in turn were
+      replaced by more savage and desperate men, who frankly recognised that
+      they would get no quarter in their war with the human race, and who swore
+      that they would give as little as they got. Of their histories we know
+      little that is trustworthy. They wrote no memoirs and left no trace, save
+      an occasional blackened and blood-stained derelict adrift upon the face of
+      the Atlantic. Their deeds could only be surmised from the long roll of
+      ships who never made their port.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Searching the records of history, it is only here and there in an
+      old-world trial that the veil that shrouds them seems for an instant to be
+      lifted, and we catch a glimpse of some amazing and grotesque brutality
+      behind. Such was the breed of Ned Low, of Gow the Scotchman, and of the
+      infamous Sharkey, whose coal-black barque, the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, was
+      known from the Newfoundland Banks to the mouths of the Orinoco as the dark
+      forerunner of misery and of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were many men, both among the islands and on the Main, who had a
+      blood feud with Sharkey, but not one who had suffered more bitterly than
+      Copley Banks, of Kingston. Banks had been one of the leading sugar
+      merchants of the West Indies. He was a man of position, a member of the
+      Council, the husband of a Percival, and the cousin of the Governor of
+      Virginia. His two sons had been sent to London to be educated, and their
+      mother had gone over to bring them back. On their return voyage the ship,
+      the <i>Duchess of Cornwall</i>, fell into the hands of Sharkey, and the
+      whole family met with an infamous death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks said little when he heard the news, but he sank into a morose
+      and enduring melancholy. He neglected his business, avoided his friends,
+      and spent much of his time in the low taverns of the fishermen and seamen.
+      There, amidst riot and devilry, he sat silently puffing at his pipe, with
+      a set face and a smouldering eye. It was generally supposed that his
+      misfortunes had shaken his wits, and his old friends looked at him
+      askance, for the company which he kept was enough to bar him from honest
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time there came rumours of Sharkey over the sea. Sometimes it
+      was from some schooner which had seen a great flame upon the horizon, and
+      approaching to offer help to the burning ship, had fled away at the sight
+      of the sleek, black barque, lurking like a wolf near a mangled sheep.
+      Sometimes it was a frightened trader, which had come tearing in with her
+      canvas curved like a lady's bodice, because she had seen a patched
+      foretopsail rising slowly above the violet water-line. Sometimes it was
+      from a coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama cay littered with
+      sun-dried bodies. Once there came a man who had been mate of a Guineaman,
+      and who had escaped from the pirate's hands. He could not speak&mdash;for
+      reasons which Sharkey could best supply&mdash;but he could write, and he
+      did write, to the very great interest of Copley Banks. For hours they sat
+      together over the map, and the dumb man pointed here and there to outlying
+      reefs and tortuous inlets, while his companion sat smoking in silence,
+      with his unvarying face and his fiery eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, some two years after his misfortunes, Mr. Copley Banks strode
+      into his own office with his old air of energy and alertness. The manager
+      stared at him in surprise, for it was months since he had shown any
+      interest in business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good morning, Mr. Banks!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good morning, Freeman. I see that <i>Ruffling Harry</i> is in the Bay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have other plans for her, Freeman. I have determined upon a slaving
+      venture to Whydah."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But her cargo is ready, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then it must come out again, Freeman. My mind is made up, and the <i>Ruffling
+      Harry</i> must go slaving to Whydah."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to
+      clear the ship once more. And then Copley Banks began to make preparations
+      for his African voyage. It appeared that he relied upon force rather than
+      barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried none of those showy
+      trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted with eight
+      nine-pounder guns, and racks full of muskets and cutlasses. The
+      after-sailroom next the cabin was transformed into a powder magazine, and
+      she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer. Water and
+      provisions were shipped for a long voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the preparation of his ship's company was most surprising. It made
+      Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that his
+      master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or another,
+      he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the firm for
+      years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port&mdash;men whose
+      reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been ashamed to
+      furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known to have been
+      present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his hideous scarlet
+      disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a red afterglow from
+      that great crime. He was first mate, and under him was Israel Martin, a
+      little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell Davies at the taking
+      of Cape Coast Castle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
+      their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
+      man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk. His beard had been shaved,
+      and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom Sharkey had
+      placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his experiences to
+      Copley Banks. These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet uncommented upon in
+      the town of Kingston. The Commandant of the troops&mdash;Major Harvey of
+      the Artillery&mdash;made serious representations to the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is not a trader, but a small warship," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think it would be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the
+      vessel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you suspect?" asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man,
+      broken down with fevers and port wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suspect," said the soldier, "that it is Stede Bonnet over again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious character
+      who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in his blood,
+      had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the Caribbean
+      Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the utmost
+      consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been accused of
+      being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions upon their
+      plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister
+      construction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Major Harvey," said he, "I am vastly sorry to do anything which may
+      offend my friend Copley Banks, for many a time have my knees been under
+      his mahogany, but in face of what you say there is no choice for me but to
+      order you to board the vessel and to satisfy yourself as to her character
+      and destination."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So at one in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers,
+      paid a surprise visit to the <i>Ruffling Harry</i>, with the result that
+      they picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the
+      moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented danger.
+      She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out against the
+      north-east trades on a course for the Windward Passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When upon the next morning the brig had left Morant Point a mere haze upon
+      the Southern horizon, the men were called aft, and Copley Banks revealed
+      his plans to them. He had chosen them, he said, as brisk boys and lads of
+      spirit, who would rather run some risk upon the sea than starve for a
+      living upon the shore. King's ships were few and weak, and they could
+      master any trader who might come their way. Others had done well at the
+      business, and with a handy, well-found vessel, there was no reason why
+      they should not turn their tarry jackets into velvet coats. If they were
+      prepared to sail under the black flag, he was ready to command them; but
+      if any wished to withdraw, they might have the gig and row back to
+      Jamaica.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four men out of six-and-forty asked for their discharge, went over the
+      ship's side into the boat, and rowed away amidst the jeers and howlings of
+      the crew. The rest assembled aft, and drew up the articles of their
+      association. A square of black tarpaulin had the white skull painted upon
+      it, and was hoisted amidst cheering at the main.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Officers were elected, and the limits of their authority fixed. Copley
+      Banks was chosen captain, but, as there are no mates upon a pirate craft,
+      Birthmark Sweetlocks became quartermaster, and Israel Martin the
+      boatswain. There was no difficulty in knowing what was the custom of the
+      brotherhood, for half the men at least had served upon pirates before.
+      Food should be the same for all, and no man should interfere with another
+      man's drink! The captain should have a cabin, but all hands should be
+      welcome to enter it when they chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All should share and share alike, save only the captain, quartermaster,
+      boatswain, carpenter, and master-gunner, who had from a quarter to a whole
+      share extra. He who saw a prize first should have the best weapon taken
+      out of her. He who boarded her first should have the richest suit of
+      clothes aboard of her. Every man might treat his own prisoner, be it man
+      or woman, after his own fashion. If a man flinched from his gun, the
+      quartermaster should pistol him. These were some of the rules which the
+      crew of the <i>Ruffling Harry</i> subscribed by putting forty-two crosses
+      at the foot of the paper upon which they had been drawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So a new rover was afloat upon the seas, and her name before a year was
+      over became as well known as that of the <i>Happy Delivery</i>. From the
+      Bahamas to the Leewards, and from the Leewards to the Windwards, Copley
+      Banks became the rival of Sharkey and the terror of traders. For a long
+      time the barque and the brig never met, which was the more singular as the
+      <i>Ruffling Harry</i> was for ever looking in at Sharkey's resorts; but at
+      last one day, when she was passing down the inlet of Coxon's Hole, at the
+      east end of Cuba, with the intention of careening, there was the <i>Happy
+      Delivery</i>, with her blocks and tackle-falls already rigged for the same
+      purpose. Copley Banks fired a shotted salute and hoisted the green
+      trumpeter ensign, as the custom was among gentlemen of the sea. Then he
+      dropped his boat and went aboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey was not a man of a genial mood, nor had he any kindly
+      sympathy for those who were of the same trade as himself. Copley Banks
+      found him seated astride upon one of the after guns, with his New England
+      quartermaster, Ned Galloway, and a crowd of roaring ruffians standing
+      about him. Yet none of them roared with quite such assurance when
+      Sharkey's pale face and filmy blue eyes were tuned upon him. He was in his
+      shirt-sleeves, with his cambric frills breaking through his open red satin
+      long-flapped vest. The scorching sun seemed to have no power upon his
+      fleshless frame, for he wore a low fur cap, as though it had been winter.
+      A many-coloured band of silk passed across his body and supported a short,
+      murderous sword, while his broad, brass-buckled belt was stuffed with
+      pistols.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sink you for a poacher!" he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the
+      bulwarks. "I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch
+      also! What mean you by fishing in my waters?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks looked at him, and his eyes were like those of a traveller
+      who sees his home at last. "I am glad that we are of one mind," said he,
+      "for I am myself of opinion that the seas are not large enough for the two
+      of us. But if you will take your sword and pistols and come upon a
+      sand-bank with me, then the world will be rid of a damned villain,
+      whichever way it goes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, this is talking!" said Sharkey, jumping off the gun and holding out
+      his hand. "I have not met many who could look John Sharkey in the eyes and
+      speak with a full breath. May the devil seize me if I do not choose you as
+      a consort! But if you play me false, then I will come aboard of you and
+      gut you upon your own poop."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I pledge you the same!" said Copley Banks, and so the two pirates
+      became sworn comrades to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That summer they went north as far as the Newfoundland Banks, and harried
+      the New York traders and the whale ships from New England. It was Copley
+      Banks who captured the Liverpool ship, <i>House of Hanover</i>, but it was
+      Sharkey who fastened her master to the windlass and pelted him to death
+      with empty claret-bottles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together they engaged the King's ship <i>Royal Fortune</i>, which had been
+      sent in search of them, and beat her off after a night action of five
+      hours, the drunken, raving crews fighting naked in the light of the
+      battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles
+      of every gun. They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and
+      then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ready for a long cruise
+      down the West Indies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time Sharkey and Copley Banks had become very excellent friends,
+      for Sharkey loved a whole-hearted villain, and he loved a man of metal,
+      and it seemed to him that the two met in the captain of the <i>Ruffling
+      Harry</i>. It was long before he gave his confidence to him, for cold
+      suspicion lay deep in his character. Never once would he trust himself
+      outside his own ship and away from his own men. But Copley Banks came
+      often on board the <i>Happy Delivery</i>, and joined Sharkey in many of
+      his morose debauches, so that at last any lingering misgivings of the
+      latter were set at rest. He knew nothing of the evil that he had done to
+      his new boon companion, for of his many victims how could he remember the
+      woman and the two boys whom he had slain with such levity so long ago!
+      When, therefore, he received a challenge to himself and to his
+      quartermaster for a carouse upon the last evening of their stay at the
+      Caicos Bank he saw no reason to refuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A well-found passenger ship had been rifled the week before, so their fare
+      was of the best, and after supper five of them drank deeply together.
+      There were the two captains, Birthmark Sweetlocks, Ned Galloway, and
+      Israel Martin, the old buccaneers-man. To wait upon them was the dumb
+      steward, whose head Sharkey split with a glass, because he had been too
+      slow in the filling of it. The quarter-master has slipped Sharkey's
+      pistols away from him, for it was an old joke with him to fire them
+      cross-handed under the table and see who was the luckiest man. It was a
+      pleasantry which had cost his boatswain his leg, so now, when the table
+      was cleared, they would coax Sharkey's weapons away from him on the excuse
+      of the heat, and lay them out of his reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain's cabin of the <i>Ruffling Harry</i> was in a deck-house upon
+      the poop, and a stern-chaser gun was mounted at the back of it. Round shot
+      were racked round the wall, and three great hogsheads of powder made a
+      stand for dishes and for bottles. In this grim room the five pirates sang
+      and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up their
+      glasses, and passed the box and the candle round for their tobacco-pipes.
+      Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices hoarser, the curses and
+      shoutings more incoherent, until three of the five had closed their
+      blood-shot eyes, and dropped their swimming heads upon the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had
+      drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake
+      his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the watchful
+      steward, for ever filling up his waning glass. From without came the low
+      lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor's chanty from the
+      barque. In the windless tropical night the words came clearly to their
+      ears:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     A trader sailed from Stepney Town,
+   Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!
+     A trader sailed from Stepney Town
+   With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.
+     Ho, the bully Rover Jack,
+   Waiting with his yard aback
+     Out upon the Lowland Sea.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks
+      glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from the shot-rack
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Captain Sharkey," said Copley Banks, "do you remember the <i>Duchess of
+      Cornwall</i>, hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago
+      off the Statira Shoal?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Curse me if I can bear their names in mind," said Sharkey. "We did as
+      many as ten ships a week about that time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. Maybe that will
+      bring it back to your mind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose
+      jutting upwards. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing
+      laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it. "But
+      burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!" he cried. "How came you to
+      think of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was of interest to me," said Copley Banks, "for the woman was my wife,
+      and the lads were my only sons."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering fire
+      which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame. He read
+      their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt. Then he turned
+      to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round him, and in an
+      instant his arms were bound to his side. He fought like a wild cat, and
+      screamed for help. "Ned!" he yelled. "Ned! Wake up! Here's damned
+      villainy! Help, Ned!&mdash;help!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for any
+      voice to wake them. Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey was
+      swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and
+      helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a handkerchief,
+      but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at them. The dumb man
+      chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for the first time when he
+      saw the empty mouth before him. He understood that vengeance, slow and
+      patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat
+      elaborate. First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder
+      barrels, and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor. They
+      piled it round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled in a
+      heap of it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun and they triced him
+      sitting over the port-hole, with his body about a foot from the muzzle.
+      Wriggle as he would he could not move an inch either to the right or left,
+      and the dumb man trussed him up with a sailor's cunning, so that there was
+      no chance that he should work free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, you bloody devil," said Copley Banks, softly, "you must listen to
+      what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will hear.
+      You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have given all
+      that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To reach you I have had to sink to your level. For two years I strove
+      against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learnt that there
+      was no other. I've robbed and I have murdered&mdash;worse still, I have
+      laughed and lived with you&mdash;and all for the one end. And now my time
+      has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the shadow
+      creeping upon you and the devil waiting for you in the shadow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty
+      over the water.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
+  Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending!
+    Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
+    His gold's on the capstan, his blood's on his gown,
+      All for bully Rover Jack,
+      Reaching on the weather tack
+    Right across the Lowland Sea.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men
+      pacing backwards and forwards upon the deck. And yet he was helpless,
+      staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to
+      utter so much as a groan. Again there came the burst of voices from the
+      deck of the barque.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    So it's up and it's over to Stornoway Bay,
+  Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with stunsails!
+    It's off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay,
+    Where the liquor is good and the lasses are gay,
+      Waiting for their bully Jack,
+      Watching for him sailing back,
+    Right across the Lowland Sea.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      To the dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own fate
+      seem the harsher, but there was no softening in those venomous blue eyes.
+      Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had sprinkled
+      fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the candle and cut
+      it to the length of about an inch. This he placed upon the loose powder at
+      the breach of the gun. Thin he scattered powder thickly over the floor
+      beneath, so that when the candle fell at the recoil it must explode the
+      huge pile in which the three drunkards were wallowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've made others look death in the face, Sharkey," said he; "now it has
+      come to be your own turn. You and these swine here shall go together!" He
+      lit the candle-end as he spoke, and blew out the other lights upon the
+      table. Then he passed out with the dumb man, and locked the cabin door
+      upon the outer side. But before he closed it he took an exultant look
+      backwards, and received one last curse from those unconquerable eyes. In
+      the single dim circle of light that ivory-white face, with the gleam of
+      moisture upon the high, bald forehead, was the last that was ever seen of
+      Sharkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a skiff alongside, and in it Copley Banks and the dumb steward
+      made their way to the beach, and looked back upon the brig riding in the
+      moon-light just outside the shadow of the palm trees. They waited and
+      waited watching that dim light which shone through the stem port. And then
+      at last there came the dull thud of a gun, and an instant later the
+      shattering crash of an explosion. The long, sleek, black barque, the sweep
+      of white sand, and the fringe of nodding feathery palm trees sprang into
+      dazzling light and back into darkness again. Voices screamed and called
+      upon the bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him, touched his companion
+      upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely jungle of the
+      Caicos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE CROXLEY MASTER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands, in
+      a state of the blackest despondency. Before him was the open ledger with
+      the long columns of Dr. Oldacre's prescriptions. At his elbow lay the
+      wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the lumps
+      of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of bottles waited to be
+      filled. But his spirits were too low for work. He sat in silence with his
+      fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened
+      brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars upheld
+      the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank. For six days in the week they
+      spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was
+      Sunday. Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and
+      blasted by the greed of man. There was nothing in the surroundings to
+      cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment which
+      weighed upon the medical assistant. His trouble was deeper and more
+      personal. The winter session was approaching. He should be back again at
+      the University completing the last year which would give him his medical
+      degree; but, alas! he had not the money with which to pay his class fees,
+      nor could he imagine how he could procure it. Sixty pounds were wanted to
+      make his career, and it might have been as many thousand for any chance
+      there seemed to be of his obtaining it. He was roused from his black
+      meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre himself, a large, clean-shaven,
+      respectable man, with a prim manner and an austere face. He had prospered
+      exceedingly by the support of the local Church interest, and the rule of
+      his life was never by word or action to run a risk of offending the
+      sentiment which had made him. His standard of respectability and of
+      dignity was exceedingly high, and he expected the same from his
+      assistants. His appearance and words were always vaguely benevolent. A
+      sudden impulse came over the despondent student. He would test the reality
+      of this philanthropy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg your pardon, Dr. Oldacre," said he, rising from his chair; "I have
+      a great favour to ask of you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor's appearance was not encouraging. His mouth suddenly tightened,
+      and his eyes fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Mr. Montgomery?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are aware, sir, that I need only one more session to complete my
+      course."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So you have told me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very important to me, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Naturally."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The fees, Dr. Oldacre, would amount to about sixty pounds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid that my duties call me elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One moment, sir! I had hoped, sir, that perhaps, if I signed a paper
+      promising you interest upon your money, you would advance this sum to me.
+      I will pay you back, sir, I really will. Or, if you like, I will work it
+      off after I am qualified."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor's lips had thinned into a narrow line. His eyes were raised
+      again, and sparkled indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your request is unreasonable, Mr. Montgomery. I am surprised that you
+      should have made it. Consider, sir, how many thousands of medical students
+      there are in this country. No doubt there are many of them who have a
+      difficulty in finding their fees. Am I to provide for them all? Or why
+      should I make an exception in your favour? I am grieved and disappointed,
+      Mr. Montgomery, that you should have put me into the painful position of
+      having to refuse you." He turned upon his heel, and walked with offended
+      dignity out of the surgery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The student smiled bitterly, and turned to his work of making up the
+      morning prescriptions. It was poor and unworthy work&mdash;work which any
+      weakling might have done as well, and this was a man of exceptional nerve
+      and sinew. But, such as it was, it brought him his board and One pound a
+      week&mdash;enough to help him during the summer months and let him save a
+      few pounds towards his winter keep. But those class fees! Where were they
+      to come from? He could not save them out of his scanty wage. Dr. Oldacre
+      would not advance them. He saw no way of earning them. His brains were
+      fairly good, but brains of that quality were a drug in the market. He only
+      excelled in his strength, and where was he to find a customer for that?
+      But the ways of Fate are strange, and his customer was at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look y'ere!" said a voice at the door. Montgomery looked up, for the
+      voice was a loud and rasping one. A young man stood at the entrance&mdash;
+      a stocky, bull-necked young miner, in tweed Sunday clothes and an
+      aggressive neck-tie. He was a sinister-looking figure, with dark, insolent
+      eyes, and the jaw and throat of a bulldog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look y'ere!" said he again. "Why hast thou not sent t' medicine oop as
+      thy master ordered?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had become accustomed to the brutal frankness of the northern
+      worker. At first it had enraged him, but after a time he had grown callous
+      to it, and accepted it as it was meant. But this was something different.
+      It was insolence&mdash;brutal, overbearing insolence, with physical menace
+      behind it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What name?" he asked coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Barton. Happen I may give thee cause to mind that name, yoong man. Mak'
+      oop t' wife's medicine this very moment, look ye, or it will be the worse
+      for thee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery smiled. A pleasant sense of relief thrilled softly through him.
+      What blessed safety-valve was this through which his jangled nerves might
+      find some outlet. The provocation was so gross, the insult so unprovoked,
+      that he could have none of those qualms which take the edge off a man's
+      mettle. He finished sealing the bottle upon which he was occupied, and he
+      addressed it and placed it carefully in the rack. "Look here!" said he,
+      turning round to the miner, "your medicine will be made up in its turn and
+      sent down to you. I don't allow folk in the surgery. Wait outside in the
+      waiting-room if you wish to wait at all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yoong man," said the miner, "thou's got to mak' t' wife's medicine here,
+      and now, and quick, while I wait and watch thee, or else happen thou might
+      need some medicine thysel' before all is over."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't advise you to fasten a quarrel upon me." Montgomery was
+      speaking in the hard, staccato voice of a man who is holding himself in
+      with difficulty. "You'll save trouble if you'll go quietly. If you don't
+      you'll be hurt. Ah, you would? Take it, then!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blows were almost simultaneous&mdash;a savage swing which whistled
+      past Montgomery's ear, and a straight drive which took the workman on the
+      chin. Luck was with the assistant. That single whizzing uppercut, and the
+      way in which it was delivered, warned him that he had a formidable man to
+      deal with. But if he had underrated his antagonist, his antagonist had
+      also underrated him, and had laid himself open to a fatal blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The miner's head had come with a crash against the corner of the surgery
+      shelves, and he had dropped heavily on to the ground. There he lay with
+      his bandy legs drawn up and his hands thrown abroad, the blood trickling
+      over the surgery tiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Had enough?" asked the assistant, breathing fiercely through his nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no answer came. The man was insensible. And then the danger of his
+      position came upon Montgomery, and he turned as white as his antagonist. A
+      Sunday, the immaculate Dr. Oldacre with his pious connection, a savage
+      brawl with a patient; he would irretrievably lose his situation if the
+      facts came out. It was not much of a situation, but he could not get
+      another without a reference, and Oldacre might refuse him one. Without
+      money for his classes, and without a situation&mdash;what was to become of
+      him? It was absolute ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But perhaps he could escape exposure after all. He seized his insensible
+      adversary, dragged him out into the centre of he room, loosened his
+      collar, and squeezed the surgery sponge over his face. He sat up at last
+      with a gasp and a scowl. "Domn thee, thou's spoilt my neck-tie," said he,
+      mopping up the water from his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm sorry I hit you so hard," said Montgomery, apologetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thou hit me hard! I could stan' such fly-flappin' all day. 'Twas this
+      here press that cracked my pate for me, and thou art a looky man to be
+      able to boast as thou hast outed me. And now I'd be obliged to thee if
+      thou wilt give me t' wife's medicine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery gladly made it up and handed it to the miner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are weak still," said he. "Won't you stay awhile and rest?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "T' wife wants her medicine," said the man, and lurched out at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assistant, looking after him, saw him rolling, with an uncertain step,
+      down the street, until a friend met him, and they walked on arm in arm.
+      The man seemed in his rough Northern fashion to bear no grudge, and so
+      Montgomery's fears left him. There was no reason why the doctor should
+      know anything about it. He wiped the blood from the floor, put the surgery
+      in order, and went on with his interrupted task, hoping that he had come
+      scathless out of a very dangerous business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet all day he was aware of a sense of vague uneasiness, which sharpened
+      into dismay when, late in the afternoon, he was informed that three
+      gentlemen had called and were waiting for him in the surgery. A coroner's
+      inquest, a descent of detectives, an invasion of angry relatives&mdash;all
+      sorts of possibilities rose to scare him. With tense nerves and a rigid
+      face he went to meet his visitors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were a very singular trio. Each was known to him by sight; but what
+      on earth the three could be doing together, and, above all, what they
+      could expect from <i>him</i>, was a most inexplicable problem. The first
+      was Sorley Wilson, the son of the owner of the Nonpareil Coalpit. He was a
+      young blood of twenty, heir to a fortune, a keen sportsman, and down for
+      the Easter Vacation from Magdalene College. He sat now upon the edge of
+      the surgery table, looking in thoughtful silence at Montgomery and
+      twisting the ends of his small, black, waxed moustache. The second was
+      Purvis, the publican, owner of the chief beer-shop, and well known as the
+      local bookmaker. He was a coarse, clean-shaven man, whose fiery face made
+      a singular contrast with his ivory-white bald head. He had shrewd,
+      light-blue eyes with foxy lashes, and he also leaned forward in silence
+      from his chair, a fat, red hand upon either knee, and stared critically at
+      the young assistant. So did the third visitor, Fawcett, the horse-breaker,
+      who leaned back, his long, thin legs, with their boxcloth riding-gaiters,
+      thrust out in front of him, tapping his protruding teeth with his
+      riding-whip, with anxious thought in every line of his rugged, bony face.
+      Publican, exquisite, and horse-breaker were all three equally silent,
+      equally earnest, and equally critical. Montgomery seated in the midst of
+      them, looked from one to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, gentlemen?" he observed, but no answer came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The position was embarrassing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said the horse-breaker, at last. "No. It's off. It's nowt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stand oop, lad; let's see thee standin'." It was the publican who spoke.
+      Montgomery obeyed. He would learn all about it, no doubt, if he were
+      patient. He stood up and turned slowly round, as if in front of his
+      tailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's off! It's off!" cried the horse-breaker. "Why, mon, the Master would
+      break him over his knee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, that be hanged for a yarn!" said the young Cantab. "You can drop out
+      if you like, Fawcett, but I'll see this thing through, if I have to do it
+      alone. I don't hedge a penny. I like the cut of him a great deal better
+      than I liked Ted Barton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look at Barton's shoulders, Mr. Wilson."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lumpiness isn't always strength. Give me nerve and fire and breed. That's
+      what wins."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, sir, you have it theer&mdash;you have it theer!" said the fat,
+      red-faced publican, in a thick suety voice. "It's the same wi' poops. Get
+      'em clean-bred an' fine, an' they'll yark the thick 'uns&mdash;yark 'em
+      out o' their skins."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's ten good pund on the light side," growled the horse-breaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's a welter weight, anyhow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hundred and thirty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hundred and fifty, if he's an ounce."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, the Master doesn't scale much more than that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hundred and seventy-five."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That was when he was hog-fat and living high. Work the grease out of him
+      and I lay there's no great difference between them. Have you been weighed
+      lately, Mr. Montgomery?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first direct question which had been asked him. He had stood in
+      the midst of them like a horse at a fair, and he was just beginning to
+      wonder whether he was more angry or amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am just eleven stone," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I said that he was a welter weight."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But suppose you was trained?" said the publican. "Wot then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am always in training."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In a manner of speakin', no doubt, he <i>is</i> always in trainin',"
+      remarked the horse-breaker. "But trainin' for everyday work ain't the same
+      as trainin' with a trainer; and I dare bet, with all respec' to your
+      opinion, Mr. Wilson, that there's half a stone of tallow on him at this
+      minute."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young Cantab put his fingers on the assistant's upper arm, then with
+      his other hand on his wrist, he bent the forearm sharply, and felt the
+      biceps, as round and hard as a cricket-ball, spring up under his fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Feel that!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The publican and horse-breaker felt it with an air of reverence. "Good
+      lad! He'll do yet!" cried Purvis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gentlemen," said Montgomery, "I think that you will acknowledge that I
+      have boon very patient with you. I have listened to all that you have to
+      say about my personal appearance, and now I must really beg that you will
+      have the goodness to tell me what is the matter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all sat down in their serious, business-like way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's easy done, Mr. Montgomery," said the fat-voiced publican. "But
+      before sayin' anything we had to wait and see whether, in a way of
+      speakin', there was any need for us to say anything at all. Mr. Wilson
+      thinks there is. Mr. Fawcett, who has the same right to his opinion, bein'
+      also a backer and one o' the committee, thinks the other way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought him too light built, and I think so now," said the
+      horse-breaker, still tapping his prominent teeth with the metal head of
+      his riding-whip. "But happen he may pull through, and he's a fine-made,
+      buirdly young chap, so if you mean to back him, Mr. Wilson&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which I do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you, Purvis?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't one to go back, Fawcett."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I'll stan' to my share of the purse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And well I knew you would," said Purvis, "for it would be somethin' new
+      to find Isaac Fawcett as a spoil-sport. Well, then, we will make up the
+      hundred for the stake among us, and the fight stands&mdash;always
+      supposin' the young man is willin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Excuse all this rot, Mr. Montgomery," said the University man, in a
+      genial voice. "We've begun at the wrong end, I know, but we'll soon
+      straighten it out, and I hope that you will see your way to falling in
+      with our views. In the first place, you remember the man whom you knocked
+      out this morning? He is Barton&mdash;the famous Ted Barton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm sure, sir, you may well be proud to have outed him in one round,"
+      said the publican. "Why, it took Morris, the ten-stone-six champion, a
+      deal more trouble than that before he put Barton to sleep. You've done a
+      fine performance, sir, and happen you'll do a finer, if you give yourself
+      the chance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never heard of Ted Barton, beyond seeing the name on a medicine label,"
+      said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you may take it from me that he's a slaughterer," said the
+      horse-breaker. "You've taught him a lesson that he needed, for it was
+      always a word and a blow with him, and the word alone was worth five
+      shillin' in a public court. He won't be so ready now to shake his nief in
+      the face of everyone he meets. However, that's neither here nor there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery looked at them in bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For goodness' sake, gentlemen, tell me what it is you want me to do!" he
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We want you to fight Silas Craggs, better known as the Master of
+      Croxley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because Ted Barton was to have fought him next Saturday. He was the
+      champion of the Wilson coal-pits, and the other was the Master of the
+      iron-folk down at the Croxley smelters. We'd matched our man for a purse
+      of a hundred against the Master. But you've queered our man, and he can't
+      face such a battle with a two-inch cut at the back of his head. There's
+      only one thing to be done, sir, and that is for you to take his place. If
+      you can lick Ted Barton you may lick the Master of Croxley, but if you
+      don't we're done, for there's no one else who is in the same street with
+      him in this district. It's twenty rounds, two-ounce gloves, Queensberry
+      rules, and a decision on points if you fight to the finish."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the absurdity of the thing drove every other thought out of
+      Montgomery's head. But then there came a sudden revulsion. A hundred
+      pounds!&mdash;all he wanted to complete his education was lying there
+      ready to his hand, if only that hand were strong enough to pick it up. He
+      had thought bitterly that morning that there was no market for his
+      strength, but here was one where his muscle might earn more in an hour
+      than his brains in a year. But a chill of doubt came over him. "How can I
+      fight for the coal-pits?" said he. "I am not connected with them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Eh, lad, but thou art!" cried old Purvis. "We've got it down in writin',
+      and it's clear enough 'Anyone connected with the coal-pits.' Doctor
+      Oldacre is the coal-pit club doctor; thou art his assistant. What more can
+      they want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, that's right enough," said the Cantab. "It would be a very sporting
+      thing of you, Mr. Montgomery, if you would come to our help when we are in
+      such a hole. Of course, you might not like to take the hundred pounds; but
+      I have no doubt that, in the case of your winning, we could arrange that
+      it should take the form of a watch or piece of plate, or any other shape
+      which might suggest itself to you. You see, you are responsible for our
+      having lost our champion, so we really feel that we have a claim upon
+      you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Give me a moment, gentlemen. It is very unexpected. I am afraid the
+      doctor would never consent to my going&mdash;in fact, I am sure that he
+      would not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But he need never know&mdash;not before the fight, at any rate. We are
+      not bound to give the name of our man. So long as he is within the weight
+      limits on the day of the fight, that is all that concerns anyone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The adventure and the profit would either of them have attracted
+      Montgomery. The two combined were irresistible. "Gentlemen," said he,
+      "I'll do it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three sprang from their seats. The publican had seized his right hand,
+      the horse-dealer his left, and the Cantab slapped him on the back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good lad! good lad!" croaked the publican. "Eh, mon, but if thou yark
+      him, thou'll rise in one day from being just a common doctor to the
+      best-known mon 'twixt here and Bradford. Thou art a witherin' tyke, thou
+      art, and no mistake; and if thou beat the Master of Croxley, thou'll find
+      all the beer thou want for the rest of thy life waiting for thee at the
+      'Four Sacks.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is the most sporting thing I ever heard of in my life," said young
+      Wilson. "By George, sir, if you pull it off, you've got the constituency
+      in your pocket, if you care to stand. You know the out-house in my
+      garden?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Next the road?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Exactly. I turned it into a gymnasium for Ted Barton. You'll find all you
+      want there: clubs, punching ball, bars, dumb-bells, everything. Then
+      you'll want a sparring partner. Ogilvy has been acting for Barton, but we
+      don't think that he is class enough. Barton bears you no grudge. He's a
+      good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers. He looked upon
+      you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you now. He is quite
+      ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come any hour you will
+      name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you; I will let you know the hour," said Montgomery; and so the
+      committee departed jubilant upon their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The medical assistant sat for a time in the surgery turning it over a
+      little in his mind. He had been trained originally at the University by
+      the man who had been middle-weight champion in his day. It was true that
+      his teacher was long past his prime, slow upon his feet, and stiff in his
+      joints, but even so he was still a tough antagonist; but Montgomery had
+      found at last that he could more than hold his own with him. He had won
+      the University medal, and his teacher, who had trained so many students,
+      was emphatic in his opinion that he had never had one who was in the same
+      class with him. He had been exhorted to go in for the Amateur
+      Championships, but he had no particular ambition in that direction. Once
+      he had put on the gloves with Hammer Tunstall in a booth at a fair and had
+      fought three rattling rounds, in which he had the worst of it, but had
+      made the prize fighter stretch himself to the uttermost. There was his
+      whole record, and was it enough to encourage him to stand up to the Master
+      of Croxley? He had never heard of the Master before, but then he had lost
+      touch of the ring during the last few years of hard work. After all, what
+      did it matter? If he won, there was the money, which meant so much to him.
+      If he lost, it would only mean a thrashing. He could take punishment
+      without flinching, of that he was certain. If there were only one chance
+      in a hundred of pulling it off, then it was worth his while to attempt it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Oldacre, new come from church, with an ostentatious Prayer-book in his
+      kid-gloved hand, broke in upon his meditation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't go to service, I observe, Mr. Montgomery" said he, coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir; I have had some business to detain me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very near to my heart that my household should set a good example.
+      There are so few educated people in this district that a great
+      responsibility devolves upon us. If we do not live up to the highest, how
+      can we expect these poor workers to do so? It is a dreadful thing to
+      reflect that the parish takes a great deal more interest in an approaching
+      glove fight than in their religious duties."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A glove fight, sir?" said Montgomery, guiltily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe that to be the correct term. One of my patients tells me that
+      it is the talk of the district. A local ruffian, a patient of ours, by the
+      way, matched against a pugilist over at Croxley. I cannot understand why
+      the law does not step in and stop so degrading an exhibition. It is really
+      a prize fight."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A glove fight, you said."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am informed that a 2oz. glove is an evasion by which they dodge the
+      law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere. They contend for a
+      sum of money. It seems dreadful and almost incredible&mdash;does it not?&mdash;to
+      think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our peaceful
+      home. But you will realise, Mr. Montgomery, that while there are such
+      influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we should live
+      up to our highest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor's sermon would have had more effect if the assistant had not
+      once or twice had occasion to test his highest, and come upon it at
+      unexpectedly humble elevations. It is always so particularly easy to
+      "compound for sins we're most inclined to by damning those we have no mind
+      to." In any case, Montgomery felt that of all the men concerned in such a
+      fight&mdash;promoters, backers, spectators&mdash;it is the actual fighter
+      who holds the strongest and most honourable position. His conscience gave
+      him no concern upon the subject. Endurance and courage are virtues, not
+      vices, and brutality is, at least, better than effeminacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where
+      Montgomery got his bird's-eye and also his local information, for the
+      shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of the
+      district. The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in a
+      casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard of the Master of
+      Croxley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Heard of him! Heard of him!" the little man could hardly articulate in
+      his astonishment. "Why, sir, he's the first mon o' the district, an' his
+      name's as well known in the West Riding as the winner o' t' Derby. But
+      Lor,' sir,"&mdash;here he stopped and rummaged among a heap of papers.
+      "They are makin' a fuss about him on account o' his fight wi' Ted Barton,
+      and so the <i>Croxley Herald</i> has his life an' record, an' here it is,
+      an' thou canst read it for thysel'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheet of the paper which he held up was a lake of print around an
+      islet of illustration. The latter was a coarse wood-cut of a pugilist's
+      head and neck set in a cross-barred jersey. It was a sinister but powerful
+      face, the face of a debauched hero, clean-shaven, strongly eye-browed,
+      keen-eyed, with huge, aggressive jaw, and an animal dewlap beneath it. The
+      long, obstinate cheeks ran flush up to the narrow, sinister eyes. The
+      mighty neck came down square from the ears and curved outwards into
+      shoulders, which had lost nothing at the hands of the local artist. Above
+      was written "Silas Craggs," and beneath, "The Master of Croxley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thou'll find all about him there, sir," said the tobacconist. "He's a
+      witherin' tyke, he is, and we're proud to have him in the county. If he
+      hadn't broke his leg he'd have been champion of England."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Broke his leg, has he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, and it set badly. They ca' him owd K, behind his back, for that is
+      how his two legs look. But his arms&mdash;well, if they was both stropped
+      to a bench, as the sayin' is, I wonder where the champion of England would
+      be then."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll take this with me," said Montgomery; and putting the paper into his
+      pocket he returned home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not a cheering record which he read there. The whole history of the
+      Croxley Master was given in full, his many victories, his few defeats.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   Born in 1857 (said the provincial biographer), Silas Craggs, better
+   known in sporting circles as the Master of Croxley, is now in his
+   fortieth year.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Hang it, I'm only twenty-three!" said Montgomery to himself, and read on
+      more cheerfully.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   Having in his youth shown a surprising aptitude for the game, he
+   fought   his way up among his comrades, until he became the
+   recognised champion of the district and won the proud title which
+   he still holds.  Ambitious of a more than local fame, he secured a
+   patron, and fought his first fight against Jack Barton, of
+   Birmingham, in May 1880, at the old Loiterers' Club.  Craggs,
+   who fought at ten stone-two at the time, had the better of fifteen
+   rattling rounds, and gained an award on points against the Midlander.
+   Having disposed of James Dunn, of Rotherhithe, Cameron, of Glasgow,
+   and a youth named Fernie, he was thought so highly of by the fancy
+   that he was matched against Ernest Willox, at that time
+   middle-weight champion of the North of England, and defeated him in a
+   hard-fought battle, knocking him out in the tenth round after a
+   punishing contest.  At this period it looked as if the very highest
+   honours of the ring were within the reach of the young Yorkshireman,
+   but he was laid upon the shelf by a most unfortunate accident.  The
+   kick of a horse broke his thigh, and for a year he was compelled to
+   rest himself.  When he returned to his work the fracture had set
+   badly, and his activity was much impaired.  It was owing to this
+   that he was defeated in seven rounds by Willox, the man whom he had
+   previously beaten, and afterwards by James Shaw, of London, though
+   the latter acknowledged that he had found the toughest customer of
+   his career.  Undismayed by his reverses, the Master adapted the
+   style of his fighting to his physical disabilities and resumed his
+   career of victory&mdash;defeating Norton (the black), Hobby Wilson, and
+   Levi Cohen, the latter a heavy-weight.  Conceding two stone, he
+   fought a draw with the famous Billy McQuire, and afterwards, for
+   a purse of fifty pounds, he defeated Sam Hare at the Pelican Club,
+   London.  In 1891 a decision was given against him upon a foul when
+   fighting a winning fight against Jim Taylor, the Australian middle
+   weight, and so mortified was he by the decision, that he withdrew
+   from the ring.  Since then he has hardly fought at all save to
+   accommodate any local aspirant who may wish to learn the difference
+   between a bar-room scramble and a scientific contest.  The latest
+   of these ambitious souls comes from the Wilson coal-pits, which have
+   undertaken to put up a stake of 100 pounds and back their local
+   champion.  There are various rumours afloat as to who their
+   representative is to be, the name of Ted Barton being freely
+   mentioned; but the betting, which is seven to one on the Master
+   against any untried man, is a fair reflection of the feeling of
+   the community.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery read it over twice, and it left him with a very serious face.
+      No light matter this which he had undertaken; no battle with a
+      rough-and-tumble fighter who presumed upon a local reputation. The man's
+      record showed that he was first-class&mdash;or nearly so. There were a few
+      points in his favour, and he must make the most of them. There was age&mdash;twenty-three
+      against forty. There was an old ring proverb that "Youth will be served,"
+      but the annals of the ring offer a great number of exceptions. A hard
+      veteran full of cool valour and ring-craft, could give ten or fifteen
+      years and a beating to most striplings. He could not rely too much upon
+      his advantage in age. But then there was the lameness; that must surely
+      count for a great deal. And, lastly, there was the chance that the Master
+      might underrate his opponent, that he might be remiss in his training, and
+      refuse to abandon his usual way of life, if he thought that he had an easy
+      task before him. In a man of his age and habits this seemed very possible.
+      Montgomery prayed that it might be so. Meanwhile, if his opponent were the
+      best man who ever jumped the ropes into a ring, his own duty was clear. He
+      must prepare himself carefully, throw away no chance, and do the very best
+      that he could. But he knew enough to appreciate the difference which
+      exists in boxing, as in every sport, between the amateur and the
+      professional. The coolness, the power of hitting, above all the capability
+      of taking punishment, count for so much. Those specially developed,
+      gutta-percha-like abdominal muscles of the hardened pugilist will take
+      without flinching a blow which would leave another man writhing on the
+      ground. Such things are not to be acquired in a week, but all that could
+      be done in a week should be done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The medical assistant had a good basis to start from. He was 5ft. 11 ins.&mdash;tall
+      enough for anything on two legs, as the old ring men used to say&mdash;lithe
+      and spare, with the activity of a panther, and a strength which had hardly
+      yet ever found its limitations. His muscular development was finely hard,
+      but his power came rather from that higher nerve-energy which counts for
+      nothing upon a measuring tape. He had the well-curved nose and the widely
+      opened eye which never yet were seen upon the face of a craven, and behind
+      everything he had the driving force, which came from the knowledge that
+      his whole career was at stake upon the contest. The three backers rubbed
+      their hands when they saw him at work punching the ball in the gymnasium
+      next morning; and Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who had written to Leeds to
+      hedge his bets, sent a wire to cancel the letter, and to lay another fifty
+      at the market price of seven to one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery's chief difficulty was to find time for his training without
+      any interference from the doctor. His work took him a large part of the
+      day, but as the visiting was done on foot, and considerable distances had
+      to be traversed, it was a training in itself. For the rest, he punched the
+      swinging ball and worked with the dumb-bells for an hour every morning and
+      evening, and boxed twice a day with Ted Barton in the gymnasium, gaining
+      as much profit as could be got from a rushing, two-handed slogger. Barton
+      was full of admiration for his cleverness and quickness, but doubtful
+      about his strength. Hard hitting was the feature of his own style, and he
+      exacted it from others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lord, sir, that's a turble poor poonch for an eleven-stone man!" he would
+      cry. "Thou wilt have to hit harder than that afore t' Master will know
+      that thou art theer. All, thot's better, mon, thot's fine!" he would add,
+      as his opponent lifted him across the room on the end of a right counter.
+      "Thot's how I likes to feel 'em. Happen thou'lt pull through yet." He
+      chuckled with joy when Montgomery knocked him into a corner. "Eh, mon,
+      thou art coming along grand. Thou hast fair yarked me off my legs. Do it
+      again, lad, do it again!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only part of Montgomery's training which came within the doctor's
+      observation was his diet, and that puzzled him considerably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will excuse my remarking, Mr. Montgomery, that you are becoming
+      rather particular in your tastes. Such fads are not to be encouraged in
+      one's youth. Why do you eat toast with every meal?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I find that it suits me better than bread, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It entails unnecessary work upon the cook. I observe, also, that you have
+      turned against potatoes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir; I think that I am better without them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you no longer drink your beer?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These causeless whims and fancies are very much to be deprecated, Mr.
+      Montgomery. Consider how many there are to whom these very potatoes and
+      this very beer would be most acceptable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No doubt, sir, but at present I prefer to do without them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sitting alone at lunch, and the assistant thought that it would
+      be a good opportunity of asking leave for the day of the fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should be glad if you could let me have leave for Saturday, Dr.
+      Oldacre."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very inconvenient upon so busy a day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should do a double day's work on Friday so as to leave everything in
+      order. I should hope to be back in the evening."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid I cannot spare you, Mr. Montgomery."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a facer. If he could not get leave he would go without it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will remember, Dr. Oldacre, that when I came to you it was understood
+      that I should have a clear day every month. I have never claimed one. But
+      now there are reasons why I wish to have a holiday upon Saturday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Oldacre gave in with a very bad grace. "Of course, if you insist upon
+      your formal rights, there is no more to be said, Mr. Montgomery, though I
+      feel that it shows a certain indifference to my comfort and the welfare of
+      the practice. Do you still insist?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good. Have your way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was boiling over with anger, but Montgomery was a valuable
+      assistant&mdash;steady, capable, and hardworking&mdash;and he could not
+      afford to lose him. Even if he had been prompted to advance those class
+      fees, for which his assistant had appealed, it would have been against his
+      interests to do so, for he did not wish him to qualify, and he desired him
+      to remain in his subordinate position, in which he worked so hard for so
+      small a wage. There was something in the cool insistence of the young man,
+      a quiet resolution in his voice as he claimed his Saturday, which aroused
+      his curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no desire to interfere unduly with your affairs, Mr. Montgomery,
+      but were you thinking of having a day in Leeds upon Saturday?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the country?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are very wise. You will find a quiet day among the wild flowers a
+      very valuable restorative. Have you thought of any particular direction?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am going over Croxley way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, there is no prettier country when once you are past the iron-works.
+      What could be more delightful than to lie upon the Fells, basking in the
+      sunshine, with perhaps some instructive and elevating book as your
+      companion? I should recommend a visit to the ruins of St. Bridget's
+      Church, a very interesting relic of the early Norman era. By the way,
+      there is one objection which I see to your going to Croxley on Saturday.
+      It is upon that date, as I am informed, that that ruffianly glove fight
+      takes place. You may find yourself molested by the blackguards whom it
+      will attract."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will take my chance of that, sir," said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Friday night, which was the last night before the fight,
+      Montgomery's three backers assembled in the gymnasium and inspected their
+      man as he went through some light exercises to keep his muscles supple. He
+      was certainly in splendid condition, his skin shining with health, and his
+      eyes with energy and confidence. The three walked round him and exulted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's simply ripping!" said the undergraduate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By gad, you've come out of it splendidly. You're as hard as a pebble, and
+      fit to fight for your life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Happen he's a trifle on the fine side," said the publican. "Runs a bit
+      light at the loins, to my way of thinking'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What weight to-day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ten stone eleven," the assistant answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's only three pund off in a week's trainin'," said the horse-breaker.
+      "He said right when he said that he was in condition. Well, it's fine
+      stuff all there is of it, but I'm none so sure as there is enough." He
+      kept poking his finger into Montgomery as if he were one of his horses. "I
+      hear that the Master will scale a hundred and sixty odd at the ring-side."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But there's some of that which he'd like well to pull off and leave
+      behind wi' his shirt," said Purvis. "I hear they've had a rare job to get
+      him to drop his beer, and if it had not been for that great red-headed
+      wench of his they'd never ha' done it. She fair scratted the face off a
+      potman that had brought him a gallon from t' 'Chequers.' They say the
+      hussy is his sparrin' partner, as well as his sweetheart, and that his
+      poor wife is just breakin' her heart over it. Hullo, young 'un, what do
+      you want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door of the gymnasium had opened and a lad, about sixteen, grimy and
+      black with soot and iron, stepped into the yellow glare of the oil lamp.
+      Ted Barton seized him by the collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "See here, thou yoong whelp, this is private, and we want noan o' thy
+      spyin'!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I maun speak to Mr. Wilson."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young Cantab stepped forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, my lad, what is it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's aboot t' fight, Mr. Wilson, sir. I wanted to tell your mon somethin'
+      aboot t' Maister."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We've no time to listen to gossip, my boy. We know all about the Master."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But thou doan't, sir. Nobody knows but me and mother, and we thought as
+      we'd like thy mon to know, sir, for we want him to fair bray him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, you want the Master fair brayed, do you? So do we. Well, what have
+      you to say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is this your mon, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, suppose it is?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then it's him I want to tell aboot it. T' Maister is blind o' the left
+      eye."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nonsense!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's true, sir. Not stone blind, but rarely fogged. He keeps it secret,
+      but mother knows, and so do I. If thou slip him on the left side he can't
+      cop thee. Thou'll find it right as I tell thee. And mark him when he sinks
+      his right. 'Tis his best blow, his right upper-cut. T' Maister's finisher,
+      they ca' it at t' works. It's a turble blow when it do come home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, my boy. This is information worth having about his sight,"
+      said Wilson. "How came you to know so much? Who are you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm his son, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wilson whistled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And who sent you to us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My mother. I maun get back to her again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take this half-crown."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir, I don't seek money in comin' here. I do it&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For love?" suggested the publican.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For hate!" said the boy, and darted off into the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seems to me t' red-headed wench may do him more harm than good, after
+      all," remarked the publican. "And now, Mr. Montgomery, sir, you've done
+      enough for this evenin', an' a nine-hours' sleep is the best trainin'
+      before a battle. Happen this time to-morrow night you'll be safe back
+      again with your 100 pound in your pocket."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                             II
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Work was struck at one o'clock at the coal-pits and the iron-works, and
+      the fight was arranged for three. From the Croxley Furnaces, from Wilson's
+      Coal-pits, from the Heartsease Mine, from the Dodd Mills, from the
+      Leverworth Smelters the workmen came trooping, each with his fox-terrier
+      or his lurcher at his heels. Warped with labour and twisted by toil, bent
+      double by week-long work in the cramped coal galleries or half-blinded
+      with years spent in front of white-hot fluid metal, these men still gilded
+      their harsh and hopeless lives by their devotion to sport. It was their
+      one relief, the only thing which could distract their minds from sordid
+      surroundings, and give them an interest beyond the blackened circle which
+      enclosed them. Literature, art, science, all these things were beyond
+      their horizon; but the race, the football match, the cricket, the fight,
+      these were things which they could understand, which they could speculate
+      upon in advance and comment upon afterwards. Sometimes brutal, sometimes
+      grotesque, the love of sport is still one of the great agencies which make
+      for the happiness of our people. It lies very deeply in the springs of our
+      nature, and when it has been educated out, a higher, more refined nature
+      may be left, but it will not be of that robust British type which has left
+      its mark so deeply on the world. Every one of these raddled workers,
+      slouching with his dog at his heels to see something of the fight, was a
+      true unit of his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a squally May day, with bright sunbursts and driving showers.
+      Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting his medicine made up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The weather seems so very unsettled, Mr. Montgomery," remarked the
+      doctor, "that I am inclined to think that you had better postpone your
+      little country excursion until a later date."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid that I must go to-day, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have just had an intimation that Mrs. Potter, at the other side of
+      Angleton, wishes to see me. It is probable that I shall be there all day.
+      It will be extremely inconvenient to leave the house empty so long."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very sorry, sir, but I must go," said the assistant, doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor saw that it would be useless to argue, and departed in the
+      worst of bad tempers upon mission. Montgomery felt easier now that he was
+      gone. He went up to his room, and packed his running-shoes, his
+      fighting-drawers, and his cricket sash into a hand-bag. When he came down,
+      Mr. Wilson was waiting for him in the surgery. "I hear the doctor has
+      gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; he is likely to be away all day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't see that it matters much. It's bound to come to his ears by
+      to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; it's serious with me, Mr. Wilson. If I win, it's all right. I don't
+      mind telling you that the hundred pounds will make all the difference to
+      me. But if I lose, I shall lose my situation, for, as you say, I can't
+      keep it secret."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind. We'll see you through among us. I only wonder the doctor has
+      not heard, for it's all over the country that you are to fight the Croxley
+      Champion. We've had Armitage up about it already. He's the Master's
+      backer, you know. He wasn't sure that you were eligible. The Master said
+      he wanted you whether you were eligible or not. Armitage has money on, and
+      would have made trouble if he could. But I showed him that you came within
+      the conditions of the challenge, and he agreed that it was all right. They
+      think they have a soft thing on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I can only do my best," said Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They lunched together; a silent and rather nervous repast, for
+      Montgomery's mind was full of what was before him, and Wilson had himself
+      more money at stake than he cared to lose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wilson's carriage and pair were at the door, the horses with blue and
+      white rosettes at their ears, which were the colours of the Wilson
+      Coal-pits, well known, on many a football field. At the avenue gate a
+      crowd of some hundred pit-men and their wives gave a cheer as the carriage
+      passed. To the assistant it all seemed dream-like and extraordinary&mdash;the
+      strangest experience of his life, but with a thrill of human action and
+      interest in it which made it passionately absorbing. He lay back in the
+      open carriage and saw the fluttering handkerchiefs from the doors and
+      windows of the miners' cottages. Wilson had pinned a blue and white
+      rosette upon his coat, and everybody knew him as their champion. "Good
+      luck, sir! good luck to thee!" they shouted from the roadside. He felt
+      that it was like some unromantic knight riding down to sordid lists, but
+      there was something of chivalry in it all the same. He fought for others
+      as well as for himself. He might fail from want of skill or strength, but
+      deep in his sombre soul he vowed that it should never be for want of
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fawcett was just mounting into his high-wheeled, spidery dogcart, with
+      his little bit of blood between the shafts. He waved his whip and fell in
+      behind the carriage. They overtook Purvis, the tomato-faced publican, upon
+      the road, with his wife in her Sunday bonnet. They also dropped into the
+      procession, and then, as they traversed the seven miles of the high road
+      to Croxley, their two-horsed, rosetted carriage became gradually the
+      nucleus of a comet with a loosely radiating tail. From every side-road
+      came the miners' carts, the humble, ramshackle traps, black and bulging,
+      with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued, open-hearted partisans. They
+      trailed for a long quarter of a mile behind them&mdash;cracking, whipping,
+      shouting, galloping, swearing. Horsemen and runners were mixed with the
+      vehicles. And then suddenly a squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were
+      having their annual training in those parts, clattered and jingled out of
+      a field, and rode as an escort to the carriage. Through the dust-clouds
+      round him Montgomery saw the gleaming brass helmets, the bright coats, and
+      the tossing heads of the chargers, the delighted brown faces of the
+      troopers. It was more dream-like than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, as they approached the monstrous, uncouth line of bottle-shaped
+      buildings which marked the smelting-works of Croxley, their long, writhing
+      snake of dust was headed off by another but longer one which wound across
+      their path. The main road into which their own opened was filled by the
+      rushing current of traps. The Wilson contingent halted until the others
+      should get past. The iron-men cheered and groaned, according to their
+      humour, as they whirled past their antagonist. Rough chaff flew back and
+      forwards like iron nuts and splinters of coal. "Brought him up, then!"
+      "Got t' hearse for to fetch him back?" "Where's t' owd K-legs?" "Mon, mon,
+      have thy photograph took&mdash;'twill mind thee of what thou used to
+      look!" "He fight?&mdash;he's nowt but a half-baked doctor!" "Happen he'll
+      doctor thy Croxley Champion afore he's through wi't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they flashed at each other as the one side waited and the other passed.
+      Then there came a rolling murmur swelling into a shout, and a great brake
+      with four horses came clattering along, all streaming with salmon-pink
+      ribbons. The driver wore a white hat with pink rosette, and beside him, on
+      the high seat, were a man and a woman-she with her arm round his waist.
+      Montgomery had one glimpse of them as they flashed past; he with a furry
+      cap drawn low over his brow, a great frieze coat and a pink comforter
+      round his throat; she brazen, red-headed, bright-coloured, laughing
+      excitedly. The Master, for it was he, turned as he passed, gazed hard at
+      Montgomery, and gave him a menacing, gap-toothed grin. It was a hard,
+      wicked face, blue-jowled and craggy, with long, obstinate cheeks and
+      inexorable eyes. The brake behind was full of patrons of the sport-flushed
+      iron-foremen, heads of departments, managers. One was drinking from a
+      metal flask, and raised it to Montgomery as he passed; and then the crowd
+      thinned, and the Wilson cortege with their dragoons swept in at the rear
+      of the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road led away from Croxley, between curving green hills, gashed and
+      polluted by the searchers for coal and iron. The whole country had been
+      gutted, and vast piles of refuse and mountains of slag suggested the
+      mighty chambers which the labour of man had burrowed beneath. On the left
+      the road curved up to where a huge building, roofless and dismantled,
+      stood crumbling and forlorn, with the light shining through the windowless
+      squares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the old Arrowsmith's factory. That's where the fight is to be,"
+      said Wilson. "How are you feeling now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, I was never better in my life," Montgomery answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By Gad, I like your nerve!" said Wilson, who was himself flushed and
+      uneasy. "You'll give us a fight for our money, come what may. That place
+      on the right is the office, and that has been set aside as the dressing
+      and weighing room."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The carriage drove up to it amidst the shouts of the folk upon the
+      hillside. Lines of empty carriages and traps curved down upon the winding
+      road, and a black crowd surged round the door of the ruined factory. The
+      seats, as a huge placard announced, were five shillings, three shillings,
+      and a shilling, with half-price for dogs. The takings, deducting expenses,
+      were to go to the winner, and it was already evident that a larger stake
+      than a hundred pounds was in question. A babel of voices rose from the
+      door, The workers wished to bring their dogs in free. The men scuffled.
+      The dogs barked. The crowd was a whirling, eddying pool surging with a
+      roar up to the narrow cleft which was its only outlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brake, with its salmon-coloured streamers and four reeking horses,
+      stood empty before the door of the office; Wilson, Purvis, Fawcett and
+      Montgomery passed in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a large, bare room inside with square, clean patches upon the
+      grimy walls, where pictures and almanacs had once hung. Worn linoleum
+      covered the floor, but there was no furniture save some benches and a deal
+      table with an ewer and a basin upon it. Two of the corners were curtained
+      off. In the middle of the room was a weighing-chair. A hugely fat man,
+      with a salmon tie and a blue waistcoat with birds'-eye spots, came
+      bustling up to them. It was Armitage, the butcher and grazier, well known
+      for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal patron of sport in the
+      Riding. "Well, well," he grunted, in a thick, fussy, wheezy voice, "you
+      have come, then. Got your man? Got your man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here he is, fit and well. Mr. Montgomery, let me present you to Mr.
+      Armitage."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Glad to meet you, sir. Happy to make your acquaintance. I make bold to
+      say, sir, that we of Croxley admire your courage, Mr. Montgomery, and that
+      our only hope is a fair fight and no favour, and the best man win. That's
+      our sentiments at Croxley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And it is my sentiment, also," said the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you can't say fairer than that, Mr. Montgomery. You've taken a
+      large contrac' in hand, but a large contrac' may be carried through, sir,
+      as anyone that knows my dealings could testify. The Master is ready to
+      weigh in!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So am I."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must weigh in the buff." Montgomery looked askance at the tall,
+      red-headed woman who was standing gazing out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's all right," said Wilson. "Get behind the curtain and put on your
+      fighting kit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did so, and came out the picture of an athlete, in white, loose
+      drawers, canvas shoes, and the sash of a well-known cricket club round his
+      waist. He was trained to a hair, his skin gleaming like silk, and every
+      muscle rippling down his broad shoulders and along his beautiful arms as
+      he moved them. They bunched into ivory knobs, or slid into long, sinuous
+      curves, as he raised or lowered his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What thinkest thou o' that?" asked Ted Barton, his second, of the woman
+      in the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced contemptuously at the young athlete. "It's but a poor kindness
+      thou dost him to put a thread-paper yoong gentleman like yon against a mon
+      as is a mon. Why, my Jock would throttle him wi' one bond lashed behind
+      him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Happen he may&mdash;happen not," said Barton. "I have but twa pund in the
+      world, but it's on him, every penny, and no hedgin'. But here's t'
+      Maister, and rarely fine he do look."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prize-fighter had come out from his curtain, a squat, formidable
+      figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted
+      leg. His skin bad none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery's, but
+      was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled black
+      hair which thatched his mighty breast. His weight bore no relation to his
+      strength, for those huge shoulders and great arms, with brown,
+      sledge-hammer fists, would have fitted the heaviest man that ever threw
+      his cap into a ring. But his loins and legs were slight in proportion.
+      Montgomery, on the other hand, was as symmetrical as a Greek statue. It
+      would be an encounter between a man who was specially fitted for one
+      sport, and one who was equally capable of any. The two looked curiously at
+      each other: a bull-dog, and a high-bred clean-limbed terrier, each full of
+      spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do?" The Master grinned again, and his three jagged front teeth
+      gleamed for an instant. The rest had been beaten out of him in twenty
+      years of battle. He spat upon the floor. "We have a rare fine day for't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Capital," said Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the good feelin' I like," wheezed the fat butcher. "Good lads,
+      both of them!&mdash;prime lads!&mdash;hard meat an' good bone. There's no
+      ill-feelin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he downs me, Gawd bless him!" said the Master,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "An' if we down him, Gawd help him!" interrupted the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Haud thy tongue, wench!" said the Master, impatiently. "Who art thou to
+      put in thy word? Happen I might draw my hand across thy face."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman did not take the threat amiss. "Wilt have enough for thy hand to
+      do, Jock," said she. "Get quit o' this gradely man afore thou turn on me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lovers' quarrel was interrupted by the entrance of a newcomer, a
+      gentleman with a fur-collared overcoat and a very shiny top-hat&mdash; a
+      top-hat of a degree of glossiness which is seldom seen five miles from
+      Hyde Park. This hat he wore at the extreme back of his head, so that the
+      lower surface of the brim made a kind of frame for his high, bald
+      forehead, his, keen eyes, his rugged and yet kindly face. He bustled in
+      with the quiet air of possession with which the ring master enters the
+      circus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's Mr. Stapleton, the referee from London," said Wilson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you do, Mr. Stapleton? I was introduced to you at the big fight at
+      the Corinthian Club in Piccadilly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! I dare say," said the other, shaking hands. "Fact is, I'm introduced
+      to so many that I can't undertake to carry their names. Wilson, is it?
+      Well, Mr. Wilson, glad to see you. Couldn't get a fly at the station, and
+      that's why I'm late."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm sure, sir," said Armitage, "we should be proud that anyone so well
+      known in the boxing world should come down to our little exhibition."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all. Not at all. Anything in the interests of boxin'. All ready?
+      Men weighed?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Weighing now, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! Just as well that I should see it done. Seen you before, Craggs. Saw
+      you fight your second battle against Willox. You had beaten him once, but
+      he came back on you. What does the indicator say&mdash;163lbs.&mdash; two
+      off for the kit&mdash;161lbs. Now, my lad, you jump. My goodness, what
+      colours are you wearing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Anonymi Cricket Club."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What right have you to wear them? I belong to the club myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So do I."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You an amateur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you are fighting for a money prize?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose you know what you are doing? You realise that you're a
+      professional pug from this onwards, and that if ever you fight again&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll never fight again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Happen you won't," said the woman, and the Master turned a terrible eye
+      upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I suppose you know your own business best. Up you jump. One hundred
+      and fifty-one, minus two, 149&mdash;12lbs. difference, but youth and
+      condition on the other scale. Well, the sooner we get to work the better,
+      for I wish to catch the seven o'clock express at Hellifield. Twenty
+      three-minute rounds, with one-minute intervals, and Queensberry rules.
+      Those are the conditions, are they not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good, then&mdash;we may go across."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two combatants had overcoats thrown over their shoulders, and the
+      whole party, backers, fighters, seconds, and the referee filed out of the
+      room. A police inspector was waiting for them in the road. He had a
+      note-book in his hand&mdash;that terrible weapon which awes even the
+      London cabman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must take your names, gentlemen, in case it should be necessary to
+      proceed for breach of peace."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't mean to stop the fight?" cried Armitage, in a passion of
+      indignation. "I'm Mr. Armitage, of Croxley, and this is Mr. Wilson, and
+      we'll be responsible that all is fair and as it should be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll take the names in case it should be necessary to proceed," said the
+      inspector, impassively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you know me well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you was a dook or even a judge it would be all' the same," said the
+      inspector. "It's the law, and there's an end. I'll not take upon myself to
+      stop the fight, seeing that gloves are to be used, but I'll take the names
+      of all concerned. Silas Craggs, Robert Montgomery, Edward Barton, James
+      Stapleton, of London. Who seconds Silas Craggs?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do," said the woman. "Yes, you can stare, but it's my job, and no one
+      else's. Anastasia's the name&mdash;four a's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Craggs?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Johnson&mdash;Anastasia Johnson. If you jug him you can jug me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who talked of juggin', ye fool?" growled the Master. "Coom on, Mr.
+      Armitage, for I'm fair sick o' this loiterin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector fell in with the procession, and proceeded, as they walked
+      up the hill, to bargain in his official capacity for a front seat, where
+      he could safeguard the interests of the law, and in his private capacity
+      to lay out thirty shillings at seven to one with Mr. Armitage. Through the
+      door they passed, down a narrow lane walled with a dense bank of humanity,
+      up a wooden ladder to a platform, over a rope which was slung waist-high
+      from four corner-stakes, and then Montgomery realised that he was in that
+      ring in which his immediate destiny was to be worked out. On the stake at
+      one corner there hung a blue-and-white streamer. Barton led him across,
+      the overcoat dangling loosely from his shoulders, and he sat down on a
+      wooden stool. Barton and another man, both wearing white sweaters, stood
+      beside him. The so-called ring was a square, twenty feet each way. At the
+      opposite angle was the sinister figure of the Master, with his red-headed
+      woman and a rough-faced friend to look after him. At each corner were
+      metal basins, pitchers of water, and sponges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the hubbub and uproar of the entrance Montgomery was too bewildered
+      to take things in. But now there was a few minutes' delay, for the referee
+      had lingered behind, and so he looked quietly about him. It was a sight to
+      haunt him for a lifetime. Wooden seats had been built in, sloping upwards
+      to the tops of the walls. Above, instead of a ceiling, a great flight of
+      crows passed slowly across a square of grey cloud. Right up to the topmost
+      benches the folk were banked&mdash;broadcloth in front, corduroys and
+      fustian behind; faces turned everywhere upon him. The grey reek of the
+      pipes filled the building, and the air was pungent with the acrid smell of
+      cheap, strong tobacco. Everywhere among the human faces were to be seen
+      the heads of the dogs. They growled and yapped from the back benches. In
+      that dense mass of humanity, one could hardly pick out individuals, but
+      Montgomery's eyes caught the brazen gleam of the helmets held upon the
+      knees of the ten yeomen of his escort. At the very edge of the platform
+      sat the reporters, five of them&mdash;three locals and two all the way
+      from London. But where was the all-important referee? There was no sign of
+      him, unless he were in the centre of that angry swirl of men near the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Stapleton had stopped to examine the gloves which wore to be used, and
+      entered the building after the combatants. He had started to come down
+      that narrow lane with the human walls which led to the ring. But already
+      it had gone abroad that the Wilson champion was a gentleman, and that
+      another gentleman had been appointed as referee. A wave of suspicion
+      passed through the Croxley folk. They would have one of their own people
+      for a referee. They would not have a stranger. His path was stopped as he
+      made for the ring. Excited men flung themselves in front of him; they
+      waved their fists in his face and cursed him. A woman howled vile names in
+      his ear. Somebody struck at him with an umbrella. "Go thou back to Lunnon.
+      We want noan o' thee. Go thou back!" they yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stapleton, with his shiny hat cocked backwards, and his large, bulging
+      forehead swelling from under it, looked round him from beneath his bushy
+      brows. He was in the centre of a savage and dangerous mob. Then he drew
+      his watch from his pocket and held it dial upwards in his palm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In three minutes," said he, "I will declare the fight off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They raged round him. His cool face and that aggressive top-hat irritated
+      them. Grimy hands were raised. But it was difficult, somehow, to strike a
+      man who was so absolutely indifferent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In two minutes I declare the fight off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They exploded into blasphemy. The breath of angry men smoked into his
+      placid face. A gnarled, grimy fist vibrated at the end of his nose. "We
+      tell thee we want noan o' thee. Get thou back where thou com'st from."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In one minute I declare the fight off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the calm persistence of the man conquered the swaying, mutable,
+      passionate crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let him through, mon. Happen there'll be no fight after a'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let him through."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bill, thou loomp, let him pass. Dost want the fight declared off?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Make room for the referee!&mdash;room for the Lunnon referee!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And half pushed, half carried, he was swept up to the ring. There were two
+      chairs by the side of it, one for him and one for the timekeeper. He sat
+      down, his hands on his knees, his hat at a more wonderful angle than ever,
+      impassive but solemn, with the aspect of one who appreciates his
+      responsibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Armitage, the portly butcher, made his way into the ring and held up
+      two fat hands, sparkling with rings, as a signal for silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gentlemen!" he yelled. And then in a crescendo shriek, "Gentlemen!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And ladies!" cried somebody, for, indeed, there was a fair sprinkling of
+      women among the crowd. "Speak up, owd man!" shouted another. "What price
+      pork chops?" cried somebody at the back. Everybody laughed, and the dogs
+      began to bark. Armitage waved his hands amidst the uproar as if he were
+      conducting an orchestra. At last the babel thinned into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gentlemen," he yelled, "the match is between Silas Craggs, whom we call
+      the Master of Croxley, and Robert Montgomery, of the Wilson Coal-pits. The
+      match was to be under eleven-eight. When they were weighed just now,
+      Craggs weighed eleven-seven, and Montgomery ten-nine. The conditions of
+      the contest are&mdash;the best of twenty three-minute rounds with
+      two-ounce gloves. Should the fight run to its full length, it will, of
+      course, be decided upon points. Mr. Stapleton, the well-known London
+      referee, has kindly consented to see fair play. I wish to say that Mr.
+      Wilson and I, the chief backers of the two men, have every confidence in
+      Mr. Stapleton, and that we beg that you will accept his rulings without
+      dispute."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then turned from one combatant to the other, with a wave of his hand.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                             III
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Montgomery&mdash;Craggs!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great hush fell over the huge assembly. Even the dogs stopped yapping;
+      one might have thought that the monstrous room was empty. The two men had
+      stood up, the small white gloves over their hands They advanced from their
+      corners and shook hands, Montgomery gravely, Craggs with a smile. Then
+      they fell into position. The crowd gave a long sigh&mdash;the intake of a
+      thousand excited breaths. The referee tilted his chair on to its back
+      legs, and looked moodily critical from the one to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was strength against activity&mdash;that was evident from the first.
+      The Master stood stolidly upon his K leg. It gave him a tremendous
+      pedestal; one could hardly imagine his being knocked down. And he could
+      pivot round upon it with extraordinary quickness; but his advance or
+      retreat was ungainly. His frame, however, was so much larger and broader
+      than that of the student, and his brown, massive face looked so resolute
+      and menacing that the hearts of the Wilson party sank within them. There
+      was one heart, however, which had not done so. It was that of Robert
+      Montgomery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Any nervousness which he may have had completely passed away now that he
+      had his work before him. Here was something definite&mdash;this
+      hard-faced, deformed Hercules to beat, with a career as the price of
+      beating him. He glowed with the joy of action; it thrilled through his
+      nerves. He faced his man with little in-and-out steps, breaking to the
+      left, breaking to the right, feeling his way, while Craggs, with a dull,
+      malignant eye, pivoted slowly upon his weak leg, his left arm half
+      extended, his right sunk low across the mark. Montgomery led with his
+      left, and then led again, getting lightly home each time. He tried again,
+      but the Master had his counter ready, and Montgomery reeled back from a
+      harder blow than he had given. Anastasia, the woman, gave a shrill cry of
+      encouragement, and her man let fly his right. Montgomery ducked under it,
+      and in an instant the two were in each other's arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Break away! Break away!" said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master struck upwards on the break, and shook Montgomery with the
+      blow. Then it was "time." It had been a spirited opening round. The people
+      buzzed into comment and applause. Montgomery was quite fresh, but the
+      hairy chest of the Master was rising and falling. The man passed a sponge
+      over his head while Anastasia flapped the towel before him. "Good lass!
+      good lass!" cried the crowd, and cheered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men were up again, the Master grimly watchful, Montgomery as alert as
+      a kitten. The Master tried a sudden rush, squattering along with his
+      awkward gait, but coming faster than one would think. The student slipped
+      aside and avoided him. The Master stopped, grinned, and shook his head.
+      Then he motioned with his hand as an invitation to Montgomery to come to
+      him. The student did so and led with his left, but got a swinging right
+      counter in the ribs in exchange. The heavy blow staggered him, and the
+      Master came scrambling in to complete his advantage; but Montgomery, with
+      his greater activity, kept out of danger until the call of "time." A tame
+      round, and the advantage with the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "T' Maister's too strong for him," said a smelter to his neighbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay; but t'other's a likely lad. Happen we'll see some sport yet. He can
+      joomp rarely."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But t' Maister can stop and hit rarely. Happen he'll mak' him joomp when
+      he gets his nief upon him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were up again, the water glistening upon their faces. Montgomery led
+      instantly, and got his right home with a sounding smack upon the master's
+      forehead. There was a shout from the colliers, and "Silence! Order!" from
+      the referee. Montgomery avoided the counter, and scored with his left.
+      Fresh applause, and the referee upon his feet in indignation..
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No comments, gentlemen, if <i>you</i> please, during the rounds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just bide a bit!" growled the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't talk&mdash;fight!" said the referee, angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery rubbed in the point by a flush hit upon the mouth, and the
+      Master shambled back to his corner like an angry bear, having had all the
+      worst of the round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where's thot seven to one?" shouted Purvis, the publican. "I'll take six
+      to one!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were no answers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Five to one!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were givers at that. Purvis booked them in a tattered notebook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery began to feel happy. He lay back with his legs outstretched,
+      his back against the corner-post, and one gloved hand upon each rope. What
+      a delicious minute it was between each round. If he could only keep out of
+      harm's way, he must surely wear this man out before the end of twenty
+      rounds. He was so slow that all his strength went for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're fightin' a winnin' fight&mdash;a winnin' fight," Ted Barton
+      whispered in his ear. "Go canny; tak' no chances; you have him proper."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Master was crafty. He had fought so many battles with his maimed
+      limb that he knew how to make the best of it. Warily and slowly he
+      manoeuvred round Montgomery, stepping forward and yet again forward until
+      he had imperceptibly backed him into his corner. The student suddenly saw
+      a flash of triumph upon the grim face, and a gleam in the dull, malignant
+      eyes. The Master was upon him. He sprang aside and was on the ropes. The
+      Master smashed in one of his terrible upper-cuts, and Montgomery half
+      broke it with his guard. The student sprang the other way and was against
+      the other converging rope. He was trapped in the angle. The Master sent in
+      another with a hoggish grunt which spoke of the energy behind it.
+      Montgomery ducked, but got a jab from the left upon the mark. He closed
+      with his man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Break away! Break away!" cried the referee. Montgomery disengaged, and
+      got a swinging blow on the ear as he did so. It had been a damaging round
+      for him, and the Croxley people were shouting their delight. "Gentlemen, I
+      will <i>not</i> have this noise!" Stapleton roared. "I have been
+      accustomed to preside at a well-conducted club, and not at a bear-garden."
+      This little man, with the tilted hat and the bulging forehead, dominated
+      the whole assembly. He was like a head-master among his boys. He glared
+      round him, and nobody cared to meet his eye. Anastasia had kissed the
+      Master when he resumed his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good lass. Do't again!" cried the laughing crowd, and the angry Master
+      shook his glove at her, as she flapped her towel in front of him.
+      Montgomery was weary and a little sore, but not depressed. He had learned
+      something. He would not again be tempted into danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three rounds the honours were fairly equal. The student's hitting was
+      the quicker, the Master's the harder. Profiting by his lesson, Montgomery
+      kept himself in the open, and refused to be herded into a corner.
+      Sometimes the Master succeeded in rushing him to the side-ropes, but the
+      younger man slipped away, or closed and then disengaged. The monotonous
+      "Break away! Break away!" of the referee broke in upon the quick, low
+      patter of rubber-soled shoes, the dull thud of the blows, and the sharp,
+      hissing breath of two tired men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ninth round found both of them in fairly good condition. Montgomery's
+      head was still singing from the blow that he had in the corner, and one of
+      his thumbs pained him acutely and seemed to be dislocated. The Master
+      showed no sign of a touch, but his breathing was the more laboured, and a
+      long line of ticks upon the referee's paper showed that the student had a
+      good show of points. But one of this iron-man's blows was worth three of
+      his, and he knew that without the gloves he could not have stood for three
+      rounds against him. All the amateur work that he had done was the merest
+      tapping and flapping when compared to those frightful blows, from arms
+      toughened by the shovel and the crowbar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the tenth round, and the fight was half over. The betting now was
+      only three to one, for the Wilson champion had held his own much better
+      than had been expected. But those who knew the ring-craft as well as the
+      staying power of the old prize-fighter knew that the odds were still a
+      long way in his favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have a care of him!" whispered Barton, as he sent his man up to the
+      scratch. "Have a care! He'll play thee a trick, if he can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery saw, or imagined he saw, that his antagonist was tiring. He
+      looked jaded and listless, and his hands drooped a little from their
+      position. His own youth and condition were beginning to tell. He sprang in
+      and brought off a fine left-handed lead. The Master's return lacked his
+      usual fire. Again Montgomery led, and again he got home. Then he tried his
+      right upon the mark, and the Master guarded it downwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Too low! Too low! A foul! A foul!" yelled a thousand voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The referee rolled his sardonic eyes slowly round. "Seems to me this
+      buildin' is chock-full of referees," said he. The people laughed and
+      applauded, but their favour was as immaterial to him as their anger. "No
+      applause, please! This is not a theatre!" he yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery was very pleased with himself. His adversary was evidently in a
+      bad way. He was piling on his points and establishing a lead. He might as
+      well make hay while the sun shone. The Master was looking all abroad.
+      Montgomery popped one upon his blue jowl and got away without a return.
+      And then the Master suddenly dropped both his hands and began rubbing his
+      thigh. Ah! that was it, was it? He had muscular cramp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go in! Go in!" cried Teddy Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery sprang wildly forward, and the next instant was lying half
+      senseless, with his neck nearly broken, in the middle of the ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole round had been a long conspiracy to tempt him within reach of
+      one of those terrible right-hand upper-cuts for which the Master was
+      famous. For this the listless, weary bearing, for this the cramp in the
+      thigh. When Montgomery had sprung in so hotly he had exposed himself to
+      such a blow as neither flesh nor blood could stand. Whizzing up from below
+      with a rigid arm, which put the Master's eleven stone into its force, it
+      struck him under the jaw; he whirled half round, and fell a helpless and
+      half-paralysed mass. A vague groan and murmur, inarticulate, too excited
+      for words, rose from the great audience. With open mouths and staring eyes
+      they gazed at the twitching and quivering figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stand back! Stand right back!" shrieked the referee, for the Master was
+      standing over his man ready to give him the <i>coup-de-grace</i> as he
+      rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stand back, Craggs, this instant!" Stapleton repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master sank his hands sulkily and walked backwards to the rope with
+      his ferocious eyes fixed upon his fallen antagonist. The timekeeper called
+      the seconds. If ten of them passed before Montgomery rose to his feet, the
+      fight was ended. Ted Barton wrung his hands and danced about in an agony
+      in his corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As if in a dream&mdash;a terrible nightmare&mdash;the student could hear
+      the voice of the timekeeper&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;he got
+      up on his hand&mdash;six&mdash; seven&mdash;he was on his knee, sick,
+      swimming, faint, but resolute to rise. Eight&mdash;he was up, and the
+      Master was on him like a tiger, lashing savagely at him with both hands.
