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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pursuit of the House-Boat, by John
+Kendrick Bangs
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world 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.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Pursuit of the House-Boat
+
+
+Author: John Kendrick Bangs
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 1, 2019  [eBook #3169]
+[This file was first posted on January 30, 2001]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PURSUIT OF THE HOUSE-BOAT***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1919 Harper and Brothers edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+      [Picture: The Stranger drew forth a bundle of business cards]
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE PURSUIT OF THE
+                                HOUSE-BOAT
+
+
+                           _BEING SOME FURTHER_
+                         _ACCOUNT OF THE DOINGS_
+                       _OF THE ASSOCIATED SHADES_,
+                          _UNDER THE LEADERSHIP_
+                        _OF SHERLOCK HOLMES ESQ._
+
+                                    BY
+                           JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
+                AUTHOR OF “A HOUSE-BOAT ON THE STYX,” ETC.
+
+                               ILLUSTRATED
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                           LONDON AND NEW YORK
+                           HARPER AND BROTHERS
+                         45, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
+                                   1919
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                          FOURTEENTH IMPRESSION
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    CHAP.                                                         PAGE
+       I.  The Associated Shades take Action                         1
+      II.  The Stranger Unravels a Mystery and Reveals              19
+           Himself
+     III.  The Search-Party is Organized                            42
+      IV.  On Board the House-Boat                                  58
+       V.  A Conference on Deck                                     73
+      VI.  A Conference Below-Stairs                                89
+     VII.  The “Gehenna” is Chartered                              105
+    VIII.  On Board the “Gehenna”                                  121
+      IX.  Captain Kidd Meets with an Obstacle                     139
+       X.  A Warning Accepted                                      157
+      XI.  Marooned                                                172
+     XII.  The Escape and the End                                  189
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+“The Stranger drew forth a bundle of business           _Frontispiece_
+cards”
+“Dr. Johnson’s point is well taken”                                  8
+“What has all this got to do with the question?”                    10
+“Poor old Boswell was pushed overboard”                             22
+“Three rousing cheers, led by Hamlet, had been                      42
+given”
+“A black person by the name of Friday finds a                       54
+bottle”
+Madame Récamier has a plan                                          66
+The hard features of Captain Kidd were thrust                       70
+through
+“Here’s a kettle of fish!” said Kidd                                74
+“Every bloomin’ million was represented by a                        84
+certified check, an’ payable in London”
+Queen Elizabeth desires an axe and one hour of her                  90
+olden power
+“The committee on treachery is ready to report”                    102
+“You are very much mistaken, Sir Walter”                           108
+“In the dead of night he had stolen quietly up the                 118
+gang-plank”
+Shem in the lookout                                                128
+Judge Blackstone refuses to climb to the mizzentop                 126
+Captain Kidd consents to be cross-examined by                      148
+Portia
+Kidd’s companions endeavouring to restore                          154
+evaporating portions of his anatomy with a
+steam-atomizer
+“He told us we were going to Paris”                                160
+“You are a very clear-headed young woman, Lizzie,”                 170
+said Mrs. Noah
+“That ought to be a lesson to you”                                 178
+“The pirates made a mad dash down the rough, rocky                 180
+hill-side”
+“Now, my child,” said Mrs. Noah, firmly, “I do not                 192
+wish any words”
+“A great helpless hulk ten feet to the rear”                       200
+
+I
+
+
+
+THE ASSOCIATED SHADES TAKE ACTION
+
+
+THE House-boat of the Associated Shades, formerly located upon the River
+Styx, as the reader may possibly remember, had been torn from its
+moorings and navigated out into unknown seas by that vengeful pirate
+Captain Kidd, aided and abetted by some of the most ruffianly inhabitants
+of Hades.  Like a thief in the night had they come, and for no better
+reason than that the Captain had been unanimously voted a shade too shady
+to associate with self-respecting spirits had they made off with the
+happy floating club-house of their betters; and worst of all, with them,
+by force of circumstances over which they had no control, had sailed also
+the fair Queen Elizabeth, the spirited Xanthippe, and every other
+strong-minded and beautiful woman of Erebean society, whereby the men
+thereof were rendered desolate.
+
+“I can’t stand it!” cried Raleigh, desperately, as with his accustomed
+grace he presided over a special meeting of the club, called on the bank
+of the inky Stygian stream, at the point where the missing boat had been
+moored.  “Think of it, gentlemen, Elizabeth of England, Calpurnia of
+Rome, Ophelia of Denmark, and every precious jewel in our social diadem
+gone, vanished completely; and with whom?  Kidd, of all men in the
+universe!  Kidd, the pirate, the ruffian—”
+
+“Don’t take on so, my dear Sir Walter,” said Socrates, cheerfully.
+“What’s the use of going into hysterics?  You are not a woman, and should
+eschew that luxury.  Xanthippe is with them, and I’ll warrant you that
+when that cherished spouse of mine has recovered from the effects of the
+sea, say the third day out, Kidd and his crew will be walking the plank,
+and voluntarily at that.”
+
+“But the House-boat itself,” murmured Noah, sadly.  “That was my delight.
+It reminded me in some respects of the Ark.”
+
+“The law of compensation enters in there, my dear Commodore,” retorted
+Socrates.  “For me, with Xanthippe abroad I do not need a club to go to;
+I can stay at home and take my hemlock in peace and straight.  Xanthippe
+always compelled me to dilute it at the rate of one quart of water to the
+finger.”
+
+“Well, we didn’t all marry Xanthippe,” put in Cæsar firmly, “therefore we
+are not all satisfied with the situation.  I, for one, quite agree with
+Sir Walter that something must be done, and quickly.  Are we to sit here
+and do nothing, allowing that fiend to kidnap our wives with impunity?”
+
+“Not at all,” interposed Bonaparte.  “The time for action has arrived.
+All things considered, he is welcome to Marie Louise, but the idea of
+Josephine going off on a cruise of that kind breaks my heart.”
+
+“No question about it,” observed Dr. Johnson.  “We’ve got to do something
+if it is only for the sake of appearances.  The question really is, what
+shall be done first?”
+
+“I am in favor of taking a drink as the first step, and considering the
+matter of further action afterwards,” suggested Shakespeare, and it was
+this suggestion that made the members unanimous upon the necessity for
+immediate action, for when the assembled spirits called for their various
+favorite beverages it was found that there were none to be had, it being
+Sunday, and all the establishments wherein liquid refreshments were
+licensed to be sold being closed—for at the time of writing the local
+government of Hades was in the hands of the reform party.
+
+“What!” cried Socrates.  “Nothing but Styx water and vitriol, Sundays?
+Then the House-boat must be recovered whether Xanthippe comes with it or
+not.  Sir Walter, I am for immediate action, after all.  This ruffian
+should be captured at once and made an example of.”
+
+“Excuse me, Socrates,” put in Lindley Murray, “but, ah—pray speak in
+Greek hereafter, will you, please?  When you attempt English you have a
+beastly way of working up to climatic prepositions which are offensive to
+the ear of a purist.”
+
+“This is no time to discuss style, Murray,” interposed Sir Walter.
+“Socrates may speak and spell like Chaucer if he pleases; he may even
+part his infinitives in the middle, for all I care.  We have affairs of
+greater moment in hand.”
+
+“We must ransack the earth,” cried Socrates, “until we find that boat.
+I’m dry as a fish.”
+
+“There he goes again!” growled Murray.  “Dry as a fish!  What fish, I’d
+like to know, is dry?”
+
+“Red herrings,” retorted Socrates; and there was a great laugh at the
+expense of the purist, in which even Hamlet, who had grown more and more
+melancholy and morbid since the abduction of Ophelia, joined.
+
+“Then it is settled,” said Raleigh; “something must be done.  And now the
+point is, what?”
+
+“Relief expeditions have a way of finding things,” suggested Dr.
+Livingstone.  “Or rather of being found by the things they go out to
+relieve.  I propose that we send out a number of them.  I will take
+Africa; Bonaparte can lead an expedition into Europe; General Washington
+may have North America; and—”
+
+“I beg pardon,” put in Dr. Johnson, “but have you any idea, Dr.
+Livingstone, that Captain Kidd has put wheels on this House-boat of ours,
+and is having it dragged across the Sahara by mules or camels?”
+
+“No such absurd idea ever entered my head,” retorted the Doctor.
+
+“Do you, then, believe that he has put runners on it, and is engaged in
+the pleasurable pastime of taking the ladies tobogganing down the Alps?”
+persisted the philosopher.
+
+“Not at all.  Why do you ask?” queried the African explorer, irritably.
+
+“Because I wish to know,” said Johnson.  “That is always my motive in
+asking questions.  You propose to go looking for a house-boat in Central
+Africa; you suggest that Bonaparte lead an expedition in search of it
+through Europe—all of which strikes me as nonsense.  This search is the
+work of sea-dogs, not of landlubbers.  You might as well ask Confucius to
+look for it in the heart of China.  What earthly use there is in
+ransacking the earth I fail to see.  What we need is a navel expedition
+to scour the sea, unless it is pretty well understood in advance that we
+believe Kidd has hauled the boat out of the water, and is now using it
+for a roller-skating rink or a bicycle academy in Ohio, or for some other
+purpose for which neither he nor it was designed.”
+
+               [Picture: Dr. Johnson’s point is well taken]
+
+“Dr. Johnson’s point is well taken,” said a stranger who had been sitting
+upon the string-piece of the pier, quietly, but with very evident
+interest, listening to the discussion.  He was a tall and excessively
+slender shade, “like a spirt of steam out of a teapot,” as Johnson put it
+afterwards, so slight he seemed.  “I have not the honor of being a member
+of this association,” the stranger continued, “but, like all well-ordered
+shades, I aspire to the distinction, and I hold myself and my talents at
+the disposal of this club.  I fancy it will not take us long to establish
+our initial point, which is that the gross person who has so foully
+appropriated your property to his own base uses does not contemplate
+removing it from its keel and placing it somewhere inland.  All the
+evidence in hand points to a radically different conclusion, which is my
+sole reason for doubting the value of that conclusion.  Captain Kidd is a
+seafarer by instinct, not a landsman.  The House-boat is not a house, but
+a boat; therefore the place to look for it is not, as Dr. Johnson so well
+says, in the Sahara Desert, or on the Alps, or in the State of Ohio, but
+upon the high sea, or upon the waterfront of some one of the world’s
+great cities.”
+
+“And what, then, would be your plan?” asked Sir Walter, impressed by the
+stranger’s manner as well as by the very manifest reason in all that he
+had said.
+
+“The chartering of a suitable vessel, fully armed and equipped for the
+purpose of pursuit.  Ascertain whither the House-boat has sailed, for
+what port, and start at once.  Have you a model of the House-boat within
+reach?” returned the stranger.
+
+“I think not; we have the architect’s plans, however,” said the chairman.
+
+“We had, Mr. Chairman,” said Demosthenes, who was secretary of the House
+Committee, rising, “but they are gone with the House-boat itself.  They
+were kept in the safe in the hold.”
+
+A look of annoyance came into the face of the stranger.
+
+“That’s too bad,” he said.  “It was a most important part of my plan that
+we should know about how fast the House-boat was.”
+
+“Humph!” ejaculated Socrates, with ill-concealed sarcasm.  “If you’ll
+take Xanthippe’s word for it, the House-boat was the fastest yacht
+afloat.”
+
+“I refer to the matter of speed in sailing,” returned the stranger,
+quietly.  “The question of its ethical speed has nothing to do with it.”
+
+“The designer of the craft is here,” said Sir Walter, fixing his eyes
+upon Sir Christopher Wren.  “It is possible that he may be of assistance
+in settling that point.”
+
+         [Picture: What has all this got to do with the question]
+
+“What has all this got to do with the question, anyhow, Mr. Chairman?”
+asked Solomon, rising impatiently and addressing Sir Walter.  “We aren’t
+preparing for a yacht-race, that I know of.  Nobody’s after a cup, or a
+championship of any kind.  What we do want is to get our wives back.  The
+Captain hasn’t taken more than half of mine along with him, but I am
+interested none the less.  The Queen of Sheba is on board, and I am
+somewhat interested in her fate.  So I ask you what earthly or unearthly
+use there is in discussing this question of speed in the House-boat.  It
+strikes me as a woful waste of time, and rather unprecedented too, that
+we should suspend all rules and listen to the talk of an entire
+stranger.”
+
+“I do not venture to doubt the wisdom of Solomon,” said Johnson, dryly,
+“but I must say that the gentleman’s remarks rather interest me.”
+
+“Of course they do,” ejaculated Solomon.  “He agreed with you.  That
+ought to make him interesting to everybody.  Freaks usually are.”
+
+“That is not the reason at all,” retorted Dr. Johnson.  “Cold water
+agrees with me, but it doesn’t interest me.  What I do think, however, is
+that our unknown friend seems to have a grasp on the situation by which
+we are confronted, and he’s going at the matter in hand in a very
+comprehensive fashion.  I move, therefore, that Solomon be laid on the
+table, and that the privileges of the—ah—of the wharf be extended
+indefinitely to our friend on the string-piece.”
+
+The motion, having been seconded, was duly carried, and the stranger
+resumed.
+
+“I will explain for the benefit of his Majesty King Solomon, whose wisdom
+I have always admired, and whose endurance as the husband of three
+hundred wives has filled me with wonder,” he said, “that before starting
+in pursuit of the stolen vessel we must select a craft of some sort for
+the purpose, and that in selecting the pursuer it is quite essential that
+we should choose a vessel of greater speed than the one we desire to
+overtake.  It would hardly be proper, I think, if the House-boat can sail
+four knots an hour to attempt to overhaul her with a launch, or other
+nautical craft, with a maximum speed of two knots an hour.”
+
+“Hear! hear!” ejaculated Cæsar.
+
+“That is my reason, your Majesty, for inquiring as to the speed of your
+late club-house,” said the stranger, bowing courteously to Solomon.
+“Now, if Sir Christopher Wren can give me her measurements, we can very
+soon determine at about what rate she is leaving us behind under
+favorable circumstances.”
+
+“’Tisn’t necessary for Sir Christopher to do anything of the sort,” said
+Noah, rising and manifesting somewhat more heat than the occasion seemed
+to require.  “As long as we are discussing the question I will take the
+liberty of stating what I have never mentioned before, that the designer
+of the House-boat merely appropriated the lines of the Ark.  Shem, Ham,
+and Japhet will bear testimony to the truth of that statement.”
+
+“There can be no quarrel on that score, Mr. Chairman,” assented Sir
+Christopher, with cutting frigidity.  “I am perfectly willing to admit
+that practically the two vessels were built on the same lines, but with
+modifications which would enable my boat to sail twenty miles to windward
+and back in six days’ less time than it would have taken the Ark to cover
+the same distance, and it could have taken all the wash of the excursion
+steamers into the bargain.”
+
+“Bosh!” ejaculated Noah, angrily.  “Strip your old tub down to a flying
+balloon-jib and a marline-spike, and ballast the Ark with elephants until
+every inch of her reeked with ivory and peanuts, and she’d outfoot you on
+every leg, in a cyclone or a zephyr.  Give me the Ark and a breeze, and
+your House-boat wouldn’t be within hailing distance of her five minutes
+after the start if she had 40,000 square yards of canvas spread before a
+gale.”
+
+“This discussion is waxing very unprofitable,” observed Confucius.  “If
+these gentlemen cannot be made to confine themselves to the subject that
+is agitating this body, I move we call in the authorities and have them
+confined in the bottomless pit.”
+
+“I did not precipitate the quarrel,” said Noah.  “I was merely trying to
+assist our friend on the string-piece.  I was going to say that as the
+Ark was probably a hundred times faster than Sir Christopher Wren’s—tub,
+which he himself says can take care of all the wash of the excursion
+boats, thereby becoming on his own admission a wash-tub—”
+
+“Order! order!” cried Sir Christopher.
+
+“I was going to say that this wash-tub could be overhauled by a launch or
+any other craft with a speed of thirty knots a mouth,” continued Noah,
+ignoring the interruption.
+
+“Took him forty days to get to Mount Ararat!” sneered Sir Christopher.
+
+“Well, your boat would have got there two weeks sooner, I’ll admit,”
+retorted Noah, “if she’d sprung a leak at the right time.”
+
+“Granting the truth of Noah’s statement,” said Sir Walter, motioning to
+the angry architect to be quiet—“not that we take any side in the issue
+between the two gentlemen, but merely for the sake of argument—I wish to
+ask the stranger who has been good enough to interest himself in our
+trouble what he proposes to do—how can you establish your course in case
+a boat were provided?”
+
+“Also vot vill be dher gost, if any?” put in Shylock.
+
+A murmur of disapprobation greeted this remark.
+
+“The cost need not trouble you, sir,” said Sir Walter, indignantly,
+addressing the stranger; “you will have carte blanche.”
+
+“Den ve are ruint!” cried Shylock, displaying his palms, and showing by
+that act a select assortment of diamond rings.
+
+“Oh,” laughed the stranger, “that is a simple matter.  Captain Kidd has
+gone to London.”
+
+“To London!” cried several members at once.  “How do you know that?”
+
+“By this,” said the stranger, holding up the tiny stub end of a cigar.
+
+“Tut-tut!” ejaculated Solomon.  “What child’s play is this!”
+
+“No, your Majesty,” observed the stranger, “it is not child’s play; it is
+fact.  That cigar end was thrown aside here on the wharf by Captain Kidd
+just before he stepped on board the House-boat.”
+
+“How do you know that?” demanded Raleigh.  “And granting the truth of the
+assertion, what does it prove?”
+
+“I will tell you,” said the stranger.  And he at once proceeded as
+follows.
+
+
+
+
+II
+THE STRANGER UNRAVELS A MYSTERY AND REVEALS HIMSELF
+
+
+“I HAVE made a hobby of the study of cigar ends,” said the stranger, as
+the Associated Shades settled back to hear his account of himself.  “From
+my earliest youth, when I used surreptitiously to remove the unsmoked
+ends of my father’s cigars and break them up, and, in hiding, smoke them
+in an old clay pipe which I had presented to me by an ancient sea-captain
+of my acquaintance, I have been interested in tobacco in all forms, even
+including these self-same despised unsmoked ends; for they convey to my
+mind messages, sentiments, farces, comedies, and tragedies which to your
+minds would never become manifest through their agency.”
+
+The company drew closer together and formed themselves in a more compact
+mass about the speaker.  It was evident that they were beginning to feel
+an unusual interest in this extraordinary person, who had come among them
+unheralded and unknown.  Even Shylock stopped calculating percentages for
+an instant to listen.
+
+“Do you mean to tell us,” demanded Shakespeare, “that the unsmoked stub
+of a cigar will suggest the story of him who smoked it to your mind?”
+
+“I do,” replied the stranger, with a confident smile.  “Take this one,
+for instance, that I have picked up here upon the wharf; it tells me the
+whole story of the intentions of Captain Kidd at the moment when, in
+utter disregard of your rights, he stepped aboard your House-boat, and,
+in his usual piratical fashion, made off with it into unknown seas.”
+
+“But how do you know he smoked it?” asked Solomon, who deemed it the part
+of wisdom to be suspicious of the stranger.
+
+“There are two curious indentations in it which prove that.  The marks of
+two teeth, with a hiatus between, which you will see if you look
+closely,” said the stranger, handing the small bit of tobacco to Sir
+Walter, “make that point evident beyond peradventure.  The Captain lost
+an eye-tooth in one of his later raids; it was knocked out by a
+marine-spike which had been hurled at him by one of the crew of the
+treasure-ship he and his followers had attacked.  The adjacent teeth were
+broken, but not removed.  The cigar end bears the marks of those two
+jagged molars, with the hiatus, which, as I have indicated, is due to the
+destruction of the eye-tooth between them.  It is not likely that there
+was another man in the pirate’s crew with teeth exactly like the
+commander’s, therefore I say there can be no doubt that the cigar end was
+that of the Captain himself.”
+
+“Very interesting indeed,” observed Blackstone, removing his wig and
+fanning himself with it; “but I must confess, Mr. Chairman, that in any
+properly constituted law court this evidence would long since have been
+ruled out as irrelevant and absurd.  The idea of two or three hundred
+dignified spirits like ourselves, gathered together to devise a means for
+the recovery of our property and the rescue of our wives, yielding the
+floor to the delivering of a lecture by an entire stranger on ‘Cigar Ends
+He Has Met,’ strikes me as ridiculous in the extreme.  Of what earthly
+interest is it to us to know that this or that cigar was smoked by
+Captain Kidd?”
+
+“Merely that it will help us on, your honor, to discover the whereabouts
+of the said Kidd,” interposed the stranger.  “It is by trifles, seeming
+trifles, that the greatest detective work is done.  My friends Le Coq,
+Hawkshaw, and Old Sleuth will bear me out in this, I think, however much
+in other respects our methods may have differed.  They left no stone
+unturned in the pursuit of a criminal; no detail, however trifling,
+uncared for.  No more should we in the present instance overlook the
+minutest bit of evidence, however irrelevant and absurd at first blush it
+may appear to be.  The truth of what I say was very effectually proven in
+the strange case of the Brokedale tiara, in which I figured somewhat
+conspicuously, but which have never made public, because it involves a
+secret affecting the integrity of one of the noblest families in the
+British Empire.  I really believe that mystery was solved easily and at
+once because I happened to remember that the number of my watch was
+86507B.  How trivial and yet how important it was, to what then
+transpired, you will realize when I tell you the incident.”
+
+             [Picture: Poor old Boswell was pushed overboard]
+
+The stranger’s manner was so impressive that there was a unanimous and
+simultaneous movement upon the part of all present to get up closer, so
+as the more readily to hear what he said, as a result of which poor old
+Boswell was pushed overboard, and fell, with a loud splash into the Styx.
+Fortunately, however, one of Charon’s pleasure-boats was close at hand,
+and in a short while the dripping, sputtering spirit was drawn into it,
+wrung out, and sent home to dry.  The excitement attending this diversion
+having subsided, Solomon asked:
+
+“What was the incident of the lost tiara?”
+
+“I am about to tell you,” returned the stranger; “and it must be
+understood that you are told in the strictest confidence, for, as I say,
+the incident involves a state secret of great magnitude.  In life—in the
+mortal life—gentlemen, I was a detective by profession, and, if I do say
+it, who perhaps should not, I was one of the most interesting for purely
+literary purposes that has ever been known.  I did not find it necessary
+to go about saying ‘Ha! ha!’ as M. Le Coq was accustomed to do to
+advertise his cleverness; neither did I disguise myself as a drum-major
+and hide under a kitchen-table for the purpose of solving a mystery
+involving the abduction of a parlor stove, after the manner of the
+talented Hawkshaw.  By mental concentration alone, without fireworks or
+orchestral accompaniment of any sort whatsoever, did I go about my
+business, and for that very reason many of my fellow-sleuths were forced
+to go out of real detective work into that line of the business with
+which the stage has familiarized the most of us—a line in which nothing
+but stupidity, luck, and a yellow wig is required of him who pursues it.”
+
+“This man is an impostor,” whispered Le Coq to Hawkshaw.
+
+“I’ve known that all along by the mole on his left wrist,” returned
+Hawkshaw, contemptuously.
+
+“I suspected it the minute I saw he was not disguised,” returned Le Coq,
+knowingly.  “I have observed that the greatest villains latterly have
+discarded disguises, as being too easily penetrated, and therefore of no
+avail, and merely a useless expense.”
+
+“Silence!” cried Confucius, impatiently.  “How can the gentleman proceed,
+with all this conversation going on in the rear?”
+
+Hawkshaw and Le Coq immediately subsided, and the stranger went on.
+
+“It was in this way that I treated the strange case of the lost tiara,”
+resumed the stranger.  “Mental concentration upon seemingly insignificant
+details alone enabled me to bring about the desired results in that
+instance.  A brief outline of the case is as follows: It was late one
+evening in the early spring of 1894.  The London season was at its
+height.  Dances, fêtes of all kinds, opera, and the theatres were in full
+blast, when all of a sudden society was paralyzed by a most audacious
+robbery.  A diamond tiara valued at £50,000 sterling had been stolen from
+the Duchess of Brokedale, and under circumstances which threw society
+itself and every individual in it under suspicion—even his Royal Highness
+the Prince himself, for he had danced frequently with the Duchess, and
+was known to be a great admirer of her tiara.  It was at half-past eleven
+o’clock at night that the news of the robbery first came to my ears.  I
+had been spending the evening alone in my library making notes for a
+second volume of my memoirs, and, feeling somewhat depressed, I was on
+the point of going out for my usual midnight walk on Hampstead Heath,
+when one of my servants, hastily entering, informed me of the robbery.  I
+changed my mind in respect to my midnight walk immediately upon receipt
+of the news, for I knew that before one o’clock some one would call upon
+me at my lodgings with reference to this robbery.  It could not be
+otherwise.  Any mystery of such magnitude could no more be taken to
+another bureau than elephants could fly—”
+
+“They used to,” said Adam.  “I once had a whole aviary full of winged
+elephants.  They flew from flower to flower, and thrusting their
+probabilities deep into—”
+
+“Their what?” queried Johnson, with a frown.
+
+“Probabilities—isn’t that the word?  Their trunks,” said Adam.
+
+“Probosces, I imagine you mean,” suggested Johnson.
+
+“Yes—that was it.  Their probosces,” said Adam.  “They were great
+honey-gatherers, those elephants—far better than the bees, because they
+could make so much more of it in a given time.”
+
+Munchausen shook his head sadly.  “I’m afraid I’m outclassed by these
+antediluvians,” he said.
+
+“Gentlemen! gentlemen!” cried Sir Walter.  “These interruptions are
+inexcusable!”
+
+“That’s what I think,” said the stranger, with some asperity.  “I’m
+having about as hard a time getting this story out as I would if it were
+a serial.  Of course, if you gentlemen do not wish to hear it, I can
+stop; but it must be understood that when I do stop I stop finally, once
+and for all, because the tale has not a sufficiency of dramatic climaxes
+to warrant its prolongation over the usual magazine period of twelve
+months.”
+
+“Go on! go on!” cried some.
+
+“Shut up!” cried others—addressing the interrupting members, of course.
+
+“As I was saying,” resumed the stranger, “I felt confident that within an
+hour, in some way or other, that case would be placed in my hands.  It
+would be mine either positively or negatively—that is to say, either the
+person robbed would employ me to ferret out the mystery and recover the
+diamonds, or the robber himself, actuated by motives of
+self-preservation, would endeavor to direct my energies into other
+channels until he should have the time to dispose of his ill-gotten
+booty.  A mental discussion of the probabilities inclined me to believe
+that the latter would be the case.  I reasoned in this fashion: The
+person robbed is of exalted rank.  She cannot move rapidly because she is
+so.  Great bodies move slowly.  It is probable that it will be a week
+before, according to the etiquette by which she is hedged about, she can
+communicate with me.  In the first place, she must inform one of her
+attendants that she has been robbed.  He must communicate the news to the
+functionary in charge of her residence, who will communicate with the
+Home Secretary, and from him will issue the orders to the police, who,
+baffled at every step, will finally address themselves to me.  ‘I’ll give
+that side two weeks,’ I said.  On the other hand, the robber: will he
+allow himself to be lulled into a false sense of security by counting on
+this delay, or will he not, noting my habit of occasionally entering upon
+detective enterprises of this nature of my own volition, come to me at
+once and set me to work ferreting out some crime that has never been
+committed?  My feeling was that this would happen, and I pulled out my
+watch to see if it were not nearly time for him to arrive.  The robbery
+had taken place at a state ball at the Buckingham Palace.  ‘H’m!’ I
+mused.  ‘He has had an hour and forty minutes to get here.  It is now
+twelve-twenty.  He should be here by twelve-forty-five.  I will wait.’
+And hastily swallowing a cocaine tablet to nerve myself up for the
+meeting, I sat down and began to read my Schopenhauer.  Hardly had I
+perused a page when there came a tap upon my door.  I rose with a smile,
+for I thought I knew what was to happen, opened the door, and there
+stood, much to my surprise, the husband of the lady whose tiara was
+missing.  It was the Duke of Brokedale himself.  It is true he was
+disguised.  His beard was powdered until it looked like snow, and he wore
+a wig and a pair of green goggles; but I recognized him at once by his
+lack of manners, which is an unmistakable sign of nobility.  As I opened
+the door, he began:
+
+“‘You are Mr. —’
+
+“‘I am,’ I replied.  ‘Come in.  You have come to see me about your stolen
+watch.  It is a gold hunting-case watch with a Swiss movement; loses five
+minutes a day; stem-winder; and the back cover, which does not bear any
+inscription, has upon it the indentations made by the molars of your son
+Willie when that interesting youth was cutting his teeth upon it.’”
+
+“Wonderful!” cried Johnson.
+
+“May I ask how you knew all that?” asked Solomon, deeply impressed.
+“Such penetration strikes me as marvellous.”
+
+“I didn’t know it,” replied the stranger, with a smile.  “What I said was
+intended to be jocular, and to put Brokedale at his ease.  The Americans
+present, with their usual astuteness, would term it bluff.  It was.  I
+merely rattled on.  I simply did not wish to offend the gentleman by
+letting him know that I had penetrated his disguise.  Imagine my
+surprise, however, when his eye brightened as I spoke, and he entered my
+room with such alacrity that half the powder which he thought disguised
+his beard was shaken off on to the floor.  Sitting down in the chair I
+had just vacated, he quietly remarked:
+
+“‘You are a wonderful man, sir.  How did you know that I had lost my
+watch?’
+
+“For a moment I was nonplussed; more than that, I was completely
+staggered.  I had expected him to say at once that he had not lost his
+watch, but had come to see me about the tiara; and to have him take my
+words seriously was entirely unexpected and overwhelmingly surprising.
+However, in view of his rank, I deemed it well to fall in with his
+humour.  ‘Oh, as for that,’ I replied, ‘that is a part of my business.
+It is the detective’s place to know everything; and generally, if he
+reveals the machinery by means of which he reaches his conclusions, he is
+a fool, since his method is his secret, and his secret his
+stock-in-trade.  I do not mind telling you, however, that I knew your
+watch was stolen by your anxious glance at my clock, which showed that
+you wished to know the time.  Now most rich Americans have watches for
+that purpose, and have no hesitation about showing them.  If you’d had a
+watch, you’d have looked at it, not at my clock.’
+
+“My visitor laughed, and repeated what he had said about my being a
+wonderful man.
+
+“‘And the dents which my son made cutting his teeth?’ he added.
+
+“‘Invariably go with an American’s watch.  Rubber or ivory rings aren’t
+good enough for American babies to chew on,’ said I.  ‘They must have
+gold watches or nothing.’
+
+“‘And finally, how did you know I was a rich American?’ he asked.
+
+“‘Because no other can afford to stop at hotels like the Savoy in the
+height of the season,’ I replied, thinking that the jest would end there,
+and that he would now reveal his identity and speak of the tiara.  To my
+surprise, however, he did nothing of the sort.
+
+“‘You have an almost supernatural gift,’ he said.  ‘My name is Bunker.  I
+am stopping at the Savoy.  I _am_ an American.  I _was_ rich when I
+arrived here, but I’m not quite so bloated with wealth as I was, now that
+I have paid my first week’s bill.  I _have_ lost my watch; such a watch,
+too, as you describe, even to the dents.  Your only mistake was that the
+dents were made by my son John, and not Willie; but even there I cannot
+but wonder at you, for John and Willie are twins, and so much alike that
+it sometimes baffles even their mother to tell them apart.  The watch has
+no very great value intrinsically, but the associations are such that I
+want it back, and I will pay £200 for its recovery.  I have no clew as to
+who took it.  It was numbered—’
+
+“Here a happy thought struck me.  In all my description of the watch I
+had merely described my own, a very cheap affair which I had won at a
+raffle.  My visitor was deceiving me, though for what purpose I did not
+on the instant divine.  No one would like to suspect him of having
+purloined his wife’s tiara.  Why should I not deceive him, and at the
+same time get rid of my poor chronometer for a sum that exceeded its
+value a hundredfold?”
+
+“Good business!” cried Shylock.
+
+The stranger smiled and bowed.
+
+“Excellent,” he said.  “I took the words right out of his mouth.  ‘It was
+numbered 86507B!’ I cried, giving, of course, the number of my own watch.
+
+“He gazed at me narrowly for a moment, and then he smiled.  ‘You grow
+more marvellous at every step.  That was indeed the number.  Are you a
+demon?’
+
+“‘No,’ I replied.  ‘Only something of a mind-reader.’
+
+“Well, to be brief, the bargain was struck.  I was to look for a watch
+that I knew he hadn’t lost, and was to receive £200 if I found it.  It
+seemed to him to be a very good bargain, as, indeed, it was, from his
+point of view, feeling, as he did, that there never having been any such
+watch, it could not be recovered, and little suspecting that two could
+play at his little game of deception, and that under any circumstances I
+could foist a ten-shilling watch upon him for two hundred pounds.  This
+business concluded, he started to go.
+
+“‘Won’t you have a little Scotch?’ I asked, as he started, feeling, with
+all that prospective profit in view, I could well afford the expense.
+‘It is a stormy night.’
+
+“‘Thanks, I will,’ said he, returning and seating himself by my
+table—still, to my surprise, keeping his hat on.
+
+“‘Let me take your hat,’ I said, little thinking that my courtesy would
+reveal the true state of affairs.  The mere mention of the word hat
+brought about a terrible change in my visitor; his knees trembled, his
+face grew ghastly, and he clutched the brim of his beaver until it
+cracked.  He then nervously removed it, and I noticed a dull red mark
+running about his forehead, just as there would be on the forehead of a
+man whose hat fitted too tightly; and that mark, gentlemen, had the
+undulating outline of nothing more nor less than a tiara, and on the apex
+of the uttermost extremity was a deep indentation about the size of a
+shilling, that could have been made only by some adamantine substance!
+The mystery was solved!  The robber of the Duchess of Brokedale stood
+before me.”
+
+A suppressed murmur of excitement went through the assembled spirits, and
+even Messrs. Hawkshaw and Le Coq were silent in the presence of such
+genius.
+
+“My plan of action was immediately formulated.  The man was completely at
+my mercy.  He had stolen the tiara, and had it concealed in the lining of
+his hat.  I rose and locked the door.  My visitor sank with a groan into
+my chair.
+
+“‘Why did you do that?’ he stammered, as I turned the key in the lock.
+
+“‘To keep my Scotch whiskey from evaporating,’ I said, dryly.  ‘Now, my
+lord,’ I added, ‘it will pay your Grace to let me have your hat.  I know
+who you are.  You are the Duke of Brokedale.  The Duchess of Brokedale
+has lost a valuable tiara of diamonds, and you have not lost your watch.
+Somebody has stolen the diamonds, and it may be that somewhere there is a
+Bunker who has lost such a watch as I have described.  The queer part of
+it all is,’ I continued, handing him the decanter, and taking a couple of
+loaded six-shooters out of my escritoire—‘the queer part of it all is
+that I have the watch and you have the tiara.  We’ll swap the swag.  Hand
+over the bauble, please.’
+
+“‘But—’ he began.
+
+“‘We won’t have any butting, your Grace,’ said I.  ‘I’ll give you the
+watch, and you needn’t mind the £200; and you must give me the tiara, or
+I’ll accompany you forthwith to the police, and have a search made of
+your hat.  It won’t pay you to defy me.  Give it up.’
+
+“He gave up the hat at once, and, as I suspected, there lay the tiara,
+snugly stowed away behind the head-band.
+
+“‘You are a great fellow,’ said I, as I held the tiara up to the light
+and watched with pleasure the flashing brilliance of its gems.
+
+“‘I beg you’ll not expose me,’ he moaned.  ‘I was driven to it by
+necessity.’
+
+“‘Not I,’ I replied.  ‘As long as you play fair it will be all right.
+I’m not going to keep this thing.  I’m not married, and so have no use
+for such a trifle; but what I do intend is simply to wait until your wife
+retains me to find it, and then I’ll find it and get the reward.  If you
+keep perfectly still, I’ll have it found in such a fashion that you’ll
+never be suspected.  If, on the other hand, you say a word about
+to-night’s events, I’ll hand you over to the police.’
+
+“‘Humph!’ he said.  ‘You couldn’t prove a case against me.’
+
+“‘I can prove any case against anybody,’ I retorted.  ‘If you don’t
+believe it, read my book,’ I added, and I handed him a copy of my
+memoirs.