+      Folk held their breath as they watched those terrible blows, and
+      anticipated the pitiful end&mdash;so much more pitiful where a game but
+      helpless man refuses to accept defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangely automatic is the human brain. Without volition, without effort,
+      there shot into the memory of this bewildered, staggering, half-stupefied
+      man the one thing which could have saved him&mdash;that blind eye of which
+      the Master's son had spoken. It was the same as the other to look at, but
+      Montgomery remembered that he had said that it was the left. He reeled to
+      the left side, half felled by a drive which lit upon his shoulder. The
+      Master pivoted round upon his leg and was at him in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yark him, lad! Yark him!" screamed the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hold your tongue!" said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery slipped to the left again and yet again, but the Master was too
+      quick and clever for him. He struck round and got him full on the face as
+      he tried once more to break away. Montgomery's knees weakened under him,
+      and he fell with a groan on the floor. This time he knew that he was done.
+      With bitter agony he realised, as he groped blindly with his hands, that
+      he could not possibly raise himself. Far away and muffled he heard, amid
+      the murmurs of the multitude, the fateful voice of the timekeeper counting
+      off the seconds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;six&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Time!" said the referee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the pent-up passion of the great assembly broke loose. Croxley gave a
+      deep groan of disappointment. The Wilsons were on their feet, yelling with
+      delight. There was still a chance for them. In four more seconds their man
+      would have been solemnly counted out. But now he had a minute in which to
+      recover. The referee looked round with relaxed features and laughing eyes.
+      He loved this rough game, this school for humble heroes, and it was
+      pleasant to him to intervene as a <i>Deus ex machina</i> at so dramatic a
+      moment. His chair and his hat were both tilted at an extreme angle; he and
+      the timekeeper smiled at each other. Ted Barton and the other second had
+      rushed out and thrust an arm each under Montgomery's knee, the other
+      behind his loins, and so carried him back to his stool. His head lolled
+      upon his shoulder, but a douche of cold water sent a shiver through him,
+      and he started and looked round him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's a' right!" cried the people round. "He's a rare brave lad. Good lad!
+      Good lad!" Barton poured some brandy into his mouth. The mists cleared a
+      little, and he realised where he was and what he had to do. But he was
+      still very weak, and he hardly dared to hope that he could survive another
+      round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seconds out of the ring!" cried the referee. "Time!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Croxley Master sprang eagerly off his stool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Keep clear of him! Go easy for a bit," said Barton, and Montgomery walked
+      out to meet his man once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had had two lessons&mdash;the one when the Master got him into his
+      corner, the other when he had been lured into mixing it up with so
+      powerful an antagonist. Now he would be wary. Another blow would finish
+      him; he could afford to run no risks. The Master was determined to follow
+      up his advantage, and rushed at him, slogging furiously right and left.
+      But Montgomery was too young and active to be caught. He was strong upon
+      his legs once more, and his wits had all come back to him. It was a
+      gallant sight&mdash;the line-of-battleship trying to pour its overwhelming
+      broadside into the frigate, and the frigate manoeuvring always so as to
+      avoid it. The Master tried all his ring-craft. He coaxed the student up by
+      pretended inactivity; he rushed at him with furious rushes towards the
+      ropes. For three rounds he exhausted every wile in trying to get at him.
+      Montgomery during all this time was conscious that his strength was minute
+      by minute coming back to him. The spinal jar from an upper-cut is
+      overwhelming, but evanescent. He was losing all sense of it beyond a great
+      stiffness of the neck. For the first round after his downfall he had been
+      content to be entirely on the defensive, only too happy if he could stall
+      off the furious attacks of the Master. In the second he occasionally
+      ventured upon a light counter. In the third he was smacking back merrily
+      where he saw an opening. His people yelled their approval of him at the
+      end of every round. Even the iron-workers cheered him with that fine
+      unselfishness which true sport engenders. To most of them, unspiritual and
+      unimaginative, the sight of this clean-limbed young Apollo, rising above
+      disaster and holding on while consciousness was in him to his appointed
+      task, was the greatest thing their experience had ever known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Master's naturally morose temper became more and more murderous at
+      this postponement of his hopes. Three rounds ago the battle had been in
+      his hands; now it was all to do over again. Round by round his man was
+      recovering his strength. By the fifteenth he was strong again in wind and
+      limb. But the vigilant Anastasia saw something which encouraged her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That bash in t' ribs is telling on him, Jock," she whispered. "Why else
+      should he be gulping t' brandy? Go in, lad, and thou hast him yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had suddenly taken the flask from Barton's hand, and had a deep
+      pull at the contents. Then, with his face a little flushed, and with a
+      curious look of purpose, which made the referee stare hard at him, in his
+      eyes, he rose for the sixteenth round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Game as a pairtridge!" cried the publican, as he looked at the hard-set
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!" cried the iron-men to their Master. And
+      then a hum of exultation ran through their ranks as they realised that
+      their tougher, harder, stronger man held the vantage, after all. Neither
+      of the men showed much sign of punishment. Small gloves crush and numb,
+      but they do not cut. One of the Master's eyes was even more flush with his
+      cheek than Nature had made it. Montgomery had two or three livid marks
+      upon his body, and his face was haggard, save for that pink spot which the
+      brandy had brought into either cheek. He rocked a little as he stood
+      opposite his man, and his hands drooped as if he felt the gloves to be an
+      unutterable weight. It was evident that he was spent and desperately
+      weary. If he received one other blow it must surely be fatal to him. If he
+      brought one home, what power could there be behind it, and what chance was
+      there of its harming the colossus in front of him? It was the crisis of
+      the fight. This round must decide it. "Mix it oop, lad! Mix it oop!" the
+      iron-men whooped. Even the savage eyes of the referee were unable to
+      restrain the excited crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, at last, the chance had come for Montgomery. He had learned a lesson
+      from his more experienced rival. Why should he not play his own game upon
+      him? He was spent, but not nearly so spent as he pretended. That brandy
+      was to call up his reserves, to let him have strength to take full
+      advantage of the opening when it came. It was thrilling and tingling
+      through his veins at the very moment when he was lurching and rocking like
+      a beaten man. He acted his part admirably. The Master felt that there was
+      an easy task before him, and rushed in with ungainly activity to finish it
+      once for all. He slap-banged away left and right, boring Montgomery up
+      against the ropes, swinging in his ferocious blows with those animal
+      grunts which told of the vicious energy behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery was too cool to fall a victim to any of those murderous
+      upper-cuts. He kept out of harm's way with a rigid guard, an active foot,
+      and a head which was swift to duck. And yet he contrived to present the
+      same appearance of a man who is hopelessly done. The Master, weary from
+      his own shower of blows, and fearing nothing from so weak a man, dropped
+      his hand for an instant, and at that instant Montgomery's right came home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a magnificent blow, straight, clean, crisp, with the force of the
+      loins and the back behind it. And it landed where he had meant it to&mdash;
+      upon the exact point of that blue-grained chin. Flesh and blood could not
+      stand such a blow in such a place. Neither valour nor hardihood can save
+      the man to whom it comes. The Master fell backwards, flat, prostrate,
+      striking the ground with so simultaneous a clap that it was like a shutter
+      falling from a wall. A yell, which no referee could control, broke from
+      the crowded benches as the giant went down. He lay upon his back, his
+      knees a little drawn up, his huge chest panting. He twitched and shook,
+      but could not move. His feet pawed convulsively once or twice. It was no
+      use. He was done. "Eight&mdash;nine&mdash;ten!" said the time-keeper, and
+      the roar of a thousand voices, with a deafening clap like the broad-side
+      of a ship, told that the Master of Croxley was the Master no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery stood half dazed, looking down at the huge, prostrate figure.
+      He could hardly realise that it was indeed all over. He saw the referee
+      motion towards him with his hand. He heard his name bellowed in triumph
+      from every side. And then he was aware of someone rushing towards him; he
+      caught a glimpse of a flushed face and an aureole of flying red hair, a
+      gloveless fist struck him between the eyes, and he was on his back in the
+      ring beside his antagonist, while a dozen of his supporters were
+      endeavouring to secure the frantic Anastasia. He heard the angry shouting
+      of the referee, the screaming of the furious woman, and the cries of the
+      mob. Then something seemed to break like an over-stretched banjo string,
+      and he sank into the deep, deep, mist-girt abyss of unconsciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dressing was like a thing in a dream, and so was a vision of the
+      Master with the grin of a bulldog upon his face, and his three teeth
+      amiably protruded. He shook Montgomery heartily by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would have been rare pleased to shake thee by the throttle, lad, a
+      short while syne," said he. "But I bear no ill-feeling again' thee. It was
+      a rare poonch that brought me down&mdash;I have not had a better since my
+      second fight wi' Billy Edwards in '89. Happen thou might think o' goin'
+      further wi' this business. If thou dost, and want a trainer, there's not
+      much inside t' ropes as I don't know. Or happen thou might like to try it
+      wi' me old style and bare knuckles. Thou hast but to write to t' ironworks
+      to find me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery disclaimed any such ambition. A canvas bag with his share&mdash;190
+      sovereigns&mdash;was handed to him, of which he gave ten to the Master,
+      who also received some share of the gate-money. Then, with young Wilson
+      escorting him on one side, Purvis on the other, and Fawcett carrying his
+      bag behind, he went in triumph to his carriage, and drove amid a long
+      roar, which lined the highway like a hedge for the seven miles, back to
+      his starting-point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's the greatest thing I ever saw in my life. By George, it's ripping!"
+      cried Wilson, who had been left in a kind of ecstasy by the events of the
+      day. "There's a chap over Barnsley way who fancies himself a bit. Let us
+      spring you on him, and let him see what he can make of you. We'll put up a
+      purse&mdash;won't we, Purvis? You shall never want a backer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At his weight," said the publican, "I'm behind him, I am, for twenty
+      rounds, and no age, country, or colour barred."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So am I," cried Fawcett; "middle-weight champion of the world, that's
+      what he is&mdash;here, in the same carriage with us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Montgomery was not to be beguiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; I have my own work to do now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what may that be?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll use this money to get my medical degree."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we've plenty of doctors, but you're the only man in the Riding that
+      could smack the Croxley Master off his legs. However, I suppose you know
+      your own business best. When you're a doctor, you'd best come down into
+      these parts, and you'll always find a job waiting for you at the Wilson
+      Coal-pits."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montgomery had returned by devious ways to the surgery. The horses were
+      smoking at the door, and the doctor was just back from his long journey.
+      Several patients had called in his absence, and he was in the worst of
+      tempers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose I should be glad that you have come back at all, Mr.
+      Montgomery!" he snarled. "When next you elect to take a holiday, I trust
+      it will not be at so busy a time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry, sir, that you should have been inconvenienced."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir, I have been exceedingly inconvenienced." Here, for the first
+      time, he looked hard at the assistant. "Good Heavens, Mr. Montgomery, what
+      have you been doing with your left eye?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was where Anastasia had lodged her protest. Montgomery laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is nothing, sir," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you have a livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that my
+      representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition. How
+      did you receive these injuries?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, sir, as you know, there was a little glove-fight to-day over at
+      Croxley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you got mixed up with that brutal crowd?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I <i>was</i> rather mixed up with them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And who assaulted you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One of the fighters."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which of them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Master of Croxley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good Heavens! Perhaps you interfered with him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, to tell the truth, I did a little."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Montgomery, in such a practice as mine, intimately associated as it
+      is with the highest and most progressive elements of our small community,
+      it is impossible&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just then the tentative bray of a cornet-player searching for his
+      key-note jarred upon their ears, and an instant later the Wilson Colliery
+      brass band was in full cry with, "See the Conquering Hero Comes," outside
+      the surgery window. There was a banner waving, and a shouting crowd of
+      miners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is it? What does it mean?" cried the angry doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It means, sir, that I have, in the only way which was open to me, earned
+      the money which is necessary for my education. It is my duty, Dr. Oldacre,
+      to warn you that I am about to return to the University, and that you
+      should lose no time in appointing my successor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was in the days when the German armies had broken their way across
+      France, and when the shattered forces of the young Republic had been swept
+      away to the north of the Aisne and to the south of the Loire. Three broad
+      streams of armed men had rolled slowly but irresistibly from the Rhine,
+      now meandering to the north, now to the south, dividing, coalescing, but
+      all uniting to form one great lake round Paris. And from this lake there
+      welled out smaller streams&mdash;one to the north, one southward, to
+      Orleans, and a third westward to Normandy. Many a German trooper saw the
+      sea for the first time when he rode his horse girth-deep into the waves at
+      Dieppe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Black and bitter were the thoughts of Frenchmen when they saw this weal of
+      dishonour slashed across the fair face of their country. They had fought
+      and they had been overborne. That swarming cavalry, those countless
+      footmen, the masterful guns&mdash;they had tried and tried to make head
+      against them. In battalions their invaders were not to be beaten, but man
+      to man, or ten to ten, they were their equals. A brave Frenchman might
+      still make a single German rue the day that he had left his own bank of
+      the Rhine. Thus, unchronicled amid the battles and the sieges, there broke
+      out another war, a war of individuals, with foul murder upon the one side
+      and brutal reprisal on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm, of the 24th Posen Infantry, had suffered severely
+      during this new development. He commanded in the little Norman town of Les
+      Andelys, and his outposts stretched amid the hamlets and farmhouses of the
+      district round. No French force was within fifty miles of him, and yet
+      morning after morning he had to listen to a black report of sentries found
+      dead at their posts, or of foraging parties which had never returned. Then
+      the colonel would go forth in his wrath, and farmsteadings would blaze and
+      villages tremble; but next morning there was still that same dismal tale
+      to be told. Do what he might, he could not shake off his invisible
+      enemies. And yet it should not have been so hard, for, from certain signs
+      in common, in the plan and in the deed, it was certain that all these
+      outrages came from a single source.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm had tried violence, and it had failed. Gold might be
+      more successful. He published it abroad over the countryside that 500frs.
+      would be paid for information. There was no response. Then 800frs. The
+      peasants were incorruptible. Then, goaded on by a murdered corporal, he
+      rose to a thousand, and so bought the soul of Francois Rejane, farm
+      labourer, whose Norman avarice was a stronger passion than his French
+      hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You say that you know who did these crimes?" asked the Prussian colonel,
+      eyeing with loathing the blue-bloused, rat-faced creature before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, colonel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And it was&mdash;?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Those thousand francs, colonel&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not a sou until your story has been tested. Come! Who is it who has
+      murdered my men?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is Count Eustace of Chateau Noir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You lie!" cried the colonel, angrily. "A gentleman and a nobleman could
+      not have done such crimes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasant shrugged his shoulders. "It is evident to me that you do not
+      know the count. It is this way, colonel. What I tell you is the truth, and
+      I am not afraid that you should test it. The Count of Chateau Noir is a
+      hard man, even at the best time he was a hard man. But of late he has been
+      terrible. It was his son's death, you know. His son was under Douay, and
+      he was taken, and then in escaping from Germany he met his death. It was
+      the count's only child, and indeed we all think that it has driven him
+      mad. With his peasants he follows the German armies. I do not know how
+      many he has killed, but it is he who cut the cross upon the foreheads, for
+      it is the badge of his house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true. The murdered sentries had each had a saltire cross slashed
+      across their brows, as by a hunting-knife. The colonel bent his stiff back
+      and ran his forefinger over the map which lay upon the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Chateau Noir is not more than four leagues," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Three and a kilometre, colonel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know the place?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I used to work there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel von Gramm rang the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Give this man food and detain him," said he to the sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why detain me, colonel? I can tell you no more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We shall need you as guide."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As guide? But the count? If I were to fall into his hands? Ah, colonel&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prussian commander waved him away. "Send Captain Baumgarten to me at
+      once," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer who answered the summons was a man of middle-age, heavy-jawed,
+      blue-eyed, with a curving yellow moustache, and a brick-red face which
+      turned to an ivory white where his helmet had sheltered it. He was bald,
+      with a shining, tightly stretched scalp, at the back of which, as in a
+      mirror, it was a favourite mess-joke of the subalterns to trim their
+      moustaches. As a soldier he was slow, but reliable and brave. The colonel
+      could trust him where a more dashing officer might be in danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will proceed to Chateau Noir to-night, captain," said he. "A guide
+      has been provided. You will arrest the count and bring him back. If there
+      is an attempt at rescue, shoot him at once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How many men shall I take, colonel?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we are surrounded by spies, and our only chance is to pounce upon
+      him before he knows that we are on the way. A large force will attract
+      attention. On the other hand, you must not risk being cut off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I might march north, colonel, as if to join General Goeben. Then I could
+      turn down this road which I see upon your map, and get to Chateau Noir
+      before they could hear of us. In that case, with twenty men&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good, captain. I hope to see you with your prisoner to-morrow
+      morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold December night when Captain Baumgarten marched out of Les
+      Andelys with his twenty Poseners, and took the main road to the north
+      west. Two miles out he turned suddenly down a narrow, deeply rutted track,
+      and made swiftly for his man. A thin, cold rain was falling, swishing
+      among the tall poplar trees and rustling in the fields on either side. The
+      captain walked first with Moser, a veteran sergeant, beside him. The
+      sergeant's wrist was fastened to that of the French peasant, and it had
+      been whispered in his ear that in case of an ambush the first bullet fired
+      would be through his head. Behind them the twenty infantrymen plodded
+      along through the darkness with their faces sunk to the rain, and their
+      boots squeaking in the soft, wet clay. They knew where they were going,
+      and why, and the thought upheld them, for they were bitter at the loss of
+      their comrades. It was a cavalry job, they knew, but the cavalry were all
+      on with the advance, and, besides, it was more fitting that the regiment
+      should avenge its own dead men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly eight when they left Les Andelys. At half-past eleven their
+      guide stopped at a place where two high pillars, crowned with some
+      heraldic stonework, flanked a huge iron gate. The wall in which it had
+      been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered above
+      the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base. The Prussians made
+      their way round it and advanced stealthily, under the shadow of a tunnel
+      of oak branches, up the long avenue, which was still cumbered by the
+      leaves of last autumn. At the top they halted and reconnoitred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The black chateau lay in front of them. The moon had shone out between two
+      rain-clouds, and threw the old house into silver and shadow. It was shaped
+      like an L, with a low arched door in front, and lines of small windows
+      like the open ports of a man-of-war. Above was a dark roof, breaking at
+      the corners into little round overhanging turrets, the whole lying silent
+      in the moonshine, with a drift of ragged clouds blackening the heavens
+      behind it. A single light gleamed in one of the lower windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain whispered his orders to his men. Some were to creep to the
+      front door, some to the back. Some were to watch the east, and some the
+      west. He and the sergeant stole on tiptoe to the lighted window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a small room into which they looked, very meanly furnished. An
+      elderly man, in the dress of a menial, was reading a tattered paper by the
+      light of a guttering candle. He leaned back in his wooden chair with his
+      feet upon a box, while a bottle of white wine stood with a half-filled
+      tumbler upon a stool beside him. The sergeant thrust his needle-gun
+      through the glass, and the man sprang to his feet with a shriek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Silence, for your life! The house is surrounded, and you cannot escape.
+      Come round and open the door, or we will show you no mercy when we come
+      in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For God's sake, don't shoot! I will open it! I will open it!" He rushed
+      from the room with his paper still crumpled up in his hand. An instant
+      later, with a groaning of old locks and a rasping of bars, the low door
+      swung open, and the Prussians poured into the stone-flagged passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is Count Eustace de Chateau Noir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My master! He is out, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Out at this time of night? Your life for a lie!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is true, sir. He is out!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Doing what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot tell. No, it is no use your cocking your pistol, sir. You may
+      kill me, but you cannot make me tell you that which I do not know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he often out at this hour?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Frequently."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And when does he come home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Before daybreak."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten rasped out a German oath. He had had his journey for
+      nothing, then. The man's answers were only too likely to be true. It was
+      what he might have expected. But at least he would search the house and
+      make sure. Leaving a picket at the front door and another at the back, the
+      sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of them&mdash; his
+      shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the old tapestries
+      and the low, oak-raftered ceilings. They searched the whole house, from
+      the huge stone-flagged kitchen below to the dining-hall on the second
+      floor, with its gallery for musicians, and its panelling black with age,
+      but nowhere was there a living creature. Up above, in an attic, they found
+      Marie, the elderly wife of the butler; but the owner kept no other
+      servants, and of his own presence there was no trace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was long, however, before Captain Baumgarten had satisfied himself upon
+      the point. It was a difficult house to search. Thin stairs, which only one
+      man could ascend at a time, connected lines of tortuous corridors. The
+      walls were so thick that each room was cut off from its neighbour. Huge
+      fireplaces yawned in each, while the windows were 6ft. deep in the wall.
+      Captain Baumgarten stamped with his feet, tore down curtains, and struck
+      with the pommel of his sword. If there were secret hiding-places, he was
+      not fortunate enough to find them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have an idea," said he, at last, speaking in German to the sergeant.
+      "You will place a guard over this fellow, and make sure that he
+      communicates with no one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, captain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you will place four men in ambush at the front and at the back. It is
+      likely enough that about daybreak our bird may return to the nest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the others, captain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let them have their suppers in the kitchen. The fellow will serve you
+      with meat and wine. It is a wild night, and we shall be better here than
+      on the country road."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yourself, captain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will take my supper up here in the dining-hall. The logs are laid and
+      we can light the fire. You will call me if there is any alarm. What can
+      you give me for supper&mdash;you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Alas, monsieur, there was a time when I might have answered, 'What you
+      wish!' but now it is all that we can do to find a bottle of new claret and
+      a cold pullet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That will do very well. Let a guard go about with him, sergeant, and let
+      him feel the end of a bayonet if he plays us any tricks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten was an old campaigner. In the Eastern provinces, and
+      before that in Bohemia, he had learned the art of quartering himself upon
+      the enemy. While the butler brought his supper he occupied himself in
+      making his preparations for a comfortable night. He lit the candelabrum of
+      ten candles upon the centre table. The fire was already burning up,
+      crackling merrily, and sending spurts of blue, pungent smoke into the
+      room. The captain walked to the window and looked out. The moon had gone
+      in again, and it was raining heavily. He could hear the deep sough of the
+      wind, and see the dark loom of the trees, all swaying in the one
+      direction. It was a sight which gave a zest to his comfortable quarters,
+      and to the cold fowl and the bottle of wine which the butler had brought
+      up for him. He was tired and hungry after his long tramp, so he threw his
+      sword, his helmet, and his revolver-belt down upon a chair, and fell to
+      eagerly upon his supper. Then, with his glass of wine before him and his
+      cigar between his lips, he tilted his chair back and looked about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat within a small circle of brilliant light which gleamed upon his
+      silver shoulder-straps, and threw out his terra-cotta face, his heavy
+      eyebrows, and his yellow moustache. But outside that circle things were
+      vague and shadowy in the old dining-hall. Two sides were oak-panelled and
+      two were hung with faded tapestry, across which huntsmen and dogs and
+      stags were still dimly streaming. Above the fireplace were rows of
+      heraldic shields with the blazonings of the family and of its alliances,
+      the fatal saltire cross breaking out on each of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four paintings of old seigneurs of Chateau Noir faced the fireplace, all
+      men with hawk noses and bold, high features, so like each other that only
+      the dress could distinguish the Crusader from the Cavalier of the Fronde.
+      Captain Baumgarten, heavy with his repast, lay back in his chair looking
+      up at them through the clouds of his tobacco smoke, and pondering over the
+      strange chance which had sent him, a man from the Baltic coast, to eat his
+      supper in the ancestral hall of these proud Norman chieftains. But the
+      fire was hot, and the captain's eyes were heavy. His chin sank slowly upon
+      his chest, and the ten candles gleamed upon the broad, white scalp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a slight noise brought him to his feet. For an instant it seemed
+      to his dazed senses that one of the pictures opposite had walked from its
+      frame. There, beside the table, and almost within arm's length of him, was
+      standing a huge man, silent, motionless, with no sign of life save his
+      fierce-glinting eyes. He was black-haired, olive-skinned, with a pointed
+      tuft of black beard, and a great, fierce nose, towards which all his
+      features seemed to run. His cheeks were wrinkled like a last year's apple,
+      but his sweep of shoulder, and bony, corded hands, told of a strength
+      which was unsapped by age. His arms were folded across his arching chest,
+      and his mouth was set in a fixed smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pray do not trouble yourself to look for your weapons," he said, as the
+      Prussian cast a swift glance at the empty chair in which they had been
+      laid. "You have been, if you will allow me to say so, a little indiscreet
+      to make yourself so much at home in a house every wall of which is
+      honeycombed with secret passages. You will be amused to hear that forty
+      men were watching you at your supper. Ah! what then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten had taken a step forward with clenched fists. The
+      Frenchman held up tho revolver which he grasped in his right hand, while
+      with the left he hurled the German back into his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pray keep your seat," said he. "You have no cause to trouble about your
+      men. They have already been provided for. It is astonishing with these
+      stone floors how little one can hear what goes on beneath. You have been
+      relieved of your command, and have now only to think of yourself. May I
+      ask what your name is?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am Captain Baumgarten of, the 24th Posen Regiment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your French is excellent, though you incline, like most of your
+      countrymen, to turn the 'p' into a 'b.' I have been amused to hear them
+      cry '<i>Avez bitie sur moi!</i>' You know, doubtless, who it is who
+      addresses you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Count of Chateau Noir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Precisely. It would have been a misfortune if you had visited my chateau
+      and I had been unable to have a word with you. I have had to do with many
+      German soldiers, but never with an officer before. I have much to talk to
+      you about."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Baumgarten sat still in his chair. Brave as he was, there was
+      something in this man's manner which made his skin creep with
+      apprehension. His eyes glanced to right and to left, but his weapons were
+      gone, and in a struggle he saw that he was but a child to this gigantic
+      adversary. The count had picked up the claret bottle and held it to the
+      light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tut! tut!" said he. "And was this the best that Pierre could do for you?
+      I am ashamed to look you in the face, Captain Baumgarten. We must improve
+      upon this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He blew a call upon a whistle which hung from his shooting-jacket. The old
+      manservant was in the room in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Chambertin from bin 15!" he cried, and a minute later a grey bottle,
+      streaked with cobwebs, was carried in as a nurse bears an infant. The
+      count filled two glasses to the brim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Drink!" said he. "It is the very best in my cellars, and not to be
+      matched between Rouen and Paris. Drink, sir, and be happy! There are cold
+      joints below. There are two lobsters, fresh from Honfleur. Will you not
+      venture upon a second and more savoury supper?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German officer shook his head. He drained the glass, however, and his
+      host filled it once more, pressing him to give an order for this or that
+      dainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is nothing in my house which is not at your disposal. You have but
+      to say the word. Well, then, you will allow me to tell you a story while
+      you drink your wine. I have so longed to tell it to some German officer.
+      It is about my son, my only child, Eustace, who was taken and died in
+      escaping. It is a curious little story, and I think that I can promise you
+      that you will never forget it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must know, then, that my boy was in the artillery&mdash;a fine young
+      fellow, Captain Baumgarten, and the pride of his mother. She died within a
+      week of the news of his death reaching us. It was brought by a brother
+      officer who was at his side throughout, and who escaped while my lad died.
+      I want to tell you all that he told me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Eustace was taken at Weissenburg on the 4th of August. The prisoners were
+      broken up into parties, and sent back into Germany by different routes.
+      Eustace was taken upon the 5th to a village called Lauterburg, where he
+      met with kindness from the German officer in command. This good colonel
+      had the hungry lad to supper, offered him the best he had, opened a bottle
+      of good wine, as I have tried to do for you, and gave him a cigar from his
+      own case. Might I entreat you to take one from mine?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German again shook his head. His horror of his companion had increased
+      as he sat watching the lips that smiled and the eyes that glared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The colonel, as I say, was good to my boy. But, unluckily, the prisoners
+      were moved next day across the Rhine into Ettlingen. They were not equally
+      fortunate there. The officer who guarded them was a ruffian and a villain,
+      Captain Baumgarten. He took a pleasure in humiliating and ill-treating the
+      brave men who had fallen into his power. That night upon my son answering
+      fiercely back to some taunt of his, he struck him in the eye, like this!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crash of the blow rang through the hall. The German's face fell
+      forward, his hand up, and blood oozing through his fingers. The count
+      settled down in his chair once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My boy was disfigured by the blow, and this villain made his appearance
+      the object of his jeers. By the way, you look a little comical yourself at
+      the present moment, captain, and your colonel would certainly say that you
+      had been getting into mischief. To continue, however, my boy's youth and
+      his destitution&mdash;for his pockets were empty&mdash;moved the pity of a
+      kind-hearted major, and he advanced him ten Napoleons from his own pocket
+      without security of any kind. Into your hands, Captain Baumgarten, I
+      return these ten gold pieces, since I cannot learn the name of the lender.
+      I am grateful from my heart for this kindness shown to my boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The vile tyrant who commanded the escort accompanied the prisoners to
+      Durlack, and from there to Carlsruhe. He heaped every outrage upon my lad,
+      because the spirit of the Chateau Noirs would not stoop to turn away his
+      wrath by a feigned submission. Ay, this cowardly villain, whose heart's
+      blood shall yet clot upon this hand, dared to strike my son with his open
+      hand, to kick him, to tear hairs from his moustache&mdash; to use him thus&mdash;and
+      thus&mdash;and thus!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German writhed and struggled. He was helpless in the hands of this
+      huge giant whose blows were raining upon him. When at last, blinded and
+      half-senseless, he staggered to his feet, it was only to be hurled back
+      again into the great oaken chair. He sobbed in his impotent anger and
+      shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My boy was frequently moved to tears by the humiliation of his position,"
+      continued the count. "You will understand me when I say that it is a
+      bitter thing to be helpless in the hands of an insolent and remorseless
+      enemy. On arriving at Carlsruhe, however, his face, which had been wounded
+      by the brutality of his guard, was bound up by a young Bavarian subaltern
+      who was touched by his appearance. I regret to see that your eye is
+      bleeding so. Will you permit me to bind it with my silk handkerchief?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned forward, but the German dashed his hand aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am in your power, you monster!" he cried; "I can endure your
+      brutalities, but not your hypocrisy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The count shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am taking things in their order, just as they occurred," said he. "I
+      was under vow to tell it to the first German officer with whom I could
+      talk <i>tete-a-tete</i>. Let me see, I had got as far as the young
+      Bavarian at Carlsruhe. I regret extremely that you will not permit me to
+      use such slight skill in surgery as I possess. At Carlsruhe, my lad was
+      shut up in the old caserne, where he remained for a fortnight. The worst
+      pang of his captivity was that some unmannerly curs in the garrison would
+      taunt him with his position as he sat by his window in the evening. That
+      reminds me, captain, that you are not quite situated upon a bed of roses
+      yourself, are you now? You came to trap a wolf, my man, and now the beast
+      has you down with his fangs in your throat. A family man, too, I should
+      judge, by that well-filled tunic. Well, a widow the more will make little
+      matter, and they do not usually remain widows long. Get back into the
+      chair, you dog!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, to continue my story&mdash;at the end of a fortnight my son and his
+      friend escaped. I need not trouble you with the dangers which they ran, or
+      with the privations which they endured. Suffice it that to disguise
+      themselves they had to take the clothes of two peasants, whom they waylaid
+      in a wood. Hiding by day and travelling by night, they had got as far into
+      France as Remilly, and were within a mile&mdash;a single mile, captain&mdash;of
+      crossing the German lines when a patrol of Uhlans came right upon them.
+      Ah! it was hard, was it not, when they had come so far and were so near to
+      safety?" The count blew a double call upon his whistle, and three
+      hard-faced peasants entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These must represent my Uhlans," said he. "Well, then, the captain in
+      command, finding that these men were French soldiers in civilian dress
+      within the German lines, proceeded to hang them without trial or ceremony.
+      I think, Jean, that the centre beam is the strongest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unfortunate soldier was dragged from his chair to where a noosed rope
+      had been flung over one of the huge oaken rafters which spanned the room.
+      The cord was slipped over his head, and he felt its harsh grip round his
+      throat. The three peasants seized the other end, and looked to the count
+      for his orders. The officer, pale, but firm, folded his arms and stared
+      defiantly at the man who tortured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are now face to face with death, and I perceive from your lips that
+      you are praying. My son was also face to face with death, and he prayed,
+      also. It happened that a general officer came up, and he heard the lad
+      praying for his mother, and it moved him so&mdash;he being himself a
+      father&mdash;that he ordered his Uhlans away, and he remained with his
+      aide-de-camp only, beside the condemned men. And when he heard all the lad
+      had to tell&mdash;that he was the only child of an old family, and that
+      his mother was in failing health&mdash;he threw off the rope as I throw
+      off this, and he kissed him on either cheek, as I kiss you, and he bade
+      him go, as I bid you go, and may every kind wish of that noble general,
+      though it could not stave off the fever which slew my son, descend now
+      upon your head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was that Captain Baumgarten, disfigured, blinded, and bleeding,
+      staggered out into the wind and the rain of that wild December dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE STRIPED CHEST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      "What do you make of her, Allardyce?" I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My second mate was standing beside me upon the poop, with his short, thick
+      legs astretch, for the gale had left a considerable swell behind it, and
+      our two quarter-boats nearly touched the water with every roll. He
+      steadied his glass against the mizzen-shrouds, and he looked long and hard
+      at this disconsolate stranger every time she came reeling up on to the
+      crest of a roller and hung balanced for a few seconds before swooping down
+      upon the other side. She lay so low in the water that I could only catch
+      an occasional glimpse of a pea-green line of bulwark. She was a brig, but
+      her mainmast had been snapped short off some 10ft. above the deck, and no
+      effort seemed to have been made to cut away the wreckage, which floated,
+      sails and yards, like the broken wing of a wounded gull upon the water
+      beside her. The foremast was still standing, but the foretopsail was
+      flying loose, and the headsails were streaming out in long, white pennons
+      in front of her. Never have I seen a vessel which appeared to have gone
+      through rougher handling. But we could not be surprised at that, for there
+      had been times during the last three days when it was a question whether
+      our own barque would ever see land again. For thirty-six hours we had kept
+      her nose to it, and if the <i>Mary Sinclair</i> had not been as good a
+      seaboat as ever left the Clyde, we could not have gone through. And yet
+      here we were at the end of it with the loss only of our gig and of part of
+      the starboard bulwark. It did not astonish us, however, when the smother
+      had cleared away, to find that others had been less lucky, and that this
+      mutilated brig staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky,
+      had been left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the
+      terror which is past. Allardyce, who was a slow and methodical Scotchman,
+      stared long and hard at the little craft, while our seamen lined the
+      bulwark or clustered upon the fore shrouds to have a view of the stranger.
+      In latitude 20 degrees and longitude 10 degrees, which were about our
+      bearings, one becomes a little curious as to whom one meets, for one has
+      left the main lines of Atlantic commerce to the north. For ten days we had
+      been sailing over a solitary sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's derelict, I'm thinking," said the second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had come to the same conclusion, for I could see no signs of life upon
+      her deck, and there was no answer to the friendly wavings from our seamen.
+      The crew had probably deserted her under the impression that she was about
+      to founder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She can't last long," continued Allardyce, in his measured way. "She may
+      put her nose down and her tail up any minute. The water's lipping up to
+      the edge of her rail."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's her flag?" I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm trying to make out. It's got all twisted and tangled with the
+      halyards. Yes, I've got it now, clear enough. It's the Brazilian flag, but
+      it's wrong side up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had hoisted a signal of distress, then, before her people had
+      abandoned her. Perhaps they had only just gone. I took the mate's glass
+      and looked round over the tumultuous face of the deep blue Atlantic, still
+      veined and starred with white lines and spoutings of foam. But nowhere
+      could I see anything human beyond ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There may be living men aboard," said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There may be salvage," muttered the second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then we will run down upon her lee side, and lie to." We were not more
+      than a hundred yards from her when we swung our foreyard aback, and there
+      we were, the barque and the brig, ducking and bowing like two clowns in a
+      dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Drop one of the quarter-boats," said I. "Take four men, Mr. Allardyce,
+      and see what you can learn of her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just at that moment my first officer, Mr. Armstrong, came on deck, for
+      seven bells had struck, and it was but a few minutes off his watch. It
+      would interest me to go myself to this abandoned vessel and to see what
+      there might be aboard of her. So, with a word to Armstrong, I swung myself
+      over the side, slipped down the falls, and took my place in the sheets of
+      the boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was but a little distance, but it took some time to traverse, and so
+      heavy was the roll that often when we were in the trough of the sea, we
+      could not see either the barque which we had left or the brig which we
+      were approaching. The sinking sun did not penetrate down there, and it was
+      cold and dark in the hollows of the waves, but each passing billow heaved
+      us up into the warmth and the sunshine once more. At each of these
+      moments, as we hung upon a white-capped ridge between the two dark
+      valleys, I caught a glimpse of the long, pea-green line, and the nodding
+      foremast of the brig, and I steered so as to come round by her stern, so
+      that we might determine which was the best way of boarding her. As we
+      passed her we saw the name <i>Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria</i> painted across
+      her dripping counter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The weather side, sir," said the second mate. "Stand by with the
+      boat-hook, carpenter!" An instant later we had jumped over the bulwarks,
+      which were hardly higher than our boat, and found ourselves upon the deck
+      of the abandoned vessel. Our first thought was to provide for our own
+      safety in case&mdash;as seemed very probable&mdash;the vessel should
+      settle down beneath our feet. With this object two of our men held on to
+      the painter of the boat, and fended her off from the vessel's side, so
+      that she might be ready in case we had to make a hurried retreat. The
+      carpenter was sent to find out how much water there was, and whether it
+      was still gaming, while the other seaman, Allardyce and myself, made a
+      rapid inspection of the vessel and her cargo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deck was littered with wreckage and with hen-coops, in which the dead
+      birds were washing about. The boats were gone, with the exception of one,
+      the bottom of which had been stove, and it was certain that the crew had
+      abandoned the vessel. The cabin was in a deck-house, one side of which had
+      been beaten in by a heavy sea. Allardyce and I entered it, and found the
+      captain's table as he had left it, his books and papers&mdash; all Spanish
+      or Portuguese&mdash;scattered over it, with piles of cigarette ash
+      everywhere. I looked about for the log, but could not find it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As likely as not he never kept one," said Allardyce. "Things are pretty
+      slack aboard a South American trader, and they don't do more than they can
+      help. If there was one it must have been taken away with him in the boat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should like to take all these books and papers," said I. "Ask the
+      carpenter how much time we have."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His report was reassuring. The vessel was full of water, but some of the
+      cargo was buoyant, and there was no immediate danger of her sinking.
+      Probably she would never sink, but would drift about as one of those
+      terrible unmarked reefs which have sent so many stout vessels to the
+      bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case there is no danger in your going below, Mr. Allardyce," said
+      I. "See what you can make of her and find out how much of her cargo may be
+      saved. I'll look through these papers while you are gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bills of lading, and some notes and letters which lay upon the desk,
+      sufficed to inform me that the Brazilian brig <i>Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria</i>
+      had cleared from Bahia a month before. The name of the captain was
+      Texeira, but there was no record as to the number of the crew. She was
+      bound for London, and a glance at the bills of lading was sufficient to
+      show me that we were not likely to profit much in the way of salvage. Her
+      cargo consisted of nuts, ginger, and wood, the latter in the shape of
+      great logs of valuable tropical growths. It was these, no doubt, which had
+      prevented the ill-fated vessel from going to the bottom, but they were of
+      such a size as to make it impossible for us to extract them. Besides
+      these, there were a few fancy goods, such as a number of ornamental birds
+      for millinery purposes, and a hundred cases of preserved fruits. And then,
+      as I turned over the papers, I came upon a short note in English, which
+      arrested my attention.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   It is requested (said the note) that the various old Spanish
+   and Indian curiosities, which came out of the Santarem
+   collection, and which are consigned to Prontfoot &amp; Neuman
+   of Oxford Street, London, should be put in some place where
+   there may be no danger of these very valuable and unique articles
+   being injured or tampered with.  This applies most particularly
+   to the treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, which must on
+   no account be placed where anyone can get at it.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez! Unique and valuable articles! Here was
+      a chance of salvage after all. I had risen to my feet with the paper in my
+      hand when my Scotch mate appeared in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm thinking all isn't quite as it should be aboard of this ship, sir,"
+      said he. He was a hard-faced man, and yet I could see that he had been
+      startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the matter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Murder's the matter, sir. There's a man here with his brains beaten out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Killed in the storm?" said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May be so, sir, but I'll be surprised if you think so after you have seen
+      him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is he, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This way, sir; here in the maindeck house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There appeared to have been no accommodation below in the brig, for there
+      was the after-house for the captain, another by the main hatchway, with
+      the cook's galley attached to it, and a third in the forecastle for the
+      men. It was to this middle one that the mate led me. As you entered, the
+      galley, with its litter of tumbled pots and dishes, was upon the right,
+      and upon the left was a small room with two bunks for the officers. Then
+      beyond there was a place about 12ft. square, which was littered with flags
+      and spare canvas. All round the walls were a number of packets done up in
+      coarse cloth and carefully lashed to the woodwork. At the other end was a
+      great box, striped red and white, though the red was so faded and the
+      white so dirty that it was only where the light fell directly upon it that
+      one could see the colouring. The box was, by subsequent measurement, 4ft.
+      3ins. in length, 3ft. 2ins. in height, and 3ft. across&mdash;considerably
+      larger than a seaman's chest. But it was not to the box that my eyes or my
+      thoughts were turned as I entered the store-room. On the floor, lying
+      across the litter of bunting, there was stretched a small, dark man with a
+      short, curling beard. He lay as far as it was possible from the box, with
+      his feet towards it and his head away. A crimson patch was printed upon
+      the white canvas on which his head was resting, and little red ribbons
+      wreathed themselves round his swarthy neck and trailed away on to the
+      floor, but there was no sign of a wound that I could see, and his face was
+      as placid as that of a sleeping child. It was only when I stooped that I
+      could perceive his injury, and then I turned away with an exclamation of
+      horror. He had been pole-axed; apparently by some person standing behind
+      him. A frightful blow had smashed in the top of his head and penetrated
+      deeply into his brains. His face might well be placid, for death must have
+      been absolutely instantaneous, and the position of the wound showed that
+      he could never have seen the person who had inflicted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that foul play or accident, Captain Barclay?" asked my second mate,
+      demurely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are quite right, Mr. Allardyce. The man has been murdered&mdash;struck
+      down from above by a sharp and heavy weapon. But who was he, and why did
+      they murder him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was a common seaman, sir," said the mate. "You can see that if you
+      look at his fingers." He turned out his pockets as he spoke and brought to
+      light a pack of cards, some tarred string, and a bundle of Brazilian
+      tobacco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hello, look at this!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a large, open knife with a stiff spring blade which he had picked
+      up from the floor. The steel was shining and bright, so that we could not
+      associate it with the crime, and yet the dead man had apparently held it
+      in his hand when he was struck down, for it still lay within his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It looks to me, sir, as if he knew he was in danger and kept his knife
+      handy," said the mate. "However, we can't help the poor beggar now. I
+      can't make out these things that are lashed to the wall. They seem to be
+      idols and weapons and curios of all sorts done up in old sacking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's right," said I. "They are the only things of value that we are
+      likely to get from the cargo. Hail the barque and tell them to send the
+      other quarter-boat to help us to get the stuff aboard."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was away I examined this curious plunder which had come into our
+      possession. The curiosities were so wrapped up that I could only form a
+      general idea as to their nature, but the striped box stood in a good light
+      where I could thoroughly examine it. On the lid, which was clamped and
+      cornered with metal-work, there was engraved a complex coat of arms, and
+      beneath it was a line of Spanish which I was able to decipher as meaning,
+      "The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, Knight of the Order of Saint
+      James, Governor and Captain-General of Terra Firma and of the Province of
+      Veraquas." In one corner was the date, 1606, and on the other a large
+      white label, upon which was written in English, "You are earnestly
+      requested, upon no account, to open this box." The same warning was
+      repeated underneath in Spanish. As to the lock, it was a very complex and
+      heavy one of engraved steel, with a Latin motto, which was above a
+      seaman's comprehension. By the time I had finished this examination of the
+      peculiar box, the other quarter-boat with Mr. Armstrong, the first
+      officer, had come alongside, and we began to carry out and place in her
+      the various curiosities which appeared to be the only objects worth moving
+      from the derelict ship. When she was full I sent her back to the barque,
+      and then Allardyce and I, with the carpenter and one seaman, shifted the
+      striped box, which was the only thing left, to our boat, and lowered it
+      over, balancing it upon the two middle thwarts, for it was so heavy that
+      it would have given the boat a dangerous tilt had we placed it at either
+      end. As to the dead man, we left him where we had found him. The mate had
+      a theory that, at the moment of the desertion of the ship, this fellow had
+      started plundering, and that the captain, in an attempt to preserve
+      discipline, had struck him down with a hatchet or some other heavy weapon.
+      It seemed more probable than any other explanation, and yet it did not
+      entirely satisfy me either. But the ocean is full of mysteries, and we
+      were content to leave the fate of the dead seaman of the Brazilian brig to
+      be added to that long list which every sailor can recall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavy box was slung up by ropes on to the deck of the <i>Mary Sinclair</i>,
+      and was carried by four seamen into the cabin, where, between the table
+      and the after-lockers, there was just space for it to stand. There it
+      remained during supper, and after that meal the mates remained with me,
+      and discussed over a glass of grog the event of the day. Mr. Armstrong was
+      a long, thin, vulture-like man, an excellent seaman, but famous for his
+      nearness and cupidity. Our treasure-trove had excited him greatly, and
+      already he had begun with glistening eyes to reckon up how much it might
+      be worth to each of us when the shares of the salvage came to be divided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If the paper said that they were unique, Mr. Barclay, then they may be
+      worth anything that you like to name. You wouldn't believe the sums that
+      the rich collectors give. A thousand pounds is nothing to them. We'll have
+      something to show for our voyage, or I am mistaken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think that," said I. "As far as I can see, they are not very
+      different from any other South American curios."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, sir, I've traded there for fourteen voyages, and I have never seen
+      anything like that chest before. That's worth a pile of money, just as it
+      stands. But it's so heavy that surely there must be something valuable
+      inside it. Don't you think that we ought to open it and see?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you break it open you will spoil it, as likely as not," said the
+      second mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armstrong squatted down in front of it, with his head on one side, and his
+      long, thin nose within a few inches of the lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The wood is oak," said he, "and it has shrunk a little with age. If I had
+      a chisel or a strong-bladed knife I could force the lock back without
+      doing any damage at all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mention of a strong-bladed knife made me think of the dead seaman upon
+      the brig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder if he could have been on the job when someone came to interfere
+      with him," said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know about that, sir, but I am perfectly certain that I could
+      open the box. There's a screwdriver here in the locker. Just hold the
+      lamp, Allardyce, and I'll have it done in a brace of shakes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wait a bit," said I, for already, with eyes which gleamed with curiosity
+      and with avarice, he was stooping over the lid. "I don't see that there is
+      any hurry over this matter. You've read that card which warns us not to
+      open it. It may mean anything or it may mean nothing, but somehow I feel
+      inclined to obey it. After all, whatever is in it will keep, and if it is
+      valuable it will be worth as much if it is opened in the owner's offices
+      as in the cabin of the <i>Mary Sinclair</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first officer seemed bitterly disappointed at my decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Surely, sir, you are not superstitious about it," said he, with a slight
+      sneer upon his thin lips. "If it gets out of our own hands, and we don't
+      see for ourselves what is inside it, we may be done out of our rights;
+      besides&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's enough, Mr. Armstrong," said I, abruptly. "You may have every
+      confidence that you will get your rights, but I will not have that box
+      opened to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, the label itself shows that the box has been examined by Europeans,"
+      Allardyce added. "Because a box is a treasure-box is no reason that it has
+      treasures inside it now. A good many folk have had a peep into it since
+      the days of the old Governor of Terra Firma."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armstrong threw the screwdriver down upon the table and shrugged his
+      shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just as you like," said he; but for the rest of the evening, although we
+      spoke upon many subjects, I noticed that his eyes were continually coming
+      round, with the same expression of curiosity and greed, to the old striped
+      box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now I come to that portion of my story which fills me even now with a
+      shuddering horror when I think of it. The main cabin had the rooms of the
+      officers round it, but mine was the farthest away from it at the end of
+      the little passage which led to the companion. No regular watch was kept
+      by me, except in cases of emergency, and the three mates divided the
+      watches among them. Armstrong had the middle watch, which ends at four in
+      the morning, and he was relieved by Allardyce. For my part I have always
+      been one of the soundest of sleepers, and it is rare for anything less
+      than a hand upon my shoulder to arouse me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet I was aroused that night, or rather in the early grey of the
+      morning. It was just half-past four by my chronometer when something
+      caused me to sit up in my berth wide awake and with every nerve tingling.
+      It was a sound of some sort, a crash with a human cry at the end of it,
+      which still jarred on my ears. I sat listening, but all was now silent.
+      And yet it could not have been imagination, that hideous cry, for the echo
+      of it still rang in my head, and it seemed to have come from some place
+      quite close to me. I sprang from my bunk, and, pulling on some clothes, I
+      made my way into the cabin. At first I saw nothing unusual there. In the
+      cold, grey light I made out the red-clothed table, the six rotating
+      chairs, the walnut lockers, the swinging barometer, and there, at the end,
+      the big striped chest. I was turning away, with the intention of going
+      upon deck and asking the second mate if he had heard anything, when my
+      eyes fell suddenly upon something which projected from under the table. It
+      was the leg of a man&mdash;a leg with a long sea-boot upon it. I stooped,
+      and there was a figure sprawling upon his face, his arms thrown forward
+      and his body twisted. One glance told me that it was Armstrong, the first
+      officer, and a second that he was a dead man. For a few moments I stood
+      gasping. Then I rushed on to the deck, called Allardyce to my assistance,
+      and came back with him into the cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together we pulled the unfortunate fellow from under the table, and as we
+      looked at his dripping head we exchanged glances, and I do not know which
+      was the paler of the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The same as the Spanish sailor," said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The very same. God preserve us! It's that infernal chest! Look at
+      Armstrong's hand!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He held up the mate's right hand, and there was the screwdriver which he
+      had wished to use the night before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's been at the chest, sir. He knew that I was on deck and you were
+      asleep. He knelt down in front of it, and he pushed the lock back with
+      that tool. Then something happened to him, and he cried out so that you
+      heard him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Allardyce," I whispered, "what <i>could</i> have happened to him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second mate put his hand upon my sleeve and drew me into his cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We can talk here, sir, and we don't know who may be listening to us in
+      there. What do you suppose is in that box, Captain Barclay?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I give you my word, Allardyce, that I have no idea."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I can only find one theory which will fit all the facts. Look at
+      the size of the box. Look at all the carving and metal-work which may
+      conceal any number of holes. Look at the weight of it; it took four men to
+      carry it. On top of that, remember that two men have tried to open it, and
+      both have come to their end through it. Now, sir, what can it mean except
+      one thing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mean there is a man in it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course there is a man in it. You know how it is in these South
+      American States, sir. A man may be president one week and hunted like a
+      dog the next&mdash;they are for ever flying for their lives. My idea is
+      that there is some fellow in hiding there, who is armed and desperate, and
+      who will fight to the death before he is taken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But his food and drink?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a roomy chest, sir, and he may have some provisions stowed away. As
+      to his drink, he had a friend among the crew upon the brig who saw that he
+      had what he needed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You think, then, that the label asking people not to open the box was
+      simply written in his interest?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir, that is my idea. Have you any other way of explaining the
+      facts?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had to confess that I had not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The question is what we are to do?" I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The man's a dangerous ruffian, who sticks at nothing. I'm thinking it
+      wouldn't be a bad thing to put a rope round the chest and tow it alongside
+      for half an hour; then we could open it at our ease. Or if we just tied
+      the box up and kept him from getting any water maybe that would do as
+      well. Or the carpenter could put a coat of varnish over it and stop all
+      the blow-holes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, Allardyce," said I, angrily. "You don't seriously mean to say that
+      a whole ship's company are going to be terrorised by a single man in a
+      box. If he's there, I'll engage to fetch him out!" I went to my room and
+      came back with my revolver in my hand. "Now, Allardyce," said I, "do you
+      open the lock, and I'll stand on guard."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For God's sake, think what you are doing, sir!" cried the mate. "Two men
+      have lost their lives over it, and the blood of one not yet dry upon the
+      carpet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The more reason why we should revenge him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, sir, at least let me call the carpenter. Three are better than two,
+      and he is a good stout man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went off in search of him, and I was left alone with the striped chest
+      in the cabin. I don't think that I'm a nervous man, but I kept the table
+      between me and this solid old relic of the Spanish Main. In the growing
+      light of morning the red and white striping was beginning to appear, and
+      the curious scrolls and wreaths of metal and carving which showed the
+      loving pains which cunning craftsmen had expended upon it. Presently the
+      carpenter and the mate came back together, the former with a hammer in his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a bad business, this, sir," said he, shaking his head, as he looked
+      at the body of the mate. "And you think there's someone hiding in the
+      box?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's no doubt about it," said Allardyce, picking up the screwdriver
+      and setting his jaw like a man who needs to brace his courage. "I'll drive
+      the lock back if you will both stand by. If he rises let him have it on
+      the head with your hammer, carpenter. Shoot at once, sir, if he raises his
+      hand. Now!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had knelt down in front of the striped chest, and passed the blade of
+      the tool under the lid. With a sharp snick the lock flew back. "Stand by!"
+      yelled the mate, and with a heave he threw open the massive top of the
+      box. As it swung up we all three sprang back, I with my pistol levelled,
+      and the carpenter with the hammer above his head. Then, as nothing
+      happened, we each took a step forward and peeped in. The box was empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not quite empty either, for in one corner was lying an old yellow
+      candle-stick, elaborately engraved, which appeared to be as old as the box
+      itself. Its rich yellow tone and artistic shape suggested that it was an
+      object of value. For the rest there was nothing more weighty or valuable
+      than dust in the old striped treasure-chest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I'm blessed!" cried Allardyce, staring blankly into it. "Where does
+      the weight come in, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look at the thickness of the sides, and look at the lid. Why, it's five
+      inches through. And see that great metal spring across it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's for holding the lid up," said the mate. "You see, it won't lean
+      back. What's that German printing on the inside?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It means that it was made by Johann Rothstein of Augsburg, in 1606."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And a solid bit of work, too. But it doesn't throw much light on what has
+      passed, does it, Captain Barclay? That candlestick looks like gold. We
+      shall have something for our trouble after all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He leant forward to grasp it, and from that moment I have never doubted as
+      to the reality of inspiration, for on the instant I caught him by the
+      collar and pulled him straight again. It may have been some story of the
+      Middle Ages which had come back to my mind, or it may have been that my
+      eye had caught some red which was not that of rust upon the upper part of
+      the lock, but to him and to me it will always seem an inspiration, so
+      prompt and sudden was my action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's devilry here," said I. "Give me the crooked stick from the
+      corner."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an ordinary walking-cane with a hooked top. I passed it over the
+      candlestick and gave it a pull. With a flash a row of polished steel fangs
+      shot out from below the upper lip, and the great striped chest snapped at
+      us like a wild animal. Clang came the huge lid into its place, and the
+      glasses on the swinging rack sang and tinkled with the shock. The mate sat
+      down on the edge of the table and shivered like a frightened horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've saved my life, Captain Barclay!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So this was the secret of the striped treasure-chest of old Don Ramirez di
+      Leyra, and this was how he preserved his ill-gotten gains from the Terra
+      Firma and the Province of Veraquas. Be the thief ever so cunning he could
+      not tell that golden candlestick from the other articles of value, and the
+      instant that he laid hand upon it the terrible spring was unloosed and the
+      murderous steel pikes were driven into his brain, while the shock of the
+      blow sent the victim backward and enabled the chest to automatically close
+      itself. How many, I wondered, had fallen victims to the ingenuity of the
+      mechanic of Ausgburg? And as I thought of the possible history of that
+      grim striped chest my resolution was very quickly taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Carpenter, bring three men, and carry this on deck."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Going to throw it overboard, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Mr. Allardyce. I'm not superstitious as a rule, but there are some
+      things which are more than a sailor can be called upon to stand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No wonder that brig made heavy weather, Captain Barclay, with such a
+      thing on board. The glass is dropping fast, sir, and we are only just in
+      time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we did not even wait for the three sailors, but we carried it out, the
+      mate, the carpenter, and I, and we pushed it with our own hands over the
+      bulwarks. There was a white spout of water, and it was gone. There it
+      lies, the striped chest, a thousand fathoms deep, and if, as they say, the
+      sea will some day be dry land, I grieve for the man who finds that old box
+      and tries to penetrate into its secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A SHADOW BEFORE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The 15th of July, 1870, found John Worlington Dodds a ruined gamester of
+      the Stock Exchange. Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man. And yet he
+      had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish townlet
+      of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter of the sum
+      which he had earned during the single day that he was within its walls.
+      There is a romance of finance yet to be written, a story of huge forces
+      which are for ever waxing and waning, of bold operations, of breathless
+      suspense, of agonised failure, of deep combinations which are baffled by
+      others still more subtle. The mighty debts of each great European Power
+      stand like so many columns of mercury, for ever rising and falling to
+      indicate the pressure upon each. He who can see far enough into the future
+      to tell how that ever-varying column will stand to-morrow is the man who
+      has fortune within his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Worlington Dodds had many of the gifts which lead a speculator to
+      success. He was quick in observing, just in estimating, prompt and
+      fearless in acting. But in finance there is always the element of luck,
+      which, however one may eliminate it, still remains, like the blank at
+      roulette, a constantly present handicap upon the operator. And so it was
+      that Worlington Dodds had come to grief. On the best advices he had
+      dabbled in the funds of a South American Republic in the days before South
+      American Republics had been found out. The Republic defaulted, and Dodds
+      lost his money. He had bulled the shares of a Scotch railway, and a four
+      months' strike had hit him hard. He had helped to underwrite a coffee
+      company in the hope that the public would come along upon the feed and
+      gradually nibble away some of his holding, but the political sky had been
+      clouded and the public had refused to invest. Everything which he had
+      touched had gone wrong, and now, on the eve of his marriage, young,
+      clear-headed, and energetic, he was actually a bankrupt had his creditors
+      chosen to make him one. But the Stock Exchange is an indulgent body. What
+      is the case of one to-day may be that of another to-morrow, and everyone
+      is interested in seeing that the stricken man is given time to rise again.
+      So the burden of Worlington Dodds was lightened for him; many shoulders
+      helped to bear it, and he was able to go for a little summer tour into
+      Ireland, for the doctors had ordered him rest and change of air to restore
+      his shaken nervous system. Thus it was that upon the 15th of July, 1870,
+      he found himself at his breakfast in the fly-blown coffee-room of the
+      "George Hotel" in the market square of Dunsloe. It is a dull and
+      depressing coffee-room, and one which is usually empty, but on this
+      particular day it was as crowded and noisy as that of any London hotel.
+      Every table was occupied, and a thick smell of fried bacon and of fish
+      hung in the air. Heavily booted men clattered in and out, spurs jingled,
+      riding-crops were stacked in corners, and there was a general atmosphere
+      of horse. The conversation, too, was of nothing else. From every side
+      Worlington Dodds heard of yearlings, of windgalls, of roarers, of spavins,
+      of cribsuckers, of a hundred other terms which were as unintelligible to
+      him as his own Stock Exchange jargon would have been to the company. He
+      asked the waiter for the reason of it all, and the waiter was an
+      astonished man that there should be any man in this world who did not know
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shure it's the Dunsloe horse fair, your honour&mdash;the greatest
+      horse-fair in all Oireland. It lasts for a wake, and the folk come from
+      far an' near&mdash;from England an' Scotland an' iverywhere. If you look
+      out of the winder, your honour, you'll see the horses, and it's asy your
+      honour's conscience must be, or you wouldn't slape so sound that the
+      creatures didn't rouse you with their clatter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds had a recollection that he had heard a confused murmur, which had
+      interwoven itself with his dreams&mdash;a sort of steady rhythmic beating
+      and clanking&mdash;and now, when he looked through the window, he saw the
+      cause of it. The square was packed with horses from end to end&mdash;greys,
+      bays, browns, blacks, chestnuts&mdash;young ones and old, fine ones and
+      coarse, horses of every conceivable sort and size. It seemed a huge
+      function for so small a town, and he remarked as much to the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you see, your honour, the horses don't live in the town, an' they
+      don't vex their heads how small it is. But it's in the very centre of the
+      horse-bradin' districts of Oireland, so where should they come to be sould
+      if it wasn't to Dunsloe?" The waiter had a telegram in his hand, and he
+      turned the address to Worlington Dodds. "Shure I niver heard such a name,
+      sorr. Maybe you could tell me who owns it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds looked at the envelope. Strellenhaus was the name. "No, I don't
+      know," said he. "I never heard it before. It's a foreign name. Perhaps if
+      you were&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at that moment a little round-faced, ruddy-cheeked gentleman, who was
+      breakfasting at the next table, leaned forward and interrupted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you say a foreign name, sir?" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Strellenhaus is the name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am Mr. Strellenhaus&mdash;Mr. Julius Strellenhaus, of Liverpool. I was
+      expecting a telegram. Thank you very much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat so near that Dodds, without any wish to play the spy, could not
+      help to some extent overlooking him as he opened the envelope. The message
+      was a very long one. Quite a wad of melon-tinted paper came out from the
+      tawny envelope. Mr. Strellenhaus arranged the sheets methodically upon the
+      table-cloth in front of him, so that no eye but his own could see them.
+      Then he took out a note-book, and, with an anxious face, he began to make
+      entries in it, glancing first at the telegram and then at the book, and
+      writing apparently one letter or figure at a time. Dodds was interested,
+      for he knew exactly what the man was doing. He was working out a cipher.
+      Dodds had often done it himself. And then suddenly the little man turned
+      very pale, as if the full purport of the message had been a shock to him.
+      Dodds had done that also, and his sympathies were all with his neighbours.
+      Then the stranger rose, and, leaving his breakfast untasted, he walked out
+      of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm thinkin' that the gintleman has had bad news, sorr," said the
+      confidential waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Looks like it," Dodds answered; and at that moment his thoughts were
+      suddenly drawn off into another direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boots had entered the room with a telegram in his hand. "Where's Mr.
+      Mancune?" said he to the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, there are some quare names about. What was it you said?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Mancune," said the boots, glancing round him. "Ah, there he is!" and
+      he handed the telegram to a gentleman who was sitting reading the paper in
+      a corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dodds's eyes had already fallen upon this man, and he had wondered vaguely
+      what he was doing in such company. He was a tall, white-haired,
+      eagle-nosed gentleman, with a waxed moustache and a carefully pointed
+      beard&mdash;an aristocratic type which seemed out of its element among the
+      rough, hearty, noisy dealers who surrounded him. This, then, was Mr.
+      Mancune, for whom the second telegram was intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he opened it, tearing it open with a feverish haste, Dodds could
+      perceive that it was as bulky as the first one. He observed also, from the
+      delay in reading it, that it was also in some sort of cipher. The
+      gentleman did not write down any translation of it, but he sat for some
+      time with his nervous, thin fingers twitching amongst the hairs of his
+      white beard, and his shaggy brows bent in the deepest and most absorbed
+      attention whilst he mastered the meaning of it. Then he sprang suddenly to
+      his feet, his eyes flashed, his cheeks flushed, and in his excitement he
+      crumpled the message up in his hand. With an effort he mastered his
+      emotion, put the paper into his pocket, and walked out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was enough to excite a less astute and imaginative man than
+      Worlington Dodds. Was there any connection between these two messages, or
+      was it merely a coincidence? Two men with strange names receive two
+      telegrams within a few minutes of each other, each of considerable length,
+      each in cipher, and each causing keen emotion to the man who received it.
+      One turned pale. The other sprang excitedly to his feet. It might be a
+      coincidence, but it was a very curious one. If it was not a coincidence,
+      then what could it mean? Were they confederates who pretended to work
+      apart, but who each received identical orders from some person at a
+      distance? That was possible, and yet there were difficulties in the way.
+      He puzzled and puzzled, but could find no satisfactory solution to the
+      problem. All breakfast he was turning it over in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When breakfast was over he sauntered out into the market square, where the
+      horse sale was already in progress. The yearlings were being sold first&mdash;tall,
+      long-legged, skittish, wild-eyed creatures, who had run free upon the
+      upland pastures, with ragged hair and towsie manes, but hardy, inured to
+      all weathers, and with the makings of splendid hunters and steeplechasers
+      when corn and time had brought them to maturity. They were largely of
+      thoroughbred blood, and were being bought by English dealers, who would
+      invest a few pounds now on what they might sell for fifty guineas in a
+      year, if all went well. It was legitimate speculation, for the horse is a
+      delicate creature, he is afflicted with many ailments, the least accident
+      may destroy his value, he is a certain expense and an uncertain profit,
+      and for one who comes safely to maturity several may bring no return at
+      all. So the English horse-dealers took their risks as they bought up the
+      shaggy Irish yearlings. One man with a ruddy face and a yellow overcoat
+      took them by the dozen, with as much <i>sang froid</i> as if they had been
+      oranges, entering each bargain in a bloated note-book. He bought forty or
+      fifty during the time that Dodds was watching him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is that?" he asked his neighbour, whose spurs and gaiters showed that
+      he was likely to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man stared in astonishment at the stranger's ignorance. "Why, that's
+      Jim Holloway, the great Jim Holloway," said he; then, seeing by the blank
+      look upon Dodds's face that even this information had not helped him much,
+      he went into details. "Sure he's the head of Holloway &amp; Morland, of
+      London," said he. "He's the buying partner, and he buys cheap; and the
+      other stays at home and sells, and he sells dear. He owns more horses than
+      any man in the world, and asks the best money for them. I dare say you'll
+      find that half of what are sold at the Dunsloe fair this day will go to
+      him, and he's got such a purse that there's not a man who can bid against
+      him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Worlington Dodds watched the doings of the great dealer with interest. He
+      had passed on now to the two-year-olds and three-year-olds, full-grown
+      horses, but still a little loose in the limb and weak in the bone. The
+      London buyer was choosing his animals carefully, but having chosen them,
+      the vigour of his competition drove all other bidders out of it. With a
+      careless nod he would run the figure up five pounds at a time, until he
+      was left in possession of the field. At the same time he was a shrewd
+      observer, and when, as happened more than once, he believed that someone
+      was bidding against him simply in order to run him up, the head would
+      cease suddenly to nod, the note-book would be closed with a snap, and the
+      intruder would be left with a purchase which he did not desire upon his
+      hands. All Dodds's business instincts were aroused by the tactics of this
+      great operator, and he stood in the crowd watching with the utmost
+      interest all that occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not to buy young horses, however, that the great dealers come to
+      Ireland, and the real business of the fair commenced when the four and
+      five-year-olds were reached; the full-grown, perfect horses, at their
+      prime, and ready for any work or any fatigue. Seventy magnificent
+      creatures had been brought down by a single breeder, a comfortable-
+      looking, keen-eyed, ruddy-cheeked gentleman who stood beside the sales-man
+      and whispered cautions and precepts into his ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's Flynn of Kildare," said Dodds's informant. "Jack Flynn has brought
+      down that string of horses, and the other large string over yonder belongs
+      to Tom Flynn, his brother. The two of them together are the two first
+      breeders in Ireland." A crowd had gathered in front of the horses. By
+      common consent a place had been made for Mr. Holloway, and Dodds could
+      catch a glimpse of his florid face and yellow covert-coat in the front
+      rank. He had opened his note-book, and was tapping his teeth reflectively
+      with his pencil as he eyed the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll see a fight now between the first seller and the first buyer in
+      the country," said Dodds's acquaintance. "They are a beautiful string,
+      anyhow. I shouldn't be surprised if he didn't average five-and-thirty
+      pound apiece for the lot as they stand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The salesman had mounted upon a chair, and his keen, clean-shaven face
+      overlooked the crowd. Mr. Jack Flynn's grey whiskers were at his elbow,
+      and Mr. Holloway immediately in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've seen these horses, gentlemen," said the salesman, with a backward
+      sweep of his hand towards the line of tossing heads and streaming manes.
+      "When you know that they are bred by Mr. Jack Flynn, at his place in
+      Kildare, you will have a guarantee of their quality. They are the best
+      that Ireland can produce, and in this class of horse the best that Ireland
+      can produce are the best in the world, as every riding man knows well.
+      Hunters or carriage horses, all warranted sound, and bred from the best
+      stock. There are seventy in Mr. Jack Flynn's string, and he bids me say
+      that if any wholesale dealer would make one bid for the whole lot, to save
+      time, he would have the preference over any purchaser."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause and a whisper from the crowd in front, with some
+      expressions of discontent. By a single sweep all the small dealers had
+      been put out of it. It was only a long purse which could buy on such a
+      scale as that. The salesman looked round him inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, Mr. Holloway," said he, at last. "You didn't come over here for the
+      sake of the scenery. You may travel the country and not see such another
+      string of horses. Give us a starting bid."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great dealer was still rattling his pencil upon his front teeth.
+      "Well," said he, at last, "they <i>are</i> a fine lot of horses, and I
+      won't deny it. They do you credit, Mr. Flynn, I am sure. All the same I
+      didn't mean to fill a ship at a single bid in this fashion. I like to pick
+      and choose my horses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case Mr. Flynn is quite prepared to sell them in smaller lots,"
+      said the salesman. "It was rather for the convenience of a wholesale
+      customer that he was prepared to put them all up together. But if no
+      gentleman wishes to bid&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wait a minute," said a voice. "They are very fine horses, these, and I
+      will give you a bid to start you. I will give you twenty pounds each for
+      the string of seventy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a rustle as the crowd all swayed their heads to catch a glimpse
+      of the speaker. The salesman leaned forward. "May I ask your name, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Strellenhaus&mdash;Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a new firm," said Dodds's neighbour. "I thought I knew them all, but
+      I never heard of him before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The salesman's head had disappeared, for he was whispering with the
+      breeder. Now he suddenly straightened himself again. "Thank you for giving
+      us a lead, sir," said he. "Now, gentlemen, you have heard the offer of Mr.
+      Strellenhaus of Liverpool. It will give us a base to start from. Mr.
+      Strellenhaus has offered twenty pounds a head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Guineas," said Holloway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bravo, Mr. Holloway! I knew that you would take a hand. You are not the
+      man to let such a string of horses pass away from you. The bid is twenty
+      guineas a head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twenty-five pounds," said Mr. Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twenty-six."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was London against Liverpool, and it was the head of the trade against
+      an outsider. Still, the one man had increased his bids by fives and the
+      other only by ones. Those fives meant determination and also wealth.
+      Holloway had ruled the market so long that the crowd was delighted at
+      finding someone who would stand up to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The bid now stands at thirty pounds a head," said the salesman. "The word
+      lies with you, Mr. Holloway."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The London dealer was glancing keenly at his unknown opponent, and he was
+      asking himself whether this was a genuine rival, or whether it was a
+      device of some sort&mdash;an agent of Flynn's perhaps&mdash;for running up
+      the price. Little Mr. Strellenhaus, the same apple-faced gentleman whom
+      Dodds had noticed in the coffee-room, stood looking at the horses with the
+      sharp, quick glances of a man who knows what he is looking for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-one," said Holloway, with the air of a man who has gone to his
+      extreme limit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-two," said Strellenhaus, promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holloway grew angry at this persistent opposition. His red face flushed
+      redder still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-three!" he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-four," said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holloway became thoughtful, and entered a few figures in his note-book.
+      There were seventy horses. He knew that Flynn's stock was always of the
+      highest quality. With the hunting season coming on he might rely upon
+      selling them at an average of from forty-five to fifty. Some of them might
+      carry a heavy weight, and would run to three figures. On the other hand,
+      there was the feed and keep of them for three months, the danger of the
+      voyage, the chance of influenza or some of those other complaints which
+      run through an entire stable as measles go through a nursery. Deducting
+      all this, it was a question whether at the present price any profit would
+      be left upon the transaction. Every pound that he bid meant seventy out of
+      his pocket. And yet he could not submit to be beaten by this stranger
+      without a struggle. As a business matter it was important to him to be
+      recognised as the head of his profession. He would make one more effort,
+      if he sacrificed his profit by doing so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At the end of your rope, Mr. Holloway?" asked the salesman, with the
+      suspicion of a sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-five," cried Holloway gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-six," said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I wish you joy of your bargain," said Holloway. "I don't buy at that
+      price, but I should be glad to sell you some."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Strellenhaus took no notice of the irony. He was still looking
+      critically at the horses. The salesman glanced round him in a perfunctory
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty-six pounds bid," said he. "Mr. Jack Flynn's lot is going to Mr.
+      Strellenhaus of Liverpool, at thirty-six pounds a head. Going&mdash;going&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forty!" cried a high, thin, clear voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A buzz rose from the crowd, and they were all on tiptoe again, trying to
+      catch a glimpse of this reckless buyer. Being a tall man, Dodds could see
+      over the others, and there, at the side of Holloway, he saw the masterful
+      nose and aristocratic beard of the second stranger in the coffee-room. A
+      sudden personal interest added itself to the scene. He felt that he was on
+      the verge of something&mdash;something dimly seen&mdash; which he could
+      himself turn to account. The two men with strange names, the telegrams,
+      the horses&mdash;what was underlying it all? The salesman was all
+      animation again, and Mr. Jack Flynn was sitting up with his white whiskers
+      bristling and his eyes twinkling. It was the best deal which he had ever
+      made in his fifty years of experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What name, sir?" asked the salesman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Mancune."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Address?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Mancune of Glasgow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you for your bid, sir. Forty pounds a head has been bid by Mr.
+      Mancune of Glasgow. Any advance upon forty?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forty-one," said Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forty-five," said Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tactics had changed, and it was the turn of Strellenhaus now to
+      advance by ones, while his rival sprang up by fives. But the former was as
+      dogged as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forty-six," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fifty!" cried Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was unheard of. The most that the horses could possibly average at a
+      retail price was as much as these men were willing to pay wholesale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Two lunatics from Bedlam," whispered the angry Holloway. "If I was Flynn
+      I would see the colour of their money before I went any further."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same thought had occurred to the salesman. "As a mere matter of
+      business, gentlemen," said he, "it is usual in such cases to put down a
+      small deposit as a guarantee of <i>bona fides</i>. You will understand how
+      I am placed, and that I have not had the pleasure of doing business with
+      either of you before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How much?" asked Strellenhaus, briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Should we say five hundred?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here is a note for a thousand pounds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And here is another," said Mancune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing could be more handsome, gentlemen," said the salesman. "It's a
+      treat to see such a spirited competition. The last bid was fifty pounds a
+      head from Mancune. The word lies with you, Mr. Strellenhaus."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jack Flynn whispered something to the salesman. "Quite so! Mr. Flynn
+      suggests, gentlemen, that as you are both large buyers, it would, perhaps,
+      be a convenience to you if he was to add the string of Mr. Tom Flynn,
+      which consists of seventy animals of precisely the same quality, making
+      one hundred and forty in all. Have you any objection, Mr. Mancune?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you, Mr. Strellenhaus?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should prefer it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very handsome! Very handsome indeed!" murmured the salesman. "Then I
+      understand, Mr. Mancune, that your offer of fifty pounds a head extends to
+      the whole of these horses?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long breath went up from the crowd. Seven thousand pounds at one deal.
+      It was a record for Dunsloe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Any advance, Mr. Strellenhaus?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fifty-one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fifty-five."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fifty-six."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sixty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They could hardly believe their ears. Holloway stood with his mouth open,
+      staring blankly in front of him. The salesman tried hard to look as if
+      such bidding and such prices were nothing unusual. Jack Flynn of Kildare
+      smiled benignly and rubbed his hands together. The crowd listened in dead
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sixty-one," said Strellenhaus. From the beginning he had stood without a
+      trace of emotion upon his round face, like a little automatic figure which
+      bid by clockwork. His rival was of a more excitable nature. His eyes were
+      shining, and he was for ever twitching at his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sixty-five," he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sixty-six."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seventy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the clockwork had run down. No answering bid came from Mr.
+      Strellenhaus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seventy bid, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Strellenhaus shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am buying for another, and I have reached his limit," said he. "If you
+      will permit me to send for instructions&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid, sir, that the sale must proceed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then the horses belong to this gentleman." For the first time he turned
+      towards his rival, and their glances crossed like sword-blades. "It is
+      possible that I may see the horses again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope so," said Mr. Mancune; and his white, waxed moustache gave a
+      feline upward bristle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, with a bow, they separated. Mr. Strellenhaus walked, down to the
+      telegraph-office, where his message was delayed because Mr. Worlington
+      Dodds was already at the end of the wires, for, after dim guesses and
+      vague conjecture, he had suddenly caught a clear view of this coming event
+      which had cast so curious a shadow before it in this little Irish town.
+      Political rumours, names, appearances, telegrams, seasoned horses at any
+      price, there could only be one meaning to it. He held a secret, and he
+      meant to use it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Warner, who was the partner of Mr. Worlington Dodds, and who was
+      suffering from the same eclipse, had gone down to the Stock Exchange, but
+      had found little consolation there, for the European system was in a
+      ferment, and rumours of peace and of war were succeeding each other with
+      such rapidity and assurance that it was impossible to know which to trust.