+
+“‘I’ve read it,’ he answered, ‘and I ought to have known better than to
+come here.  I thought you were only a literary success.’  And with a
+deep-drawn sigh he took the watch and went out.  Ten days later I was
+retained by the Duchess, and after a pretended search of ten days more I
+found the tiara, restored it to the noble lady, and received the £5000
+reward.  The Duke kept perfectly quiet about our little encounter, and
+afterwards we became stanch friends; for he was a good fellow, and was
+driven to his desperate deed only by the demands of his creditors, and
+the following Christmas he sent me the watch I had given him, with the
+best wishes of the season.
+
+“So, you see, gentlemen, in a moment, by quick wit and a mental
+concentration of no mean order, combined with strict observance of the
+pettiest details, I ferreted out what bade fair to become a great diamond
+mystery; and when I say that this cigar end proves certain things to my
+mind, it does not become you to doubt the value of my conclusions.”
+
+“Hear! hear!” cried Raleigh, growing tumultuous with enthusiasm.
+
+“Your name? your name?” came from all parts of the wharf.
+
+The stranger, putting his hand into the folds of his coat, drew forth a
+bundle of business cards, which he tossed, as the prestidigitator tosses
+playing-cards, out among the audience, and on each of them was found
+printed the words:
+
+                          SHERLOCK HOLMES,
+
+                             DETECTIVE.
+
+                        FERRETING DONE HERE.
+
+                        _Plots for Sale_.
+
+“I think he made a mistake in not taking the £200 for the watch.  Such
+carelessness destroys my confidence in him,” said Shylock, who was the
+first to recover from the surprise of the revelation.
+
+
+
+
+III
+THE SEARCH-PARTY IS ORGANIZED
+
+
+“WELL, Mr. Holmes,” said Sir Walter Raleigh, after three rousing cheers,
+led by Hamlet, had been given with a will by the assembled spirits,
+“after this demonstration in your honor I think it is hardly necessary
+for me to assure you of our hearty co-operation in anything you may
+venture to suggest.  There is still manifest, however, some desire on the
+part of the ever-wise King Solomon and my friend Confucius to know how
+you deduce that Kidd has sailed for London, from the cigar end which you
+hold in your hand.”
+
+      [Picture: Three rousing cheers, led by Hamlet, had been given]
+
+“I can easily satisfy their curiosity,” said Sherlock Holmes, genially.
+“I believe I have already proven that it is the end of Kidd’s cigar.  The
+marks of the teeth have shown that.  Now observe how closely it is
+smoked—there is barely enough of it left for one to insert between his
+teeth.  Now Captain Kidd would hardly have risked the edges of his
+mustache and the comfort of his lips by smoking a cigar down to the very
+light if he had had another; nor would he under any circumstances have
+smoked it that far unless he were passionately addicted to this
+particular brand of the weed.  Therefore I say to you, first, this was
+his cigar; second, it was the last one he had; third, he is a confirmed
+smoker.  The result, he has gone to the one place in the world where
+these Connecticut hand-rolled Havana cigars—for I recognize this as one
+of them—have a real popularity, and are therefore more certainly
+obtainable, and that is at London.  You cannot get so vile a cigar as
+that outside of a London hotel.  If I could have seen a quarter-inch more
+of it, I should have been able definitely to locate the hotel itself.
+The wrappers unroll to a degree that varies perceptibly as between the
+different hotels.  The Fortuna cigar can be smoked a quarter through
+before its wrapper gives way; the Felix wrapper goes as soon as you light
+the cigar; whereas the River, fronting on the Thames, is surrounded by a
+moister atmosphere than the others, and, as a consequence, the wrapper
+will hold really until most people are willing to throw the whole thing
+away.”
+
+“It is really a wonderful art!” said Solomon.
+
+“The making of a Connecticut Havana cigar?” laughed Holmes.  “Not at all.
+Give me a head of lettuce and a straw, and I’ll make you a box.”
+
+“I referred to your art—that of detection,” said Solomon.  “Your logic is
+perfect; step by step we have been led to the irresistible conclusion
+that Kidd has made for London, and can be found at one of these hotels.”
+
+“And only until next Tuesday, when he will take a house in the
+neighborhood of Scotland Yard,” put in Holmes, quickly, observing a sneer
+on Hawkshaw’s lips, and hastening to overwhelm him by further evidence of
+his ingenuity.  “When he gets his bill he will open his piratical eyes so
+wide that he will be seized with jealousy to think of how much more
+refined his profession has become since he left it, and out of mere pique
+he will leave the hotel, and, to show himself still cleverer than his
+modern prototypes, he will leave his account unpaid, with the result that
+the affair will be put in the hands of the police, under which
+circumstances a house in the immediate vicinity of the famous police
+headquarters will be the safest hiding-place he can find, as was
+instanced by the remarkable case of the famous Penstock bond robbery.  A
+certain churchwarden named Hinkley, having been appointed cashier
+thereof, robbed the Penstock Imperial Bank of £1,000,000 in bonds, and,
+fleeing to London, actually joined the detective force at Scotland Yard,
+and was detailed to find himself, which of course he never did, nor would
+he ever have been found had he not crossed my path.”
+
+Hawkshaw gazed mournfully off into space, and Le Coq muttered profane
+words under his breath.
+
+“We’re not in the same class with this fellow, Hawkshaw,” said Le Coq.
+“You could tap your forehead knowingly eight hours a day through all
+eternity with a sledge-hammer without loosening an idea like that.”
+
+“Nevertheless I’ll confound him yet,” growled the jealous detective.  “I
+shall myself go to London, and, disguised as Captain Kidd, will lead this
+visionary on until he comes there to arrest me, and when these club
+members discover that it is Hawkshaw and not Kidd he has run to earth,
+we’ll have a great laugh on Sherlock Holmes.”
+
+“I am anxious to hear how you solved the bond-robbery mystery,” said
+Socrates, wrapping his toga closely about him and settling back against
+one of the spiles of the wharf.
+
+“So are we all,” said Sir Walter.  “But meantime the House-boat is
+getting farther away.”
+
+“Not unless she’s sailing backwards,” sneered Noah, who was still nursing
+his resentment against Sir Christopher Wren for his reflections upon the
+speed of the Ark.
+
+“What’s the hurry?” asked Socrates.  “I believe in making haste slowly;
+and on the admission of our two eminent naval architects, Sir Christopher
+and Noah, neither of their vessels can travel more than a mile a week,
+and if we charter the _Flying Dutchman_ to go in pursuit of her we can
+catch her before she gets out of the Styx into the Atlantic.”
+
+“Jonah might lend us his whale, if the beast is in commission,” suggested
+Munchausen, dryly.  “I for one would rather take a state-room in Jonah’s
+whale than go aboard the _Flying Dutchman_ again.  I made one trip on the
+_Dutchman_, and she’s worse than a dory for comfort; further—I don’t see
+what good it would do us to charter a boat that can’t land oftener than
+once in seven years, and spends most of her time trying to double the
+Cape of Good Hope.”
+
+“My whale is in commission,” said Jonah, with dignity.  “But Baron
+Munchausen need not consider the question of taking a state-room aboard
+of her.  She doesn’t carry second-class passengers.  And if I took any
+stock in the idea of a trip on the _Flying Dutchman_ amounting to a seven
+years’ exile, I would cheerfully pay the Baron’s expenses for a round
+trip.”
+
+“We are losing time, gentlemen,” suggested Sherlock Holmes.  “This is a
+moment, I think, when you should lay aside personal differences and
+personal preferences for immediate action.  I have examined the wake of
+the House-boat, and I judge from the condition of what, for want of a
+better term, I may call the suds, when she left us the House-boat was
+making ten knots a day.  Almost any craft we can find suitably manned
+ought to be able to do better than that; and if you could summon Charon
+and ascertain what boats he has at hand, it would be for the good of all
+concerned.”
+
+“That’s a good plan,” said Johnson.  “Boswell, see if you can find
+Charon.”
+
+“I am here already, sir,” returned the ferryman, rising.  “Most of my
+boats have gone into winter quarters, your Honor.  The _Mayflower_ went
+into dry dock last week to be calked up; the _Pinta_ and the _Santa
+Maria_ are slow and cranky; the _Monitor_ and the _Merrimac_ I haven’t
+really had time to patch up; and the _Valkyrie_ is two months overdue.  I
+cannot make up my mind whether she is lost or kept back by excursion
+steamers.  Hence I really don’t know what I can lend you.  Any of these
+boat I have named you could have had for nothing; but my others are
+actively employed, and I couldn’t let them go without a serious
+interference with my business.”
+
+The old man blinked sorrowfully across the waters at the opposite shore.
+It was quite evident that he realized what a dreadful expense the club
+was about to be put to, and while of course there would be profit in it
+for him, he was sincerely sorry for them.
+
+“I repeat,” he added, “those boats you could have had for nothing, but
+the others I’d have to charge you for, though of course I’ll give you a
+discount.”
+
+And he blinked again, as he meditated upon whether that discount should
+be an eighth or one-quarter of one per cent.
+
+“The _Flying Dutchman_,” he pursued, “ain’t no good for your purposes.
+She’s too fast.  She’s built to fly by, not to stop.  You’d catch up with
+the House-boat in a minute with her, but you’d go right on and disappear
+like a visionary; and as for the Ark, she’d never do—with all respect to
+Mr. Noah.  She’s just about as suitable as any other waterlogged
+cattle-steamer’d be, and no more—first-rate for elephants and kangaroos,
+but no good for cruiser-work, and so slow she wouldn’t make a ripple high
+enough to drown a gnat going at the top of her speed.  Furthermore, she’s
+got a great big hole in her bottom, where she was stove in by running
+afoul of—Mount Arrus-root, I believe it was called when Captain Noah went
+cruising with that menagerie of his.”
+
+“That’s an unmitigated falsehood!” cried Noah, angrily.  “This man talks
+like a professional amateur yachtsman.  He has no regard for facts, but
+simply goes ahead and makes statements with an utter disregard of the
+truth.  The Ark was not stove in.  We beached her very successfully.  I
+say this in defence of my seamanship, which was top-notch for my day.”
+
+“Couldn’t sail six weeks without fouling a mountain-peak!” sneered Wren,
+perceiving a chance to get even.
+
+“The hole’s there, just the same,” said Charon.  “Maybe she was a
+centreboard, sad that’s where you kept the board.”
+
+“The hole is there because it was worn there by one of the elephants,”
+retorted Noah.  “You get a beast like the elephant shuffling one of his
+fore-feet up and down, up and down, a plank for twenty-four hours a day
+for forty days in one of your boats, and see where your boat would be.”
+
+“Thanks,” said Charon, calmly.  “But the elephants don’t patronize my
+line.  All the elephants I’ve ever seen in Hades waded over, except
+Jumbo, and he reached his trunk across, fastened on to a tree limb with
+it, and swung himself over.  However, the Ark isn’t at all what you want,
+unless you are going to man her with a lot of centaurs.  If that’s your
+intention, I’d charter her; the accommodations are just the thing for a
+crew of that kind.”
+
+“Well, what do you suggest?” asked Raleigh, somewhat impatiently.
+“You’ve told us what we can’t do.  Now tell us what we can do.”
+
+“I’d stay right here,” said Charon, “and let the ladies rescue
+themselves.  That’s what I’d do.  I’ve had the honor of bringing ’em over
+here, and I think I know ’em pretty well.  I’ve watched ’em close, and
+it’s my private opinion that before many days you’ll see your club-house
+sailing back here, with Queen Elizabeth at the hellum, and the other
+ladies on the for’ard deck knittin’ and crochetin’, and tearin’ each
+other to pieces in a conversational way, as happy as if there never had
+been any Captain Kidd and his pirate crew.”
+
+“That suggestion is impossible,” said Blackstone, rising.  “Whether the
+relief expedition amounts to anything or not, it’s good to be set going.
+The ladies would never forgive us if we sat here inactive, even if they
+were capable of rescuing themselves.  It is an accepted principle of law
+that this climate hath no fury like a woman left to herself, and we’ve
+got enough professional furies hereabouts without our aiding in
+augmenting the ranks.  We must have a boat.”
+
+“It’ll cost you a thousand dollars a week,” said Charon.
+
+“I’ll subscribe fifty,” cried Hamlet.
+
+“I’ll consult my secretary,” said Solomon, “and find out how many of my
+wives have been abducted, and I’ll pay ten dollars apiece for their
+recovery.”
+
+“That’s liberal,” said Hawkshaw.  “There are sixty-three of ’em on board,
+together with eighty of his fiancées.  What’s the quotation on fiancées,
+King Solomon?”
+
+“Nothing,” said Solomon.  “They’re not mine yet, and it’s their father’s
+business to get ’em back.  Not mine.”
+
+Other subscriptions came pouring in, and it was not long before everybody
+save Shylock had put his name down for something.  This some one of the
+more quick-witted of the spirits soon observed, and, with reckless
+disregard of the feelings of the Merchant of Venice, began to call,
+“Shylock!  Shylock!  How much?”
+
+The Merchant tried to leave the pier, but his path was blocked.
+
+“Subscribe, subscribe!” was the cry.  “How much?”
+
+“Order, gentlemen, order!” said Sir Walter, rising and holding a bottle
+aloft.  “A black person by the name of Friday, a valet of our friend Mr.
+Crusoe, has just handed me this bottle, which he picked up ten minutes
+ago on the bank of the river a few miles distant.  It contains a bit of
+paper, and may perhaps give us a clew based upon something more
+substantial than even the wonderful theories of our new brother Holmes.”
+
+      [Picture: A black person by the name of Friday finds a bottle]
+
+A deathly silence followed the chairman’s words, as Sir Walter drew a
+corkscrew from his pocket and opened the bottle.  He extracted the paper,
+and, as he had surmised, it proved to be a message from the missing
+vessel.  His face brightening with a smile of relief, Sir Walter read,
+aloud:
+
+“Have just emerged into the Atlantic Club in hands of Kidd and forty
+ruffians.  One hundred and eighty-three ladies on board.  Headed for the
+Azores.  Send aid at once.  All well except Xanthippe, who is seasick in
+the billiard-room.  (Signed) Portia.”
+
+“Aha!” cried Hawkshaw.  “That shows how valuable the Holmes theory is.”
+
+“Precisely,” said Holmes.  “No woman knows anything about seafaring, but
+Portia is right.  The ship is headed for the Azores, which is the first
+tack needed in a windward sail for London under the present conditions.”
+
+The reply was greeted with cheers, and when they subsided the cry for
+Shylock’s subscription began again, but he declined.
+
+“I had intended to put up a thousand ducats,” he said, defiantly, “but
+with that woman Portia on board I won’t give a red obolus!” and with that
+he wrapped his cloak about him and stalked off into the gathering shadows
+of the wood.
+
+And so the funds were raised without the aid of Shylock, and the shapely
+twin-screw steamer the _Gehenna_ was chartered of Charon, and put under
+the command of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who, after he had thanked the company
+for their confidence, walked abstractedly away, observing in strictest
+confidence to himself that he had done well to prepare that bottle
+beforehand and bribe Crusoe’s man to find it.
+
+“For now,” he said, with a chuckle, “I can get back to earth again free
+of cost on my own hook, whether my eminent inventor wants me there or
+not.  I never approved of his killing me off as he did at the very height
+of my popularity.”
+
+
+
+
+IV
+ON BOARD THE HOUSE-BOAT
+
+
+MEANWHILE the ladies were not having such a bad time, after all.  Once
+having gained possession of the House-boat, they were loath to think of
+ever having to give it up again, and it is an open question in my mind if
+they would not have made off with it themselves had Captain Kidd and his
+men not done it for them.
+
+“I’ll never forgive these men for their selfishness in monopolizing all
+this,” said Elizabeth, with a vicious stroke of a billiard-cue, which
+missed the cue-ball and tore a right angle in the cloth.  “It is not
+right.”
+
+“No,” said Portia.  “It is all wrong; and when we get back home I’m going
+to give my beloved Bassanio a piece of my mind; and if he doesn’t give in
+to me, _I’ll_ reverse my decision in the famous case of Shylock _versus_
+Antonio.”
+
+“Then I sincerely hope he doesn’t give in,” retorted Cleopatra, “for I
+swear by all my auburn locks that that was the very worst bit of
+injustice ever perpetrated.  Mr. Shakespeare confided to me one night, at
+one of Mrs. Cæsar’s card-parties, that he regarded that as the biggest
+joke he ever wrote, and Judge Blackstone observed to Antony that the
+decision wouldn’t have held in any court of equity outside of Venice.  If
+you owe a man a thousand ducats, and it costs you three thousand to get
+them, that’s your affair, not his.  If it cost Antonio every drop of his
+bluest blood to pay the pound of flesh, it was Antonio’s affair, not
+Shylock’s.  However, the world applauds you as a great jurist, when you
+have nothing more than a woman’s keen instinct for sentimental
+technicalities.”
+
+“It would have made a horrid play, though, if it had gone on,” shuddered
+Elizabeth.
+
+“That may be, but, carried out realistically, it would have done away
+with a raft of bad actors,” said Cleopatra.  “I’m half sorry it didn’t go
+on, and I’m sure it wouldn’t have been any worse than compelling Brutus
+to fall on his sword until he resembles a chicken liver _en brochette_,
+as is done in that Julius Cæsar play.”
+
+“Well, I’m very glad I did it,” snapped Portia.
+
+“I should think you would be,” said Cleopatra.  “If you hadn’t done it,
+you’d never have been known.  What was that?”
+
+The boat had given a slight lurch.
+
+“Didn’t you hear a shuffling noise up on deck, Portia?” asked the
+Egyptian Queen.
+
+“I thought I did, and it seemed as if the vessel had moved a bit,”
+returned Portia, nervously; for, like most women in an advanced state of
+development, she had become a martyr to her nerves.
+
+“It was merely the wash from one of Charon’s new ferry-boats, I fancy,”
+said Elizabeth, calmly.  “It’s disgusting, the way that old fellow allows
+these modern innovations to be brought in here!  As if the old
+paddle-boats he used to carry shades in weren’t good enough for the
+immigrants of this age!  Really this Styx River is losing a great deal of
+its charm.  Sir Walter and I were upset, while out rowing one day last
+summer, by the waves kicked up by one of Charon’s excursion steamers
+going up the river with a party of picnickers from the city—the Greater
+Gehenna Chowder Club, I believe it was—on board of her.  One might just
+as well live in the midst of the turmoil of a great city as try to get
+uninterrupted quiet here in the suburbs in these days.  Charon isn’t
+content to get rich slowly; he must make money by the barrelful, if he
+has to sacrifice all the comfort of everybody living on this river.
+Anybody’d think he was an American, the way he goes on; and everybody
+else here is the same way.  The Erebeans are getting to be a race of
+shopkeepers.”
+
+“I think myself,” sighed Cleopatra, “that Hades is being spoiled by the
+introduction of American ideas—it is getting by far too democratic for my
+tastes; and if it isn’t stopped, it’s my belief that the best people will
+stop coming here.  Take Madame Récamier’s salon as it is now and compare
+it with what it used to be!  In the early days, after her arrival here,
+everybody went because it was the swell thing, and you’d be sure of
+meeting the intellectually elect.  On the one hand you’d find Sophocles;
+on the other, Cicero; across the room would be Horace chatting gayly with
+some such person as myself.  Great warriors, from Alexander to Bonaparte,
+were there, and glad of the opportunity to be there, too; statesmen like
+Macchiavelli; artists like Cellini or Tintoretto.  You couldn’t move
+without stepping on the toes of genius.  But now all is different.  The
+money-getting instinct has been aroused within them all, with the result
+that when I invited Mozart to meet a few friends at dinner at my place
+last autumn, he sent me a card stating his terms for dinners.  Let me
+see, I think I have it with me; I’ve kept it by me for fear of losing it,
+it is such a complete revelation of the actual condition of affairs in
+this locality.  Ah! this is it,” she added, taking a small bit of
+pasteboard from her card-case.  “Read that.”
+
+The card was passed about, and all the ladies were much astonished—and
+naturally so, for it ran this wise:
+
+                             NOTICE TO HOSTESSES.
+
+    Owing to the very great, constantly growing, and at times vexatious
+    demands upon his time socially,
+
+                         HERR WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
+
+    takes this method of announcing to his friends that on and after
+    January 1, 1897, his terms for functions will be as follows:
+
+                                                                 Marks
+Dinners with conversation on the Theory of Music                   500
+Dinners with conversation on the Theory of Music,                  750
+illustrated
+Dinners without any conversation                                   300
+Receptions, public, with music                                    1000
+   ,,    ,,   private,    ,,    ,,,                                750
+Encores (single)                                                   100
+Three encores for                                                  150
+Autographs                                                          10
+
+    Positively no Invitations for Five-o’Clock Teas or Morning Musicales
+    considered.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+“Well, I declare!” tittered Elizabeth, as she read.  “Isn’t that
+extraordinary?  He’s got the three-name craze, too!”
+
+“It’s perfectly ridiculous,” said Cleopatra.  “But it’s fairer than
+Artemus Ward’s plan.  Mozart gives notice of his intentions to charge
+you; but with Ward it’s different.  He comes, and afterwards sends a bill
+for his fun.  Why, only last week I got a ‘quarterly statement’ from him
+showing a charge against me of thirty-eight dollars for humorous remarks
+made to my guests at a little chafing-dish party I gave in honor of
+Balzac, and, worst of all, he had marked it ‘Please remit.’  Even Antony,
+when he wrote a sonnet to my eyebrow, wouldn’t let me have it until he
+had heard whether or not Boswell wanted it for publication in the
+_Gossip_.  With Rubens giving chalk-talks for pay, Phidias doing
+‘Five-minute Masterpieces in Putty’ for suburban lyceums, and all the
+illustrious in other lines turning their genius to account through the
+entertainment bureaus, it’s impossible to have a salon now.”
+
+“You are indeed right,” said Madame Récamier, sadly.  “Those were palmy
+days when genius was satisfied with chicken salad and lemonade.  I shall
+never forget those nights when the wit and wisdom of all time
+were—ah—were on tap at my house, if I may so speak, at a cost to me of
+lights and supper.  Now the only people who will come for nothing are
+those we used to think of paying to stay away.  Boswell is always ready,
+but you can’t run a salon on Boswell.”
+
+“Well,” said Portia, “I sincerely hope that you won’t give up the
+functions altogether, because I have always found them most delightful.
+It is still possible to have lights and supper.”
+
+“I have a plan for next winter,” said Madame Récamier, “but I suppose I
+shall be accused of going into the commercial side of it if I adopt it.
+The plan is, briefly, to incorporate my salon.  That’s an idea worthy of
+an American, I admit; but if I don’t do it I’ll have to give it up
+entirely, which, as you intimate, would be too bad.  An incorporated
+salon, however, would be a grand thing, if only because it would
+perpetuate the salon.  ‘The _Récamier_ Salon (Limited)’ would be a most
+excellent title, and, suitably capitalized would enable us to pay our
+lions sufficiently.  Private enterprise is powerless under modern
+conditions.  It’s as much as I can afford to pay for a dinner, without
+running up an expensive account for guests; and unless we get up a
+salon-trust, as it were, the whole affair must go to the wall.”
+
+“How would you make it pay?” asked Portia.  “I can’t see where your
+dividends would come from.”
+
+“That is simple enough,” said Madame Récamier.  “We could put up a large
+reception-hall with a portion of our capital, and advertise a series of
+nights—say one a week throughout the season.  These would be Warriors’
+Night, Story-tellers’ Night, Poets’ Night, Chafing-dish Night under the
+charge of Brillat-Savarin, and so on.  It would be understood that on
+these particular evenings the most interesting people in certain lines
+would be present, and would mix with outsiders, who should be admitted
+only on payment of a certain sum of money.  The commonplace inhabitants
+of this country could thus meet the truly great; and if I know them well,
+as I think I do, they’ll pay readily for the privilege.  The obscure love
+to rub up against the famous here as well as they do on earth.”
+
+                  [Picture: Madame Récamier has a plan]
+
+“You’d run a sort of Social Zoo?” suggested Elizabeth.
+
+“Precisely; and provide entertainment for private residences too.  An
+advertisement in Boswell’s paper, which everybody buys—”
+
+“And which nobody reads,” said Portia.
+
+“They read the advertisements,” retorted Madame Récamier.  “As I was
+saying, an advertisement could be placed in Boswell’s paper as follows:
+‘Are you giving a Function?  Do you want Talent?  Get your Genius at the
+Récamier Salon (Limited).’  It would be simply magnificent as a business
+enterprise.  The common herd would be tickled to death if they could get
+great people at their homes, even if they had to pay roundly for them.”
+
+“It would look well in the society notes, wouldn’t it, if Mr. John Boggs
+gave a reception, and at the close of the account it said, ‘The supper
+was furnished by Calizetti, and the genius by the Récamier Salon
+(Limited)’?” suggested Elizabeth, scornfully.
+
+“I must admit,” replied the French lady, “that you call up an unpleasant
+possibility, but I don’t really see what else we can do if we want to
+preserve the salon idea.  Somebody has told these talented people that
+they have a commercial value, and they are availing themselves of the
+demand.”
+
+“It is a sad age!” sighed Elizabeth.
+
+“Well, all I’ve got to say is just this,” put in Xanthippe: “You people
+who get up functions have brought this condition of affairs on
+yourselves.  You were not satisfied to go ahead and indulge your passion
+for lions in a moderate fashion.  Take the case of Demosthenes last
+winter, for instance.  His wife told me that he dined at home three times
+during the winter.  The rest of the time he was out, here, there, and
+everywhere, making after-dinner speeches.  The saving on his dinner bills
+didn’t pay his pebble account, much less remunerate him for his time, and
+the fearful expense of nervous energy to which he was subjected.  It was
+as much as she could do, she said, to keep him from shaving one side of
+his head, so that he couldn’t go out, the way he used to do in Athens
+when he was afraid he would be invited out and couldn’t scare up a decent
+excuse for refusing.”
+
+“Did he do that?” cried Elizabeth, with a roar of laughter.
+
+“So the cyclopædias say.  It’s a good plan, too,” said Xanthippe.
+“Though Socrates never had to do it.  When I got the notion Socrates was
+going out too much, I used to hide his dress clothes.  Then there was the
+case of Rubens.  He gave a Carbon Talk at the Sforza’s Thursday Night
+Club, merely to oblige Madame Sforza, and three weeks later discovered
+that she had sold his pictures to pay for her gown!  You people simply
+run it into the ground.  You kill the goose that when taken at the flood
+leads on to fortune.  It advertises you, does the lion no good, and he is
+expected to be satisfied with confectionery, material and theoretical.
+If they are getting tired of candy and compliments, it’s because you have
+forced too much of it upon them.”
+
+“They like it, just the same,” retorted Récamier.  “A genius likes
+nothing better than the sound of his own voice, when he feels that it is
+falling on aristocratic ears.  The social laurel rests pleasantly on many
+a noble brow.”
+
+“True,” said Xanthippe.  “But when a man gets a pile of Christmas wreaths
+a mile high on his head, he begins to wonder what they will bring on the
+market.  An occasional wreath is very nice, but by the ton they are apt
+to weigh on his mind.  Up to a certain point notoriety is like a woman,
+and a man is apt to love it; but when it becomes exacting, demanding
+instead of permitting itself to be courted, it loses its charm.”
+
+“That is Socratic in its wisdom,” smiled Portia.
+
+“But Xanthippic in its origin,” returned Xanthippe.  “No man ever gave me
+my ideas.”
+
+As Xanthippe spoke, Lucretia Borgia burst into the room.
+
+“Hurry and save yourselves!” she cried.  “The boat has broken loose from
+her moorings, and is floating down the stream.  If we don’t hurry up and
+do something, we’ll drift out to sea!”
+
+“What!” cried Cleopatra, dropping her cue in terror, and rushing for the
+stairs.  “I was certain I felt a slight motion.  You said it was the wash
+from one of Charon’s barges, Elizabeth.”
+
+“I thought it was,” said Elizabeth, following closely after.
+
+“Well, it wasn’t,” moaned Lucretia Borgia.  “Calpurnia just looked out of
+the window and discovered that we were in mid-stream.”
+
+The ladies crowded anxiously about the stair and attempted to ascend,
+Cleopatra in the van; but as the Egyptian Queen reached the doorway to
+the upper deck, the door opened, and the hard features of Captain Kidd
+were thrust roughly through, and his strident voice rang out through the
+gathering gloom.  “Pipe my eye for a sardine if we haven’t captured a
+female seminary!” he cried.
+
+     [Picture: The hard features of Captain Kidd were thrust through]
+
+And one by one the ladies, in terror, shrank back into the billiard-room,
+while Kidd, overcome by surprise, slammed the door to, and retreated into
+the darkness of the forward deck to consult with his followers as to
+“what next.”
+
+
+
+
+V
+A CONFERENCE ON DECK
+
+
+“HERE’S a kettle of fish!” said Kidd, pulling his chin whisker in
+perplexity as he and his fellow-pirates gathered about the captain to
+discuss the situation.  “I’m blessed if in all my experience I ever
+sailed athwart anything like it afore!  Pirating with a lot of low-down
+ruffians like you gentlemen is bad enough, but on a craft loaded to the
+water’s edge with advanced women—I’ve half a mind to turn back.”
+
+             [Picture: “Here’s a kettle of fish!” said Kidd]
+
+“If you do, you swim—we’ll not turn back with you,” retorted Abeuchapeta,
+whom, in honor of his prowess, Kidd had appointed executive officer of
+the House-boat.  “I have no desire to be mutinous, Captain Kidd, but I
+have not embarked upon this enterprise for a pleasure sail down the Styx.
+I am out for business.  If you had thirty thousand women on board, still
+should I not turn back.”
+
+“But what shall we do with ’em?” pleaded Kidd.  “Where can we go without
+attracting attention?  Who’s going to feed ’em?  Who’s going to dress
+’em?  Who’s going to keep ’em in bonnets?  You don’t know anything about
+these creatures, my dear Abeuchapeta; and, by-the-way, can’t we arbitrate
+that name of yours?  It would be fearful to remember in the excitement of
+a fight.”
+
+“Call him Ab,” suggested Sir Henry Morgan, with an ill-concealed sneer,
+for he was deeply jealous of Abeuchapeta’s preferral.
+
+“If you do I’ll call you Morgue, and change your appearance to fit,”
+retorted Abeuchapeta, angrily.
+
+“By the beards of all my sainted Buccaneers,” began Morgan, springing
+angrily to his feet, “I’ll have your life!”
+
+“Gentlemen!  Gentlemen—my noble ruffians!” expostulated Kidd.  “Come,
+come; this will never do!  I must have no quarrelling among my aides.
+This is no time for divisions in our councils.  An entirely unexpected
+element has entered into our affairs, and it behooveth us to act in
+concert.  It is no light matter—”
+
+“Excuse me, captain,” said Abeuchapeta, “but that is where you and I do
+not agree.  We’ve got our ship and we’ve got our crew, and in addition we
+find that the Fates have thrown in a hundred or more women to act as
+ballast.  Now I, for one, do not fear a woman.  We can set them to work.
+There is plenty for them to do keeping things tidy; and if we get into a
+very hard fight, and come out of the mêlée somewhat the worse for wear,
+it will be a blessing to have ’em along to mend our togas, sew buttons on
+our uniforms, and darn our hosiery.”
+
+Morgan laughed sarcastically.  “When did you flourish, if ever, colonel?”
+he asked.
+
+“Do you refer to me?” queried Abeuchapeta, with a frown.
+
+“You have guessed correctly,” replied Morgan, icily.  “I have quite
+forgotten your date; were you a success in the year one, or when?”
+
+“Admiral Abeuchapeta, Sir Henry,” interposed Kidd, fearing a further
+outbreak of hostilities—“Admiral Abeuchapeta was the terror of the seas
+in the seventh century, and what he undertook to do he did, and his
+piratical enterprises were carried on on a scale of magnificence which is
+without parallel off the comic-opera stage.  He never went forth without
+at least seventy galleys and a hundred other vessels.”
+
+Abeuchapeta drew himself up proudly.  “Six-ninety-eight was my great
+year,” he said.
+
+“That’s what I thought,” said Morgan.  “That is to say, you got your
+ideas of women twelve hundred years ago, and the ladies have changed
+somewhat since that time.  I have great respect for you, sir, as a
+ruffian.  I have no doubt that as a ruffian you are a complete success,
+but when it comes to ‘feminology’ you are sailing in unknown waters.  The
+study of women, my dear Abeuchadnezzar—”
+
+“Peta,” retorted Abeuchapeta, irritably.
+
+“I stand corrected.  The study of women, my dear Peter,” said Morgan,
+with a wink at Conrad, which fortunately the seventh-century pirate did
+not see, else there would have been an open break—“the study of women is
+more difficult than that of astronomy; there may be two stars alike, but
+all women are unique.  Because she was this, that, or the other thing in
+your day does not prove that she is any one of those things in our day—in
+fact, it proves the contrary.  Why, I venture even to say that no
+individual woman is alike.”
+
+“That’s rather a hazy thought,” said Kidd, scratching his head in a
+puzzled sort of way.
+
+“I mean that she’s different from herself at different times,” said
+Morgan.  “What is it the poet called her?—‘an infinite variety show,’ or
+something of that sort; a perpetual vaudeville—a continuous performance,
+as it were, from twelve to twelve.”
+
+“Morgan is right, admiral!” put in Conrad the corsair, acting temporarily
+as bo’sun.  “The times are sadly changed, and woman is no longer what she
+was.  She is hardly what she is, much less what she was.  The Roman
+Gynæceum would be an impossibility to-day.  You might as well expect
+Delilah to open a barber-shop on board this boat as ask any of these
+advanced females below-stairs to sew buttons on a pirate’s uniform after
+a fray, or to keep the fringe on his epaulets curled.  They’re no longer
+sewing-machines—they are Keeley motors for mystery and perpetual motion.
+Women have views now they are no longer content to be looked at merely;
+they must see for themselves; and the more they see, the more they wish
+to domesticate man and emancipate woman.  It’s my private opinion that if
+we are to get along with them at all the best thing to do is to let ’em
+alone.  I have always found I was better off in the abstract, and if this
+question is going to be settled in a purely democratic fashion by
+submitting it to a vote, I’ll vote for any measure which involves leaving
+them strictly to themselves.  They’re nothing but a lot of ghosts anyhow,
+like ourselves, and we can pretend we don’t see them.”
+
+“If that could be, it would be excellent,” said Morgan; “but it is
+impossible.  For a pirate of the Byronic order, my dear Conrad, you are
+strangely unversed in the ways of the sex which cheers but not
+inebriates.  We can no more ignore their presence upon this boat than we
+can expect whales to spout kerosene.  In the first place, it would be
+excessively impolite of us to cut them—to decline to speak to them if
+they should address us.  We may be pirates, ruffians, cutthroats, but I
+hope we shall never forget that we are gentlemen.”
+
+“The whole situation is rather contrary to etiquette, don’t you think?”
+suggested Conrad.  “There’s nobody to introduce us, and I can’t really
+see how we can do otherwise than ignore them.  I certainly am not going
+to stand on deck and make eyes at them, to try and pick up an
+acquaintance with them, even if I am of a Byronic strain.”
+
+“You forget,” said Kidd, “two essential features of the situation.  These
+women are at present—or shortly will be, when they realize their
+situation—in distress, and a true gentleman may always fly to the rescue
+of a distressed female; and, the second point, we shall soon be on the
+seas, and I understand that on the fashionable transatlantic lines it is
+now considered _de rigueur_ to speak to anybody you choose to.  The
+introduction business isn’t going to stand in my way.”
+
+“Well, may I ask,” put in Abeuchapeta, “just what it is that is worrying
+you?  You said something about feeding them, and dressing them, and
+keeping them in bonnets.  I fancy there’s fish enough in the sea to feed
+’em; and as for their gowns and hats, they can make ’em themselves.
+Every woman is a milliner at heart.”
+
+“Exactly, and we’ll have to pay the milliners.  That is what bothers me.
+I was going to lead this expedition to London, Paris, and New York,
+admiral.  That is where the money is, and to get it you’ve got to go
+ashore, to headquarters.  You cannot nowadays find it on the high seas.
+Modern civilization,” said Kidd, “has ruined the pirate’s business.  The
+latest news from the other world has really opened my eyes to certain
+facts that I never dreamed of.  The conditions of the day of which I
+speak are interestingly shown in the experience of our friend Hawkins
+here.  Captain Hawkins, would you have any objection to stating to these
+gentlemen the condition of affairs which led you to give up piracy on the
+high seas?”