+      It was obvious that a fortune lay either way, for every rumour set the
+      funds fluctuating; but without special information it was impossible to
+      act, and no one dared to plunge heavily upon the strength of newspaper
+      surmise and the gossip of the street. Warner knew that an hour's work
+      might resuscitate the fallen fortunes of himself and his partner, and yet
+      he could not afford to make a mistake. He returned to his office in the
+      afternoon, half inclined to back the chances of peace, for of all war
+      scares not one in ten comes to pass. As he entered the office a telegram
+      lay upon the table. It was from Dunsloe, a place of which he had never
+      heard, and was signed by his absent partner. The message was in cipher,
+      but he soon translated it, for it was short and crisp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am a bear of everything German and French. Sell, sell, sell, keep on
+      selling."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Warner hesitated. What could Worlington Dodds know at Dunsloe
+      which was not known in Throgmorton Street? But he remembered the quickness
+      and decision of his partner. He would not have sent such a message without
+      very good grounds. If he was to act at all he must act at once, so,
+      hardening his heart, he went down to the house, and, dealing upon that
+      curious system by which a man can sell what he has not got, and what he
+      could not pay for if he had it, he disposed of heavy parcels of French and
+      German securities. He had caught the market in one of its little spasms of
+      hope, and there was no lack of buying until his own persistent selling
+      caused others to follow his lead, and so brought about a reaction. When
+      Warner returned to his offices it took him some hours to work out his
+      accounts, and he emerged into the streets in the evening with the absolute
+      certainty that the next settling-day would leave him either hopelessly
+      bankrupt or exceedingly prosperous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It all depended upon Worlington Dodds's information. What could he
+      possibly have found out at Dunsloe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly he saw a newspaper boy fasten a poster upon a lamp-post,
+      and a little crowd had gathered round it in an instant One of them waved
+      his hat in the air; another shouted to a friend across the street. Warner
+      hurried up and caught a glimpse of the poster between two craning heads&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+           "FRANCE DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "By Jove!" cried Warner. "Old Dodds was right, after all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE KING OF THE FOXES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was after a hunting dinner, and there were as many scarlet coats as
+      black ones round the table. The conversation over the cigars had turned,
+      therefore, in the direction of horses and horsemen, with reminiscences of
+      phenomenal runs where foxes had led the pack from end to end of a county,
+      and been overtaken at last by two or three limping hounds and a huntsman
+      on foot, while every rider in the field had been pounded. As the port
+      circulated the runs became longer and more apocryphal, until we had the
+      whips inquiring their way and failing to understand the dialect of the
+      people who answered them. The foxes, too, became mere eccentric, and we
+      had foxes up pollard willows, foxes which were dragged by the tail out of
+      horses' mangers, and foxes which had raced through an open front door and
+      gone to ground in a lady's bonnet-box. The master had told one or two tall
+      reminiscences, and when he cleared his throat for another we were all
+      curious, for he was a bit of an artist in his way, and produced his
+      effects in a <i>crescendo</i> fashion. His face wore the earnest,
+      practical, severely accurate expression which heralded some of his finest
+      efforts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was before I was master," said he. "Sir Charles Adair had the hounds
+      at that time, and then afterwards they passed to old Lathom, and then to
+      me. It may possibly have been just after Lathom took them over, but my
+      strong impression is that it was in Adair's time. That would be early in
+      the seventies&mdash;about seventy-two, I should say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The man I mean has moved to another part of the country, but I daresay
+      that some of you can remember him. Danbury was the name&mdash;Walter
+      Danbury, or Wat Danbury, as the people used to call him. He was the son of
+      old Joe Danbury, of High Ascombe, and when his father died he came into a
+      very good thing, for his only brother was drowned when the <i>Magna Charta</i>
+      foundered, so he inherited the whole estate. It was but a few hundred
+      acres, but it was good arable land, and those were the great days of
+      farming. Besides, it was freehold, and a yeoman farmer without a mortgage
+      was a warmish man before the great fall in wheat came. Foreign wheat and
+      barbed wire&mdash;those are the two curses of this country, for the one
+      spoils the farmer's work and the other spoils his play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This young Wat Danbury was a very fine fellow, a keen rider, and a
+      thorough sportsman, but his head was a little turned at having come, when
+      so young, into a comfortable fortune, and he went the pace for a year or
+      two. The lad had no vice in him, but there was a hard-drinking set in the
+      neighbourhood at that time, and Danbury got drawn in among them; and,
+      being an amiable fellow who liked to do what his friends were doing, he
+      very soon took to drinking a great deal more than was good for him. As a
+      rule, a man who takes his exercise may drink as much as he likes in the
+      evening, and do himself no very great harm, if he will leave it alone
+      during the day. Danbury had too many friends for that, however, and it
+      really looked as if the poor chap was going to the bad, when a very
+      curious thing happened which pulled him up with such a sudden jerk that he
+      never put his hand upon the neck of a whisky bottle again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He had a peculiarity which I have noticed in a good many other men, that
+      though he was always playing tricks with his own health, he was none the
+      less very anxious about it, and was extremely fidgety if ever he had any
+      trivial symptom. Being a tough, open-air fellow, who was always as hard as
+      a nail, it was seldom that there was anything amiss with him; but at last
+      the drink began to tell, and he woke one morning with his hands shaking
+      and all his nerves tingling like over-stretched fiddle-strings. He had
+      been dining at some very wet house the night before, and the wine had,
+      perhaps, been more plentiful than choice; at any rate, there he was, with
+      a tongue like a bath towel and a head that ticked like an eight-day clock.
+      He was very alarmed at his own condition, and he sent for Doctor
+      Middleton, of Ascombe, the father of the man who practises there now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Middleton had been a great friend of old Danbury's, and he was very sorry
+      to see his son going to the devil; so he improved the occasion by taking
+      his case very seriously, and lecturing him upon the danger of his ways. He
+      shook his head and talked about the possibility of <i>delirium tremens</i>,
+      or even of mania, if he continued to lead such a life. Wat Danbury was
+      horribly frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Do you think I am going to get anything of the sort?' he wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Well, really, I don't know,' said the doctor gravely. 'I cannot
+      undertake to say that you are out of danger. Your system is very much out
+      of order. At any time during the day you might have those grave symptoms
+      of which I warn you.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'You think I shall be safe by evening?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'If you drink nothing during the day, and have no nervous symptoms before
+      evening, I think you may consider yourself safe," the doctor answered. A
+      little fright would, he thought, do his patient good, so he made the most
+      of the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'What symptoms may I expect?' asked Danebury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It generally takes the form of optical delusions.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I see specks floating all about.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'That is mere biliousness,' said the doctor soothingly, for he saw that
+      the lad was highly strung, and he did not wish to overdo it. 'I daresay
+      that you will have no symptoms of the kind, but when they do come they
+      usually take the shape of insects, or reptiles, or curious animals.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'And if I see anything of the kind?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'If you do, you will at once send for me;' and so, with a promise of
+      medicine, the doctor departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Young Wat Danbury rose and dressed and moped about the room feeling very
+      miserable and unstrung, with a vision of the County Asylum for ever in his
+      mind. He had the doctor's word for it that if he could get through to
+      evening in safety he would be all right; but it is not very exhilarating
+      to be waiting for symptoms, and to keep on glancing at your bootjack to
+      see whether it is still a bootjack or whether it has begun to develop
+      antennae and legs. At last he could stand it no longer, and an
+      overpowering longing for the fresh air and the green grass came over him.
+      Why should he stay indoors when the Ascombe Hunt was meeting within half a
+      mile of him? If he was going to have these delusions which the doctor
+      talked of, he would not have them the sooner nor the worse because he was
+      on horseback in the open. He was sure, too, it would ease his aching head.
+      And so it came about that in ten minutes he was in his hunting-kit, and in
+      ten more he was riding out of his stable-yard with his roan mare 'Matilda'
+      between his knees. He was a little unsteady in his saddle just at first,
+      but the farther he went the better he felt, until by the time he reached
+      the meet his head was almost clear, and there was nothing troubling him
+      except those haunting words of the doctor's about the possibility of
+      delusions any time before nightfall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But soon he forgot that also, for as he came up the hounds were thrown
+      off, and they drew the Gravel Hanger, and afterwards the Hickory Copse. It
+      was just the morning for a scent&mdash;no wind to blow it away, no water
+      to wash it out, and just damp enough to make it cling. There was a field
+      of forty, all keen men and good riders, so when they came to the Black
+      Hanger they knew that there would be some sport, for that's a cover which
+      never draws blank. The woods were thicker in those days than now, and the
+      foxes were thicker also, and that great dark oak-grove was swarming with
+      them. The only difficulty was to make them break, for it is, as you know,
+      a very close country, and you must coax them out into the open before you
+      can hope for a run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When they came to the Black Hanger the field took their positions along
+      the cover-side wherever they thought that they were most likely to get a
+      good start. Some went in with the hounds, some clustered at the ends of
+      the drives, and some kept outside in the hope of the fox breaking in that
+      direction. Young Wat Danbury knew the country like the palm of his hand,
+      so he made for a place where several drives intersected, and there he
+      waited. He had a feeling that the faster and the farther he galloped the
+      better he should be, and so he was chafing to be off. His mare, too, was
+      in the height of fettle and one of the fastest goers in the county. Wat
+      was a splendid lightweight rider&mdash;under ten stone with his saddle&mdash;and
+      the mare was a powerful creature, all quarters and shoulders, fit to carry
+      a lifeguardsman; and so it was no wonder that there was hardly a man in
+      the field who could hope to stay with him. There he waited and listened to
+      the shouting of the huntsman and the whips, catching a glimpse now and
+      then in the darkness of the wood of a whisking tail, or the gleam of a
+      white-and-tan side amongst the underwood. It was a well-trained pack, and
+      there was not so much as a whine to tell you that forty hounds were
+      working all round you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then suddenly there came one long-drawn yell from one of them, and it
+      was taken up by another, and another, until within a few seconds the whole
+      pack was giving tongue together and running on a hot scent. Danbury saw
+      them stream across one of the drives and disappear upon the other side,
+      and an instant later the three red coats of the hunt servants flashed
+      after them upon the same line. He might have made a shorter cut down one
+      of the other drives, but he was afraid of heading the fox, so he followed
+      the lead of the huntsman. Right through the wood they went in a bee-line,
+      galloping with their faces brushed by their horses' manes as they stooped
+      under the branches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's ugly going, as you know, with the roots all wriggling about in the
+      darkness, but you can take a risk when you catch an occasional glimpse of
+      the pack running with a breast-high scent; so in and out they dodged until
+      the wood began to thin at the edges, and they found themselves in the long
+      bottom where the river runs. It is clear going there upon grassland, and
+      the hounds were running very strong about two hundred yards ahead, keeping
+      parallel with the stream. The field, who had come round the wood instead
+      of going through, were coming hard over the fields upon the left; but
+      Danbury, with the hunt servants, had a clear lead, and they never lost it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Two of the field got on terms with them&mdash;Parson Geddes on a big
+      seventeen-hand bay which he used to ride in those days, and Squire Foley,
+      who rode as a feather-weight, and made his hunters out of cast
+      thoroughbreds from the Newmarket sales; but the others never had a look-in
+      from start to finish, for there was no check and no pulling, and it was
+      clear cross-country racing from start to finish. If you had drawn a line
+      right across the map with a pencil you couldn't go straighter than that
+      fox ran, heading for the South Downs and the sea, and the hounds ran as
+      surely as if they were running to view, and yet from the beginning no one
+      ever saw the fox, and there was never a hallo forrard to tell them that he
+      had been spied. This, however, is not so surprising, for if you've been
+      over that line of country you will know that there are not very many
+      people about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There were six of them then in the front row&mdash;Parson Geddes, Squire
+      Foley, the huntsman, two whips, and Wat Danbury, who had forgotten all
+      about his head and the doctor by this time, and had not a thought for
+      anything but the run. All six were galloping just as hard as they could
+      lay hoofs to the ground. One of the whips dropped back, however, as some
+      of the hounds were tailing off, and that brought them down to five. Then
+      Foley's thoroughbred strained herself, as these slim-legged,
+      dainty-fetlocked thoroughbreds will do when the going is rough, and he had
+      to take a back seat. But the other four were still going strong, and they
+      did four or five miles down the river flat at a rasping pace. It had been
+      a wet winter, and the waters had been out a little time before, so there
+      was a deal of sliding and splashing; but by the time they came to the
+      bridge the whole field was out of sight, and these four had the hunt to
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The fox had crossed the bridge&mdash;for foxes do not care to swim a
+      chilly river any more than humans do&mdash;and from that point he had
+      streaked away southward as hard as he could tear. It is broken country,
+      rolling heaths, down one slope and up another, and it's hard to say
+      whether the up or the down is the more trying for the horses. This sort of
+      switchback work is all right for a cobby, short-backed, short-legged
+      little horse, but it is killing work for a big, long-striding hunter such
+      as one wants in the Midlands. Anyhow, it was too much for Parson Geddes'
+      seventeen-hand bay, and though he tried the Irish trick&mdash;for he was a
+      rare keen sportsman&mdash;of running up the hills by his horse's head, it
+      was all to no use, and he had to give it up. So then there were only the
+      huntsman, the whip, and Wat Danbury&mdash;all going strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But the country got worse and worse and the hills were steeper and more
+      thickly covered in heather and bracken. The horses were over their hocks
+      all the time, and the place was pitted with rabbit-holes; but the hounds
+      were still streaming along, and the riders could not afford to pick their
+      steps. As they raced down one slope, the hounds were always flowing up the
+      opposite one, until it looked like that game where the one figure in
+      falling makes the other one rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But never a glimpse did they get of the fox, although they knew very well
+      that he must be only a very short way ahead for the scent to be so strong.
+      And then Wat Danbury heard a crash and a thud at his elbow, and looking
+      round he saw a pair of white cords and top-boots kicking out of a tussock
+      of brambles. The whip's horse had stumbled, and the whip was out of the
+      running. Danbury and the huntsman eased down for an instant; and then,
+      seeing the man staggering to his feet all right, they turned and settled
+      into their saddles once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Joe Clarke, the huntsman, was a famous old rider, known for five counties
+      round; but he reckoned upon his second horse, and the second horses had
+      all been left many miles behind. However, the one he was riding was good
+      enough for anything with such a horseman upon his back, and he was going
+      as well as when he started. As to Wat Danbury, he was going better. With
+      every stride his own feelings improved, and the mind of the rider had its
+      influence upon the mind of the horse. The stout little roan was gathering
+      its muscular limbs under it, and stretching to the gallop as if it were
+      steel and whale-bone instead of flesh and blood. Wat had never come to the
+      end of its powers yet, and to-day he had such a chance of testing them as
+      he had never had before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There was a pasture country beyond the heather slopes, and for several
+      miles the two riders were either losing ground as they fumbled with their
+      crop-handles at the bars of gates, or gaining it again as they galloped
+      over the fields. Those were the days before this accursed wire came into
+      the country, and you could generally break a hedge where you could not fly
+      it, so they did not trouble the gates more than they could help. Then they
+      were down in a hard lane, where they had to slacken their pace, and
+      through a farm where a man came shouting excitedly after them; but they
+      had no time to stop and listen to him, for the hounds were on some
+      ploughland, only two fields ahead. It was sloping upwards, that
+      ploughland, and the horses were over their fetlocks in the red, soft soil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When they reached the top they were blowing badly, but a grand valley
+      sloped before them, leading up to the open country of the South Downs.
+      Between, there lay a belt of pine-woods, into which the hounds were
+      streaming, running now in a long, straggling line, and shedding one here
+      and one there as they ran. You could see the white-and-tan dots here and
+      there where the limpers were tailing away. But half the pack were still
+      going well, though the pace and distance had both been tremendous&mdash;two
+      clear hours now without a check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There was a drive through the pine-wood&mdash;one of those green,
+      slightly rutted drives where a horse can get the last yard out of itself,
+      for the ground is hard enough to give him clean going and yet springy
+      enough to help him. Wat Danbury got alongside of the huntsman and they
+      galloped together with their stirrup-irons touching, and the hounds within
+      a hundred yards of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'We have it all to ourselves,' said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Yes, sir, we've shook on the lot of 'em this time,' said old Joe Clarke.
+      'If we get this fox it's worth while 'aving 'im skinned an' stuffed, for
+      'e's a curiosity 'e is.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It's the fastest run I ever had in my life!' cried Danbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'And the fastest that ever I 'ad, an' that means more,' said the old
+      huntsman. 'But what licks me is that we've never 'ad a look at the beast.
+      'E must leave an amazin' scent be'ind 'im when these 'ounds can follow 'im
+      like this, and yet none of us have seen 'im when we've 'ad a clear 'alf
+      mile view in front of us.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I expect we'll have a view of him presently,' said Danbury; and in his
+      mind he added, 'at least, I shall,' for the huntsman's horse was gasping
+      as it ran, and the white foam was pouring down it like the side of a
+      washing-tub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They had followed the hounds on to one of the side tracks which led out
+      of the main drive, and that divided into a smaller track still, where the
+      branches switched across their faces as they went, and there was barely
+      room for one horse at a time. Wat Danbury took the lead, and he heard the
+      huntsman's horse clumping along heavily behind him, while his own mare was
+      going with less spring than when she had started. She answered to a touch
+      of his crop or spur, however, and he felt that there was something still
+      left to draw upon. And then he looked up, and there was a heavy wooden
+      stile at the end of the narrow track, with a lane of stiff young saplings
+      leading down to it, which was far too thick to break through. The hounds
+      were running clear upon the grassland on the other side, and you were
+      bound either to get over that stile or lose sight of them, for the pace
+      was too hot to let you go round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Wat Danbury was not the lad to flinch, and at it he went full
+      split, like a man who means what he is doing. She rose gallantly to it,
+      rapped it hard with her front hoof, shook him on to her withers, recovered
+      herself, and was over. Wat had hardly got back into his saddle when there
+      was a clatter behind him like the fall of a woodstack, and there was the
+      top bar in splinters, the horse on its belly, and the huntsman on hands
+      and knees half a dozen yards in front of him. Wat pulled up for an
+      instant, for the fall was a smasher; but he saw old Joe spring to his feet
+      and get to his horse's bridle. The horse staggered up, but the moment it
+      put one foot in front of the other, Wat saw that it was hopelessly lame&mdash;a
+      slipped shoulder and a six weeks' job. There was nothing he could do, and
+      Joe was shouting to him not to lose the hounds, so off he went again, the
+      one solitary survivor of the whole hunt. When a man finds himself there,
+      he can retire from fox-hunting, for he has tasted the highest which it has
+      to offer. I remember once when I was out with the Royal Surrey&mdash;but
+      I'll tell you that story afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The pack, or what was left of them, had got a bit ahead during this time;
+      but he had a clear view of them on the downland, and the mare seemed full
+      of pride at being the only one left, for she was stepping out rarely and
+      tossing her head as she went. They were two miles over the green shoulder
+      of a hill, a rattle down a stony, deep-rutted country lane, where the mare
+      stumbled and nearly came down, a jump over a 5ft. brook, a cut through a
+      hazel copse, another dose of heavy ploughland, a couple of gates to open,
+      and then the green, unbroken Downs beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Well,' said Wat Danbury to himself, 'I'll see this fox run into or I
+      shall see it drowned, for it's all clear going now between this and the
+      chalk cliffs which line the sea.' But he was wrong in that, as he speedily
+      discovered. In all the little hollows of the downs at that part there are
+      plantations of fir-woods, some of which have grown to a good size. You do
+      not see them until you come upon the edge of the valleys in which they
+      lie. Danbury was galloping hard over the short, springy turf when he came
+      over the lip of one of these depressions, and there was the dark clump of
+      wood lying in front of and beneath him. There were only a dozen hounds
+      still running, and they were just disappearing among the trees. The
+      sunlight was shining straight upon the long olive-green slopes which
+      curved down towards this wood, and Danbury, who had the eyes of a hawk,
+      swept them over this great expanse; but there was nothing moving upon it.
+      A few sheep were grazing far up on the right, but there was no other sight
+      of any living creature. He was certain then that he was very near to the
+      end, for either the fox must have gone to ground in the wood or the
+      hounds' noses must be at his very brush. The mare seemed to know also what
+      that great empty sweep of countryside meant, for she quickened her stride,
+      and a few minutes afterwards Danbury was galloping into the fir-wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He had come from bright sunshine, but the wood was very closely planted,
+      and so dim that he could hardly see to right or to left out of the narrow
+      path down which he was riding. You know what a solemn, churchyardy sort of
+      place a fir-wood is. I suppose it is the absence of any undergrowth, and
+      the fact that the trees never move at all. At any rate a kind of chill
+      suddenly struck Wat Danbury, and it flashed through his mind that there
+      had been some very singular points about this run&mdash; its length and
+      its straightness, and the fact that from the first find no one had ever
+      caught a glimpse of the creature. Some silly talk which had been going
+      round the country about the king of the foxes&mdash;a sort of demon fox,
+      so fast that it could outrun any pack, and so fierce that they could do
+      nothing with it if they overtook it&mdash;suddenly came back into his
+      mind, and it did not seem so laughable now in the dim fir-wood as it had
+      done when the story had been told over the wine and cigars. The
+      nervousness which had been on him in the morning, and which he had hoped
+      that he had shaken off, swept over him again in an overpowering wave. He
+      had been so proud of being alone, and yet he would have given 10 pounds
+      now to have had Joe Clarke's homely face beside him. And then, just at
+      that moment, there broke out from the thickest part of the wood the most
+      frantic hullabaloo that ever he had heard in his life. The hounds had run
+      into their fox.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you know, or you ought to know, what your duty is in such a case.
+      You have to be whip, huntsman, and everything else if you are the first
+      man up. You get in among the hounds, lash them off, and keep the brush and
+      pads from being destroyed. Of course, Wat Danbury knew all about that, and
+      he tried to force his mare through the trees to the place where all this
+      hideous screaming and howling came from, but the wood was so thick that it
+      was impossible to ride it. He sprang off, therefore, left the mare
+      standing, and broke his way through as best he could with his hunting-lash
+      ready over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But as he ran forward he felt his flesh go cold and creepy all over. He
+      had heard hounds run into foxes many times before, but he had never heard
+      such sounds as these. They were not the cries of triumph, but of fear.
+      Every now and then came a shrill yelp of mortal agony. Holding his breath,
+      he ran on until he broke through the interlacing branches, and found
+      himself in a little, clearing with the hounds all crowding round a patch
+      of tangled bramble at the further end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When he first caught sight of them the hounds were standing in a
+      half-circle round this bramble patch, with their backs bristling and their
+      jaws gaping. In front of the brambles lay one of them with his throat torn
+      out, all crimson and white-and-tan. Wat came running out into the
+      clearing, and at the sight of him the hounds took heart again, and one of
+      them sprang with a growl into the bushes. At the same instant, a creature
+      the size of a donkey jumped on to its feet, a huge grey head, with
+      monstrous glistening fangs and tapering fox jaws, shot out from among the
+      branches, and the hound was thrown several feet into the air, and fell
+      howling among the cover. Then there was a clashing snap, like a rat-trap
+      closing, and the howls sharpened into a scream and then were still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Danbury had been on the look-out for symptoms all day, and now he had
+      found them. He looked once more at the thicket, saw a pair of savage red
+      eyes fixed upon him, and fairly took to his heels. It might only be a
+      passing delusion, or it might be the permanent mania of which the doctor
+      had spoken, but anyhow, the thing to do was to get back to bed and to
+      quiet, and to hope for the best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He forgot the hounds, the hunt, and everything else in his desperate
+      fears for his own reason. He sprang upon his mare, galloped her madly over
+      the downs, and only stopped when he found himself at a country station.
+      There he left his mare at the inn, and made back for home as quickly as
+      steam would take him. It was evening before he got there, shivering with
+      apprehension, and seeing those red eyes and savage teeth at every turn. He
+      went straight to bed and sent for Dr. Middleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I've got 'em, doctor,' said he. 'It came about exactly as you said&mdash;
+      strange creatures, optical delusions, and everything. All I ask you now is
+      to save my reason.' The doctor listened to his story, and was shocked as
+      he heard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It appears to be a very clear case,' said he. 'This must be a lesson to
+      you for life.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Never a drop again if I only come safely through this,' cried Wat
+      Danbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Well, my dear boy, if you will stick to that it may prove a blessing in
+      disguise. But the difficulty in this case is to know where fact ends and
+      fancy begins. You see, it is not as if there was only one delusion. There
+      have been several. The dead dogs, for example, must have been one as well
+      as the creature in the bush.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I saw it all as clearly as I see you.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'One of the characteristics of this form of delirium is that what you see
+      is even clearer than reality. I was wondering whether the whole run was
+      not a delusion also.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wat Danbury pointed to his hunting boots still lying upon the floor,
+      necked with the splashings of two counties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Hum! that looks very real, certainly. No doubt, in your weak state, you
+      over-exerted yourself and so brought this attack upon yourself. Well,
+      whatever the cause, our treatment is clear. You will take the soothing
+      mixture which I will send to you, and we shall put two leeches upon your
+      temples to-night to relieve any congestion of the brain.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So Wat Danbury spent the night in tossing about and reflecting what a
+      sensitive thing this machinery of ours is, and how very foolish it is to
+      play tricks with what is so easily put out of gear and so difficult to
+      mend. And so he repeated and repeated his oath that this first lesson
+      should be his last, and that from that time forward he would be a sober,
+      hard-working yeoman as his father had been before him. So he lay, tossing
+      and still repentant, when his door flew open in the morning and in rushed
+      the doctor with a newspaper crumpled up in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'My dear boy,' he cried, 'I owe you a thousand apologies. You're the most
+      ill-used lad and I the greatest numskull in the county. Listen to this!'
+      And he sat down upon the side of the bed, flattened out his paper upon his
+      knee, and began to read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The paragraph was headed, 'Disaster to the Ascombe Hounds,' and it went
+      on to say that four of the hounds, shockingly torn and mangled, had been
+      found in Winton Fir Wood upon the South Downs. The run had been so severe
+      that half the pack were lamed; but the four found in the wood were
+      actually dead, although the cause of their extraordinary injuries was
+      still unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'So, you see,' said the doctor, looking up, 'that I was wrong when I put
+      the dead hounds among the delusions.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'But the cause?' cried Wat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Well, I think we may guess the cause from an item which has been
+      inserted just as the paper went to press:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   "Late last night, Mr. Brown, of Smither's Farm, to the
+   east of Hastings, perceived what he imagined to be an enormous
+   dog worrying one of his sheep.  He shot the creature, which
+   proves to be a grey Siberian wolf of the variety known as
+   <i>Lupus Giganticus</i>.  It is supposed to have escaped from some
+   travelling menagerie.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "That's the story, gentlemen, and Wat Danbury stuck to his good
+      resolutions, for the fright which he had cured him of all wish to run such
+      a risk again; and he never touches anything stronger than lime-juice&mdash;at
+      least, he hadn't before he left this part of the country, five years ago
+      next Lady Day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was only the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that
+      great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the
+      bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole
+      Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders which
+      studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was beating
+      down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims of the
+      pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a blast-furnace. It
+      had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were no larger than
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whew!" cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead, "you'd pay five shillings
+      for this at the hummums."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Precisely," said Scott. "But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in a
+      Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and a
+      whole Christmas-treeful of things dangling from you. The hot-house at Kew
+      is excellent as a conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon the
+      horizontal bar. I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and a halt until
+      evening."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward. Everywhere
+      were the same black burned rocks and deep orange sand. At one spot only an
+      intermittent line appeared to have been cut through the rugged spurs which
+      ran down to the river. It was the bed of the old railway, long destroyed
+      by the Arabs, but now in process of reconstruction by the advancing
+      Egyptians. There was no other sign of man's handiwork in all that desolate
+      scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's palm trees or nothing," said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I suppose we must; and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the
+      force up. What <i>would</i> our editors say if we were late for the
+      action?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn't need to be told that no sane
+      modern general would ever attack until the Press is up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't mean that?" said young Anerley. "I thought we were looked upon
+      as an unmitigated nuisance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Newspaper correspondents and travelling gentlemen, and all that tribe of
+      useless drones'&mdash;being an extract from Lord Wolseley's 'Soldier's
+      Pocket-Book,'" cried Scott. "We know all about <i>that</i>, Anerley;" and
+      he winked behind his blue spectacles. "If there was going to be a battle
+      we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up. I've been in
+      fifteen, and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a reporter's
+      table."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's very well; but the enemy may be less considerate," said Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are not strong enough to force a battle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A skirmish, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear. In that case we are just
+      where we should be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So we are! What a score over Reuter's man up with the advance! Well,
+      we'll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies.
+      Reuter's was thirty miles ahead; two evening pennies upon camels were
+      twenty miles behind. And among them they represented the eyes and ears of
+      the public&mdash;the great silent millions and millions who had paid for
+      everything, and who waited so patiently to know the result of their
+      outlay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were remarkable men these body-servants of the Press; two of them
+      already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first campaign,
+      and full of deference for his famous comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was
+      Mortimer, of the <i>Intelligence</i>&mdash;tall, straight, and hawk-faced,
+      with khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund,
+      and a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled
+      by the mosquito and the sand-fly. The other&mdash;small, quick, mercurial,
+      with blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch for ever flicking in
+      his left hand&mdash;was Scott, of the <i>Courier</i>, who had come through
+      more dangers and brought off more brilliant <i>coups</i> than any man in
+      the profession, save the eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to
+      take the field. They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and it
+      was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship lay.
+      Each dovetailed into the other. The strength of each was in the other's
+      weakness. Together they formed a perfect unit. Mortimer was Saxon&mdash;slow,
+      conscientious, and deliberate; Scott was Celtic&mdash;quick,
+      happy-go-lucky, and brilliant. Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the more
+      attractive. Mortimer was the deeper thinker, Scott the brighter talker. By
+      a curious coincidence, though each had seen much of warfare, their
+      campaigns had never coincided. Together they covered all recent military
+      history. Scott had done Plevna, the Shipka, the Zulus, Egypt, Suakim;
+      Mortimer had seen the Boer War, the Chilian, the Bulgaria and Servian, the
+      Gordon relief, the Indian frontier, Brazilian rebellion, and Madagascar.
+      This intimate personal knowledge gave a peculiar flavour to their talk.
+      There was none of the second-hand surmise and conjecture which form so
+      much of our conversation; it was all concrete and final. The speaker had
+      been there, had seen it, and there was an end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of their friendship there was the keenest professional rivalry
+      between the two men. Either would have sacrificed himself to help his
+      companion, but either would also have sacrificed his companion to help his
+      paper. Never did a jockey yearn for a winning mount as keenly as each of
+      them longed to have a full column in a morning edition whilst every other
+      daily was blank. They were perfectly frank about the matter. Each
+      professed himself ready to steal a march on his neighbour, and each
+      recognised that the other's duty to his employer was far higher than any
+      personal consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third man was Anerley, of the <i>Gazette</i>&mdash;young,
+      inexperienced, and rather simple-looking. He had a droop of the lip, which
+      some of his more intimate friends regarded as a libel upon his character,
+      and his eyes were so slow and so sleepy that they suggested an
+      affectation. A leaning towards soldiering had sent him twice to autumn
+      manoeuvres, and a touch of colour in his descriptions had induced the
+      proprietors of the <i>Gazette</i> to give him a trial as a war-special.
+      There was a pleasing diffidence about his bearing which recommended him to
+      his experienced companions, and if they had a smile sometimes at his
+      guileless ways, it was soothing to them to have a comrade from whom
+      nothing was to be feared. From the day that they left the telegraph-wire
+      behind them at Sarras, the man who was mounted upon a 15-guinea 13-4
+      Syrian was delivered over into the hands of the owners of the two fastest
+      polo-ponies that ever shot down the Ghezireh ground. The three had
+      dismounted and led their beasts under the welcome shade. In the brassy,
+      yellow glare every branch above threw so black and solid a shadow that the
+      men involuntarily raised their feet to step over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The palm makes an excellent hat-rack," said Scott, slinging his revolver
+      and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which bristle
+      from the trunk. "As a shade tree, however, it isn't an unqualified
+      success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means to ends
+      something a little less flimsy could not have been devised for the
+      tropics."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Like the banyan in India."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Or the fine hardwood trees in Ashantee, where a whole regiment could
+      picnic under the shade."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The teak tree isn't bad in Burmah, either. By Jove, the baccy has all
+      come loose in the saddle-bag! That long-cut mixture smokes rather hot for
+      this climate. How about the baggles, Anerley?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They'll be here in five minutes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down the winding path which curved among the rocks the little train of
+      baggage-camels was daintily picking its way. They came mincing and
+      undulating along, turning their heads slowly from side to side with the
+      air of a self-conscious woman. In front rode the three Berberee
+      body-servants upon donkeys, and behind walked the Arab camel-boys. They
+      had been travelling for nine long hours, ever since the first rising of
+      the moon, at the weary camel-drag of two and a half miles an hour, but now
+      they brightened, both beasts and men, at the sight of the grove and the
+      riderless horses. In a few minutes the loads were unstrapped, the animals
+      tethered, a fire lighted, fresh water carried up from the river, and each
+      camel-boy provided with his own little heap of tibbin laid in the centre
+      of the table-cloth, without which no well-bred Arabian will condescend to
+      feed. The dazzling light without, the subdued half-tones within, the green
+      palm-fronds outlined against the deep blue sky, the flitting,
+      silent-footed Arab servants, the crackling of sticks, the reek of a
+      lighting fire, the placid supercilious heads of the camels, they all come
+      back in their dreams to those who have known them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott was breaking eggs into a pan and rolling out a love-song in his
+      rich, deep voice. Anerley, with his head and arms buried in a deal
+      packing-case, was working his way through strata of tinned soups, bully
+      beef, potted chicken, and sardines to reach the jams which lay beneath.
+      The conscientious Mortimer, with his notebook upon his knee, was jotting
+      down what the railway engineer had told him at the line-end the day
+      before. Suddenly he raised his eyes and saw the man himself on his
+      chestnut pony, dipping and rising over the broken ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hullo! Here's Merryweather!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A pretty lather his pony is in! He's had her at that hand-gallop for
+      hours, by the look of her. Hullo, Merryweather, hullo!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The engineer, a small, compact man with a pointed red beard, had made as
+      though he would ride past their camp without word or halt. Now he swerved,
+      and easing his pony down to a canter, he headed her to-wards them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For God's sake, a drink!" he croaked. "My tongue is stuck to the roof of
+      my mouth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer ran with the water-bottle, Scott with the whisky-flask, and
+      Anerley with the tin pannikin. The engineer drank until his breath failed
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I must be off," said he, striking the drops from his red moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Any news?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hitch in the railway construction. I must see the general. It's the
+      devil not having a telegraph."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Anything we can report?" Out came three notebooks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll tell you after I've seen the general."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Any dervishes?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The usual shaves. Hud-up, Jinny! Good-bye!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a soft thudding upon the sand, and a clatter among the stones the
+      weary pony was off upon her journey once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing serious, I suppose?" said Mortimer, staring after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Deuced serious," cried Scott. "The ham and eggs are burned! No&mdash;it's
+      all right&mdash;saved, and done to a turn! Pull the box up, Anerley. Come
+      on, Mortimer, stow that notebook! The fork is mightier than the pen just
+      at present. What's the matter with you, Anerley?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was wondering whether what we have just seen was worth a telegram."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it's for the proprietors to say if it's worth it. Sordid money
+      considerations are not for us. We must wire about something just to
+      justify our khaki coats and our putties."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what is there to say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer's long, austere face broke into a smile over the youngster's
+      innocence. "It's not quite usual in our profession to give each other
+      tips," said he. "However, as my telegram is written, I've no objection to
+      your reading it. You may be sure that I would not show it to you if it
+      were of the slightest importance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley took up the slip of paper and read:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   Merryweather obstacles stop journey confer general stop nature
+   difficulties later stop rumours dervishes.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "This is very condensed," said Anerley, with wrinkled brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Condensed!" cried Scott. "Why, it's sinfully garrulous. If my old man got
+      a wire like that his language would crack the lamp-shades. I'd cut out
+      half this; for example, I'd have out 'journey,' and 'nature,' and
+      'rumours.' But my old man would make a ten-line paragraph of it for all
+      that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I'll do it myself just to show you. Lend me that stylo." He
+      scribbled for a minute in his notebook. "It works out somewhat on these
+      lines":&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   Mr. Charles H.  Merryweather, the eminent railway engineer,
+   who is at present engaged in superintending the construction
+   of the line from Sarras to the front, has met with considerable
+   obstacles to the rapid completion of his important task&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Of course the old man knows who Merryweather is, and what he is about, so
+      the word 'obstacles' would suggest all that to him."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   He has to-day been compelled to make a journey of forty
+   miles to the front, in order to confer with the general upon
+   the steps which are necessary in order to facilitate the work.
+   Further particulars of the exact nature of the difficulties
+   met with will be made public at a later date.  All is quiet
+   upon the line of communications, though the usual persistent
+   rumours of the presence of dervishes in the Eastern desert
+   continue to circulate.&mdash;<i>Our own correspondent</i>.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "How's that?" cried Scott, triumphantly, and his white teeth gleamed
+      suddenly through his black beard. "That's the sort of flapdoodle for the
+      dear old public."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will it interest them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, everything interests them. They want to know all about it; and they
+      like to think that there is a man who is getting a hundred a month simply
+      in order to tell it to them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's very kind of you to teach me all this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it is a little unconventional, for, after all, we are here to score
+      over each other if we can. There are no more eggs, and you must take it
+      out in jam. Of course, as Mortimer says, such a telegram as this is of no
+      importance one way or another, except to prove to the office that we <i>are</i>
+      in the Soudan, and not at Monte Carlo. But when it comes to serious work
+      it must be every man for himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that quite necessary?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, of course it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should have thought if three men were to combine and to share their
+      news, they would do better than if they were each to act for himself, and
+      they would have a much pleasanter time of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two older men sat with their bread-and-jam in their hands, and an
+      expression of genuine disgust upon their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are not here to have a pleasant time," said Mortimer, with a flash
+      through his glasses. "We are here to do our best for our papers. How can
+      they score over each other if we do not do the same? If we all combine we
+      might as well amalgamate with Reuter at once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, it would take away the whole glory of the profession!" cried Scott.
+      "At present the smartest man gets his stuff first on the wires. What
+      inducement is there to be smart if we all share and share alike?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And at present the man with the best equipment has the best chance,"
+      remarked Mortimer, glancing across at the shot-silk polo ponies and the
+      cheap little Syrian grey. "That is the fair reward of foresight and
+      enterprise. Every man for himself, and let the best man win."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the way to find who the best man is. Look at Chandler. He would
+      never have got his chance if he had not played always off his own bat.
+      You've heard how he pretended to break his leg, sent his
+      fellow-correspondent off for the doctor, and so got a fair start for the
+      telegraph-office."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you mean to say that was legitimate?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Everything is legitimate. It's your wits against my wits."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should call it dishonourable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may call it what you like. Chandler's paper got the battle and the
+      other's didn't. It made Chandler's name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Or take Westlake," said Mortimer, cramming the tobacco into his pipe.
+      "Hi, Abdul, you may have the dishes! Westlake brought his stuff down by
+      pretending to be the Government courier, and using the relays of
+      Government horses. Westlake's paper sold half a million."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that legitimate also?" asked Anerley, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it looks a little like horse-stealing and lying."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, <i>I</i> think I should do a little horse-stealing and lying if I
+      could have a column to myself in a London daily. What do you say, Scott?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Anything short of manslaughter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I'm not sure that I'd trust you there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I don't think I should be guilty of newspaper-man-slaughter. That I
+      regard as a distinct breach of professional etiquette. But if any outsider
+      comes between a highly charged correspondent and an electric wire, he does
+      it at his peril. My dear Anerley, I tell you frankly that if you are going
+      to handicap yourself with scruple you may just as well be in Fleet Street
+      as in the Soudan. Our life is irregular. Our work has never been
+      systematised. No doubt it will be some day, but the time is not yet. Do
+      what you can and how you can, and be first on the wires; that's my advice
+      to you; and also, that when next you come upon a campaign you bring with
+      you the best horse that money can buy. Mortimer may beat me or I may beat
+      Mortimer, but at least we know that between us we have the fastest ponies
+      in the country. We have neglected no chance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not so certain of that," said Mortimer, slowly. "You are aware, of
+      course, that though a horse beats a camel on twenty miles, a camel beats a
+      horse on thirty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, one of those camels?" cried Anerley in astonishment. The two
+      seniors burst out laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no, the real high-bred trotter&mdash;the kind of beast the dervishes
+      ride when they make their lightning raids."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Faster than a galloping horse?" "Well, it tires a horse down. It goes the
+      same gait all the way, and it wants neither halt nor drink, and it takes
+      rough ground much better than a horse. They used to have long distance
+      races at Haifa, and the camel always won at thirty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Still, we need not reproach ourselves, Scott, for we are not very likely
+      to have to carry a thirty-mile message, they will have the field telegraph
+      next week."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite so. But at the present moment&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know, my dear chap; but there is no motion of urgency before the house.
+      Load baggles at five o'clock; so you have Just three hours clear. Any sign
+      of the evening pennies?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer swept the northern horizon with his binoculars. "Not in sight
+      yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are quite capable of travelling during the heat of the day. Just the
+      sort of thing evening pennies <i>would</i> do. Take care of your match,
+      Anerley. These palm groves go up like a powder magazine if you set them
+      alight. Bye-bye." The two men crawled under their mosquito-nets and sank
+      instantly into the easy sleep of those whose lives are spent in the open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Anerley stood with his back against a palm tree and his briar
+      between his lips, thinking over the advice which he had received. After
+      all, they were the heads of the profession, these men, and it was not for
+      him, the newcomer, to reform their methods. If they served their papers in
+      this fashion, then he must do the same. They had at least been frank and
+      generous in teaching him the rules of the game. If it was good enough for
+      them it was good enough for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a broiling afternoon, and those thin frills of foam round the
+      black, glistening necks of the Nile boulders looked delightfully cool and
+      alluring. But it would not be safe to bathe for some hours to come. The
+      air shimmered and vibrated over the baking stretch of sand and rock. There
+      was not a breath of wind, and the droning and piping of the insects
+      inclined one for sleep. Somewhere above a hoopoe was calling. Anerley
+      knocked out his ashes, and was turning towards his couch, when his eye
+      caught something moving in the desert to the south. It was a horseman
+      riding towards them as swiftly as the broken ground would permit. A
+      messenger from the army, thought Anerley; and then, as he watched, the sun
+      suddenly struck the man on the side of the head, and his chin flamed into
+      gold. There could not be two horsemen with beards of such a colour. It was
+      Merryweather, the engineer, and he was returning. What on earth was he
+      returning for? He had been so keen to see the general, and yet he was
+      coming back with his mission unaccomplished. Was it that his pony was
+      hopelessly foundered? It seemed to be moving well. Anerley picked up
+      Mortimer's binoculars, and a foam-bespattered horse and a weary
+      koorbash-cracking man came cantering up the centre of the field. But there
+      was nothing in his appearance to explain the mystery of his return. Then
+      as he watched them they dipped into a hollow and disappeared. He could see
+      that it was one of those narrow khors which led to the river, and he
+      waited, glass in hand, for their immediate reappearance. But minute passed
+      after minute and there was no sign of them. That narrow gully appeared to
+      have swallowed them up. And then with a curious gulp and start he saw a
+      little grey cloud wreathe itself slowly from among the rocks and drift in
+      a long, hazy shred over the desert. In an instant he had torn Scott and
+      Mortimer from their slumbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Get up, you chaps!" he cried. "I believe Merryweather has been shot by
+      dervishes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Reuter not here!" cried the two veterans, exultantly clutching at
+      their notebooks. "Merryweather shot! Where? When? How?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few words Anerley explained what he had seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You heard nothing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, a shot loses itself very easily among rocks. By George, look at the
+      buzzards!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two large brown birds were soaring in the deep blue heaven. As Scott spoke
+      they circled down and dropped into the little khor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's good enough," said Mortimer, with his nose between the leaves of
+      his book. "'Merryweather headed dervishes stop return stop shot mutilated
+      stop raid communications.' How's that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You think he was headed off?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why else should he return?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case, if they were out in front of him and others cut him off,
+      there must be several small raiding parties."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should judge so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How about the 'mutilated'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've fought against Arabs before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where are you off to?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sarras."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I'll race you in," said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley stared in astonishment at the absolutely impersonal way in which
+      these men regarded the situation. In their zeal for news it had apparently
+      never struck them that they, their camp, and their servants were all in
+      the lion's mouth. But even as they talked there came the harsh,
+      importunate rat-tat-tat of an irregular volley from among the rocks, and
+      the high, keening whistle of bullets over their heads. A palm spray
+      fluttered down amongst them. At the same instant the six frightened
+      servants came running wildly in for protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the cool-headed Mortimer who organised the defence, for Scott's
+      Celtic soul was so aflame at all this "copy" in hand and more to come that
+      he was too exuberantly boisterous for a commander. The other, with his
+      spectacles and his stern face, soon had the servants in hand. "<i>Tali
+      henna! Egri!</i> What the deuce are you frightened about? Put the camels
+      between the palm trunks. That's right. Now get the knee-tethers on them.
+      <i>Quies</i>! Did you never hear bullets before? Now put the donkeys here.
+      Not much&mdash;you don't get my polo-pony to make a zareba with. Picket
+      the ponies between the grove and the river out of danger's way. These
+      fellows seem to fire even higher than they did in '85."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's got home, anyhow," said Scott, as they heard a soft, splashing
+      thud like a stone in a mud-bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who's hit, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The brown camel that's chewing the cud." As he spoke the creature, its
+      jaw still working, laid its long neck along the ground and closed its
+      large dark eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That shot cost me 15 pounds," said Mortimer, ruefully. "How many of them
+      do you make?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Four, I think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only four Bezingers, at any rate; there may be some spearmen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think not; it is a little raiding-party of rifle-men. By the way,
+      Anerley, you've never been under fire before, have you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never," said the young pressman, who was conscious of a curious feeling
+      of nervous elation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Love and poverty and war, they are all experiences necessary to make a
+      complete life. Pass over those cartridges. This is a very mild baptism
+      that you are undergoing, for behind these camels you are as safe as if you
+      were sitting in the back room of the Authors' Club."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As safe, but hardly as comfortable," said Scott. "A long glass of hock
+      and seltzer would be exceedingly acceptable. But oh, Mortimer, what a
+      chance! Think of the general's feelings when he hears that the first
+      action of the war has been fought by the Press column. Think of Reuter,
+      who has been stewing at the front for a week! Think of the evening pennies
+      just too late for the fun. By George, that slug brushed a mosquito off
+      me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And one of the donkeys is hit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is sinful. It will end in our having to carry our own kits to
+      Khartoum."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind, my boy, it all goes to make copy. I can see the headlines&mdash;'Raid
+      on Communications'; 'Murder of British Engineer': 'Press Column Attacked.'
+      Won't it be ripping?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder what the next line will be," said Anerley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Our Special Wounded'!" cried Scott, rolling over on to his back. "No
+      harm done," he added, gathering himself up again; "only a chip off my
+      knee. This is getting sultry. I confess that the idea of that back room at
+      the Authors' Club begins to grow upon me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have some diachylon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Afterwards will do. We're having a 'appy day with Fuzzy on the rush. I
+      wish he <i>would</i> rush."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They're coming nearer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is an excellent revolver of mine if it didn't throw so devilish
+      high. I always aim at a man's toes if I want to stimulate his digestion. O
+      Lord, there's our kettle gone!" With a boom like a dinner-gong a Remington
+      bullet had passed through the kettle, and a cloud of steam hissed up from
+      the fire. A wild shout came from the rocks above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The idiots think that they have blown us up. They'll rush us now, as sure
+      as fate; then it will be our turn to lead. Got your revolver, Anerley?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have this double-barrelled fowling-piece."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sensible man! It's the best weapon in the world at this sort of
+      rough-and-tumble work. What cartridges?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Swan-shot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That will do all right. I carry this big bore double-barrelled pistol
+      loaded with slugs. You might as well try to stop one of these fellows with
+      a pea-shooter as with a service revolver."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are ways and means," said Scott. "The Geneva Convention does not
+      hold south of the first cataract. It's easy to make a bullet mushroom by a
+      little manipulation of the tip of it. When I was in the broken square at
+      Tamai&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wait a bit," cried Mortimer, adjusting his glasses. "I think they are
+      coming now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The time," said Scott, snapping up his watch, "being exactly seventeen
+      minutes past four."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley had been lying behind a camel staring with an interest which
+      bordered upon fascination at the rocks opposite. Here was a little woolly
+      puff of smoke, and there was another one, but never once had they caught a
+      glimpse of the attackers. To him there was something weird and awesome in
+      these unseen, persistent men who, minute by minute, were drawing closer to
+      them. He had heard them cry out when the kettle was broken, and once,
+      immediately afterwards, an enormously strong voice had roared something
+      which had set Scott shrugging his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They've got to take us first," said he, and Anerley thought his nerve
+      might be better if he did not ask for a translation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The firing had begun at a distance of some 100 yards, which put it out of
+      the question for them, with their lighter weapons, to make any reply to
+      it. Had their antagonists continued to keep that range the defenders must
+      either have made a hopeless sally or tried to shelter themselves behind
+      their zareba as best they might on the chance that the sound might bring
+      up help. But, luckily for them, the African has never taken kindly to the
+      rifle, and his primitive instinct to close with his enemy is always too
+      strong for his sense of strategy. They were drawing in, therefore, and
+      now, for the first time, Anerley caught sight of a face looking at them
+      from over a rock. It was a huge, virile, strong-jawed head of a pure negro
+      type, with silver trinkets gleaming in the ears. The man raised a great
+      arm from behind the rock, and shook his Remington at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shall I fire?" asked Anerley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no; it is too far. Your shot would scatter all over the place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a picturesque ruffian," said Scott. "Couldn't you kodak him,
+      Mortimer? There's another!" A fine-featured brown Arab, with a black,
+      pointed beard, was peeping from behind another boulder. He wore the green
+      turban which proclaimed him hadji, and his face showed the keen, nervous
+      exultation of the religious fanatic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They seem a piebald crowd," said Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That last is one of the real fighting Baggara," remarked Mortimer. "He's
+      a dangerous man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He looks pretty vicious. There's another negro!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Two more! Dingas, by the look of them. Just the same chaps we get our own
+      black battalions from. As long as they get a fight they don't mind who
+      it's for; but if the idiots had only sense enough to understand, they
+      would know that the Arab is their hereditary enemy, and we their
+      hereditary friends. Look at the silly juggins, gnashing his teeth at the
+      very men who put down the slave trade!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Couldn't you explain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll explain with this pistol when he comes a little nearer. Now sit
+      tight, Anerley. They're off!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were indeed. It was the brown man with the green turban who headed
+      the rush. Close at his heels was the negro with the silver ear-rings&mdash;
+      a giant of a man, and the other two were only a little behind. As they
+      sprang over the rocks one after the other, it took Anerley back to the
+      school sports when he held the tape for the hurdle-race. It was
+      magnificent, the wild spirit and abandon of it, the flutter of the
+      chequered galabeeahs, the gleam of steel, the wave of black arms, the
+      frenzied faces, the quick pitter-patter of the rushing feet. The
+      law-abiding Briton is so imbued with the idea of the sanctity of human
+      life that it was hard for the young pressman to realise that these men had
+      every intention of killing him, and that he was at perfect liberty to do
+      as much for them. He lay staring as if this were a show and he a
+      spectator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, Anerley, now! Take the Arab!" cried somebody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put up the gun and saw the brown fierce face at the other end of the
+      barrel. He tugged at the trigger, but the face grew larger and fiercer
+      with every stride. Again and again he tugged. A revolver-shot rang out at
+      his elbow, then another one, and he saw a red spot spring out on the
+      Arab's brown breast. But he was still coming on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shoot, you ass, shoot!" screamed Scott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he strained unavailingly at the trigger. There were two more
+      pistol-shots, and the big negro had fallen and risen and fallen again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cock it, you fool!" shouted a furious voice; and at the same instant,
+      with a rush and flutter, the Arab bounded over the prostrate camel and
+      came down with his bare feet upon Anerley's chest. In a dream he seemed to
+      be struggling frantically with someone upon the ground, then he was
+      conscious of a tremendous explosion in his very face, and so ended for him
+      the first action of the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good-bye, old chap. You'll be all right. Give yourself time." It was
+      Mortimer's voice, and he became dimly conscious of a long, spectacled
+      face, and of a heavy hand upon his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sorry to leave you. We'll be lucky now if we are in time for the morning
+      editions." Scott was tightening his girth as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We'll put in our wire that you have been hurt, so your people will know
+      why they don't hear from you. If Reuter or the evening pennies come up,
+      don't give the thing away. Abbas will look after you, and we'll be back
+      to-morrow afternoon. Bye-bye!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley heard it all, though he did not feel energy enough to answer.
+      Then, as he watched two sleek, brown ponies with their yellow-clad riders
+      dwindling among the rocks, his memory cleared suddenly, and he realised
+      that the first great journalistic chance of his life was slipping away
+      from him. It was a small fight, but it was the first of the war, and the
+      great public at home were all athirst for news. They would have it in the
+      <i>Courier</i>; they would have it in the <i>Intelligence</i>, and not a
+      word in the <i>Gazette</i>. The thought brought him to his feet, though he
+      had to throw his arm round the stem of the palm tree to steady his
+      swimming head. There was a big black man lying where he had fallen, his
+      huge chest pocked with bullet-marks, every wound rosetted with its circle
+      of flies. The Arab was stretched out within a few yards of him, with two
+      hands clasped over the dreadful thing which had been his head. Across him
+      was lying Anerley's fowling-piece, one barrel discharged, the other at
+      half cock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Scott effendi shoot him your gun," said a voice. It was Abbas, his
+      English-speaking body-servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley groaned at the disgrace of it. He had lost his head so completely
+      that he had forgotten to cock his gun; and yet he knew that it was not
+      fear but interest which had so absorbed him. He put his hand up to his
+      head and felt that a wet handkerchief was bound round his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where are the two other dervishes?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They ran away. One got shot in arm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's happened to me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Effendi got cut on head. Effendi catch bad man by arms, and Scott effendi
+      shot him. Face burn very bad."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anerley became conscious suddenly that there was a pringling about his
+      skin and an overpowering smell of burned hair under his nostrils. He put
+      his hand to his moustache. It was gone. His eyebrows too? He could not
+      find them. His head, no doubt, was very near to the dervish's when they
+      were rolling upon the ground together, and this was the effect of the
+      explosion of his own gun. Well, he would have time to grow some more hair
+      before he saw Fleet Street again. But the cut, perhaps, was a more serious
+      matter. Was it enough to prevent him getting to the telegraph-office at
+      Sarras? The only way was to try and see. But there was only that poor
+      little Syrian grey of his. There it stood in the evening sunshine, with a
+      sunk head and a bent knee, as if its morning's work was still heavy upon
+      it. What hope was there of being able to do thirty-five miles of heavy
+      going upon that? It would be a strain upon the splendid ponies of his
+      companions&mdash;and they were the swiftest and most enduring in the
+      country. The most enduring? There was one creature more enduring, and that
+      was a real trotting camel. If he had had one he might have got to the
+      wires first after all, for Mortimer had said that over thirty miles they
+      have the better of any horse. Yes, if he had only had a real trotting
+      camel! And then like a flash came Mortimer's words, "It is the kind of
+      beast that the dervishes ride when they make their lightning raids."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beasts the dervishes ride! What had these dead dervishes ridden? In an
+      instant he was clambering up the rocks, with Abbas protesting at his
+      heels. Had the two fugitives carried away all the camels, or had they been
+      content to save themselves? The brass gleam from a litter of empty
+      Remington cases caught his eye, and showed where the enemy had been
+      crouching. And then he could have shouted for joy, for there, in the
+      hollow, some little distance off, rose the high, graceful white neck and
+      the elegant head of such a camel as he had never set eyes upon before&mdash;a
+      swanlike, beautiful creature, as far from the rough, clumsy baggles as the
+      cart-horse is from the racer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beast was kneeling under the shelter of the rocks with its waterskin
+      and bag of doora slung over its shoulders, and its forelegs tethered Arab
+      fashion with a rope around the knees. Anerley threw his leg over the front
+      pommel while Abbas slipped off the cord. Forward flew Anerley towards the
+      creature's neck, then violently backwards, clawing madly at anything which
+      might save him, and then, with a jerk which nearly snapped his loins, he
+      was thrown forward again. But the camel was on its legs now, and the young
+      pressman was safely seated upon one of the fliers of the desert. It was as
+      gentle as it was swift, and it stood oscillating its long neck and gazing
+      round with its large brown eyes, whilst Anerley coiled his legs round the
+      peg and grasped the curved camel-stick which Abbas had handed up to him.
+      There were two bridle-cords, one from the nostril and one from the neck,
+      but he remembered that Scott had said that it was the servant's and not
+      the house-bell which had to be pulled, so he kept his grasp upon the
+      lower. Then he touched the long, vibrating neck with his stick, and in an
+      instant Abbas' farewell seemed to come from far behind him, and the black
+      rocks and yellow sand were dancing past on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his first experience of a trotting camel, and at first the motion,
+      although irregular and abrupt, was not unpleasant. Having no stirrup or
+      fixed point of any kind, he could not rise to it, but he gripped as
+      tightly as be could with his knee, and he tried to sway backwards and
+      forwards as he had seen the Arabs do. It was a large, very concave
+      Makloofa saddle, and he was conscious that he was bouncing about on it
+      with as little power of adhesion as a billiard-ball upon a tea-tray. He
+      gripped the two sides with his hands to hold himself steady. The creature
+      had got into its long, swinging, stealthy trot, its sponge-like feet
+      making no sound upon the hard sand. Anerley leaned back with his two hands
+      gripping hard behind him, and he whooped the creature on. The sun had
+      already sunk behind the line of black volcanic peaks, which look like huge
+      slag-heaps at the mouth of a mine. The western sky had taken that lovely
+      light green and pale pink tint which makes evening beautiful upon the
+      Nile, and the old brown river itself, swirling down amongst the black
+      rocks, caught some shimmer of the colours above. The glare, the heat, and
+      the piping of the insects had all ceased together. In spite of his aching
+      head, Anerley could have cried out for pure physical joy as the swift
+      creature beneath him flew along with him through that cool, invigorating
+      air, with the virile north wind soothing his pringling face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had looked at his watch, and now he made a swift calculation of times
+      and distances. It was past six when he had left the camp. Over broken
+      ground it was impossible that he could hope to do more than seven miles an
+      hour&mdash;less on bad parts, more on the smooth. His recollection of the
+      track was that there were few smooth and many bad. He would be lucky,
+      then, if he reached Sarras anywhere from twelve to one. Then the messages
+      took a good two hours to go through, for they had to be transcribed at
+      Cairo. At the best he could only hope to have told his story in Fleet
+      Street at two or three in the morning. It was possible that he might
+      manage it, but the chances seemed enormously against him. About three the
+      morning edition would be made up, and his chance gone for ever. The one
+      thing clear was that only the first man at the wires would have any chance
+      at all, and Anerley meant to be first if hard riding could do it. So he
+      tapped away at the bird-like neck, and the creature's long, loose limbs
+      went faster and faster at every tap. Where the rocky spurs ran down to the
+      river, horses would have to go round, while camels might get across, so
+      that Anerley felt that he was always gaining upon his companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was a price to be paid for the feeling. He had heard of men who
+      had burst when on camel journeys, and he knew that the Arabs swathe their
+      bodies tightly in broad cloth bandages when they prepare for a long march.
+      It had seemed unnecessary and ridiculous when he first began to speed over
+      the level track, but now, when he got on the rocky paths, he understood
+      what it meant. Never for an instant was he at the same angle. Backwards,
+      forwards he swung, with a tingling jar at the end of each sway, until he
+      ached from his neck to his knees. It caught him across the shoulders, it
+      caught him down the spine, it gripped him over the loins, it marked the
+      lower line of his ribs with one heavy, dull throb. He clutched here and
+      there with his hand to try and ease the strain upon his muscles. He drew
+      up his knees, altered his seat, and set his teeth with a grim
+      determination to go through with it should it kill him. His head was
+      splitting, his flayed face smarting, and every joint in his body aching as
+      if it were dislocated. But he forgot all that when, with the rising of the
+      moon, he heard the clinking of horses' hoofs down upon the track by the
+      river, and knew that, unseen by them, he had already got well abreast of
+      his companions. But he was hardly halfway, and the time already eleven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day the needles had been ticking away without intermission in the
+      little corrugated iron hut which served as a telegraph station at Sarras.
+      With its bare walls and its packing-case seats, it was none the less for
+      the moment one of the vital spots upon the earth's surface, and the crisp,
+      importunate ticking might have come from the world-old clock of Destiny.
+      Many august people had been at the other end of those wires, and had
+      communed with the moist-faced military clerk. A French Premier had
+      demanded a pledge, and an English marquis had passed on the request to the
+      General in command, with a question as to how it would affect the
+      situation. Cipher telegrams had nearly driven the clerk out of his wits,
+      for of all crazy occupations the taking of a cipher message, when you are
+      without the key to the cipher, is the worst. Much high diplomacy had been
+      going on all day in the innermost chambers of European chancellories, and
+      the results of it had been whispered into this little corrugated-iron hut.
+      About two in the morning an enormous despatch had come at last to an end,
+      and the weary operator had opened the door, and was lighting his pipe in
+      the cool, fresh air, when he saw a camel plump down in the dust, and a
+      man, who seemed to be in the last stage of drunkenness, come rolling
+      towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the time?" he cried, in a voice which appeared to be the only
+      sober thing about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the clerk's lips to say that it was time that the questioner was
+      in his bed, but it is not safe upon a campaign to be ironical at the
+      expense of khaki-clad men. He contented himself, therefore, with the bald
+      statement that it was after two. But no retort that he could have devised
+      could have had a more crushing effect. The voice turned drunken also, and
+      the man caught at the door-post to uphold him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Two o'clock! I'm done after all!" said he. His head was tied up in a
+      bloody handkerchief, his face was crimson, and he stood with his legs
+      crooked as if the pith had all gone out of his back. The clerk began to
+      realise that something out of the ordinary was in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How long does it take to get a wire to London?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About two hours."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And it's two now. I could not get it there before four."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Before three."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Four."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, three."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you said two hours."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but there's more than an hour's difference in longitude."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By Heaven, I'll do it yet!" cried Anerley, and staggering to a
+      packing-case, he began the dictation of his famous despatch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it came about that the <i>Gazette</i> had a long column, with
+      headlines like an epitaph, when the sheets of the <i>Intelligence</i> and
+      the <i>Courier</i> were as blank as the faces of their editors. And so,
+      too, it happened that when two weary men, upon two foundered horses,
+      arrived about four in the morning at the Sarras post-office, they looked
+      at each other in silence and departed noiselessly, with the conviction
+      that there are some situations with which the English language is not
+      capable of dealing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE NEW CATACOMB
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Burger," said Kennedy, "I do wish that you would confide in
+      me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two famous students of Roman remains sat together in Kennedy's
+      comfortable room overlooking the Corso. The night was cold, and they had
+      both pulled up their chairs to the unsatisfactory Italian stove which
+      threw out a zone of stuffiness rather than of warmth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside under the bright winter stars lay the modern Rome, the long,
+      double chain of the electric lamps, the brilliantly lighted <i>cafes</i>,
+      the rushing carriages, and the dense throng upon the footpaths. But
+      inside, in the sumptuous chamber of the rich young English archaeologist,
+      there was only old Rome to be seen. Cracked and time-worn friezes hung
+      upon the walls, grey old busts of senators and soldiers with their
+      fighting heads and their hard, cruel faces peered out from the corners. On
+      the centre table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments, and
+      ornaments, there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths
+      of Caracalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was
+      exhibited in Berlin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amphorae hung from the ceiling, and a litter of curiosities strewed the
+      rich red Turkey carpet. And of them all there was not one which was not of
+      the most unimpeachable authenticity, and of the utmost rarity and value;
+      for Kennedy, though little more than thirty, had a European reputation in
+      this particular branch of research, and was, moreover, provided with that
+      long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap to the student's
+      energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him an
+      enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often been seduced by
+      whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one,
+      capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of
+      sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its
+      aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensuous mouth, was a fair
+      index of the compromise between strength and weakness in his nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger. He came of a
+      curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust
+      qualities of the North mingling strangely with the softer graces of the
+      South. Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above them
+      rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow curls lying
+      round it. His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his companion had
+      frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman busts which
+      peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber. Under its bluff
+      German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian subtlety, but the
+      smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one understood that this
+      was only an indication of his ancestry, with no actual bearing upon his
+      character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In age and in reputation he was on the same level as his English
+      companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous.
+      Twelve years before he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived
+      ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded
+      to him by the University of Bonn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and
+      singlemindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of fame,
+      until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was every
+      reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the Chair of the
+      greatest of German Universities. But the singleness of purpose which had
+      brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant Englishman,
+      had caused him in everything outside their work to stand infinitely below
+      him. He had never found a pause in his studies in which to cultivate the
+      social graces. It was only when he spoke of his own subject that his face
+      was filled with life and soul. At other times he was silent and
+      embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in larger subjects, and
+      impatient of that small talk which is the conventional refuge of those who
+      have no thoughts to express.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared
+      to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different
+      rivals. The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own
+      studies each was the only one of the younger men who had knowledge and
+      enthusiasm enough to properly appreciate the other. Their common interests
+      and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been attracted by the
+      other's knowledge. And then gradually something had been added to this.
+      Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and simplicity of his rival,
+      while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the brilliancy and vivacity
+      which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman society. I say "had,"
+      because just at the moment the young Englishman was somewhat under a
+      cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A love affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had
+      indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked many
+      of his friends. But in the bachelor circles of students and artists in
+      which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of honour in such
+      matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of shoulders shrugged
+      over the flight of two and the return of one, the general sentiment was
+      probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy rather than of reprobation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Burger," said Kennedy, looking hard at the placid face of his
+      companion, "I do wish that you would confide in me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he waved his hand in the direction of a rug which lay upon the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the rug stood a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wicker-work
+      which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of
+      objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn
+      papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have seemed
+      to have come straight from a dustman's bin, but which a specialist would
+      have speedily recognized as unique of their kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pile of odds and ends in the flat wicker-work basket supplied exactly
+      one of those missing links of social development which are of such
+      interest to the student. It was the German who had brought them in, and
+      the Englishman's eyes were hungry as he looked at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't interfere with your treasure-trove, but I should very much like
+      to hear about it," he continued, while Burger very deliberately lit a
+      cigar. "It is evidently a discovery of the first importance. These
+      inscriptions will make a sensation throughout Europe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For every one here there are a million there!" said the German. "There
+      are so many that a dozen savants might spend a lifetime over them, and
+      build up a reputation as solid as the Castle of St. Angelo."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy was thinking with his fine forehead wrinkled and his fingers
+      playing with his long, fair moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have given yourself away, Burger!" said he at last. "Your words can
+      only apply to one thing. You have discovered a new catacomb."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had no doubt that you had already come to that conclusion from an
+      examination of these objects."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, they certainly appeared to indicate it, but your last remarks make
+      it certain. There is no place except a catacomb which could contain so
+      vast a store of relics as you describe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite so. There is no mystery about that. I <i>have</i> discovered a new
+      catacomb."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, that is my secret, my dear Kennedy! Suffice it that it is so situated
+      that there is not one chance in a million of anyone else coming upon it.
+      Its date is different from that of any known catacomb, and it has been
+      reserved for the burial of the highest Christians, so that the remains and
+      the relics are quite different from anything which has ever been seen
+      before. If I was not aware of your knowledge and of your energy, my
+      friend, I would not hesitate, under the pledge of secrecy, to tell you
+      everything about it. But as it is I think that I must certainly prepare my
+      own report of the matter before I expose myself to such formidable
+      competition."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy loved his subject with a love which was almost a mania&mdash;a
+      love which held him true to it, amidst all the distractions which come to
+      a wealthy and dissipated young man. He had ambition, but his ambition was
+      secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which
+      concerned the old life and history of the city. He yearned to see this new
+      underworld which his companion had discovered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Burger," said he, earnestly, "I assure you that you can trust
+      me most implicitly in the matter. Nothing would induce me to put pen to
+      paper about anything which I see until I have your express permission. I
+      quite understand your feeling, and I think it is most natural, but you
+      have really nothing whatever to fear from me. On the other hand, if you
+      don't tell me I shall make a systematic search, and I shall most certainly
+      discover it. In that case, of course, I should make what use I liked of
+      it, since I should be under no obligation to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Burger smiled thoughtfully over his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have noticed, friend Kennedy," said he, "that when I want information
+      over any point you are not always so ready to supply it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When did you ever ask me anything that I did not tell you? You remember,
+      for example, my giving you the material for your paper about the temple of
+      the Vestals."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, well, that was not a matter of much importance. If I were to question
+      you upon some intimate thing, would you give me an answer, I wonder! This
+      new catacomb is a very intimate thing to me, and I should certainly expect
+      some sign of confidence in return."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What you are driving at I cannot imagine," said the Englishman, "but if
+      you mean that you will answer my question about the catacomb if I answer
+      any question which you may put to me, I can assure you that I will
+      certainly do so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, then," said Burger, leaning luxuriously back in his settee, and
+      puffing a blue tree of cigar-smoke into the air, "tell me all about your
+      relations with Miss Mary Saunderson."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy sprang up in his chair and glared angrily at his impassive
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What the devil do you mean?" he cried. "What sort of a question is this?
+      You may mean it as a joke, but you never made a worse one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I don't mean it as a joke," said Burger, simply. "I am really rather
+      interested in the details of the matter. I don't know much about the world
+      and women and social life and that sort of thing, and such an incident has
+      the fascination of the unknown for me. I know you, and I knew her by sight&mdash;I
+      had even spoken to her once or twice. I should very much like to hear from
+      your own lips exactly what it was which occurred between you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't tell you a word."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's all right. It was only my whim to see if you would give up a
+      secret as easily as you expected me to give up my secret of the new
+      catacomb. You wouldn't, and I didn't expect you to. But why should you
+      expect otherwise of me? There's St. John's clock striking ten. It is quite
+      time that I was going home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, wait a bit, Burger," said Kennedy; "this is really a ridiculous
+      caprice of yours to wish to know about an old love affair which has burned
+      out months ago. You know we look upon a man who kisses and tells as the
+      greatest coward and villain possible."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly," said the German, gathering up his basket of curiosities,
+      "when he tells anything about a girl which is previously unknown, he must
+      be so. But in this case, as you must be aware, it was a public matter
+      which was the common talk of Rome, so that you are not really doing Miss
+      Mary Saunderson any injury by discussing her case with me. But still, I
+      respect your scruples; and so good night!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wait a bit, Burger," said Kennedy, laying his hand upon the other's arm;
+      "I am very keen upon this catacomb business, and I can't let it drop quite
+      so easily. Would you mind asking me something else in return&mdash;something
+      not quite so eccentric this time?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no; you have refused, and there is an end of it," said Burger, with
+      his basket on his arm. "No doubt you are quite right not to answer, and no
+      doubt I am quite right also&mdash;and so again, my dear Kennedy, good
+      night!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman watched Burger cross the room, and he had his hand on the
+      handle of the door before his host sprang up with the air of a man who is
+      making the best of that which cannot be helped. "Hold on, old fellow,"
+      said he. "I think you are behaving in a most ridiculous fashion, but
+      still, if this is your condition, I suppose that I must submit to it. I
+      hate saying anything about a girl, but, as you say, it is all over Rome,
+      and I don't suppose I can tell you anything which you do not know already.
+      What was it you wanted to know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German came back to the stove, and, laying down his basket, he sank
+      into his chair once more. "May I have another cigar?" said he. "Thank you
+      very much! I never smoke when I work, but I enjoy a chat much more when I
+      am under the influence of tobacco. Now, as regards this young lady, with
+      whom you had this little adventure. What in the world has become of her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is at home with her own people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, really&mdash;in England?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What part of England&mdash;London?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Twickenham."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must excuse my curiosity, my dear Kennedy, and you must put it down
+      to my ignorance of the world. No doubt it is quite a simple thing to
+      persuade a young lady to go off with you for three weeks or so, and then
+      to hand her over to her own family at&mdash;what did you call the place?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twickenham."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite so&mdash;at Twickenham. But it is something so entirely outside my
+      own experience that I cannot even imagine how you set about it. For
+      example, if you had loved this girl your love could hardly disappear in
+      three weeks, so I presume that you could not have loved her at all. But if
+      you did not love her why should you make this great scandal which has
+      damaged you and ruined her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy looked moodily into the red eye of the stove. "That's a logical
+      way of looking at it, certainly," said he. "Love is a big word, and it
+      represents a good many different shades of feeling. I liked her, and&mdash;
+      well, you say you've seen her&mdash;you know how charming she can look.
+      But still I am willing to admit, looking back, that I could never have
+      really loved her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then, my dear Kennedy, why did you do it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The adventure of the thing had a great deal to do with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! You are so fond of adventures!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where would the variety of life be without them? It was for an adventure
+      that I first began to pay my attentions to her. I've chased a good deal of
+      game in my time, but there's no chase like that of a pretty woman. There
+      was the piquant difficulty of it also, for, as she was the companion of
+      Lady Emily Rood it was almost impossible to see her alone. On the top of
+      all the other obstacles which attracted me, I learned from her own lips
+      very early in the proceedings that she was engaged."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mein Gott! To whom?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She mentioned no names."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not think that anyone knows that. So that made the adventure more
+      alluring, did it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it did certainly give a spice to it. Don't you think so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I tell you that I am very ignorant about these things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear fellow, you can remember that the apple you stole from your
+      neighbour's tree was always sweeter than that which fell from your own.
+      And then I found that she cared for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What&mdash;at once?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, no, it took about three months of sapping and mining. But at last I
+      won her over. She understood that my judicial separation from my wife made
+      it impossible for me to do the right thing by her&mdash;but she came all
+      the same, and we had a delightful time, as long as it lasted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how about the other man?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose it is the survival of the
+      fittest," said he. "If he had been the better man she would not have
+      deserted him. Let's drop the subject, for I have had enough of it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only one other thing. How did you get rid of her in three weeks?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we had both cooled down a bit, you understand. She absolutely
+      refused, under any circumstances, to come back to face the people she had
+      known in Rome. Now, of course, Rome is necessary to me, and I was already
+      pining to be back at my work&mdash;so there was one obvious cause of
+      separation. Then, again, her old father turned up at the hotel in London,
+      and there was a scene, and the whole thing became so unpleasant that
+      really&mdash;though I missed her dreadfully at first&mdash;I was very glad
+      to slip out of it. Now, I rely upon you not to repeat anything of what I
+      have said."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Kennedy, I should not dream of repeating it. But all that you say
+      interests me very much, for it gives me an insight into your way of
+      looking at things, which is entirely different from mine, for I have seen
+      so little of life. And now you want to know about my new catacomb. There's
+      no use my trying to describe it, for you would never find it by that.
+      There is only one thing, and that is for me to take you there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That would be splendid."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When would you like to come?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The sooner the better. I am all impatience to see it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it is a beautiful night&mdash;though a trifle cold. Suppose we
+      start in an hour. We must be very careful to keep the matter to ourselves.
+      If anyone saw us hunting in couples they would suspect that there was
+      something going on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We can't be too cautious," said Kennedy. "Is it far?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some miles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not too far to walk?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, no, we could walk there easily."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We had better do so, then. A cabman's suspicions would be aroused if he
+      dropped us both at some lonely spot in the dead of the night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite so. I think it would be best for us to meet at the Gate of the
+      Appian Way at midnight. I must go back to my lodgings for the matches and
+      candles and things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All right, Burger! I think it is very kind of you to let me into this
+      secret, and I promise you that I will write nothing about it until you
+      have published your report. Good-bye for the present! You will find me at
+      the Gate at twelve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cold, clear air was filled with the musical chimes from that city of
+      clocks as Burger, wrapped in an Italian overcoat, with a lantern hanging
+      from his hand, walked up to the rendezvous. Kennedy stepped out of the
+      shadow to meet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are ardent in work as well as in love!" said the German, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope you left no clue as to where we were going."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not such a fool! By Jove, I am chilled to the bone! Come on, Burger, let
+      us warm ourselves by a spurt of hard walking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their footsteps sounded loud and crisp upon the rough stone paving of the
+      disappointing road which is all that is left of the most famous highway of
+      the world. A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop, and a few carts
+      of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only things which they met.
+      They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up through the darkness upon
+      each side of them, until they had come as far as the Catacombs of St.
+      Calixtus, and saw against a rising moon the great circular bastion of
+      Cecilia Metella in front of them. Then Burger stopped with his hand to his
+      side. "Your legs are longer than mine, and you are more accustomed to
+      walking," said he, laughing. "I think that the place where we turn off is
+      somewhere here. Yes, this is it, round the corner of the trattoria. Now,
+      it is a very narrow path, so perhaps I had better go in front, and you can
+      follow." He had lit his lantern, and by its light they were enabled to
+      follow a narrow and devious track which wound across the marshes of the
+      Campagna. The great Aqueduct of old Rome lay like a monstrous caterpillar
+      across the moonlit landscape, and their road led them under one of its
+      huge arches, and past the circle of crumbling bricks which marks the old
+      arena. At last Burger stopped at a solitary wooden cowhouse, and he drew a
+      key from his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Surely your catacomb is not inside a house!" cried Kennedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The entrance to it is. That is just the safeguard which we have against
+      anyone else discovering it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does the proprietor know of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not he. He had found one or two objects which made me almost certain that
+      his house was built on the entrance to such a place. So I rented it from
+      him, and did my excavations for myself. Come in, and shut the door behind
+      you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long, empty building, with the mangers of the cows along one
+      wall. Burger put his lantern down on the ground, and shaded its light in
+      all directions save one by draping his overcoat round it. "It might excite
+      remark if anyone saw a light in this lonely place," said he. "Just help me
+      to move this boarding." The flooring was loose in the corner, and plank by
+      plank the two savants raised it and leaned it against the wall. Below
+      there was a square aperture and a stair of old stone steps which led away
+      down into the bowels of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Be careful!" cried Burger, as Kennedy, in his impatience, hurried down
+      them. "It is a perfect rabbits'-warren below, and if you were once to lose
+      your way there, the chances would be a hundred to one against your ever
+      coming out again. Wait until I bring the light."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you find your own way if it is so complicated?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had some very narrow escapes at first, but I have gradually learned to
+      go about. There is a certain system to it, but it is one which a lost man,
+      if he were in the dark, could not possibly find out. Even now I always
+      spin out a ball of string behind me when I am going far into the catacomb.
+      You can see for yourself that it is difficult, but every one of these
+      passages divides and subdivides a dozen times before you go a hundred
+      yards." They had descended some twenty feet from the level of the byre,
+      and they were standing now in a square chamber cut out of the soft tufa.
+      The lantern cast a flickering light, bright below and dim above, over the
+      cracked brown walls. In every direction were the black openings of
+      passages which radiated from this common centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I want you to follow me closely, my friend," said Burger. "Do not loiter
+      to look at anything upon the way, for the place to which I will take you
+      contains all that you can see, and more. It will save time for us to go
+      there direct." He led the way down one of the corridors, and the
+      Englishman followed closely at his heels. Every now and then the passage
+      bifurcated, but Burger was evidently following some secret marks of his
+      own, for he neither stopped nor hesitated. Everywhere along the walls,
+      packed like the berths upon an emigrant ship, lay the Christians of old
+      Rome. The yellow light flickered over the shrivelled features of the
+      mummies, and gleamed upon rounded skulls and long, white arm-bones crossed
+      over fleshless chests. And everywhere as he passed Kennedy looked with
+      wistful eyes upon inscriptions, funeral vessels, pictures, vestments,
+      utensils, all lying as pious hands had placed them so many centuries ago.