+
+“Not the slightest, Captain Kidd,” returned Captain Hawkins, who was a
+recent arrival in Hades.  “It is a sad little story, and it gives me a
+pain for to think on it, but none the less I’ll tell it, since you ask
+me.  When I were a mere boy, fellow-pirates, I had but one ambition, due
+to my readin’, which was confined to stories of a Sunday-school nater—to
+become somethin’ different from the little Willies an’ the clever Tommies
+what I read about therein.  They was all good, an’ they went to their
+reward too soon in life for me, who even in them days regarded death as a
+stuffy an’ unpleasant diversion.  Learnin’ at an early period that virtue
+was its only reward, an’ a-wish-in’ others, I says to myself: ‘Jim,’ says
+I, ‘if you wishes to become a magnet in this village, be sinful.  If so
+be as you are a good boy, an’ kind to your sister an’ all other animals,
+you’ll end up as a prosperous father with fifteen hundred a year sure,
+with never no hope for no public preferment beyond bein’ made the
+super-intendent of the Sunday-school; but if so be as how you’re bad, you
+may become famous, an’ go to Congress, an’ have your picture in the
+Sunday noospapers.’  So I looks around for books tellin’ how to get
+‘Famous in Fifty Ways,’ an’ after due reflection I settles in my mind
+that to be a pirate’s just the thing for me, seein’ as how it’s both
+profitable an’ healthy.  Pass-in’ over details, let me tell you that I
+became a pirate.  I ran away to sea, an’ by dint of perseverance, as the
+Sunday-school book useter say, in my badness I soon became the centre of
+a evil lot; an’ when I says to ’em, ‘Boys, I wants to be a pirate chief,’
+they hollers back, loud like, ‘Jim, we’re with you,’ an’ they was.  For
+years I was the terror of the Venezuelan Gulf, the Spanish Main, an’ the
+Pacific seas, but there was precious little money into it.  The best pay
+I got was from a Sunday noospaper which paid me well to sign an article
+on ‘Modern Piracy’ which I didn’t write.  Finally business got so bad the
+crew began to murmur, an’ I was at my wits’ ends to please ’em; when one
+mornin’, havin’ passed a restless night, I picks up a noospaper and sees
+in it that ‘Next Saturday’s steamer is a weritable treasure-ship, takin’
+out twelve million dollars, and the jewels of a certain prima donna
+valued at five hundred thousand.’  ‘Here’s my chance,’ says I, an’ I goes
+to sea and lies in wait for the steamer.  I captures her easy, my crew
+bein’ hungry, an’ fightin according like.  We steals the box a-hold-in’
+the jewels an’ the bag containin’ the millions, hustles back to our own
+ship, an’ makes for our rondyvoo, me with two bullets in my leg, four o’
+my crew killed, and one engin’ of my ship disabled by a shot—but happy.
+Twelve an’ a half millions at one break is enough to make anybody happy.”
+
+“I should say so,” said Abeuchapeta, with an ecstatic shake of his head.
+“I didn’t get that in all my career.”
+
+“Nor I,” sighed Kidd.  “But go on, Hawkins.”
+
+“Well, as I says,” continued Captain Hawkins, “we goes to the rondyvoo to
+look over our booty.  ‘Captain ’Awkins,’ says my valet—for I was a swell
+pirate, gents, an’ never travelled nowhere without a man to keep my
+clothes brushed and the proper wrinkles in my trousers—‘this ’ere twelve
+millions,’ says he, ‘is werry light,’ says he, carryin’ the bag ashore.
+‘I don’t care how light it is, so long as it’s twelve millions,
+Henderson,’ says I; but my heart sinks inside o’ me at his words, an’ the
+minute we lands I sits down to investigate right there on the beach.  I
+opens the bag, an’ it’s the one I was after—but the twelve millions!”
+
+“Weren’t there?” cried Conrad.
+
+“Yes, they was there,” sighed Hawkins, “but every bloomin’ million was
+represented by a certified check, an’ payable in London!”
+
+  [Picture: Every bloomin’ million was represented by a certified check,
+                          an’ payable in London]
+
+“By Jingo!” cried Morgan.  “What fearful luck!  But you had the prima
+donna’s jewels.”
+
+“Yes,” said Hawkins, with a moan.  “But they was like all other prima
+donna’s jewels—for advertisin’ purposes only, an’ made o’ gum-arabic!”
+
+“Horrible!” said Abeuchapeta.  “And the crew, what did they say?”
+
+“They was a crew of a few words,” sighed Hawkins.  “Werry few words, an’
+not a civil word in the lot—mostly adjectives of a profane kind.  When I
+told ’em what had happened, they got mad at Fortune for a-jiltin’ of ’em,
+an’—well, I came here.  I was ’sas’inated that werry night!”
+
+“They killed you?” cried Morgan.
+
+“A dozen times,” nodded Hawkins.  “They always was a lavish lot.  I met
+death in all its most horrid forms.  First they stabbed me, then they
+shot me, then they clubbed me, and so on, endin’ up with a lynchin’—but I
+didn’t mind much after the first, which hurt a bit.  But now that I’m
+here I’m glad it happened.  This life is sort of less responsible than
+that other.  You can’t hurt a ghost by shooting him, because there ain’t
+nothing to hurt, an’ I must say I like bein’ a mere vision what everybody
+can see through.”
+
+“All of which interesting tale proves what?” queried Abeuchapeta.
+
+“That piracy on the sea is not profitable in these days of the check
+banking system,” said Kidd.  “If you can get a chance at real gold it’s
+all right, but it’s of no earthly use to steal checks that people can
+stop payment on.  Therefore it was my plan to visit the cities and do a
+little freebooting there, where solid material wealth is to be found.”
+
+“Well?  Can’t we do it now?” asked Abeuchapeta.
+
+“Not with these women tagging after us,” returned Kidd.  “If we went to
+London and lifted the whole Bank of England, these women would have it
+spent on Regent Street inside of twenty-four hours.”
+
+“Then leave them on board,” said Abeuchapeta.
+
+“And have them steal the ship!” retorted Kidd.  “No.  There are but two
+things to do.  Take ’em back, or land them in Paris.  Tell them to spend
+a week on shore while we are provisioning.  Tell ’em to shop to their
+hearts’ content, and while they are doing it we can sneak off and leave
+them stranded.”
+
+“Splendid!” cried Morgan.
+
+“But will they consent?” asked Abeuchapeta.
+
+“Consent!  To shop?  In Paris?  For a week?” cried Morgan.
+
+“Ha, ha!” laughed Hawkins.  “Will they consent!  Will a duck swim?”
+
+And so it was decided, which was the first incident in the career of the
+House-boat upon which the astute Mr. Sherlock Holmes had failed to count.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+A CONFERENCE BELOW-STAIRS
+
+
+WHEN, with a resounding slam, the door to the upper deck of the
+House-boat was shut in the faces of queens Elizabeth and Cleopatra by the
+unmannerly Kidd, these ladies turned and gazed at those who thronged the
+stairs behind them in blank amazement, and the heart of Xanthippe, had
+one chosen to gaze through that diaphanous person’s ribs, could have been
+seen to beat angrily.
+
+Queen Elizabeth was so excited at this wholly novel attitude towards her
+regal self that, having turned, she sat down plump upon the floor in the
+most unroyal fashion.
+
+“Well!” she ejaculated.  “If this does not surpass everything!  The idea
+of it!  Oh for one hour of my olden power, one hour of the axe, one hour
+of the block!”
+
+[Picture: Queen Elizabeth desires an axe and one hour of her olden power]
+
+“Get up,” retorted Cleopatra, “and let us all return to the billiard-room
+and discuss this matter calmly.  It is quite evident that something has
+happened of which we wotted little when we came aboard this craft.”
+
+“That is a good idea,” said Calpurnia, retreating below.  “I can see
+through the window that we are in motion.  The vessel has left her
+moorings, and is making considerable headway down the stream, and the
+distinctly masculine voices we have heard are indications to my mind that
+the ship is manned, and that this is the result of design rather than of
+accident.  Let us below.”
+
+Elizabeth rose up and readjusted her ruff, which in the excitement of the
+moment had been forced to assume a position about her forehead which gave
+one the impression that its royal wearer had suddenly donned a sombrero.
+
+“Very well,” she said.  “Let us below; but oh, for the axe!”
+
+“Bring the lady an axe,” cried Xanthippe, sarcastically.  “She wants to
+cut somebody.”
+
+The sally was not greeted with applause.  The situation was regarded as
+being too serious to admit of humor, and in silence they filed back into
+the billiard-room, and, arranging themselves in groups, stood about
+anxiously discussing the situation.
+
+“It’s getting rougher every minute,” sobbed Ophelia.  “Look at those
+pool-balls!”  These were in very truth chasing each other about the table
+in an extraordinary fashion.  “And I wish I’d never followed you horrid
+new creatures on board!” the poor girl added, in an agony of despair.
+
+“I believe we’ve crossed the bar already!” said Cleopatra, gazing out of
+the window at a nasty choppy sea that was adding somewhat to the
+disquietude of the fair gathering.  “If this is merely a joke on the part
+of the Associated Shades, it is a mighty poor one, and I think it is time
+it should cease.”
+
+“Oh, for an axe!” moaned Elizabeth, again.
+
+“Excuse me, your Majesty,” put in Xanthippe.  “You said that before, and
+I must say it is getting tiresome.  You couldn’t do anything with an axe.
+Suppose you had one.  What earthly good would it do you, who were
+accustomed to doing all your killing by proxy?  I don’t believe, if you
+had the unmannerly person who slammed the door in your face lying
+prostrate upon the billiard-table here, you could hit him a square blow
+in the neck if you had a hundred axes.  Delilah might as well cry for her
+scissors, for all the good it would do us in our predicament.  If
+Cleopatra had her asp with her it might be more to the purpose.  One
+deadly little snake like that let loose on the upper deck would doubtless
+drive these boors into the sea, and even then our condition would not be
+bettered, for there isn’t any of us that can sail a boat.  There isn’t an
+old salt among us.”
+
+“Too bad Mrs. Lot isn’t along,” giggled Marguerite de Valois, whose
+Gallic spirits were by no means overshadowed by the unhappy predicament
+in which she found herself.
+
+“I’m here,” piped up Mrs. Lot.  “But I’m not that kind of a salt.”
+
+“I am present,” said Mrs. Noah.  “Though why I ever came I don’t know,
+for I vowed the minute I set my foot on Ararat that dry land was good
+enough for me, and that I’d never step aboard another boat as long as I
+lived.  If, however, now that I am here, I can give you the benefit of my
+nautical experience, you are all perfectly welcome to it.”
+
+“I’m sure we’re very much obliged for the offer,” said Portia, “but in
+the emergency which has arisen we cannot say how much obliged we are
+until we know what your experience amounted to.  Before relying upon you
+we ought to know how far that reliance can go—not that I lack confidence
+in you, my dear madam, but that in an hour of peril one must take care,
+to rely upon the oak, not upon the reed.”
+
+“The point is properly taken,” said Elizabeth, “and I wish to say here
+that I am easier in my mind when I realize that we have with us so
+level-headed a person as the lady who has just spoken.  She has spoken
+truly and to the point.  If I were to become queen again, I should make
+her my attorney-general.  We must not go ahead impulsively, but look at
+all things in a calm, judicial manner.”
+
+“Which is pretty hard work with a sea like this on,” remarked Ophelia,
+faintly, for she was getting a trifle sallow, as indeed she might, for
+the House-boat was beginning to roll tremendously with no alleviation
+save an occasional pitch, which was an alleviation only in the sense that
+it gave variety to their discomfort.  “I don’t believe a chief-justice
+could look at things calmly and in a judicial manner if he felt as I do.”
+
+“Poor dear!” said the matronly Mrs. Noah, sympathetically.  “I know
+exactly how you feel.  I have been there myself.  The fourth day out I
+and my whole family were in the same condition, except that Noah, my
+husband, was so very far gone that I could not afford to yield.  I nursed
+him for six days before he got his sea-legs on, and then succumbed
+myself.”
+
+“But,” gasped Ophelia, “that doesn’t help me—
+
+“It did my husband,” said Mrs. Noah.
+
+“When he heard that the boys were seasick too, he actually laughed and
+began to get better right away.  There is really only one cure for the
+_mal de mer_, and that is the fun of knowing that somebody else is
+suffering too.  If some of you ladies would kindly yield to the
+seductions of the sea, I think we could get this poor girl on her feet in
+an instant.”
+
+Unfortunately for poor Ophelia, there was no immediate response to this
+appeal, and the unhappy young woman was forced to suffer in solitude.
+
+“We have no time for untimely diversions of this sort,” snapped
+Xanthippe, with a scornful glance at the suffering Ophelia, who, having
+retired to a comfortable lounge at an end of the room, was evidently
+improving.  “I have no sympathy with this habit some of my sex seem to
+have acquired of succumbing to an immediate sensation of this nature.”
+
+“I hope to be pardoned for interrupting,” said Mrs. Noah, with a great
+deal of firmness, “but I wish Mrs. Socrates to understand that it is
+rather early in the voyage for her to lay down any such broad principle
+as that, and for her own sake to-morrow, I think it would be well if she
+withdrew the sentiment.  There are certain things about a sea-voyage that
+are more or less beyond the control of man or woman, and any one who
+chides that poor suffering child on yonder sofa ought to be more
+confident than Mrs. Socrates can possibly be that within an hour she will
+not be as badly off.  People who live in glass houses should not throw
+dice.”
+
+“I shall never yield to anything so undignified as seasickness, let me
+tell you that,” retorted Xanthippe.  “Furthermore, the proverb is not as
+the lady has quoted it.  ‘People who live in glass houses should not
+throw stones’ is the proper version.”
+
+“I was not quoting,” returned Mrs. Noah, calmly.  “When I said that
+people who live in glass houses should not throw dice, I meant precisely
+what I said.  People who live in glass houses should not take chances.
+In assuming with such vainglorious positiveness that she will not be
+seasick, the lady who has just spoken is giving tremendous odds, as the
+boys used to say on the Ark when we gathered about the table at night and
+began to make small wagers on the day’s run.”
+
+“I think we had better suspend this discussion,” suggested Cleopatra.
+“It is of no immediate interest to any one but Ophelia, and I fancy she
+does not care to dwell upon it at any great length.  It is more important
+that we should decide upon our future course of action.  In the first
+place, the question is who these people up on deck are.  If they are the
+members of the club, we are all right.  They will give us our scare, and
+land us safely again at the pier.  In that event it is our womanly duty
+to manifest no concern, and to seem to be aware of nothing unusual in the
+proceeding.  It would never do to let them think that their joke has been
+a good one.  If, on the other hand, as I fear, we are the victims of some
+horde of ruffians, who have pounced upon us unawares, and are going into
+the business of abduction on a wholesale basis, we must meet treachery
+with treachery, strategy with strategy.  I, for one, am perfectly willing
+to make every man on board walk the plank; having confidence in the
+seawomanship of Mrs. Noah and her ability to steer us into port.”
+
+“I am quite in accord with these views,” put in Madame Récamier, “and I
+move you, Mrs. President, that we organize a series of sub-committees—one
+on treachery, with Lucretia Borgia and Delilah as members; one on
+strategy, consisting of Portia and Queen Elizabeth; one on navigation,
+headed by Mrs. Noah; with a final sub-committee on reconnoitre, with
+Cassandra to look forward, and Mrs. Lot to look aft—all of these
+subordinated to a central committee of safety headed by Cleopatra and
+Calpurnia.  The rest of us can then commit ourselves and our interests
+unreservedly to these ladies, and proceed to enjoy ourselves without
+thought of the morrow.”
+
+“I second the motion,” said Ophelia, “with the amendment that Madame
+Récamier be appointed chair-lady of another sub-committee, on
+entertainment.”
+
+The amendment was accepted, and the motion put.  It was carried with an
+enthusiastic aye, and the organization was complete.
+
+The various committees retired to the several corners of the room to
+discuss their individual lines of action, when a shadow was observed to
+obscure the moonlight which had been streaming in through the window.
+The faces of Calpurnia and Cleopatra blanched for an instant, as,
+immediately following upon this apparition, a large bundle was hurled
+through the open port into the middle of the room, and the shadow
+vanished.
+
+“Is it a bomb?” cried several of the ladies at once.
+
+“Nonsense!” said Madame Récamier, jumping lightly forward.  “A man
+doesn’t mind blowing a woman up, but he’ll never blow himself up.  We’re
+safe enough in that respect.  The thing looks to me like a bundle of
+illustrated papers.”
+
+“That’s what it is,” said Cleopatra who had been investigating.  “It’s
+rather a discourteous bit of courtesy, tossing them in through the window
+that way, I think, but I presume they mean well.  Dear me,” she added,
+as, having untied the bundle, she held one of the open papers up before
+her, “how interesting!  All the latest Paris fashions.  Humph!  Look at
+those sleeves, Elizabeth.  What an impregnable fortress you would have
+been with those sleeves added to your ruffs!”
+
+“I should think they’d be very becoming,” put in Cassandra, standing on
+her tip-toes and looking over Cleopatra’s shoulder.  “That Watteau isn’t
+bad, either, is it, now?”
+
+“No,” remarked Calpurnia.  “I wonder how a Watteau back like that would
+go on my blue alpaca?”
+
+“Very nicely,” said Elizabeth.  “How many gores has it?”
+
+“Five,” observed Calpurnia.  “One more than Cæsar’s toga.  We had to have
+our costumes distinct in some way.”
+
+“A remarkable hat, that,” nodded Mrs. Lot, her eye catching sight of a
+Virot creation at the top of the page.
+
+“Reminds me of Eve’s description of an autumn scene in the garden,”
+smiled Mrs. Noah.  “Gorgeous in its foliage, beautiful thing; though I
+shouldn’t have dared wear one in the Ark, with all those hungry animals
+browsing about the upper and lower decks.”
+
+“I wonder,” remarked Cleopatra, as she cocked her head to one side to
+take in the full effect of an attractive summer gown—“I wonder how that
+waist would make up in blue crépon, with a yoke of lace and a stylishly
+contrasting stock of satin ribbon?”
+
+“It would depend upon how you finished the sleeves,” remarked Madame
+Récamier.  “If you had a few puffs of rich brocaded satin set in with
+deeply folded pleats it wouldn’t be bad.”
+
+“I think it would be very effective,” observed Mrs. Noah, “but a trifle
+too light for general wear.  I should want some kind of a wrap with it.”
+
+“It does need that,” assented Elizabeth.  “A wrap made of passementerie
+and jet, with a mousseline de soie ruche about the neck held by a _chou_,
+would make it fascinating.”
+
+“The committee on treachery is ready to report,” said Delilah, rising
+from her corner, where she and Lucretia Borgia had been having so
+animated a discussion that they had failed to observe the others crowding
+about Cleopatra and the papers.
+
+         [Picture: The committee on treachery is ready to report]
+
+“A little sombre,” said Cleopatra.  “The corsage is effective, but I
+don’t like those basque terminations.  I’ve never approved of those full
+godets—”
+
+“The committee on treachery,” remarked Delilah again, raising her voice,
+“has a suggestion to make.”
+
+“I can’t get over those sleeves, though,” laughed Helen of Troy.  “What
+is the use of them?”
+
+“They might be used to get Greeks into Troy,” suggested Madame Récamier.
+
+“The committee on treachery,” roared Delilah, thoroughly angered by the
+absorption of the chairman and others, “has a suggestion to make.  This
+is the third and last call.”
+
+“Oh, I beg pardon,” cried Cleopatra, rapping for order.  “I had forgotten
+all about our committees.  Excuse me, Delilah.  I—ah—was absorbed in
+other matters.  Will you kindly lay your pattern—I should say your
+plan—before us?”
+
+“It is briefly this,” said Delilah.  “It has been suggested that we
+invite the crew of this vessel to a chafing-dish party, under the
+supervision of Lucretia Borgia, and that she—”
+
+The balance of the plan was not outlined, for at this point the speaker
+was interrupted by a loud knocking at the door, its instant opening, and
+the appearance in the doorway of that ill-visaged ruffian Captain Kidd.
+
+“Ladies,” he began, “I have come here to explain to you the situation in
+which you find yourselves.  Have I your permission to speak?”
+
+The ladies started back, but the chairman was equal to the occasion.
+
+“Go on,” said Cleopatra, with queenly dignity, turning to the interloper;
+and the pirate proceeded to take the second step in the nefarious plan
+upon which he and his brother ruffians had agreed, of which the tossing
+in through the window of the bundle of fashion papers was the first.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+THE “GEHENNA” IS CHARTERED
+
+
+IT was about twenty-four hours after the events narrated in the preceding
+chapters that Mr. Sherlock Holmes assumed command of the _Gehenna_, which
+was nothing more nor less than the shadow of the ill-starred ocean
+steamship _City of Chicago_, which tried some years ago to reach
+Liverpool by taking the overland route through Ireland, fortunately
+without detriment to her passengers and crew, who had the pleasure of the
+experience of shipwreck without any of the discomforts of drowning.  As
+will be remembered, the obstructionist nature of the Irish soil prevented
+the _City of Chicago_ from proceeding farther inland than was necessary
+to keep her well balanced amidships upon a convenient and not too stony
+bed; and that after a brief sojourn on the rocks she was finally disposed
+of to the Styx Navigation Company, under which title Charon had had
+himself incorporated, is a matter of nautical history.  The change of
+name to the _Gehenna_ was the act of Charon himself, and was prompted, no
+doubt, by a desire to soften the jealous prejudices of the residents of
+the Stygian capital against the flourishing and ever-growing metropolis
+of Illinois.
+
+The Associated Shades had had some trouble in getting this craft.
+Charon, through his constant association with life on both sides of the
+dark river, had gained a knowledge, more or less intimate, of modern
+business methods, and while as janitor of the club he was subject to the
+will of the House-boat Committee, and sympathized deeply with the members
+of the association in their trouble, as president of the Styx Navigation
+Company he was bound up in certain newly attained commercial ideas which
+were embarrassing to those members of the association to whose hands the
+chartering of a vessel had been committed.
+
+“See here, Charon,” Sir Walter Raleigh had said, after Charon had
+expressed himself as deeply sympathetic, but unable to shave the terms
+upon which the vessel could be had, “you are an infernal old hypocrite.
+You go about wringing your hands over our misfortunes until they’ve got
+as dry and flabby as a pair of kid gloves, and yet when we ask you for a
+ship of suitable size and speed to go out after those pirates, you become
+a sort of twin brother to Shylock, without his excuse.  His instincts are
+accidents of birth.  Yours are cultivated, and you know it.”
+
+“You are very much mistaken, Sir Walter,” Charon had answered to this.
+“You don’t understand my position.  It is a very hard one.  As janitor of
+your club I am really prostrated over the events of the past twenty-four
+hours.  My occupation is gone, and my despair over your loss is
+correspondingly greater, for I have time on my hands to brood over it.  I
+was hysterical as a woman yesterday afternoon—so hysterical that I came
+near upsetting one of the Furies who engaged me to row her down to Madame
+Medusa’s villa last evening; and right at the sluice of the vitriol
+reservoir at that.”
+
+            [Picture: You are very much mistaken, Sir Walter]
+
+“Then why the deuce don’t you do something to help us?” pleaded Hamlet.
+
+“How can I do any more than I have done?  I’ve offered you the
+_Gehenna_,” retorted Charon.
+
+“But on what terms?” expostulated Raleigh.  “If we had all the wealth of
+the Indies we’d have difficulty in paying you the sums you demand.”
+
+“But I am only president of the company,” explained Charon.  “I’d like,
+as president, to show you some courtesy, and I’m perfectly willing to do
+so; but when it comes down to giving you a vessel like that, I’m bound by
+my official oath to consider the interest of the stockholders.  It isn’t
+as it used to be when I had boats to hire in my own behalf alone.  In
+those days I had nobody’s interest but my own to look after.  Now the
+ships all belong to the Styx Navigation Company.  Can’t you see the
+difference?”
+
+“You own all the stock, don’t you?” insisted Raleigh.
+
+“I don’t know,” Charon answered, blandly.  “I haven’t seen the
+transfer-books lately.”
+
+“But you know that you did own every share of it, and that you haven’t
+sold any, don’t you?” put in Hamlet.
+
+Charon was puzzled for a moment, but shortly his face cleared, and Sir
+Walter’s heart sank, for it was evident that the old fellow could not be
+cornered.
+
+“Well, it’s this way, Sir Walter, and your Highness,” he said, “I—I can’t
+say whether any of that stock has been transferred or not.  The fact is,
+I’ve been speculating a little on margin, and I’ve put up that stock as
+security, and, for all I know, I may have been sold out by my brokers.
+I’ve been so upset by this unfortunate occurrence that I haven’t seen the
+market reports for two days.  Really you’ll have to be content with my
+offer or go without the _Gehenna_.  There’s too much suspicion attached
+to high corporate officials lately for me to yield a jot in the position
+I have taken.  It would never do to get you all ready to start, and then
+have an injunction clapped on you by some unforeseen stockholder who was
+not satisfied with the terms offered you; nor can I ever let it be said
+of me that to retain my position as janitor of your organization I
+sacrificed a trust committed to my charge.  I’ll gladly lend you my
+private launch, though I don’t think it will aid you much, because the
+naphtha-tank has exploded, and the screw slipped off and went to the
+bottom two weeks ago.  Still, it is at your service, and I’ve no doubt
+that either Phidias or Benvenuto Cellini will carve out a paddle for you
+if you ask him to.”
+
+“Bah!” retorted Raleigh.  “You might as well offer us a pair of skates.”
+
+“I would, if I thought the river’d freeze,” retorted Charon, blandly.
+
+Raleigh and Hamlet turned away impatiently and left Charon to his own
+devices, which for the time being consisted largely of winking his other
+eye quietly and outwardly making a great show of grief.
+
+“He’s too canny for us, I am afraid,” said Sir Walter.  “We’ll have to
+pay him his money.”
+
+“Let us first consult Sherlock Holmes,” suggested Hamlet, and this they
+proceeded at once to do.
+
+“There is but one thing to be done,” observed the astute detective after
+he had heard Sir Walter’s statement of the case.  “It is an old saying
+that one should fight fire with fire.  We must meet modern business
+methods with modern commercial ideas.  Charter his vessel at his own
+price.”
+
+“But we’d never be able to pay,” said Hamlet.
+
+“Ha-ha!” laughed Holmes.  “It is evident that you know nothing of the
+laws of trade nowadays.  Don’t pay!”
+
+“But how can we?” asked Raleigh.
+
+“The method is simple.  You haven’t anything to pay with,” returned
+Holmes.  “Let him sue.  Suppose he gets a verdict.  You haven’t anything
+he can attach—if you have, make it over to your wives or your fiancées.”
+
+“Is that honest?” asked Hamlet, shaking his head doubtfully.
+
+“It’s business,” said Holmes.
+
+“But suppose he wants an advance payment?” queried Hamlet.
+
+“Give him a check drawn to his own order.  He’ll have to endorse it when
+he deposits it, and that will make him responsible,” laughed Holmes.
+
+“What a simple thing when you understand it!” commented Raleigh.
+
+“Very,” said Holmes.  “Business is getting by slow degrees to be an exact
+science.  It reminds me of the Brighton mystery, in which I played a
+modest part some ten years ago, when I first took up ferreting as a
+profession.  I was sitting one night in my room at one of the Brighton
+hotels, which shall be nameless.  I never give the name of any of the
+hotels at which I stop, because it might give offence to the proprietors
+of other hotels, with the result that my books would be excluded from
+sale therein.  Suffice it to say that I was spending an early summer
+Sunday at Brighton with my friend Watson.  We had dined well, and were
+enjoying our evening smoke together upon a small balcony overlooking the
+water, when there came a timid knock on the door of my room.
+
+“‘Watson,’ said I, ‘here comes some one for advice.  Do you wish to wager
+a small bottle upon it?’
+
+“‘Yes,’ he answered, with a smile.  ‘I am thirsty and I’d like a small
+bottle; and while I do not expect to win, I’ll take the bet.  I should
+like to know, though, how you know.’
+
+“‘It is quite simple,’ said I.  ‘The timidity of the knock shows that my
+visitor is one of two classes of persons—an autograph-hunter or a client,
+one of the two.  You see I give you a chance to win.  It may be an
+autograph-hunter, but I think it is a client.  If it were a creditor, he
+would knock boldly, even ostentatiously; if it were the maid, she would
+not knock at all; if it were the hall-boy, he would not come until I had
+rung five times for him.  None of these things has occurred; the knock is
+the half-hearted knock which betokens either that the person who knocked
+is in trouble, or is uncertain as to his reception.  I am willing,
+however, considering the heat and my desire to quench my thirst, to wager
+that it is a client.’
+
+“‘Done,’ said Watson; and I immediately remarked, ‘Come in.’
+
+“The door opened, and a man of about thirty-five years of age, in a
+bathing-suit, entered the room, and I saw at a glance what had happened.
+
+“‘Your name is Burgess,’ I said.  ‘You came here from London this
+morning, expecting to return to-night.  You brought no luggage with you.
+After luncheon you went bathing.  You had machine No. 35, and when you
+came out of the water you found that No. 35 had disappeared, with your
+clothes and the silver watch your uncle gave you on the day you succeeded
+to his business.’
+
+“Of course, gentlemen,” observed the detective, with a smile at Sir
+Walter and Hamlet—“of course the man fairly gasped, and I continued: ‘You
+have been lying face downward in the sand ever since, waiting for
+nightfall, so that you could come to me for assistance, not considering
+it good form to make an afternoon call upon a stranger at his hotel, clad
+in a bathing-suit.  Am I correct?’
+
+“‘Sir,’ he replied, with a look of wonder, ‘you have narrated my story
+exactly as it happened, and I find I have made no mistake in coming to
+you.  Would you mind telling me what is your course of reasoning?’
+
+“‘It is plain as day,’ said I.  ‘I am the person with the red beard with
+whom you came down third class from London this morning, and you told me
+your name was Burgess and that you were a butcher.  When you looked to
+see the time, I remarked upon the oddness of your watch, which led to
+your telling me that it was the gift of your uncle.’
+
+“‘True,’ said Burgess, ‘but I did not tell you I had no luggage.’
+
+“‘No,’ said I, ‘but that you hadn’t is plain; for if you had brought any
+other clothing besides that you had on with you, you would have put it on
+to come here.  That you have been robbed I deduce also from your
+costume.’
+
+“‘But the number of the machine?’ asked Watson.
+
+“‘Is on the tag on the key hanging about his neck,’ said I.
+
+“‘One more question,’ queried Burgess.  ‘How do you know I have been
+lying face downward on the beach ever since?’
+
+“‘By the sand in your eyebrows,’ I replied; and Watson ordered up the
+small bottle.”
+
+“I fail to see what it was in our conversation, however,” observed
+Hamlet, somewhat impatient over the delay caused by the narration of this
+tale, “that suggested this train of thought to you.”
+
+“The sequel will show,” returned Holmes.
+
+“Oh, Lord!” put in Raleigh.  “Can’t we put off the sequel until a later
+issue?  Remember, Mr. Holmes, that we are constantly losing time.”
+
+“The sequel is brief, and I can narrate it on our way to the office of
+the Navigation Company,” observed the detective.  “When the bottle came I
+invited Mr. Burgess to join us, which he did, and as the hour was late
+when we came to separate, I offered him the use of my parlor overnight.
+This he accepted, and we retired.
+
+“The next morning when I arose to dress, the mystery was cleared.”
+
+“You had dreamed its solution?” asked Raleigh.
+
+“No,” replied Holmes.  “Burgess had disappeared with all my clothing, my
+false-beard, my suit-case, and my watch.  The only thing he had left me
+was the bathing-suit and a few empty small bottles.”
+
+“And why, may I ask,” put in Hamlet, as they drew near to Charon’s
+office—“why does that case remind you of business as it is conducted
+to-day?”
+
+“In this, that it is a good thing to stay out of unless you know it all,”
+explained Holmes.  “I omitted in the case of Burgess to observe one thing
+about him.  Had I observed that his nose was rectilinear, incurved, and
+with a lifted base, and that his auricular temporal angle was between 96
+and 97 degrees, I should have known at once that he was an impostor
+_Vide_ Ottolenghui on ‘Ears and Noses I Have Met,’ pp. 631–640.”
+
+“Do you mean to say that you can tell a criminal by his ears?” demanded
+Hamlet.
+
+“If he has any—yes; but I did not know that at the time of the Brighton
+mystery.  Therefore I should have stayed out of the case.  But here we
+are.  Good-morning, Charon.”
+
+By this time the trio had entered the private office of the president of
+the Styx Navigation Company, and in a few moments the vessel was
+chartered at a fabulous price.
+
+On the return to the wharf, Sir Walter somewhat nervously asked Holmes if
+he thought the plan they had settled upon would work.
+
+“Charon is a very shrewd old fellow,” said he.  “He may outwit us yet.”
+
+“The chances are just two and one-eighth degrees in your favor,” observed
+Holmes, quietly, with a glance at Raleigh’s ears.  “The temporal angle of
+your ears is 93.125 degrees, whereas Charon’s stand out at 91, by my
+otometer.  To that extent your criminal instincts are superior to his.
+If criminology is an exact science, reasoning by your respective ears,
+you ought to beat him out by a perceptible though possibly narrow
+margin.”
+
+With which assurance Raleigh went ahead with his preparations, and within
+twelve hours the _Gehenna_ was under way, carrying a full complement of
+crew and officers, with every state-room on board occupied by some spirit
+of the more illustrious kind.
+
+Even Shylock was on board, though no one knew it, for in the dead of
+night he had stolen quietly up the gang-plank and had hidden himself in
+an empty water-cask in the forecastle.
+
+“’Tisn’t Venice,” he said, as he sat down and breathed heavily through
+the bung of the barrel, “but it’s musty and damp enough, and, considering
+the cost, I can’t complain.  You can’t get something for nothing, even in
+Hades.”
+
+ [Picture: In the dead of night he had stolen quietly up the gang-plank]
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+ON BOARD THE “GEHENNA”
+
+
+WHEN the _Gehenna_ had passed down the Styx and out through the beautiful
+Cimmerian Harbor into the broad waters of the ocean, and everything was
+comparatively safe for a while at least, Sherlock Holmes came down from
+the bridge, where he had taken his place as the commander of the
+expedition at the moment of departure.  His brow was furrowed with
+anxiety, and through his massive forehead his brain could be seen to be
+throbbing violently, and the corrugations of his gray matter were not
+pleasant to witness as he tried vainly to squeeze an idea out of them.
+
+“What is the matter?” asked Demosthenes, anxiously.  “We are not in any
+danger, are we?”
+
+“No,” replied Holmes.  “But I am somewhat puzzled at the bubbles on the
+surface of the ocean, and the ripples which we passed over an hour or two
+ago, barely perceptible through the most powerful microscope, indicate to
+my mind that for some reason at present unknown to me the House-boat has
+changed her course.  Take that bubble floating by.  It is the last
+expiring bit of aerial agitation of the House-boat’s wake.  Observe
+whence it comes.  Not from the Azores quarter, but as if instead of
+steering a straight course thither the House-boat had taken a sharp turn
+to the north-east, and was making for Havre; or, in other words, Paris
+instead of London seems to have become their destination.”
+
+Demosthenes looked at Holmes with blank amazement, and, to keep from
+stammering out the exclamation of wonder that rose to his lips, he opened
+his _bonbonnière_ and swallowed a pebble.
+
+“You don’t happen to have a cocaine tablet in your box, do you?” queried
+Holmes.
+
+“No,” returned the Greek.  “Cocaine makes me flighty and nervous, but
+these pebbles sort of ballast me and hold me down.  How on earth do you
+know that that bubble comes from the wake of the House-boat?”
+
+“By my chemical knowledge, merely,” replied Holmes.  “A merely worldly
+vessel leaves a phosphorescent bubble in its wake.  That one we have just
+discovered is not so, but sulphurescent, if I may coin a word which it
+seems to me the English language is very much in need of.  It proves,
+then, that the bubble is a portion of the wake of a Stygian craft, and
+the only Stygian craft that has cleared the Cimmerian Harbor for years is
+the House-boat—Q. E. D.”
+
+“We can go back until we find the ripple again, and follow that, I
+presume,” sneered Le Coq, who did not take much stock in the theories of
+his great rival, largely because he was a detective by intuition rather
+than by study of the science.