+      It was apparent to him, even in those hurried, passing glances, that this
+      was the earliest and finest of the catacombs, containing such a storehouse
+      of Roman remains as had never before come at one time under the
+      observation of the student. "What would happen if the light went out?" he
+      asked, as they hurried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have a spare candle and a box of matches in my pocket. By the way,
+      Kennedy, have you any matches?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; you had better give me some."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, that is all right. There is no chance of our separating."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How far are we going? It seems to me that we have walked at least a
+      quarter of a mile."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "More than that, I think. There is really no limit to the tombs&mdash;at
+      least, I have never been able to find any. This is a very difficult place,
+      so I think that I will use our ball of string." He fastened one end of it
+      to a projecting stone and he carried the coil in the breast of his coat,
+      paying it out as he advanced. Kennedy saw that it was no unnecessary
+      precaution, for the passages had become more complexed and tortuous than
+      ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors. But these all
+      ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of tufa topped
+      with a slab of marble at one end of it. "By Jove!" cried Kennedy in an
+      ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble. "It is a Christian
+      altar&mdash;probably the first one in existence. Here is the little
+      consecration cross cut upon the corner of it. No doubt this circular space
+      was used as a church."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Precisely," said Burger. "If I had more time I should like to show you
+      all the bodies which are buried in these niches upon the walls, for they
+      are the early popes and bishops of the Church, with their mitres, their
+      croziers, and full canonicals. Go over to that one and look at it!"
+      Kennedy went across, and stared at the ghastly head which lay loosely on
+      the shredded and mouldering mitre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is most interesting," said he, and his voice seemed to boom against
+      the concave vault. "As far as my experience goes, it is unique. Bring the
+      lantern over, Burger, for I want to see them all." But the German had
+      strolled away, and was standing in the middle of a yellow circle of light
+      at the other side of the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know how many wrong turnings there are between this and the
+      stairs?" he asked. "There are over two thousand. No doubt it was one of
+      the means of protection which the Christians adopted. The odds are two
+      thousand to one against a man getting out, even if he had a light; but if
+      he were in the dark it would, of course, be far more difficult."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I should think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the darkness is something dreadful. I tried it once for an
+      experiment. Let us try it again!" He stooped to the lantern, and in an
+      instant it was as if an invisible hand was squeezed tightly over each of
+      Kennedy's eyes. Never had he known what such darkness was. It seemed to
+      press upon him and to smother him. It was a solid obstacle against which
+      the body shrank from advancing. He put his hands out to push it back from
+      him. "That will do, Burger," said he, "let's have the light again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his companion began to laugh, and in that circular room the sound
+      seemed to come from every side at once. "You seem uneasy, friend Kennedy,"
+      said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go on, man, light the candle!" said Kennedy, impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's very strange, Kennedy, but I could not in the least tell by the
+      sound in which direction you stand. Could you tell where I am?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; you seem to be on every side of me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If it were not for this string which I hold in my hand I should not have
+      a notion which way to go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say not. Strike a light, man, and have an end of this nonsense."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Kennedy, there are two things which I understand that you are very
+      fond of. The one is adventure, and the other is an obstacle to surmount.
+      The adventure must be the finding of your way out of this catacomb. The
+      obstacle will be the darkness and the two thousand wrong turns which make
+      the way a little difficult to find. But you need not hurry, for you have
+      plenty of time, and when you halt for a rest now and then, I should like
+      you just to think of Miss Mary Saunderson, and whether you treated her
+      quite fairly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You devil, what do you mean?" roared Kennedy. He was running about in
+      little circles and clasping at the solid blackness with both hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good-bye," said the mocking voice, and it was already at some distance.
+      "I really do not think, Kennedy, even by your own showing that you did the
+      right thing by that girl. There was only one little thing which you
+      appeared not to know, and I can supply it. Miss Saunderson was engaged to
+      a poor, ungainly devil of a student, and his name was Julius Burger."
+      There was a rustle somewhere&mdash;the vague sound of a foot striking a
+      stone&mdash;and then there fell silence upon that old Christian church&mdash;a
+      stagnant heavy silence which closed round Kennedy and shut him in like
+      water round a drowning man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some two months afterwards the following paragraph made the round of the
+      European Press:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   One of the most interesting discoveries of recent years is
+   that of the new catacomb in Rome, which lies some distance to the
+   east of the well-known vaults of St. Calixtus.  The finding of this
+   important burial-place, which is exceedingly rich in most
+   interesting early Christian remains, is due to the energy and
+   sagacity of Dr. Julius Burger, the young German specialist, who is
+   rapidly taking the first place as an authority upon ancient Rome.
+   Although the first to publish his discovery, it appears that a less
+   fortunate adventurer had anticipated Dr. Burger.  Some months ago
+   Mr. Kennedy, the well-known English student, disappeared suddenly
+   from his rooms in the "Corso", and it was conjectured that his
+   association with a recent scandal had driven him to leave Rome.  It
+   appears now that he had in reality fallen a victim to that fervid
+   love of archaeology which had raised him to a distinguished place
+   among living scholars.  His body was discovered in the heart of the
+   new catacomb, and it was evident from the condition of his feet and
+   boots that he had tramped for days through the tortuous corridors
+   which make these subterranean tombs so dangerous to explorers.  The
+   deceased gentleman had, with inexplicable rashness, made his way
+   into this labyrinth without, as far as can be discovered, taking
+   with him either candles or matches, so that his sad fate was the
+   natural result of his own temerity.  What makes the matter more
+   painful is that Dr. Julius Burger was an intimate friend of the
+   deceased.  His joy at the extraordinary find which he has been so
+   fortunate as to make has been greatly marred by the terrible fate
+   of his comrade and fellow-worker.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was in the days when the tide of Mahdism, which had swept in such a
+      flood from the great Lakes and Darfur to the confines of Egypt, had at
+      last come to its full, and even begun, as some hoped, to show signs of a
+      turn. At its outset it had been terrible. It had engulfed Hicks's army,
+      swept over Gordon and Khartoum, rolled behind the British forces as they
+      retired down the river, and finally cast up a spray of raiding parties as
+      far north as Assouan. Then it found other channels to east and west, to
+      Central Africa and to Abyssinia, and retired a little on the side of
+      Egypt. For ten years there ensued a lull, during which the frontier
+      garrisons looked out upon those distant blue hills of Dongola. Behind the
+      violet mists which draped them lay a land of blood and horror. From time
+      to time some adventurer went south towards those haze-girt mountains,
+      tempted by stories of gum and ivory, but none ever returned. Once a
+      mutilated Egyptian and once a Greek woman, mad with thirst and fear, made
+      their way to the lines. They were the only exports of that country of
+      darkness. Sometimes the sunset would turn those distant mists into a bank
+      of crimson, and the dark mountains would rise from that sinister reek like
+      islands in a sea of blood. It seemed a grim symbol in the southern heaven
+      when seen from the fort-capped hills by Wady Halfa. Ten years of lust in
+      Khartoum, ten years of silent work in Cairo, and then all was ready, and
+      it was time for civilisation to take a trip south once more, travelling as
+      her wont is in an armoured train. Everything was ready, down to the last
+      pack-saddle of the last camel, and yet no one suspected it, for an
+      unconstitutional Government has its advantage. A great administrator had
+      argued, and managed, and cajoled; a great soldier had organised and
+      planned, and made piastres do the work of pounds. And then one night these
+      two master spirits met and clasped hands, and the soldier vanished away
+      upon some business of his own. And just at that very time, Bimbashi Hilary
+      Joyce, seconded from the Royal Mallow Fusiliers, and temporarily attached
+      to the Ninth Soudanese, made his first appearance in Cairo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Napoleon had said, and Hilary Joyce had noted, that great reputations are
+      only to be made in the East. Here he was in the East with four tin cases
+      of baggage, a Wilkinson sword, a Bond's slug-throwing pistol, and a copy
+      of "Green's Introduction to the Study of Arabic." With such a start, and
+      the blood of youth running hot in his veins, everything seemed easy. He
+      was a little frightened of the general; he had heard stories of his
+      sternness to young officers, but with tact and suavity he hoped for the
+      best. So, leaving his effects at "Shepherd's Hotel," he reported himself
+      at headquarters. It was not the general, but the head of the Intelligence
+      Department who received him, the chief being still absent upon that
+      business which had called him. Hilary Joyce found himself in the presence
+      of a short, thick-set officer, with a gentle voice and a placid expression
+      which covered a remarkably acute and energetic spirit. With that quiet
+      smile and guileless manner he had undercut and outwitted the most cunning
+      of Orientals. He stood, a cigarette between his fingers, looking at the
+      newcomer. "I heard that you had come. Sorry the chief isn't here to see
+      you. Gone up to the frontier, you know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My regiment is at Wady Halfa. I suppose, sir, that I should report myself
+      there at once?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; I was to give you your orders." He led the way to a map upon the
+      wall, and pointed with the end of his cigarette. "You see this place. It's
+      the Oasis of Kurkur&mdash;a little quiet, I am afraid, but excellent air.
+      You are to get out there as quick as possible. You'll find a company of
+      the Ninth, and half a squadron of cavalry. You will be in command."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hilary Joyce looked at the name, printed at the intersection of two black
+      lines without another dot upon the map for several inches around it. "A
+      village, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, a well. Not very good water, I'm afraid, but you soon get accustomed
+      to natron. It's an important post, as being at the junction of two caravan
+      routes. All routes are closed now, of course, but still you never know who
+      <i>might</i> come along them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are there, I presume, to prevent raiding?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, between you and me, there's really nothing to raid. You are there
+      to intercept messengers. They must call at the wells. Of course you have
+      only just come out, but you probably understand already enough about the
+      conditions of this country to know that there is a great deal of
+      disaffection about, and that the Khalifa is likely to try and keep in
+      touch with his adherents. Then, again, Senoussi lives up that way"&mdash;he
+      waved his cigarette to the westward&mdash;"the Khalifa might send a
+      message to him along that route. Anyhow, your duty is to arrest everyone
+      coming along, and get some account of him before you let him go. You don't
+      talk Arabic, I suppose?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am learning, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, well, you'll have time enough for study there. And you'll have a
+      native officer, Ali something or other, who speaks English, and can
+      interpret for you. Well, good-bye&mdash;I'll tell the chief that you
+      reported yourself. Get on to your post now as quickly as you can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Railway to Baliani, the post-boat to Assouan, and then two days on a camel
+      in the Libyan desert, with an Ababdeh guide, and three baggage-camels to
+      tie one down to their own exasperating pace. However, even two and a half
+      miles an hour mount up in time, and at last, on the third evening, from
+      the blackened slag-heap of a hill which is called the Jebel Kurkur, Hilary
+      Joyce looked down upon a distant clump of palms, and thought that this
+      cool patch of green in the midst of the merciless blacks and yellows was
+      the fairest colour effect that he had ever seen. An hour later he had
+      ridden into the little camp, the guard had turned out to salute him, his
+      native subordinate had greeted him in excellent English, and he had fairly
+      entered into his own. It was not an exhilarating place for a lengthy
+      residence. There was one large, bowl-shaped, grassy depression sloping
+      down to the three pits of brown and brackish water. There was the grove of
+      palm trees also, beautiful to look upon, but exasperating in view of the
+      fact that Nature has provided her least shady trees on the very spot where
+      shade is needed most. A single wide-spread acacia did something to restore
+      the balance. Here Hilary Joyce slumbered in the heat, and in the cool he
+      inspected his square-shouldered, spindle-shanked Soudanese, with their
+      cheery black faces and their funny little pork-pie forage caps. Joyce was
+      a martinet at drill, and the blacks loved being drilled, so the Bimbashi
+      was soon popular among them. But one day was exactly like another. The
+      weather, the view, the employment, the food&mdash;everything was the same.
+      At the end of three weeks he felt that he had been there for interminable
+      years. And then at last there came something to break the monotony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, as the sun was sinking, Hilary Joyce rode slowly down the old
+      caravan road. It had a fascination for him, this narrow track, winding
+      among the boulders and curving up the nullahs, for he remembered how in
+      the map it had gone on and on, stretching away into the unknown heart of
+      Africa. The countless pads of innumerable camels through many centuries
+      had beaten it smooth, so that now, unused and deserted, it still wound
+      away, the strangest of roads, a foot broad, and perhaps two thousand miles
+      in length. Joyce wondered as he rode how long it was since any traveller
+      had journeyed up it from the south, and then he raised his eyes, and there
+      was a man coming along the path. For an instant Joyce thought that it
+      might be one of his own men, but a second glance assured him that this
+      could not be so. The stranger was dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab,
+      and not in the close-fitting khaki of a soldier. He was very tall, and a
+      high turban made him seem gigantic. He strode swiftly along, with head
+      erect, and the bearing of a man who knows no fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who could he be, this formidable giant coming out of the unknown? The
+      precursor possibly of a horde of savage spearmen. And where could he have
+      walked from? The nearest well was a long hundred miles down the track. At
+      any rate the frontier post of Kurkur could not afford to receive casual
+      visitors. Hilary Joyce whisked round his horse, galloped into camp, and
+      gave the alarm. Then, with twenty horsemen at his back, he rode out again
+      to reconnoitre. The man was still coming on in spite of these hostile
+      preparations. For an instant he hesitated when first he saw the cavalry,
+      but escape was out of the question, and he advanced with the air of one
+      who makes the best of a bad job. He made no resistance, and said nothing
+      when the hands of two troopers clutched at his shoulders, but walked
+      quietly between their horses into camp. Shortly afterwards the patrol came
+      in again. There were no signs of any dervishes. The man was alone. A
+      splendid trotting camel had been found lying dead a little way down the
+      track. The mystery of the stranger's arrival was explained. But why, and
+      whence, and whither?&mdash;these were questions for which a zealous
+      officer must find an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hilary Joyce was disappointed that there were no dervishes. It would have
+      been a great start for him in the Egyptian army had he fought a little
+      action on his own account. But even as it was, he had a rare chance of
+      impressing the authorities. He would love to show his capacity to the head
+      of the Intelligence, and even more to that grim Chief who never forgot
+      what was smart, or forgave what was slack. The prisoner's dress and
+      bearing showed that he was of importance. Mean men do not ride pure-bred
+      trotting camels. Joyce sponged his head with cold water, drank a cup of
+      strong coffee, put on an imposing official tarboosh instead of his
+      sun-helmet, and formed himself into a court of inquiry and judgment under
+      the acacia tree. He would have liked his people to have seen him now, with
+      his two black orderlies in waiting, and his Egyptian native officer at his
+      side. He sat behind a camp-table, and the prisoner, strongly guarded, was
+      led up to him. The man was a handsome fellow, with bold grey eyes and a
+      long black beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why!" cried Joyce, "the rascal is making faces at me." A curious
+      contraction had passed over the man's features, but so swiftly that it
+      might have been a nervous twitch. He was now a model of Oriental gravity.
+      "Ask him who he is, and what he wants?" The native officer did so, but the
+      stranger made no reply, save that the same sharp spasm passed once more
+      over his face. "Well, I'm blessed!" cried Hilary Joyce. "Of all the
+      impudent scoundrels! He keeps on winking at me. Who are you, you rascal?
+      Give an account of yourself! D'ye hear?" But the tall Arab was as
+      impervious to English as to Arabic. The Egyptian tried again and again.
+      The prisoner looked at Joyce with his inscrutable eyes, and occasionally
+      twitched his face at him, but never opened his mouth. The Bimbashi
+      scratched his head in bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Mahomet Ali, we've got to get some sense out of this fellow.
+      You say there are no papers on him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir; we found no papers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No clue of any kind?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has come far, sir. A trotting camel does not die easily. He has come
+      from Dongola, at least."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we must get him to talk."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is possible that he is deaf and dumb."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not he. I never saw a man look more all there in my life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You might send him across to Assouan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And give someone else the credit? No, thank you. This is my bird. But how
+      are we going to get him to find his tongue?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Egyptian's dark eyes skirted the encampment and rested on the cook's
+      fire. "Perhaps," said he, "if the Bimbashi thought fit&mdash;" He looked
+      at the prisoner and then at the burning wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no; it wouldn't do. No, by Jove, that's going too far."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A very little might do it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no. It's all very well here, but it would sound just awful if ever it
+      got as far as Fleet Street. But, I say," he whispered, "we might frighten
+      him a bit. There's no harm in that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell them to undo the man's galabeeah. Order them to put a horseshoe in
+      the fire and make it red-hot." The prisoner watched the proceedings with
+      an air which had more of amusement than of uneasiness. He never winced as
+      the black sergeant approached with the glowing shoe held upon two
+      bayonets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you speak now?" asked the Bimbashi, savagely. The prisoner smiled
+      gently and stroked his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, chuck the infernal thing away!" cried Joyce, jumping up in a passion.
+      "There's no use trying to bluff the fellow. He knows we won't do it. But I
+      <i>can</i> and I <i>will</i> flog him, and you can tell him from me that
+      if he hasn't found his tongue by to-morrow morning I'll take the skin off
+      his back as sure as my name's Joyce. Have you said all that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you can sleep upon it, you beauty, and a good night's rest may it
+      give you!" He adjourned the Court, and the prisoner, as imperturbable as
+      ever, was led away by the guard to his supper of rice and water. Hilary
+      Joyce was a kind-hearted man, and his own sleep was considerably disturbed
+      by the prospect of the punishment which he must inflict next day. He had
+      hopes that the mere sight of the koorbash and the thongs might prevail
+      over his prisoner's obstinacy. And then, again, he thought how shocking it
+      would be if the man proved to be really dumb after all. The possibility
+      shook him so that he had almost determined by daybreak that he would send
+      the stranger on unhurt to Assouan. And yet what a tame conclusion it would
+      be to the incident! He lay upon his angareeb still debating it when the
+      question suddenly and effectively settled itself. Ali Mahomet rushed into
+      his tent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sir," he cried, "the prisoner is gone!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gone!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir, and your own best riding camel as well. There is a slit cut in
+      the tent, and he got away unseen in the early morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bimbashi acted with all energy. Cavalry rode along every track; scouts
+      examined the soft sand of the wadys for signs of the fugitive, but no
+      trace was discovered. The man had utterly disappeared. With a heavy heart,
+      Hilary Joyce wrote an official report of the matter and forwarded it to
+      Assouan. Five days later there came a curt order from the chief that he
+      should report himself there. He feared the worst from the stern soldier,
+      who spared others as little as he spared himself. And his worst
+      forebodings were realised. Travel-stained and weary, he reported himself
+      one night at the general's quarters. Behind a table piled with papers and
+      strewn with maps the famous soldier and his Chief of Intelligence were
+      deep in plans and figures. Their greeting was a cold one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I understand, Captain Joyce," said the general, "that you have allowed a
+      very important prisoner to slip through your fingers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No doubt. But that will not mend matters. Did you ascertain anything
+      about him before you lost him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How was that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I could get nothing out of him, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you try?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir; I did what I could."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did you do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, sir, I threatened to use physical force."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did he say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He said nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was he like?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A tall man, sir. Rather a desperate character, I should think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Any way by which we could identify him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A long black beard, sir. Grey eyes. And a nervous way of twitching his
+      face."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Captain Joyce," said the general, in his stern, inflexible voice,
+      "I cannot congratulate you upon your first exploit in the Egyptian army.
+      You are aware that every English officer in this force is a picked man. I
+      have the whole British army from which to draw. It is necessary,
+      therefore, that I should insist upon the very highest efficiency. It would
+      be unfair upon the others to pass over any obvious want of zeal or
+      intelligence. You are seconded from the Royal Mallows, I understand?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no doubt that your colonel will be glad to see you fulfilling your
+      regimental duties again." Hilary Joyce's heart was too heavy for words. He
+      was silent. "I will let you know my final decision to-morrow morning."
+      Joyce saluted and turned upon his heel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can sleep upon that, you beauty, and a good night's rest may it give
+      you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joyce turned in bewilderment. Where had those words been used before? Who
+      was it who had used them? The general was standing erect. Both he and the
+      Chief of the Intelligence were laughing. Joyce stared at the tall figure,
+      the erect bearing, the inscrutable grey eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good Lord!" he gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, well, Captain Joyce, we are quits!" said the general, holding out
+      his hand. "You gave me a bad ten minutes with that infernal red-hot
+      horseshoe of yours. I've done as much for you. I don't think we can spare
+      you for the Royal Mallows just yet awhile."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, sir; but&mdash;!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The fewer questions the better, perhaps. But of course it must seem
+      rather amazing. I had a little private business with the Kabbabish. It
+      must be done in person. I did it, and came to your post in my return. I
+      kept on winking at you as a sign that I wanted a word with you alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, yes. I begin to understand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I couldn't give it away before all those blacks, or where should I have
+      been the next time I used my false beard and Arab dress? You put me in a
+      very awkward position. But at last I had a word alone with your Egyptian
+      officer, who managed my escape all right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He! Mahomet Ali!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ordered him to say nothing. I had a score to settle with you. But we
+      dine at eight, Captain Joyce. We live plainly here, but I think I can do
+      you a little better than you did me at Kurkur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There are many folk who knew Alphonse Lacour in his old age. From about
+      the time of the Revolution of '48 until he died in the second year of the
+      Crimean War he was always to be found in the same corner of the Cafe de
+      Provence, at the end of the Rue St. Honore, coming down about nine in the
+      evening, and going when he could find no one to talk with. It took some
+      self-restraint to listen to the old diplomatist, for his stories were
+      beyond all belief, and yet he was quick at detecting the shadow of a smile
+      or the slightest little raising of the eyebrows. Then his huge, rounded
+      back would straighten itself, his bull-dog chin would project, and his r's
+      would burr like a kettledrum. When he got as far as, "Ah, monsieur
+      r-r-r-rit!" or "Vous ne me cr-r-r-royez pas donc!" it was quite time to
+      remember that you had a ticket for the opera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was his story of Talleyrand and the five oyster-shells, and there
+      was his utterly absurd account of Napoleon's second visit to Ajaccio. Then
+      there was that most circumstantial romance (which he never ventured upon
+      until his second bottle had been uncorked) of the Emperor's escape from
+      St. Helena&mdash;how he lived for a whole year in Philadelphia, while
+      Count Herbert de Bertrand, who was his living image, personated him at
+      Longwood. But of all his stories there was none which was more notorious
+      than that of the Koran and the Foreign Office messenger. And yet when
+      Monsieur Otto's memoirs were written it was found that there really was
+      some foundation for old Lacour's incredible statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must know, monsieur," he would say, "that I left Egypt after Kleber's
+      assassination. I would gladly have stayed on, for I was engaged in a
+      translation of the Koran, and between ourselves I had thoughts at the time
+      of embracing Mahometanism, for I was deeply struck by the wisdom of their
+      views about marriage. They had made an incredible mistake, however, upon
+      the subject of wine, and this was what the Mufti who attempted to convert
+      me could never get over. Then when old Kleber died and Menou came to the
+      top, I felt that it was time for me to go. It is not for me to speak of my
+      own capacities, monsieur, but you will readily understand that the man
+      does not care to be ridden by the mule. I carried my Koran and my papers
+      to London, where Monsieur Otto had been sent by the First Consul to
+      arrange a treaty of peace; for both nations were very weary of the war,
+      which had already lasted ten years. Here I was most useful to Monsieur
+      Otto on account of my knowledge of the English tongue, and also, if I may
+      say so, on account of my natural capacity. They were happy days during
+      which I lived in the square of Bloomsbury. The climate of monsieur's
+      country is, it must be confessed, detestable. But then what would you
+      have? Flowers grow best in the rain. One has but to point to monsieur's
+      fellow country-women to prove it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Monsieur Otto, our Ambassador, was kept terribly busy over that
+      treaty, and all of his staff were worked to death. We had not Pitt to deal
+      with, which was, perhaps, as well for us. He was a terrible man that Pitt,
+      and wherever half a dozen enemies of France were plotting together, there
+      was his sharp-pointed nose right in the middle of them. The nation,
+      however, had been thoughtful enough to put him out of office, and we had
+      to do with Monsieur Addington. But Milord Hawkesbury was the Foreign
+      Minister, and it was with him that we were obliged to do our bargaining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can understand that it was no child's play. After ten years of war
+      each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the other,
+      or to the other's allies. What was to be given back, and what was to be
+      kept? Is this island worth that peninsula? If we do this at Venice, will
+      you do that at Sierra Leone? If we give up Egypt to the Sultan, will you
+      restore the Cape of Good Hope, which you have taken from our allies the
+      Dutch? So we wrangled and wrestled, and I have seen Monsieur Otto come
+      back to the Embassy so exhausted that his secretary and I had to help him
+      from his carriage to his sofa. But at last things adjusted themselves, and
+      the night came round when the treaty was to be finally signed. Now, you
+      must know that the one great card which we held, and which we played,
+      played, played at every point of the game, was that we had Egypt. The
+      English were very nervous about our being there. It gave us a foot at each
+      end of the Mediterranean, you see. And they were not sure that that
+      wonderful little Napoleon of ours might not make it the base of an advance
+      against India. So whenever Lord Hawkesbury proposed to retain anything, we
+      had only to reply, 'In <i>that</i> case, of course, we cannot consent to
+      evacuate Egypt,' and in this way we quickly brought him to reason. It was
+      by the help of Egypt that we gained terms which were remarkably
+      favourable, and especially that we caused the English to consent to give
+      up the Cape of Good Hope. We did not wish your people, monsieur, to have
+      any foothold in South Africa, for history has taught us that the British
+      foothold of one half-century is the British Empire of the next. It is not
+      your army or your navy against which we have to guard, but it is your
+      terrible younger son and your man in search of a career. When we French
+      have a possession across the seas, we like to sit in Paris and to
+      felicitate ourselves upon it. With you it is different. You take your
+      wives and your children, and you run away to see what kind of place this
+      may be, and after that we might as well try to take that old Square of
+      Bloomsbury away from you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it was upon the first of October that the treaty was finally to be
+      signed. In the morning I was congratulating Monsieur Otto upon the happy
+      conclusion of his labours. He was a little pale shrimp of a man, very
+      quick and nervous, and he was so delighted now at his own success that he
+      could not sit still, but ran about the room chattering and laughing, while
+      I sat on a cushion in the corner, as I had learned to do in the East.
+      Suddenly, in came a messenger with a letter which had been forwarded from
+      Paris. Monsieur Otto cast his eye upon it, and then, without a word, his
+      knees gave way, and he fell senseless upon the floor. I ran to him, as did
+      the courier, and between us we carried him to the sofa. He might have been
+      dead from his appearance, but I could still feel his heart thrilling
+      beneath my palm. 'What is this, then?' I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I do not know,' answered the messenger. 'Monsieur Talleyrand told me to
+      hurry as never man hurried before, and to put this letter into the hands
+      of Monsieur Otto. I was in Paris at midday yesterday.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know that I am to blame, but I could not help glancing at the letter,
+      picking it out of the senseless hand of Monsieur Otto. My God! the
+      thunderbolt that it was! I did not faint, but I sat down beside my chief
+      and I burst into tears. It was but a few words, but they told us that
+      Egypt had been evacuated by our troops a month before. All our treaty was
+      undone then, and the one consideration which had induced our enemies to
+      give us good terms had vanished. In twelve hours it would not have
+      mattered. But now the treaty was not yet signed. We should have to give up
+      the Cape. We should have to let England have Malta. Now that Egypt was
+      gone we had nothing left to offer in exchange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But we are not so easily beaten, we Frenchmen. You English misjudge us
+      when you think that because we show emotions which you conceal, that we
+      are therefore of a weak and womanly nature. You cannot read your histories
+      and believe that. Monsieur Otto recovered his senses presently, and we
+      took counsel what we should do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It is useless to go on, Alphonse,' said he. 'This Englishman will laugh
+      at me when I ask him to sign.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Courage!' I cried; and then a sudden thought coming into my head&mdash;'How
+      do we know that the English will have news of this? Perhaps they may sign
+      the treaty before they know of it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Monsieur Otto sprang from the sofa and flung himself into my arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Alphonse,' he cried, 'you have saved me! Why should they know about it?
+      Our news has come from Toulon to Paris, and thence straight to London.
+      Theirs will come by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar. At this moment
+      it is unlikely that anyone in Paris knows of it, save only Talleyrand and
+      the First Consul. If we keep our secret, we may still get our treaty
+      signed.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! monsieur, you can imagine the horrible uncertainty in which we spent
+      the day. Never, never shall I forget those slow hours during which we sat
+      together, starting at every distant shout, lest it should be the first
+      sign of the rejoicing which this news would cause in London. Monsieur Otto
+      passed from youth to age in a day. As for me, I find it easier to go out
+      and meet danger than to wait for it. I set forth, therefore, towards
+      evening. I wandered here, and wandered there. I was in the fencing-rooms
+      of Monsieur Angelo, and in the salon-de-boxe of Monsieur Jackson, and in
+      the club of Brooks, and in the lobby of the Chamber of Deputies, but
+      nowhere did I hear any news. Still, it was possible that Milord Hawkesbury
+      had received it himself just as we had. He lived in Harley Street, and
+      there it was that the treaty was to be finally signed that night at eight.
+      I entreated Monsieur Otto to drink two glasses of Burgundy before he went,
+      for I feared lest his haggard face and trembling, hands should rouse
+      suspicion in the English minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we went round together in one of the Embassy's carriages about
+      half-past seven. Monsieur Otto went in alone; but presently, on excuse of
+      getting his portfolio, he came out again, with his cheeks flushed with
+      joy, to tell me that all was well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'He knows nothing,' he whispered. 'Ah, if the next half-hour were over!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Give me a sign when it is settled,' said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'For what reason?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Because until then no messenger shall interrupt you. I give you my
+      promise&mdash;I, Alphonse Lacour.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He clasped my hand in both of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I shall make an excuse to move one of the candles on to the table in the
+      window,' said he, and hurried into the house, whilst I was left waiting
+      beside the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, if we could but secure ourselves from interruption for a single
+      half-hour the day would be our own. I had hardly begun to form my plans
+      when I saw the lights of a carriage coming swiftly from the direction of
+      Oxford Street. Ah! if it should be the messenger! What could I do? I was
+      prepared to kill him&mdash;yes, even to kill him&mdash;rather than at this
+      last moment allow our work to be undone. Thousands die to make a glorious
+      war. Why should not one die to make a glorious peace? What though they
+      hurried me to the scaffold? I should have sacrificed myself for my
+      country. I had a little curved Turkish knife strapped to my waist. My hand
+      was on the hilt of it when the carriage which had alarmed me so rattled
+      safely past me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But another might come. I must be prepared. Above all, I must not
+      compromise the Embassy. I ordered our carriage to move on, and I engaged
+      what you call a hackney coach. Then I spoke to the driver, and gave him a
+      guinea. He understood that it was a special service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'You shall have another guinea if you do what you are told,' said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'All right, master,' said he, turning his slow eyes upon me without a
+      trace of excitement or curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "' If I enter your coach with another gentleman, you will drive up and
+      down Harley Street, and take no orders from anyone but me. When I get out,
+      you will carry the other gentleman to Watier's Club, in Bruton Street.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'All right, master,' said he again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I stood outside Milord Hawkesbury's house, and you can think how often
+      my eyes went up to that window in the hope of seeing the candle twinkle in
+      it. Five minutes passed, and another five. Oh, how slowly they crept
+      along! It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a white fog
+      crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the dim
+      oil-lamps. I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my ears
+      were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the rumble of
+      wheels. It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of Harley, even
+      upon a sunny day. The houses are solid and very respectable over yonder,
+      but there is nothing of the feminine about them. It is a city to be
+      inhabited by males. But on that raw night, amid the damp and the fog, with
+      the anxiety gnawing at my heart, it seemed the saddest, weariest spot in
+      the whole wide world. I paced up and down slapping my hands to keep them
+      warm, and still straining my ears. And then suddenly out of the dull hum
+      of the traffic down in Oxford Street I heard a sound detach itself, and
+      grow louder and louder, and clearer and clearer with every instant, until
+      two yellow lights came flashing through the fog, and a light cabriolet
+      whirled up to the door of the Foreign Minister. It had not stopped before
+      a young fellow sprang out of it and hurried to the steps, while the driver
+      turned his horse and rattled off into the fog once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, it is in the moment of action that I am best, monsieur. You, who only
+      see me when I am drinking my wine in the Cafe de Provence, cannot conceive
+      the heights to which I rise. At that moment, when I knew that the fruits
+      of a ten years' war were at stake, I was magnificent. It was the last
+      French campaign and I the general and army in one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Sir," said I, touching him upon the arm, 'are you the messenger for Lord
+      Hawkesbury?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Yes,' said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I have been waiting for you half an hour,' said I. 'You are to follow me
+      at once. He is with the French Ambassador.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I spoke with such assurance that he never hesitated for an instant. When
+      he entered the hackney coach and I followed him in, my heart gave such a
+      thrill of joy that I could hardly keep from shouting aloud. He was a poor
+      little creature, this Foreign Office messenger, not much bigger than
+      Monsieur Otto, and I&mdash;monsieur can see my hands now, and imagine what
+      they were like when I was seven-and-twenty years of age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, now that I had him in my coach, the question was what I should do
+      with him. I did not wish to hurt him if I could help it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'This is a pressing business,' said he. 'I have a despatch which I must
+      deliver instantly.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Our coach had rattled down Harley Street now, in accordance with my
+      instruction, it turned and began to go up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Hullo!' he cried. 'What's this?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'What then? 'I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'We are driving back. Where is Lord Hawkesbury?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'We shall see him presently.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Let me out!' he shouted. 'There's some trickery in this. Coachman, stop
+      the coach! Let me out, I say!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dashed him back into his seat as he tried to turn the handle of the
+      door. He roared for help. I clapped my palm across his mouth. He made his
+      teeth meet through the side of it. I seized his own cravat and bound it
+      over his lips. He still mumbled and gurgled, but the noise was covered by
+      the rattle of our wheels. We were passing the minister's house, and there
+      was no candle in the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The messenger sat quiet for a little, and I could see the glint of his
+      eyes as he stared at me through the gloom. He was partly stunned, I think,
+      by the force with which I had hurled him into his seat. And also he was
+      pondering, perhaps, what he should do next. Presently he got his mouth
+      partly free from the cravat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'You shall have my watch and my purse if you will let me go,' said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Sir,' said I, 'I am as honourable a man as you are yourself.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Who are you, then?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'My name is of no importance.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'What do you want with me?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a bet.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'A bet? What d'you mean? Do you understand that I am on the Government
+      service, and that you will see the inside of a gaol for this?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'That is the bet. That is the sport, said I.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'You may find it poor sport before you finish,' he cried. 'What is this
+      insane bet of yours then?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'I have bet,' I answered, 'that I will recite a chapter of the Koran to
+      the first gentleman whom I should meet in the street.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not know what made me think of it, save that my translation was
+      always running in my head. He clutched at the door-handle, and again I had
+      to hurl him back into his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'How long will it take?' he gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It depends on the chapter,' I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'A short one, then, and let me go!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'But is it fair?' I argued. 'When I say a chapter, I do not mean the
+      shortest chapter, but rather one which should be of average length.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Help! help! help!' he squealed, and I was compelled again to adjust his
+      cravat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'A little patience,' said I, 'and it will soon be over. I should like to
+      recite the chapter which would be of most interest to yourself. You will
+      confess that I am trying to make things as pleasant as I can for you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He slipped his mouth free again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Quick, then, quick!' he groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'The Chapter of the Camel?' I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Yes, yes.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Or that of the Fleet Stallion?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Yes, yes. Only proceed!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We had passed the window and there was no candle. I settled down to
+      recite the Chapter of the Stallion to him. Perhaps you do not know your
+      Koran very well, monsieur? Well, I knew it by heart then, as I know it by
+      heart now. The style is a little exasperating for anyone who is in a
+      hurry. But, then, what would you have? The people in the East are never in
+      a hurry, and it was written for them. I repeated it all with the dignity
+      and solemnity which a sacred book demands, and the young Englishman he
+      wriggled and groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'When the horses, standing on three feet and placing the tip of their
+      fourth foot upon the ground, were mustered in front of him in the evening,
+      he said, I have loved the love of earthly good above the remembrance of
+      things on high, and have spent the time in viewing these horses. Bring the
+      horses back to me. And when they were brought back he began to cut off
+      their legs and&mdash;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was at this moment that the young Englishman sprang at me. My God! how
+      little can I remember of the next few minutes! He was a boxer, this shred
+      of a man. He had been trained to strike. I tried to catch him by the
+      hands. Pac, pac, he came upon my nose and upon my eye. I put down my head
+      and thrust at him with it. Pac, he came from below. But ah! I was too much
+      for him. I hurled myself upon him, and he had no place where he could
+      escape from my weight. He fell flat upon the cushions and I seated myself
+      upon him with such conviction that the wind flew from him as from a burst
+      bellows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I searched to see what there was with which I could tie him. I drew
+      the strings from my shoes, and with one I secured his wrists, and with
+      another his ankles. Then I tied the cravat round his mouth again, so that
+      he could only lie and glare at me. When I had done all this, and had
+      stopped the bleeding of my own nose, I looked out of the coach and ah,
+      monsieur, the very first thing which caught my eyes was that candle&mdash;that
+      dear little candle&mdash;glimmering in the window of the minister. Alone,
+      with these two hands, I had retrieved the capitulation of an army and the
+      loss of a province. Yes, monsieur, what Abercrombie and 5,000 men had done
+      upon the beach at Aboukir was undone by me, single-handed, in a hackney
+      coach in Harley Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I had no time to lose, for at any moment Monsieur Otto might be
+      down. I shouted to my driver, gave him his second guinea, and allowed him
+      to proceed to Watier's. For myself, I sprang into our Embassy's carriage,
+      and a moment later the door of the minister opened. He had himself
+      escorted Monsieur Otto downstairs, and now so deep was he in talk that he
+      walked out bareheaded as far as the carriage. As he stood there by the
+      open door, there came the rattle of wheels, and a man rushed down the
+      pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'A despatch of great importance for Milord Hawkesbury!' he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I could see that it was not my messenger, but a second one. Milord
+      Hawkesbury caught the paper from his hand, and read it by the light of the
+      carriage lamp. His face, monsieur, was as white as this plate, before he
+      had finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Monsieur Otto,' he cried, 'we have signed this treaty upon a false
+      understanding. Egypt is in our hands.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'What!' cried Monsieur Otto. 'Impossible!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It is certain. It fell to Abercrombie last month.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'In that case,' said Monsieur Otto, 'it is very fortunate that the treaty
+      is signed.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Very fortunate for you, sir,' cried Milord Hawkesbury, as he turned back
+      to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Next day, monsieur, what they call the Bow Street runners were after me,
+      but they could not run across salt water, and Alphonse Lacour was
+      receiving the congratulations of Monsieur Talleyrand and the First Consul
+      before ever his pursuers had got as far as Dover."
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
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diff --git a/old/old/10446.txt b/old/old/10446.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/old/old/10446.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Green Flag, by Arthur Conan Doyle
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Green Flag
+
+Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2003  [eBook #10446]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN FLAG***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Lionel G. Sear of Truro, Cornwall, England
+
+
+
+THE GREEN FLAG.
+
+ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+THE GREEN FLAG.
+
+CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+
+THE CROXLEY MASTER.
+
+THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR.
+
+THE STRIPED CHEST.
+
+A SHADOW BEFORE.
+
+THE KING OF THE FOXES.
+
+THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS.
+
+THE NEW CATACOMB.
+
+THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE.
+
+A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GREEN FLAG
+
+
+When Jack Conolly, of the Irish Shotgun Brigade, the Rory of the Hills
+Inner Circle, and the extreme left wing of the Land League, was
+incontinently shot by Sergeant Murdoch of the constabulary, in a little
+moonlight frolic near Kanturk, his twin-brother Dennis joined the
+British Army.  The countryside had become too hot for him; and, as the
+seventy-five shillings were wanting which might have carried him to
+America, he took the only way handy of getting himself out of the way.
+Seldom has Her Majesty had a less promising recruit, for his hot Celtic
+blood seethed with hatred against Britain and all things British.
+The sergeant, however, smiling complacently over his 6 ft. of brawn and
+his 44 in. chest, whisked him off with a dozen other of the boys to the
+depot at Fermoy, whence in a few weeks they were sent on, with the
+spade-work kinks taken out of their backs, to the first battalion of the
+Royal Mallows, at the top of the roster for foreign service.
+
+The Royal Mallows, at about that date, were as strange a lot of men as
+ever were paid by a great empire to fight its battles.  It was the
+darkest hour of the land struggle, when the one side came out with
+crow-bar and battering-ram by day, and the other with mask and with
+shot-gun by night.  Men driven from their homes and potato-patches found
+their way even into the service of the Government, to which it seemed to
+them that they owed their troubles, and now and then they did wild
+things before they came.  There were recruits in the Irish regiments who
+would forget to answer to their own names, so short had been their
+acquaintance with them.  Of these the Royal Mallows had their full
+share; and, while they still retained their fame as being one of the
+smartest corps in the army, no one knew better than their officers that
+they were dry-rotted with treason and with bitter hatred of the flag
+under which they served.
+
+And the centre of all the disaffection was C Company, in which Dennis
+Conolly found himself enrolled.  They were Celts, Catholics, and men of
+the tenant class to a man; and their whole experience of the British
+Government had been an inexorable landlord, and a constabulary who
+seemed to them to be always on the side of the rent-collector.  Dennis
+was not the only moonlighter in the ranks, nor was he alone in having an
+intolerable family blood-feud to harden his heart.  Savagery had
+begotten savagery in that veiled civil war.  A landlord with an iron
+mortgage weighing down upon him had small bowels for his tenantry.
+He did but take what the law allowed, and yet, with men like Jim Holan,
+or Patrick McQuire, or Peter Flynn, who had seen the roofs torn from
+their cottages and their folk huddled among their pitiable furniture
+upon the roadside, it was ill to argue about abstract law.  What matter
+that in that long and bitter struggle there was many another outrage on
+the part of the tenant, and many another grievance on the side of the
+landowner!  A stricken man can only feel his own wound, and the rank and
+file of the C Company of the Royal Mallows were sore and savage to the
+soul.  There were low whisperings in barrack-rooms and canteens,
+stealthy meetings in public-house parlours, bandying of passwords from
+mouth to mouth, and many other signs which made their officers right
+glad when the order came which sent them to foreign, and better still,
+to active service.
+
+For Irish regiments have before now been disaffected, and have at a
+distance looked upon the foe as though he might, in truth, be the
+friend; but when they have been put face on to him, and when their
+officers have dashed to the front with a wave and halloo, those rebel
+hearts have softened and their gallant Celtic blood has boiled with the
+mad Joy of the fight, until the slower Britons have marvelled that they
+ever could have doubted the loyalty of their Irish comrades.  So it
+would be again, according to the officers, and so it would not be if
+Dennis Conolly and a few others could have their way.
+
+It was a March morning upon the eastern fringe of the Nubian desert.
+The sun had not yet risen, but a tinge of pink flushed up as far as the
+cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon
+across the horizon.  From the coast inland stretched dreary sand-plains,
+dotted over with thick clumps at mimosa scrub and mottled patches of
+thorny bush.  No tree broke the monotony of that vast desert.  The dull,
+dusty hue of the thickets, and the yellow glare of the sand, were the
+only colours, save at one point, where, from a distance, it seemed that
+a land-slip of snow-white stones had shot itself across a low foot-hill.
+But as the traveller approached he saw, with a thrill, that these were
+no stones, but the bleaching bones of a slaughtered army.  With its dull
+tints, its gnarled, viprous bushes, its arid, barren soil, and this
+death streak trailed across it, it was indeed a nightmare country.
+
+Some eight or ten miles inland the rolling plain curved upwards with a
+steeper slope until it ran into a line of red basaltic rock which
+zigzagged from north to south, heaping itself up at one point into a
+fantastic knoll.  On the summit of this there stood upon that March
+morning three Arab chieftains--the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas, Moussa
+Wad Aburhegel, who led the Berber dervishes, and Hamid Wad Hussein, who
+had come northward with his fighting men from the land of the Baggaras.
+They had all three just risen from their praying-carpets, and were
+peering out, with fierce, high-nosed faces thrust forwards, at the
+stretch of country revealed by the spreading dawn.
+
+The red rim of the sun was pushing itself now above the distant sea, and
+the whole coast-line stood out brilliantly yellow against the rich deep
+blue beyond.  At one spot lay a huddle of white-walled houses, a mere
+splotch in the distance; while four tiny cock-boats, which lay beyond,
+marked the position of three of Her Majesty's 10,000-ton troopers and
+the admiral's flagship.  But it was not upon the distant town, nor upon
+the great vessels, nor yet upon the sinister white litter which gleamed
+in the plain beneath them, that the Arab chieftains gazed.  Two miles
+from where they stood, amid the sand-hills and the mimosa scrub, a great
+parallelogram had been marked by piled-up bushes.  From the inside of
+this dozens of tiny blue smoke-reeks curled up into the still morning
+air; while there rose from it a confused deep murmur, the voices of men
+and the gruntings of camels blended into the same insect buzz.
+
+"The unbelievers have cooked their morning food," said the Baggara
+chief, shading his eyes with his tawny, sinewy hand.  "Truly their sleep
+has been scanty; for Hamid and a hundred of his men have fired upon them
+since the rising of the moon."
+
+"So it was with these others," answered the Sheik Kadra, pointing with
+his sheathed sword towards the old battle-field.  "They also had a day
+of little water and a night of little rest, and the heart was gone out
+of them ere ever the sons of the Prophet had looked them in the eyes.
+This blade drank deep that day, and will again before the sun has
+travelled from the sea to the hill."
+
+"And yet these are other men," remarked the Berber dervish.  "Well, I
+know that Allah has placed them in the clutch of our fingers, yet it may
+be that they with the big hats will stand firmer than the cursed men of
+Egypt."
+
+"Pray Allah that it may be so," cried the fierce Baggara, with a flash
+of his black eyes.  "It was not to chase women that I brought 700 men
+from the river to the coast.  See, my brother, already they are forming
+their array."
+
+A fanfare of bugle-calls burst from the distant camp.  At the same time
+the bank of bushes at one side had been thrown or trampled down, and the
+little army within began to move slowly out on to the plain.  Once clear
+of the camp they halted, and the slant rays of the sun struck flashes
+from bayonet and from gun-barrel as the ranks closed up until the big
+pith helmets joined into a single long white ribbon.  Two streaks of
+scarlet glowed on either side of the square, but elsewhere the fringe of
+fighting-men was of the dull yellow khaki tint which hardly shows
+against the desert sand.  Inside their array was a dense mass of camels
+and mules bearing stores and ambulance needs.  Outside a twinkling clump
+of cavalry was drawn up on each flank, and in front a thin, scattered
+line of mounted infantry was already slowly advancing over the
+bush-strewn plain, halting on every eminence, and peering warily round
+as men might who have to pick their steps among the bones of those who
+have preceded them.
+
+The three chieftains still lingered upon the knoll, looking down with
+hungry eyes and compressed lips at the dark steel-tipped patch.
+"They are slower to start than the men of Egypt," the Sheik of the
+Hadendowas growled in his beard.
+
+"Slower also to go back, perchance, my brother," murmured the dervish.
+
+"And yet they are not many--3,000 at the most."
+
+"And we 10,000, with the Prophet's grip upon our spear-hafts and his
+words upon our banner.  See to their chieftain, how he rides upon the
+right and looks up at us with the glass that sees from afar!  It may be
+that he sees this also."  The Arab shook his sword at the small clump of
+horsemen who had spurred out from the square.
+
+"Lo! he beckons," cried the dervish; "and see those others at the
+corner, how they bend and heave.  Ha! by the Prophet, I had thought it."
+As he spoke, a little woolly puff of smoke spurted up at the corner of
+the square, and a 7 lb. shell burst with a hard metallic smack just over
+their heads.  The splinters knocked chips from the red rocks around
+them.
+
+"Bismillah!" cried the Hadendowa; "if the gun can carry thus far, then
+ours can answer to it.  Ride to the left, Moussa, and tell Ben Ali to
+cut the skin from the Egyptians if they cannot hit yonder mark.
+And you, Hamid, to the right, and see that 3,000 men lie close in the
+wady that we have chosen.  Let the others beat the drum and show the
+banner of the Prophet, for by the black stone their spears will have
+drunk deep ere they look upon the stars again."
+
+A long, straggling, boulder-strewn plateau lay on the summit of the red
+hills, sloping very precipitously to the plain, save at one point, where
+a winding gully curved downwards, its mouth choked with sand-mounds and
+olive-hued scrub.  Along the edge of this position lay the Arab host--a
+motley crew of shock-headed desert clansmen, fierce predatory slave
+dealers of the interior, and wild dervishes from the Upper Nile, all
+blent together by their common fearlessness and fanaticism.  Two races
+were there, as wide as the poles apart--the thin-lipped, straight-haired
+Arab and the thick-lipped, curly negro--yet the faith of Islam had bound
+them closer than a blood tie.  Squatting among the rocks, or lying
+thickly in the shadow, they peered out at the slow-moving square beneath
+them, while women with water-skins and bags of dhoora fluttered from
+group to group, calling out to each other those fighting texts from the
+Koran which in the hour of battle are maddening as wine to the true
+believer.  A score of banners waved over the ragged, valiant crew, and
+among them, upon desert horses and white Bishareen camels, were the
+Emirs and Sheiks who were to lead them against the infidels.
+
+As the Sheik Kadra sprang into his saddle and drew his sword there was a
+wild whoop and a clatter of waving spears, while the one-ended war-drums
+burst into a dull crash like a wave upon shingle.  For a moment 10,000
+men were up on the rocks with brandished arms and leaping figures; the
+next they were under cover again, waiting sternly and silently for their
+chieftain's orders.  The square was less than half a mile from the ridge
+now, and shell after shell from the 7 lb. guns were pitching over it.
+A deep roar on the right, and then a second one showed that the Egyptian
+Krupps were in action.  Sheik Kadra's hawk eyes saw that the shells
+burst far beyond the mark, and he spurred his horse along to where a
+knot of mounted chiefs were gathered round the two guns, which were
+served by their captured crews.
+
+"How is this, Ben Ali?" he cried.  "It was not thus that the dogs fired
+when it was their own brothers in faith at whom they aimed!"
+
+A chieftain reined his horse back, and thrust a blood-smeared sword into
+its sheath.  Beside him two Egyptian artillerymen with their throats cut
+were sobbing out their lives upon the ground.  "Who lays the gun this
+time?" asked the fierce chief, glaring at the frightened gunners."
+Here, thou black-browed child of Shaitan, aim, and aim for thy life."
+
+It may have been chance, or it may have been skill, but the third and
+fourth shells burst over the square.  Sheik Kadra smiled grimly and
+galloped back to the left, where his spearmen were streaming down into
+the gully.  As he joined them a deep growling rose from the plain
+beneath, like the snarling of a sullen wild beast, and a little knot of
+tribesmen fell into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead from
+a Gardner.  Their comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down into
+the ravine.  From all along the crest burst the hard, sharp crackle of
+Remington fire.
+
+The square had slowly advanced, rippling over the low sandhills, and
+halting every few minutes to re-arrange its formation.  Now, having made
+sure that there was no force of the enemy in the scrub, it changed its
+direction, and began to take a line parallel to the Arab position.
+It was too steep to assail from the front, and if they moved far enough
+to the right the general hoped that he might turn it.  On the top of
+those ruddy hills lay a baronetcy for him, and a few extra hundreds in
+his pension, and he meant having them both that day.  The Remington fire
+was annoying, and so were those two Krupp guns; already there were more
+cacolets full than he cared to see.  But on the whole he thought it
+better to hold his fire until he had more to aim at than a few hundred
+of fuzzy heads peeping over a razor-back ridge.  He was a bulky,
+red-faced man, a fine whist-player, and a soldier who knew his work.
+His men believed in him, and he had good reason to believe in them, for
+he had excellent stuff under him that day.  Being an ardent champion of
+the short-service system, he took particular care to work with veteran
+first battalions, and his little force was the compressed essence of an
+army corps.
+
+The left front of the square was formed by four companies of the Royal
+Wessex, and the right by four of the Royal Mallows.  On either side the
+other halves of the same regiments marched in quarter column of
+companies.  Behind them, on the right was a battalion of Guards, and on
+the left one of Marines, while the rear was closed in by a Rifle
+battalion.  Two Royal Artillery 7 lb. screw-guns kept pace with the
+square, and a dozen white-bloused sailors, under their blue-coated,
+tight-waisted officers, trailed their Gardner in front, turning every
+now and then to spit up at the draggled banners which waved over the
+cragged ridge.  Hussars and Lancers scouted in the scrub at each side,
+and within moved the clump of camels, with humorous eyes and
+supercilious lips, their comic faces a contrast to the blood-stained men
+who already lay huddled in the cacolets on either side.
+
+The square was now moving slowly on a line parallel with the rocks,
+stopping every few minutes to pick up wounded, and to allow the
+screw-guns and Gardner to make themselves felt.  The men looked serious,
+for that spring on to the rocks of the Arab army had given them a vague
+glimpse of the number and ferocity of their foes; but their faces were
+set like stone, for they knew to a man that they must win or they must
+die--and die, too, in a particularly unlovely fashion.  But most serious
+of all was the general, for he had seen that which brought a flush to
+his cheeks and a frown to his brow.
+
+"I say, Stephen," said he to his galloper, "those Mallows seem a trifle
+jumpy.  The right flank company bulged a bit when the niggers showed on
+the hill."
+
+"Youngest troops in the square, sir," murmured the aide, looking at them
+critically through his eye-glass.
+
+"Tell Colonel Flanagan to see to it, Stephen," said the general; and the
+galloper sped upon his way.  The colonel, a fine old Celtic warrior, was
+over at C Company in an instant.
+
+"How are the men, Captain Foley?"
+
+"Never better, sir," answered the senior captain, in the spirit that
+makes a Madras officer look murder if you suggest recruiting his
+regiment from the Punjab.
+
+"Stiffen them up!" cried the colonel.  As he rode away a colour-sergeant
+seemed to trip, and fell forward into a mimosa bush.  He made no effort
+to rise, but lay in a heap among the thorns.
+
+"Sergeant O'Rooke's gone, sorr," cried a voice.  "Never mind, lads,"
+said Captain Foley.  "He's died like a soldier, fighting for his Queen."
+
+"Down with the Queen!" shouted a hoarse voice from the ranks.
+
+But the roar of the Gardner and the typewriter-like clicking of the
+hopper burst in at the tail of the words.  Captain Foley heard them, and
+Subalterns Grice and Murphy heard them;  but there are times when a deaf
+ear is a gift from the gods.
+
+"Steady, Mallows!" cried the captain, in a pause of the grunting
+machine-gun.  "We have the honour of Ireland to guard this day."
+
+"And well we know how to guard it, captin!" cried the same ominous
+voice; and there was a buzz from the length of the company.
+
+The captain and the two subs. came together behind the marching line.
+
+"They seem a bit out of hand," murmured the captain.
+
+"Bedad," said the Galway boy, "they mean to scoot like redshanks."
+
+"They nearly broke when the blacks showed on the hill," said Grice.
+
+"The first man that turns, my sword is through him," cried Foley, loud
+enough to be heard by five files on either side of him.  Then, in a
+lower voice, "It's a bitter drop to swallow, but it's my duty to report
+what you think to the chief, and have a company of Jollies put behind
+us."  He turned away with the safety of the square upon his mind, and
+before he had reached his goal the square had ceased to exist.
+
+In their march in front of what looked like a face of cliff, they had
+come opposite to the mouth of the gully, in which, screened by scrub and
+boulders, 3,000 chosen dervishes, under Hamid Wad Hussein, of the
+Baggaras, were crouching.  Tat, tat, tat, went the rifles of three
+mounted infantrymen in front of the left shoulder of the square, and an
+instant later they wore spurring it for their lives, crouching over the
+manes of their horses, and pelting over the sandhills with thirty or
+forty galloping chieftains at their heels.  Rocks and scrub and mimosa
+swarmed suddenly into life.  Rushing black figures came and went in the
+gaps of the bushes.  A howl that drowned the shouts of the officers, a
+long quavering yell, burst from the ambuscade.  Two rolling volleys from
+the Royal Wessex, one crash from the screw-gun firing shrapnel, and then
+before a second cartridge could be rammed in, a living, glistening black
+wave, tipped with steel, had rolled over the gun, the Royal Wessex had
+been dashed back among the camels, and 1,000 fanatics were hewing and
+hacking in the heart of what had been the square.
+
+The camels and mules in the centre, jammed more and more together as
+their leaders flinched from the rush of the tribesmen, shut out the view
+of the other three faces, who could only tell that the Arabs had got in
+by the yells upon Allah, which rose ever nearer and nearer amid the
+clouds of sand-dust, the struggling animals, and the dense mass of
+swaying, cursing men.  Some of the Wessex fired back at the Arabs who
+had passed them, as excited Tommies will, and it is whispered among
+doctors that it was not always a Remington bullet which was cut from a
+wound that day.  Some rallied in little knots, stabbing furiously with
+their bayonets at the rushing spearmen.  Others turned at bay with their
+backs against the camels, and others round the general and his staff,
+who, revolver in hand, had flung themselves into the heart of it.
+But the whole square was sidling slowly away from the gorge, pushed back
+by the pressure at the shattered corner.
+
+The officers and men at the other faces were glancing nervously to the
+rear, uncertain what was going on, and unable to take help to their
+comrades without breaking the formation.
+
+"By Jove, they've got through the Wessex!" cried Grice of the Mallows.
+
+"The divils have hurrooshed us, Ted," said his brother subaltern,
+cocking his revolver.
+
+The ranks were breaking, and crowding towards Private Conolly, all
+talking together as the officers peered back through the veil of dust.
+The sailors had run their Gardner out, and she was squirting death out
+of her five barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages.
+"Oh, this bloody gun!" shouted a voice.  "She's jammed again."
+The fierce metallic grunting had ceased, and her crew were straining and
+hauling at the breech.
+
+"This damned vertical feed!" cried an officer.
+
+"The spanner, Wilson!--the spanner!  Stand to your cutlasses, boys, or
+they're into us."  His voice rose into a shriek as he ended, for a
+shovel-headed spear had been buried in his chest.  A second wave of
+dervishes lapped over the hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and
+the right front of the line.  The sailors were overborne in an instant,
+but the Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the yell of the
+Moslem with an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two hundred of them
+with a single point-blank volley.  The howling, leaping crew swerved
+away to the right, and dashed on into the gap which had already been
+made for them.
+
+But C Company had drawn no trigger to stop that fiery rush.  The men
+leaned moodily upon their Martinis.  Some had even thrown them upon the
+ground.  Conolly was talking fiercely to those about him.  Captain
+Foley, thrusting his way through the press, rushed up to him with a
+revolver in his hand.
+
+"This is your doing, you villain!" he cried.
+
+"If you raise your pistol, Captin, your brains will be over your coat,"
+said a low voice at his side.
+
+He saw that several rifles were turned on him.  The two subs. had
+pressed forward, and were by his side.  "What is it, then?" he cried,
+looking round from one fierce mutinous face to another.  "Are you
+Irishmen?  Are you soldiers?  What are you here for but to fight for
+your country?"
+
+"England is no country of ours," cried several.
+
+"You are not fighting for England.  You are fighting for Ireland, and
+for the Empire of which it as part."
+
+"A black curse on the Impire!" shouted Private McQuire, throwing down
+his rifle.  "'Twas the Impire that backed the man that druv me onto the
+roadside.  May me hand stiffen before I draw trigger for it.
+
+"What's the Impire to us, Captain Foley, and what's the Widdy to us
+ayther?" cried a voice.
+
+"Let the constabulary foight for her."
+
+"Ay, be God, they'd be better imployed than pullin' a poor man's thatch
+about his ears."
+
+"Or shootin' his brother, as they did mine."
+
+"It was the Impire laid my groanin' mother by the wayside.  Her son will
+rot before he upholds it, and ye can put that in the charge-sheet in the
+next coort-martial."
+
+In vain the three officers begged, menaced, persuaded.  The square was
+still moving, ever moving, with the same bloody fight raging in its
+entrails.  Even while they had been speaking they had been shuffling
+backwards, and the useless Gardner, with her slaughtered crew, was
+already a good hundred yards from them.  And the pace was accelerating.
+The mass of men, tormented and writhing, was trying, by a common
+instinct, to reach some clearer ground where they could re-form.  Three
+faces were still intact, but the fourth had been caved in, and badly
+mauled, without its comrades being able to help it.  The Guards had met
+a fresh rush of the Hadendowas, and had blown back the tribesmen with a
+volley, and the cavalry had ridden over another stream of them, as they
+welled out of the gully.  A litter of hamstrung horses, and haggled men
+behind them, showed that a spearman on his face among the bushes can
+show some sport to the man who charges him.  But, in spite of all, the
+square was still reeling swiftly backwards, trying to shake itself clear
+of this torment which clung to its heart.  Would it break or would it
+re-form? The lives of five regiments and the honour of the flag hung
+upon the answer.
+
+Some, at least, were breaking.  The C Company of the Mallows had lost
+all military order, and was pushing back in spite of the haggard
+officers, who cursed, and shoved, and prayed in the vain attempt to hold
+them.  The captain and the subs. were elbowed and jostled, while the men
+crowded towards Private Conolly for their orders.  The confusion had not
+spread, for the other companies, in the dust and smoke and turmoil, had
+lost touch with their mutinous comrades.  Captain Foley saw that even
+now there might be time to avert a disaster.  "Think what you are doing,
+man," he yelled, rushing towards the ringleader.  "There are a thousand
+Irish in the square, and they are dead men if we break."
+
+The words alone might have had little effect on the old moonlighter.
+It is possible that, in his scheming brain, he had already planned how
+he was to club his Irish together and lead them to the sea.  But at that
+moment the Arabs broke through the screen of camels which had fended
+them off.  There was a Struggle, a screaming, a mule rolled over, a
+wounded man sprang up in a cacolet with a spear through him, and then
+through the narrow gap surged a stream of naked savages, mad with
+battle, drunk with slaughter, spotted and splashed with blood--blood
+dripping from their spears, their arms, their faces.  Their yells, their
+bounds, their crouching, darting figures, the horrid energy of their
+spear-thrusts, made them look like a blast of fiends from the pit.  And
+were these the Allies of Ireland? Were these the men who were to strike
+for her against her enemies? Conolly's soul rose up in loathing at the
+thought.
+
+He was a man of firm purpose, and yet at the first sight of those
+howling fiends that purpose faltered, and at the second it was blown to
+the winds.  He saw a huge coal-black negro seize a shrieking
+camel-driver and saw at his throat with a knife.  He saw a shock-headed
+tribesman plunge his great spear through the back of their own little
+bugler from Mill-street.  He saw a dozen deeds of blood--the murder of
+the wounded, the hacking of the unarmed--and caught, too, in a glance,
+the good wholesome faces of the faced-about rear rank of the Marines.
+The Mallows, too, had faced about, and in an instant Conolly had thrown
+himself into the heart of C Company, striving with the officers to form
+the men up with their comrades.
+
+But the mischief had gone too far.  The rank and file had no heart in
+their work.  They had broken before, and this last rush of murderous
+savages was a hard thing for broken men to stand against.  They flinched
+from the furious faces and dripping forearms.  Why should they throw
+away their lives for a flag for which they cared nothing?  Why should
+their leader urge them to break, and now shriek to them to re-form?
+They would not re-form.  They wanted to get to the sea and to safety.
+He flung himself among them with outstretched arms, with words of
+reason, with shouts, with gaspings.  It was useless; the tide was beyond
+his control.  They were shredding out into the desert with their faces
+set for the coast.
+
+"Bhoys, will ye stand for this?" screamed a voice.  It was so ringing,
+so strenuous, that the breaking Mallows glanced backwards.  They were
+held by what they saw.  Private Conolly had planted his rifle-stock
+downwards in a mimosa bush.  From the fixed bayonet there fluttered a
+little green flag with the crownless harp.  God knows for what black
+mutiny, for what signal of revolt, that flag had been treasured up
+within the corporal's tunic!  Now its green wisp stood amid the rush,
+while three proud regimental colours were reeling slowly backwards.
+
+"What for the flag?" yelled the private.
+
+"My heart's blood for it! and mine! and mine!" cried a score of voices.
+"God bless it!  The flag, boys--the flag!"
+
+C Company were rallying upon it.  The stragglers clutched at each
+other, and pointed.  "Here, McQuire, Flynn, O'Hara," ran the shoutings.
+"Close on the flag!  Back to the flag!"  The three standards reeled
+backwards, and the seething square strove for a clearer space where they
+could form their shattered ranks; but C Company, grim and
+powder-stained, choked with enemies and falling fast, still closed in on
+the little rebel ensign that flapped from the mimosa bush.
+
+It was a good half-hour before the square, having disentangled itself
+from its difficulties and dressed its ranks, began to slowly move
+forwards over the ground, across which in its labour and anguish it had
+been driven.  The long trail of Wessex men and Arabs showed but too
+clearly the path they had come.
+
+"How many got into us, Stephen?" asked the general, tapping his
+snuff-box.
+
+"I should put them down at a thousand or twelve hundred, sir."
+
+"I did not see any get out again.  What the devil were the Wessex
+thinking about?  The Guards stood well, though; so did the Mallows."
+
+"Colonel Flanagan reports that his front flank company was cut off,
+sir."
+
+"Why, that's the company that was out of hand when we advanced!"
+
+"Colonel Flanagan reports, sir, that the company took the whole brunt of
+the attack, and gave the square time to re-form."
+
+"Tell the Hussars to ride forward, Stephen," said the general, "and try
+if they can see anything of them.  There's no firing, and I fear that
+the Mallows will want to do some recruiting.  Let the square take ground
+by the right, and then advance!"
+
+But the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas saw from his knoll that the men
+with the big hats had rallied, and that they were coming back in the
+quiet business fashion of men whose work was before them.  He took
+counsel with Moussa the Dervish and Hussein the Baggara, and a woestruck
+man was he when he learned that the third of his men were safe in the
+Moslem Paradise.  So, having still some signs of victory to show, he
+gave the word, and the desert warriors flitted off unseen and unheard,
+even as they had come.
+
+A red rock plateau, a few hundred spears and Remingtons, and a plain
+which for the second time was strewn with slaughtered men, was all that
+his day's fighting gave to the English general.
+
+It was a squadron of Hussars which came first to the spot where the
+rebel flag had waved.  A dense litter of Arab dead marked the place.
+Within, the flag waved no longer, but the rifle stood in the mimosa
+bush, and round it, with their wounds in front, lay the Fenian private
+and the silent ranks of the Irishry.  Sentiment is not an English
+failing, but the Hussar captain raised his hilt in a salute as he rode
+past the blood-soaked ring.
+
+The British general sent home dispatches to his Government, and so did
+the chief of the Hadendowas, though the style and manner differed
+somewhat in each.
+
+
+
+The Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowa people to Mohammed Ahmed, the chosen of
+Allah, homage and greeting, (began the latter).  Know by this that on
+the fourth day of this moon we gave battle to the Kaffirs who call
+themselves Inglees, having with us the Chief Hussein with ten thousand
+of the faithful.  By the blessing of Allah we have broken them, and
+chased them for a mile, though indeed these infidels are different from
+the dogs of Egypt, and have slain very many of our men.  Yet we hope to
+smite them again ere the new moon be come, to which end I trust that
+thou wilt send us a thousand Dervishes from Omdurman.  In token of our
+victory I send you by this messenger a flag which we have taken.  By the
+colour it might well seem to have belonged to those of the true faith,
+but the Kaffirs gave their blood freely to save it, and so we think
+that, though small, it is very dear to them.
+
+
+
+CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
+
+
+
+                             I
+
+
+HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT'S CAME HOME.
+
+When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end
+by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been
+fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone.  Some
+took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce,
+others were absorbed into the fishing fleets, and a few of the more
+reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen, and the bloody flag at
+the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the
+whole human race.
+
+With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they scoured the seas,
+disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in
+for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants
+by their lavishness, and horrified them by their brutalities.
+
+On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above
+all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant
+menace.  With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations
+by the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer, and
+dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.
+
+They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that
+discipline and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers,
+both formidable and respectable.  These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an
+account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken
+whim of the moment.  Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with
+longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell
+into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after
+serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his
+cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and
+salt in front of him.  It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his
+calling in the Caribbean Gulf.
+
+Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship _Morning Star_, and yet
+he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the
+falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the
+guns of the citadel of Basseterre.  St. Kitt's was his final port of
+call, and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old
+England.  He had had enough of those robber-haunted seas.  Ever since he
+had left Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red
+pepper, he had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet
+edge of the tropical sea.  He had coasted up the Windward Islands,
+touching here and there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy
+and outrage.
+
+Captain Sharkey, of the twenty-gun pirate barque, _Happy Delivery_, had
+passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and with
+murdered men.  Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim pleasantries
+and of his inflexible ferocity.  From the Bahamas to the Main his
+coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with
+death and many things which are worse than death.  So nervous was
+Captain Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship, and her full and
+valuable lading, that he struck out to the west as far as Bird's Island
+to be out of the usual track of commerce.  And yet even in those
+solitary waters he had been unable to shake off sinister traces of
+Captain Sharkey.
+
+One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
+ocean.  Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as
+they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and
+wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth.  Water and nursing soon
+transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship.
+He was from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole
+survivor of a schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.
+
+For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath
+a tropical sun.  Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late
+captain to be thrown into the boat, "as provisions for the voyage," but
+the seaman had at once committed it to the deep, lest the temptation
+should be more than he could bear.  He had lived upon his own huge frame
+until, at the last moment, the _Morning Star_ had found him in that
+madness which is the precursor of such a death.  It was no bad find for
+Captain Scarrow, for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this
+big New Englander was a prize worth having.  He vowed that he was the
+only man whom Captain Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.
+
+Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the
+pirate was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the
+seaman's mind as he watched the agent's boat shooting out from the
+Custom-house quay.
+
+"I'll lay you a wager, Morgan," said he to the first mate, "that the
+agent will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his
+lips."
+
+"Well, captain, I'll have you a silver dollar, and chance it," said the
+rough old Bristol man beside him.
+
+The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
+sprang up the ladder.  "Welcome, Captain Scarrow!" he cried. "Have you
+heard about Sharkey?"
+
+The captain grinned at the mate.
+
+"What devilry has he been up to now?" he asked.
+
+"Devilry!  You've not heard, then?  Why, we've got him safe under lock
+and key at Basseterre.  He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be
+hanged to-morrow morning."
+
+Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken
+up by the crew.  Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through
+the break of the poop to hear the news.  The New Englander was in the
+front of them with a radiant face turned up to Heaven, for he came of
+the Puritan stock.
+
+"Sharkey to be hanged!" he cried.  "You don't know, Master Agent, if
+they lack a hangman, do you?"
+
+"Stand back!" cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was
+even stronger than his interest at the news.  "I'll pay that dollar,
+Captain Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet.
+How came the villain to be taken?"
+
+"Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and
+they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship.
+So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
+Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
+brought him in.  There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried,
+but our good little Governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it.
+'He's my meat,' said he, 'and I claim the cooking of it.'  If you can
+stay till to-morrow morning at ten, you'll see the joint swinging."
+
+"I wish I could," said the captain, wistfully, "but I am sadly behind
+time now.  I should start with the evening tide."
+
+"That you can't do," said the agent with decision.  "The Governor is
+going back with you."
+
+"The Governor!"
+
+"Yes.  He's had a dispatch from Government to return without delay.
+The fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia.  So Sir Charles
+has been waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains."
+
+"Well, well!" cried the captain in some perplexity, "I'm a plain seaman,
+and I don't know much of governors and baronets and their ways.  I don't
+remember that I ever so much as spoke to one.  But if it's in King
+George's service, and he asks a cast in the _Morning Star_ as far as
+London, I'll do what I can for him.  There's my own cabin he can have
+and welcome.  As to the cooking, it's lobscouse and salmagundy six days
+in the week; but he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks
+our galley too rough for his taste."
+
+"You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow," said the agent.
+"Sir Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague,
+and it is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage.
+Dr. Larousse said that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not
+put fresh life into him.  He has a great spirit in him, though, and you
+must not blame him if he is somewhat short in his speech."
+
+"He may say what he likes, and do what he likes, so long as he does not
+come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship," said the captain.
+"He is Governor of St. Kitt's, but I am Governor of the _Morning Star_,
+and, by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to
+my employer, just as he does to King George."
+
+"He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order
+before he leaves."
+
+"The early morning tide, then."
+
+"Very good.  I shall send his things aboard to-night; and he will follow
+them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt's
+without seeing Sharkey do the rogue's hornpipe.  His own orders were
+instant, so it may be that he will come at once.  It is likely that Dr.
+Larousse may attend him upon the journey."
+
+Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations
+which they could for their illustrious passenger.  The largest cabin was
+turned out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which
+barrels of fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary
+the plain food of an ocean-going trader.  In the evening the Governor's
+baggage began to arrive--great iron-bound ant-proof trunks, and official
+tin packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested
+the cocked hat or the sword within.  And then there came a note, with a
+heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made
+his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in
+the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.
+
+He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun
+to deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some
+difficulty up the ladder.  The captain had heard that the Governor was
+an eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came
+limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick
+bamboo cane.  He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails
+like a poodle's coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large
+green glasses which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from
+it.  A fierce beak of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in
+front of him.  His ague had caused him to swathe his throat and chin
+with a broad linen cravat, and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown
+secured by a cord round the waist.  As he advanced he carried his
+masterful nose high in the air, but his head turned slowly from side to
+side in the helpless manner of the purblind, and he called in a high,
+querulous voice for the captain.
+
+"You have my things?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, Sir Charles."
+
+"Have you wine aboard?"
+
+"I have ordered five cases, sir."
+
+"And tobacco?"
+
+"There is a keg of Trinidad."
+
+"You play a hand at picquet?"
+
+"Passably well, sir."
+
+"Then anchor up, and to sea!"
+
+There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly
+through the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands.
+The decrepit Governor still limpid the deck, with one guiding hand upon
+the quarter rail.
+
+"You are on Government service now, captain," said he.  "They are
+counting the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you.  Have you
+all that she will carry?"
+
+"Every inch, Sir Charles."
+
+"Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her.  I fear, Captain Scarrow,
+that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your
+voyage."
+
+"I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency's society," said the captain.
+"But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted."
+
+"Yes, indeed.  It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of
+Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out."
+
+"I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague."
+
+"Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much."
+
+"We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon."
+
+"Ah, the rascal!  There was no budging him, for he has a snug business
+amongst the merchants.  But hark!"  He raised his ring-covered band in
+the air.  From far astern there came the low, deep thunder of cannon.
+
+"It is from the island!" cried the captain in astonishment.  "Can it be
+a signal for us to put back?"
+
+The Governor laughed.  "You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to
+be hanged this morning.  I ordered the batteries to salute when the
+rascal was kicking his last, so that I might know of it out at sea.
+There's an end of Sharkey!"
+
+"There's an end of Sharkey!" cried the captain; and the crew took up the
+cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at
+the low, purple line of the vanishing land.
+
+It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the
+invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was
+generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial
+and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge
+and so escaped.  At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of
+the deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting
+his conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and
+Governor smoked their long pipes, and drank their claret as three good
+comrades should.
+
+"And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?" asked the captain.
+
+"He is a man of some presence," said the Governor.
+
+"I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil," remarked
+the mate.
+
+"Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions," said the Governor.
+
+"I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his
+eyes," said Captain Scarrow.  "They were of the lightest filmy blue,
+with red-rimmed lids.  Was that not so, Sir Charles?"
+
+"Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others!
+But I remember now that the adjutant-general said that he had such an
+eye as you describe, and added that the jury was so foolish as to be
+visibly discomposed when it was turned upon them.  It is well for them
+that he is dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and
+if he had laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with
+straw and hung him for a figure-head."
+
+The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a
+high, neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so
+heartily, for they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who
+sailed the western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be
+their own.  Another bottle was broached to drink to a pleasant voyage,
+and the Governor would drink just one other on the top of it, so that
+the seamen were glad at last to stagger off--the one to his watch, and
+the other to his bunk.  But when, after his four hours' spell, the mate
+came down again, he was amazed to see the Governor, in his Ramillies
+wig, his glasses, and his powdering-gown, still seated sedately at the
+lonely table with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.
+
+"I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt's when he was sick," said
+he, "and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he
+is well."
+
+The voyage of the _Morning Star_ was a successful one, and in about
+three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel.  From the first
+day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before
+they were halfway across the Atlantic, he was, save only for his eyes,
+as well as any man upon the ship.  Those who uphold the nourishing
+qualities of wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night
+passed that he did not repeat the performance of his first one.  And yet
+be would be out upon deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the
+best of them, peering about with his weak eyes, and asking questions
+about the sails and the rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of
+the sea.  And he made up for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining
+leave from the captain that the New England seaman--he who had been cast
+away in the boat--should lead him about, and, above all, that he should
+sit beside him when he played cards and count the number of the pips,
+for unaided he could not tell the king from the knave.
+
+It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service,
+since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey and the other was his
+avenger.  One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to
+lend his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all
+respect behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed
+forefinger upon the card which he should play.  Between them there was
+little in the pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first
+mate, by the time they sighted the Lizard.
+
+And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the
+high temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark.  At a sign of
+opposition or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his
+cravat, his masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent
+angle, and his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulders.
+He cracked it once over the head of the carpenter when the man had
+accidentally jostled him upon the deck.  Once, too, when there was some
+grumbling and talk of a mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was
+of opinion that they should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they
+should march forward and set upon them until they had trounced the
+devilment out of them.  "Give me a knife and a bucket!" he cried with an
+oath, and could hardly be withheld from setting forth alone to deal with
+the spokesman of the seamen.
+
+Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only
+answerable to himself at St. Kitt's, killing became murder upon the high
+seas.  In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop
+of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met
+a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood.  Yet for all his
+vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a
+stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had
+never known a voyage pass so pleasantly.
+
+And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island,
+they had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head.  As
+evening fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from
+Winchelsea, with the long, dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front
+of her.  Next morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland,
+and Sir Charles might meet the King's ministers at Westminster before
+the evening.  The boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were
+met for a last turn of cards in the cabin, the faithful American still
+serving as eyes to the Governor.  There was a good stake upon the table,
+for the sailors had tried on this last night to win their losses back
+from their passenger.  Suddenly he threw his cards down, and swept all
+the money into the pocket of his long-flapped silken waistcoat.
+
+"The game's mine!" said he.
+
+"Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!" cried Captain Scarrow; "you have not
+played out the hand, and we are not the losers."
+
+"Sink you for a liar!" said the Governor.  "I tell you I _have_ played
+out the hand, and that you _are_ a loser."  He whipped off his wig and
+his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a pair
+of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.
+
+"Good God!" cried the mate.  "It's Sharkey!"
+
+The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway
+had put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in
+each of his hands.  The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the
+scattered cards in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing
+laugh.  "Captain Sharkey is the name, gentlemen," said he, "and this is
+Roaring Ned Galloway, the quartermaster of the _Happy Delivery_.
+We made it hot, and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and
+him in an oarless boat.  You dogs--you poor, fond, water-hearted dogs--
+we hold you at the end of our pistols!"
+
+"You may shoot, or you may not!" cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon
+the breast of his frieze jacket.  "If it's my last breath, Sharkey, I
+tell you that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and
+hell-fire in store for you!"
+
+"There's a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he's going to
+make a very pretty death of it!" cried Sharkey.  "There's no one aft
+save the man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you'll need
+it soon.  Is the dinghy astern, Ned?"
+
+"Ay, ay, captain!"
+
+"And the other boats scuttled?"
+
+"I bored them all in three places."
+
+"Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow.  You look as if you
+hadn't quite got your bearings yet.  Is there anything you'd like to ask
+me?"
+
+"I believe you're the devil himself!" cried the captain.  "Where is the
+Governor of St. Kitt's?"
+
+"When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut.
+When I broke prison I learnt from my friends--for Captain Sharkey has
+those who love him in every port--that the Governor was starting for
+Europe under a master who had never seen him.  I climbed his verandah,
+and I paid him the little debt that I owed him.  Then I came aboard you
+with such of his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide
+these tell-tale eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a governor
+should.  Now, Ned, you can get to work upon them."
+
+"Help! help! Watch ahoy!" yelled the mate;  but the butt of the pirate's
+pistol crashed down on his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox.
+Scarrow rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his
+mouth, and threw his other arm round his waist.
+
+"No use, Master Scarrow," said Sharkey.  "Let us see you go down on your
+knees and beg for your life."
+
+"I'll see you--" cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.
+
+"Twist his arm round, Ned.  Now will you?"
+
+"No; not if you twist it off."
+
+"Put an inch of your knife into him."
+
+"You may put six inches, and then I won't."
+
+"Sink me, but I like his spirit!" cried Sharkey.  "Put your knife in
+your pocket, Ned.  You've saved your skin, Scarrow, and it's a pity so
+stout a man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can
+pick up a living.  You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since
+you have lain at my mercy and lived to tell the story.  Tie him up,
+Ned."
+
+"To the stove, captain?"
+
+"Tut, tut! there's a fire in the stove.  None of your rover tricks, Ned
+Galloway, unless they are called for, or I'll let you know which of us
+two is captain and which is quartermaster.  Make him fast to the table."
+
+"Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!" said the quartermaster.
+"You surely do not mean to let him go?"
+
+"If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still
+for me to command and for you to obey.  Sink you for a villain, do you
+dare to question my orders?"
+
+"Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!" said the quartermaster,
+and, lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table.  With the
+quick dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spread-eagled hands and feet
+with a rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with
+the long cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of
+St. Kitt's.
+
+"Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you," said the pirate.
+"If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had
+your cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand
+with the spirit of a mouse.  I see there are some small craft about, and
+we shall get one of them.  When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a
+smack, when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can
+get a barque, and when he has a barque he'll soon have a full-rigged
+ship of his own--so make haste into London town, or I may be coming
+back, after all, for the _Morning Star_."
+
+Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin.
+Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the
+companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the
+stern.  Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the
+falls and the splash of the boat in the water.  In a mad fury he tore
+and dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles,
+he rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way
+through the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.
+
+"Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage,  Wilson!" he screamed.  "Cutlasses and
+pistols!  Clear away the long-boat!  Clear away the gig!  Sharkey, the
+pirate, is in yonder dinghy.   Whistle up the larboard watch, bo'sun,
+and tumble into the boats, all hands."
+
+Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant
+the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once
+more.
+
+"The boats are scuttled!" they cried.  "They are leaking like a sieve."
+
+The captain gave a bitter curse.  He had been beaten and outwitted at
+every point.  Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor
+the promise of it.  The sails flapped idly in the moonlight.  Far away
+lay a fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net.  Close to
+them was the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the shining swell.
+
+"They are dead men!" cried the captain.  "A shout all together, boys,
+to warn them of their danger."  But it was too late.  At that very
+moment the dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat.  There were
+two rapid pistol-shots, a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed
+by silence.  The clustering fishermen had disappeared.  And then,
+suddenly, as the first puffs of a land-breeze came out from the Sussex
+shore, the boom swung out, the mainsail filled, and the little craft
+crept out with her nose to the Atlantic.
+
+
+
+                             II
+
+
+THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY WITH STEPHEN CRADDOCK
+
+Careening was a very necessary operation for the old pirate.  On his
+superior speed he depended both for overhauling the trader and escaping
+the man-of-war.  But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities
+unless he periodically--once a year, at the least--cleared his vessel's
+bottom from the long, trailing plants and crusting barnacles which
+gather so rapidly in the tropical seas.  For this purpose he lightened
+his vessel, thrust her into some narrow inlet where she would be left
+high and dry at low water, fastened blocks and tackles to her masts to
+pull her over on to her bilge, and then scraped her thoroughly from
+rudder-post to cut-water.
+
+During the weeks which were thus occupied the ship was, of course,
+defenceless; but, on the other hand, she was unapproachable by anything
+heavier than an empty hull, and the place for careening was chosen with
+an eye to secrecy, so that there was no great danger.  So secure did the
+captains feel, that it was not uncommon for them, at such times, to
+leave their ships under a sufficient guard, and to start off in the
+long-boat, either upon a sporting expedition or, more frequently, upon a
+visit to some outlying town, where they burned the heads of the women by
+their swaggering gallantry, or broached pipes of wine in the market
+square, with a threat to pistol all who would not drink with them.
+
+Sometimes they would even appear in cities of the size of Charleston,
+and walk the streets with their clattering side-arms--an open scandal to
+the whole law-abiding colony.  Such visits were not always paid with
+impunity.  It was one of them, for example, which provoked Lieutenant
+Maynard to hack off Blackbeard's head, and to spear it upon the end of
+his bowsprit.  But, as a rule, the pirate ruffled and bullied and
+drabbed without let or hindrance, until it was time for him to go back
+to his ship once more.
+
+There was one pirate, however, who never crossed even the skirts of
+civilisation, and that was the sinister Sharkey, of the barque _Happy
+Delivery_.  It may have been from his morose and solitary temper, or, as
+is more probable, that he knew that his name upon the coast was such
+that outraged humanity would, against all odds, have thrown themselves
+upon him, but never once did he show his face in a settlement.
+
+When his ship was laid up he would leave her under the charge of Ned
+Galloway--her New England quartermaster--and would take long voyages in
+his boat, sometimes, it was said, for the purpose of burying his share
+of the plunder, and sometimes to shoot the wild oxen of Hispaniola,
+which, when dressed and barbecued, provided provisions for his next
+voyage.  In the latter case the barque would come round to some
+pre-arranged spot to pick him up, and take on board what he had shot.
+
+There had always been a hope in the islands that Sharkey might be taken
+on one of these occasions; and at last there came news to Kingston which
+seemed to justify an attempt upon him.  It was brought by an elderly
+logwood-cutter who had fallen into the pirate's hands, and in some freak
+of drunken benevolence had been allowed to get away with nothing worse
+than a slit nose and a drubbing.  His account was recent and definite.
+The _Happy Delivery_ was careening at Torbec on the south-west of
+Hispaniola.  Sharkey, with four men, was buccaneering on the outlying
+island of La Vache.  The blood of a hundred murdered crews was calling
+out for vengeance, and now at last it seemed as if it might not call in
+vain.
+
+Sir Edward Compton, the high-nosed, red-faced Governor, sitting in
+solemn conclave with the commandant and the head of the council, was
+sorely puzzled in his mind as to how he should use this chance.
+There was no man-of-war nearer than Jamestown, and she was a clumsy old
+fly-boat, which could neither overhaul the pirate on the seas, nor reach
+her in a shallow inlet.  There were forts and artillerymen both at
+Kingston and Port Royal, but no soldiers available for an expedition.
+
+A private venture might be fitted out--and there were many who had a
+blood-feud with Sharkey--but what could a private venture do?
+The pirates were numerous and desperate.  As to taking Sharkey and his
+four companions, that, of course, would be easy if they could get at
+them; but how were they to get at them on a large well-wooded island
+like La Vache, full of wild hills and impenetrable jungles?  A reward
+was offered to whoever could find a solution, and that brought a man to
+the front who had a singular plan, and was himself prepared to carry it
+out.
+
+Stephen Craddock had been that most formidable person, the Puritan gone
+wrong.  Sprung from a decent Salem family, his ill-doing seemed to be a
+recoil from the austerity of their religion, and he brought to vice all
+the physical strength and energy with which the virtues of his ancestors
+had endowed him.  He was ingenious, fearless, and exceedingly tenacious
+of purpose, so that when he was still young, his name became notorious
+upon the American coast.  He was the same Craddock who was tried for his
+life in Virginia for the slaying of the Seminole Chief, and, though he
+escaped, it was well known that he had corrupted the witnesses and
+bribed the judge.
+
+Afterwards, as a slaver, and even, as it was hinted, as a pirate, he had
+left an evil name behind him in the Bight of Benin.  Finally he had
+returned to Jamaica with a considerable fortune, and had settled down to
+a life of sombre dissipation.  This was the man, gaunt, austere, and
+dangerous, who now waited upon the Governor with a plan for the
+extirpation of Sharkey.  Sir Edward received him with little enthusiasm,
+for in spite of some rumours of conversion and reformation, he had
+always regarded him as an infected sheep who might taint the whole of
+his little flock.  Craddock saw the Governor's mistrust under his thin
+veil of formal and restrained courtesy.
+
+"You've no call to fear me, sir," said he; "I'm a changed man from what
+you've known.  I've seen the light again of late, after losing sight of
+it for many a black year.  It was through the ministration of the Rev.
+John Simons, of our own people.  Sir, if your spirit should be in need
+of quickening, you would find a very sweet savour in his discourse."
+
+The Governor cocked his episcopalian nose at him.
+
+"You came here to speak of Sharkey, Master Craddock," said he.
+
+"The man Sharkey is a vessel of wrath," said Craddock.  "His wicked
+horn has been exalted over long, and it is borne in upon me that if I
+can cut him off and utterly destroy him, it will be a goodly deed, and
+one which may atone for many backslidings in the past.  A plan has been
+given to me whereby I may encompass his destruction."
+
+The Governor was keenly interested, for there was a grim and practical
+air about the man's freckled face which showed that he was in earnest.
+After all, he was a seaman and a fighter, and, if it were true that he
+was eager to atone for his past, no better man could be chosen for the
+business.
+
+"This will be a dangerous task, Master Craddock," said he.
+
+"If I meet my death at it, it may be that it will cleanse the memory of
+an ill-spent life.  I have much to atone for."
+
+The Governor did not see his way to contradict him.
+
+"What was your plan?" he asked.
+
+"You have heard that Sharkey's barque, the _Happy Delivery_, came from
+this very port of Kingston?"
+
+"It belonged to Mr. Codrington, and it was taken by Sharkey, who
+scuttled his own sloop and moved into her because she was faster," said
+Sir Edward.
+
+"Yes; but it may be that you have lever heard that Mr. Codrington has a
+sister ship, the _White Rose_, which lies even now in the harbour, and
+which is so like the pirate, that, if it were not for a white paint
+line, none could tell them apart."
+
+"Ah! and what of that?" asked the Governor keenly, with the air of one
+who is just on the edge of an idea.
+
+"By the help of it this man shall be delivered into our hands."
+
+"And how?"
+
+"I will paint out the streak upon the _White Rose_, and make it in all
+things like the _Happy Delivery_.  Then I will set sail for the Island
+of La Vache, where this man is slaying the wild oxen.  When he sees me
+he will surely mistake me for his own vessel which he is awaiting, and
+he will come on board to his own undoing."
+
+It was a simple plan, and yet it seemed to the Governor that it might be
+effective.  Without hesitation he gave Craddock permission to carry it
+out, and to take any steps he liked in order to further the object which
+he had in view.  Sir Edward was not very sanguine, for many attempts had
+been made upon Sharkey, and their results had shown that he was as
+cunning as he was ruthless.  But this gaunt Puritan with the evil record
+was cunning aid ruthless also.  The contest of wits between two such men
+as Sharkey and Craddock appealed to the Governor's acute sense of sport,
+and though he was inwardly convinced that the chances were against him,
+he backed his man with the same loyalty which he would have shown to his
+horse or his cock.
+
+Haste was, above all things, necessary, for upon any day the careening
+might be finished, and the pirates out at sea once more.  But there was
+not very much to do, and there were many willing hands to do it, so the
+second day saw the _White Rose_ beating out for the open sea.  There
+were many seamen in the port who knew the lines and rig of the pirate
+barque, and not one of them could see the slightest difference in this
+counterfeit.  Her white side line had been painted out, her masts and
+yards were smoked, to give them the dingy appearance of the
+weather-beaten rover, and a large diamond-shaped patch was let into her
+foretopsail.  Her crew were volunteers, many of them being men who had
+sailed with Stephen Craddock before--the mate, Joshua Hird, an old
+slaver, had been his accomplice in many voyages, and came now at the
+bidding of his chief.
+
+The avenging barque sped across the Caribbean Sea, and, at the sight of
+that patched topsail, the little craft which they met flew left and
+right like frightened trout in a pool.  On the fourth evening Point
+Abacou bore five miles to the north and east of them.  On the fifth they
+were at anchor in the Bay of Tortoises at the Island of La Vache, where
+Sharkey and his four men had been hunting.  It was a well-wooded place,
+with the palms and underwood growing down to the thin crescent of silver
+sand which skirted the shore.  They had hoisted the black flag and the
+red pennant, but no answer came from the shore.  Craddock strained his
+eyes, hoping every instant to see a boat shoot out to them with Sharkey
+seated in the sheets.  But the night passed away, and a day and yet
+another night, without any sign of the men whom they were endeavouring
+to trap.  It looked as if they were already gone.
+
+On the second morning Craddock went ashore in search of some proof
+whether Sharkey and his men were still upon the island.  What he found
+reassured him greatly.  Close to the shore was a boucan of green wood,
+such as was used for preserving the meat, and a great store of barbecued
+strips of ox-flesh was hung upon lines all round it.  The pirate ship
+had not taken off her provisions, and therefore the hunters were still
+upon the island.
+
+Why had they not shown themselves? Was it that they had detected that
+this was not their own ship?  Or was it that they were hunting in the
+interior of the island, and were not on the look-out for a ship yet?
+Craddock was still hesitating between the two alternatives, when a Carib
+Indian came down with information.  The pirates were in the island, he
+said, and their camp was a day's march from the Sea.  They had stolen
+his wife, and the marks of their stripes were still pink upon his brown
+back.  Their enemies were his friends, and he would lead them to where
+they lay.
+
+Craddock could not have asked for anything better; so early next
+morning, with a small party armed to the teeth, he set off, under the
+guidance of the Carib.  All day they struggled through brushwood and
+clambered over rocks, pushing their way further and further into the
+desolate heart of the island.  Here and there they found traces of the
+hunters, the bones of a slain ox, or the marks of feet in a morass, and
+once, towards evening, it seemed to some of them that they heard the
+distant rattle of guns.
+
+That night they spent under the trees, and pushed on again with the
+earliest light.  About noon they came to the huts of bark, which, the
+Carib told them, were the camp of the hunters, but they were silent and
+deserted.  No doubt their occupants were away at the hunt and would
+return in the evening, so Craddock and his men lay in ambush in the
+brushwood around them.  But no one came, and another night was spent in
+the forest.  Nothing more could be done, and it seemed to Craddock that
+after the two days' absence it was time that he returned to his ship
+once more.
+
+The return journey was less difficult, as they had already blazed a path
+for themselves.  Before evening they found themselves once more at the
+Bay of Palms, and saw their ship riding at anchor where they had left
+her.  Their boat and oars had been hauled up among the bushes, so they
+launched it and pulled out to the barque.
+
+"No luck, then!" cried Joshua Hird, the mate, looking down with a pale
+face from the poop.
+
+"His camp was empty, but he may come down to us yet," said Craddock,
+with his hand on the ladder.
+
+Somebody upon deck began to laugh.  "I think," said the mate, "that
+these men had better stay in the boat."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"If you will come aboard, sir, you will understand it."  He spoke in a
+curious, hesitating fashion.
+
+The blood flushed to Craddock's gaunt face.  "How is this, Master Hird?"
+he cried, springing up the side.  "What mean you by giving orders to my
+boat's crew?"
+
+But as he passed over the bulwarks, with one foot upon the deck and one
+knee upon the rail, a tow-bearded man, whom he had never before observed
+aboard his vessel, grabbed suddenly at his pistol.  Craddock clutched at
+the fellow's wrist, but at the same instant his mate snatched the
+cutlass from his side.
+
+"What roguery is this?" shouted Craddock, looking furiously around him.
+But the crew stood in knots about the deck, laughing and whispering
+amongst themselves without showing any desire to go to his assistance.
+Even in that hurried glance Craddock noticed that they were dressed in
+the most singular manner, with long riding-coats, full-skirted velvet
+gowns and coloured ribands at their knees, more like men of fashion than
+seamen.
+
+As he looked at their grotesque figures he struck his brow with his
+clenched fist to be sure that he was awake.  The deck seemed to be much
+dirtier than when he had left it, and there were strange, sun-blackened
+faces turned upon him from every side.  Not one of them did he know save
+only Joshua Hird.  Had the ship been captured in his absence?  Were
+these Sharkey's men who were around him?  At the thought he broke
+furiously away and tried to climb over to his boat, but a dozen hands
+were on him in an instant, and he was pushed aft through the open door
+of his own cabin.
+
+And it was all different to the cabin which he had left.  The floor was
+different, the ceiling was different, the furniture was different.
+His had been plain and austere.  This was sumptuous and yet dirty, hung
+with rare velvet curtains splashed with wine-stains, and panelled with
+costly woods which were pocked with pistol-marks.
+
+On the table was a great chart of the Caribbean Sea, and beside it, with
+compasses in his hand, sat a clean-shaven, pale-faced man with a fur cap
+and a claret-coloured coat of damask.  Craddock turned white under his
+freckles as he looked upon the long, thin high-nostrilled nose and the
+red-rimmed eyes which were turned upon him with the fixed, humorous gaze
+of the master player who has left his opponent without a move.
+"Sharkey!" cried Craddock.
+
+Sharkey's thin lips opened, and he broke into his high, sniggering
+laugh.
+
+"You fool!" he cried, and, leaning over, he stabbed Craddock's shoulder
+again and again with his compasses.  "You poor, dull-witted fool, would
+you match yourself against me?"
+
+It was not the pain of the wounds, but it was the contempt in Sharkey's
+voice which turned Craddock into a savage madman.  He flew at the
+pirate, roaring with rage, striking, kicking, writhing, foaming.
+It took six men to drag him down on to the floor amidst the splintered
+remains of the table--and not one of the six who did not bear the
+prisoner's mark upon him.  But Sharkey still surveyed him with the same
+contemptuous eye.  From outside there came the crash of breaking wood
+and the clamour of startled voices.
+
+"What is that?" asked Sharkey.
+
+"They have stove the boat with cold shot, and the men are in the water."
+
+"Let them stay there," said the pirate.  "Now, Craddock, you know where
+you are.  You are aboard my ship, the _Happy Delivery_, and you lie at
+my mercy.  I knew you for a stout seaman, you rogue, before you took to
+this long-shore canting.  Your hands then were no cleaner than my own.
+Will you sign articles, as your mate has done, and join us, or shall I
+heave you over to follow your ship's company?"
+
+"Where is my ship?" asked Craddock.
+
+"Scuttled in the bay."
+
+"And the hands?"
+
+"In the bay, too."
+
+"Then I'm for the bay, also."
+
+"Hock him and heave him over," said Sharkey.
+
+Many rough hands had dragged Craddock out upon deck, and Galloway, the
+quartermaster, had already drawn his hanger to cripple him, when Sharkey
+came hurrying from his cabin with an eager face.  "We can do better with
+the hound!" he cried.  "Sink me if it is not a rare plan.  Throw him
+into the sail-room with the irons on, and do you come here,
+quarter-master, that I may tell you what I have in my mind."
+
+So Craddock, bruised and wounded in soul and body, was thrown into the
+dark sail-room, so fettered that he could not stir hand or foot, but his
+Northern blood was running strong in his veins, and his grim spirit
+aspired only to make such an ending as might go some way towards atoning
+for the evil of his life.  All night he lay in the curve of the bilge
+listening to the rush of the water and the straining of the timbers
+which told him that the ship was at sea and driving fast.  In the early
+morning someone came crawling to him in the darkness over the heap of
+sails.
+
+"Here's rum and biscuits," said the voice of his late mate.  "It's at
+the risk of my life, Master Craddock, that I bring them to you."
+
+"It was you who trapped me and caught me as in a snare!" cried Craddock.
+"How shall you answer for what you have done?"
+
+"What I did I did with the point of a knife betwixt my blade-bones."
+
+"God forgive you for a coward, Joshua Hird.  How came you into their
+hands?"
+
+"Why, Master Craddock, the pirate ship came back from its careening upon
+the very day that you left us.  They laid us aboard, and, short-handed
+as we were, with the best of the men ashore with you, we could offer but
+a poor defence.  Some were cut down, and they were the happiest.  The
+others were killed afterwards.  As to me, I saved my life by signing on
+with them."
+
+"And they scuttled my ship?"
+
+"They scuttled her, and then Sharkey and his men, who had been watching
+us from the brushwood, came off to the ship.  His mainyard had been
+cracked and fished last voyage, so he had suspicions of us, seeing that
+ours was whole.  Then he thought of laying the same trap for you which
+you had set for him."
+
+Craddock groaned.  "How came I not to see that fished mainyard?" he
+muttered.  "But whither are we bound?"
+
+"We are running north and west."
+
+"North and west!  Then we are heading back towards Jamaica."
+
+"With an eight-knot wind."
+
+"Have you heard what they mean to do with me?"
+
+"I have not heard.  If you would but sign the articles--"
+
+"Enough, Joshua Hird!  I have risked my soul too often."
+
+"As you wish.  I have done what I could.  Farewell!"
+
+All that night and the next day the _Happy Delivery_ ran before the
+easterly trades, and Stephen Craddock lay in the dark of the sail-room
+working patiently at his wrist-irons.  One he had slipped off at the
+cost of a row of broken and bleeding knuckles, but, do what he would, he
+could not free the other, and his ankles were securely fastened.
+From hour to hour he heard the swish of the water, and knew that the
+barque must be driving with all set in front of the trade wind.  In that
+case they must be nearly back again to Jamaica by now.  What plan could
+Sharkey have in his head, and what use did he hope to make of him?
+Craddock set his teeth, and vowed that if he had once been a villain
+from choice he would, at least, never be one by compulsion.
+
+On the second morning Craddock became aware that sail had been reduced
+in the vessel, and that she was tacking slowly, with a light breeze on
+her beam.  The varying slope of the sail room and the sounds from the
+deck told his practised senses exactly what she was doing.  The short
+reaches showed him that she was manoeuvring near shore, and making for
+some definite point.  If so, she must have reached Jamaica.  But what
+could she be doing there?
+
+And then suddenly there was a burst of hearty cheering from the deck,
+and then the crash of a gun above his head, and then the answering
+booming of guns from far over the water.  Craddock sat up and strained
+his ears.  Was the ship in action?  Only the one gun had been fired, and
+though many had answered, there were none of the crashings which told of
+a shot coming home.  Then, if it was not an action, it must be a salute.
+But who would salute Sharkey, the pirate?  It could only be another
+pirate ship which would do so.  So Craddock lay back again with a groan,
+and continued to work at the manacle which still held his right wrist.
+But suddenly there came the shuffling of steps outside, and he had
+hardly time to wrap the loose links round his free hand, when the door
+was unbolted and two pirates came in.
+
+"Got your hammer, carpenter?" asked one, whom Craddock recognised as the
+big quartermaster.
+
+"Knock off his leg shackles, then.  Better leave the bracelets--he's
+safer with them on."
+
+With hammer and chisel the carpenter loosened the irons.
+
+"What are you going to do with me?" asked Craddock.
+
+"Come on deck and you'll see."
+
+The sailor seized him by the arm and dragged him roughly to the foot of
+the companion.  Above him was a square of blue sky cut across by the
+mizzen gaff, with the colours flying at the peak.  But it was the sight
+of those colours which struck the breath from Stephen Craddock's lips.
+For there were two of them, and the British ensign was flying above the
+Jolly Rodger--the honest flag above that of the rogue.
+
+For an instant Craddock stopped in amazement, but a brutal push from the
+pirates behind drove him up the companion ladder.  As he stepped out
+upon deck, his eyes turned up to the main, and there again were the
+British colours flying above the red pennant, and all the shrouds and
+rigging were garlanded with streamers.
+
+Had the ship been taken, then?  But that was impossible, for there were
+the pirates clustering in swarms along the port bulwarks, and waving
+their hats joyously in the air.  Most prominent of all was the renegade
+mate, standing on the foc'sle head, and gesticulating wildly.  Craddock
+looked over the side to see what they were cheering at, and then in a
+flash he saw how critical was the moment.
+
+On the port bow, and about a mile off, lay the white houses and forts of
+Port Royal, with flags breaking out everywhere over their roofs.
+Right ahead was the opening of the palisades leading to the town of
+Kingston.  Not more than a quarter of a mile off was a small sloop
+working out against the very slight wind.  The British ensign was at her
+peak, and her rigging was all decorated.  On her deck could be seen a
+dense crowd of people cheering and waving their hats, and the gleam of
+scarlet told that there were officers of the garrison among them.
+
+In an instant, with the quick perception of a man of action, Craddock
+saw through it all.  Sharkey, with that diabolical cunning and audacity
+which were among his main characteristics, was simulating the part which
+Craddock would himself have played had he come back victorious.  It was
+in _his_ honour that the salutes were firing and the flags flying.
+It was to welcome _him_ that this ship with the Governor, the
+commandant, and the chiefs of the island were approaching.  In another
+ten minutes they would all be under the guns of the _Happy Delivery_,
+and Sharkey would have won the greatest stake that ever a pirate played
+for yet.
+
+"Bring him forward," cried the pirate captain, as Craddock appeared
+between the carpenter and the quartermaster.  "Keep the ports closed,
+but clear away the port guns, and stand by for a broadside.  Another two
+cable lengths and we have them."
+
+"They are edging away," said the boatswain.  "I think they smell us."
+
+"That's soon set right," said Sharkey, turning his filmy eyes upon
+Craddock.  "Stand there, you--right there, where they can recognise you,
+with your hand on the guy, and wave your hat to them.  Quick, or your
+brains will be over your coat.  Put an inch of your knife into him, Ned.
+Now, will you wave your hat?  Try him again, then.  Hey, shoot him! Stop
+him!"
+
+But it was too late.  Relying upon the manacles, the quartermaster had
+taken his hands for a moment off Craddock's arm.  In that instant he had
+flung off the carpenter, and, amid a spatter of pistol bullets, had
+sprung the bulwarks and was swimming for his life.  He had been hit and
+hit again, but it takes many pistols to kill a resolute and powerful man
+who has his mind set upon doing something before he dies.  He was a
+strong swimmer, and, in spite of the red trail which he left in the
+water behind him, he was rapidly increasing his distance from the
+pirate.  "Give me a musket!" cried Sharkey, with a savage oath.
+
+He was a famous shot, and his iron nerves never failed him in an
+emergency.  The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then
+swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop.
+Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired.  With the crack of the
+gun the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a
+gesture of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay.
+Then, as the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an
+impotent broadside, Stephen Craddock, smiling grimly in his death agony,
+sank slowly down to that golden couch which glimmered far beneath him.
+
+
+
+                             III
+
+
+HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY
+
+The Buccaneers were something higher than a mere band of marauders.
+They were a floating republic, with laws, usages, and discipline of
+their own.  In their endless and remorseless quarrel with the
+Spaniards they had some semblance of right upon their side.
+Their bloody harryings of the cities of the Main were not more barbarous
+than the inroads of Spain upon the Netherlands--or upon the Caribs in
+these same American lands.
+
+The chief of the Buccaneers, were he English or French, a Morgan or a
+Granmont, was still a responsible person, whose country might
+countenance him, or even praise him, so long as he refrained from any
+deed which might shock the leathery seventeenth-century conscience too
+outrageously.  Some of them were touched with religion, and it is still
+remembered how Sawkins threw the dice overboard upon the Sabbath, and
+Daniel pistolled a man before the altar for irreverence.
+
+But there came a day when the fleets of the Buccaneers no longer
+mustered at the Tortugas, and the solitary and outlawed pirate took
+their place.  Yet even with him the tradition of restraint and of
+discipline still lingered; and among the early pirates, the Avorys, the
+Englands, and the Robertses, there remained some respect for human
+sentiment.  They were more dangerous to the merchant than to the seaman.
+But they in turn were replaced by more savage and desperate men, who
+frankly recognised that they would get no quarter in their war with the
+human race, and who swore that they would give as little as they got.
+Of their histories we know little that is trustworthy.  They wrote no
+memoirs and left no trace, save an occasional blackened and
+blood-stained derelict adrift upon the face of the Atlantic.
+Their deeds could only be surmised from the long roll of ships who never
+made their port.
+
+Searching the records of history, it is only here and there in an
+old-world trial that the veil that shrouds them seems for an instant to
+be lifted, and we catch a glimpse of some amazing and grotesque
+brutality behind.  Such was the breed of Ned Low, of Gow the Scotchman,
+and of the infamous Sharkey, whose coal-black barque, the _Happy
+Delivery_, was known from the Newfoundland Banks to the mouths of the
+Orinoco as the dark forerunner of misery and of death.
+
+There were many men, both among the islands and on the Main, who had a
+blood feud with Sharkey, but not one who had suffered more bitterly than
+Copley Banks, of Kingston.  Banks had been one of the leading sugar
+merchants of the West Indies.  He was a man of position, a member of the
+Council, the husband of a Percival, and the cousin of the Governor of
+Virginia.  His two sons had been sent to London to be educated, and
+their mother had gone over to bring them back.  On their return voyage
+the ship, the _Duchess of Cornwall_, fell into the hands of Sharkey, and
+the whole family met with an infamous death.
+
+Copley Banks said little when he heard the news, but he sank into a
+morose and enduring melancholy.  He neglected his business, avoided his
+friends, and spent much of his time in the low taverns of the fishermen
+and seamen.  There, amidst riot and devilry, he sat silently puffing at
+his pipe, with a set face and a smouldering eye.  It was generally
+supposed that his misfortunes had shaken his wits, and his old friends
+looked at him askance, for the company which he kept was enough to bar
+him from honest men.
+
+From time to time there came rumours of Sharkey over the sea.  Sometimes
+it was from some schooner which had seen a great flame upon the horizon,
+and approaching to offer help to the burning ship, had fled away at the
+sight of the sleek, black barque, lurking like a wolf near a mangled
+sheep.  Sometimes it was a frightened trader, which had come tearing in
+with her canvas curved like a lady's bodice, because she had seen a
+patched foretopsail rising slowly above the violet water-line.
+Sometimes it was from a coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama cay
+littered with sun-dried bodies.  Once there came a man who had been mate
+of a Guineaman, and who had escaped from the pirate's hands.  He could
+not speak--for reasons which Sharkey could best supply--but he could
+write, and he did write, to the very great interest of Copley Banks.
+For hours they sat together over the map, and the dumb man pointed here
+and there to outlying reefs and tortuous inlets, while his companion sat
+smoking in silence, with his unvarying face and his fiery eyes.
+
+One morning, some two years after his misfortunes, Mr. Copley Banks
+strode into his own office with his old air of energy and alertness.
+The manager stared at him in surprise, for it was months since he had
+shown any interest in business.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Banks!" said he.
+
+"Good morning, Freeman.  I see that _Ruffling Harry_ is in the Bay."
+
+"Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday."
+
+"I have other plans for her, Freeman.  I have determined upon a slaving
+venture to Whydah."
+
+"But her cargo is ready, sir."
+
+"Then it must come out again, Freeman.  My mind is made up, and the
+_Ruffling Harry_ must go slaving to Whydah."
+
+All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to
+clear the ship once more.  And then Copley Banks began to make
+preparations for his African voyage.  It appeared that he relied upon
+force rather than barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried
+none of those showy trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted
+with eight nine-pounder guns, and racks full of muskets and cutlasses.
+The after-sailroom next the cabin was transformed into a powder
+magazine, and she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer.
+Water and provisions were shipped for a long voyage.
+
+But the preparation of his ship's company was most surprising.  It made
+Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that
+his master had taken leave of his senses.  For, under one pretext or
+another, he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the
+firm for years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port--men
+whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been
+ashamed to furnish them.  There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known
+to have been present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his
+hideous scarlet disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a
+red afterglow from that great crime.  He was first mate, and under him
+was Israel Martin, a little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell
+Davies at the taking of Cape Coast Castle.
+
+The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
+their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
+man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk.  His beard had been
+shaved, and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom
+Sharkey had placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his
+experiences to Copley Banks.  These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet
+uncommented upon in the town of Kingston.  The Commandant of the
+troops--Major Harvey of the Artillery--made serious representations to
+the Governor.
+
+"She is not a trader, but a small warship," said he.
+
+"I think it would be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the
+vessel."
+
+"What do you suspect?" asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man,
+broken down with fevers and port wine.
+
+"I suspect," said the soldier, "that it is Stede Bonnet over again."
+
+Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious
+character who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in
+his blood, had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the
+Caribbean Sea.  The example was a recent one, and it had caused the
+utmost consternation in the islands.   Governors had before now been
+accused of being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions
+upon their plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister
+construction.
+
+"Well, Major Harvey," said he, "I am vastly sorry to do anything which
+may offend my friend Copley Banks, for many a time have my knees been
+under his mahogany, but in face of what you say there is no choice for
+me but to order you to board the vessel and to satisfy yourself as to
+her character and destination."
+
+So at one in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers,
+paid a surprise visit to the _Ruffling Harry_, with the result that they
+picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the
+moorings.  It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented
+danger.  She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out
+against  the north-east trades on a course for the Windward Passage.
+
+When upon the next morning the brig had left Morant Point a mere haze
+upon the Southern horizon, the men were called aft, and Copley Banks
+revealed his plans to them.  He had chosen them, he said, as brisk boys
+and lads of spirit, who would rather run some risk upon the sea than
+starve for a living upon the shore.  King's ships were few and weak, and
+they could master any trader who might come their way.  Others had done
+well at the business, and with a handy, well-found vessel, there was no
+reason why they should not turn their tarry jackets into velvet coats.
+If they were prepared to sail under the black flag, he was ready to
+command them; but if any wished to withdraw, they might have the gig and
+row back to Jamaica.
+
+Four men out of six-and-forty asked for their discharge, went over the
+ship's side into the boat, and rowed away amidst the jeers and howlings
+of the crew.  The rest assembled aft, and drew up the articles of their
+association.  A square of black tarpaulin had the white skull painted
+upon it, and was hoisted amidst cheering at the main.
+
+Officers were elected, and the limits of their authority fixed.  Copley
+Banks was chosen captain, but, as there are no mates upon a pirate
+craft, Birthmark Sweetlocks became quartermaster, and Israel Martin the
+boatswain.  There was no difficulty in knowing what was the custom of
+the brotherhood, for half the men at least had served upon pirates
+before.  Food should be the same for all, and no man should interfere
+with another man's drink!  The captain should have a cabin, but all
+hands should be welcome to enter it when they chose.
+
+All should share and share alike, save only the captain, quartermaster,
+boatswain, carpenter, and master-gunner, who had from a quarter to a
+whole share extra.  He who saw a prize first should have the best weapon
+taken out of her.  He who boarded her first should have the richest suit
+of clothes aboard of her.  Every man might treat his own prisoner, be it
+man or woman, after his own fashion.  If a man flinched from his gun,
+the quartermaster should pistol him.  These were some of the rules which
+the crew of the _Ruffling Harry_ subscribed by putting forty-two crosses
+at the foot of the paper upon which they had been drawn.
+
+So a new rover was afloat upon the seas, and her name before a year was
+over became as well known as that of the _Happy Delivery_.  From the
+Bahamas to the Leewards, and from the Leewards to the Windwards, Copley
+Banks became the rival of Sharkey and the terror of traders.  For a long
+time the barque and the brig never met, which was the more singular as
+the _Ruffling Harry_ was for ever looking in at Sharkey's resorts; but
+at last one day, when she was passing down the inlet of Coxon's Hole, at
+the east end of Cuba, with the intention of careening, there was the
+_Happy Delivery_, with her blocks and tackle-falls already rigged for
+the same purpose.  Copley Banks fired a shotted salute and hoisted the
+green trumpeter ensign, as the custom was among gentlemen of the sea.
+Then he dropped his boat and went aboard.
+
+Captain Sharkey was not a man of a genial mood, nor had he any kindly
+sympathy for those who were of the same trade as himself.  Copley Banks
+found him seated astride upon one of the after guns, with his New
+England quartermaster, Ned Galloway, and a crowd of roaring ruffians
+standing about him.  Yet none of them roared with quite such assurance
+when Sharkey's pale face and filmy blue eyes were tuned upon him.
+He was in his shirt-sleeves, with his cambric frills breaking through
+his open red satin long-flapped vest.  The scorching sun seemed to have
+no power upon his fleshless frame, for he wore a low fur cap, as though
+it had been winter.  A many-coloured band of silk passed across his body
+and supported a short, murderous sword, while his broad, brass-buckled
+belt was stuffed with pistols.
+
+"Sink you for a poacher!" he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the
+bulwarks.  "I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch
+also!  What mean you by fishing in my waters?"
+
+Copley Banks looked at him, and his eyes were like those of a traveller
+who sees his home at last.  "I am glad that we are of one mind," said
+he, "for I am myself of opinion that the seas are not large enough for
+the two of us.  But if you will take your sword and pistols and come
+upon a sand-bank with me, then the world will be rid of a damned
+villain, whichever way it goes."
+
+"Now, this is talking!" said Sharkey, jumping off the gun and holding
+out his hand.  "I have not met many who could look John Sharkey in the
+eyes and speak with a full breath.  May the devil seize me if I do not
+choose you as a consort!  But if you play me false, then I will come
+aboard of you and gut you upon your own poop."
+
+"And I pledge you the same!" said Copley Banks, and so the two pirates
+became sworn comrades to each other.
+
+That summer they went north as far as the Newfoundland Banks, and
+harried the New York traders and the whale ships from New England.
+It was Copley Banks who captured the Liverpool ship, _House of Hanover_,
+but it was Sharkey who fastened her master to the windlass and pelted
+him to death with empty claret-bottles.
+
+Together they engaged the King's ship _Royal Fortune_, which had been
+sent in search of them, and beat her off after a night action of five
+hours, the drunken, raving crews fighting naked in the light of the
+battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles
+of every gun.  They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and
+then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ready for a long
+cruise down the West Indies.
+
+By this time Sharkey and Copley Banks had become very excellent friends,
+for Sharkey loved a whole-hearted villain, and he loved a man of metal,
+and it seemed to him that the two met in the captain of the _Ruffling
+Harry_.  It was long before he gave his confidence to him, for cold
+suspicion lay deep in his character.  Never once would he trust himself
+outside his own ship and away from his own men.  But Copley Banks came
+often on board the _Happy Delivery_, and joined Sharkey in many of his
+morose debauches, so that at last any lingering misgivings of the latter
+were set at rest.  He knew nothing of the evil that he had done to his
+new boon companion, for of his many victims how could he remember the
+woman and the two boys whom he had slain with such levity so long ago!
+When, therefore, he received a challenge to himself and to his
+quartermaster for a carouse upon the last evening of their stay at the
+Caicos Bank he saw no reason to refuse.
+
+A well-found passenger ship had been rifled the week before, so their
+fare was of the best, and after supper five of them drank deeply
+together.  There were the two captains,  Birthmark Sweetlocks, Ned
+Galloway, and Israel Martin, the old buccaneers-man.  To wait upon them
+was the dumb steward, whose head Sharkey split with a glass, because he
+had been too slow in the filling of it.  The quarter-master has slipped
+Sharkey's pistols away from him, for it was an old joke with him to fire
+them cross-handed under the table and see who was the luckiest man.
+It was a pleasantry which had cost his boatswain his leg, so now, when
+the table was cleared, they would coax Sharkey's weapons away from him
+on the excuse of the heat, and lay them out of his reach.
+
+The captain's cabin of the _Ruffling Harry_ was in a deck-house upon the
+poop, and a stern-chaser gun was mounted at the back of it.  Round shot
+were racked round the wall, and three great hogsheads of powder made a
+stand for dishes and for bottles.  In this grim room the five pirates
+sang and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up
+their glasses, and passed the box and the candle round for their
+tobacco-pipes.  Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices
+hoarser, the curses and shoutings more incoherent, until three of the
+five had closed their blood-shot eyes, and dropped their swimming heads
+upon the table.
+
+Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had
+drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake
+his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood.  Behind him stood the
+watchful steward, for ever filling up his waning glass.  From without
+came the low lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor's
+chanty from the barque.  In the windless tropical night the words came
+clearly to their ears:--
+
+     A trader sailed from Stepney Town,
+   Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!
+     A trader sailed from Stepney Town
+   With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.
+     Ho, the bully Rover Jack,
+   Waiting with his yard aback
+     Out upon the Lowland Sea.
+
+The two boon companions sat listening in silence.  Then Copley Banks
+glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from
+the shot-rack behind him.
+
+"Captain Sharkey," said Copley Banks, "do you remember the _Duchess of
+Cornwall_, hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago
+off the Statira Shoal?"
+
+"Curse me if I can bear their names in mind," said Sharkey.  "We did as
+many as ten ships a week about that time."
+
+"There were a mother and two sons among the passengers.  Maybe that will
+bring it back to your mind."
+
+Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose
+jutting upwards.  Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing
+laugh.  He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it.
+"But burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!" he cried.  "How came
+you to think of it?"
+
+"It was of interest to me," said Copley Banks, "for the woman was my
+wife, and the lads were my only sons."
+
+Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering
+fire which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame.
+He read their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt.
+Then he turned to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round
+him, and in an instant his arms were bound to his side.  He fought like
+a wild cat, and screamed for help.  "Ned!" he yelled.  "Ned!  Wake up!
+Here's damned villainy!  Help, Ned!--help!"
+
+But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for
+any voice to wake them.  Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey
+was swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck.  They propped him stiff and
+helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a
+handkerchief, but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at
+them.  The dumb man chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for
+the first time when he saw the empty mouth before him.  He understood
+that vengeance, slow and patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him
+at last.
+
+The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat
+elaborate.  First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder
+barrels, and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor.
+They piled it round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled
+in a heap of it.  Then they carried Sharkey to the gun and they triced
+him sitting over the port-hole, with his body about a foot from the
+muzzle.  Wriggle as he would he could not move an inch either to the
+right or left, and the dumb man trussed him up with a sailor's cunning,
+so that there was no chance that he should work free.
+
+"Now, you bloody devil," said Copley Banks, softly, "you must listen to
+what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will
+hear.  You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have
+given all that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as
+well.
+
+"To reach you I have had to sink to your level.  For two years I strove
+against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learnt that
+there was no other.  I've robbed and I have murdered--worse still, I
+have laughed and lived with you--and all for the one end.  And now my
+time has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the
+shadow creeping upon you and the devil waiting for you in the shadow."
+
+Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty
+over the water.
+
+    Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
+  Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending!
+    Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
+    His gold's on the capstan, his blood's on his gown,
+      All for bully Rover Jack,
+      Reaching on the weather tack
+    Right across the Lowland Sea.
+
+The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men
+pacing backwards and forwards upon the deck.  And yet he was helpless,
+staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to
+utter so much as a groan.  Again there came the burst of voices from the
+deck of the barque.
+
+    So it's up and it's over to Stornoway Bay,
+  Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with stunsails!
+    It's off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay,
+    Where the liquor is good and the lasses are gay,
+      Waiting for their bully Jack,
+      Watching for him sailing back,
+    Right across the Lowland Sea.
+
+To the dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own
+fate seem the harsher, but there was no softening in those venomous blue
+eyes.  Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had
+sprinkled fresh powder over the touch-hole.  Then he had taken up the
+candle and cut it to the length of about an inch.  This he placed upon
+the loose powder at the breach of the gun.  Thin he scattered powder
+thickly over the floor beneath, so that when the candle fell at the
+recoil it must explode the huge pile in which the three drunkards were
+wallowing.
+
+"You've made others look death in the face, Sharkey," said he; "now it
+has come to be your own turn.  You and these swine here shall go
+together!" He lit the candle-end as he spoke, and blew out the other
+lights upon the table.  Then he passed out with the dumb man, and locked
+the cabin door upon the outer side.  But before he closed it he took an
+exultant look backwards, and received one last curse from those
+unconquerable eyes.  In the single dim circle of light that ivory-white
+face, with the gleam of moisture upon the high, bald forehead, was the
+last that was ever seen of Sharkey.
+
+There was a skiff alongside, and in it Copley Banks and the dumb steward
+made their way to the beach, and looked back upon the brig riding in the
+moon-light just outside the shadow of the palm trees.  They waited and
+waited watching that dim light which shone through the stem port.  And
+then at last there came the dull thud of a gun, and an instant later the
+shattering crash of an explosion.  The long, sleek, black barque, the
+sweep of white sand, and the fringe of nodding feathery palm trees
+sprang into dazzling light and back into darkness again.  Voices
+screamed and called upon the bay.
+
+Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him, touched his companion
+upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely jungle of
+the Caicos.
+
+
+
+THE CROXLEY MASTER
+
+
+                             I
+
+Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands,
+in a state of the blackest despondency.  Before him was the open ledger
+with the long columns of Dr. Oldacre's prescriptions.  At his elbow lay
+the wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the
+lumps of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of bottles waited to
+be filled.  But his spirits were too low for work.  He sat in silence
+with his fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands.
+
+Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened
+brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars
+upheld the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank.  For six days in the week
+they spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was
+Sunday.  Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and
+blasted by the greed of man.  There was nothing in the surroundings to
+cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment
+which weighed upon the medical assistant.  His trouble was deeper and
+more personal.  The winter session was approaching.  He should be back
+again at the University completing the last year which would give him
+his medical degree; but, alas! he had not the money with which to pay
+his class fees, nor could he imagine how he could procure it.
+Sixty pounds were wanted to make his career, and it might have been as
+many thousand for any chance there seemed to be of his obtaining it.
+He was roused from his black meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre
+himself, a large, clean-shaven, respectable man, with a prim manner and
+an austere face.  He had prospered exceedingly by the support of the
+local Church interest, and the rule of his life was never by word or
+action to run a risk of offending the sentiment which had made him.
+His standard of respectability and of dignity was exceedingly high, and
+he expected the same from his assistants.  His appearance and words were
+always vaguely benevolent.  A sudden impulse came over the despondent
+student.  He would test the reality of this philanthropy.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Dr. Oldacre," said he, rising from his chair;
+"I have a great favour to ask of you."
+
+The doctor's appearance was not encouraging.  His mouth suddenly
+tightened, and his eyes fell.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Montgomery?"
+
+"You are aware, sir, that I need only one more session to complete my
+course."
+
+"So you have told me."
+
+"It is very important to me, sir."
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"The fees, Dr. Oldacre, would amount to about sixty pounds."
+
+"I am afraid that my duties call me elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery."
+
+"One moment, sir! I had hoped, sir, that perhaps, if I signed a paper
+promising you interest upon your money, you would advance this sum to
+me.  I will pay you back, sir, I really will.  Or, if you like, I will
+work it off after I am qualified."
+
+The doctor's lips had thinned into a narrow line.  His eyes were raised
+again, and sparkled indignantly.
+
+"Your request is unreasonable, Mr. Montgomery.  I am surprised that you
+should have made it.  Consider, sir, how many thousands of medical
+students there are in this country.  No doubt there are many of them who
+have a difficulty in finding their fees.  Am I to provide for them all?
+Or why should I make an exception in your favour? I am grieved and
+disappointed, Mr. Montgomery, that you should have put me into the
+painful position of having to refuse you."  He turned upon his heel, and
+walked with offended dignity out of the surgery.
+
+The student smiled bitterly, and turned to his work of making up the
+morning prescriptions.  It was poor and unworthy work--work which any
+weakling might have done as well, and this was a man of exceptional
+nerve and sinew.  But, such as it was, it brought him his board and One
+pound a week--enough to help him during the summer months and let him
+save a few pounds towards his winter keep.  But those class fees!
+Where were they to come from?  He could not save them out of his scanty
+wage.  Dr. Oldacre would not advance them.  He saw no way of earning
+them.  His brains were fairly good, but brains of that quality were a
+drug in the market.  He only excelled in his strength, and where was he
+to find a customer for that?  But the ways of Fate are strange, and his
+customer was at hand.
+
+"Look y'ere!" said a voice at the door.  Montgomery looked up, for the
+voice was a loud and rasping one.  A young man stood at the entrance--
+a stocky, bull-necked young miner, in tweed Sunday clothes and an
+aggressive neck-tie.  He was a sinister-looking figure, with dark,
+insolent eyes, and the jaw and throat of a bulldog.
+
+"Look y'ere!" said he again.  "Why hast thou not sent t' medicine oop as
+thy master ordered?"
+
+Montgomery had become accustomed to the brutal frankness of the northern
+worker.  At first it had enraged him, but after a time he had grown
+callous to it, and accepted it as it was meant.  But this was something
+different.  It was insolence--brutal, overbearing insolence, with
+physical menace behind it.
+
+"What name?" he asked coldly.
+
+"Barton.  Happen I may give thee cause to mind that name, yoong man.
+Mak' oop t' wife's medicine this very moment, look ye, or it will be the
+worse for thee."
+
+Montgomery smiled.  A pleasant sense of relief thrilled softly through
+him.  What blessed safety-valve was this through which his jangled
+nerves might find some outlet.  The provocation was so gross, the insult
+so unprovoked, that he could have none of those qualms which take the
+edge off a man's mettle.  He finished sealing the bottle upon which he
+was occupied, and he addressed it and placed it carefully in the rack.
+"Look here!" said he, turning round to the miner, "your medicine will be
+made up in its turn and sent down to you.  I don't allow folk in the
+surgery.  Wait outside in the waiting-room if you wish to wait at all."
+
+"Yoong man," said the miner, "thou's got to mak' t' wife's medicine
+here, and now, and quick, while I wait and watch thee, or else happen
+thou might need some medicine thysel' before all is over."
+
+"I shouldn't advise you to fasten a quarrel upon me." Montgomery was
+speaking in the hard, staccato voice of a man who is holding himself in
+with difficulty.  "You'll save trouble if you'll go quietly.  If you
+don't you'll be hurt.  Ah, you would?  Take it, then!"
+
+The blows were almost simultaneous--a savage swing which whistled past
+Montgomery's ear, and a straight drive which took the workman on the
+chin.  Luck was with the assistant.  That single whizzing uppercut, and
+the way in which it was delivered, warned him that he had a formidable
+man to deal with.  But if he had underrated his antagonist, his
+antagonist had also underrated him, and had laid himself open to a fatal
+blow.
+
+The miner's head had come with a crash against the corner of the surgery
+shelves, and he had dropped heavily on to the ground.  There he lay with
+his bandy legs drawn up and his hands thrown abroad, the blood trickling
+over the surgery tiles.
+
+"Had enough?" asked the assistant, breathing fiercely through his nose.
+
+But no answer came.  The man was insensible.  And then the danger of his
+position came upon Montgomery, and he turned as white as his antagonist.
+A Sunday, the immaculate Dr. Oldacre with his pious connection, a savage
+brawl with a patient; he would irretrievably lose his situation if the
+facts came out.  It was not much of a situation, but he could not get
+another without a reference, and Oldacre might refuse him one.  Without
+money for his classes, and without a situation--what was to become of
+him?  It was absolute ruin.
+
+But perhaps he could escape exposure after all.  He seized his
+insensible adversary, dragged him out into the centre of he room,
+loosened his collar, and squeezed the surgery sponge over his face.  He
+sat up at last with a gasp and a scowl.  "Domn thee, thou's spoilt my
+neck-tie," said he, mopping up the water from his breast.
+
+"I'm sorry I hit you so hard," said Montgomery, apologetically.
+
+"Thou hit me hard! I could stan' such fly-flappin' all day.  'Twas this
+here press that cracked my pate for me, and thou art a looky man to be
+able to boast as thou hast outed me.  And now I'd be obliged to thee if
+thou wilt give me t' wife's medicine."
+
+Montgomery gladly made it up and handed it to the miner.
+
+"You are weak still," said he.  "Won't you stay awhile and rest?"
+
+"T' wife wants her medicine," said the man, and lurched out at the door.
+
+The assistant, looking after him, saw him rolling, with an uncertain
+step, down the street, until a friend met him, and they walked on arm in
+arm.  The man seemed in his rough Northern fashion to bear no grudge,
+and so Montgomery's fears left him.  There was no reason why the doctor
+should know anything about it.  He wiped the blood from the floor, put
+the surgery in order, and went on with his interrupted task, hoping that
+he had come scathless out of a very dangerous business.
+
+Yet all day he was aware of a sense of vague uneasiness, which sharpened
+into dismay when, late in the afternoon, he was informed that three
+gentlemen had called and were waiting for him in the surgery.
+A coroner's inquest, a descent of detectives, an invasion of angry
+relatives--all sorts of possibilities rose to scare him.  With tense
+nerves and a rigid face he went to meet his visitors.
+
+They were a very singular trio.  Each was known to him by sight; but
+what on earth the three could be doing together, and, above all, what
+they could expect from _him_, was a most inexplicable problem.
+The first was Sorley Wilson, the son of the owner of the Nonpareil
+Coalpit.  He was a young blood of twenty, heir to a fortune, a keen
+sportsman, and down for the Easter Vacation from Magdalene College.
+He sat now upon the edge of the surgery table, looking in thoughtful
+silence at Montgomery and twisting the ends of his small, black, waxed
+moustache.  The second was Purvis, the publican, owner of the chief
+beer-shop, and well known as the local bookmaker.  He was a coarse,
+clean-shaven man, whose fiery face made a singular contrast with his
+ivory-white bald head.  He had shrewd, light-blue eyes with foxy lashes,
+and he also leaned forward in silence from his chair, a fat, red hand
+upon either knee, and stared critically at the young assistant.  So did
+the third visitor, Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who leaned back, his
+long, thin legs, with their boxcloth riding-gaiters, thrust out in front
+of him, tapping his protruding teeth with his riding-whip, with anxious
+thought in every line of his rugged, bony face.  Publican, exquisite,
+and horse-breaker were all three equally silent, equally earnest, and
+equally critical.  Montgomery seated in the midst of them, looked from
+one to the other.
+
+"Well, gentlemen?" he observed, but no answer came.
+
+The position was embarrassing.
+
+"No," said the horse-breaker, at last.  "No.  It's off.  It's nowt."
+
+"Stand oop, lad; let's see thee standin'." It was the publican who
+spoke.  Montgomery obeyed.  He would learn all about it, no doubt, if he
+were patient.  He stood up and turned slowly round, as if in front of
+his tailor.
+
+"It's off!  It's off!" cried the horse-breaker.  "Why, mon, the Master
+would break him over his knee."
+
+"Oh, that be hanged for a yarn!" said the young Cantab.  "You can drop
+out if you like, Fawcett, but I'll see this thing through, if I have to
+do it alone.  I don't hedge a penny.  I like the cut of him a great deal
+better than I liked Ted Barton."
+
+"Look at Barton's shoulders, Mr. Wilson."
+
+"Lumpiness isn't always strength.  Give me nerve and fire and breed.
+That's what wins."
+
+"Ay, sir, you have it theer--you have it theer!" said the fat, red-faced
+publican, in a thick suety voice.  "It's the same wi' poops.  Get 'em
+clean-bred an' fine, an' they'll yark the thick 'uns--yark 'em out o'
+their skins."
+
+"He's ten good pund on the light side," growled the horse-breaker.
+
+"He's a welter weight, anyhow."
+
+"A hundred and thirty."
+
+"A hundred and fifty, if he's an ounce."
+
+"Well, the Master doesn't scale much more than that."
+
+"A hundred and seventy-five."
+
+"That was when he was hog-fat and living high.  Work the grease out of
+him and I lay there's no great difference between them.  Have you been
+weighed lately, Mr. Montgomery?"
+
+It was the first direct question which had been asked him.  He had stood
+in the midst of them like a horse at a fair, and he was just beginning
+to wonder whether he was more angry or amused.
+
+"I am just eleven stone," said he.
+
+"I said that he was a welter weight."
+
+"But suppose you was trained?" said the publican.  "Wot then?"
+
+"I am always in training."
+
+"In a manner of speakin', no doubt, he _is_ always in trainin',"
+remarked the horse-breaker.  "But trainin' for everyday work ain't the
+same as trainin' with a trainer; and I dare bet, with all respec' to
+your opinion, Mr. Wilson, that there's half a stone of tallow on him at
+this minute."
+
+The young Cantab put his fingers on the assistant's upper arm, then with
+his other hand on his wrist, he bent the forearm sharply, and felt the
+biceps, as round and hard as a cricket-ball, spring up under his
+fingers.
+
+"Feel that!" said he.
+
+The publican and horse-breaker felt it with an air of reverence.  "Good
+lad!  He'll do yet!" cried Purvis.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Montgomery, "I think that you will acknowledge that I
+have boon very patient with you.  I have listened to all that you have
+to say about my personal appearance, and now I must really beg that you
+will have the goodness to tell me what is the matter."
+
+They all sat down in their serious, business-like way.
+
+"That's easy done, Mr. Montgomery," said the fat-voiced publican.
+"But before sayin' anything we had to wait and see whether, in a way of
+speakin', there was any need for us to say anything at all.  Mr. Wilson
+thinks there is.  Mr. Fawcett, who has the same right to his opinion,
+bein' also a backer and one o' the committee, thinks the other way."
+
+"I thought him too light built, and I think so now," said the
+horse-breaker, still tapping his prominent teeth with the metal head of
+his riding-whip.  "But happen he may pull through, and he's a
+fine-made, buirdly young chap, so if you mean to back him, Mr. Wilson--
+
+"Which I do."
+
+"And you, Purvis?"
+
+"I ain't one to go back, Fawcett."
+
+"Well, I'll stan' to my share of the purse."
+
+"And well I knew you would," said Purvis, "for it would be somethin' new
+to find Isaac Fawcett as a spoil-sport.  Well, then, we will make up the
+hundred for the stake among us, and the fight stands--always supposin'
+the young man is willin'."
+
+"Excuse all this rot, Mr. Montgomery," said the University man, in a
+genial voice.  "We've begun at the wrong end, I know, but we'll soon
+straighten it out, and I hope that you will see your way to falling in
+with our views.  In the first place, you remember the man whom you
+knocked out this morning?  He is Barton--the famous Ted Barton."
+
+"I'm sure, sir, you may well be proud to have outed him in one round,"
+said the publican.  "Why, it took Morris, the ten-stone-six champion, a
+deal more trouble than that before he put Barton to sleep.  You've done
+a fine performance, sir, and happen you'll do a finer, if you give
+yourself the chance."
+
+"I never heard of Ted Barton, beyond seeing the name on a medicine
+label," said the assistant.
+
+"Well, you may take it from me that he's a slaughterer," said the
+horse-breaker.  "You've taught him a lesson that he needed, for it was
+always a word and a blow with him, and the word alone was worth five
+shillin' in a public court.  He won't be so ready now to shake his nief
+in the face of everyone he meets.  However, that's neither here nor
+there."
+
+Montgomery looked at them in bewilderment.
+
+"For goodness' sake, gentlemen, tell me what it is you want me to do!"
+he cried.
+
+"We want you to fight Silas Craggs, better known as the Master of
+Croxley."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because Ted Barton was to have fought him next Saturday.  He was the
+champion of the Wilson coal-pits, and the other was the Master of the
+iron-folk down at the Croxley smelters.  We'd matched our man for a
+purse of a hundred against the Master.  But you've queered our man, and
+he can't face such a battle with a two-inch cut at the back of his head.
+There's only one thing to be done, sir, and that is for you to take his
+place.  If you can lick Ted Barton you may lick the Master of Croxley,
+but if you don't we're done, for there's no one else who is in the same
+street with him in this district.  It's twenty rounds, two-ounce gloves,
+Queensberry rules, and a decision on points if you fight to the finish."
+
+For a moment the absurdity of the thing drove every other thought out of
+Montgomery's head.  But then there came a sudden revulsion.  A hundred
+pounds!--all he wanted to complete his education was lying there ready
+to his hand, if only that hand were strong enough to pick it up.  He had
+thought bitterly that morning that there was no market for his strength,
+but here was one where his muscle might earn more in an hour than his
+brains in a year.  But a chill of doubt came over him.  "How can I fight
+for the coal-pits?" said he.  "I am not connected with them."
+
+"Eh, lad, but thou art!" cried old Purvis.  "We've got it down in
+writin', and it's clear enough  'Anyone connected with the coal-pits.'
+Doctor Oldacre is the coal-pit club doctor; thou art his assistant.
+What more can they want?"
+
+"Yes, that's right enough," said the Cantab.  "It would be a very
+sporting thing of you, Mr. Montgomery, if you would come to our help
+when we are in such a hole.  Of course, you might not like to take the
+hundred pounds; but I have no doubt that, in the case of your winning,
+we could arrange that it should take the form of a watch or piece of
+plate, or any other shape which might suggest itself to you.  You see,
+you are responsible for our having lost our champion, so we really feel
+that we have a claim upon  you."
+
+"Give me a moment, gentlemen.  It is very unexpected.  I am afraid the
+doctor would never consent to my going--in fact, I am sure that he would
+not."
+
+"But he need never know--not before the fight, at any rate.  We are not
+bound to give the name of our man.  So long as he is within the weight
+limits on the day of the fight, that is all that concerns anyone."
+
+The adventure and the profit would either of them have attracted
+Montgomery.  The two combined were irresistible.  "Gentlemen," said he,
+"I'll do it!"
+
+The three sprang from their seats.  The publican had seized his right
+hand, the horse-dealer his left, and the Cantab slapped him on the back.
+
+"Good lad! good lad!" croaked the publican.  "Eh, mon, but if thou yark
+him, thou'll rise in one day from being just a common doctor to the
+best-known mon 'twixt here and Bradford.  Thou art a witherin' tyke,
+thou art, and no mistake; and if thou beat the Master of Croxley,
+thou'll find all the beer thou want for the rest of thy life waiting for
+thee at the 'Four Sacks.'"
+
+"It is the most sporting thing I ever heard of in my life," said young
+Wilson.  "By George, sir, if you pull it off, you've got the
+constituency in your pocket, if you care to stand.  You know the
+out-house in my garden?"
+
+"Next the road?"
+
+"Exactly.  I turned it into a gymnasium for Ted Barton.  You'll find all
+you want there: clubs, punching ball, bars, dumb-bells, everything.
+Then you'll want a sparring partner.  Ogilvy has been acting for Barton,
+but we don't think that he is class enough.  Barton bears you no grudge.
+He's a good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers.  He
+looked upon you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you
+now.  He is quite ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come
+any hour you will name."
+
+"Thank you; I will let you know the hour," said Montgomery; and so the
+committee departed jubilant upon their way.
+
+The medical assistant sat for a time in the surgery turning it over a
+little in his mind.  He had been trained originally at the University by
+the man who had been middle-weight champion in his day.  It was true
+that his teacher was long past his prime, slow upon his feet, and stiff
+in his joints, but even so he was still a tough antagonist; but
+Montgomery had found at last that he could more than hold his own with
+him.  He had won the University medal, and his teacher, who had trained
+so many students, was emphatic in his opinion that he had never had one
+who was in the same class with him.  He had been exhorted to go in for
+the Amateur Championships, but he had no particular ambition in that
+direction.  Once he had put on the gloves with Hammer Tunstall in a
+booth at a fair and had fought three rattling rounds, in which he had
+the worst of it, but had made the prize fighter stretch himself to the
+uttermost.  There was his whole record, and was it enough to encourage
+him to stand up to the Master of Croxley?  He had never heard of the
+Master before, but then he had lost touch of the ring during the last
+few years of hard work.  After all, what did it matter?  If he won,
+there was the money, which meant so much to him.  If he lost, it would
+only mean a thrashing.  He could take punishment without flinching, of
+that he was certain.  If there were only one chance in a hundred of
+pulling it off, then it was worth his while to attempt it.
+
+Dr. Oldacre, new come from church, with an ostentatious Prayer-book in
+his kid-gloved hand, broke in upon his meditation.
+
+"You don't go to service, I observe, Mr. Montgomery" said he, coldly.
+
+"No, sir; I have had some business to detain me."
+
+"It is very near to my heart that my household should set a good
+example.  There are so few educated people in this district that a great
+responsibility devolves upon us.  If we do not live up to the highest,
+how can we expect these poor workers to do so?  It is a dreadful thing
+to reflect that the parish takes a great deal more interest in an
+approaching glove fight than in their religious duties."
+
+"A glove fight, sir?" said Montgomery, guiltily.
+
+"I believe that to be the correct term.  One of my patients tells me
+that it is the talk of the district.  A local ruffian, a patient of
+ours, by the way, matched against a pugilist over at Croxley.
+I cannot understand why the law does not step in and stop so degrading
+an exhibition.  It is really a prize fight."
+
+"A glove fight, you said."
+
+"I am informed that a 2oz. glove is an evasion by which they dodge the
+law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere.  They contend
+for a sum of money.  It seems dreadful and almost incredible--does it
+not?--to think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our
+peaceful home.  But you will realise, Mr. Montgomery, that while there
+are such influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we
+should live up to our highest."
+
+The doctor's sermon would have had more effect if the assistant had not
+once or twice had occasion to test his highest, and come upon it at
+unexpectedly humble elevations.  It is always so particularly easy to
+"compound for sins we're most inclined to by damning those we have no
+mind to."  In any case, Montgomery felt that of all the men concerned in
+such a fight--promoters, backers, spectators--it is the actual fighter
+who holds the strongest and most honourable position.  His conscience
+gave him no concern upon the subject.  Endurance and courage are
+virtues, not vices, and brutality is, at least, better than effeminacy.
+
+There was a little tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where
+Montgomery got his bird's-eye and also his local information, for the
+shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of
+the district.  The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in
+a casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard of the Master of
+Croxley.
+
+"Heard of him! Heard of him!" the little man could hardly articulate in
+his astonishment.  "Why, sir, he's the first mon o' the district, an'
+his name's as well known in the West Riding as the winner o' t' Derby.
+But Lor,' sir,"--here he stopped and rummaged among a heap of papers.
+"They are makin' a fuss about him on account o' his fight wi' Ted
+Barton, and so the _Croxley Herald_ has his life an' record, an' here it
+is, an' thou canst read it for thysel'"
+
+The sheet of the paper which he held up was a lake of print around an
+islet of illustration.  The latter was a coarse wood-cut of a pugilist's
+head and neck set in a cross-barred jersey.  It was a sinister but
+powerful face, the face of a debauched hero, clean-shaven, strongly
+eye-browed, keen-eyed, with huge, aggressive jaw, and an animal dewlap
+beneath it.  The long, obstinate cheeks ran flush up to the narrow,
+sinister eyes.  The mighty neck came down square from the ears and
+curved outwards into shoulders, which had lost nothing at the hands of
+the local artist.  Above was written "Silas Craggs," and beneath,
+"The Master of Croxley."
+
+"Thou'll find all about him there, sir," said the tobacconist.  "He's a
+witherin' tyke, he is, and we're proud to have him in the county.  If he
+hadn't broke his leg he'd have been champion of England."
+
+"Broke his leg, has he?"
+
+"Yes, and it set badly.  They ca' him owd K, behind his back, for that
+is how his two legs look.  But his arms--well, if they was both stropped
+to a bench, as the sayin' is, I wonder where the champion of England
+would be then."
+
+"I'll take this with me," said Montgomery; and putting the paper into
+his pocket he returned home.
+
+It was not a cheering record which he read there.  The whole history of
+the Croxley Master was given in full, his many victories, his few
+defeats.
+
+   Born in 1857 (said the provincial biographer), Silas Craggs, better
+   known in sporting circles as the Master of Croxley, is now in his
+   fortieth year.
+
+"Hang it, I'm only twenty-three!" said Montgomery to himself, and read
+on more cheerfully.
+
+   Having in his youth shown a surprising aptitude for the game, he
+   fought   his way up among his comrades, until he became the
+   recognised champion of the district and won the proud title which
+   he still holds.  Ambitious of a more than local fame, he secured a
+   patron, and fought his first fight against Jack Barton, of
+   Birmingham, in May 1880, at the old Loiterers' Club.  Craggs,
+   who fought at ten stone-two at the time, had the better of fifteen
+   rattling rounds, and gained an award on points against the Midlander.
+   Having disposed of James Dunn, of Rotherhithe, Cameron, of Glasgow,
+   and a youth named Fernie, he was thought so highly of by the fancy
+   that he was matched against Ernest Willox, at that time
+   middle-weight champion of the North of England, and defeated him in a
+   hard-fought battle, knocking him out in the tenth round after a
+   punishing contest.  At this period it looked as if the very highest
+   honours of the ring were within the reach of the young Yorkshireman,
+   but he was laid upon the shelf by a most unfortunate accident.  The
+   kick of a horse broke his thigh, and for a year he was compelled to
+   rest himself.  When he returned to his work the fracture had set
+   badly, and his activity was much impaired.  It was owing to this
+   that he was defeated in seven rounds by Willox, the man whom he had
+   previously beaten, and afterwards by James Shaw, of London, though
+   the latter acknowledged that he had found the toughest customer of
+   his career.  Undismayed by his reverses, the Master adapted the
+   style of his fighting to his physical disabilities and resumed his
+   career of victory--defeating Norton (the black), Hobby Wilson, and
+   Levi Cohen, the latter a heavy-weight.  Conceding two stone, he
+   fought a draw with the famous Billy McQuire, and afterwards, for
+   a purse of fifty pounds, he defeated Sam Hare at the Pelican Club,
+   London.  In 1891 a decision was given against him upon a foul when
+   fighting a winning fight against Jim Taylor, the Australian middle
+   weight, and so mortified was he by the decision, that he withdrew
+   from the ring.  Since then he has hardly fought at all save to
+   accommodate any local aspirant who may wish to learn the difference
+   between a bar-room scramble and a scientific contest.  The latest
+   of these ambitious souls comes from the Wilson coal-pits, which have
+   undertaken to put up a stake of 100 pounds and back their local
+   champion.  There are various rumours afloat as to who their
+   representative is to be, the name of Ted Barton being freely
+   mentioned; but the betting, which is seven to one on the Master
+   against any untried man, is a fair reflection of the feeling of
+   the community.
+
+Montgomery read it over twice, and it left him with a very serious face.
+No light matter this which he had undertaken; no battle with a
+rough-and-tumble fighter who presumed upon a local reputation.
+The  man's record showed that he was first-class--or nearly so.  There
+were a few points in his favour, and  he must make the most of them.
+There was age--twenty-three against forty.  There was an old ring
+proverb that "Youth will be served," but the annals of the ring offer a
+great number of exceptions.  A hard veteran full of cool valour and
+ring-craft, could give ten or fifteen years and a beating to most
+striplings.  He could not rely too much upon his advantage in age.
+But then there was the lameness; that must surely count for a great
+deal.  And, lastly, there was the chance that the Master might underrate
+his opponent, that he might be remiss in his training, and refuse to
+abandon his usual way of life, if he thought that he had an easy task
+before him.  In a man of his age and habits this seemed very possible.
+Montgomery prayed that it might be so.  Meanwhile, if his opponent were
+the best man who ever jumped the ropes into a ring, his own duty was
+clear.  He must prepare himself carefully, throw away no chance, and do
+the very best that he could.  But he knew enough to appreciate the
+difference which exists in boxing, as in every sport, between the
+amateur and the professional.  The coolness, the power of hitting, above
+all the capability of taking punishment, count for so much.  Those
+specially developed, gutta-percha-like abdominal muscles of the hardened
+pugilist will take without flinching a blow which would leave another
+man writhing on the ground.  Such things are not to be acquired in a
+week, but all that could be done in a week should be done.
+
+The medical assistant had a good basis to start from.  He was 5ft. 11
+ins.--tall enough for anything on two legs, as the old ring men used to
+say--lithe and spare, with the activity of a panther, and a strength
+which had hardly yet ever found its limitations.  His muscular
+development was finely hard, but his power came rather from that higher
+nerve-energy which counts for nothing upon a measuring tape.  He had the
+well-curved nose and the widely opened eye which never yet were seen
+upon the face of a craven, and behind everything he had the driving
+force, which came from the knowledge that his whole career was at stake
+upon the contest.  The three backers rubbed their hands when they saw
+him at work punching the ball in the gymnasium next morning; and
+Fawcett, the horse-breaker, who had written to Leeds to hedge his bets,
+sent a wire to cancel the letter, and to lay another fifty at the market
+price of seven to one.
+
+Montgomery's chief difficulty was to find time for his training without
+any interference from the doctor.  His work took him a large part of the
+day, but as the visiting was done on foot, and considerable distances
+had to be traversed, it was a training in itself.  For the rest, he
+punched the swinging ball and worked with the dumb-bells for an hour
+every morning and evening, and boxed twice a day with Ted Barton in the
+gymnasium, gaining as much profit as could be got from a rushing,
+two-handed slogger.  Barton was full of admiration for his cleverness
+and quickness, but doubtful about his strength.  Hard hitting was the
+feature of his own style, and he exacted it from others.
+
+"Lord, sir, that's a turble poor poonch for an eleven-stone man!" he
+would cry.  "Thou wilt have to hit harder than that afore t' Master will
+know that thou art theer.  All, thot's better, mon, thot's fine!" he
+would add, as his opponent lifted him across the room on the end of a
+right counter.  "Thot's how I likes to feel 'em.  Happen thou'lt pull
+through yet."  He chuckled with joy when Montgomery knocked him into a
+corner.  "Eh, mon, thou art coming along grand.  Thou hast fair yarked
+me off my legs.  Do it again, lad, do it again!"
+
+The only part of Montgomery's training which came within the doctor's
+observation was his diet, and that puzzled him considerably.
+
+"You will excuse my remarking, Mr. Montgomery, that you are becoming
+rather particular in your tastes.  Such fads are not to be encouraged in
+one's youth.  Why do you eat toast with every meal?"
+
+"I find that it suits me better than bread, sir."
+
+"It entails unnecessary work upon the cook.  I observe, also, that you
+have turned against potatoes."
+
+"Yes, sir; I think that I am better without them."
+
+"And you no longer drink your beer?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"These causeless whims and fancies are very much to be deprecated, Mr.
+Montgomery.  Consider how many there are to whom these very potatoes and
+this very beer would be most acceptable."
+
+"No doubt, sir, but at present I prefer to do without them."
+
+They were sitting alone at lunch, and the assistant thought that it
+would be a good opportunity of asking leave for the day of the fight.
+
+"I should be glad if you could let me have leave for Saturday, Dr.
+Oldacre."
+
+"It is very inconvenient upon so busy a day."
+
+"I should do a double day's work on Friday so as to leave everything in
+order.  I should hope to be back in the evening."
+
+"I am afraid I cannot spare you, Mr. Montgomery."
+
+This was a facer.  If he could not get leave he would go without it.
+
+"You will remember, Dr. Oldacre, that when I came to you it was
+understood that I should have a clear day every month.  I have never
+claimed one.  But now there are reasons why I wish to have a holiday
+upon Saturday."
+
+Dr. Oldacre gave in with a very bad grace.  "Of course, if you insist
+upon your formal rights, there is no more to be said, Mr. Montgomery,
+though I feel that it shows a certain indifference to my comfort and the
+welfare of the practice.  Do you still insist?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Very good.  Have your way."
+
+The doctor was boiling over with anger, but Montgomery was a valuable
+assistant--steady, capable, and hardworking--and he could not afford to
+lose him.  Even if he had been prompted to advance those class fees, for
+which his assistant had appealed, it would have been against his
+interests to do so, for he did not wish him to qualify, and he desired
+him to remain in his subordinate position, in which he worked so hard
+for so small a wage.  There was something in the cool insistence of the
+young man, a quiet resolution in his voice as he claimed his Saturday,
+which aroused his curiosity.
+
+"I have no desire to interfere unduly with your affairs, Mr. Montgomery,
+but were you thinking of having a day in Leeds upon Saturday?"
+
+"No, sir.
+
+"In the country?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You are very wise.  You will find a quiet day among the wild flowers a
+very valuable restorative.  Have you thought of any particular
+direction?"
+
+"I am going over Croxley way."
+
+"Well, there is no prettier country when once you are past the
+iron-works.  What could be more delightful than to lie upon the Fells,
+basking in the sunshine, with perhaps some instructive and elevating
+book as your companion?  I should recommend a visit to the ruins of St.
+Bridget's Church, a very interesting relic of the early Norman era.
+By the way, there is one objection which I see to your going to Croxley
+on Saturday.  It is upon that date, as I am informed, that that
+ruffianly glove fight takes place.  You may find yourself molested by
+the blackguards whom it will attract."
+
+"I will take my chance of that, sir," said the assistant.
+
+On the Friday night, which was the last night before the fight,
+Montgomery's three backers assembled in the gymnasium and inspected
+their man as he went through some light exercises to keep his muscles
+supple.  He was certainly in splendid condition, his skin shining with
+health, and his eyes with energy and confidence.  The three walked round
+him and exulted.
+
+"He's simply ripping!" said the undergraduate.
+
+"By gad, you've come out of it splendidly.  You're as hard as a pebble,
+and fit to fight for your life."
+
+"Happen he's a trifle on the fine side," said the publican.  "Runs a bit
+light at the loins, to my way of thinking'."
+
+"What weight to-day?"
+
+"Ten stone eleven," the assistant answered.
+
+"That's only three pund off in a week's trainin'," said the
+horse-breaker.  "He said right when he said that he was in condition.
+Well, it's fine stuff all there is of it, but I'm none so sure as there
+is enough."  He kept poking his finger into Montgomery as if he were one
+of his horses.  "I hear that the Master will scale a hundred and sixty
+odd at the ring-side."
+
+"But there's some of that which he'd like well to pull off and leave
+behind wi' his shirt," said Purvis.  "I hear they've had a rare job to
+get him to drop his beer, and if it had not been for that great
+red-headed wench of his they'd never ha' done it.  She fair scratted the
+face off a potman that had brought him a gallon from t' 'Chequers.'
+They say the hussy is his sparrin' partner, as well as his sweetheart,
+and that his poor wife is just breakin' her heart over it.  Hullo, young
+'un, what do you want?"
+
+The door of the gymnasium had opened and a lad, about sixteen, grimy and
+black with soot and iron, stepped into the yellow glare of the oil lamp.
+Ted Barton seized him by the collar.
+
+"See here, thou yoong whelp, this is private, and we want noan o' thy
+spyin'!"
+
+"But I maun speak to Mr. Wilson."
+
+The young Cantab stepped forward.
+
+"Well, my lad, what is it?"
+
+"It's aboot t' fight, Mr. Wilson, sir.  I wanted to tell your mon
+somethin' aboot t' Maister."
+
+"We've no time to listen to gossip, my boy.  We know all about the
+Master."
+
+"But thou doan't, sir.  Nobody knows but me and mother, and we thought
+as we'd like thy mon to know, sir, for we want him to fair bray him."
+
+"Oh, you want the Master fair brayed, do you?  So do we.  Well, what
+have you to say?"
+
+"Is this your mon, sir?"
+
+"Well, suppose it is?"
+
+"Then it's him I want to tell aboot it.  T' Maister is blind o' the left
+eye."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"It's true, sir.  Not stone blind, but rarely fogged.  He keeps it
+secret, but mother knows, and so do I.  If thou slip him on the left
+side he can't cop thee.  Thou'll find it right as I tell thee.  And mark
+him when he sinks his right.  'Tis his best blow, his right upper-cut.