+
+“You can if you want to, but it is better not to,” rejoined Holmes,
+simply, as though not observing the sneer, “because the ripple represents
+the outer lines of the angle of disturbance in the water; and as any one
+of the sides to an angle is greater than the perpendicular from the
+hypothenuse to the apex, you’d merely be going the long way.  This is
+especially important when you consider the formation of the bow of the
+House-boat, which is rounded like the stern of most vessels, and comes
+near to making a pair of ripples at an angle of ninety degrees.”
+
+“Then,” observed Sir Walter, with a sigh of disappointment, “we must
+change our course and sail for Paris?”
+
+“I am afraid so,” said Holmes; “but of course it’s by no means certain as
+yet.  I think if Columbus would go up into the mizzentop and look about
+him, he might discover something either in confirmation or refutation of
+the theory.”
+
+“He couldn’t discover anything,” put in Pinzon.  “He never did.”
+
+“Well, I like that!” retorted Columbus.  “I’d like to know who discovered
+America.”
+
+“So should I,” observed Leif Ericson, with a wink at Vespucci.
+
+“Tut!” retorted Columbus.  “I did it, and the world knows it, whether you
+claim it or not.”
+
+“Yes, just as Noah discovered Ararat,” replied Pinzon.  “You sat upon the
+deck until we ran plumb into an island, after floating about for three
+months, and then you couldn’t tell it from a continent, even when you had
+it right before your eyes.  Noah might just as well have told his family
+that he discovered a roof garden as for you to go back to Spain telling
+’em all that San Salvador was the United States.”
+
+“Well, I don’t care,” said Columbus, with a short laugh.  “I’m the one
+they celebrate, so what’s the odds?  I’d rather stay down here in the
+smoking-room enjoying a small game, anyhow, than climb up that mast and
+strain my eyes for ten or a dozen hours looking for evidence to prove or
+disprove the correctness of another man’s theory.  I wouldn’t know
+evidence when I saw it, anyhow.  Send Judge Blackstone.”
+
+“I draw the line at the mizzentop,” observed Blackstone.  “The dignity of
+the bench must and shall be preserved, and I’ll never consent to climb up
+that rigging, getting pitch and paint on my ermine, no matter who asks me
+to go.”
+
+      [Picture: Judge Blackstone refuses to climb to the mizzentop]
+
+“Whomsoever I tell to go, shall go,” put in Holmes, firmly.  “I am
+commander of this ship.  It will pay you to remember that, Judge
+Blackstone.”
+
+“And I am the Court of Appeals,” retorted Blackstone, hotly.  “Bear that
+in mind, captain, when you try to send me up.  I’ll issue a writ of
+_habeas corpus_ on my own body, and commit you for contempt.”
+
+“There’s no use of sending the Judge, anyhow,” said Raleigh, fearing by
+the glitter that came into the eye of the commander that trouble might
+ensue unless pacificatory measures were resorted to.  “He’s accustomed to
+weighing everything carefully, and cannot be rushed into a decision.  If
+he saw any evidence, he’d have to sit on it a week before reaching a
+conclusion.  What we need here more than anything else is an expert
+seaman, a lookout, and I nominate Shem.  He has sailed under his father,
+and I have it on good authority that he is a nautical expert.”
+
+Holmes hesitated for an instant.  He was considering the necessity of
+disciplining the recalcitrant Blackstone, but he finally yielded.
+
+“Very well,” he said.  “Shem be it.  Bo’sun, pipe Shem on deck, and tell
+him that general order number one requires him to report at the mizzentop
+right away, and that immediately he sees anything he shall come below and
+make it known to me.  As for the rest of us, having a very considerable
+appetite, I do now decree that it is dinner-time.  Shall we go below?”
+
+“I don’t think I care for any, thank you,” said Raleigh.  “Fact is—ah—I
+dined last week, and am not hungry.”
+
+Noah laughed.  “Oh, come below and watch us eat, then,” he said.  “It’ll
+do you good.”
+
+But there was no reply.  Raleigh had plunged head first into his
+state-room, which fortunately happened to be on the upper deck.  The rest
+of the spirits repaired below to the saloon, where they were soon engaged
+in an animated discussion of such viands as the larder provided.
+
+“This,” said Dr. Johnson, from the head of the table, “is what I call
+comfort.  I don’t know that I am so anxious to recover the House-boat,
+after all.”
+
+“Nor I,” said Socrates, “with a ship like this to go off cruising on, and
+with such a larder.  Look at the thickness of that puree, Doctor—”
+
+“Excuse me,” said Boswell, faintly, “but I—I’ve left my note—bub—book
+upstairs, Doctor, and I’d like to go up and get it.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Dr. Johnson.  “I judge from your color, which is highly
+suggestive of a modern magazine poster, that it might be well too if you
+stayed on deck for a little while and made a few entries in your
+commonplace book.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Boswell, gratefully.  “Shall you say anything clever
+during dinner, sir?  If so, I might be putting it down while I’m up—”
+
+“Get out!” roared the Doctor.  “Get up as high as you can—get up with
+Shem on the mizzentop—”
+
+                     [Picture: Shem in the look-out]
+
+“Very good, sir,” replied Boswell, and he was off.
+
+“You ought to be more lenient with him, Doctor,” said Bonaparte; “he
+means well.”
+
+“I know it,” observed Johnson; “but he’s so very previous.  Last winter,
+at Chaucer’s dinner to Burns, I made a speech, which Boswell printed a
+week before it was delivered, with the words ‘laughter’ and ‘uproarious
+applause’ interspersed through it.  It placed me in a false position.”
+
+“How did he know what you were going to say?” queried Demosthenes.
+
+“Don’t know,” replied Johnson.  “Kind of mind-reader, I fancy,” he added,
+blushing a trifle.  “But, Captain Holmes, what do you deduce from your
+observation of the wake of the House-boat?  If she’s going to Paris, why
+the change?”
+
+“I have two theories,” replied the detective.
+
+“Which is always safe,” said Le Coq.
+
+“Always; it doubles your chances of success,” acquiesced Holmes.
+“Anyhow, it gives you a choice, which makes it more interesting.  The
+change of her course from Londonward to Parisward proves to me either
+that Kidd is not satisfied with the extent of the revenge he has already
+taken, and wishes to ruin you gentlemen financially by turning your
+wives, daughters, and sisters loose on the Parisian shops, or that the
+pirates have themselves been overthrown by the ladies, who have decided
+to prolong their cruise and get some fun out of their misfortune.”
+
+“And where else than to Paris would any one in search of pleasure go?”
+asked Bonaparte.
+
+“I had more fun a few miles outside of Brussels,” said Wellington, with a
+sly wink at Washington.
+
+“Oh, let up on that!” retorted Bonaparte.  “It wasn’t you beat me at
+Waterloo.  You couldn’t have beaten me at a plain ordinary game of
+old-maid with a stacked pack of cards, much less in the game of war, if
+you hadn’t had the elements with you.”
+
+“Tut!” snapped Wellington.  “It was clear science laid you out, Boney.”
+
+“Taisey-voo!” shouted the irate Corsican.  “Clear science be hanged!  Wet
+science was what did it.  If it hadn’t been for the rain, my little Duke,
+I should have been in London within a week, my grenadiers would have been
+camping in your Rue Peekadeely, and the Old Guard all over everywhere
+else.”
+
+“You must have had a gay army, then,” laughed Cæsar.  “What are French
+soldiers made of, that they can’t stand the wet—unshrunk linen or
+flannel?”
+
+“Bah!” observed Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders and walking a few paces
+away.  “You do not understand the French.  The Frenchman is not a
+pell-mell soldier like you Romans; he is the poet of arms; he does not go
+in for glory at the expense of his dignity; style, form, is dearer to him
+than honor, and he has no use for fighting in the wet and coming out of
+the fight conspicuous as a victor with the curl out of his feathers and
+his epaulets rusted with the damp.  There is no glory in water.  But if
+we had had umbrellas and mackintoshes, as every Englishman who comes to
+the Continent always has, and a bath-tub for everybody, then would your
+Waterloo have been different again, and the great democracy of Europe
+with a Bonaparte for emperor would have been founded for what the
+Americans call the keeps; and as for your little Great Britain, ha! she
+would have become the Blackwell’s Island of the Greater France.”
+
+“You’re almost as funny as Punch isn’t,” drawled Wellington, with an
+angry gesture at Bonaparte.  “You weren’t within telephoning distance of
+victory all day.  We simply played with you, my boy.  It was a regular
+game of golf for us.  We let you keep up pretty close and win a few
+holes, but on the home drive we had you beaten in one stroke.  Go to, my
+dear Bonaparte, and stop talking about the flood.”
+
+“It’s a lucky thing for us that Noah wasn’t a Frenchman, eh?” said
+Frederick the Great.  “How that rain would have fazed him if he had been!
+The human race would have been wiped out.”
+
+“Oh, pshaw!” ejaculated Noah, deprecating the unseemliness of the
+quarrel, and putting his arm affectionately about Bonaparte’s shoulder.
+“When you come down to that, I was French—as French as one could be in
+those days—and these Gallic subjects of my friend here were, every one of
+’em, my lineal descendants, and their hatred of rain was inherited
+directly from me, their ancestor.”
+
+“Are not we English as much your descendants?” queried Wellington,
+arching his eyebrows.
+
+“You are,” said Noah, “but you take after Mrs. Noah more than after me.
+Water never fazes a woman, and your delight in tubs is an essentially
+feminine trait.  The first thing Mrs. Noah carried aboard was a laundry
+outfit, and then she went back for rugs and coats and all sorts of
+hand-baggage.  Gad, it makes me laugh to this day when I think of it!
+She looked for all the world like an Englishman travelling on the
+Continent as she walked up the gang-plank behind the elephants, each
+elephant with a Gladstone bag in his trunk and a hat-box tied to his
+tail.”  Here the venerable old weather-prophet winked at Munchausen, and
+the little quarrel which had been imminent passed off in a general laugh.
+
+“Where’s Boswell?  He ought to get that anecdote,” said Johnson.
+
+“I’ve locked him up in the library,” said Holmes.  “He’s in charge of the
+log, and as I have a pretty good general idea as to what is about to
+happen, I have mapped out a skeleton of the plot and set him to work
+writing it up.”  Here the detective gave a sudden start, placed his hand
+to his ear, listened intently for an instant, and, taking out his watch
+and glancing at it, added, quietly, “In three minutes Shem will be in
+here to announce a discovery, and one of great importance, I judge, from
+the squeak.”
+
+The assemblage gazed earnestly at Holmes for a moment.
+
+“The squeak?” queried Raleigh.
+
+“Precisely,” said Holmes.  “The squeak is what I said, and as I always
+say what I mean, it follows logically that I meant what I said.”
+
+“I heard no squeak,” observed Dr. Johnson; “and, furthermore, I fail to
+see how a squeak, if I had heard it, would have portended a discovery of
+importance.”
+
+“It would not—to you,” said Holmes; “but with me it is different.  My
+hearing is unusually acute.  I can hear the dropping of a pin through a
+stone wall ten feet thick; any sound within a mile of my eardrum vibrates
+thereon with an intensity which would surprise you, and it is by the use
+of cocaine that I have acquired this wonderfully acute sense.  A property
+which dulls the senses of most people renders mine doubly apprehensive;
+therefore, gentlemen, while to you there was no auricular disturbance, to
+me there was.  I heard Shem sliding down the mast a minute since.  The
+fact that he slid down the mast instead of climbing down the rigging
+showed that he was in great haste, therefore he must have something to
+communicate of great importance.”
+
+“Why isn’t he here already, then?  It wouldn’t take him two minutes to
+get from the deck here,” asked the ever-auspicious Le Coq.
+
+“It is simple,” returned Holmes, calmly.  “If you will go yourself and
+slide down that mast you will see.  Shem has stopped for a little
+witch-hazel to soothe his burns.  It is no cool matter sliding down a
+mast two hundred feet in height.”
+
+As Sherlock Holmes spoke the door burst open and Shem rushed in.
+
+“A signal of distress, captain!” he cried.
+
+“From what quarter—to larboard?” asked Holmes.
+
+“No,” returned Shem, breathless.
+
+“Then it must be dead ahead,” said Holmes.
+
+“Why not to starboard?” asked Le Coq, dryly.
+
+“Because,” answered Holmes, confidently, “it never happens so.  If you
+had ever read a truly exciting sea-tale, my dear Le Coq, you would have
+known that interesting things, and particularly signals of distress, are
+never seen except to larboard or dead ahead.”
+
+A murmur of applause greeted this retort, and Le Coq subsided.
+
+“The nature of the signal?” demanded Holmes.
+
+“A black flag, skull and cross-bones down, at half-mast!” cried Shem,
+“and on a rock-bound coast!”
+
+“They’re marooned, by heavens!” shouted Holmes, springing to his feet and
+rushing to the deck, where he was joined immediately by Sir Walter, Dr.
+Johnson, Bonaparte, and the others.
+
+“Isn’t he a daisy?” whispered Demosthenes to Diogenes as they climbed the
+stairs.
+
+“He is more than that; he’s a blooming orchid,” said Diogenes, with
+intense enthusiasm.  “I think I’ll get my X-ray lantern and see if he’s
+honest.”
+
+
+
+
+IX
+CAPTAIN KIDD MEETS WITH AN OBSTACLE
+
+
+“EXCUSE me, your Majesty,” remarked Helen of Troy as Cleopatra accorded
+permission to Captain Kidd to speak, “I have not been introduced to this
+gentleman nor has he been presented to me, and I really cannot consent to
+any proceeding so irregular as this.  I do not speak to gentlemen I have
+not met, nor do I permit them to address me.”
+
+“Hear, hear!” cried Xanthippe.  “I quite agree with the principle of my
+young friend from Troy.  It may be that when we claimed for ourselves all
+the rights of men that the right to speak and be spoken to by other men
+without an introduction will included in the list, but I for one have no
+desire to avail myself of the privilege, especially when it’s a
+horrid-looking man like this.”
+
+Kidd bowed politely, and smiled so terribly that several of the ladies
+fainted.
+
+“I will withdraw,” he said, turning to Cleopatra; and it must be said
+that his suggestion was prompted by his heartfelt wish, for now that he
+found himself thus conspicuously brought before so many women, with
+falsehood on his lips, his courage began to ooze.
+
+“Not yet, please,” answered the chairlady.  “I imagine we can get about
+this difficulty without much trouble.”
+
+“I think it a perfectly proper objection too,” observed Delilah, rising.
+“If we ever needed etiquette we need it now.  But I have a plan which
+will obviate any further difficulty.  If there is no one among us who is
+sufficiently well acquainted with the gentleman to present him formally
+to us, I will for the time being take upon myself the office of ship’s
+barber and cut his hair.  I understand that it is quite the proper thing
+for barbers to talk, while cutting their hair, to persons to whom they
+have not been introduced.  And, besides, he really needs a hair-cut
+badly.  Thus I shall establish an acquaintance with the captain, after
+which I can with propriety introduce him to the rest of you.”
+
+“Perhaps the gentleman himself might object to that,” put in Queen
+Elizabeth.  “If I remember rightly, your last customer was very much
+dissatisfied with the trim you gave him.”
+
+“It will be unnecessary to do what Delilah proposes,” said Mrs. Noah,
+with a kindly smile, as she rose up from the corner in which she had been
+sitting, an interested listener.  “I can introduce the gentleman to you
+all with perfect propriety.  He’s a member of my family.  His grandfather
+was the great-grandson a thousand and eight times removed of my son
+Shem’s great-grandnephew on his father’s side.  His relationship to me is
+therefore obvious, though from what I know of his reputation I think he
+takes more after my husband’s ancestors than my own.  Willie, dear, these
+ladies are friends of mine.  Ladies, this young man is one of my most
+famous descendants.  He has been a man of many adventures, and he has
+been hanged once, which, far from making him undesirable as an
+acquaintance, has served merely to render him harmless, and therefore a
+safe person to know.  Now, my son, go ahead and speak your piece.”
+
+The good old spirit sat down, and the scruples of the objectors having
+thus been satisfied, Captain Kidd began.
+
+“Now that I know you all,” he remarked, as pleasantly as he could under
+the circumstances, “I feel that I can speak more freely, and certainly
+with a great deal less embarrassment than if I were addressing a
+gathering of entire strangers.  I am not much of a hand at speaking, and
+have always felt somewhat nonplussed at finding myself in a position of
+this nature.  In my whole career I never experienced but one irresistible
+impulse to make a public address of any length, and that was upon that
+unhappy occasion to which the greatest and grandest of my
+great-grandmothers has alluded, and that only as the chain by which I was
+suspended in mid-air tightened about my vocal chords.  At that moment I
+could have talked impromptu for a year, so fast and numerously did
+thoughts of the uttermost import surge upward into my brain; but
+circumstances over which I had no control prevented the utterance of
+those thoughts, and that speech is therefore lost to the world.”
+
+“He has the gift of continuity,” observed Madame Récamier.
+
+“Ought to be in the United States Senate,” smiled Elizabeth.
+
+“I wish I could make up my mind as to whether he is outrageously handsome
+or desperately ugly,” remarked Helen of Troy.  “He fascinates me, but
+whether it is the fascination of liking or of horror I can’t tell, and
+it’s quite important.”
+
+“Ladies,” resumed the captain, his uneasiness increasing as he came to
+the point, “I am but the agent of your respective husbands, _fiancés_,
+and other masculine guardians.  The gentlemen who were previously the
+tenants of this club-house have delegated to me the important, and I may
+add highly agreeable, task of showing you the world.  They have noted of
+late years the growth of that feeling of unrest which is becoming every
+day more and more conspicuous in feminine circles in all parts of the
+universe—on the earth, where women are clamoring to vote, and to be
+allowed to go out late at night without an escort, in Hades, where, as
+you are no doubt aware, the management of the government has fallen
+almost wholly into the hands of the Furies; and even in the halls of
+Jupiter himself, where, I am credibly informed, Juno has been taking
+private lessons in the art of hurling thunderbolts—information which the
+extraordinary quality of recent electrical storms on the earth would seem
+to confirm.  Thunderbolts of late years have been cast hither and yon in
+a most erratic fashion, striking where they were least expected, as those
+of you who keep in touch with the outer world must be fully aware.  Now,
+actuated by their usual broad and liberal motives, the men of Hades wish
+to meet the views of you ladies to just that extent that your views are
+based upon a wise selection, in turn based upon experience, and they have
+come to me and in so many words have said, ‘Mr. Kidd, we wish the women
+of Hades to see the world.  We want them to be satisfied.  We do not like
+this constantly increasing spirit of unrest.  We, who have seen all the
+life that we care to see, do not ourselves feel equal to the task of
+showing them about.  We will pay you liberally if you will take our
+House-boat, which they have always been anxious to enter, and personally
+conduct our beloved ones to Paris, London, and elsewhere.  Let them see
+as much of life as they can stand.  Accord them every privilege.  Spare
+no expense; only bring them back again to us safe and sound.’  These were
+their words, ladies.  I asked them why they didn’t come along themselves,
+saying that even if they were tired of it all, they should make some
+personal sacrifice to your comfort; and they answered, reasonably and
+well, that they would be only too glad to do so, but that they feared
+they might unconsciously seem to exert a repressing influence upon you.