+T' Maister's finisher, they ca' it at t' works.  It's a turble blow when
+it do come home."
+
+"Thank you, my boy.  This is information worth having about his sight,"
+said Wilson.  "How came you to know so much?  Who are you?"
+
+"I'm his son, sir."
+
+Wilson whistled.
+
+"And who sent you to us?"
+
+"My mother.  I maun get back to her again."
+
+"Take this half-crown."
+
+"No, sir, I don't seek money in comin' here.  I do it--"
+
+"For love?" suggested the publican.
+
+"For hate!" said the boy, and darted off into the darkness.
+
+"Seems to me t' red-headed wench may do him more harm than good, after
+all," remarked the publican.  "And now, Mr. Montgomery, sir, you've done
+enough for this evenin', an' a nine-hours' sleep is the best trainin'
+before a battle.  Happen this time to-morrow night you'll be safe back
+again with your 100 pound in your pocket."
+
+
+
+
+                             II
+
+
+Work was struck at one o'clock at the coal-pits and the iron-works, and
+the fight was arranged for three.  From the Croxley Furnaces, from
+Wilson's Coal-pits, from the Heartsease Mine, from the Dodd Mills, from
+the Leverworth Smelters the workmen came trooping, each with his
+fox-terrier or his lurcher at his heels.  Warped with labour and twisted
+by toil, bent double by week-long work in the cramped coal galleries or
+half-blinded with years spent in front of white-hot fluid metal, these
+men still gilded their harsh and hopeless lives by their devotion to
+sport.  It was their one relief, the only thing which could distract
+their minds from sordid surroundings, and give them an interest beyond
+the blackened circle which enclosed them.  Literature, art, science, all
+these things were beyond their horizon; but the race, the football
+match, the cricket, the fight, these were things which they could
+understand, which they could speculate upon in advance and comment upon
+afterwards.  Sometimes brutal, sometimes grotesque, the love of sport is
+still one of the great agencies which make for the happiness of our
+people.  It lies very deeply in the springs of our nature, and when it
+has been educated out, a higher, more refined nature may be left, but it
+will not be of that robust British type which has left its mark so
+deeply on the world.  Every one of these raddled workers, slouching with
+his dog at his heels to see something of the fight, was a true unit of
+his race.
+
+It was a squally May day, with bright sunbursts and driving showers.
+Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting his medicine made
+up.
+
+"The weather seems so very unsettled, Mr. Montgomery," remarked the
+doctor, "that I am inclined to think that you had better postpone your
+little country excursion until a later date."
+
+"I am afraid that I must go to-day, sir."
+
+"I have just had an intimation that Mrs. Potter, at the other side of
+Angleton, wishes to see me.  It is probable that I shall be there all
+day.  It will be extremely inconvenient to leave the house empty so
+long."
+
+"I am very sorry, sir, but I must go," said the assistant, doggedly.
+
+The doctor saw that it would be useless to argue, and departed in the
+worst of bad tempers upon mission.  Montgomery felt easier now that he
+was gone.  He went up to his room, and packed his running-shoes, his
+fighting-drawers, and his cricket sash into a hand-bag.  When he came
+down, Mr. Wilson was waiting for him in the surgery.  "I hear the doctor
+has gone."
+
+"Yes; he is likely to be away all day."
+
+"I don't see that it matters much.  It's bound to come to his ears by
+to-night."
+
+"Yes; it's serious with me, Mr. Wilson.  If I win, it's all right.
+I don't mind telling you that the hundred pounds will make all the
+difference to me.  But if I lose, I shall lose my situation, for, as you
+say, I can't keep it secret."
+
+"Never mind.  We'll see you through among us.  I only wonder the doctor
+has not heard, for it's all over the country that you are to fight the
+Croxley Champion.  We've had Armitage up about it already.  He's the
+Master's backer, you know.  He wasn't sure that you were eligible.
+The Master said he wanted you whether you were eligible or not.
+Armitage has money on, and would have made trouble if he could.  But I
+showed him that you came within the conditions of the challenge, and he
+agreed that it was all right.  They think they have a soft thing on."
+
+"Well, I can only do my best," said Montgomery.
+
+They lunched together; a silent and rather nervous repast, for
+Montgomery's mind was full of what was before him, and Wilson had
+himself more money at stake than he cared to lose.
+
+Wilson's carriage and pair were at the door, the horses with blue and
+white rosettes at their ears, which were the colours of the Wilson
+Coal-pits, well known, on many a football field.  At the avenue gate a
+crowd of some hundred pit-men and their wives gave a cheer as the
+carriage passed.  To the assistant it all seemed dream-like and
+extraordinary--the strangest experience of his life, but with a thrill
+of human action and interest in it which made it passionately absorbing.
+He lay back in the open carriage and saw the fluttering handkerchiefs
+from the doors and windows of the miners' cottages.  Wilson had pinned a
+blue and white rosette upon his coat, and everybody knew him as their
+champion.  "Good luck, sir! good luck to thee!" they shouted from the
+roadside.  He felt that it was like some unromantic knight riding down
+to sordid lists, but there was something of chivalry in it all the same.
+He fought for others as well as for himself.  He might fail from want of
+skill or strength, but deep in his sombre soul he vowed that it should
+never be for want of heart.
+
+Mr. Fawcett was just mounting into his high-wheeled, spidery dogcart,
+with his little bit of blood between the shafts.  He waved his whip and
+fell in behind the carriage.  They overtook Purvis, the tomato-faced
+publican, upon the road, with his wife in her Sunday bonnet.  They also
+dropped into the procession, and then, as they traversed the seven miles
+of the high road to Croxley, their two-horsed, rosetted carriage became
+gradually the nucleus of a comet with a loosely radiating tail.
+From every side-road came the miners' carts, the humble, ramshackle
+traps, black and bulging, with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued,
+open-hearted partisans.  They trailed for a long quarter of a mile
+behind them--cracking, whipping, shouting, galloping, swearing.
+Horsemen and runners were mixed with the vehicles.  And then suddenly a
+squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were having their annual training
+in those parts, clattered and jingled out of a field, and rode as an
+escort to the carriage.  Through the dust-clouds round him Montgomery
+saw the gleaming brass helmets, the bright coats, and the tossing heads
+of the chargers, the delighted brown faces of the troopers.  It was more
+dream-like than ever.
+
+And then, as they approached the monstrous, uncouth line of
+bottle-shaped buildings which marked the smelting-works of Croxley,
+their long, writhing snake of dust was headed off by another but longer
+one which wound across their path.  The main road into which their own
+opened was filled by the rushing current of traps.  The Wilson
+contingent halted until the others should get past.  The iron-men
+cheered and groaned, according to their humour, as they whirled past
+their antagonist.  Rough chaff flew back and forwards like iron nuts and
+splinters of coal.  "Brought him up, then!"  "Got t' hearse for to fetch
+him back?"  "Where's t' owd K-legs?"  "Mon, mon, have thy photograph
+took--'twill mind thee of what thou used to look!"  "He fight?--he's
+nowt but a half-baked doctor!"  "Happen he'll doctor thy Croxley
+Champion afore he's through wi't."
+
+So they flashed at each other as the one side waited and the other
+passed.  Then there came a rolling murmur swelling into a shout, and a
+great brake with four horses came clattering along, all streaming with
+salmon-pink ribbons.  The driver wore a white hat with pink rosette, and
+beside him, on the high seat, were a man and a woman-she with her arm
+round his waist.  Montgomery had one glimpse of them as they flashed
+past; he with a furry cap drawn low over his brow, a great frieze coat
+and a pink comforter round his throat; she brazen, red-headed,
+bright-coloured, laughing excitedly.  The Master, for it was he, turned
+as he passed, gazed hard at Montgomery, and gave him a menacing,
+gap-toothed grin.  It was a hard, wicked face, blue-jowled and craggy,
+with long, obstinate cheeks and inexorable eyes.  The brake behind was
+full of patrons of the sport-flushed iron-foremen, heads of departments,
+managers.  One was drinking from a metal flask, and raised it to
+Montgomery as he passed; and then the crowd thinned, and the Wilson
+cortege with their dragoons swept in at the rear of the others.
+
+The road led away from Croxley, between curving green hills, gashed and
+polluted by the searchers for coal and iron.  The whole country had been
+gutted, and vast piles of refuse and mountains of slag suggested the
+mighty chambers which the labour of man had burrowed beneath.  On the
+left the road curved up to where a huge building, roofless and
+dismantled, stood crumbling and forlorn, with the light shining through
+the windowless squares.
+
+"That's the old Arrowsmith's factory.  That's where the fight is to be,"
+said Wilson.  "How are you feeling now?"
+
+"Thank you, I was never better in my life," Montgomery answered.
+
+"By Gad, I like your nerve!" said Wilson, who was himself flushed and
+uneasy.  "You'll give us a fight for our money, come what may.
+That place on the right is the office, and that has been set aside as
+the dressing and weighing room."
+
+The carriage drove up to it amidst the shouts of the folk upon the
+hillside.  Lines of empty carriages and traps curved down upon the
+winding road, and a black crowd surged round the door of the ruined
+factory.  The seats, as a huge placard announced, were five shillings,
+three shillings, and a shilling, with half-price for dogs.  The takings,
+deducting expenses, were to go to the winner, and it was already evident
+that a larger stake than a hundred pounds was in question.  A babel of
+voices rose from the door, The workers wished to bring their dogs in
+free.  The men scuffled.  The dogs barked.  The crowd was  a whirling,
+eddying pool surging with a roar up to the narrow cleft which was its
+only outlet.
+
+The brake, with its salmon-coloured streamers and four reeking horses,
+stood empty before the door of the office; Wilson, Purvis, Fawcett and
+Montgomery passed in.
+
+There was a large, bare room inside with square, clean patches upon the
+grimy walls, where pictures and almanacs had once hung.  Worn linoleum
+covered the floor, but there was no furniture save some benches and a
+deal table with an ewer and a basin upon it.  Two of the corners were
+curtained off.  In the middle of the room was a weighing-chair.
+A hugely fat man, with a salmon tie and a blue waistcoat with birds'-eye
+spots, came bustling up to them.  It was Armitage, the butcher and
+grazier, well known for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal
+patron of sport in the Riding.  "Well, well," he grunted, in a thick,
+fussy, wheezy voice, "you have come, then.  Got your man?  Got your man?
+
+"Here he is, fit and well.  Mr. Montgomery, let me present you to Mr.
+Armitage."
+
+"Glad to meet you, sir.  Happy to make your acquaintance.  I make bold
+to say, sir, that we of Croxley admire your courage, Mr. Montgomery, and
+that our only hope is a fair fight and no favour, and the best man win.
+That's our sentiments at Croxley."
+
+"And it is my sentiment, also," said the assistant.
+
+"Well, you can't say fairer than that, Mr. Montgomery.  You've taken a
+large contrac' in hand, but a large contrac' may be carried through,
+sir, as anyone that knows my dealings could testify.  The Master is
+ready to weigh in!"
+
+"So am I."
+
+"You must weigh in the buff." Montgomery looked askance at the tall,
+red-headed woman who was standing gazing out of the window.
+
+"That's all right," said Wilson.  "Get behind the curtain and put on
+your fighting kit."
+
+He did so, and came out the picture of an athlete, in white, loose
+drawers, canvas shoes, and the sash of a well-known cricket club round
+his waist.  He was trained to a hair, his skin gleaming like silk, and
+every muscle rippling down his broad shoulders and along his beautiful
+arms as he moved them.  They bunched into ivory knobs, or slid into
+long, sinuous curves, as he raised or lowered his hands.
+
+"What thinkest thou o' that?" asked Ted Barton, his second, of the woman
+in the window.
+
+She glanced contemptuously at the young athlete.  "It's but a poor
+kindness thou dost him to put a thread-paper yoong gentleman like yon
+against a mon as is a mon.  Why, my Jock would throttle him wi' one bond
+lashed behind him."
+
+"Happen he may--happen not," said Barton.  "I have but twa pund in the
+world, but it's on him, every penny, and no hedgin'.  But here's t'
+Maister, and rarely fine he do look."
+
+The prize-fighter had come out from his curtain, a squat, formidable
+figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted
+leg.  His skin bad none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery's,
+but was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled
+black hair which thatched his mighty breast.  His weight bore no
+relation to his strength, for those huge shoulders and great arms, with
+brown, sledge-hammer fists, would have fitted the heaviest man that ever
+threw his cap into a ring.  But his loins and legs were slight in
+proportion.  Montgomery, on the other hand, was as symmetrical as a
+Greek statue.  It would be an encounter between a man who was specially
+fitted for one sport, and one who was equally capable of any.  The two
+looked curiously at each other: a bull-dog, and a high-bred clean-limbed
+terrier, each full of spirit.
+
+"How do you do?"
+
+"How do?" The Master grinned again, and his three jagged front teeth
+gleamed for an instant.  The rest had been beaten out of him in twenty
+years of battle.  He spat upon the floor.  "We have a rare fine day
+for't."
+
+"Capital," said Montgomery.
+
+"That's the good feelin' I like," wheezed the fat butcher.  "Good lads,
+both of them!--prime lads!--hard meat an' good bone.  There's no
+ill-feelin'."
+
+"If he downs me, Gawd bless him!" said the Master,
+
+"An' if we down him, Gawd help him!" interrupted the woman.
+
+"Haud thy tongue, wench!" said the Master, impatiently.  "Who art thou
+to put in thy word?  Happen I might draw my hand across thy face."
+
+The woman did not take the threat amiss.  "Wilt have enough for thy hand
+to do, Jock," said she.  "Get quit o' this gradely man afore thou turn
+on me."
+
+The lovers' quarrel was interrupted by the entrance of a newcomer, a
+gentleman with a fur-collared overcoat and a very shiny top-hat--
+a top-hat of a degree of glossiness which is seldom seen five miles from
+Hyde Park.  This hat he wore at the extreme back of his head, so that
+the lower surface of the brim made a kind of frame for his high, bald
+forehead, his, keen eyes, his rugged and yet kindly face.  He bustled in
+with the quiet air of possession with which the ring master enters the
+circus.
+
+"It's Mr. Stapleton, the referee from London," said Wilson.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Stapleton?  I was introduced to you at the big fight
+at the Corinthian Club in Piccadilly."
+
+"Ah! I dare say," said the other, shaking hands.  "Fact is, I'm
+introduced to so many that I can't undertake to carry their names.
+Wilson, is it?  Well, Mr. Wilson, glad to see you.  Couldn't get a fly
+at the station, and that's why I'm late."
+
+"I'm sure, sir," said Armitage, "we should be proud that anyone so well
+known in the boxing world should come down to our little exhibition."
+
+"Not at all.  Not at all.  Anything in the interests of boxin'.  All
+ready?  Men weighed?"
+
+"Weighing now, sir."
+
+"Ah! Just as well that I should see it done.  Seen you before, Craggs.
+Saw you fight your second battle against Willox.  You had beaten him
+once, but he came back on you.  What does the indicator say--163lbs.--
+two off for the kit--161lbs.  Now, my lad, you jump.  My goodness, what
+colours are you wearing?"
+
+"The Anonymi Cricket Club."
+
+"What right have you to wear them? I belong to the club myself."
+
+"So do I."
+
+"You an amateur?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And you are fighting for a money prize?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I suppose you know what you are doing? You realise that you're a
+professional pug from this onwards, and that if ever you fight again--"
+
+"I'll never fight again."
+
+"Happen you won't," said the woman, and the Master turned a terrible eye
+upon her.
+
+"Well, I suppose you know your own business best.  Up you jump.  One
+hundred and fifty-one, minus two, 149--12lbs. difference, but youth and
+condition on the other scale.  Well, the sooner we get to work the
+better, for I wish to catch the seven o'clock express at Hellifield.
+Twenty three-minute rounds, with one-minute intervals, and Queensberry
+rules.  Those are the conditions, are they not?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Very good, then--we may go across."
+
+The two combatants had overcoats thrown over their shoulders, and the
+whole party, backers, fighters, seconds, and the referee filed out of
+the room.  A police inspector was waiting for them in the road.  He had
+a note-book in his hand--that terrible weapon  which awes even the
+London cabman.
+
+"I must take your names, gentlemen, in case it should be necessary to
+proceed for breach of peace."
+
+"You don't mean to stop the fight?" cried Armitage, in a passion of
+indignation.  "I'm Mr. Armitage, of Croxley, and this is Mr. Wilson, and
+we'll be responsible that all is fair and as it should be."
+
+"I'll take the names in case it should be necessary to proceed," said
+the inspector, impassively.
+
+"But you know me well."
+
+"If you was a dook or even a judge it would be all' the same," said the
+inspector.  "It's the law, and there's an end.  I'll not take upon
+myself to stop the fight, seeing that gloves are to be used, but I'll
+take the names of all concerned.  Silas Craggs, Robert Montgomery,
+Edward Barton, James Stapleton, of London.  Who seconds Silas Craggs?"
+
+"I do," said the woman.  "Yes, you can stare, but it's my job, and no
+one else's.  Anastasia's the name--four a's."
+
+"Craggs?"
+
+"Johnson--Anastasia Johnson.  If you jug him you can jug me."
+
+"Who talked of juggin', ye fool?" growled the Master.  "Coom on, Mr.
+Armitage, for I'm fair sick o' this loiterin'."
+
+The inspector fell in with the procession, and proceeded, as they walked
+up the hill, to bargain in his official capacity for a front seat, where
+he could safeguard the interests of the law, and in his private
+capacity to lay out thirty shillings at seven to one with Mr. Armitage.
+Through the door they passed, down a narrow lane walled with a dense
+bank of humanity, up a wooden ladder to a platform, over a rope which
+was slung waist-high from four corner-stakes, and then Montgomery
+realised that he was in that ring in which his immediate destiny was to
+be worked out.  On the stake at one corner there hung a blue-and-white
+streamer.  Barton led him across, the overcoat dangling loosely from his
+shoulders, and he sat down on a wooden stool.  Barton and another man,
+both wearing white sweaters, stood beside him.  The so-called ring was a
+square, twenty feet each way.  At the opposite angle was the sinister
+figure of the Master, with his red-headed woman and a rough-faced friend
+to look after him.  At each corner were metal basins, pitchers of water,
+and sponges.
+
+During the hubbub and uproar of the entrance Montgomery was too
+bewildered to take things in.  But now there was a few minutes' delay,
+for the referee had lingered behind, and so he looked quietly about him.
+It was a sight to haunt him for a lifetime.  Wooden seats had been built
+in, sloping upwards to the tops of the walls.  Above, instead of a
+ceiling, a great flight of crows passed slowly across a square of grey
+cloud.  Right up to the topmost benches the folk were banked--broadcloth
+in front, corduroys and fustian behind; faces turned everywhere upon
+him.  The grey reek of the pipes filled the building, and the air was
+pungent with the acrid smell of cheap, strong tobacco.  Everywhere among
+the human faces were to be seen the heads of the dogs.  They growled and
+yapped from the back benches.  In that dense mass of humanity, one could
+hardly pick out individuals, but Montgomery's eyes caught the brazen
+gleam of the helmets held upon the knees of the ten yeomen of his
+escort.  At the very edge of the platform sat the reporters, five of
+them--three locals and two all the way from London.  But where was the
+all-important referee?  There was no sign of him, unless he were in the
+centre of that angry swirl of men near the door.
+
+Mr. Stapleton had stopped to examine the gloves which wore to be used,
+and entered the building after the combatants.  He had started to come
+down that narrow lane with the human walls which led to the ring.
+But already it had gone abroad that the Wilson champion was a gentleman,
+and that another gentleman had been appointed as referee.  A wave of
+suspicion passed through the Croxley folk.  They would have one of their
+own people for a referee.  They would not have a stranger.  His path was
+stopped as he made for the ring.  Excited men flung themselves in front
+of him; they waved their fists in his face and cursed him.  A woman
+howled vile names in his ear.  Somebody struck at him with an umbrella.
+"Go thou back to Lunnon.  We want noan o' thee.  Go thou back!" they
+yelled.
+
+Stapleton, with his shiny hat cocked backwards, and his large, bulging
+forehead swelling from under it, looked round him from beneath his bushy
+brows.  He was in the centre of a savage and dangerous mob.  Then he
+drew his watch from his pocket and held it dial upwards in his palm.
+
+"In three minutes," said he, "I will declare the fight off."
+
+They raged round him.  His cool face and that aggressive top-hat
+irritated them.  Grimy hands were raised.  But it was difficult,
+somehow, to strike a man who was so absolutely indifferent.
+
+"In two minutes I declare the fight off."
+
+They exploded into blasphemy.  The breath of angry men smoked into his
+placid face.  A gnarled, grimy fist vibrated at the end of his nose.
+"We tell thee we want noan o' thee.  Get thou back where thou com'st
+from."
+
+"In one minute I declare the fight off."
+
+Then the calm persistence of the man conquered the swaying, mutable,
+passionate crowd.
+
+"Let him through, mon.  Happen there'll be no fight after a'."
+
+"Let him through."
+
+"Bill, thou loomp, let him pass.  Dost want the fight declared off?"
+
+"Make room for the referee!--room for the Lunnon referee!"
+
+And half pushed, half carried, he was swept up to the ring.  There were
+two chairs by the side of it, one for him and one for the timekeeper.
+He sat down, his hands on his knees, his hat at a more wonderful angle
+than ever, impassive but solemn, with the aspect of one who appreciates
+his responsibilities.
+
+Mr. Armitage, the portly butcher, made his way into the ring and held up
+two fat hands, sparkling with rings, as a signal for silence.
+
+"Gentlemen!" he yelled.  And then in a crescendo shriek, "Gentlemen!"
+
+"And ladies!" cried somebody, for, indeed, there was a fair sprinkling
+of women among the crowd.  "Speak up, owd man!" shouted another.  "What
+price pork chops?" cried somebody at the back.  Everybody laughed, and
+the dogs began to bark.  Armitage waved his hands amidst the uproar as
+if he were conducting an orchestra.  At last the babel thinned into
+silence.
+
+"Gentlemen," he yelled, "the match is between Silas Craggs, whom we
+call the Master of Croxley, and Robert Montgomery, of the Wilson
+Coal-pits.  The match was to be under eleven-eight.  When they were
+weighed just now, Craggs weighed eleven-seven, and Montgomery ten-nine.
+The conditions of the contest are--the best of twenty three-minute
+rounds with two-ounce gloves.  Should the fight run to its full length,
+it will, of course, be decided upon points.  Mr. Stapleton, the
+well-known London referee, has kindly consented to see fair play.
+I wish to say that Mr. Wilson and I, the chief backers of the two men,
+have every confidence in Mr. Stapleton, and that we beg that you will
+accept his rulings without dispute."
+
+He then turned from one combatant to the other, with a wave of his hand.
+
+
+
+                             III
+
+
+"Montgomery--Craggs!" said he.
+
+A great hush fell over the huge assembly.  Even the dogs stopped
+yapping; one might have thought that the monstrous room was empty.
+The two men had stood up, the small white gloves over their hands
+They advanced from their corners and shook hands, Montgomery gravely,
+Craggs with a smile.  Then they fell into position.  The crowd gave a
+long sigh--the intake of a thousand excited breaths.  The referee tilted
+his chair on to its back legs, and looked moodily critical from the one
+to the other.
+
+It was strength against activity--that was evident from the first.
+The Master stood stolidly upon his K leg.  It gave him a tremendous
+pedestal; one could hardly imagine his being knocked down.  And he could
+pivot round upon it with extraordinary quickness; but his advance or
+retreat was ungainly.  His frame, however, was so much larger and
+broader than that of the student, and his brown, massive face looked so
+resolute and menacing that the hearts of the Wilson party sank within
+them.  There was one heart, however, which had not done so.  It was that
+of Robert Montgomery.
+
+Any nervousness which he may have had completely passed away now that he
+had his work before him.  Here was something definite--this hard-faced,
+deformed Hercules to beat, with a career as the price of beating him.
+He glowed with the joy of action;  it thrilled through his nerves.
+He faced his man with little in-and-out steps, breaking to the left,
+breaking to the right, feeling his way, while Craggs, with a dull,
+malignant eye, pivoted slowly upon his weak leg, his left arm half
+extended, his right sunk low across the mark.  Montgomery led with his
+left, and then led again, getting lightly home each time.  He tried
+again, but the Master had his counter ready, and Montgomery reeled back
+from a harder blow than he had given.  Anastasia, the woman, gave a
+shrill cry of encouragement, and her man let fly his right.  Montgomery
+ducked under it, and in an instant the two were in each other's arms.
+
+"Break away! Break away!" said the referee.
+
+The Master struck upwards on the break, and shook Montgomery with the
+blow.  Then it was "time."  It had been a spirited opening round.
+The people buzzed into comment and applause.  Montgomery was quite
+fresh, but the hairy chest of the Master was rising and falling.
+The man passed a sponge over his head while Anastasia flapped the towel
+before him.  "Good lass! good lass!" cried the crowd, and cheered her.
+
+The men were up again, the Master grimly watchful, Montgomery as alert
+as a kitten.  The Master tried a sudden rush, squattering along with his
+awkward gait, but coming faster than one would think.  The student
+slipped aside and avoided him.  The Master stopped, grinned, and shook
+his head.  Then he motioned with his hand as an invitation to
+Montgomery to come to him.  The student did so and led with his left,
+but got a swinging right counter in the ribs in exchange.  The heavy
+blow staggered him, and the Master came scrambling in to complete his
+advantage; but Montgomery, with his greater activity, kept out of danger
+until the call of "time."  A tame round, and the advantage with the
+Master.
+
+"T' Maister's too strong for him," said a smelter to his neighbour.
+
+"Ay; but t'other's a likely lad.  Happen we'll see some sport yet.
+He can joomp rarely."
+
+"But t' Maister can stop and hit rarely.  Happen he'll mak' him joomp
+when he gets his nief upon him."
+
+They were up again, the water glistening upon their faces.  Montgomery
+led instantly, and got his right home with a sounding smack upon the
+master's forehead.  There was a shout from the colliers, and "Silence!
+Order!" from the referee.  Montgomery avoided the counter, and scored
+with his left.  Fresh applause, and the referee upon his feet in
+indignation..
+
+"No comments, gentlemen, if _you_ please, during the rounds."
+
+"Just bide a bit!" growled the Master.
+
+"Don't talk--fight!" said the referee, angrily.
+
+Montgomery rubbed in the point by a flush hit upon the mouth, and the
+Master shambled back to his corner like an angry bear, having had all
+the worst of the round.
+
+"Where's thot seven to one?" shouted Purvis, the publican.  "I'll take
+six to one!"
+
+There were no answers.
+
+"Five to one!"
+
+There were givers at that.  Purvis booked them in a tattered notebook.
+
+Montgomery began to feel happy.  He lay back with his legs outstretched,
+his back against the corner-post, and one gloved hand upon each rope.
+What a delicious minute it was between each round.  If he could only
+keep out of harm's way, he must surely wear this man out before the end
+of twenty rounds.  He was so slow that all his strength went for
+nothing.
+
+"You're fightin' a winnin' fight--a winnin' fight," Ted Barton whispered
+in his ear.  "Go canny; tak' no chances; you have him proper."
+
+But the Master was crafty.  He had fought so many battles with his
+maimed limb that he knew how to make the best of it.  Warily and slowly
+he manoeuvred round Montgomery, stepping forward and yet again forward
+until he had imperceptibly backed him into his corner.  The student
+suddenly saw a flash of triumph upon the grim face, and a gleam in the
+dull, malignant eyes.  The Master was upon him.  He sprang aside and was
+on the ropes.  The Master smashed in one of his terrible upper-cuts, and
+Montgomery half broke it with his guard.  The student sprang the other
+way and was against the other converging rope.  He was trapped in the
+angle.  The Master sent in another with a hoggish grunt which spoke of
+the energy behind it.  Montgomery ducked, but got a jab from the left
+upon the mark.  He closed with his man.
+
+"Break away!  Break away!" cried the referee.  Montgomery disengaged,
+and got a swinging blow on the ear as he did so.  It had been a damaging
+round for him, and the Croxley people were shouting their delight.
+"Gentlemen, I will _not_ have this noise!" Stapleton roared.  "I have
+been accustomed to preside at a well-conducted club, and not at a
+bear-garden."  This little man, with the tilted hat and the bulging
+forehead, dominated the whole assembly.  He was like a head-master among
+his boys.  He glared round him, and nobody cared to meet his eye.
+Anastasia had kissed the Master when he resumed his seat.
+
+"Good lass.  Do't again!" cried the laughing crowd, and the angry Master
+shook his glove at her, as she flapped her towel in front of him.
+Montgomery was weary and a little sore, but not depressed.  He had
+learned something.  He would not again be tempted into danger.
+
+For three rounds the honours were fairly equal.  The student's hitting
+was the quicker, the Master's the harder.  Profiting by his lesson,
+Montgomery kept himself in the open, and refused to be herded into a
+corner.  Sometimes the Master succeeded in rushing him to the
+side-ropes, but the younger man slipped away, or closed and then
+disengaged.  The monotonous "Break away!  Break away!" of the referee
+broke in upon the quick, low patter of rubber-soled shoes, the dull thud
+of the blows, and the sharp, hissing breath of two tired men.
+
+The ninth round found both of them in fairly good condition.
+Montgomery's head was still singing from the blow that he had in the
+corner, and one of his thumbs pained him acutely and seemed to be
+dislocated.  The Master showed no sign of a touch, but his breathing was
+the more laboured, and a long line of ticks upon the referee's paper
+showed that the student had a good show of points. But one of this
+iron-man's blows was worth three of his, and he knew that without the
+gloves he could not have stood for three rounds against him.  All the
+amateur work that he had done was the merest tapping and flapping when
+compared to those frightful blows, from arms toughened by the shovel and
+the crowbar.
+
+It was the tenth round, and the fight was half over.  The betting now
+was only three to one, for the Wilson champion had held his own much
+better than had been expected.  But those who knew the ring-craft as
+well as the staying power of the old prize-fighter knew that the odds
+were still a long way in his favour.
+
+"Have a care of him!" whispered Barton, as he sent his man up to the
+scratch.  "Have a care!  He'll play thee a trick, if he can."
+
+But Montgomery saw, or imagined he saw, that his antagonist was tiring.
+He looked jaded and listless, and his hands drooped a little from their
+position.  His own youth and condition were beginning to tell.
+He sprang in and brought off a fine left-handed lead.  The Master's
+return lacked his usual fire.  Again Montgomery led, and again he got
+home.  Then he tried his right upon the mark, and the Master guarded it
+downwards.
+
+"Too low! Too low! A foul! A foul!" yelled a thousand voices.
+
+The referee rolled his sardonic eyes slowly round.  "Seems to me this
+buildin' is chock-full of referees," said he.  The people laughed and
+applauded, but their favour was as immaterial to him as their anger.
+"No applause, please! This is not a theatre!" he yelled.
+
+Montgomery was very pleased with himself.  His adversary was evidently
+in a bad way.  He was piling on his points and establishing a lead.
+He might as well make hay while the sun shone.  The Master was looking
+all abroad.  Montgomery popped one upon his blue jowl and got away
+without a return.  And then the Master suddenly dropped both his hands
+and began rubbing his thigh.  Ah! that was it, was it?  He had muscular
+cramp.
+
+"Go in! Go in!" cried Teddy Barton.
+
+Montgomery sprang wildly forward, and the next instant was lying half
+senseless, with his neck nearly broken, in the middle of the ring.
+
+The whole round had been a long conspiracy to tempt him within reach of
+one of those terrible right-hand upper-cuts for which the Master was
+famous.  For this the listless, weary bearing, for this the cramp in the
+thigh.  When Montgomery had sprung in so hotly he had exposed himself to
+such a blow as neither flesh nor blood could stand.  Whizzing up from
+below with a rigid arm, which put the Master's eleven stone into its
+force, it struck him under the jaw; he whirled half round, and fell a
+helpless and half-paralysed mass.  A vague groan and murmur,
+inarticulate, too excited for words, rose from the great audience.
+With open mouths and staring eyes they gazed at the twitching and
+quivering figure.
+
+"Stand back!  Stand right back!" shrieked the referee, for the Master
+was standing over his man ready to give him the _coup-de-grace_ as he
+rose.
+
+"Stand back, Craggs, this instant!" Stapleton repeated.
+
+The Master sank his hands sulkily and walked backwards to the rope with
+his ferocious eyes fixed upon his fallen antagonist.  The timekeeper
+called the seconds.  If ten of them passed before Montgomery rose to his
+feet, the fight was ended.  Ted Barton wrung his hands and danced about
+in an agony in his corner.
+
+As if in a dream--a terrible nightmare--the student could hear the voice
+of the timekeeper--three--four--five--he got up on his hand--six--
+seven--he was on his knee, sick, swimming, faint, but resolute to rise.
+Eight--he was up, and the Master was on him like a tiger, lashing
+savagely at him with both hands.  Folk held their breath as they watched
+those terrible blows, and anticipated the pitiful end--so much more
+pitiful where a game but helpless man refuses to accept defeat.
+
+Strangely automatic is the human brain.  Without volition, without
+effort, there shot into the memory of this bewildered, staggering,
+half-stupefied man the one thing which could have saved him--that blind
+eye of which the Master's son had spoken.  It was the same as the other
+to look at, but Montgomery remembered that he had said that it was the
+left.  He reeled to the left side, half felled by a drive which lit upon
+his shoulder.  The Master pivoted round upon his leg and was at him in
+an instant.
+
+"Yark him, lad! Yark him!" screamed the woman.
+
+"Hold your tongue!" said the referee.
+
+Montgomery slipped to the left again and yet again, but the Master was
+too quick and clever for him.  He struck round and got him full on the
+face as he tried once more to break away.  Montgomery's knees weakened
+under him, and he fell with a groan on the floor.  This time he knew
+that he was done.  With bitter agony he realised, as he groped blindly
+with his hands, that he could not possibly raise himself.  Far away and
+muffled he heard, amid the murmurs of the multitude, the fateful voice
+of the timekeeper counting off the seconds.
+
+"One--two--three--four--five--six--"
+
+"Time!" said the referee.
+
+Then the pent-up passion of the great assembly broke loose.  Croxley
+gave a deep groan of disappointment.  The Wilsons were on their feet,
+yelling with delight.  There was still a chance for them.  In four more
+seconds their man would have been solemnly counted out.  But now he had
+a minute in which to recover.  The referee looked round with relaxed
+features and laughing eyes.  He loved this rough game, this school for
+humble heroes, and it was pleasant to him to intervene as a _Deus ex
+machina_ at so dramatic a moment.  His chair and his hat were both
+tilted at an extreme angle; he and the timekeeper smiled at each other.
+Ted Barton and the other second had rushed out and thrust an arm each
+under Montgomery's knee, the other behind his loins, and so carried him
+back to his stool.  His head lolled upon his shoulder, but a douche of
+cold water sent a shiver through him, and he started and looked round
+him.
+
+"He's a' right!" cried the people round.  "He's a rare brave lad.
+Good lad!  Good lad!"  Barton poured some brandy into his mouth.
+The mists cleared a little, and he realised where he was and what he had
+to do.  But he was still very weak, and he hardly dared to hope that he
+could survive another round.
+
+"Seconds out of the ring!" cried the referee.  "Time!"
+
+The Croxley Master sprang eagerly off his stool.
+
+"Keep clear of him! Go easy for a bit," said Barton, and Montgomery
+walked out to meet his man once more.
+
+He had had two lessons--the one when the Master got him into his corner,
+the other when he had been lured into mixing it up with so powerful an
+antagonist.  Now he would be wary.  Another blow would finish him; he
+could afford to run no risks.  The Master was determined to follow up
+his advantage, and rushed at him, slogging furiously right and left.
+But Montgomery was too young and active to be caught.  He was strong
+upon his legs once more, and his wits had all come back to him.  It was
+a gallant sight--the line-of-battleship trying to pour its overwhelming
+broadside into the frigate, and the frigate manoeuvring always so as to
+avoid it.  The Master tried all his ring-craft.  He coaxed the student
+up by pretended inactivity; he rushed at him with furious rushes
+towards the ropes.  For three rounds he exhausted every wile in trying
+to get at him.  Montgomery during all this time was conscious that his
+strength was minute by minute coming back to him.  The spinal jar from
+an upper-cut is overwhelming, but evanescent.  He was losing all sense
+of it beyond a great stiffness of the neck.  For the first round after
+his downfall he had been content to be entirely on the defensive, only
+too happy if he could stall off the furious attacks of the Master.
+In the second he occasionally ventured upon a light counter.  In the
+third he was smacking back merrily where he saw an opening.  His people
+yelled their approval of him at the end of every round.  Even the
+iron-workers cheered him with that fine unselfishness which true sport
+engenders.  To most of them, unspiritual and unimaginative, the sight of
+this clean-limbed young Apollo, rising above disaster and holding on
+while consciousness was in him to his appointed task, was the greatest
+thing their experience had ever known.
+
+But the Master's naturally morose temper became more and more murderous
+at this postponement of his hopes.  Three rounds ago the battle had been
+in his hands; now it was all to do over again.  Round by round his man
+was recovering his strength.  By the fifteenth he was strong again in
+wind and limb.  But the vigilant Anastasia saw something which
+encouraged her.
+
+"That bash in t' ribs is telling on him, Jock," she whispered.
+"Why else should he be gulping t' brandy?  Go in, lad, and thou hast him
+yet."
+
+Montgomery had suddenly taken the flask from Barton's hand, and had a
+deep pull at the contents.  Then, with his face a little flushed, and
+with a curious look of purpose, which made the referee stare hard at
+him, in his eyes, he rose for the sixteenth round.
+
+"Game as a pairtridge!" cried the publican, as he looked at the hard-set
+face.
+
+"Mix it oop, lad!  Mix it oop!" cried the iron-men to their Master.
+And then a hum of exultation ran through their ranks as they realised
+that their tougher, harder, stronger man held the vantage, after all.
+Neither of the men showed much sign of punishment.  Small gloves crush
+and numb, but they do not cut.  One of the Master's eyes was even more
+flush with his cheek than Nature had made it.  Montgomery had two or
+three livid marks upon his body, and his face was haggard, save for that
+pink spot which the brandy had brought into either cheek.  He rocked a
+little as he stood opposite his man, and his hands drooped as if he felt
+the gloves to be an unutterable weight.  It was evident that he was
+spent and desperately weary.  If he received one other blow it must
+surely be fatal to him.  If he brought one home, what power could there
+be behind it, and what chance was there of its harming the colossus in
+front of him?  It was the crisis of the fight.  This round must decide
+it.  "Mix it oop, lad!  Mix it oop!" the iron-men whooped.  Even the
+savage eyes of the referee were unable to restrain the excited crowd.
+
+Now, at last, the chance had come for Montgomery.  He had learned a
+lesson from his more experienced rival.  Why should he not play his own
+game upon him?  He was spent, but not nearly so spent as he pretended.
+That brandy was to call up his reserves, to let him have strength to
+take full advantage of the opening when it came.  It was thrilling and
+tingling through his veins at the very moment when he was lurching and
+rocking like a beaten man.  He acted his part admirably.  The Master
+felt that there was an easy task before him, and rushed in with ungainly
+activity to finish it once for all.  He slap-banged away left and right,
+boring Montgomery up against the ropes, swinging in his ferocious blows
+with those animal grunts which told of the vicious energy behind them.
+
+But Montgomery was too cool to fall a victim to any of those murderous
+upper-cuts.  He kept out of harm's way with a rigid guard, an active
+foot, and a head which was swift to duck.  And yet he contrived to
+present the same appearance of a man who is hopelessly done.  The
+Master, weary from his own shower of blows, and fearing nothing from so
+weak a man, dropped his hand for an instant, and at that instant
+Montgomery's right came home.
+
+It was a magnificent blow, straight, clean, crisp, with the force of the
+loins and the back behind it.  And it landed where he had meant it to--
+upon the exact point of that blue-grained chin.  Flesh and blood could
+not stand such a blow in such a place.  Neither valour nor hardihood can
+save the man to whom it comes.  The Master fell backwards, flat,
+prostrate, striking the ground with so simultaneous a clap that it was
+like a shutter falling from a wall.  A yell, which no referee could
+control, broke from the crowded benches as the giant went down.  He lay
+upon his back, his knees a little drawn up, his huge chest panting.
+He twitched and shook, but could not move.  His feet pawed convulsively
+once or twice.  It was no use.  He was done.  "Eight--nine--ten!" said
+the time-keeper, and the roar of a thousand voices, with a deafening
+clap like the broad-side of a ship, told that the Master of Croxley was
+the Master no more.
+
+Montgomery stood half dazed, looking down at the huge, prostrate figure.
+He could hardly realise that it was indeed all over.  He saw the referee
+motion towards him with his hand.  He heard his name bellowed in triumph
+from every side.  And then he was aware of someone rushing towards him;
+he caught a glimpse of a flushed face and an aureole of flying red hair,
+a gloveless fist struck him between the eyes, and he was on his back in
+the ring beside his antagonist, while a dozen of his supporters were
+endeavouring to secure the frantic Anastasia.  He heard the angry
+shouting of the referee, the screaming of the furious woman, and the
+cries of the mob.  Then something seemed to break like an over-stretched
+banjo string, and he sank into the deep, deep, mist-girt abyss of
+unconsciousness.
+
+The dressing was like a thing in a dream, and so was a vision of the
+Master with the grin of a bulldog upon his face, and his three teeth
+amiably protruded.  He shook Montgomery heartily by the hand.
+
+"I would have been rare pleased to shake thee by the throttle, lad, a
+short while syne," said he.  "But I bear no ill-feeling again' thee.
+It was a rare poonch that brought me down--I have not had a better
+since my second fight wi' Billy Edwards in '89. Happen thou might think
+o' goin' further wi' this business.  If thou dost, and want a trainer,
+there's not much inside t' ropes as I don't know.  Or happen thou might
+like to try it wi' me old style and bare knuckles.  Thou hast but to
+write to t' ironworks to find me."
+
+But Montgomery disclaimed any such ambition.  A canvas bag with his
+share--190 sovereigns--was handed to him, of which he gave ten to the
+Master, who also received some share of the gate-money.  Then, with
+young Wilson escorting him on one side, Purvis on the other, and Fawcett
+carrying his bag behind, he went in triumph to his carriage, and drove
+amid a long roar, which lined the highway like a hedge for the seven
+miles, back to his starting-point.
+
+"It's the greatest thing I ever saw in my life.  By George, it's
+ripping!" cried Wilson, who had been left in a kind of ecstasy by the
+events of the day.  "There's a chap over Barnsley way who fancies
+himself a bit.  Let us spring you on him, and let him see what he can
+make of you.  We'll put up a purse--won't we, Purvis? You shall never
+want a backer."
+
+"At his weight," said the publican, "I'm behind him, I am, for twenty
+rounds, and no age, country, or colour barred."
+
+"So am I," cried Fawcett; "middle-weight champion of the world, that's
+what he is--here, in the same carriage with us."
+
+But Montgomery was not to be beguiled.
+
+"No; I have my own work to do now."
+
+"And what may that be?"
+
+"I'll use this money to get my medical degree."
+
+"Well, we've plenty of doctors, but you're the only man in the Riding
+that could smack the Croxley Master off his legs.  However, I suppose
+you know your own business best.  When you're a doctor, you'd best come
+down into these parts, and you'll always find a job waiting for you at
+the Wilson Coal-pits."
+
+Montgomery had returned by devious ways to the surgery.  The horses were
+smoking at the door, and the doctor was just back from his long journey.
+Several patients had called in his absence, and he was in the worst of
+tempers.
+
+"I suppose I should be glad that you have come back at all,
+Mr. Montgomery!" he snarled.  "When next you elect to take a holiday, I
+trust it will not be at so busy a time."
+
+"I am sorry, sir, that you should have been inconvenienced."
+
+"Yes, sir, I have been exceedingly inconvenienced." Here, for the first
+time, he looked hard at the assistant.  "Good Heavens, Mr. Montgomery,
+what have you been doing with your left eye?"
+
+It was where Anastasia had lodged her protest.  Montgomery laughed.
+
+"It is nothing, sir," said he.
+
+"And you have a livid mark under your jaw.  It is, indeed, terrible that
+my representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition.
+How did you receive these injuries?"
+
+"Well, sir, as you know, there was a little glove-fight to-day over at
+Croxley."
+
+"And you got mixed up with that brutal crowd?"
+
+"I _was_ rather mixed up with them."
+
+"And who assaulted you?"
+
+"One of the fighters."
+
+"Which of them?"
+
+"The Master of Croxley."
+
+"Good Heavens!  Perhaps you interfered with him?"
+
+"Well, to tell the truth, I did a little."
+
+"Mr. Montgomery, in such a practice as mine, intimately associated as it
+is with the highest and most progressive elements of our small
+community, it is impossible--"
+
+But just then the tentative bray of a cornet-player searching for his
+key-note jarred upon their ears, and an instant later the Wilson
+Colliery brass band was in full cry with, "See the Conquering Hero
+Comes," outside the surgery window.  There was a banner waving, and a
+shouting crowd of miners.
+
+"What is it?  What does it mean?" cried the angry doctor.
+
+"It means, sir, that I have, in the only way which was open to me,
+earned the money which is necessary for my education.  It is my duty,
+Dr. Oldacre, to warn you that I am about to return to the University,
+and that you should lose no time in appointing my successor."
+
+
+
+THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR
+
+It was in the days when the German armies had broken their way across
+France, and when the shattered forces of the young Republic had been
+swept away to the north of the Aisne and to the south of the Loire.
+Three broad streams of armed men had rolled slowly but irresistibly from
+the Rhine, now meandering to the north, now to the south, dividing,
+coalescing, but all uniting to form one great lake round Paris.  And
+from this lake there welled out smaller streams--one to the north, one
+southward, to Orleans, and a third westward to Normandy.  Many a German
+trooper saw the sea for the first time when he rode his horse girth-deep
+into the waves at Dieppe.
+
+Black and bitter were the thoughts of Frenchmen when they saw this weal
+of dishonour slashed across the fair face of their country.  They had
+fought and they had been overborne.  That swarming cavalry, those
+countless footmen, the masterful guns--they had tried and tried to make
+head against them.  In battalions their invaders were not to be beaten,
+but man to man, or ten to ten, they were their equals.  A brave
+Frenchman might still make a single German rue the day that he had left
+his own bank of the Rhine.  Thus, unchronicled amid the battles and the
+sieges, there broke out another war, a war of individuals, with foul
+murder upon the one side and brutal reprisal on the other.
+
+Colonel von Gramm, of the 24th Posen Infantry, had suffered severely
+during this new development.  He commanded in the little Norman town of
+Les Andelys, and his outposts stretched amid the hamlets and farmhouses
+of the district round.  No French force was within fifty miles of him,
+and yet morning after morning he had to listen to a black report of
+sentries found dead at their posts, or of foraging parties which had
+never returned.  Then the colonel would go forth in his wrath, and
+farmsteadings would blaze and villages tremble; but next morning there
+was still that same dismal tale to be told.  Do what he might, he could
+not shake off his invisible enemies.  And yet it should not have been so
+hard, for, from certain signs in common, in the plan and in the deed, it
+was certain that all these outrages came from a single source.
+
+Colonel von Gramm had tried violence, and it had failed.  Gold might be
+more successful.  He published it abroad over the countryside that
+500frs.  would be paid for information.  There was no response.  Then
+800frs.  The peasants were incorruptible.  Then, goaded on by a murdered
+corporal, he rose to a thousand, and so bought the soul of Francois
+Rejane, farm labourer, whose Norman avarice was a stronger passion than
+his French hatred.
+
+"You say that you know who did these crimes?" asked the Prussian
+colonel, eyeing with loathing the blue-bloused, rat-faced creature
+before him.
+
+"Yes, colonel."
+
+"And it was--?"
+
+"Those thousand francs, colonel--"
+
+"Not a sou until your story has been tested.  Come!  Who is it who has
+murdered my men?"
+
+"It is Count Eustace of Chateau Noir."
+
+"You lie!" cried the colonel, angrily.  "A gentleman and a nobleman
+could not have done such crimes."
+
+The peasant shrugged his shoulders.  "It is evident to me that you do
+not know the count.  It is this way, colonel.  What I tell you is the
+truth, and I am not afraid that you should test it.  The Count of
+Chateau Noir is a hard man, even at the best time he was a hard man.
+But of late he has been terrible.  It was his son's death, you know.
+His son was under Douay, and he was taken, and then in escaping from
+Germany he met his death.  It was the count's only child, and indeed we
+all think that it has driven him mad.  With his peasants he follows the
+German armies.  I do not know how many he has killed, but it is he who
+cut the cross upon the foreheads, for it is the badge of his house."
+
+It was true.  The murdered sentries had each had a saltire cross slashed
+across their brows, as by a hunting-knife.  The colonel bent his stiff
+back and ran his forefinger over the map which lay upon the table.
+
+"The Chateau Noir is not more than four leagues," he said.
+
+"Three and a kilometre, colonel."
+
+"You know the place?"
+
+"I used to work there."
+
+Colonel von Gramm rang the bell.
+
+"Give this man food and detain him," said he to the sergeant.
+
+"Why detain me, colonel? I can tell you no more."
+
+"We shall need you as guide."
+
+"As guide?  But the count?  If I were to fall into his hands?
+Ah, colonel--"
+
+The Prussian commander waved him away.  "Send Captain Baumgarten to me
+at once," said he.
+
+The officer who answered the summons was a man of middle-age,
+heavy-jawed, blue-eyed, with a curving yellow moustache, and a brick-red
+face which turned to an ivory white where his helmet had sheltered it.
+He was bald, with a shining, tightly stretched scalp, at the back of
+which, as in a mirror, it was a favourite mess-joke of the subalterns to
+trim their moustaches.  As a soldier he was slow, but reliable and
+brave.  The colonel could trust him where a more dashing officer might
+be in danger.
+
+"You will proceed to Chateau Noir to-night, captain," said he.  "A guide
+has been provided.  You will arrest the count and bring him back.
+If there is an attempt at rescue, shoot him at once."
+
+"How many men shall I take, colonel?"
+
+"Well, we are surrounded by spies, and our only chance is to pounce upon
+him before he knows that we are on the way.  A large force will attract
+attention.  On the other hand, you must not risk being cut off."
+
+"I might march north, colonel, as if to join General Goeben.  Then I
+could turn down this road which I see upon your map, and get to Chateau
+Noir before they could hear of us.  In that case, with twenty men--"
+
+"Very good, captain.  I hope to see you with your prisoner to-morrow
+morning."
+
+It was a cold December night when Captain Baumgarten marched out of Les
+Andelys with his twenty Poseners, and took the main road to the north
+west.  Two miles out he turned suddenly down a narrow, deeply rutted
+track, and made swiftly for his man.  A thin, cold rain was falling,
+swishing among the tall poplar trees and rustling in the fields on
+either side.  The captain walked first with Moser, a veteran sergeant,
+beside him.  The sergeant's wrist was fastened to that of the French
+peasant, and it had been whispered in his ear that in case of an
+ambush the first bullet fired would be through his head.  Behind them
+the twenty infantrymen plodded along through the darkness with their
+faces sunk to the rain, and their boots squeaking in the soft, wet clay.
+They knew where they were going, and why, and the thought upheld them,
+for they were bitter at the loss of their comrades.  It was a cavalry
+job, they knew, but the cavalry were all on with the advance, and,
+besides, it was more fitting that the regiment should avenge its own
+dead men.
+
+It was nearly eight when they left Les Andelys.  At half-past eleven
+their guide stopped at a place where two high pillars, crowned with some
+heraldic stonework, flanked a huge iron gate.  The wall in which it had
+been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered
+above the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base.  The
+Prussians made their way round it and advanced stealthily, under the
+shadow of a tunnel of oak branches, up the long avenue, which was still
+cumbered by the leaves of last autumn.  At the top they halted and
+reconnoitred.
+
+The black chateau lay in front of them.  The moon had shone out between
+two rain-clouds, and threw the old house into silver and shadow.  It was
+shaped like an L, with a low arched door in front, and lines of small
+windows like the open ports of a man-of-war.  Above was a dark roof,
+breaking at the corners into little round overhanging turrets, the whole
+lying silent in the moonshine, with a drift of ragged clouds blackening
+the heavens behind it.  A single light gleamed in one of the lower
+windows.
+
+The captain whispered his orders to his men.  Some were to creep to the
+front door, some to the back.  Some were to watch the east, and some the
+west.  He and the sergeant stole on tiptoe to the lighted window.
+
+It was a small room into which they looked, very meanly furnished.
+An elderly man, in the dress of a menial, was reading a tattered paper
+by the light of a guttering candle.  He leaned back in his wooden chair
+with his feet upon a box, while a bottle of white wine stood with a
+half-filled tumbler upon a stool beside him.  The sergeant thrust his
+needle-gun through the glass, and the man sprang to his feet with a
+shriek.
+
+"Silence, for your life!  The house is surrounded, and you cannot
+escape.  Come round and open the door, or we will show you no mercy when
+we come in."
+
+"For God's sake, don't shoot!  I will open it!  I will open it!"
+He rushed from the room with his paper still crumpled up in his hand.
+An instant later, with a groaning of old locks and a rasping of bars,
+the low door swung open, and the Prussians poured into the stone-flagged
+passage.
+
+"Where is Count Eustace de Chateau Noir?"
+
+"My master!  He is out, sir."
+
+"Out at this time of night?  Your life for a lie!"
+
+"It is true, sir.  He is out!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"Doing what?"
+
+"I cannot tell.  No, it is no use your cocking your pistol, sir.  You
+may kill me, but you cannot make me tell you that which I do not know."
+
+"Is he often out at this hour?"
+
+"Frequently."
+
+"And when does he come home?"
+
+"Before daybreak."
+
+Captain Baumgarten rasped out a German oath.  He had had his journey for
+nothing, then.  The man's answers were only too likely to be true.  It
+was what he might have expected.  But at least he would search the house
+and make sure.  Leaving a picket at the front door and another at the
+back, the sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of them--
+his shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the old
+tapestries and the low, oak-raftered ceilings.  They searched the whole
+house, from the huge stone-flagged kitchen below to the dining-hall on
+the second floor, with its gallery for musicians, and its panelling
+black with age, but nowhere was there a living creature.  Up above, in
+an attic, they found Marie, the elderly wife of the butler; but the
+owner kept no other servants, and of his own presence there was no
+trace.
+
+It was long, however, before Captain Baumgarten had satisfied himself
+upon the point.  It was a difficult house to search.  Thin stairs, which
+only one man could ascend at a time, connected lines of tortuous
+corridors.  The walls were so thick that each room was cut off from its
+neighbour.  Huge fireplaces yawned in each, while the windows were 6ft.
+deep in the wall.  Captain Baumgarten stamped with his feet, tore down
+curtains, and struck with the pommel of his sword.  If there were secret
+hiding-places, he was not fortunate enough to find them.
+
+"I have an idea," said he, at last, speaking in German to the sergeant.
+"You will place a guard over this fellow, and make sure that he
+communicates with no one."
+
+"Yes, captain."
+
+"And you will place four men in ambush at the front and at the back.  It
+is likely enough that about daybreak our bird may return to the nest."
+
+"And the others, captain?"
+
+"Let them have their suppers in the kitchen.  The fellow will serve you
+with meat and wine.  It is a wild night, and we shall be better here
+than on the country road."
+
+"And yourself, captain?"
+
+"I will take my supper up here in the dining-hall.  The logs are laid
+and we can light the fire.  You will call me if there is any alarm.
+What can you give me for supper--you?"
+
+"Alas, monsieur, there was a time when I might have answered, 'What you
+wish!' but now it is all that we can do to find a bottle of new claret
+and a cold pullet."
+
+"That will do very well.  Let a guard go about with him, sergeant, and
+let him feel the end of a bayonet if he plays us any tricks."
+
+Captain Baumgarten was an old campaigner.  In the Eastern provinces, and
+before that in Bohemia, he had learned the art of quartering himself
+upon the enemy.  While the butler brought his supper he occupied himself
+in making his preparations for a comfortable night.  He lit the
+candelabrum of ten candles upon the centre table.  The fire was already
+burning up, crackling merrily, and sending spurts of blue, pungent smoke
+into the room.  The captain walked to the window and looked out.
+The moon had gone in again, and it was raining heavily.  He could hear
+the deep sough of the wind, and see the dark loom of the trees, all
+swaying in the one direction.  It was a sight which gave a zest to his
+comfortable quarters, and to the cold fowl and the bottle of wine which
+the butler had brought up for him.  He was tired and hungry after his
+long tramp, so he threw his sword, his helmet, and his revolver-belt
+down upon a chair, and fell to eagerly upon his supper.  Then, with his
+glass of wine before him and his cigar between his lips, he tilted his
+chair back and looked about him.
+
+He sat within a small circle of brilliant light which gleamed upon his
+silver shoulder-straps, and threw out his terra-cotta face, his heavy
+eyebrows, and his yellow moustache.  But outside that circle things were
+vague and shadowy in the old dining-hall.  Two sides were oak-panelled
+and two were hung with faded tapestry, across which huntsmen and dogs
+and stags were still dimly streaming.  Above the fireplace were rows of
+heraldic shields with the blazonings of the family and of its alliances,
+the fatal saltire cross breaking out on each of them.
+
+Four paintings of old seigneurs of Chateau Noir faced the fireplace, all
+men with hawk noses and bold, high features, so like each other that
+only the dress could distinguish the Crusader from the Cavalier of the
+Fronde.  Captain Baumgarten, heavy with his repast, lay back in his
+chair looking up at them through the clouds of his tobacco smoke, and
+pondering over the strange chance which had sent him, a man from the
+Baltic coast, to eat his supper in the ancestral hall of these proud
+Norman chieftains.  But the fire was hot, and the captain's eyes were
+heavy.  His chin sank slowly upon his chest, and the ten candles gleamed
+upon the broad, white scalp.
+
+Suddenly a slight noise brought him to his feet.  For an instant it
+seemed to his dazed senses that one of the pictures opposite had walked
+from its frame.  There, beside the table, and almost within arm's length
+of him, was standing a huge man, silent, motionless, with no sign of
+life save his fierce-glinting eyes.  He was black-haired, olive-skinned,
+with a pointed tuft of black beard, and a great, fierce nose, towards
+which all his features seemed to run.  His cheeks were wrinkled like a
+last year's apple, but his sweep of shoulder, and bony, corded hands,
+told of a strength which was unsapped by age.  His arms were folded
+across his arching chest, and his mouth was set in a fixed smile.
+
+"Pray do not trouble yourself to look for your weapons," he said, as the
+Prussian cast a swift glance at the empty chair in which they had been
+laid.  "You have been, if you will allow me to say so, a little
+indiscreet to make yourself so much at home in a house every wall of
+which is honeycombed with secret passages.  You will be amused to hear
+that forty men were watching you at your supper.  Ah!  what then?"
+
+Captain Baumgarten had taken a step forward  with clenched fists.
+The Frenchman held up tho revolver which he grasped in his right hand,
+while with the left he hurled the German back into his chair.
+
+"Pray keep your seat," said he.  "You have no cause to trouble about
+your men.  They have already been provided for.  It is astonishing with
+these stone floors how little one can hear what goes on beneath.
+You have been relieved of your command, and have now only to think of
+yourself.  May I ask what your  name is?"
+
+"I am Captain Baumgarten of, the 24th Posen Regiment."
+
+"Your French is excellent, though you incline, like most of your
+countrymen, to turn the 'p' into a 'b.'  I have been amused to hear them
+cry '_Avez bitie sur moi!_' You know, doubtless, who it is who addresses
+you."
+
+"The Count of Chateau Noir."
+
+"Precisely.  It would have been a misfortune if you had visited my
+chateau and I had been unable to have a word with you.  I have had to do
+with many German soldiers, but never with an officer before.  I have
+much to talk to you about."
+
+Captain Baumgarten sat still in his chair.  Brave as he was, there was
+something in this man's manner which made his skin creep with
+apprehension.  His eyes glanced to right and to left, but his weapons
+were gone, and in a struggle he saw that he was but a child to this
+gigantic adversary.  The count had picked up the claret bottle and held
+it to the light.
+
+"Tut! tut!" said he.  "And was this the best that Pierre could do for
+you? I am ashamed to look you in the face, Captain Baumgarten.  We must
+improve upon this."
+
+He blew a call upon a whistle which hung from his shooting-jacket.
+The old manservant was in the room in an instant.
+
+"Chambertin from bin 15!" he cried, and a minute later a grey bottle,
+streaked with cobwebs, was carried in as a nurse bears an infant.
+The count filled two glasses to the brim.
+
+"Drink!" said he.  "It is the very best in my cellars, and not to be
+matched between Rouen and Paris.  Drink, sir, and be happy! There are
+cold joints below.  There are two lobsters, fresh from Honfleur.  Will
+you not venture upon a second and more savoury supper?"
+
+The German officer shook his head.  He drained the glass, however, and
+his host filled it once more, pressing him to give an order for this or
+that dainty.
+
+"There is nothing in my house which is not at your disposal.  You have
+but to say the word.  Well, then, you will allow me to tell you a story
+while you drink your wine.  I have so longed to tell it to some
+German officer.  It is about my son, my only child, Eustace, who was
+taken and died in escaping.  It is a curious little story, and I think
+that I can promise you that you will never forget it.
+
+"You must know, then, that my boy was in the artillery--a fine young
+fellow, Captain Baumgarten, and the pride of his mother.  She died
+within a week of the news of his death reaching us.  It was brought by a
+brother officer who was at his side throughout, and who escaped while my
+lad died.  I want to tell  you all that he told me.
+
+"Eustace was taken at Weissenburg on the 4th of August.  The prisoners
+were broken up into parties, and sent back into Germany by different
+routes.  Eustace was taken upon the 5th to a village called Lauterburg,
+where he met with kindness from the German officer in command.
+This good colonel had the hungry lad to supper, offered him the best he
+had, opened a bottle of good wine, as I have tried to do for you, and
+gave him a cigar from his own case.  Might I entreat you to take one
+from mine?"
+
+The German again shook his head.  His horror of his companion had
+increased as he sat watching the lips that smiled and the eyes that
+glared.
+
+"The colonel, as I say, was good to my boy.  But, unluckily, the
+prisoners were moved next day across the Rhine into Ettlingen.
+They were not equally fortunate there.  The officer who guarded them was
+a ruffian and a villain, Captain Baumgarten.  He took a pleasure in
+humiliating and ill-treating the brave men who had fallen into his
+power.  That night upon my son answering fiercely back to some taunt of
+his, he struck him in the eye, like this!"
+
+The crash of the blow rang through the hall.  The German's face fell
+forward, his hand up, and blood oozing through his fingers.  The count
+settled down in his chair once more.
+
+"My boy was disfigured by the blow, and this villain made his appearance
+the object of his jeers.  By the way, you look a little comical yourself
+at the present moment, captain, and your colonel would certainly say
+that you had been getting into mischief.  To continue, however, my boy's
+youth and his destitution--for his pockets were empty--moved the pity of
+a kind-hearted major, and he advanced him ten Napoleons from his own
+pocket without security of any kind.  Into your hands, Captain
+Baumgarten, I return these ten gold pieces, since I cannot learn the
+name of the lender.  I am grateful from my heart for this kindness shown
+to my boy.
+
+"The vile tyrant who commanded the escort accompanied the prisoners to
+Durlack, and from there to Carlsruhe.  He heaped every outrage upon my
+lad, because the spirit of the Chateau Noirs would not stoop to turn
+away his wrath by a feigned submission.  Ay, this cowardly villain,
+whose heart's blood shall yet clot upon this hand, dared to strike my
+son with his open hand, to kick him, to tear hairs from his moustache--
+to use him thus--and thus--and thus!"
+
+The German writhed and struggled.  He was helpless in the hands of this
+huge giant whose blows were raining upon him.  When at last, blinded and
+half-senseless, he staggered to his feet, it was only to be hurled back
+again into the great oaken chair.  He sobbed in his impotent anger and
+shame.
+
+"My boy was frequently moved to tears by the humiliation of his
+position," continued the count.  "You will understand me when I say that
+it is a bitter thing to be helpless in the hands of an insolent and
+remorseless enemy.  On arriving at Carlsruhe, however, his face, which
+had been wounded by the brutality of his guard, was bound up by a young
+Bavarian subaltern who was touched by his appearance.  I regret to see
+that your eye is bleeding so.  Will you permit me to bind it with my
+silk handkerchief?"
+
+He leaned forward, but the German dashed his hand aside.
+
+"I am in your power, you monster!" he cried; "I can endure your
+brutalities, but not your hypocrisy."
+
+The count shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I am taking things in their order, just as they occurred," said he.
+"I was under vow to tell it to the first German officer with whom I
+could talk _tete-a-tete_.  Let me see, I had got as far as the young
+Bavarian at Carlsruhe.  I regret extremely that you will not permit me
+to use such slight skill in surgery as I possess.  At Carlsruhe, my lad
+was shut up in the old caserne, where he remained for a fortnight.
+The worst pang of his captivity was that some unmannerly curs in the
+garrison would taunt him with his position as he sat by his window in
+the evening.  That reminds me, captain, that you are not quite situated
+upon a bed of roses yourself, are you now?  You came to trap a wolf, my
+man, and now the beast has you down with his fangs in your throat.
+A family man, too, I should judge, by that well-filled tunic.  Well, a
+widow the more will make little matter, and they do not usually remain
+widows long.  Get back  into the chair, you dog!
+
+"Well, to continue my story--at the end of a fortnight my son and his
+friend escaped.  I need not trouble you with the dangers which they ran,
+or with the privations which they endured.  Suffice it that to disguise
+themselves they had to take the clothes of two peasants, whom they
+waylaid in a wood.  Hiding by day and travelling by night, they had got
+as far into France as Remilly, and were within a mile--a single mile,
+captain--of crossing the German lines when a patrol of Uhlans came right
+upon them.  Ah! it was hard, was it not, when they had come so far and
+were so near to safety?"  The count blew a double call upon his whistle,
+and three hard-faced peasants entered the room.
+
+"These must represent my Uhlans," said he.  "Well, then, the captain in
+command, finding that these men were French soldiers in civilian dress
+within the German lines, proceeded to hang them without trial or
+ceremony.  I think, Jean, that the centre beam is the strongest."
+
+The unfortunate soldier was dragged from his chair to where a noosed
+rope had been flung over one of the huge oaken rafters which spanned the
+room.  The cord was slipped over his head, and he felt its harsh grip
+round his throat.  The three peasants seized the other end, and looked
+to the count for his orders.  The officer, pale, but firm, folded his
+arms and stared defiantly at the man who tortured him.
+
+"You are now face to face with death, and I perceive from your lips that
+you are praying.  My son was also face to face with death, and he
+prayed, also.  It happened that a general officer came up, and he heard
+the lad praying for his mother, and it moved him so--he being himself a
+father--that he ordered his Uhlans away, and he remained with his
+aide-de-camp only, beside the condemned men.  And when he heard all the
+lad had to tell--that he was the only child of an old family, and that
+his mother was in failing health--he threw off the rope as I throw off
+this, and he kissed him on either cheek, as I kiss you,
+and he bade him go, as I bid you go, and may every kind wish of that
+noble general, though it could not stave off the fever which slew my
+son, descend now upon your head."
+
+And so it was that Captain Baumgarten, disfigured, blinded, and
+bleeding, staggered out into the wind and the rain of that wild December
+dawn.
+
+
+
+THE STRIPED CHEST
+
+
+"What do you make of her, Allardyce?" I asked.
+
+My second mate was standing beside me upon the poop, with his short,
+thick legs astretch, for the gale had left a considerable swell behind
+it, and our two quarter-boats nearly touched the water with every roll.
+He steadied his glass against the mizzen-shrouds, and he looked long and
+hard at this disconsolate stranger every time she came reeling up on to
+the crest of a roller and hung balanced for a few seconds before
+swooping down upon the other side.  She lay so low in the water that I
+could only catch an occasional glimpse of a pea-green line of bulwark.
+She was a brig, but her mainmast had been snapped short off some 10ft.
+above the deck, and no effort seemed to have been made to cut away the
+wreckage, which floated, sails and yards, like the broken wing of a
+wounded gull upon the water beside her.  The foremast was still
+standing, but the foretopsail was flying loose, and the headsails were
+streaming out in long, white pennons in front of her.  Never have I seen
+a vessel which appeared to have gone through rougher handling.  But we
+could not be surprised at that, for there had been times during the last
+three days when it was a question whether our own barque would ever see
+land again.  For thirty-six hours we had kept her nose to it, and if the
+_Mary Sinclair_ had not been as good a seaboat as ever left the Clyde,
+we could not have gone through.  And yet here we were at the end of it
+with the loss only of our gig and of part of the starboard bulwark.
+It did not astonish us, however, when the smother had cleared away, to
+find that others had been less lucky, and that this mutilated brig
+staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky, had been
+left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the terror
+which is past.  Allardyce, who was a slow and methodical Scotchman,
+stared long and hard at the little craft, while our seamen lined the
+bulwark or clustered upon the fore shrouds to have a view of the
+stranger.  In latitude 20 degrees and longitude 10 degrees, which were
+about our bearings, one becomes a little curious as to whom one meets,
+for one has left the main lines of Atlantic commerce to the north.
+For ten days we had been sailing over  a solitary sea.
+
+"She's derelict, I'm thinking," said the second mate.
+
+I had come to the same conclusion, for I could see  no signs of life
+upon her deck, and there was no answer to the friendly wavings from our
+seamen.  The crew had probably deserted her under the impression that
+she was about to founder.
+
+"She can't last long," continued Allardyce, in his  measured way.
+"She may put her nose down and her tail up any minute.  The water's
+lipping up to  the edge of her rail."
+
+"What's her flag?" I asked.
+
+"I'm trying to make out.  It's got all twisted and tangled with the
+halyards.  Yes, I've got it now, clear enough.  It's the Brazilian flag,
+but it's wrong side up."
+
+She had hoisted a signal of distress, then, before  her people had
+abandoned her.  Perhaps they had only just gone.  I took the mate's
+glass and looked round over the tumultuous face of the deep blue
+Atlantic, still veined and starred with white lines and spoutings of
+foam.  But nowhere could I see anything human beyond ourselves.
+
+"There may be living men aboard," said I.
+
+"There may be salvage," muttered the second mate.
+
+"Then we will run down upon her lee side, and lie to."  We were not more
+than a hundred yards from her when we swung our foreyard aback, and
+there we were, the barque and the brig, ducking and bowing like two
+clowns in a dance.
+
+"Drop one of the quarter-boats," said I.  "Take four men, Mr. Allardyce,
+and see what you can learn  of her."
+
+But just at that moment my first officer, Mr. Armstrong, came on deck,
+for seven bells had struck, and it was but a few minutes off his watch.
+It would interest me to go myself to this abandoned vessel and to see
+what there might be aboard of her.  So, with a word to Armstrong, I
+swung myself over the side, slipped down the falls, and took my place in
+the sheets of the boat.
+
+It was but a little distance, but it took some time to traverse, and so
+heavy was the roll that often when we were in the trough of the sea, we
+could not see either the barque which we had left or the brig which we
+were approaching.  The sinking sun did not penetrate down there, and it
+was cold and dark in the hollows of the waves, but each passing billow
+heaved us up into the warmth and the sunshine once more.  At each of
+these moments, as we hung upon a white-capped ridge between the two dark
+valleys, I caught a glimpse of the long, pea-green line, and the nodding
+foremast of the brig, and I steered so as to come round by her stern, so
+that we might determine which was the best way of boarding her.  As we
+passed her we saw the name _Nossa Sehnora da Vittoria_ painted across
+her dripping counter.
+
+"The weather side, sir," said the second mate.  "Stand by with the
+boat-hook, carpenter!"  An instant later we had jumped over the
+bulwarks, which were hardly higher than our boat, and found ourselves
+upon the deck of the abandoned vessel.  Our first thought was to provide
+for our own safety in case--as seemed very probable--the vessel should
+settle down beneath our feet.  With this object two of our men held on
+to the painter of the boat, and fended her off from the vessel's side,
+so that she might be ready in case we had to make a hurried retreat.
+The carpenter was sent to find out how much water there was, and whether
+it was still gaming, while the other seaman, Allardyce and myself, made
+a rapid inspection of the vessel and her cargo.
+
+The deck was littered with wreckage and with hen-coops, in which the
+dead birds were washing about.  The boats were gone, with the exception
+of one, the bottom of which had been stove, and it was certain that the
+crew had abandoned the vessel.  The cabin was in a deck-house, one side
+of which had been beaten in by a heavy sea.  Allardyce and I entered it,
+and found the captain's table as he had left it, his books and papers--
+all Spanish or Portuguese--scattered over it, with piles of cigarette
+ash everywhere.  I looked about for the log, but could not find it.
+
+"As likely as not he never kept one," said Allardyce.  "Things are
+pretty slack aboard a South American trader, and they don't do more than
+they can help.  If there was one it must have been taken away with him
+in the boat."
+
+"I should like to take all these books and papers," said I.  "Ask the
+carpenter how much time we have."
+
+His report was reassuring.  The vessel was full of water, but some of
+the cargo was buoyant, and there was no immediate danger of her sinking.
+Probably she would never sink, but would drift about as one of those
+terrible unmarked reefs which have sent so many stout vessels to the
+bottom.
+
+"In that case there is no danger in your going below, Mr. Allardyce,"
+said I.  "See what you can make of her and find out how much of her
+cargo may be saved.  I'll look through these papers while you are gone."
+
+The bills of lading, and some notes and letters which lay upon the desk,
+sufficed to inform me that the Brazilian brig _Nossa Sehnora da
+Vittoria_ had cleared from Bahia a month before.  The name of the
+captain was Texeira, but there was no record as to the number of the
+crew.  She was bound for London, and a glance at the bills of lading was
+sufficient to show me that we were not likely to profit much in the way
+of salvage.  Her cargo consisted of nuts, ginger, and wood, the latter
+in the shape of great logs of valuable tropical growths.  It was these,
+no doubt, which had prevented the ill-fated vessel from going to the
+bottom, but they were of such a size as to make it impossible for us to
+extract them.  Besides these, there were a few fancy goods, such as a
+number of ornamental birds for millinery purposes, and a hundred cases
+of preserved fruits.  And then, as I turned over the papers, I came upon
+a short note in English, which arrested my attention.
+
+   It is requested (said the note) that the various old Spanish
+   and Indian curiosities, which came out of the Santarem
+   collection, and which are consigned to Prontfoot & Neuman
+   of Oxford Street, London, should be put in some place where
+   there may be no danger of these very valuable and unique articles
+   being injured or tampered with.  This applies most particularly
+   to the treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, which must on
+   no account be placed where anyone can get at it.
+
+The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez!  Unique and valuable articles!
+Here was a chance of salvage after all.  I had risen to my feet with the
+paper in my hand when my Scotch mate appeared in the doorway.
+
+"I'm thinking all isn't quite as it should be aboard  of this ship,
+sir," said he.  He was a hard-faced man, and yet I could see that he had
+been startled.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Murder's the matter, sir.  There's a man here with his brains beaten
+out."
+
+"Killed in the storm?" said I.
+
+"May be so, sir, but I'll be surprised if you think so after you have
+seen him."
+
+"Where is he, then?"
+
+"This way, sir; here in the maindeck house."
+
+There appeared to have been no accommodation below in the brig, for
+there was the after-house for the captain, another by the main hatchway,
+with the cook's galley attached to it, and a third in the forecastle for
+the men.  It was to this middle one that the mate led me.  As you
+entered, the galley, with its litter of tumbled pots and dishes, was
+upon the right, and upon the left was a small room with two bunks for
+the officers.  Then beyond there was a place about 12ft. square, which
+was littered with flags and spare canvas.  All round the walls were a
+number of packets done up in coarse cloth and carefully lashed to the
+woodwork.  At the other end was a great box, striped red and white,
+though the red was so faded and the white so dirty that it was only
+where the light fell directly upon it that one could see the colouring.
+The box was, by subsequent measurement, 4ft. 3ins. in length, 3ft. 2ins.
+in height, and 3ft. across--considerably larger than a seaman's chest.
+But it was not to the box that my eyes or my thoughts were turned as I
+entered the  store-room.  On the floor, lying across the litter of
+bunting, there was stretched a small, dark man with a short, curling
+beard.  He lay as far as it was possible from the box, with his feet
+towards it and his head away.  A crimson patch was printed upon the
+white canvas on which his head was resting, and little red ribbons
+wreathed themselves round his swarthy neck and trailed away on to the
+floor, but there was no sign of a wound that I could see, and his face
+was as placid as that of a sleeping child.  It was only when I stooped
+that I could perceive his injury, and then I turned away with an
+exclamation of horror.  He had been pole-axed; apparently by some person
+standing behind him.  A frightful blow had smashed in the top of his
+head and penetrated deeply into his brains.  His face might well be
+placid, for death must have been absolutely instantaneous, and the
+position of the wound showed that he could never have seen the person
+who had inflicted it.
+
+"Is that foul play or accident, Captain Barclay?" asked my second mate,
+demurely.
+
+"You are quite right, Mr. Allardyce.  The man has been murdered--struck
+down from above by a sharp and heavy weapon.  But who was he, and why
+did they murder him?"
+
+"He was a common seaman, sir," said the mate.  "You can see that if you
+look at his fingers."  He turned out his pockets as he spoke and brought
+to light a pack of cards, some tarred string, and a bundle  of Brazilian
+tobacco.
+
+"Hello, look at this!" said he.
+
+It was a large, open knife with a stiff spring blade which he had picked
+up from the floor.  The steel was shining and bright, so that we could
+not associate it with the crime, and yet the dead man had apparently
+held it in his hand when he was struck down, for it still lay within his
+grasp.
+
+"It looks to me, sir, as if he knew he was in danger and kept his knife
+handy," said the mate.  "However, we can't help the poor beggar now.
+I can't make out these things that are lashed to the wall.  They seem
+to be idols and weapons and curios of all sorts done up in old sacking."
+
+"That's right," said I.  "They are the only things of value that we are
+likely to get from the cargo.  Hail the barque and tell them to send the
+other quarter-boat to help us to get the stuff aboard."
+
+While he was away I examined this curious plunder which had come into
+our possession.  The curiosities were so wrapped up that I could only
+form a general idea as to their nature, but the striped box stood in a
+good light where I could thoroughly examine it.  On the lid, which was
+clamped and cornered with metal-work, there was engraved a complex coat
+of arms, and beneath it was a line of Spanish which I was able to
+decipher as meaning, "The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, Knight
+of the Order of Saint James, Governor and Captain-General of Terra Firma
+and of the Province of Veraquas."  In one corner was the date, 1606, and
+on the other a large white label, upon which was written in English,
+"You are earnestly requested, upon no account, to open this box."
+The same warning was repeated underneath in Spanish.  As to the lock, it
+was a very complex and heavy one of engraved steel, with a Latin motto,
+which was above a seaman's comprehension.  By the time I had finished
+this examination of the peculiar box, the other quarter-boat with Mr.
+Armstrong, the first officer, had come alongside, and we began to carry
+out and place in her the various curiosities which appeared to be the
+only objects worth moving from the derelict ship.  When she was full I
+sent her back to the barque, and then Allardyce and I, with the
+carpenter and one seaman, shifted the striped box, which was the only
+thing left, to our boat, and lowered it over, balancing it upon the two
+middle thwarts, for it was so heavy that it would have given the boat a
+dangerous tilt had we placed it at either end.  As to the dead man, we
+left him where we had found him.  The mate had a theory that, at the
+moment of the desertion of the ship, this fellow had started
+plundering, and that the captain, in an attempt to preserve discipline,
+had struck him down with a hatchet or some other heavy weapon.
+It seemed more probable than any other explanation, and yet it did not
+entirely satisfy me either.  But the ocean is full of mysteries, and we
+were content to leave the fate of the dead seaman of the Brazilian brig
+to be added to that long list which every sailor can recall.
+
+The heavy box was slung up by ropes on to the deck of the _Mary
+Sinclair_, and was carried by four seamen into the cabin, where, between
+the table and the after-lockers, there was just space for it to stand.
+There it remained during supper, and after that meal the mates remained
+with me, and discussed over a glass of grog the event of the day.
+Mr. Armstrong was a long, thin, vulture-like man, an excellent seaman,
+but famous for his nearness and cupidity.  Our treasure-trove had
+excited him greatly, and already he had begun with glistening eyes to
+reckon up how much it might be worth to each of us when the shares of
+the salvage came to be divided.
+
+"If the paper said that they were unique, Mr. Barclay, then they may be
+worth anything that you like to name.  You wouldn't believe the sums
+that the rich collectors give.  A thousand pounds is nothing to them.
+We'll have something to show for our voyage, or I am mistaken."
+
+"I don't think that," said I.  "As far as I can see, they are not very
+different from any other South American curios."
+
+"Well, sir, I've traded there for fourteen voyages, and I have never
+seen anything like that chest before.  That's worth a pile of money,
+just as it stands.  But it's so heavy that surely there must be
+something valuable inside it.  Don't you think that we ought to open it
+and see?"
+
+"If you break it open you will spoil it, as likely as not," said the
+second mate.
+
+Armstrong squatted down in front of it, with his head on one side, and
+his long, thin nose within a few inches of the lock.
+
+"The wood is oak," said he, "and it has shrunk a little with age.  If I
+had a chisel or a strong-bladed knife I could force the lock back
+without doing any damage at all."
+
+The mention of a strong-bladed knife made me think of the dead seaman
+upon the brig.
+
+"I wonder if he could have been on the job when someone came to
+interfere with him," said I.
+
+"I don't know about that, sir, but I am perfectly certain that I could
+open the box.  There's a screwdriver here in the locker.  Just hold the
+lamp, Allardyce, and I'll have it done in a brace of shakes."
+
+"Wait a bit," said I, for already, with eyes which gleamed with
+curiosity and with avarice, he was stooping over the lid.  "I don't see
+that there is any hurry over this matter.  You've read that card which
+warns us not to open it.  It may mean anything or it may mean nothing,
+but somehow I feel inclined to obey it.  After all, whatever is in it
+will keep, and if it is valuable it will be worth as much if it is
+opened in the owner's offices as in the cabin of the _Mary Sinclair_."
+
+The first officer seemed bitterly disappointed at my decision.
+
+"Surely, sir, you are not superstitious about it," said he, with a
+slight sneer upon his thin lips.  "If it gets out of our own hands, and
+we don't see for ourselves what is inside it, we may be done out of our
+rights; besides--"
+
+"That's enough, Mr. Armstrong," said I, abruptly.  "You may have every
+confidence that you will get your rights, but I will not have that box
+opened to-night."
+
+"Why, the label itself shows that the box has been examined by
+Europeans," Allardyce added.  "Because a box is a treasure-box is no
+reason that it has treasures inside it now.  A good many folk have had a
+peep into it since the days of the old Governor of Terra Firma."
+
+Armstrong threw the screwdriver down upon the table and shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+"Just as you like," said he; but for the rest of the evening, although
+we spoke upon many subjects, I noticed that his eyes were continually
+coming round, with the same expression of curiosity and greed, to the
+old striped box.
+
+And now I come to that portion of my story which fills me even now with
+a shuddering horror when I think of it.  The main cabin had the rooms of
+the officers round it, but mine was the farthest away from it at the end
+of the little passage which led to the companion.  No regular watch was
+kept by me, except in cases of emergency, and the three mates divided
+the watches among them.  Armstrong had the middle watch, which ends at
+four in the morning, and he was relieved by Allardyce.  For my part I
+have always been one of the soundest of sleepers, and it is rare for
+anything less than a hand upon my shoulder to arouse me.
+
+And yet I was aroused that night, or rather in the early grey of the
+morning.  It was just half-past four by my chronometer when something
+caused me to sit up in my berth wide awake and with every nerve
+tingling.  It was a sound of some sort, a crash with a human cry at the
+end of it, which still jarred on my ears.  I sat listening, but all was
+now silent.  And yet it could not have been imagination, that hideous
+cry, for the echo of it still rang in my head, and it seemed to have
+come from some place quite close to me.  I sprang from my bunk, and,
+pulling on some clothes, I made my way into the cabin.  At first I saw
+nothing unusual there.  In the cold, grey light I made out the
+red-clothed table, the six rotating chairs, the walnut lockers, the
+swinging barometer, and there, at the end, the big striped chest.  I was
+turning away, with the intention of going upon deck and asking the
+second mate if he had heard anything, when my eyes fell suddenly upon
+something which projected from under the table.  It was the leg of a
+man--a leg with a long sea-boot upon it.  I stooped, and there was a
+figure sprawling upon his face, his arms thrown forward and his body
+twisted.  One glance told me that it was Armstrong, the first officer,
+and a second that he was a dead man.  For a few moments I stood gasping.
+Then I rushed on to the deck, called Allardyce to my assistance, and
+came back with him into the cabin.
+
+Together we pulled the unfortunate fellow from under the table, and as
+we looked at his dripping head we exchanged glances, and I do not know
+which was the paler of the two.
+
+"The same as the Spanish sailor," said I.
+
+"The very same.  God preserve us!  It's that infernal chest!  Look at
+Armstrong's hand!"
+
+He held up the mate's right hand, and there was the screwdriver which he
+had wished to use the night before.
+
+"He's been at the chest, sir.  He knew that I was on deck and you were
+asleep.  He knelt down in front of it, and he pushed the lock back with
+that tool.  Then something happened to him, and he cried out so that you
+heard him."
+
+"Allardyce," I whispered, "what _could_ have happened to him?"
+
+The second mate put his hand upon my sleeve and drew me into his cabin.
+
+"We can talk here, sir, and we don't know who may be listening to us in
+there.  What do you suppose is in that box, Captain Barclay?"
+
+"I give you my word, Allardyce, that I have no idea."
+
+"Well, I can only find one theory which will fit all the facts.  Look at
+the size of the box.  Look at all the carving and metal-work which may
+conceal any number of holes.  Look at the weight of it; it took four men
+to carry it.  On top of that, remember that two men have tried to open
+it, and both have come to their end through it.  Now, sir, what can it
+mean except one thing?"
+
+"You mean there is a man in it?"
+
+"Of course there is a man in it.  You know how it is in these South
+American States, sir.  A man may be president one week and hunted like a
+dog the next--they are for ever flying for their lives.  My idea is that
+there is some fellow in hiding there, who is armed and desperate, and
+who will fight to the death before he is taken."
+
+"But his food and drink?"
+
+"It's a roomy chest, sir, and he may have some provisions stowed away.
+As to his drink, he had a friend among the crew upon the brig who saw
+that he had what he needed."
+
+"You think, then, that the label asking people not to open the box was
+simply written in his interest?"
+
+"Yes, sir, that is my idea.  Have you any other way of explaining the
+facts?"
+
+I had to confess that I had not.
+
+"The question is what we are to do?" I asked.
+
+"The man's a dangerous ruffian, who sticks at nothing.  I'm thinking it
+wouldn't be a bad thing to put a rope round the chest and tow it
+alongside for half an hour; then we could open it at our ease.  Or if we
+just tied the box up and kept him from getting any water maybe that
+would do as well.  Or the carpenter could put a coat of varnish over it
+and stop all the blow-holes."
+
+"Come, Allardyce," said I, angrily.  "You don't seriously mean to say
+that a whole ship's company are going to be terrorised by a single man
+in a box.  If he's there, I'll engage to fetch him out!" I went to my
+room and came back with my revolver in my hand.  "Now, Allardyce," said
+I, "do you open the lock, and I'll stand on guard."
+
+"For God's sake, think what you are doing, sir!" cried the mate.  "Two
+men have lost their lives over it, and the blood of one not yet dry upon
+the carpet."
+
+"The more reason why we should revenge him."
+
+"Well, sir, at least let me call the carpenter.  Three are better than
+two, and he is a good stout man."
+
+He went off in search of him, and I was left alone with the striped
+chest in the cabin.  I don't think that I'm a nervous man, but I kept
+the table between me and this solid old relic of the Spanish Main.
+In the growing light of morning the red and white striping was beginning
+to appear, and the curious scrolls and wreaths of metal and carving
+which showed the loving pains which cunning craftsmen had expended upon
+it.  Presently the carpenter and the mate came back together, the former
+with a hammer in his hand.
+
+"It's a bad business, this, sir," said he, shaking his head, as he
+looked at the body of the mate.  "And you think there's someone hiding
+in the box?"
+
+"There's no doubt about it," said Allardyce, picking up the screwdriver
+and setting his jaw like a man who needs to brace his courage.
+"I'll drive the lock back if you will both stand by.  If he rises let
+him have it on the head with your hammer, carpenter.  Shoot at once,
+sir, if he raises his hand.  Now!"
+
+He had knelt down in front of the striped chest, and passed the blade of
+the tool under the lid.  With a sharp snick the lock flew back.  "Stand
+by!" yelled the mate, and with a heave he threw open the massive top of
+the box.  As it swung up we all three sprang back, I with my pistol
+levelled, and the carpenter with the hammer above his head.  Then, as
+nothing happened, we each took a step forward and peeped in.  The box
+was empty.
+
+Not quite empty either, for in one corner was lying an old yellow
+candle-stick, elaborately engraved, which appeared to be as old as the
+box itself.  Its rich yellow tone and artistic shape suggested that it
+was an object of value.  For the rest there was nothing more weighty or
+valuable than dust in the old striped treasure-chest.
+
+"Well, I'm blessed!" cried Allardyce, staring blankly into it.
+"Where does the weight come in, then?"
+
+"Look at the thickness of the sides, and look at the lid.  Why, it's
+five inches through.  And see that great metal spring across it."
+
+"That's for holding the lid up," said the mate.  "You see, it won't lean
+back.  What's that German printing on the inside?"
+
+"It means that it was made by Johann Rothstein of Augsburg, in 1606."
+
+"And a solid bit of work, too.  But it doesn't throw much light on what
+has passed, does it, Captain Barclay?  That candlestick looks like gold.
+We shall have something for our trouble after all."
+
+He leant forward to grasp it, and from that moment I have never doubted
+as to the reality of inspiration, for on the instant I caught him by the
+collar and pulled him straight again.  It may have been some story of
+the Middle Ages which had come back to my mind, or it may have been that
+my eye had caught some red which was not that of rust upon the upper
+part of the lock, but to him and to me it will always seem an
+inspiration, so prompt and sudden was my action.
+
+"There's devilry here," said I.  "Give me the crooked stick from the
+corner."
+
+It was an ordinary walking-cane with a hooked top.  I passed it over the
+candlestick and gave it a pull.  With a flash a row of polished steel
+fangs shot out from below the upper lip, and the great striped chest
+snapped at us like a wild animal.  Clang came the huge lid into its
+place, and the glasses on the swinging rack sang and tinkled with the
+shock.  The mate sat down on the edge of the table and shivered like a
+frightened horse.
+
+"You've saved my life, Captain Barclay!" said he.
+
+So this was the secret of the striped treasure-chest of old Don Ramirez
+di Leyra, and this was how he preserved his ill-gotten gains from the
+Terra Firma and the Province of Veraquas.  Be the thief ever so cunning
+he could not tell that golden candlestick from the other articles of
+value, and the instant that he laid hand upon it the terrible spring was
+unloosed and the murderous steel pikes were driven into his brain, while
+the shock of the blow sent the victim backward and enabled the chest to
+automatically close itself.  How many, I wondered, had fallen victims to
+the ingenuity of the mechanic of Ausgburg?  And as I thought of the
+possible history of that grim striped chest my resolution was very
+quickly taken.
+
+"Carpenter, bring three men, and carry this on deck."
+
+"Going to throw it overboard, sir?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Allardyce.  I'm not superstitious as a rule, but there are
+some things which are more than a sailor can be called upon to stand."
+
+"No wonder that brig made heavy weather, Captain Barclay, with such a
+thing on board.  The glass is dropping fast, sir, and we are only just
+in time."
+
+So we did not even wait for the three sailors, but we carried it out,
+the mate, the carpenter, and I, and we pushed it with our own hands over
+the bulwarks.  There was a white spout of water, and it was gone.  There
+it lies, the striped chest, a thousand fathoms deep, and if, as they
+say, the sea will some day be dry land, I grieve for the man who finds
+that old box and tries to penetrate into its secret.
+
+
+
+A SHADOW BEFORE
+
+
+The 15th of July, 1870, found John Worlington Dodds a ruined gamester of
+the Stock Exchange.  Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man.  And yet
+he had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish
+townlet of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter
+of the sum which he had earned during the single day that he was
+within its walls.  There is a romance of finance yet to be written, a
+story of huge forces which are for ever waxing and waning, of bold
+operations, of breathless suspense, of agonised failure, of deep
+combinations which are baffled by others still more subtle.  The mighty
+debts of each great European Power stand like so many columns of
+mercury, for ever rising and falling to indicate the pressure upon each.
+He who can see far enough into the future to tell how that ever-varying
+column will stand to-morrow is the man who has fortune within his grasp.
+
+John Worlington Dodds had many of the gifts which lead a speculator to
+success.  He was quick in observing, just in estimating, prompt and
+fearless in acting.  But in finance there is always the element of luck,
+which, however one may eliminate it, still remains, like the blank at
+roulette, a constantly present handicap upon the operator.  And so it
+was that Worlington Dodds had come to grief.  On the best advices he had
+dabbled in the funds of a South American Republic in the days before
+South American Republics had been found out.  The Republic defaulted,
+and Dodds lost his money.  He had bulled the shares of a Scotch railway,
+and a four months' strike had hit him hard.  He had helped to underwrite
+a coffee company in the hope that the public would come along upon the
+feed and gradually nibble away some of his holding, but the political
+sky had been clouded and the public had refused to invest.  Everything
+which he had touched had gone wrong, and now, on the eve of his
+marriage, young, clear-headed, and energetic, he was actually a bankrupt
+had his creditors chosen to make him one.  But the Stock Exchange is an
+indulgent body.   What is the case of one to-day may be that of another
+to-morrow, and everyone is interested in seeing that the stricken man is
+given time to rise again.  So the burden of Worlington Dodds was
+lightened for him; many shoulders helped to bear it, and he was able to
+go for a little summer tour into Ireland, for the doctors had ordered
+him rest and change of air to restore his shaken nervous system.  Thus
+it was that upon the 15th of July, 1870, he found himself at his
+breakfast in the fly-blown coffee-room of the "George Hotel" in the
+market square of Dunsloe.  It is a dull and depressing coffee-room, and
+one which is usually empty, but on this particular day it was as crowded
+and noisy as that of any London hotel.  Every table was occupied, and a
+thick smell of fried bacon and of fish hung in the air.  Heavily booted
+men clattered in and out, spurs jingled, riding-crops were stacked in
+corners, and there was a general atmosphere of horse.  The conversation,
+too, was of nothing else.  From every side Worlington Dodds heard of
+yearlings, of windgalls, of roarers, of spavins, of cribsuckers, of a
+hundred other terms which were as unintelligible to  him as his own
+Stock Exchange jargon would have been to the company.  He asked the
+waiter for the reason of it all, and the waiter was an astonished man
+that there should be any man in this world who did not know it.
+
+"Shure it's the Dunsloe horse fair, your honour--the greatest
+horse-fair in all Oireland.  It lasts for a wake, and the folk come from
+far an' near--from England an' Scotland an' iverywhere.  If you look out
+of the winder, your honour, you'll see the horses, and it's asy your
+honour's conscience must be, or you wouldn't slape so sound that the
+creatures didn't rouse you with their clatter."
+
+Dodds had a recollection that he had heard a confused murmur, which had
+interwoven itself with his dreams--a sort of steady rhythmic beating and
+clanking--and now, when he looked through the window, he saw the cause
+of it.  The square was packed with horses from end to end--greys, bays,
+browns, blacks, chestnuts--young ones and old, fine ones and coarse,
+horses of every conceivable sort and size.  It seemed a huge function
+for so small a town, and he remarked as much to the waiter.
+
+"Well, you see, your honour, the horses don't live in the town, an' they
+don't vex their heads how small it is.  But it's in the very centre of
+the horse-bradin' districts of Oireland, so where should they come to be
+sould if it wasn't to Dunsloe?"  The waiter had a telegram in his hand,
+and he turned the address to Worlington Dodds.  "Shure I niver heard
+such a name, sorr.  Maybe you could tell me who owns it?"
+
+Dodds looked at the envelope.  Strellenhaus was the name.  "No, I don't
+know," said he.  "I never heard it before.  It's a foreign name.
+Perhaps if you were--"
+
+But at that moment a little round-faced, ruddy-cheeked gentleman, who
+was breakfasting at the next table, leaned forward and interrupted him.
+
+"Did you say a foreign name, sir?" said he.
+
+"Strellenhaus is the name."
+
+"I am Mr. Strellenhaus--Mr. Julius Strellenhaus, of Liverpool.  I was
+expecting a telegram.  Thank you very much."
+
+He sat so near that Dodds, without any wish to play the spy, could not
+help to some extent overlooking him as he opened the envelope.
+The message was a very long one.  Quite a wad of melon-tinted paper came
+out from the tawny envelope.  Mr. Strellenhaus arranged the sheets
+methodically upon the table-cloth in front of him, so that no eye but
+his own could see them.  Then he took out a note-book, and, with an
+anxious face, he began to make entries in it, glancing first at the
+telegram and then at the book, and writing apparently one letter or
+figure at a time.  Dodds was interested, for he knew exactly what the
+man was doing.  He was working out a cipher.  Dodds had often done it
+himself.  And then suddenly the little man turned very pale, as if the
+full purport of the message had been a shock to him.  Dodds had done
+that also, and his sympathies were all with his neighbours.  Then the
+stranger rose, and, leaving his breakfast untasted, he walked out of the
+room.
+
+"I'm thinkin' that the gintleman has had bad news, sorr," said the
+confidential waiter.
+
+"Looks like it," Dodds answered; and at that moment his thoughts were
+suddenly drawn off into another direction.
+
+The boots had entered the room with a telegram in his hand.  "Where's
+Mr. Mancune?" said he to the waiter.
+
+"Well, there are some quare names about.  What was it you said?"
+
+"Mr. Mancune," said the boots, glancing round him.  "Ah, there he is!"
+and he handed the telegram to a gentleman who was sitting reading the
+paper in a corner.
+
+Dodds's eyes had already fallen upon this man, and he had wondered
+vaguely what he was doing in such company.  He was a tall, white-haired,
+eagle-nosed gentleman, with a waxed moustache and a carefully pointed
+beard--an aristocratic type which seemed out of its element among the
+rough, hearty, noisy dealers who surrounded him.  This, then, was Mr.
+Mancune, for whom the second telegram was intended.
+
+As he opened it, tearing it open with a feverish haste, Dodds could
+perceive that it was as bulky as the first one.  He observed also, from
+the delay in reading it, that it was also in some sort of cipher.
+The gentleman did not write down any translation of it, but he sat for
+some time with his nervous, thin fingers twitching amongst the hairs of
+his white beard, and his shaggy brows bent in the deepest and most
+absorbed attention whilst he mastered the meaning of it.  Then he sprang
+suddenly to his feet, his eyes flashed, his cheeks flushed, and in his
+excitement he crumpled the message up in his hand.  With an effort he
+mastered his emotion, put the paper into his pocket, and walked out of
+the room.
+
+This was enough to excite a less astute and imaginative man than
+Worlington Dodds.  Was there any connection between these two messages,
+or was it merely a coincidence?  Two men with strange names receive two
+telegrams within a few minutes of each other, each of considerable
+length, each in cipher, and each causing keen emotion to the man who
+received it.  One turned pale.  The other sprang excitedly to his feet.
+It might be a coincidence, but it was a very curious one.  If it was not
+a coincidence, then what could it mean?  Were they confederates who
+pretended to work apart, but who each received identical orders from
+some person at a distance?  That was possible, and yet there were
+difficulties in the way.  He puzzled and puzzled, but could find no
+satisfactory solution to the problem.  All breakfast he was turning it
+over in his mind.
+
+When breakfast was over he sauntered out into the market square, where
+the horse sale was already in progress.  The yearlings were being sold
+first--tall, long-legged, skittish, wild-eyed creatures, who had run
+free upon the upland pastures, with ragged hair and towsie manes, but
+hardy, inured to all weathers, and with the makings of splendid hunters
+and steeplechasers when corn and time had brought them to maturity.
+They were largely of thoroughbred blood, and were being bought by
+English dealers, who would invest a few pounds now on what they might
+sell for fifty guineas in a year, if all went well.  It was legitimate
+speculation, for the horse is a delicate creature, he is afflicted with
+many ailments, the least accident may destroy his value, he is a certain
+expense and an uncertain profit, and for one who comes safely to
+maturity several may bring no return at all.  So the English
+horse-dealers took their risks as they bought up the shaggy Irish
+yearlings.  One man with a ruddy face and a yellow overcoat took them by
+the dozen, with as much _sang froid_ as if they had been oranges,
+entering each bargain in a bloated note-book.  He bought forty or fifty
+during the time that Dodds was watching him.
+
+"Who is that?" he asked his neighbour, whose spurs and gaiters showed
+that he was likely to know.
+
+The man stared in astonishment at the stranger's ignorance.
+"Why, that's Jim Holloway, the great Jim Holloway," said he; then,
+seeing by the blank look upon Dodds's face that even this information
+had not helped him much, he went into details.  "Sure he's the head of
+Holloway & Morland, of London," said he.  "He's the buying partner, and
+he buys cheap; and the other stays at home and sells, and he sells dear.
+He owns more horses than any man in the world, and asks the best money
+for them.  I dare say you'll find that half of what are sold at the
+Dunsloe fair this day will go to him, and he's got such a purse that
+there's not a man who can bid against him."
+
+Worlington Dodds watched the doings of the great dealer with interest.
+He had passed on now to the two-year-olds and three-year-olds,
+full-grown horses, but still a little loose in the limb and weak in the
+bone.  The London buyer was choosing his animals carefully, but having
+chosen them, the vigour of his competition drove all other bidders out
+of it.  With a careless nod he would run the figure up five pounds at a
+time, until he was left in possession of the field.  At the same time he
+was a shrewd observer, and when, as happened more than once, he believed
+that someone was bidding against him simply in order to run him up, the
+head would cease suddenly to nod, the note-book would be closed with a
+snap, and the intruder would be left with a purchase which he did not
+desire upon his hands.  All Dodds's business instincts were aroused by
+the tactics of this great operator, and he stood in the crowd watching
+with the utmost interest all that occurred.
+
+It is not to buy young horses, however, that the great dealers come to
+Ireland, and the real business of the fair commenced when the four and
+five-year-olds were reached; the full-grown, perfect horses, at their
+prime, and ready for any work or any fatigue.  Seventy magnificent
+creatures had been brought down by a single breeder, a comfortable-
+looking, keen-eyed, ruddy-cheeked gentleman who stood beside the
+sales-man and whispered cautions and precepts into his ear.
+
+"That's Flynn of Kildare," said Dodds's informant.  "Jack Flynn has
+brought down that string of horses, and the other large string over
+yonder belongs to Tom Flynn, his brother.  The two of them together are
+the two first breeders in Ireland." A crowd had gathered in front of the
+horses.  By common consent a place had been made for Mr. Holloway, and
+Dodds could catch a glimpse of his florid face and yellow covert-coat in
+the front rank.  He had opened his note-book, and was tapping his teeth
+reflectively with his pencil as he eyed the horses.
+
+"You'll see a fight now between the first seller and the first buyer in
+the country," said Dodds's acquaintance.  "They are a beautiful string,
+anyhow.  I shouldn't be surprised if he didn't average  five-and-thirty
+pound apiece for the lot as they stand."
+
+The salesman had mounted upon a chair, and his keen, clean-shaven face
+overlooked the crowd.  Mr. Jack Flynn's grey whiskers were at his elbow,
+and Mr. Holloway immediately in front.
+
+"You've seen these horses, gentlemen," said the salesman, with a
+backward sweep of his hand towards the line of tossing heads and
+streaming manes.  "When you know that they are bred by Mr. Jack Flynn,
+at his place in Kildare, you will have a guarantee of their quality.
+They are the best that Ireland can produce, and in this class of horse
+the best that Ireland can produce are the best in the world, as every
+riding man knows well.  Hunters or carriage horses, all warranted sound,
+and bred from the best stock.  There are seventy in Mr. Jack Flynn's
+string, and he bids me say that if any wholesale dealer would make one
+bid for the whole lot, to save time, he would have the preference over
+any purchaser."
+
+There was a pause and a whisper from the crowd in front, with some
+expressions of discontent.  By a single sweep all the small dealers had
+been put out of it.  It was only a long purse which could buy on  such a
+scale as that.  The salesman looked round him inquiringly.
+
+"Come, Mr. Holloway," said he, at last. "You didn't come over here for
+the sake of the scenery.  You may travel the country and not see such
+another string of horses.  Give us a starting bid."
+
+The great dealer was still rattling his pencil upon his front teeth.
+"Well," said he, at last, "they _are_ a fine lot of horses, and I won't
+deny it.  They do you credit, Mr. Flynn, I am sure.  All the same I
+didn't mean to fill a ship at a single  bid in this fashion.  I like to
+pick and choose my horses."
+
+"In that case Mr. Flynn is quite prepared to sell them in smaller lots,"
+said the salesman.  "It was rather for the convenience of a wholesale
+customer that he was prepared to put them all up together.  But if no
+gentleman wishes to bid--"
+
+"Wait a minute," said a voice.  "They are very fine horses, these, and I
+will give you a bid to start you.  I will give you twenty pounds each
+for the string of seventy."
+
+There was a rustle as the crowd all swayed their heads to catch a
+glimpse of the speaker.  The salesman leaned forward.  "May I ask your
+name, sir?"
+
+"Strellenhaus--Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool."
+
+"It's a new firm," said Dodds's neighbour.  "I thought I knew them all,
+but I never heard of him before."
+
+The salesman's head had disappeared, for he was whispering with the
+breeder.  Now he suddenly straightened himself again.  "Thank you for
+giving us a lead, sir," said he.  "Now, gentlemen, you have heard the
+offer of Mr. Strellenhaus of Liverpool.  It will give us a base to start
+from.  Mr. Strellenhaus has offered twenty pounds a head."
+
+"Guineas," said Holloway.
+
+"Bravo, Mr. Holloway!  I knew that you would take a hand.  You are not
+the man to let such a string of horses pass away from you.  The bid is
+twenty guineas a head."
+
+"Twenty-five pounds," said Mr. Strellenhaus.
+
+"Twenty-six."
+
+"Thirty."
+
+It was London against Liverpool, and it was the head of the trade
+against an outsider.  Still, the one man had increased his bids by fives
+and the other only by ones.  Those fives meant determination and also
+wealth.  Holloway had ruled the market so long that the crowd was
+delighted at finding someone who would stand up to him.
+
+"The bid now stands at thirty pounds a head," said the salesman.
+"The word lies with you, Mr. Holloway."
+
+The London dealer was glancing keenly at his unknown opponent, and he
+was asking himself whether this was a genuine rival, or whether it was a
+device of some sort--an agent of Flynn's perhaps--for running up the
+price.  Little Mr. Strellenhaus, the same apple-faced gentleman whom
+Dodds had noticed in the coffee-room, stood looking at the horses with
+the sharp, quick glances of a man who knows what he is looking for.
+
+"Thirty-one," said Holloway, with the air of a man who has gone to his
+extreme limit.
+
+"Thirty-two," said Strellenhaus, promptly.
+
+Holloway grew angry at this persistent opposition.  His red face flushed
+redder still.
+
+"Thirty-three!" he shouted.
+
+"Thirty-four," said Strellenhaus.
+
+Holloway became thoughtful, and entered a few figures in his note-book.
+There were seventy horses.  He knew that Flynn's stock was always of the
+highest quality.  With the hunting season coming on he might rely upon
+selling them at an average of from forty-five to fifty.  Some of them
+might carry a heavy weight, and would run to three figures.  On the
+other hand, there was the feed and keep of them for three months, the
+danger of the voyage, the chance of influenza or some of those other
+complaints which run through an entire stable as measles go through a
+nursery.  Deducting all this, it was a question whether at the present
+price any profit would be left upon the transaction.  Every pound that
+he bid meant seventy out of his pocket.  And yet he could not submit to
+be beaten by this stranger without a struggle.  As a business matter it
+was important to him to be recognised as the head of his profession.
+He would make one more effort, if he sacrificed his profit by doing so.
+
+"At the end of your rope, Mr. Holloway?" asked the salesman, with the
+suspicion of a sneer.
+
+"Thirty-five," cried Holloway gruffly.
+
+"Thirty-six," said Strellenhaus.
+
+"Then I wish you joy of your bargain," said Holloway.  "I don't buy at
+that price, but I should be  glad to sell you some."
+
+Mr. Strellenhaus took no notice of the irony.  He was still looking
+critically at the horses.  The salesman glanced round him in a
+perfunctory way.
+
+"Thirty-six pounds bid," said he.  "Mr. Jack Flynn's lot is going to Mr.
+Strellenhaus of Liverpool, at thirty-six pounds a head.  Going--going--"
+
+"Forty!" cried a high, thin, clear voice.
+
+A buzz rose from the crowd, and they were all on tiptoe again, trying to
+catch a glimpse of this reckless buyer.  Being a tall man, Dodds could
+see over the others, and there, at the side of Holloway, he saw the
+masterful nose and aristocratic beard of the second stranger in the
+coffee-room.  A sudden personal interest added itself to the scene.
+He felt that he was on the verge of something--something dimly seen--
+which he could himself turn to account.  The two men with strange names,
+the telegrams, the horses--what was underlying it all?  The salesman was
+all animation again, and Mr. Jack Flynn was sitting up with his white
+whiskers bristling and his eyes twinkling.  It was the best deal which
+he had ever made in his fifty years of experience.
+
+"What name, sir?" asked the salesman.
+
+"Mr. Mancune."
+
+"Address?"
+
+"Mr. Mancune of Glasgow."
+
+"Thank you for your bid, sir.  Forty pounds a head has been bid by Mr.
+Mancune of Glasgow.  Any advance upon forty?"
+
+"Forty-one," said Strellenhaus.
+
+"Forty-five," said Mancune.
+
+The tactics had changed, and it was the turn of Strellenhaus now to
+advance by ones, while his rival sprang up by fives.  But the former was
+as dogged as ever.
+
+"Forty-six," said he.
+
+"Fifty!" cried Mancune.
+
+It was unheard of.  The most that the horses could possibly average at a
+retail price was as much as these men were willing to pay wholesale.
+
+"Two lunatics from Bedlam," whispered the angry Holloway.  "If I was
+Flynn I would see the colour of their money before I went any further."
+
+The same thought had occurred to the salesman.  "As a mere matter of
+business, gentlemen," said he, "it is usual in such cases to put down a
+small deposit as a guarantee of _bona fides_.  You will understand how I
+am placed, and that I have not had the pleasure of doing business with
+either of you before."
+
+"How much?" asked Strellenhaus, briefly.
+
+"Should we say five hundred?"
+
+"Here is a note for a thousand pounds."
+
+"And here is another," said Mancune.
+
+"Nothing could be more handsome, gentlemen," said the salesman.  "It's a
+treat to see such a spirited competition.  The last bid was fifty pounds
+a head from Mancune.  The word lies with you, Mr. Strellenhaus."
+
+Mr. Jack Flynn whispered something to the salesman.  "Quite so! Mr.
+Flynn suggests, gentlemen, that as you are both large buyers, it would,
+perhaps, be a convenience to you if he was to add the string of Mr. Tom
+Flynn, which consists of seventy animals of precisely the same quality,
+making one hundred and forty in all.  Have you any objection, Mr.
+Mancune?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"And you, Mr. Strellenhaus?"
+
+"I should prefer it."
+
+"Very handsome! Very handsome indeed!" murmured the salesman.  "Then I
+understand, Mr. Mancune, that your offer of fifty pounds a head extends
+to the whole of these horses?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+A long breath went up from the crowd.  Seven thousand pounds at one
+deal.  It was a record for Dunsloe.
+
+"Any advance, Mr. Strellenhaus?"
+
+"Fifty-one."
+
+"Fifty-five."
+
+"Fifty-six."
+
+"Sixty."
+
+They could hardly believe their ears.  Holloway stood with his mouth
+open, staring blankly in front of him.  The salesman tried hard to look
+as if such bidding and such prices were nothing unusual.  Jack Flynn of
+Kildare smiled benignly and rubbed his hands together.  The crowd
+listened in dead silence.
+
+"Sixty-one," said Strellenhaus.  From the beginning he had stood without
+a trace of emotion upon his round face, like a little automatic figure
+which bid by clockwork.  His rival was of a more excitable nature.  His
+eyes were shining, and he was for ever twitching at his beard.
+
+"Sixty-five," he cried.
+
+"Sixty-six."
+
+"Seventy."
+
+But the clockwork had run down.  No answering bid came from Mr.
+Strellenhaus.
+
+"Seventy bid, sir."
+
+Mr. Strellenhaus shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I am buying for another, and I have reached his limit," said he.
+"If you will permit me to send for instructions--"
+
+"I am afraid, sir, that the sale must proceed."
+
+"Then the horses belong to this gentleman."  For the first time he
+turned towards his rival, and their glances crossed like sword-blades.
+"It is possible that I may see the horses again."
+
+"I hope so," said Mr. Mancune; and his white, waxed moustache gave a
+feline upward bristle.
+
+So, with a bow, they separated.  Mr. Strellenhaus walked, down to the
+telegraph-office, where his message was delayed because Mr. Worlington
+Dodds was already at the end of the wires, for, after dim guesses and
+vague conjecture, he had suddenly caught a clear view of this coming
+event which had cast so curious a shadow before it in this little Irish
+town.  Political rumours, names, appearances, telegrams, seasoned horses
+at any price, there could only be one meaning to it.  He held a secret,
+and he meant to use it.
+
+Mr. Warner, who was the partner of Mr. Worlington Dodds, and who was
+suffering from the same eclipse, had gone down to the Stock Exchange,
+but had found little consolation there, for the European system was in a
+ferment, and rumours of peace and of war were succeeding each other with
+such rapidity and assurance that it was impossible to know which to
+trust.  It was obvious that a fortune lay either way, for every rumour
+set the funds fluctuating; but without special information it was
+impossible to act, and no one dared to plunge heavily upon the strength
+of newspaper surmise and the gossip of the street.  Warner knew that an
+hour's work might resuscitate the fallen fortunes of himself and his
+partner, and yet he could not afford to make a mistake.  He returned to
+his office in the afternoon, half inclined to back the chances of peace,
+for of all war scares not one in ten comes to pass.  As he entered the
+office a telegram lay upon the table.  It was from Dunsloe, a place of
+which he had never heard, and was signed by his absent partner.
+The message was in cipher, but he soon translated it, for it was short
+and crisp.
+
+"I am a bear of everything German and French.  Sell, sell, sell, keep on
+selling."
+
+For a moment Warner hesitated.  What could Worlington Dodds know at
+Dunsloe which was not known in Throgmorton Street?  But he remembered
+the quickness and decision of his partner.  He would not have sent such
+a message without very good grounds.  If he was to act at all he must
+act at once, so, hardening his heart, he went down to the house, and,
+dealing upon that curious system by which a man can sell what he has not
+got, and what he could not pay for if he had it, he disposed of heavy
+parcels of French and German securities.  He had caught the market in
+one of its little spasms of hope, and there was no lack of buying until
+his own persistent selling caused others to follow his lead, and so
+brought about a reaction.  When Warner returned to his offices it took
+him some hours to work out his accounts, and he emerged into the streets
+in the evening with the absolute certainty that the next settling-day
+would leave him either hopelessly bankrupt or exceedingly prosperous.
+
+It all depended upon Worlington Dodds's information.  What could he
+possibly have found out at Dunsloe?
+
+And then suddenly he saw a newspaper boy fasten a poster upon a
+lamp-post, and a little crowd had gathered round it in an instant
+One of them waved his hat in the air; another shouted to a friend across
+the street.  Warner hurried up and caught a glimpse of the poster
+between two craning heads--
+
+           "FRANCE DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY."
+
+"By Jove!" cried Warner.  "Old Dodds was right, after all."
+
+
+
+THE KING OF THE FOXES
+
+
+It was after a hunting dinner, and there were as many scarlet coats as
+black ones round the table.  The conversation over the cigars had
+turned, therefore, in the direction of horses and horsemen, with
+reminiscences of phenomenal runs where foxes had led the pack from end
+to end of a county, and been overtaken at last by two or three limping
+hounds and a huntsman on foot, while every rider in the field had been
+pounded.  As the port circulated the runs became longer and more
+apocryphal, until we had the whips inquiring their way and failing to
+understand the dialect of the people who answered them.  The foxes, too,
+became mere eccentric, and we had foxes up pollard willows, foxes which
+were dragged by the tail out of horses' mangers, and foxes which had
+raced through an open front door and gone to ground in a lady's
+bonnet-box.  The master had told one or two tall reminiscences, and when
+he cleared his throat for another we were all curious, for he was a bit
+of an artist in his way, and produced his effects in a _crescendo_
+fashion.  His face wore the earnest, practical, severely accurate
+expression which heralded some of his finest efforts.
+
+"It was before I was master," said he.  "Sir Charles Adair had the
+hounds at that time, and then afterwards they passed to old Lathom, and
+then to me.  It may possibly have been just after Lathom took them over,
+but my strong impression is that it was in Adair's time.  That would be
+early in the seventies--about seventy-two, I should say.
+
+"The man I mean has moved to another part of the country, but I daresay
+that some of you can remember him.  Danbury was the name--Walter
+Danbury, or Wat Danbury, as the people used to call him.  He was the son
+of old Joe Danbury, of High Ascombe, and when his father died he came
+into a very good thing, for his only brother was drowned when the _Magna
+Charta_ foundered, so he inherited the whole estate.  It was but a few
+hundred acres, but it was good arable land, and those were the great
+days of farming.  Besides, it was freehold, and a yeoman farmer without
+a mortgage was a warmish man before the great fall in wheat came.
+Foreign wheat and barbed wire--those are the two curses of this country,
+for the one spoils the farmer's work and the other spoils his play.
+
+"This young Wat Danbury was a very fine fellow, a keen rider, and a
+thorough sportsman, but his head was a little turned at having come,
+when so young, into a comfortable fortune, and he went the pace for a
+year or two.  The lad had no vice in him, but there was a hard-drinking
+set in the neighbourhood at that time, and Danbury got drawn in among
+them; and, being an amiable fellow who liked to do what his friends were
+doing, he very soon took to drinking a great deal more than was good for
+him.  As a rule, a man who takes his exercise may drink as much as he
+likes in the evening, and do himself no very great harm, if he will
+leave it alone during the day.  Danbury had too many friends for that,
+however, and it really looked as if the poor chap was going to the bad,
+when a very curious thing happened which pulled him up with such a
+sudden jerk that he never put his hand upon the neck of a whisky bottle
+again.
+
+"He had a peculiarity which I have noticed in a good many other men,
+that though he was always playing tricks with his own health, he was
+none the less very anxious about it, and was extremely fidgety if ever
+he had any trivial symptom.  Being a tough, open-air fellow, who was
+always as hard as a nail, it was seldom that there was anything amiss
+with him; but at last the drink began to tell, and he woke one morning
+with his hands shaking and all his nerves tingling like over-stretched
+fiddle-strings.  He had been dining at some very wet house the night
+before, and the wine had, perhaps, been more plentiful than choice; at
+any rate, there he was, with a tongue like a bath towel and a head that
+ticked like an eight-day clock.  He was very alarmed at his own
+condition, and he sent for Doctor Middleton, of Ascombe, the father of
+the man who practises there now.
+
+"Middleton had been a great friend of old Danbury's, and he was very
+sorry to see his son going to the devil; so he improved the occasion by
+taking his case very seriously, and lecturing him upon the danger of his
+ways.  He shook his head and talked about the possibility of _delirium
+tremens_, or even of mania, if he continued to lead such a life.
+Wat Danbury was horribly frightened.
+
+"'Do you think I am going to get anything of the sort?' he wailed.
+
+"'Well, really, I don't know,' said the doctor gravely.  'I cannot
+undertake to say that you are out of danger.  Your system is very much
+out of order.  At any time during the day you might have those grave
+symptoms of which I warn you.'
+
+"'You think I shall be safe by evening?'
+
+"'If you drink nothing during the day, and have no nervous symptoms
+before evening, I think you may consider yourself safe," the doctor
+answered.  A little fright would, he thought, do his patient good, so he
+made the most of the matter.
+
+"'What symptoms may I expect?' asked Danebury.
+
+"'It generally takes the form of optical delusions.'
+
+"'I see specks floating all about.'
+
+"'That is mere biliousness,' said the doctor soothingly, for he saw that
+the lad was highly strung, and he did not wish to overdo it.
+'I daresay that you will have no symptoms of the kind, but when they do
+come they usually take the shape of insects, or reptiles, or curious
+animals.'
+
+"'And if I see anything of the kind?'
+
+"'If you do, you will at once send for me;' and so, with a promise of
+medicine, the doctor departed.
+
+"Young Wat Danbury rose and dressed and moped about the room feeling
+very miserable and unstrung, with a vision of the County Asylum for ever
+in his mind.  He had the doctor's word for it that if he could get
+through to evening in safety he would be all right; but it is not very
+exhilarating to be waiting for symptoms, and to keep on glancing at your
+bootjack to see whether it is still a bootjack or whether it has begun
+to develop antennae and legs.  At last he could stand it no longer, and
+an overpowering longing for the fresh air and the green grass came over
+him.  Why should he stay indoors when the Ascombe Hunt was meeting
+within half a mile of him?  If he was going to have these delusions
+which the doctor talked of, he would not have them the sooner nor the
+worse because he was on horseback in the open.  He was sure, too, it
+would ease his aching head.  And so it came about that in ten minutes he
+was in his hunting-kit, and in ten more he was riding out of his
+stable-yard with his roan mare 'Matilda' between his knees.  He was a
+little unsteady in his saddle just at first, but the farther he went the
+better he felt, until by the time he reached the meet his head was
+almost clear, and there was nothing troubling him except those haunting
+words of the doctor's about the possibility of delusions any time before
+nightfall.
+
+"But soon he forgot that also, for as he came up the hounds were thrown
+off, and they drew the Gravel Hanger, and afterwards the Hickory Copse.
+It was just the morning for a scent--no wind to blow it away, no water
+to wash it out, and just damp enough to make it cling.  There was a
+field of forty, all keen men and good riders, so when they came to the
+Black Hanger they knew that there would be some sport, for that's a
+cover which never draws blank.  The woods were thicker in those days
+than now, and the foxes were thicker also, and that great dark
+oak-grove was swarming with them.  The only difficulty was to make them
+break, for it is, as you know, a very close country, and you must coax
+them out into the open before you can hope for a run.
+
+"When they came to the Black Hanger the field took their positions along
+the cover-side wherever they thought that they were most likely to get a
+good start.  Some went in with the hounds, some clustered at the ends of
+the drives, and some kept outside in the hope of the fox breaking in
+that direction.  Young Wat Danbury knew the country like the palm of his
+hand, so he made for a place where several drives intersected, and there
+he waited.  He had a feeling that the faster and the farther he galloped
+the better he should be, and so he was chafing to be off.  His mare,
+too, was in the height of fettle and one of the fastest goers in the
+county.  Wat was a splendid lightweight rider--under ten stone with his
+saddle--and the mare was a powerful creature, all quarters and
+shoulders, fit to carry a lifeguardsman; and so it was no wonder that
+there was hardly a man in the field who could hope to stay with him.
+There he waited and listened to the shouting of the huntsman and the
+whips, catching a glimpse now and then in the darkness of the wood of a
+whisking tail, or the gleam of a white-and-tan side amongst the
+underwood.  It was a well-trained pack, and there was not so much as a
+whine to tell you that forty hounds were working all round you.
+
+"And then suddenly there came one long-drawn yell from one of them, and
+it was taken up by another, and another, until within a few seconds the
+whole pack was giving tongue together and running on a hot scent.
+Danbury saw them stream across one of the drives and disappear upon the
+other side, and an instant later the three red coats of the hunt
+servants flashed after them upon the same line.  He might have made a
+shorter cut down one of the other drives, but he was afraid of heading
+the fox, so he followed the lead of the huntsman.  Right through the
+wood they went in a bee-line, galloping with their faces brushed by
+their horses' manes as they stooped under the branches.
+
+"It's ugly going, as you know, with the roots all wriggling about in the
+darkness, but you can take a risk when you catch an occasional glimpse
+of the pack running with a breast-high scent; so in and out they dodged
+until the wood began to thin at the edges, and they found themselves in
+the long bottom where the river runs.  It is clear going there upon
+grassland, and the hounds were running very strong about two hundred
+yards ahead, keeping parallel with the stream.  The field, who had come
+round the wood instead of going through, were coming hard over the
+fields upon the left; but Danbury, with the hunt servants, had a clear
+lead, and they never lost it.
+
+"Two of the field got on terms with them--Parson Geddes on a big
+seventeen-hand bay which he used to ride in those days, and Squire
+Foley, who rode as a feather-weight, and made his hunters out of cast
+thoroughbreds from the Newmarket sales; but the others never had a
+look-in from start to finish, for there was no check and no pulling, and
+it was clear cross-country racing from start to finish.  If you had
+drawn a line right across the map with a pencil you couldn't go
+straighter than that fox ran, heading for the South Downs and the sea,
+and the hounds ran as surely as if they were running to view, and yet
+from the beginning no one ever saw the fox, and there was never a hallo
+forrard to tell them that he had been spied.  This, however, is not so
+surprising, for if you've been over that line of country you will know
+that there are not very many people about.
+
+"There were six of them then in the front row--Parson Geddes, Squire
+Foley, the huntsman, two whips, and Wat Danbury, who had forgotten all
+about his head and the doctor by this time, and had not a thought for
+anything but the run.  All six were galloping just as hard as they could
+lay hoofs to the ground.  One of the whips dropped back, however, as
+some of the hounds were tailing off, and that brought them down to five.
+Then Foley's thoroughbred strained herself, as these slim-legged,
+dainty-fetlocked thoroughbreds will do when the going is rough, and he
+had to take a back seat.  But the other four were still going strong,
+and they did four or five miles down the river flat at a rasping pace.
+It had been a wet winter, and the waters had been out a little time
+before, so there was a deal of sliding and splashing; but by the time
+they came to the bridge the whole field was out of sight, and these four
+had the hunt to themselves.
+
+"The fox had crossed the bridge--for foxes do not care to swim a chilly
+river any more than humans do--and from that point he had streaked away
+southward as hard as he could tear.  It is broken country, rolling
+heaths, down one slope and up another, and it's hard to say whether the
+up or the down is the more trying for the horses.  This sort of
+switchback work is all right for a cobby, short-backed, short-legged
+little horse, but it is killing work for a big, long-striding hunter
+such as one wants in the Midlands.  Anyhow, it was too much for Parson
+Geddes' seventeen-hand bay, and though he tried the Irish trick--for he
+was a rare keen sportsman--of running up the hills by his horse's head,
+it was all to no use, and he had to give it up.  So then there were only
+the huntsman, the whip, and Wat Danbury--all going strong.
+
+"But the country got worse and worse and the hills were steeper and more
+thickly covered in heather and bracken.  The horses were over their
+hocks all the time, and the place was pitted with rabbit-holes; but the
+hounds were still streaming along, and the riders could not afford to
+pick their steps.  As they raced down one slope, the hounds were always
+flowing up the opposite one, until it looked like that game where the
+one figure in falling makes the other one rise.
+
+"But never a glimpse did they get of the fox, although they knew very
+well that he must be only a very short way ahead for the scent to be so
+strong.  And then Wat Danbury heard a crash and a thud at his elbow, and
+looking round he saw a pair of white cords and top-boots kicking out of
+a tussock of brambles.  The whip's horse had stumbled, and the whip was
+out of the running.  Danbury and the huntsman eased down for an instant;
+and then, seeing the man staggering to his feet all right, they turned
+and settled into their saddles once more.
+
+"Joe Clarke, the huntsman, was a famous old rider, known for five
+counties round; but he reckoned upon his second horse, and the second
+horses had all been left many miles behind.  However, the one he was
+riding was good enough for anything with such a horseman upon his back,
+and he was going as well as when he started.  As to Wat Danbury, he was
+going better.  With every stride his own feelings improved, and the mind
+of the rider had its influence upon the mind of the horse.  The stout
+little roan was gathering its muscular limbs under it, and stretching to
+the gallop as if it were steel and whale-bone instead of flesh and
+blood.  Wat had never come to the end of its powers yet, and to-day he
+had such a chance of testing them as he had never had before.
+
+"There was a pasture country beyond the heather slopes, and for several
+miles the two riders were either losing ground as they fumbled with
+their crop-handles at the bars of gates, or gaining it again as they
+galloped over the fields.  Those were the days before this accursed wire
+came into the country, and you could generally break a hedge where you
+could not fly it, so they did not trouble the gates more than they could
+help.  Then they were down in a hard lane, where they had to slacken
+their pace, and through a farm where a man came shouting excitedly after
+them; but they had no time to stop and listen to him, for the hounds
+were on some ploughland, only two fields ahead.  It was sloping upwards,
+that ploughland, and the horses were over their fetlocks in the red,
+soft soil.
+
+"When they reached the top they were blowing badly, but a grand valley
+sloped before them, leading up to the open country of the South Downs.
+Between, there lay a belt of pine-woods, into which the hounds were
+streaming, running now in a long, straggling line, and shedding one here
+and one there as they ran.  You could see the white-and-tan dots here
+and there where the limpers were tailing away.  But half the pack were
+still going well, though the pace and distance had both been
+tremendous--two clear hours now without a check.
+
+"There was a drive through the pine-wood--one of those green, slightly
+rutted drives where a horse can get the last yard out of itself, for the
+ground is hard enough to give him clean going and yet springy enough to
+help him.  Wat Danbury got alongside of the huntsman and they galloped
+together with their stirrup-irons touching, and the hounds within a
+hundred yards of them.
+
+"'We have it all to ourselves,' said he.
+
+"'Yes, sir, we've shook on the lot of 'em this time,' said old Joe
+Clarke.  'If we get this fox it's worth while 'aving 'im skinned an'
+stuffed, for 'e's a curiosity 'e is.'
+
+"'It's the fastest run I ever had in my life!' cried Danbury.
+
+"'And the fastest that ever I 'ad, an' that means more,' said the old
+huntsman.  'But what licks me is that we've never 'ad a look at the
+beast.  'E must leave an amazin' scent be'ind 'im when these 'ounds can
+follow 'im like this, and yet none of us have seen 'im when we've 'ad a
+clear 'alf mile view in front of us.'
+
+"'I expect we'll have a view of him presently,' said Danbury; and in his
+mind he added, 'at least, I shall,' for the huntsman's horse was gasping
+as it ran, and the white foam was pouring down it like the side of a
+washing-tub.
+
+"They had followed the hounds on to one of the side tracks which led out
+of the main drive, and that divided into a smaller track still, where
+the branches switched across their faces as they went, and there was
+barely room for one horse at a time.  Wat Danbury took the lead, and he
+heard the huntsman's horse clumping along heavily behind him, while his
+own mare was going with less spring than when she had started.  She
+answered to a touch of his crop or spur, however, and he felt that there
+was something still left to draw upon.  And then he looked up, and there
+was a heavy wooden stile at the end of the narrow track, with a lane of
+stiff young saplings leading down to it, which was far too thick to
+break through.  The hounds were running clear upon the grassland on the
+other side, and you were bound either to get over that stile or lose
+sight of them, for the pace was too hot to let you go round.
+
+"Well, Wat Danbury was not the lad to flinch, and at it he went full
+split, like a man who means what he is doing.  She rose gallantly to it,
+rapped it hard with her front hoof, shook him on to her withers,
+recovered herself, and was over.  Wat had hardly got back into his
+saddle when there was a clatter behind him like the fall of a woodstack,
+and there was the top bar in splinters, the horse on its belly, and the
+huntsman on hands and knees half a dozen yards in front of him.
+Wat pulled up for an instant, for the fall was a smasher; but he saw old
+Joe spring to his feet and get to his horse's bridle.  The horse
+staggered up, but the moment it put one foot in front of the other, Wat
+saw that it was hopelessly lame--a slipped shoulder and a six weeks'
+job.  There was nothing he could do, and Joe was shouting to him not to
+lose the hounds, so off he went again, the one solitary survivor of the
+whole hunt.  When a man finds himself there, he can retire from
+fox-hunting, for he has tasted the highest which it has to offer.
+I remember once when I was out with the Royal Surrey--but I'll tell you
+that story afterwards.
+
+"The pack, or what was left of them, had got a bit ahead during this
+time; but he had a clear view of them on the downland, and the mare
+seemed full of pride at being the only one left, for she was stepping
+out rarely and tossing her head as she went.  They were two miles over
+the green shoulder of a hill, a rattle down a stony, deep-rutted country
+lane, where the mare stumbled and nearly came down, a jump over a 5ft.
+brook, a cut through a hazel copse, another dose of heavy ploughland, a
+couple of gates to open, and then the green, unbroken Downs beyond.
+
+"'Well,' said Wat Danbury to himself, 'I'll see this fox run into or I
+shall see it drowned, for it's all clear going now between this and the
+chalk cliffs which line the sea.'  But he was wrong in that, as he
+speedily discovered.  In all the little hollows of the downs at that
+part there are plantations of fir-woods, some of which have grown to a
+good size.  You do not see them until you come upon the edge of the
+valleys in which they lie.  Danbury was galloping hard over the short,
+springy turf when he came over the lip of one of these depressions, and
+there was the dark clump of wood lying in front of and beneath him.
+There were only a dozen hounds still running, and they were just
+disappearing among the trees.  The sunlight was shining straight upon
+the long olive-green slopes which curved down towards this wood, and
+Danbury, who had the eyes of a hawk, swept them over this great expanse;
+but there was nothing moving upon it.  A few sheep were grazing far up
+on the right, but there was no other sight of any living creature.
+He was certain then that he was very near to the end, for either the fox
+must have gone to ground in the wood or the hounds' noses must be at his
+very brush.  The mare seemed to know also what that great empty sweep of
+countryside meant, for she quickened her stride, and a few minutes
+afterwards Danbury was galloping into the fir-wood.
+
+"He had come from bright sunshine, but the wood was very closely
+planted, and so dim that he could hardly see to right or to left out of
+the narrow path down which he was riding.  You know what a solemn,
+churchyardy sort of place a fir-wood is.  I suppose it is the absence of
+any undergrowth, and the fact that the trees never move at all.  At any
+rate a kind of chill suddenly struck Wat Danbury, and it flashed through
+his mind that there had been some very singular points about this run--
+its length and its straightness, and the fact that from the first find
+no one had ever caught a glimpse of the creature.  Some silly talk which
+had been going round the country about the king of the foxes--a sort of
+demon fox, so fast that it could outrun any pack, and so fierce that
+they could do nothing with it if they overtook it--suddenly came back
+into his mind, and it did not seem so laughable now in the dim fir-wood
+as it had done when the story had been told over the wine and cigars.
+The nervousness which had been on him in the morning, and which he had
+hoped that he had shaken off, swept over him again in an overpowering
+wave.  He had been so proud of being alone, and yet he would have given
+10 pounds now to have had Joe Clarke's homely face beside him.  And
+then, just at that moment, there broke out from the thickest part of the
+wood the most frantic hullabaloo that ever he had heard in his life.
+The hounds had run into their fox.
+
+"Well, you know, or you ought to know, what your duty is in such a case.
+You have to be whip, huntsman, and everything else if you are the first
+man up.  You get in among the hounds, lash them off, and keep the brush
+and pads from being destroyed.  Of course, Wat Danbury knew all about
+that, and he tried to force his mare through the trees to the place
+where all this hideous screaming and howling came from, but the wood was
+so thick that it was impossible to ride it.  He sprang off, therefore,
+left the mare standing, and broke his way through as best he could with
+his hunting-lash ready over his shoulder.
+
+"But as he ran forward he felt his flesh go cold and creepy all over.
+He had heard hounds run into foxes many times before, but he had never
+heard such sounds as these.  They were not the cries of triumph, but of
+fear.  Every now and then came a shrill yelp of mortal agony.  Holding
+his breath, he ran on until he broke through the interlacing branches,
+and found himself in a little, clearing with the hounds all crowding
+round a patch of tangled bramble at the further end.
+
+"When he first caught sight of them the hounds were standing in a
+half-circle round this bramble patch, with their backs bristling and
+their jaws gaping.  In front of the brambles lay one of them with his
+throat torn out, all crimson and white-and-tan.  Wat came running out
+into the clearing, and at the sight of him the hounds took heart again,
+and one of them sprang with a growl into the bushes.  At the same
+instant, a creature the size of a donkey jumped on to its feet, a huge
+grey head, with monstrous glistening fangs and tapering fox jaws, shot
+out from among the branches, and the hound was thrown several feet into
+the air, and fell howling among the cover.  Then there was a clashing
+snap, like a rat-trap closing, and the howls sharpened into a scream and
+then were still.
+
+"Danbury had been on the look-out for symptoms all day, and now he had
+found them.  He looked once more at the thicket, saw a pair of savage
+red eyes fixed upon him, and fairly took to his heels.  It might only be
+a passing delusion, or it might be the permanent mania of which the
+doctor had spoken, but anyhow, the thing to do was to get back to bed
+and to quiet, and to hope for the best.
+
+"He forgot the hounds, the hunt, and everything else in his desperate
+fears for his own reason.  He sprang upon his mare, galloped her madly
+over the downs, and only stopped when he found himself at a country
+station.  There he left his mare at the inn, and made back for home as
+quickly as steam would take him.  It was evening before he got there,
+shivering with apprehension, and seeing those red eyes and savage teeth
+at every turn.  He went straight to bed and sent for Dr. Middleton.
+
+"'I've got 'em, doctor,' said he.  'It came about exactly as you said--
+strange creatures, optical delusions, and everything.  All I ask you now
+is to save my reason.'  The doctor listened to his story, and was
+shocked as he heard it.
+
+"'It appears to be a very clear case,' said he.  'This must be a lesson
+to you for life.'
+
+"'Never a drop again if I only come safely through this,' cried Wat
+Danbury.
+
+"'Well, my dear boy, if you will stick to that it may prove a blessing
+in disguise.  But the difficulty in this case is to know where fact ends
+and fancy begins.  You see, it is not as if there was only one delusion.
+There have been several.  The dead dogs, for example, must have been one
+as well as the creature in the bush.'
+
+"'I saw it all as clearly as I see you.'
+
+"'One of the characteristics of this form of delirium is that what you
+see is even clearer than reality.  I was wondering whether the whole run
+was not a delusion also.'
+
+"Wat Danbury pointed to his hunting boots still lying upon the floor,
+necked with the splashings of two counties.
+
+"'Hum! that looks very real, certainly.  No doubt, in your weak state,
+you over-exerted yourself and so brought this attack upon yourself.
+Well, whatever the cause, our treatment is clear.  You will take the
+soothing mixture which I will send to you, and we shall put two leeches
+upon your temples to-night to relieve any congestion of the brain.'
+
+"So Wat Danbury spent the night in tossing about and reflecting what a
+sensitive thing this machinery of ours is, and how very foolish it is to
+play tricks with what is so easily put out of gear and so difficult to
+mend.  And so he repeated and repeated his oath that this first lesson
+should be his last, and that from that time forward he would be a sober,
+hard-working yeoman as his father had been before him.  So he lay,
+tossing and still repentant, when his door flew open in the morning and
+in rushed the doctor with a newspaper crumpled up in his hand.
+
+"'My dear boy,' he cried, 'I owe you a thousand apologies.  You're the
+most ill-used lad and I the greatest numskull in the county.  Listen to
+this!' And he sat down upon the side of the bed, flattened out his
+paper upon his knee, and began to read.
+
+"The paragraph was headed, 'Disaster to the Ascombe Hounds,' and it went
+on to say that four of the hounds, shockingly torn and mangled, had been
+found in Winton Fir Wood upon the South Downs.  The run had been so
+severe that half the pack were lamed; but the four found in the wood
+were actually dead, although the cause of their extraordinary injuries
+was still unknown.
+
+"'So, you see,' said the doctor, looking up, 'that I was wrong when I
+put the dead hounds among the delusions.'
+
+"'But the cause?' cried Wat.
+
+"'Well, I think we may guess the cause from an item which has been
+inserted just as the paper went to press:--
+
+   "Late last night, Mr. Brown, of Smither's Farm, to the
+   east of Hastings, perceived what he imagined to be an enormous
+   dog worrying one of his sheep.  He shot the creature, which
+   proves to be a grey Siberian wolf of the variety known as
+   _Lupus Giganticus_.  It is supposed to have escaped from some
+   travelling menagerie.
+
+"That's the story, gentlemen, and Wat Danbury stuck to his good
+resolutions, for the fright which he had cured him of all wish to run
+such a risk again; and he never touches anything stronger than
+lime-juice--at least, he hadn't before he left this part of the country,
+five years ago next Lady Day."
+
+
+
+THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS
+
+
+There was only the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that
+great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand.  It stood high on the
+bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole
+Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders
+which studded its surface.  Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was
+beating down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims
+of the pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a
+blast-furnace.  It had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were
+no larger than themselves.
+
+"Whew!" cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead, "you'd pay five shillings
+for this at the hummums."
+
+"Precisely," said Scott.  "But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in
+a Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and
+a whole Christmas-treeful of things dangling from you.  The hot-house at
+Kew is excellent as a conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon
+the horizontal bar.  I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and a halt
+until evening."
+
+Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward.
+Everywhere were the same black burned rocks and deep orange sand.
+At one spot only an intermittent line appeared to have been cut through
+the rugged spurs which ran down to the river.  It was the bed of the old
+railway, long destroyed by the Arabs, but now in process of
+reconstruction by the advancing Egyptians.  There was no other sign of
+man's handiwork in all that desolate scene.
+
+"It's palm trees or nothing," said Scott.
+
+"Well, I suppose we must; and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the
+force up.  What _would_ our editors say if we were late for the action?"
+
+"My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn't need to be told that no sane
+modern general would ever attack until the Press is up."
+
+"You don't mean that?" said young Anerley.  "I thought we were looked
+upon as an unmitigated nuisance."
+
+"'Newspaper correspondents and travelling gentlemen, and all that tribe
+of useless drones'--being an extract from Lord Wolseley's 'Soldier's
+Pocket-Book,'" cried Scott.  "We know all about _that_, Anerley;" and he
+winked behind his blue spectacles.  "If there was going to be a battle
+we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up.  I've been
+in fifteen, and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a
+reporter's table."
+
+"That's very well; but the enemy may be less considerate," said
+Mortimer.
+
+"They are not strong enough to force a battle."
+
+"A skirmish, then?"
+
+"Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear.  In that case we are just
+where we should be."
+
+"So we are!  What a score over Reuter's man up with the advance!
+Well, we'll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms."
+
+There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies.
+Reuter's was thirty miles ahead; two evening pennies upon camels were
+twenty miles behind.  And among them they represented the eyes and ears
+of the public--the great silent millions and millions who had paid for
+everything, and who waited so patiently to know the result of their
+outlay.
+
+They were remarkable men these body-servants of the Press; two of them
+already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first
+campaign, and full of deference for his famous comrades.
+
+This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was
+Mortimer, of the _Intelligence_--tall, straight, and hawk-faced, with
+khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund, and
+a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled by
+the mosquito and the sand-fly.  The other--small, quick, mercurial, with
+blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch for ever flicking in
+his left hand--was Scott, of the _Courier_, who had come through more
+dangers and brought off more brilliant _coups_ than any man in the
+profession, save the eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to
+take the field.  They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and
+it was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship
+lay.  Each dovetailed into the other.  The strength of each was in the
+other's weakness.   Together they formed a perfect unit.  Mortimer was
+Saxon--slow, conscientious, and deliberate;  Scott was Celtic--quick,
+happy-go-lucky, and brilliant.  Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the
+more attractive.  Mortimer was the deeper thinker, Scott the brighter
+talker.  By a curious coincidence, though each had seen much of warfare,
+their campaigns had never coincided.  Together they covered all recent
+military history.  Scott had done Plevna, the Shipka, the Zulus, Egypt,
+Suakim; Mortimer had seen the Boer War, the Chilian, the Bulgaria and
+Servian, the Gordon relief, the Indian frontier, Brazilian rebellion,
+and Madagascar.  This intimate personal knowledge gave a peculiar
+flavour to their talk.  There was none of the second-hand surmise and
+conjecture which form so much of our conversation; it was all concrete
+and final.  The speaker had been there, had seen it, and there was an
+end of it.
+
+In spite of their friendship there was the keenest professional rivalry
+between the two men.  Either would have sacrificed himself to help his
+companion, but either would also have sacrificed his companion to help
+his paper.  Never did a jockey yearn for a winning mount as keenly as
+each of them longed to have a full column in a morning edition whilst
+every other daily was blank.  They were perfectly frank about the
+matter.  Each professed himself ready to steal a march on his neighbour,
+and each recognised that the other's duty to his employer was far higher
+than any personal consideration.
+
+The third man was Anerley, of the _Gazette_--young, inexperienced, and
+rather simple-looking.  He had a droop of the lip, which some of his
+more intimate friends regarded as a libel upon his character, and his
+eyes were so slow and so sleepy that they suggested an affectation.
+A leaning towards soldiering had sent him twice to autumn manoeuvres,
+and a touch of colour in his descriptions had induced the proprietors of
+the _Gazette_ to give him a trial as a war-special.  There was a
+pleasing diffidence about his bearing which recommended him to his
+experienced companions, and if they had a smile sometimes at his
+guileless ways, it was soothing to them to have a comrade from whom
+nothing was to be feared.  From the day that they left the
+telegraph-wire behind them at Sarras, the man who was mounted upon a
+15-guinea 13-4 Syrian was delivered over into the hands of the owners of
+the two fastest polo-ponies that ever shot down the Ghezireh ground.
+The three had dismounted and led their beasts under the welcome shade.
+In the brassy, yellow glare every branch above threw so black and solid
+a shadow that the men involuntarily raised their feet to step over
+them.
+
+"The palm makes an excellent hat-rack," said Scott, slinging his
+revolver and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which
+bristle from the trunk.   "As a shade tree, however, it isn't an
+unqualified success.  Curious that in the universal adaptation of means
+to ends something a little less flimsy could not have been devised for
+the tropics."
+
+"Like the banyan in India."
+
+"Or the fine hardwood trees in Ashantee, where a whole regiment could
+picnic under the shade."
+
+"The teak tree isn't bad in Burmah, either.  By Jove, the baccy has all
+come loose in the saddle-bag!  That long-cut mixture smokes rather hot
+for this climate.  How about the baggles, Anerley?"
+
+"They'll be here in five minutes."
+
+Down the winding path which curved among the rocks the little train of
+baggage-camels was daintily picking its way.  They came mincing and
+undulating along, turning their heads slowly from side to side with the
+air of a self-conscious woman.  In front rode the three Berberee
+body-servants upon donkeys, and behind walked the Arab camel-boys.
+They had been travelling for nine long hours, ever since the first
+rising of the moon, at the weary camel-drag of two and a half miles an
+hour, but now they brightened, both beasts and men, at the sight of the
+grove and the riderless horses.  In a few minutes the loads were
+unstrapped, the animals tethered, a fire lighted, fresh water carried up
+from the river, and each camel-boy provided with his own little heap of
+tibbin laid in the centre of the table-cloth, without which no well-bred
+Arabian will condescend to feed.  The dazzling light without, the
+subdued half-tones within, the green palm-fronds outlined against the
+deep blue sky, the flitting, silent-footed Arab servants, the crackling
+of sticks, the reek of a lighting fire, the placid supercilious heads of
+the camels, they all come back in their dreams to those who have known
+them.
+
+Scott was breaking eggs into a pan and rolling out a love-song in his
+rich, deep voice.  Anerley, with his head and arms buried in a deal
+packing-case, was working his way through strata of tinned soups, bully
+beef, potted chicken, and sardines to reach the jams which lay beneath.
+The conscientious Mortimer, with his notebook upon his knee, was jotting
+down what the railway engineer had told him at the line-end the day
+before.  Suddenly he raised his eyes and saw the man himself on his
+chestnut pony, dipping and rising over the broken ground.
+
+"Hullo! Here's Merryweather!"
+
+"A pretty lather his pony is in!  He's had her at that hand-gallop for
+hours, by the look of her.  Hullo, Merryweather, hullo!"
+
+The engineer, a small, compact man with a pointed red beard, had made as
+though he would ride past their camp without word or halt.  Now he
+swerved, and easing his pony down to a canter, he headed her to-wards
+them.
+
+"For God's sake, a drink!" he croaked.  "My tongue is stuck to the roof
+of my mouth."
+
+Mortimer ran with the water-bottle, Scott with the whisky-flask, and
+Anerley with the tin pannikin.  The engineer drank until his breath
+failed him.
+
+"Well, I must be off," said he, striking the drops from his red
+moustache.
+
+"Any news?"
+
+"A hitch in the railway construction.  I must see the general.
+It's the devil not having a telegraph."
+
+"Anything we can report?"  Out came three notebooks.
+
+"I'll tell you after I've seen the general."
+
+"Any dervishes?"
+
+"The usual shaves.  Hud-up, Jinny! Good-bye!"
+
+With a soft thudding upon the sand, and a clatter among the stones the
+weary pony was off upon her journey once more.
+
+"Nothing serious, I suppose?" said Mortimer, staring after him.
+
+"Deuced serious," cried Scott.  "The ham and eggs are burned!  No--it's
+all right--saved, and done to a turn!  Pull the box up, Anerley.
+Come on, Mortimer, stow that notebook!  The fork is mightier than the
+pen just at present.  What's the matter with you, Anerley?"
+
+"I was wondering whether what we have just seen was worth a telegram."
+
+"Well, it's for the proprietors to say if it's worth it.  Sordid money
+considerations are not for us.  We must wire about something just to
+justify our khaki coats and our putties."
+
+"But what is there to say?"
+
+Mortimer's long, austere face broke into a smile over the youngster's
+innocence.  "It's not quite usual in our profession to give each other
+tips," said he.  "However, as my telegram is written, I've no objection
+to your reading it.  You may be sure that I would not show it to you if
+it were of the slightest importance."
+
+Anerley took up the slip of paper and read:--
+
+   Merryweather obstacles stop journey confer general stop nature
+   difficulties later stop rumours dervishes.
+
+"This is very condensed," said Anerley, with wrinkled brows.
+
+"Condensed!" cried Scott.  "Why, it's sinfully garrulous.  If my old man
+got a wire like that his language would crack the lamp-shades.  I'd cut
+out half this; for example, I'd have out 'journey,' and 'nature,' and
+'rumours.' But my old man would make a ten-line paragraph of it for all
+that."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Well, I'll do it myself just to show you.  Lend me that stylo." He
+scribbled for a minute in his notebook.  "It works out somewhat on these
+lines":--
+
+   Mr. Charles H.  Merryweather, the eminent railway engineer,
+   who is at present engaged in superintending the construction
+   of the line from Sarras to the front, has met with considerable
+   obstacles to the rapid completion of his important task--
+
+"Of course the old man knows who Merryweather is, and what he is about,
+so the word 'obstacles' would suggest all that to him."
+
+   He has to-day been compelled to make a journey of forty
+   miles to the front, in order to confer with the general upon
+   the steps which are necessary in order to facilitate the work.
+   Further particulars of the exact nature of the difficulties
+   met with will be made public at a later date.  All is quiet
+   upon the line of communications, though the usual persistent
+   rumours of the presence of dervishes in the Eastern desert
+   continue to circulate.--_Our own correspondent_.
+
+"How's that?" cried Scott, triumphantly, and his white teeth gleamed
+suddenly through his black beard.  "That's the sort of flapdoodle for
+the dear old public."
+
+"Will it interest them?"
+
+"Oh, everything interests them.  They want to know all about it; and
+they like to think that there is a man who is getting a hundred a month
+simply in order to tell it to them."
+
+"It's very kind of you to teach me all this."
+
+"Well, it is a little unconventional, for, after all, we are here to
+score over each other if we can.  There are no more eggs, and you must
+take it out in jam.  Of course, as Mortimer says, such a telegram as
+this is of no importance one way or another, except to prove to the
+office that we _are_ in the Soudan, and not at Monte Carlo.  But when it
+comes to serious work it must be every man for himself."
+
+"Is that quite necessary?"
+
+"Why, of course it is."
+
+"I should have thought if three men were to combine and to share their
+news, they would do better than if they were each to act for himself,
+and they would have a much pleasanter time of it."
+
+The two older men sat with their bread-and-jam in their hands, and an
+expression of genuine disgust upon their faces.
+
+"We are not here to have a pleasant time," said Mortimer, with a flash
+through his glasses.  "We are here to do our best for our papers.
+How can they score over each other if we do not do the same?  If we all
+combine we might as well amalgamate with Reuter at once."
+
+"Why, it would take away the whole glory of the profession!" cried
+Scott.  "At present the smartest man gets his stuff first on the wires.
+What inducement is there to be smart if we all share and share alike?"
+
+"And at present the man with the best equipment has the best chance,"
+remarked Mortimer, glancing across at the shot-silk polo ponies and the
+cheap little Syrian grey.  "That is the fair reward of foresight and
+enterprise.  Every man for himself, and let the best man win."
+
+"That's the way to find who the best man is.  Look at Chandler.
+He would never have got his chance if he had not played always off his
+own bat.  You've heard how he pretended to break his leg, sent his
+fellow-correspondent off for the doctor, and so got a fair start for the
+telegraph-office."
+
+"Do you mean to say that was legitimate?"
+
+"Everything is legitimate.  It's your wits against my wits."
+
+"I should call it dishonourable."
+
+"You may call it what you like.  Chandler's paper got the battle and the
+other's didn't.  It made Chandler's name."
+
+"Or take Westlake," said Mortimer, cramming the tobacco into his pipe.
+"Hi, Abdul, you may have the dishes!  Westlake brought his stuff down by
+pretending to be the Government courier, and using the relays of
+Government horses.  Westlake's paper sold half a million."
+
+"Is that legitimate also?" asked Anerley, thoughtfully.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, it looks a little like horse-stealing and lying."
+
+"Well, _I_ think I should do a little horse-stealing and lying if I
+could have a column to myself in a London daily.  What do you say,
+Scott?"
+
+"Anything short of manslaughter."
+
+"And I'm not sure that I'd trust you there."
+
+"Well, I don't think I should be guilty of newspaper-man-slaughter.
+That I regard as a distinct breach of professional etiquette.  But if
+any outsider comes between a highly charged correspondent and an
+electric wire, he does it at his peril.  My dear Anerley, I tell you
+frankly that if you are going to handicap yourself with scruple you may
+just as well be in Fleet Street as in the Soudan.  Our life is
+irregular.  Our work has never been systematised.  No doubt it will be
+some day, but the time is not yet.  Do what you can and how you can, and
+be first on the wires; that's my advice to you; and also, that when next
+you come upon a campaign you bring with you the best horse that money
+can buy.  Mortimer may beat me or I may beat Mortimer, but at least we
+know that between us we have the fastest ponies in the country.  We have
+neglected no chance."
+
+"I am not so certain of that," said Mortimer, slowly.  "You are aware,
+of course, that though a horse beats a camel on twenty miles, a camel
+beats a horse on thirty."
+
+"What, one of those camels?" cried Anerley in astonishment.  The two
+seniors burst out laughing.
+
+"No, no, the real high-bred trotter--the kind of beast the dervishes
+ride when they make their lightning raids."
+
+"Faster than a galloping horse?"  "Well, it tires a horse down.  It goes
+the same gait all the way, and it wants neither halt nor drink, and it
+takes rough ground much better than a horse.  They used to have long
+distance races at Haifa, and the camel always won at thirty."
+
+"Still, we need not reproach ourselves, Scott, for we are not very
+likely to have to carry a thirty-mile message, they will have the field
+telegraph next week."
+
+"Quite so.  But at the present moment--"
+
+"I know, my dear chap; but there is no motion of urgency before the
+house.  Load baggles at five o'clock; so you have Just three hours
+clear.  Any sign of the evening pennies?"
+
+Mortimer swept the northern horizon with his binoculars.  "Not in sight
+yet."
+
+"They are quite capable of travelling during the heat of the day.
+Just the sort of thing evening pennies _would_ do.  Take care of your
+match, Anerley.  These palm groves go up like a powder magazine if you
+set them alight.  Bye-bye."  The two men crawled under their
+mosquito-nets and sank instantly into the easy sleep of those whose
+lives are spent in the open.
+
+Young Anerley stood with his back against a palm tree and his briar
+between his lips, thinking over the advice which he had received.
+After all, they were the heads of the profession, these men, and it was
+not for him, the newcomer, to reform their methods.  If they served
+their papers in this fashion, then he must do the same.  They had at
+least been frank and generous in teaching him the rules of the game.
+If it was good enough for them it was good enough for him.
+
+It was a broiling afternoon, and those thin frills of foam round the
+black, glistening necks of the Nile boulders looked delightfully cool
+and alluring.  But it would not be safe to bathe for some hours to come.
+The air shimmered and vibrated over the baking stretch of sand and rock.
+There was not a breath of wind, and the droning and piping of the
+insects inclined one for sleep.  Somewhere above a hoopoe was calling.
+Anerley knocked out his ashes, and was turning towards his couch, when
+his eye caught something moving in the desert to the south.  It was a
+horseman riding towards them as swiftly as the broken ground would
+permit.  A messenger from the army, thought Anerley; and then, as he
+watched, the sun suddenly struck the man on the side of the head, and
+his chin flamed into gold.  There could not be two horsemen with beards
+of such a colour.  It was Merryweather, the engineer, and he was
+returning.  What on earth was he returning for?  He had been so keen to
+see the general, and yet he was coming back with his mission
+unaccomplished.  Was it that his pony was hopelessly foundered?
+It seemed to be moving well.  Anerley picked up Mortimer's binoculars,
+and a foam-bespattered horse and a weary koorbash-cracking man came
+cantering up the centre of the field.  But there was nothing in his
+appearance to explain the mystery of his return.  Then as he watched
+them they dipped into a hollow and disappeared.  He could see that it
+was one of those narrow khors which led to the river, and he waited,
+glass in hand, for their immediate reappearance.  But minute passed
+after minute and there was no sign of them.  That narrow gully appeared
+to have swallowed them up.  And then with a curious gulp and start he
+saw a little grey cloud wreathe itself slowly from among the rocks and
+drift in a long, hazy shred over the desert.  In an instant he had torn
+Scott and Mortimer from their slumbers.
+
+"Get up, you chaps!" he cried.  "I believe Merryweather has been shot by
+dervishes."
+
+"And Reuter not here!" cried the two veterans, exultantly clutching at
+their notebooks.  "Merryweather shot!  Where?  When?  How?"
+
+In a few words Anerley explained what he had seen.
+
+"You heard nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Well, a shot loses itself very easily among rocks.  By George, look at
+the buzzards!"
+
+Two large brown birds were soaring in the deep blue heaven.  As Scott
+spoke they circled down and dropped into the little khor.
+
+"That's good enough," said Mortimer, with his nose between the leaves of
+his book.  "'Merryweather headed dervishes stop return stop shot
+mutilated stop raid communications.'  How's that?"
+
+"You think he was headed off?"
+
+"Why else should he return?"
+
+"In that case, if they were out in front of him and others cut him off,
+there must be several small raiding parties."
+
+"I should judge so."
+
+"How about the 'mutilated'?"
+
+"I've fought against Arabs before."
+
+"Where are you off to?"
+
+"Sarras."
+
+"I think I'll race you in," said Scott.
+
+Anerley stared in astonishment at the absolutely impersonal way in which
+these men regarded the situation.  In their zeal for news it had
+apparently never struck them that they, their camp, and their servants
+were all in the lion's mouth.  But even as they talked there came the
+harsh, importunate rat-tat-tat of an irregular volley from among the
+rocks, and the high, keening whistle of bullets over their heads.
+A palm spray fluttered down amongst them.  At the same instant the six
+frightened servants came running wildly in for protection.
+
+It was the cool-headed Mortimer who organised the defence, for Scott's
+Celtic soul was so aflame at all this "copy" in hand and more to come
+that he was too exuberantly boisterous for a commander.  The other, with
+his spectacles and his stern face, soon had the servants in hand.
+"_Tali henna!  Egri!_  What the deuce are you frightened about?  Put the
+camels between the palm trunks.  That's right.  Now get the knee-tethers
+on them.  _Quies_!  Did you never hear bullets before?  Now put the
+donkeys here.  Not much--you don't get my polo-pony to make a zareba
+with.  Picket the ponies between the grove and the river out of danger's
+way.  These fellows seem to fire even higher than they did in '85."
+
+"That's got home, anyhow," said Scott, as they heard a soft, splashing
+thud like a stone in a mud-bank.
+
+"Who's hit, then?"
+
+"The brown camel that's chewing the cud."  As he spoke the creature, its
+jaw still working, laid its long neck along the ground and closed its
+large dark eyes.
+
+"That shot cost me 15 pounds," said Mortimer, ruefully.  "How many of
+them do you make?"
+
+"Four, I think."
+
+"Only four Bezingers, at any rate; there may be some spearmen."
+
+"I think not; it is a little raiding-party of rifle-men.  By the way,
+Anerley, you've never been under fire before, have you?"
+
+"Never," said the young pressman, who was conscious of a curious feeling
+of nervous elation.
+
+"Love and poverty and war, they are all experiences necessary to make a
+complete life.  Pass over those cartridges.  This is a very mild baptism
+that you are undergoing, for behind these camels you are as safe as if
+you were sitting in the back room of the Authors' Club."
+
+"As safe, but hardly as comfortable," said Scott.  "A long glass of hock
+and seltzer would be exceedingly acceptable.  But oh, Mortimer, what a
+chance!  Think of the general's feelings when he hears that the first
+action of the war has been fought by the Press column.  Think of Reuter,
+who has been stewing at the front for a week!  Think of the evening
+pennies just too late for the fun.  By George, that slug brushed a
+mosquito off me!"
+
+"And one of the donkeys is hit."
+
+"This is sinful.  It will end in our having to carry our own kits to
+Khartoum."
+
+"Never mind, my boy, it all goes to make copy.  I can see the
+headlines--'Raid on Communications'; 'Murder of British Engineer':
+'Press Column Attacked.'  Won't it be ripping?"
+
+"I wonder what the next line will be," said Anerley.
+
+"'Our Special Wounded'!" cried Scott, rolling over on to his back.
+"No harm done," he added, gathering himself up again; "only a chip off
+my knee.  This is getting sultry.  I confess that the idea of that back
+room at the Authors' Club begins to grow upon me."
+
+"I have some diachylon."
+
+"Afterwards will do.  We're having a 'appy day with Fuzzy on the rush.
+I wish he _would_ rush."
+
+"They're coming nearer."
+
+"This is an excellent revolver of mine if it didn't throw so devilish
+high.  I always aim at a man's toes if I want to stimulate his
+digestion.  O Lord, there's our kettle gone!"  With a boom like a
+dinner-gong a Remington bullet had passed through the kettle, and a
+cloud of steam hissed up from the fire.  A wild shout came from the
+rocks above.
+
+"The idiots think that they have blown us up.  They'll rush us now, as
+sure as fate; then it will be our turn to lead.  Got your revolver,
+Anerley?"
+
+"I have this double-barrelled fowling-piece."
+
+"Sensible man!  It's the best weapon in the world at this sort of
+rough-and-tumble work.  What cartridges?"
+
+"Swan-shot."
+
+"That will do all right.  I carry this big bore double-barrelled pistol
+loaded with slugs.  You might as well try to stop one of these fellows
+with a pea-shooter as with a service revolver."
+
+"There are ways and means," said Scott.  "The Geneva Convention does not
+hold south of the first cataract.  It's easy to make a bullet mushroom
+by a little manipulation of the tip of it.  When I was in the broken
+square at Tamai--"
+
+"Wait a bit," cried Mortimer, adjusting his glasses.  "I think they are
+coming now."
+
+"The time," said Scott, snapping up his watch, "being exactly seventeen
+minutes past four."
+
+Anerley had been lying behind a camel staring with an interest which
+bordered upon fascination at the rocks opposite.  Here was a little
+woolly puff of smoke, and there was another one, but never once had they
+caught a glimpse of the attackers.  To him there was something weird and
+awesome in these unseen, persistent men who, minute by minute, were
+drawing closer to them.  He had heard them cry out when the kettle was
+broken, and once, immediately afterwards, an enormously strong voice had
+roared something which had set Scott shrugging his shoulders.
+
+"They've got to take us first," said he, and Anerley thought his nerve
+might be better if he did not ask for a translation.
+
+The firing had begun at a distance of some 100 yards, which put it out
+of the question for them, with their lighter weapons, to make any reply
+to it.  Had their antagonists continued to keep that range the defenders
+must either have made a hopeless sally or tried to shelter themselves
+behind their zareba as best they might on the chance that the sound
+might bring up help.  But, luckily for them, the African has never taken
+kindly to the rifle, and his primitive instinct to close with his enemy
+is always too strong for his sense of strategy.  They were drawing in,
+therefore, and now, for the first time, Anerley caught sight of a face
+looking at them from over a rock.  It was a huge, virile, strong-jawed
+head of a pure negro type, with silver trinkets gleaming in the ears.
+The man raised a great arm from behind the rock, and shook his Remington
+at them.
+
+"Shall I fire?" asked Anerley.
+
+"No, no; it is too far.  Your shot would scatter all over the place."
+
+"It's a picturesque ruffian," said Scott.  "Couldn't you kodak him,
+Mortimer?  There's another!"  A fine-featured brown Arab, with a black,
+pointed beard, was peeping from behind another boulder.  He wore the
+green turban which proclaimed him hadji, and his face showed the keen,
+nervous exultation of the religious fanatic.
+
+"They seem a piebald crowd," said Scott.
+
+"That last is one of the real fighting Baggara," remarked Mortimer.
+"He's a dangerous man."
+
+"He looks pretty vicious.  There's another negro!"
+
+"Two more!  Dingas, by the look of them.  Just the same chaps we get our
+own black battalions from.  As long as they get a fight they don't mind
+who it's for; but if the idiots had only sense enough to understand,
+they would know that the Arab is their hereditary enemy, and we their
+hereditary friends.  Look at the silly juggins, gnashing his teeth at
+the very men who put down the slave trade!"
+
+"Couldn't you explain?"
+
+"I'll explain with this pistol when he comes a little nearer.  Now sit
+tight, Anerley.  They're off!"
+
+They were indeed.  It was the brown man with the green turban who headed
+the rush.  Close at his heels was the negro with the silver ear-rings--
+a giant of a man, and the other two were only a little behind.  As they
+sprang over the rocks one after the other, it took Anerley back to the
+school sports when he held the tape for the hurdle-race.  It was
+magnificent, the wild spirit and abandon of it, the flutter of the
+chequered galabeeahs, the gleam of steel, the wave of black arms, the
+frenzied faces, the quick pitter-patter of the rushing feet.  The
+law-abiding Briton is so imbued with the idea of the sanctity of human
+life that it was hard for the young pressman to realise that these men
+had every intention of killing him, and that he was at perfect liberty
+to do as much for them.  He lay staring as if this were a show and he a
+spectator.
+
+"Now, Anerley, now!  Take the Arab!" cried somebody.
+
+He put up the gun and saw the brown fierce face at the other end of the
+barrel.  He tugged at the trigger, but the face grew larger and fiercer
+with every stride.  Again and again he tugged.  A revolver-shot rang out
+at his elbow, then another one, and he saw a red spot spring out on the
+Arab's brown breast.  But he was still coming on.
+
+"Shoot, you ass, shoot!" screamed Scott.
+
+Again he strained unavailingly at the trigger.  There were two more
+pistol-shots, and the big negro had fallen and risen and fallen again.
+
+"Cock it, you fool!" shouted a furious voice;  and at the same instant,
+with a rush and flutter, the Arab bounded over the prostrate camel and
+came down with his bare feet upon Anerley's chest.  In a dream he seemed
+to be struggling frantically with someone upon the ground, then he was
+conscious of a tremendous explosion in his very face, and so ended for
+him the first action of the war.
+
+"Good-bye, old chap.  You'll be all right.  Give yourself time."  It was
+Mortimer's voice, and he became dimly conscious of a long, spectacled
+face, and of a heavy hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"Sorry to leave you.  We'll be lucky now if we are in time for the
+morning editions."  Scott was tightening his girth as he spoke.
+
+"We'll put in our wire that you have been hurt, so your people will know
+why they don't hear from you.  If Reuter or the evening pennies come up,
+don't give the thing away.  Abbas will look after you, and we'll be back
+to-morrow afternoon.  Bye-bye!"
+
+Anerley heard it all, though he did not feel energy enough to answer.
+Then, as he watched two sleek, brown ponies with their yellow-clad
+riders dwindling among the rocks, his memory cleared suddenly, and he
+realised that the first great journalistic chance of his life was
+slipping away from him.  It was a small fight, but it was the first of
+the war, and the great public at home were all athirst for news.
+They would have it in the _Courier_; they would have it in the
+_Intelligence_, and not a word in the _Gazette_.  The thought brought
+him to his feet, though he had to throw his arm round the stem of the
+palm tree to steady his swimming head.  There was a big black man lying
+where he had fallen, his huge chest pocked with bullet-marks, every
+wound rosetted with its circle of flies.  The Arab was stretched out
+within a few yards of him, with two hands clasped over the dreadful
+thing which had been his head.  Across him was lying Anerley's
+fowling-piece, one barrel discharged, the other at half cock.
+
+"Scott effendi shoot him your gun," said a voice.  It was Abbas, his
+English-speaking body-servant.
+
+Anerley groaned at the disgrace of it.  He had lost his head so
+completely that he had forgotten to cock his gun; and yet he knew that
+it was not fear but interest which had so absorbed him.  He put his hand
+up to his head and felt that a wet handkerchief was bound round his
+forehead.
+
+"Where are the two other dervishes?"
+
+"They ran away.  One got shot in arm."
+
+"What's happened to me?"
+
+"Effendi got cut on head.  Effendi catch bad man by arms, and Scott
+effendi shot him.  Face burn very bad."
+
+Anerley became conscious suddenly that there was a pringling about his
+skin and an overpowering smell of burned hair under his nostrils.  He
+put his hand to his moustache.  It was gone.  His eyebrows too?
+He could not find them.  His head, no doubt, was very near to the
+dervish's when they were rolling upon the ground together, and this was
+the effect of the explosion of his own gun.  Well, he would have time to
+grow some more hair before he saw Fleet Street again.  But the cut,
+perhaps, was a more serious matter.  Was it enough to prevent him
+getting to the telegraph-office at Sarras?  The only way was to try and
+see.  But there was only that poor little Syrian grey of his.  There it
+stood in the evening sunshine, with a sunk head and a bent knee, as if
+its morning's work was still heavy upon it.  What hope was there of
+being able to do thirty-five miles of heavy going upon that?  It would
+be a strain upon the splendid ponies of his companions--and they were
+the swiftest and most enduring in the country.  The most enduring?
+There was one creature more enduring, and that was a real trotting
+camel.  If he had had one he might have got to the wires first after
+all, for Mortimer had said that over thirty miles they have the better
+of any horse.  Yes, if he had only had a real trotting camel!  And then
+like a flash came Mortimer's words, "It is the kind of beast that the
+dervishes ride when they make their lightning raids."
+
+The beasts the dervishes ride!  What had these dead dervishes ridden?
+In an instant he was clambering up the rocks, with Abbas protesting at
+his heels.  Had the two fugitives carried away all the camels, or had
+they been content to save themselves?  The brass gleam from a litter of
+empty Remington cases caught his eye, and showed where the enemy had
+been crouching.  And then he could have shouted for joy, for there, in
+the hollow, some little distance off, rose the high, graceful white neck
+and the elegant head of such a camel as he had never set eyes upon
+before--a swanlike, beautiful creature, as far from the rough, clumsy
+baggles as the cart-horse is from the racer.
+
+The beast was kneeling under the shelter of the rocks with its waterskin
+and bag of doora slung over its shoulders, and its forelegs tethered
+Arab fashion with a rope around the knees.  Anerley threw his leg over
+the front pommel while Abbas slipped off the cord.   Forward flew
+Anerley towards the creature's neck, then violently backwards, clawing
+madly at anything which might save him, and then, with a jerk which
+nearly snapped his loins, he was thrown forward again.  But the camel
+was on its legs now, and the young pressman was safely seated upon one
+of the fliers of the desert.  It was as gentle as it was swift, and it
+stood oscillating its long neck and gazing round with its large brown
+eyes, whilst Anerley coiled his legs round the peg and grasped the
+curved camel-stick which Abbas had handed up to him.  There were two
+bridle-cords, one from the nostril and one from the neck, but he
+remembered that Scott had said that it was the servant's and not the
+house-bell which had to be pulled, so he kept his grasp upon the lower.
+Then he touched the long, vibrating neck with his stick, and in an
+instant Abbas' farewell seemed to come from far behind him, and the
+black rocks and yellow sand were dancing past on either side.
+
+It was his first experience of a trotting camel, and at first the
+motion, although irregular and abrupt, was not unpleasant.  Having no
+stirrup or fixed point of any kind, he could not rise to it, but he
+gripped as tightly as be could with his knee, and he tried to sway
+backwards and forwards as he had seen the Arabs do.  It was a large,
+very concave Makloofa saddle, and he was conscious that he was bouncing
+about on it with as little power of adhesion as a billiard-ball upon a
+tea-tray.  He gripped the two sides with his hands to hold himself
+steady.  The creature had got into its long, swinging, stealthy trot,
+its sponge-like feet making no sound upon the hard sand.  Anerley leaned
+back with his two hands gripping hard behind him, and he whooped the
+creature on.  The sun had already sunk behind the line of black volcanic
+peaks, which look like huge slag-heaps at the mouth of a mine.
+The western sky had taken that lovely light green and pale pink tint
+which makes evening beautiful upon the Nile, and the old brown river
+itself, swirling down amongst the black rocks, caught some shimmer of
+the colours above.  The glare, the heat, and the piping of the insects
+had all ceased together.  In spite of his aching head, Anerley could
+have cried out for pure physical joy as the swift creature beneath him
+flew along with him through that cool, invigorating air, with the virile
+north wind soothing his pringling face.
+
+He had looked at his watch, and now he made a swift calculation of times
+and distances.  It was past six when he had left the camp.  Over broken
+ground it was impossible that he could hope to do more than seven miles
+an hour--less on bad parts, more on the smooth.  His recollection of the
+track was that there were few smooth and many bad.  He would be lucky,
+then, if he reached Sarras anywhere from twelve to one.  Then the
+messages took a good two hours to go through, for they had to be
+transcribed at Cairo.  At the best he could only hope to have told his
+story in Fleet Street at two or three in the morning.  It was possible
+that he might manage it, but the chances seemed enormously against him.
+About three the morning edition would be made up, and his chance gone
+for ever.  The one thing clear was that only the first man at the wires
+would have any chance at all, and Anerley meant to be first if hard
+riding could do it.  So he tapped away at the bird-like neck, and the
+creature's long, loose limbs went faster and faster at every tap.
+Where the rocky spurs ran down to the river, horses would have to go
+round, while camels might get across, so that Anerley felt that he was
+always gaining upon his companions.
+
+But there was a price to be paid for the feeling.  He had heard of men
+who had burst when on camel journeys, and he knew that the Arabs swathe
+their bodies tightly in broad cloth bandages when they prepare for a
+long march.  It had seemed unnecessary and ridiculous when he first
+began to speed over the level track, but now, when he got on the rocky
+paths, he understood what it meant.  Never for an instant was he at the
+same angle.  Backwards, forwards he swung, with a tingling jar at the
+end of each sway, until he ached from his neck to his knees.  It caught
+him across the shoulders, it caught him down the spine, it gripped him
+over the loins, it marked the lower line of his ribs with one heavy,
+dull throb.  He clutched here and there with his hand to try and ease
+the strain upon his muscles.  He drew up his knees, altered his seat,
+and set his teeth with a grim determination to go through with it should
+it kill him.  His head was splitting, his flayed face smarting, and
+every joint in his body aching as if it were dislocated.  But he forgot
+all that when, with the rising of the moon, he heard the clinking of
+horses' hoofs down upon the track by the river, and knew that, unseen by
+them, he had already got well abreast of his companions.  But he was
+hardly halfway, and the time already eleven.
+
+All day the needles had been ticking away without intermission in the
+little corrugated iron hut which served as a telegraph station at
+Sarras.  With its bare walls and its packing-case seats, it was none the
+less for the moment one of the vital spots upon the earth's surface, and
+the crisp, importunate ticking might have come from the world-old clock
+of Destiny.  Many august people had been at the other end of those
+wires, and had communed with the moist-faced military clerk.  A French
+Premier had demanded a pledge, and an English marquis had passed on the
+request to the General in command, with a question as to how it would
+affect the situation.  Cipher telegrams had nearly driven the clerk out
+of his wits, for of all crazy occupations the taking of a cipher
+message, when you are without the key to the cipher, is the worst.
+Much high diplomacy had been going on all day in the innermost chambers
+of European chancellories, and the results of it had been whispered into
+this little corrugated-iron hut.  About two in the morning an enormous
+despatch had come at last to an end, and the weary operator had opened
+the door, and was lighting his pipe in the cool, fresh air, when he saw
+a camel plump down in the dust, and a man, who seemed to be in the last
+stage of drunkenness, come rolling towards him.
+
+"What's the time?" he cried, in a voice which appeared to be the only
+sober thing about him.
+
+It was on the clerk's lips to say that it was time that the questioner
+was in his bed, but it is not safe upon a campaign to be ironical at the
+expense of khaki-clad men.  He contented himself, therefore, with the
+bald statement that it was after two.  But no retort that he could have
+devised could have had a more crushing effect.  The voice turned drunken
+also, and the man caught at the door-post to uphold him.
+
+"Two o'clock! I'm done after all!" said he.  His head was tied up in a
+bloody handkerchief, his face was crimson, and he stood with his legs
+crooked as if the pith had all gone out of his back.  The clerk began to
+realise that something out of the ordinary was in the wind.
+
+"How long does it take to get a wire to London?"
+
+"About two hours."
+
+"And it's two now.  I could not get it there before four."
+
+"Before three."
+
+"Four."
+
+"No, three."
+
+"But you said two hours."
+
+"Yes, but there's more than an hour's difference in longitude."
+
+"By Heaven, I'll do it yet!" cried Anerley, and staggering to a
+packing-case, he began the dictation of his famous despatch.
+
+And so it came about that the _Gazette_ had a long column, with
+headlines like an epitaph, when the sheets of the _Intelligence_ and the
+_Courier_ were as blank as the faces of their editors.  And so, too, it
+happened that when two weary men, upon two foundered horses, arrived
+about four in the morning at the Sarras post-office, they looked at each
+other in silence and departed noiselessly, with the conviction that
+there are some situations with which the English language is not capable
+of dealing.
+
+
+
+
+The New Catacomb
+
+
+"Look here, Burger," said Kennedy, "I do wish that you would confide in
+me."
+
+The two famous students of Roman remains sat together in Kennedy's
+comfortable room overlooking the Corso.  The night was cold, and they
+had both pulled up their chairs to the unsatisfactory Italian stove
+which threw out a zone of stuffiness rather than of warmth.
+
+Outside under the bright winter stars lay the modern Rome, the long,
+double chain of the electric lamps, the brilliantly lighted _cafes_, the
+rushing carriages, and the dense throng upon the footpaths.  But inside,
+in the sumptuous chamber of the rich young English archaeologist, there
+was only old Rome to be seen.  Cracked and time-worn friezes hung upon
+the walls, grey old busts of senators and soldiers with their fighting
+heads and their hard, cruel faces peered out from the corners.  On the
+centre table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments, and ornaments,
+there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths of
+Caracalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was
+exhibited in Berlin.
+
+Amphorae hung from the ceiling, and a litter of curiosities strewed the
+rich red Turkey carpet.  And of them all there was not one which was not
+of the most unimpeachable authenticity, and of the utmost rarity and
+value; for Kennedy, though little more than thirty, had a European
+reputation in this particular branch of research, and was, moreover,
+provided with that long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap
+to the student's energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose,
+gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame.  Kennedy had often
+been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an
+incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in
+sharp reactions of sensuous languor.  His handsome face, with its high,
+white forehead, its aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensuous
+mouth, was a fair index of the compromise between strength and weakness
+in his nature.
+
+Of a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger.  He came of a
+curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust
+qualities of the North mingling strangely with the softer graces of the
+South.  Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above
+them rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow
+curls lying round it.  His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his
+companion had frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman
+busts which peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber.
+Under its bluff German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian
+subtlety, but the smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one
+understood that this was only an indication of his ancestry, with no
+actual bearing upon his character.
+
+In age and in reputation he was on the same level as his English
+companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous.
+Twelve years before he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived
+ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded
+to him by the University of Bonn.
+
+Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and
+singlemindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of
+fame, until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was
+every reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the Chair
+of the greatest of German Universities.  But the singleness of purpose
+which had brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant
+Englishman, had caused him in everything outside their work to stand
+infinitely below him.  He had never found a pause in his studies in
+which to cultivate the social graces.  It was only when he spoke of his
+own subject that his face was filled with life and soul.  At other times
+he was silent and embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in
+larger subjects, and impatient of that small talk which is the
+conventional refuge of those who have no thoughts to express.
+
+And yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared
+to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different
+rivals.  The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own
+studies each was the only one of the younger men who had knowledge and
+enthusiasm enough to properly appreciate the other.  Their common
+interests and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been
+attracted by the other's knowledge.  And then gradually something had
+been added to this.  Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and
+simplicity of his rival, while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the
+brilliancy and vivacity which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman
+society.  I say "had," because just at the moment the young Englishman
+was somewhat under a cloud.
+
+A love affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had
+indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked
+many of his friends.  But in the bachelor circles of students and
+artists in which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of
+honour in such matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of
+shoulders shrugged over the flight of two and the return of one, the
+general sentiment was probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy
+rather than of reprobation.
+
+"Look here, Burger," said Kennedy, looking hard at the placid face of
+his companion, "I do wish that you would confide in me."
+
+As he spoke he waved his hand in the direction of a rug which
+lay upon the floor.
+
+On the rug stood a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wicker-work
+which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of
+objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn
+papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have
+seemed to have come straight from a dustman's bin, but which a
+specialist would have speedily recognized as unique of their kind.
+
+The pile of odds and ends in the flat wicker-work basket supplied
+exactly one of those missing links of social development which are of
+such interest to the student.  It was the German who had brought them
+in, and the Englishman's eyes were hungry as he looked at them.
+
+"I won't interfere with your treasure-trove, but I should very much like
+to hear about it," he continued, while Burger very deliberately lit a
+cigar.  "It is evidently a discovery of the first importance.  These
+inscriptions will make a sensation throughout Europe."
+
+"For every one here there are a million there!" said the German.  "There
+are so many that a dozen savants might spend a lifetime over them, and
+build up a reputation as solid as the Castle of St. Angelo."
+
+Kennedy was thinking with his fine forehead wrinkled and his fingers
+playing with his long, fair moustache.
+
+"You have given yourself away, Burger!" said he at last.  "Your words
+can only apply to one thing.  You have discovered a new catacomb."
+
+"I had no doubt that you had already come to that conclusion from an
+examination of these objects."
+
+"Well, they certainly appeared to indicate it, but your last remarks
+make it certain.  There is no place except a catacomb which could
+contain so vast a store of relics as you describe."
+
+"Quite so.  There is no mystery about that.  I _have_ discovered a new
+catacomb."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Ah, that is my secret, my dear Kennedy!  Suffice it that it is so
+situated that there is not one chance in a million of anyone else coming
+upon it.  Its date is different from that of any known catacomb, and it
+has been reserved for the burial of the highest Christians, so that the
+remains and the relics are quite different from anything which has ever
+been seen before.  If I was not aware of your knowledge and of your
+energy, my friend, I would not hesitate, under the pledge of secrecy, to
+tell you everything about it.  But as it is I think that I must
+certainly prepare my own report of the matter before I expose myself to
+such formidable competition."
+
+Kennedy loved his subject with a love which was almost a mania--a love
+which held him true to it, amidst all the distractions which come to a
+wealthy and dissipated young man.  He had ambition, but his ambition was
+secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which
+concerned the old life and history of the city.  He yearned to see this
+new underworld which his companion had discovered.
+
+"Look here, Burger," said he, earnestly, "I assure you that you can
+trust me most implicitly in the matter.  Nothing would induce me to put
+pen to paper about anything which I see until I have your express
+permission.  I quite understand your feeling, and I think it is most
+natural, but you have really nothing whatever to fear from me.  On the
+other hand, if you don't tell me I shall make a systematic search, and I
+shall most certainly discover it.  In that case, of course, I should
+make what use I liked of it, since I should be under no obligation to
+you."
+
+Burger smiled thoughtfully over his cigar.
+
+"I have noticed, friend Kennedy," said he, "that when I want information
+over any point you are not always so ready to supply it."
+
+"When did you ever ask me anything that I did not tell you?  You
+remember, for example, my giving you the material for your paper about
+the temple of the Vestals."
+
+"Ah, well, that was not a matter of much importance.  If I were to
+question you upon some intimate thing, would you give me an answer, I
+wonder!  This new catacomb is a very intimate thing to me, and I should
+certainly expect some sign of confidence in return."
+
+"What you are driving at I cannot imagine," said the Englishman, "but if
+you mean that you will answer my question about the catacomb if I answer
+any question which you may put to me, I can assure you that I will
+certainly do so."
+
+"Well, then," said Burger, leaning luxuriously back in his settee, and
+puffing a blue tree of cigar-smoke into the air, "tell me all about your
+relations with Miss Mary Saunderson."
+
+Kennedy sprang up in his chair and glared angrily at his impassive
+companion.
+
+"What the devil do you mean?" he cried.  "What sort of a question is
+this?  You may mean it as a joke, but you never made a worse one."
+
+"No, I don't mean it as a joke," said Burger, simply.  "I am really
+rather interested in the details of the matter.  I don't know much about
+the world and women and social life and that sort of thing, and such an
+incident has the fascination of the unknown for me.  I know you, and I
+knew her by sight--I had even spoken to her once or twice.  I should
+very much like to hear from your own lips exactly what it was which
+occurred between you."
+
+"I won't tell you a word."
+
+"That's all right.  It was only my whim to see if you would give up a
+secret as easily as you expected me to give up my secret of the new
+catacomb.  You wouldn't, and I didn't expect you to.  But why should you
+expect otherwise of me?  There's St. John's clock striking ten.  It is
+quite time that I was going home."
+
+"No, wait a bit, Burger," said Kennedy; "this is really a ridiculous
+caprice of yours to wish to know about an old love affair which has
+burned out months ago.  You know we look upon a man who kisses and tells
+as the greatest coward and villain possible."
+
+"Certainly," said the German, gathering up his basket of curiosities,
+"when he tells anything about a girl which is previously unknown, he
+must be so.  But in this case, as you must be aware, it was a public
+matter which was the common talk of Rome, so that you are not really
+doing Miss Mary Saunderson any injury by discussing her case with me.
+But still, I respect your scruples; and so good night!"
+
+"Wait a bit, Burger," said Kennedy, laying his hand upon the other's
+arm; "I am very keen upon this catacomb business, and I can't let it
+drop quite so easily.  Would you mind asking me something else in
+return--something not quite so eccentric this time?"
+
+"No, no; you have refused, and there is an end of it," said Burger, with
+his basket on his arm.  "No doubt you are quite right not to answer, and
+no doubt I am quite right also--and so again, my dear Kennedy, good
+night!"
+
+The Englishman watched Burger cross the room, and he had his hand on the
+handle of the door before his host sprang up with the air of a man who
+is making the best of that which cannot be helped.  "Hold on, old
+fellow," said he. "I think you are behaving in a most ridiculous
+fashion, but still, if this is your condition, I suppose that I must
+submit to it.  I hate saying anything about a girl, but, as you say, it
+is all over Rome, and I don't suppose I can tell you anything which you
+do not know already.  What was it you wanted to know?"
+
+The German came back to the stove, and, laying down his basket, he sank
+into his chair once more.  "May I have another cigar?" said he.  "Thank
+you very much!  I never smoke when I work, but I enjoy a chat much more
+when I am under the influence of tobacco.  Now, as regards this young
+lady, with whom you had this little adventure.  What in the world has
+become of her?"
+
+"She is at home with her own people."
+
+"Oh, really--in England?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What part of England--London?"
+
+"No, Twickenham."
+
+"You must excuse my curiosity, my dear Kennedy, and you must put it down
+to my ignorance of the world.  No doubt it is quite a simple thing to
+persuade a young lady to go off with you for three weeks or so, and then
+to hand her over to her own family at--what did you call the place?"
+
+"Twickenham."
+
+"Quite so--at Twickenham.  But it is something so entirely outside my
+own experience that I cannot even imagine how you set about it.  For
+example, if you had loved this girl your love could hardly disappear in
+three weeks, so I presume that you could not have loved her at all.  But
+if you did not love her why should you make this great scandal which has
+damaged you and ruined her?"
+
+Kennedy looked moodily into the red eye of the stove.  "That's a logical
+way of looking at it, certainly," said he.  "Love is a big word, and it
+represents a good many different shades of feeling.  I liked her, and--
+well, you say you've seen her--you know how charming she can look.
+But still I am willing to admit, looking back, that I could never have
+really loved her."
+
+"Then, my dear Kennedy, why did you do it?"
+
+"The adventure of the thing had a great deal to do with it."
+
+"What!  You are so fond of adventures!"
+
+"Where would the variety of life be without them?  It was for an
+adventure that I first began to pay my attentions to her.  I've chased a
+good deal of game in my time, but there's no chase like that of a pretty
+woman.  There was the piquant difficulty of it also, for, as she was the
+companion of Lady Emily Rood it was almost impossible to see her alone.
+On the top of all the other obstacles which attracted me, I learned from
+her own lips very early in the proceedings that she was engaged."
+
+"Mein Gott!  To whom?"
+
+"She mentioned no names."
+
+"I do not think that anyone knows that.  So that made the adventure more
+alluring, did it?"
+
+"Well, it did certainly give a spice to it.  Don't you think so?"
+
+"I tell you that I am very ignorant about these things."
+
+"My dear fellow, you can remember that the apple you stole from your
+neighbour's tree was always sweeter than that which fell from your own.
+And then I found that she cared for me."
+
+"What--at once?"
+
+"Oh, no, it took about three months of sapping and mining.  But at last
+I won her over.  She understood that my judicial separation from my wife
+made it impossible for me to do the right thing by her--but she came all
+the same, and we had a delightful time, as long as it lasted."
+
+"But how about the other man?"
+
+Kennedy shrugged his shoulders.  "I suppose it is the survival of the
+fittest," said he.  "If he had been the better man she would not have
+deserted him.  Let's drop the subject, for I have had enough of it!"
+
+"Only one other thing.  How did you get rid of her in three weeks?"
+
+"Well, we had both cooled down a bit, you understand.  She absolutely
+refused, under any circumstances, to come back to face the people she
+had known in Rome.  Now, of course, Rome is necessary to me, and I was
+already pining to be back at my work--so there was one obvious cause of
+separation.  Then, again, her old father turned up at the hotel in
+London, and there was a scene, and the whole thing became so unpleasant
+that really--though I missed her dreadfully at first--I was very glad to
+slip out of it.  Now, I rely upon you not to repeat anything of what I
+have said."
+
+"My dear Kennedy, I should not dream of repeating it.  But all that you
+say interests me very much, for it gives me an insight into your way of
+looking at things, which is entirely different from mine, for I have
+seen so little of life.  And now you want to know about my new catacomb.
+There's no use my trying to describe it, for you would never find it by
+that.  There is only one thing, and that is for me to take you there."
+
+"That would be splendid."
+
+"When would you like to come?"
+
+"The sooner the better.  I am all impatience to see it."
+
+"Well, it is a beautiful night--though a trifle cold.  Suppose we start
+in an hour.  We must be very careful to keep the matter to ourselves.
+If anyone saw us hunting in couples they would suspect that there was
+something going on."
+
+"We can't be too cautious," said Kennedy.  "Is it far?"
+
+"Some miles."
+
+"Not too far to walk?"
+
+"Oh, no, we could walk there easily."
+
+"We had better do so, then.  A cabman's suspicions would be aroused if
+he dropped us both at some lonely spot in the dead of the night."
+
+"Quite so.  I think it would be best for us to meet at the Gate of the
+Appian Way at midnight.  I must go back to my lodgings for the matches
+and candles and things."
+
+"All right, Burger!  I think it is very kind of you to let me into this
+secret, and I promise you that I will write nothing about it until you
+have published your report.  Good-bye for the present!  You will find me
+at the Gate at twelve."
+
+The cold, clear air was filled with the musical chimes from that city of
+clocks as Burger, wrapped in an Italian overcoat, with a lantern hanging
+from his hand, walked up to the rendezvous.  Kennedy stepped out of the
+shadow to meet him.
+
+"You are ardent in work as well as in love!" said the German, laughing.
+
+"Yes; I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour."
+
+"I hope you left no clue as to where we were going."
+
+"Not such a fool!  By Jove, I am chilled to the bone!  Come on, Burger,
+let us warm ourselves by a spurt of hard walking."
+
+Their footsteps sounded loud and crisp upon the rough stone paving of
+the disappointing road which is all that is left of the most famous
+highway of the world.  A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop,
+and a few carts of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only
+things which they met.  They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up
+through the darkness upon each side of them, until they had come as far
+as the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, and saw against a rising moon the
+great circular bastion of Cecilia Metella in front of them.  Then Burger
+stopped with his hand to his side.  "Your legs are longer than mine, and
+you are more accustomed to walking," said he, laughing.  "I think that
+the place where we turn off is somewhere here.  Yes, this is it, round
+the corner of the trattoria.  Now, it is a very narrow path, so perhaps
+I had better go in front, and you can follow."  He had lit his lantern,
+and by its light they were enabled to follow a narrow and devious track
+which wound across the marshes of the Campagna.  The great Aqueduct of
+old Rome lay like a monstrous caterpillar across the moonlit landscape,
+and their road led them under one of its huge arches, and past the
+circle of crumbling bricks which marks the old arena.  At last Burger
+stopped at a solitary wooden cowhouse, and he drew a key from his
+pocket.
+
+"Surely your catacomb is not inside a house!" cried Kennedy.
+
+"The entrance to it is.  That is just the safeguard which we have
+against anyone else discovering it."
+
+"Does the proprietor know of it?"
+
+"Not he.  He had found one or two objects which made me almost certain
+that his house was built on the entrance to such a place.  So I rented
+it from him, and did my excavations for myself.  Come in, and shut the
+door behind you."
+
+It was a long, empty building, with the mangers of the cows along one
+wall.  Burger put his lantern down on the ground, and shaded its light
+in all directions save one by draping his overcoat round it.  "It might
+excite remark if anyone saw a light in this lonely place," said he.
+"Just help me to move this boarding."  The flooring was loose in the
+corner, and plank by plank the two savants raised it and leaned it
+against the wall.  Below there was a square aperture and a stair of old
+stone steps which led away down into the bowels of the earth.
+
+"Be careful!" cried Burger, as Kennedy, in his impatience,
+hurried down them.  "It is a perfect rabbits'-warren below, and if
+you were once to lose your way there, the chances would be a hundred
+to one against your ever coming out again.  Wait until I bring the
+light."
+
+"How do you find your own way if it is so complicated?"
+
+"I had some very narrow escapes at first, but I have gradually learned
+to go about.  There is a certain system to it, but it is one which a
+lost man, if he were in the dark, could not possibly find out.  Even now
+I always spin out a ball of string behind me when I am going far into
+the catacomb.  You can see for yourself that it is difficult, but every
+one of these passages divides and subdivides a dozen times before you go
+a hundred yards."  They had descended some twenty feet from the level of
+the byre, and they were standing now in a square chamber cut out of the
+soft tufa.  The lantern cast a flickering light, bright below and dim
+above, over the cracked brown walls.  In every direction were the black
+openings of passages which radiated from this common centre.
+
+"I want you to follow me closely, my friend," said Burger.  "Do not
+loiter to look at anything upon the way, for the place to which I will
+take you contains all that you can see, and more.  It will save time for
+us to go there direct."  He led the way down one of the corridors, and
+the Englishman followed closely at his heels.  Every now and then the
+passage bifurcated, but Burger was evidently following some secret marks
+of his own, for he neither stopped nor hesitated.  Everywhere along the
+walls, packed like the berths upon an emigrant ship, lay the Christians
+of old Rome.  The yellow light flickered over the shrivelled features of
+the mummies, and gleamed upon rounded skulls and long, white arm-bones
+crossed over fleshless chests.  And everywhere as he passed Kennedy
+looked with wistful eyes upon inscriptions, funeral vessels, pictures,
+vestments, utensils, all lying as pious hands had placed them so many
+centuries ago.  It was apparent to him, even in those hurried, passing
+glances, that this was the earliest and finest of the catacombs,
+containing such a storehouse of Roman remains as had never before come
+at one time under the observation of the student.  "What would happen if
+the light went out?" he asked, as they hurried on.
+
+"I have a spare candle and a box of matches in my pocket.  By the way,
+Kennedy, have you any matches?"
+
+"No; you had better give me some."
+
+"Oh, that is all right.  There is no chance of our separating."
+
+"How far are we going?  It seems to me that we have walked at least a
+quarter of a mile."
+
+"More than that, I think.  There is really no limit to the tombs--at
+least, I have never been able to find any.  This is a very difficult
+place, so I think that I will use our ball of string."  He fastened one
+end of it to a projecting stone and he carried the coil in the breast of
+his coat, paying it out as he advanced.  Kennedy saw that it was no
+unnecessary precaution, for the passages had become more complexed and
+tortuous than ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors.
+But these all ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of
+tufa topped with a slab of marble at one end of it.  "By Jove!" cried
+Kennedy in an ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble.  "It
+is a Christian altar--probably the first one in existence.  Here is the
+little consecration cross cut upon the corner of it.  No doubt this
+circular space was used as a church."
+
+"Precisely," said Burger.  "If I had more time I should like to show you
+all the bodies which are buried in these niches upon the walls, for they
+are the early popes and bishops of the Church, with their mitres, their
+croziers, and full canonicals.  Go over to that one and look at it!"
+Kennedy went across, and stared at the ghastly head which lay loosely on
+the shredded and mouldering mitre.
+
+"This is most interesting," said he, and his voice seemed to boom
+against the concave vault.  "As far as my experience goes, it is unique.
+Bring the lantern over, Burger, for I want to see them all."  But the
+German had strolled away, and was standing in the middle of a yellow
+circle of light at the other side of the hall.
+
+"Do you know how many wrong turnings there are between this and the
+stairs?" he asked.  "There are over two thousand.  No doubt it was one
+of the means of protection which the Christians adopted.  The odds are
+two thousand to one against a man getting out, even if he had a light;
+but if he were in the dark it would, of course, be far more difficult."
+
+"So I should think."
+
+"And the darkness is something dreadful.  I tried it once for an
+experiment.  Let us try it again!"  He stooped to the lantern, and in an
+instant it was as if an invisible hand was squeezed tightly over each of
+Kennedy's eyes.  Never had he known what such darkness was.  It seemed
+to press upon him and to smother him.  It was a solid obstacle against
+which the body shrank from advancing.  He put his hands out to push it
+back from him.  "That will do, Burger," said he, "let's have the light
+again."
+
+But his companion began to laugh, and in that circular room the sound
+seemed to come from every side at once.  "You seem uneasy, friend
+Kennedy," said he.
+
+"Go on, man, light the candle!" said Kennedy, impatiently.
+
+"It's very strange, Kennedy, but I could not in the least tell by the
+sound in which direction you stand.  Could you tell where I am?"
+
+"No; you seem to be on every side of me."
+
+"If it were not for this string which I hold in my hand I should not
+have a notion which way to go."
+
+"I dare say not.  Strike a light, man, and have an end of this
+nonsense."
+
+"Well, Kennedy, there are two things which I understand that you are
+very fond of.  The one is adventure, and the other is an obstacle to
+surmount.  The adventure must be the finding of your way out of this
+catacomb.  The obstacle will be the darkness and the two thousand wrong
+turns which make the way a little difficult to find.  But you need not
+hurry, for you have plenty of time, and when you halt for a rest now and
+then, I should like you just to think of Miss Mary Saunderson, and
+whether you treated her quite fairly."
+
+"You devil, what do you mean?" roared Kennedy.  He was running
+about in little circles and clasping at the solid blackness with
+both hands.
+
+"Good-bye," said the mocking voice, and it was already at some distance.
+"I really do not think, Kennedy, even by your own showing that you did
+the right thing by that girl.  There was only one little thing which you
+appeared not to know, and I can supply it.  Miss Saunderson was engaged
+to a poor, ungainly devil of a student, and his name was Julius Burger."
+There was a rustle somewhere--the vague sound of a foot striking a
+stone--and then there fell silence upon that old Christian church--a
+stagnant heavy silence which closed round Kennedy and shut him in like
+water round a drowning man.
+
+
+Some two months afterwards the following paragraph made the round of the
+European Press:--
+
+
+   One of the most interesting discoveries of recent years is
+   that of the new catacomb in Rome, which lies some distance to the
+   east of the well-known vaults of St. Calixtus.  The finding of this
+   important burial-place, which is exceedingly rich in most
+   interesting early Christian remains, is due to the energy and
+   sagacity of Dr. Julius Burger, the young German specialist, who is
+   rapidly taking the first place as an authority upon ancient Rome.
+   Although the first to publish his discovery, it appears that a less
+   fortunate adventurer had anticipated Dr. Burger.  Some months ago
+   Mr. Kennedy, the well-known English student, disappeared suddenly
+   from his rooms in the "Corso", and it was conjectured that his
+   association with a recent scandal had driven him to leave Rome.  It
+   appears now that he had in reality fallen a victim to that fervid
+   love of archaeology which had raised him to a distinguished place
+   among living scholars.  His body was discovered in the heart of the
+   new catacomb, and it was evident from the condition of his feet and
+   boots that he had tramped for days through the tortuous corridors
+   which make these subterranean tombs so dangerous to explorers.  The
+   deceased gentleman had, with inexplicable rashness, made his way
+   into this labyrinth without, as far as can be discovered, taking
+   with him either candles or matches, so that his sad fate was the
+   natural result of his own temerity.  What makes the matter more
+   painful is that Dr. Julius Burger was an intimate friend of the
+   deceased.  His joy at the extraordinary find which he has been so
+   fortunate as to make has been greatly marred by the terrible fate
+   of his comrade and fellow-worker.
+
+
+
+THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE
+
+
+It was in the days when the tide of Mahdism, which had swept in such a
+flood from the great Lakes and Darfur to the confines of Egypt, had at
+last come to its full, and even begun, as some hoped, to show signs of a
+turn.  At its outset it had been terrible.  It had engulfed Hicks's
+army, swept over Gordon and Khartoum, rolled behind the British forces
+as they retired down the river, and finally cast up a spray of raiding
+parties as far north as Assouan.  Then it found other channels to east
+and west, to Central Africa and to Abyssinia, and retired a little on
+the side of Egypt.  For ten years there ensued a lull, during which the
+frontier garrisons looked out upon those distant blue hills of Dongola.
+Behind the violet mists which draped them lay a land of blood and
+horror.  From time to time some adventurer went south towards those
+haze-girt mountains, tempted by stories of gum and ivory, but none ever
+returned.  Once a mutilated Egyptian and once a Greek woman, mad with
+thirst and fear, made their way to the lines.  They were the only
+exports of that country of darkness.  Sometimes the sunset would turn
+those distant mists into a bank of crimson, and the dark mountains would
+rise from that sinister reek like islands in a sea of blood.  It seemed
+a grim symbol in the southern heaven when seen from the fort-capped
+hills by Wady Halfa.  Ten years of lust in Khartoum, ten years of silent
+work in Cairo, and then all was ready, and it was time for civilisation
+to take a trip south once more, travelling as her wont is in an armoured
+train.  Everything was ready, down to the last pack-saddle of the last
+camel, and yet no one suspected it, for an unconstitutional Government
+has its advantage.  A great administrator had argued, and managed, and
+cajoled; a great soldier had organised and planned, and made piastres do
+the work of pounds.  And then one night these two master spirits met and
+clasped hands, and the soldier vanished away upon some business of his
+own.  And just at that very time, Bimbashi Hilary Joyce, seconded from
+the Royal Mallow Fusiliers, and temporarily attached to the Ninth
+Soudanese, made his first appearance in Cairo.
+
+Napoleon had said, and Hilary Joyce had noted, that great reputations
+are only to be made in the East.  Here he was in the East with four tin
+cases of baggage, a Wilkinson sword, a Bond's slug-throwing pistol, and
+a copy of "Green's Introduction to the Study of Arabic."  With such a
+start, and the blood of youth running hot in his veins, everything
+seemed easy.  He was a little frightened of the general; he had heard
+stories of his sternness to young officers, but with tact and suavity he
+hoped for the best.  So, leaving his effects at "Shepherd's Hotel," he
+reported himself at headquarters.  It was not the general, but the head
+of the Intelligence Department who received him, the chief being still
+absent upon that business which had called him.  Hilary Joyce found
+himself in the presence of a short, thick-set officer, with a gentle
+voice and a placid expression which covered a remarkably acute and
+energetic spirit.  With that quiet smile and guileless manner he had
+undercut and outwitted the most cunning of Orientals.  He stood, a
+cigarette between his fingers, looking at the newcomer.  "I heard that
+you had come.  Sorry the chief isn't here to see you.  Gone up to the
+frontier, you know."
+
+"My regiment is at Wady Halfa.  I suppose, sir, that I should report
+myself there at once?"
+
+"No; I was to give you your orders." He led the way to a map upon the
+wall, and pointed with the end of his cigarette.  "You see this place.
+It's the Oasis of Kurkur--a little quiet, I am afraid, but excellent
+air.  You are to get out there as quick as possible.  You'll find a
+company of the Ninth, and half a squadron of cavalry.  You will be in
+command."
+
+Hilary Joyce looked at the name, printed at the intersection of two
+black lines without another dot upon the map for several inches around
+it.  "A village, sir?"
+
+"No, a well.  Not very good water, I'm afraid, but you soon get
+accustomed to natron.  It's an important post, as being at the junction
+of two caravan routes.  All routes are closed now, of course, but still
+you never know who _might_ come along them."
+
+"We are there, I presume, to prevent raiding?"
+
+"Well, between you and me, there's really nothing to raid.  You are
+there to intercept messengers.  They must call at the wells.  Of course
+you have only just come out, but you probably understand already enough
+about the conditions of this country to know that there is a great deal
+of disaffection about, and that the Khalifa is likely to try and keep in
+touch with his adherents.  Then, again, Senoussi lives up that way"--he
+waved his cigarette to the westward--"the Khalifa might send a message
+to him along that route.  Anyhow, your duty is to arrest everyone coming
+along, and get some account of him before you let him go.  You don't
+talk Arabic, I suppose?"
+
+"I am learning, sir."
+
+"Well, well, you'll have time enough for study there.  And you'll have a
+native officer, Ali something or other, who speaks English, and can
+interpret for you.  Well, good-bye--I'll tell the chief that you
+reported yourself.  Get on to your post now as quickly as you can."
+
+Railway to Baliani, the post-boat to Assouan, and then two days on a
+camel in the Libyan desert, with an Ababdeh guide, and three
+baggage-camels to tie one down to their own exasperating pace.
+However, even two and a half miles an hour mount up in time, and at
+last, on the third evening, from the blackened slag-heap of a hill which
+is called the Jebel Kurkur, Hilary Joyce looked down upon a distant
+clump of palms, and thought that this cool patch of green in the midst
+of the merciless blacks and yellows was the fairest colour effect that
+he had ever seen.  An hour later he had ridden into the little camp, the
+guard had turned out to salute him, his native subordinate had greeted
+him in excellent English, and he had fairly entered into his own.
+It was not an exhilarating place for a lengthy residence.  There was one
+large, bowl-shaped, grassy depression sloping down to the three pits of
+brown and brackish water.  There was the grove of palm trees also,
+beautiful to look upon, but exasperating in view of the fact that Nature
+has provided her least shady trees on the very spot where shade is
+needed most.  A single wide-spread acacia did something to restore the
+balance.  Here Hilary Joyce slumbered in the heat, and in the cool he
+inspected his square-shouldered, spindle-shanked Soudanese, with their
+cheery black faces and their funny little pork-pie forage caps.
+Joyce was a martinet at drill, and the blacks loved being drilled, so
+the Bimbashi was soon popular among them.  But one day was exactly like
+another.  The weather, the view, the employment, the food--everything
+was the same.  At the end of three weeks he felt that he had been there
+for interminable years.  And then at last there came something to break
+the monotony.
+
+One evening, as the sun was sinking, Hilary Joyce rode slowly down the
+old caravan road.  It had a fascination for him, this narrow track,
+winding among the boulders and curving up the nullahs, for he
+remembered how in the map it had gone on and on, stretching away into
+the unknown heart of Africa.  The countless pads of innumerable camels
+through many centuries had beaten it smooth, so that now, unused and
+deserted, it still wound away, the strangest of roads, a foot broad, and
+perhaps two thousand miles in length.  Joyce wondered as he rode how
+long it was since any traveller had journeyed up it from the south, and
+then he raised his eyes, and there was a man coming along the path.
+For an instant Joyce thought that it might be one of his own men, but a
+second glance assured him that this could not be so.  The stranger was
+dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab, and not in the close-fitting
+khaki of a soldier.  He was very tall, and a high turban made him seem
+gigantic.  He strode swiftly along, with head erect, and the bearing of
+a man who knows no fear.
+
+Who could he be, this formidable giant coming out of the unknown?
+The precursor possibly of a horde of savage spearmen.  And where could
+he have walked from?  The nearest well was a long hundred miles down the
+track.  At any rate the frontier post of Kurkur could not afford to
+receive casual visitors.  Hilary Joyce whisked round his horse, galloped
+into camp, and gave the alarm.  Then, with twenty horsemen at his back,
+he rode out again to reconnoitre.  The man was still coming on in spite
+of these hostile preparations.  For an instant he hesitated when first
+he saw the cavalry, but escape was out of the question, and he advanced
+with the air of one who makes the best of a bad job.  He made no
+resistance, and said nothing when the hands of two troopers clutched at
+his shoulders, but walked quietly between their horses into camp.
+Shortly afterwards the patrol came in again.  There were no signs of any
+dervishes.  The man was alone.  A splendid trotting camel had been found
+lying dead a little way down the track.  The mystery of the stranger's
+arrival was explained.  But why, and whence, and whither?--these were
+questions for which a zealous officer must find an answer.
+
+Hilary Joyce was disappointed that there were no dervishes.  It would
+have been a great start for him in the Egyptian army had he fought a
+little action on his own account.  But even as it was, he had a rare
+chance of impressing the authorities.  He would love to show his
+capacity to the head of the Intelligence, and even more to that grim
+Chief who never forgot what was smart, or forgave what was slack.
+The prisoner's dress and bearing showed that he was of importance.
+Mean men do not ride pure-bred trotting camels.  Joyce sponged his head
+with cold water, drank a cup of strong coffee, put on an imposing
+official tarboosh instead of his sun-helmet, and formed himself into a
+court of inquiry and judgment under the acacia tree.  He would have
+liked his people to have seen him now, with his two black orderlies in
+waiting, and his Egyptian native officer at his side.  He sat behind a
+camp-table, and the prisoner, strongly guarded, was led up to him.
+The man was a handsome fellow, with bold grey eyes and a long black
+beard.
+
+"Why!" cried Joyce, "the rascal is making faces at me."  A curious
+contraction had passed over the man's features, but so swiftly that it
+might have been a nervous twitch.  He was now a model of Oriental
+gravity.  "Ask him who he is, and what he wants?"  The native officer
+did so, but the stranger made no reply, save that the same sharp spasm
+passed once more over his face.  "Well, I'm blessed!" cried Hilary
+Joyce.  "Of all the impudent scoundrels!  He keeps on winking at me.
+Who are you, you rascal?  Give an account of yourself!  D'ye hear?"
+But the tall Arab was as impervious to English as to Arabic.
+The Egyptian tried again and again.  The prisoner looked at Joyce with
+his inscrutable eyes, and occasionally twitched his face at him, but
+never opened his mouth.  The Bimbashi scratched his head in
+bewilderment.
+
+"Look here, Mahomet Ali, we've got to get some sense out of this fellow.
+You say there are no papers on him?"
+
+"No, sir; we found no papers."
+
+"No clue of any kind?"
+
+"He has come far, sir.  A trotting camel does not die easily.  He has
+come from Dongola, at least."
+
+"Well, we must get him to talk."
+
+"It is possible that he is deaf and dumb."
+
+"Not he.  I never saw a man look more all there in my life."
+
+"You might send him across to Assouan."
+
+"And give someone else the credit?  No, thank you.  This is my bird.
+But how are we going to get him to find his tongue?"
+
+The Egyptian's dark eyes skirted the encampment and rested on the cook's
+fire.  "Perhaps," said he, "if the Bimbashi thought fit--"  He looked at
+the prisoner and then at the burning wood.
+
+"No, no; it wouldn't do.  No, by Jove, that's going too far."
+
+"A very little might do it."
+
+"No, no.  It's all very well here, but it would sound just awful if ever
+it got as far as Fleet Street.  But, I say," he whispered, "we might
+frighten him a bit.  There's no harm in that."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Tell them to undo the man's galabeeah.  Order them to put a horseshoe
+in the fire and make it red-hot."  The prisoner watched the proceedings
+with an air which had more of amusement than of uneasiness.  He never
+winced as the black sergeant approached with the glowing shoe held upon
+two bayonets.
+
+"Will you speak now?" asked the Bimbashi, savagely.  The prisoner smiled
+gently and stroked his beard.
+
+"Oh, chuck the infernal thing away!" cried Joyce, jumping up in a
+passion.  "There's no use trying to bluff the fellow.  He knows we won't
+do it.  But I _can_ and I _will_ flog him, and you can tell him from me
+that if he hasn't found his tongue by to-morrow morning I'll take the
+skin off his back as sure as my name's Joyce.  Have you said all that?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, you can sleep upon it, you beauty, and a good night's rest may it
+give you!"  He adjourned the Court, and the prisoner, as imperturbable
+as ever, was led away by the guard to his supper of rice and water.
+Hilary Joyce was a kind-hearted man, and his own sleep was considerably
+disturbed by the prospect of the punishment which he must inflict next
+day.  He had hopes that the mere sight of the koorbash and the thongs
+might prevail over his prisoner's obstinacy.  And then, again, he
+thought how shocking it would be if the man proved to be really dumb
+after all.  The possibility shook him so that he had almost determined
+by daybreak that he would send the stranger on unhurt to Assouan.
+And yet what a tame conclusion it would be to the incident!  He lay upon
+his angareeb still debating it when the question suddenly and
+effectively settled itself.  Ali Mahomet rushed into his tent.
+
+"Sir," he cried, "the prisoner is gone!"
+
+"Gone!"
+
+"Yes, sir, and your own best riding camel as well.  There is a slit cut
+in the tent, and he got away unseen in the early morning."
+
+The Bimbashi acted with all energy.  Cavalry rode along every track;
+scouts examined the soft sand of the wadys for signs of the fugitive,
+but no trace was discovered.  The man had utterly disappeared.  With a
+heavy heart, Hilary Joyce wrote an official report of the matter and
+forwarded it to Assouan.  Five days later there came a curt order from
+the chief that he should report himself there.  He feared the worst from
+the stern soldier, who spared others as little as he spared himself.
+And his worst forebodings were realised.  Travel-stained and weary, he
+reported himself one night at the general's quarters.  Behind a table
+piled with papers and strewn with maps the famous soldier and his Chief
+of Intelligence were deep in plans and figures.  Their greeting was a
+cold one.
+
+"I understand, Captain Joyce," said the general, "that you have allowed
+a very important prisoner to slip through your fingers."
+
+"I am sorry, sir."
+
+"No doubt.  But that will not mend matters.  Did you ascertain anything
+about him before you lost him?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"I could get nothing out of him, sir."
+
+"Did you try?"
+
+"Yes, sir; I did what I could."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"Well, sir, I threatened to use physical force."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He said nothing."
+
+"What was he like?"
+
+"A tall man, sir.  Rather a desperate character, I should think."
+
+"Any way by which we could identify him?"
+
+"A long black beard, sir.  Grey eyes.  And a nervous way of twitching
+his face."
+
+"Well, Captain Joyce," said the general, in his stern, inflexible voice,
+"I cannot congratulate you upon your first exploit in the Egyptian army.
+You are aware that every English officer in this force is a picked man.
+I have the whole British army from which to draw.  It is necessary,
+therefore, that I should insist upon the very highest efficiency.
+It would be unfair upon the others to pass over any obvious want of zeal
+or intelligence.  You are seconded from the Royal Mallows, I
+understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I have no doubt that your colonel will be glad to see you fulfilling
+your regimental duties again." Hilary Joyce's heart was too heavy for
+words.  He was silent.  "I will let you know my final decision to-morrow
+morning."  Joyce saluted and turned upon his heel."
+
+"You can sleep upon that, you beauty, and a good night's rest may it
+give you!"
+
+Joyce turned in bewilderment.  Where had those words been used before?
+Who was it who had used them?  The general was standing erect.  Both he
+and the Chief of the Intelligence were laughing.  Joyce stared at the
+tall figure, the erect bearing, the inscrutable grey eyes.
+
+"Good Lord!" he gasped.
+
+"Well, well, Captain Joyce, we are quits!" said the general, holding out
+his hand.  "You gave me a bad ten minutes with that infernal red-hot
+horseshoe of yours.  I've done as much for you.  I don't think we can
+spare you for the Royal Mallows just yet awhile."
+
+"But, sir; but--!"
+
+"The fewer questions the better, perhaps.  But of course it must seem
+rather amazing.  I had a little private business with the Kabbabish.
+It must be done in person.  I did it, and came to your post in my
+return.  I kept on winking at you as a sign that I wanted a word with
+you alone."
+
+"Yes, yes.  I begin to understand."
+
+"I couldn't give it away before all those blacks, or where should I have
+been the next time I used my false beard and Arab dress?  You put me in
+a very awkward position.  But at last I had a word alone with your
+Egyptian officer, who managed my escape all right."
+
+"He!  Mahomet Ali!"
+
+"I ordered him to say nothing.  I had a score to settle with you.
+But we dine at eight, Captain Joyce.  We live plainly here, but I think
+I can do you a little better than you did me at Kurkur."
+
+
+
+A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE
+
+
+There are many folk who knew Alphonse Lacour in his old age.  From about
+the time of the Revolution of '48 until he died in the second year of
+the Crimean War he was always to be found in the same corner of the Cafe
+de Provence, at the end of the Rue St. Honore, coming down about nine in
+the evening, and going when he could find no one to talk with.  It took
+some self-restraint to listen to the old diplomatist, for his stories
+were beyond all belief, and yet he was quick at detecting the shadow of
+a smile or the slightest little raising of the eyebrows.  Then his huge,
+rounded back would straighten itself, his bull-dog chin would project,
+and his r's would burr like a kettledrum.  When he got as far as, "Ah,
+monsieur r-r-r-rit!" or "Vous ne me cr-r-r-royez pas donc!" it was quite
+time to remember that you had a ticket for the opera.
+
+There was his story of Talleyrand and the five oyster-shells, and there
+was his utterly absurd account of Napoleon's second visit to Ajaccio.
+Then there was that most circumstantial romance (which he never ventured
+upon until his second bottle had been uncorked) of the Emperor's escape
+from St. Helena--how he lived for a whole year in Philadelphia, while
+Count Herbert de Bertrand, who was his living image, personated him at
+Longwood.  But of all his stories there was none which was more
+notorious than that of the Koran and the Foreign Office messenger.  And
+yet when Monsieur Otto's memoirs were written it was found that there
+really was some foundation for old Lacour's incredible statement.
+
+"You must know, monsieur," he would say, "that I left Egypt after
+Kleber's assassination.  I would gladly have stayed on, for I was
+engaged in a translation of the Koran, and between ourselves I had
+thoughts at the time of embracing Mahometanism, for I was deeply struck
+by the wisdom of their views about marriage.  They had made an
+incredible mistake, however, upon the subject of wine, and this was what
+the Mufti who attempted to convert me could never get over.  Then when
+old Kleber died and Menou came to the top, I felt that it was time for
+me to go.  It is not for me to speak of my own capacities, monsieur, but
+you will readily understand that the man does not care to be ridden by
+the mule.  I carried my Koran and my papers to London, where Monsieur
+Otto had been sent by the First Consul to arrange a treaty of peace; for
+both nations were very weary of the war, which had already lasted ten
+years.  Here I was most useful to Monsieur Otto on account of my
+knowledge of the English tongue, and also, if I may say so, on account
+of my natural capacity.  They were happy days during which I lived in
+the square of Bloomsbury.  The climate of monsieur's country is, it must
+be confessed, detestable.  But then what would you have?  Flowers grow
+best in the rain.  One has but to point to monsieur's fellow
+country-women to prove it.
+
+"Well, Monsieur Otto, our Ambassador, was kept terribly busy over that
+treaty, and all of his staff were worked to death.  We had not Pitt to
+deal with, which was, perhaps, as well for us.  He was a terrible man
+that Pitt, and wherever half a dozen enemies of France were plotting
+together, there was his sharp-pointed nose right in the middle of them.
+The nation, however, had been thoughtful enough to put him out of
+office, and we had to do with Monsieur Addington.  But Milord Hawkesbury
+was the Foreign Minister, and it was with him that we were obliged to do
+our bargaining.
+
+"You can understand that it was no child's play.  After ten years of war
+each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the
+other, or to the other's allies.  What was to be given back, and what
+was to be kept?  Is this island worth that peninsula?  If we do this at
+Venice, will you do that at Sierra Leone?  If we give up Egypt to the
+Sultan, will you restore the Cape of Good Hope, which you have taken
+from our allies the Dutch?  So we wrangled and wrestled, and I have seen
+Monsieur Otto come back to the Embassy so exhausted that his secretary
+and I had to help him from his carriage to his sofa.  But at last things
+adjusted themselves, and the night came round when the treaty was to be
+finally signed.  Now, you must know that the one great card which we
+held, and which we played, played, played at every point of the game,
+was that we had Egypt.  The English were very nervous about our being
+there.  It gave us a foot at each end of the Mediterranean, you see.
+And they were not sure that that wonderful little Napoleon of ours might
+not make it the base of an advance against India.  So whenever Lord
+Hawkesbury proposed to retain anything, we had only to reply, 'In _that_
+case, of course, we cannot consent to evacuate Egypt,' and in this way
+we quickly brought him to reason.  It was by the help of Egypt that we
+gained terms which were remarkably favourable, and especially that we
+caused the English to consent to give up the Cape of Good Hope.  We did
+not wish your people, monsieur, to have any foothold in South Africa,
+for history has taught us that the British foothold of one half-century
+is the British Empire of the next.  It is not your army or your navy
+against which we have to guard, but it is your terrible younger son and
+your man in search of a career.  When we French have a possession across
+the seas, we like to sit in Paris and to felicitate ourselves upon it.
+With you it is different.  You take your wives and your children, and
+you run away to see what kind of place this may be, and after that we
+might as well try to take that old Square of Bloomsbury away from you.
+
+"Well, it was upon the first of October that the treaty was finally to
+be signed.  In the morning I was congratulating Monsieur Otto upon the
+happy conclusion of his labours.  He was a little pale shrimp of a man,
+very quick and nervous, and he was so delighted now at his own success
+that he could not sit still, but ran about the room chattering and
+laughing, while I sat on a cushion in the corner, as I had learned to do
+in the East.  Suddenly, in came a messenger with a letter which had been
+forwarded from Paris.  Monsieur Otto cast his eye upon it, and then,
+without a word, his knees gave way, and he fell senseless upon the
+floor.  I ran to him, as did the courier, and between us we carried him
+to the sofa.  He might have been dead from his appearance, but I could
+still feel his heart thrilling beneath my palm.  'What is this, then?' I
+asked.
+
+"'I do not know,' answered the messenger.  'Monsieur Talleyrand told me
+to hurry as never man hurried before, and to put this letter into the
+hands of Monsieur Otto.  I was in Paris at midday yesterday.'
+
+"I know that I am to blame, but I could not help glancing at the letter,
+picking it out of the senseless hand of Monsieur Otto.  My God! the
+thunderbolt that it was!  I did not faint, but I sat down beside my
+chief and I burst into tears.  It was but a few words, but they told us
+that Egypt had been evacuated by our troops a month before.  All our
+treaty was undone then, and the one consideration which had induced our
+enemies to give us good terms had vanished.  In twelve hours it would
+not have mattered.  But now the treaty was not yet signed.  We should
+have to give up the Cape.  We should have to let England have Malta.
+Now that Egypt was gone we had nothing left to offer in exchange.
+
+"But we are not so easily beaten, we Frenchmen.  You English misjudge us
+when you think that because we show emotions which you conceal, that we
+are therefore of a weak and womanly nature.  You cannot read your
+histories and believe that.  Monsieur Otto recovered his senses
+presently, and we took counsel what we should do.
+
+"'It is useless to go on, Alphonse,' said he.  'This Englishman will
+laugh at me when I ask him to sign.'
+
+"'Courage!' I cried; and then a sudden thought coming into my head--'How
+do we know that the English will have news of this?  Perhaps they may
+sign the treaty before they know of it.'
+
+"Monsieur Otto sprang from the sofa and flung himself into my arms.
+
+"'Alphonse,' he cried, 'you have saved me!  Why should they know about
+it?  Our news has come from Toulon to Paris, and thence straight to
+London.  Theirs will come by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar.  At
+this moment it is unlikely that anyone in Paris knows of it, save only
+Talleyrand and the First Consul.  If we keep our secret, we may still
+get our treaty signed.'
+
+"Ah! monsieur, you can imagine the horrible uncertainty in which we
+spent the day.  Never, never shall I forget those slow hours during
+which we sat together, starting at every distant shout, lest it should
+be the first sign of the rejoicing which this news would cause in
+London.  Monsieur Otto passed from youth to age in a day.  As for me, I
+find it easier to go out and meet danger than to wait for it.  I set
+forth, therefore, towards evening.  I wandered here, and wandered there.
+I was in the fencing-rooms of Monsieur Angelo, and in the salon-de-boxe
+of Monsieur Jackson, and in the club of Brooks, and in the lobby of the
+Chamber of Deputies, but nowhere did I hear any news.  Still, it was
+possible that Milord Hawkesbury had received it himself just as we had.
+He lived in Harley Street, and there it was that the treaty was to be
+finally signed that night at eight.  I entreated Monsieur Otto to drink
+two glasses of Burgundy before he went, for I feared lest his haggard
+face and trembling, hands should rouse suspicion in the English
+minister.
+
+"Well, we went round together in one of the Embassy's carriages about
+half-past seven.  Monsieur Otto went in alone; but presently, on excuse
+of getting his portfolio, he came out again, with his cheeks flushed
+with joy, to tell me that all was well.
+
+"'He knows nothing,' he whispered.  'Ah, if the next half-hour were
+over!'
+
+"'Give me a sign when it is settled,' said I.
+
+"'For what reason?'
+
+"'Because until then no messenger shall interrupt you.  I give you my
+promise--I, Alphonse Lacour.'
+
+"He clasped my hand in both of his.
+
+"'I shall make an excuse to move one of the candles on to the table in
+the window,' said he, and hurried into the house, whilst I was left
+waiting beside the carriage.
+
+"Well, if we could but secure ourselves from interruption for a single
+half-hour the day would be our own.  I had hardly begun to form my plans
+when I saw the lights of a carriage coming swiftly from the direction of
+Oxford Street.  Ah! if it should be the messenger!  What could I do?
+I was prepared to kill him--yes, even to kill him--rather than at this
+last moment allow our work to be undone.  Thousands die to make a
+glorious war.  Why should not one die to make a glorious peace?
+What though they hurried me to the scaffold?  I should have sacrificed
+myself for my country.  I had a little curved Turkish knife strapped to
+my waist.  My hand was on the hilt of it when the carriage which had
+alarmed me so rattled safely past me.
+
+"But another might come.  I must be prepared.  Above all, I must not
+compromise the Embassy.  I ordered our carriage to move on, and I
+engaged what you call a hackney coach.  Then I spoke to the driver, and
+gave him a guinea.  He understood that it was a special service.
+
+"'You shall have another guinea if you do what you are told,' said I.
+
+"'All right, master,' said he, turning his slow eyes upon me without a
+trace of excitement or curiosity.
+
+"' If I enter your coach  with another gentleman, you will drive up and
+down Harley Street, and take no orders from anyone but me.  When I get
+out, you will carry the other gentleman to Watier's Club, in Bruton
+Street.'
+
+"'All right, master,' said he again.
+
+"So I stood outside Milord Hawkesbury's house, and you can think how
+often my eyes went up to that window in the hope of seeing the candle
+twinkle in it.  Five minutes passed, and another five.  Oh, how slowly
+they crept along!  It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a
+white fog crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the
+dim oil-lamps.  I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my
+ears were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the
+rumble of wheels.  It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of
+Harley, even upon a sunny day.  The houses are solid and very
+respectable over yonder, but there is nothing of the feminine about
+them.  It is a city to be inhabited by males.  But on that raw night,
+amid the damp and the fog, with the anxiety gnawing at my heart, it
+seemed the saddest, weariest spot in the whole wide world.  I paced up
+and down slapping my hands to keep them warm, and still straining my
+ears.  And then suddenly out of the dull hum of the traffic down in
+Oxford Street I heard a sound detach itself, and grow louder and louder,
+and clearer and clearer with every instant, until two yellow lights came
+flashing through the fog, and a light cabriolet whirled up to the door
+of the Foreign Minister.  It had not stopped before a young fellow
+sprang out of it and hurried to the steps, while the driver turned his
+horse and rattled off into the fog once more.
+
+"Ah, it is in the moment of action that I am best, monsieur.  You, who
+only see me when I am drinking my wine in the Cafe de Provence, cannot
+conceive the heights to which I rise.  At that moment, when I knew that
+the fruits of a ten years' war were at stake, I was magnificent.  It was
+the last French campaign and I the general and army in one.
+
+"'Sir," said I, touching him upon the arm, 'are you the messenger for
+Lord Hawkesbury?'
+
+"'Yes,' said he.
+
+"'I have been waiting for you half an hour,' said I.  'You are to follow
+me at once.  He is with the French Ambassador.'
+
+"I spoke with such assurance that he never hesitated for an instant.
+When he entered the hackney coach and I followed him in, my heart gave
+such a thrill of joy that I could hardly keep from shouting aloud.
+He was a poor little creature, this Foreign Office messenger, not much
+bigger than Monsieur Otto, and I--monsieur can see my hands now, and
+imagine what they were like when I was seven-and-twenty years of age.
+
+"Well, now that I had him in my coach, the question was what I should do
+with him.  I did not wish to hurt him if I could help it.
+
+"'This is a pressing business,' said he.  'I have a despatch which I
+must deliver instantly.'
+
+"Our coach had rattled down Harley Street now, in accordance with my
+instruction, it turned and began to go up again.
+
+"'Hullo!' he cried.  'What's this?'
+
+"'What then?  'I asked.
+
+"'We are driving back.  Where is Lord Hawkesbury?'
+
+"'We shall see him presently.'
+
+"'Let me out!' he shouted.  'There's some trickery in this.  Coachman,
+stop the coach!  Let me out, I say!'
+
+"I dashed him back into his seat as he tried to turn the handle of the
+door.  He roared for help.  I clapped my palm across his mouth.  He made
+his teeth meet through the side of it.  I seized his own cravat and
+bound it over his lips.  He still mumbled and gurgled, but the noise was
+covered by the rattle of our wheels.  We were passing the minister's
+house, and there was no candle in the window.
+
+"The messenger sat quiet for a little, and I could see the glint of his
+eyes as he stared at me through the gloom.  He was partly stunned, I
+think, by the force with which I had hurled him into his seat.  And also
+he was pondering, perhaps, what he should do next.  Presently he got his
+mouth partly free from the cravat.
+
+"'You shall have my watch and my purse if you will let me go,' said he.
+
+"'Sir,' said I, 'I am as honourable a man as you are yourself.'
+
+"'Who are you, then?'
+
+"'My name is of no importance.'
+
+"'What do you want with me?'
+
+"It is a bet.'
+
+"'A bet?  What d'you mean?  Do you understand that I am on the
+Government service, and that you will see the inside of a gaol for
+this?'
+
+"'That is the bet.  That is the sport, said I.'
+
+"'You may find it poor sport before you finish,' he cried.  'What is
+this insane bet of yours then?'
+
+"'I have bet,' I answered, 'that I will recite a chapter of the Koran to
+the first gentleman whom I should meet in the street.'
+
+"I do not know what made me think of it, save that my translation was
+always running in my head.  He clutched at the door-handle, and again I
+had to hurl him back into his seat.
+
+"'How long will it take?' he gasped.
+
+"'It depends on the chapter,' I answered.
+
+"'A short one, then, and let me go!'
+
+"'But is it fair?' I argued.  'When I say a chapter, I do not mean the
+shortest chapter, but rather one which should be of average length.'
+
+"'Help! help! help!' he squealed, and I was compelled again to adjust
+his cravat.
+
+"'A little patience,' said I, 'and it will soon be over.  I should like
+to recite the chapter which would be of most interest to yourself.  You
+will confess that I am trying to make things as pleasant as I can for
+you?"
+
+He slipped his mouth free again.
+
+"'Quick, then, quick!' he groaned.
+
+"'The Chapter of the Camel?' I suggested.
+
+"'Yes, yes.'
+
+"'Or that of the Fleet Stallion?'
+
+"'Yes, yes.  Only proceed!'
+
+"We had passed the window and there was no candle.  I settled down to
+recite the Chapter of the Stallion to him.  Perhaps you do not know your
+Koran very well, monsieur?  Well, I knew it by heart then, as I know it
+by heart now.  The style is a little exasperating for anyone who is in a
+hurry.  But, then, what would you have?  The people in the East are
+never in a hurry, and it was written for them.  I repeated it all with
+the dignity and solemnity which a sacred book demands, and the young
+Englishman he wriggled and groaned.
+
+"'When the horses, standing on three feet and placing the tip of their
+fourth foot upon the ground, were mustered in front of him in the
+evening, he said, I have loved the love of earthly good above the
+remembrance of things on high, and have spent the time in viewing these
+horses.  Bring the horses back to me.  And when they were brought back
+he began to cut off their legs and--'
+
+"It was at this moment that the young Englishman sprang at me.  My God!
+how little can I remember of the next few minutes!  He was a boxer, this
+shred of a man.  He had been trained to strike.  I tried to catch him by
+the hands.  Pac, pac, he came upon my nose and upon my eye.  I put down
+my head and thrust at him with it.  Pac, he came from below.  But ah!
+I was too much for him.  I hurled myself upon him, and he had no place
+where he could escape from my weight.  He fell flat upon the cushions
+and I seated myself upon him with such conviction that the wind flew
+from him as from a burst bellows.
+
+"Then I searched to see what there was with which I could tie him.  I
+drew the strings from my shoes, and with one I secured his wrists, and
+with another his ankles.  Then I tied the cravat round his mouth again,
+so that he could only lie and glare at me.  When I had done all this,
+and had stopped the bleeding of my own nose, I looked out of the coach
+and ah, monsieur, the very first thing which caught my eyes was that
+candle--that dear little candle--glimmering in the window of the
+minister.  Alone, with these two hands, I had retrieved the capitulation
+of an army and the loss of a province.  Yes, monsieur, what Abercrombie
+and 5,000 men had done upon the beach at Aboukir was undone by me,
+single-handed, in a hackney coach in Harley Street.
+
+"Well, I had no time to lose, for at any moment Monsieur Otto might be
+down.  I shouted to my driver, gave him his second guinea, and allowed
+him to proceed to Watier's.  For myself, I sprang into our Embassy's
+carriage, and a moment later the door of the minister opened.  He had
+himself escorted Monsieur Otto downstairs, and now so deep was he in
+talk that he walked out bareheaded as far as the carriage.  As he stood
+there by the open door, there came the rattle of wheels, and a man
+rushed down the pavement.
+
+"'A despatch of great importance for Milord Hawkesbury!' he cried.
+
+"I could see that it was not my messenger, but a second one.  Milord
+Hawkesbury caught the paper from his hand, and read it by the light of
+the carriage lamp.  His face, monsieur, was as white as this plate,
+before he had finished.
+
+"'Monsieur Otto,' he cried, 'we have signed this treaty upon a false
+understanding.  Egypt is in our hands.'
+
+"'What!' cried Monsieur Otto.  'Impossible!'
+
+"'It is certain.  It fell to Abercrombie last month.'
+
+"'In that case,' said Monsieur Otto, 'it is very fortunate that the
+treaty is signed.'
+
+"'Very fortunate for you, sir,' cried Milord Hawkesbury, as he turned
+back to the house.
+
+"Next day, monsieur, what they call the Bow Street runners were after
+me, but they could not run across salt water, and Alphonse Lacour was
+receiving the congratulations of Monsieur Talleyrand and the First
+Consul before ever his pursuers had got as far as Dover."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN FLAG***
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