+‘We want them to feel absolutely free, Captain Kidd,’ said they, ‘and if
+we are along they may not feel so.’  The answer was convincing, ladies,
+and I accepted the commission.”
+
+“But we knew nothing of all this,” interposed Elizabeth.  “The subject
+was not broached to us by our husbands, brothers, _fiancés_, or fathers.
+My brother, Sir Walter Raleigh—”
+
+Cleopatra chuckled.  “Brother!  Brother’s good,” she said.
+
+“Well, that’s what he is,” retorted Elizabeth, quickly.  “I promised to
+be a sister to him, and I’m going to keep my word.  That’s the kind of a
+queen I am.  I was about to remark,” Elizabeth added, turning to the
+captain, “that my brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, never even hinted at any
+such plan, and usually he asked my advice in matters of so great
+importance.”
+
+“That is easily accounted for, madame,” retorted Kidd.  “Sir Walter
+intended this as a little surprise for you, that is all.  The
+arrangements were all placed in his hands, and it was he who bound us all
+to secrecy.  None of the ladies were to be informed of it.”
+
+“It does not sound altogether plausible,” interposed Portia.  “If you
+ladies do not object, I should like to cross-examine this—ah—gentleman.”
+
+Kidd paled visibly.  He was not prepared for any such trial; however, he
+put as good a face on the matter as he could, and announced his
+willingness to answer any questions that he might be asked.
+
+     [Picture: Captain Kidd consents to be cross-examined by Portia]
+
+“Shall we put him under oath?” asked Cleopatra.
+
+“As you please, ladies,” said the pirate.  “A pirate’s word is as good as
+his bond; but I’ll take an oath if you choose—a half-dozen of ’em, if
+need be.”
+
+“I fancy we can get along without that,” said Portia.  “Now, Captain
+Kidd, who first proposed this plan?”
+
+“Socrates,” said Kidd, unblushingly with a sly glance at Xanthippe.
+
+“What?” cried Xanthippe.  “My husband propose anything that would
+contribute to my pleasure or intellectual advancement?  Bah!  Your story
+is transparently false at the outset.”
+
+“Nevertheless,” said Kidd, “the scheme was proposed by Socrates.  He said
+a trip of that kind for Xanthippe would be very restful and
+health-giving.”
+
+“For me?” cried Xanthippe, sceptically.
+
+“No, madame, for him,” retorted Kidd.
+
+“Ah—ho-ho!  That’s the way of it, eh?” said Xanthippe, flushing to the
+roots of her hair.  “Very likely.  You—ah—you will excuse my doubting
+your word, Captain Kidd, a moment since.  I withdraw my remark, and in
+order to make fullest reparation, I beg to assure these ladies that I am
+now perfectly convinced that you are telling the truth.  That last
+observation is just like my husband, and when I get back home again, if I
+ever do, well—ha, ha!—we’ll have a merry time, that’s all.”
+
+“And what was—ah—Bassanio’s connection with this affair?” added Portia,
+hesitatingly.
+
+“He was not informed of it,” said Kidd, archly.  “I am not acquainted
+with Bassanio, my lady, but I overheard Sir Walter enjoining upon the
+others the absolute necessity of keeping the whole affair from Bassanio,
+because he was afraid he would not consent to it.  ‘Bassanio has a most
+beautiful wife, gentlemen,’ said Sir Walter, ‘and he wouldn’t think of
+parting with her under any circumstances; therefore let us keep our
+intentions a secret from him.’  I did not hear whom the gentleman
+married, madame; but the others, Prince Hamlet, the Duke of Buckingham,
+and Louis the Fourteenth, all agreed that Mrs. Bassanio was too beautiful
+a person to be separated from, and that it was better, therefore, to keep
+Bassanio in the dark as to their little enterprise until it was too late
+for him to interfere.”
+
+A pink glow of pleasure suffused the lovely countenance of the
+cross-examiner, and it did not require a very sharp eye to see that the
+wily Kidd had completely won her over to his side.  On the other hand,
+Elizabeth’s brow became as corrugated as her ruff, and the spirit of the
+pirate shivered to the core as he turned and gazed upon that glowering
+face.
+
+“Sir Walter agreed to that, did he?” snapped Elizabeth.  “And yet he was
+willing to part with—ah—his sister.”
+
+“Well, your Majesty,” began Kidd, hesitatingly, “you see it was this way:
+Sir Walter—er—did say that, but—ah—he—ah—but he added that he of course
+merely judged—er—this man Bassanio’s feelings by his own in parting from
+his sister—”
+
+“Did he say sister?” cried Elizabeth.
+
+“Well—no—not in those words,” shuffled Kidd, perceiving quickly wherein
+his error lay, “but—ah—I jumped at the conclusion, seeing his intense
+enthusiasm for the lady’s beauty and—er—intellectual qualities, that he
+referred to you, and it is from yourself that I have gained my knowledge
+as to the fraternal, not to say sororal, relationship that exists between
+you.”
+
+“That man’s a diplomat from Diplomaville!” muttered Sir Henry Morgan,
+who, with Abeuchapeta and Conrad, was listening at the port without.
+
+“He is that,” said Abeuchapeta, “but he can’t last much longer.  He’s
+perspiring like a pitcher of ice-water on a hot day, and a spirit of his
+size and volatile nature can’t stand much of that without evaporating.
+If you will observe him closely you will see that his left arm already
+has vanished into thin air.”
+
+“By Jove!” whispered Conrad, “that’s a fact!  If they don’t let up on him
+he’ll vanish.  He’s getting excessively tenuous about the top of his
+head.”
+
+All of which was only too true.  Subjected to a scrutiny which he had
+little expected, the deceitful ambassador of the thieving band was
+rapidly dissipating, and, as those without had so fearsomely noted, was
+in imminent danger of complete sublimation, which, in the case of one
+possessed of so little elementary purity, meant nothing short of
+annihilation.  Fortunately for Kidd, however, his wonderful tact had
+stemmed the tide of suspicion.  Elizabeth was satisfied with his
+explanation, and in the minds of at least three of the most influential
+ladies on board, Portia, Xanthippe, and Elizabeth, he had become a
+creature worthy of credence, which meant that he had nothing more to
+fear.
+
+“I am prepared, your Majesty,” said Elizabeth, addressing Cleopatra, “to
+accept from this time on the gentleman’s word.  The little that he has
+already told us is hall-marked with truth.  I should like to ask,
+however, one more question, and that is how our gentleman friends
+expected to embark us upon this voyage without letting us into the
+secret?”
+
+“Oh, as for that,” replied Kidd, with a deep-drawn sigh of relief, for he
+too had noticed the gradual evaporation of his arm and the incipient
+etherization of his cranium—“as for that, it was simple enough.  There
+was to have been a day set apart for ladies’ day at the club, and when
+you were all on board we were quietly to weigh anchor and start.  The
+fact that you had anticipated the day, of your own volition, was
+telephoned by my scouts to me at my headquarters, and that news was by me
+transmitted by messenger to Sir Walter at Charon’s Glen Island, where the
+long-talked-of fight between Samson and Goliath was taking place.
+Raleigh immediately replied, ‘_Good_!  _Start at once_.  _Paris first_.
+_Unlimited credit_.  _Love to Elizabeth_.’  Wherefore, ladies,” he added,
+rising from his chair and walking to the door—“wherefore you are here and
+in my care.  Make yourselves comfortable, and with the aid of the fashion
+papers which you have already received prepare yourselves for the joys
+that await you.  With the aid of Madame Récamier and Baedeker’s _Paris_,
+which you will find in the library, it will be your own fault if when you
+arrive there you resemble a great many less fortunate women who don’t
+know what they want.”
+
+With these words Kidd disappeared through the door, and fainted in the
+arms of Sir Henry Morgan.  The strain upon him had been too great.
+
+“A charming fellow,” said Portia, as the pirate disappeared.
+
+“Most attractive,” said Elizabeth.
+
+“Handsome, too, don’t you think?” asked Helen of Troy.
+
+“And truthful beyond peradventure,” observed Xanthippe, as she reflected
+upon the words the captain had attributed to Socrates.  “I didn’t believe
+him at first, but when he told me what my sweet-tempered philosopher had
+said, I was convinced.”
+
+“He’s a sweet child,” interposed Mrs. Noah, fondly.  “One of my favorite
+grandchildren.”
+
+“Which makes it embarrassing for me to say,” cried Cassandra, starting up
+angrily, “that he is a base caitiff!”
+
+Had a bomb been dropped in the middle of the room, it could not have
+created a greater sensation than the words of Cassandra.
+
+“What?” cried several voices at once.  “A caitiff?”
+
+“A caitiff with a capital K,” retorted Cassandra.  “I know that, because
+while he was telling his story I was listening to it with one ear and
+looking forward into the middle of next week with the other—I mean the
+other eye—and I saw—”
+
+“Yes, you saw?” cried Cleopatra.
+
+“I saw that he was deceiving us.  Mark my words, ladies, he is a base
+caitiff,” replied Cassandra—“a base caitiff.”
+
+“What did you see?” cried Elizabeth, excitedly.
+
+“This,” said Cassandra, and she began a narration of future events which
+I must defer to the next chapter.  Meanwhile his associates were
+endeavoring to restore the evaporated portions of the prostrated Kidd’s
+spirit anatomy by the use of a steam-atomizer, but with indifferent
+success.  Kidd’s training had not fitted him for an intellectual combat
+with superior women, and he suffered accordingly.
+
+ [Picture: Kidd’s companions endeavouring to restore evaporating portions
+                  of his anatomy with a steam-atomizer]
+
+
+
+
+X
+A WARNING ACCEPTED
+
+
+“IT is with no desire to interrupt my friend Cassandra unnecessarily,”
+said Mrs. Noah, as the prophetess was about to narrate her story, “that I
+rise to beg her to remember that, as an ancestress of Captain Kidd, I
+hope she will spare a grandmother’s feelings, if anything in the story
+she is about to tell is improper to be placed before the young.  I have
+been so shocked by the stories of perfidy and baseness generally that
+have been published of late years, that I would interpose a protest while
+there is yet time if there is a line in Cassandra’s story which ought to
+be withheld from the public; a protest based upon my affection for
+posterity, and in the interests of morality everywhere.”
+
+“You may rest easy upon that score, my dear Mrs. Noah,” said the
+prophetess.  “What I have to say would commend itself, I am sure, even to
+the ears of a British matron; and while it is as complete a demonstration
+of man’s perfidy as ever was, it is none the less as harmless a little
+tale as the Dottie Dimple books or any other more recent study of New
+England character.”
+
+“Thank you for the load your words have lifted from my mind,” said Mrs.
+Noah, settling back in her chair, a satisfied expression upon her gentle
+countenance.  “I hope you will understand why I spoke, and withal why
+modern literature generally has been so distressful to me.  When you
+reflect that the world is satisfied that most of man’s criminal instincts
+are the result of heredity, and that Mr. Noah and I are unable to shift
+the responsibility for posterity to other shoulders than our own, you
+will understand my position.  We were about the most domestic old couple
+that ever lived, and when we see the long and varied assortment of crimes
+that are cropping out everywhere in our descendants it is painful to us
+to realize what a pair of unconsciously wicked old fogies we must have
+been.”
+
+“We all understand that,” said Cleopatra, kindly; “and we are all
+prepared to acquit you of any responsibility for the advanced condition
+of wickedness to-day.  Man has progressed since your time, my dear
+grandma, and the modern improvements in the science of crime are no more
+attributable to you than the invention of the telephone or the oyster
+cocktail is attributable to your husband.”
+
+“Thank you kindly,” murmured the old lady, and she resumed her knitting
+upon a phantom tam-o’-shanter, which she was making as a Christmas
+surprise for her husband.
+
+“When Captain Kidd began his story,” said Cassandra, “he made one very
+bad mistake, and yet one which was prompted by that courtesy which all
+men instinctively adopt when addressing women.  When he entered the room
+he removed his hat, and therein lay his fatal error, if he wished to
+convince me of the truth of his story, for with his hat removed I could
+see the workings of his mind.  While you ladies were watching his lips or
+his eyes, some of you taking in the gorgeous details of his dress, all of
+you hanging upon his every word, I kept my eye fixed firmly upon his
+imagination, and I saw, what you did not, _that he was drawing wholly
+upon that_!”
+
+“How extraordinary!” cried Elizabeth.
+
+“Yes—and fortunate,” said Cassandra.  “Had I not done so, a week hence we
+should, every one of us, have been lost in the surging wickedness of the
+city of Paris.”
+
+“But, Cassandra,” said Trilby, who was anxious to return once more to the
+beautiful city by the Seine, “he told us we were going to Paris.”
+
+               [Picture: He told us we were going to Paris]
+
+“Of course he did,” said Madame Récamier, “and in so many words.
+Certainly he was not drawing upon his imagination there.”
+
+“And one might be lost in a very much worse place,” put in Marguerite de
+Valois, “if, indeed, it were possible to lose us in Paris at all.  I
+fancy that I know enough about Paris to find my way about.”
+
+“Humph!” ejaculated Cassandra.  “What a foolish little thing you are!
+You don’t imagine that the Paris of to-day is the Paris of your time, or
+even the Paris of that sweet child Trilby’s time, do you?  If you do you
+are very much mistaken.  I almost wish I had not warned you of your
+danger and had let you go, just to see those eyes of yours open with
+amazement at the change.  You’d find your Louvre a very different sort of
+a place from what it used to be, my dear lady.  Those pleasing little
+windows through which your relations were wont in olden times to indulge
+in target practice at people who didn’t go to their church are now kept
+closed; the galleries which used to swarm with people, many of whom ought
+to have been hanged, now swarm with pictures, many of which ought not to
+have been hung; the romance which clung about its walls is as much a part
+of the dead past as yourselves, and were you to materialize suddenly
+therein you would find yourselves jostled and hustled and trodden upon by
+the curious from other lands, with Argus eyes taking in five hundred
+pictures a minute, and traversing those halls at a rate of speed at which
+Mercury himself would stand aghast.”
+
+“But my beloved Tuileries?” cried Marie Antoinette.
+
+“Has been swallowed up by a play-ground for the people, my dear,” said
+Cassandra, gently.  “Paris is no place for us, and it is the intention of
+these men, in whose hands we are, to take us there and then desert us.
+Can you imagine anything worse than ourselves, the phantoms of a glorious
+romantic past, basely deserted in the streets of a wholly strange,
+superficial, material city of to-day?  What do you think, Elizabeth,
+would be your fate if, faint and famished, you begged for sustenance at
+an English door to-day, and when asked your name and profession were to
+reply, ‘Elizabeth, Queen of England’?”
+
+“Insane asylum,” said Elizabeth, shortly.
+
+“Precisely.  So in Paris with the rest of us,” said Cassandra.
+
+“How do you know all this?” asked Trilby, still unconvinced.
+
+“I know it just as you knew how to become a prima donna,” said Cassandra.
+“I am, however, my own Svengali, which is rather preferable to the patent
+detachable hypnotizer you had.  I hypnotize myself, and direct my mind
+into the future.  I was a professional forecaster in the days of ancient
+Troy, and if my revelations had been heeded the Priam family would, I
+doubt not, still be doing business at the old stand, and Mr. Æneas would
+not have grown round-shouldered giving his poor father a picky-back ride
+on the opening night of the horse-show, so graphically depicted by
+Virgil.”
+
+“I never heard about that,” said Trilby.  “It sounds like a very funny
+story, though.”
+
+“Well, it wasn’t so humorous for some as it was for others,” said
+Cassandra, with a sly glance at Helen.  “The fact is, until you mentioned
+it yourself, it never occurred to me that there was much fun in any
+portion of the Trojan incident, excepting perhaps the delirium tremens of
+old Laocoon, who got no more than he deserved for stealing my thunder.  I
+had warned Troy against the Greeks, and they all laughed at me, and said
+my eye to the future was strabismatic; that the Greeks couldn’t get into
+Troy at all, even if they wanted to.  And then the Greeks made a great
+wooden horse as a gift for the Trojans, and when I turned my X-ray gaze
+upon it I saw that it contained about six brigades of infantry, three
+artillery regiments, and sharp-shooters by the score.  It was a sort of
+military Noah’s Ark; but I knew that the prejudice against me was so
+strong that nobody would believe what I told them.  So I said nothing.
+My prophecies never came true, they said, failing to observe that my
+warning as to what would be was in itself the cause of their
+non-fulfilment.  But desiring to save Troy, I sent for Laocoon and told
+him all about it, and he went out and announced it as his own private
+prophecy; and then, having tried to drown his conscience in strong
+waters, he fell a victim to the usual serpentine hallucination, and
+everybody said he wasn’t sober, and therefore unworthy of belief.  The
+horse was accepted, hauled into the city, and that night orders came from
+hindquarters to the regiments concealed inside to march.  They marched,
+and next morning Troy had been removed from the map; ninety per cent of
+the Trojans died suddenly, and Æneas, grabbing up his family in one hand
+and his gods in the other, went yachting for several seasons, ultimately
+settling down in Italy.  All of this could have been avoided if the
+Trojans would have taken the hint from my prophecies.  They preferred,
+however, not to do it, with the result that to-day no one but Helen and
+myself knows even where Troy was, and we’ll never tell.”
+
+“It is all true,” said Helen, proudly.  “I was the woman who was at the
+bottom of it all, and I can testify that Cassandra always told the truth,
+which is why she was always so unpopular.  When anything that was
+unpleasant happened, after it was all over she would turn and say,
+sweetly, ‘I told you so.’  She was the original ‘I told you so’ nuisance,
+and of course she had the newspapyruses down on her, because she never
+left them any sensation to spring upon the public.  If she had only told
+a fib once in a while, the public would have had more confidence in her.”
+
+“Thank you for your endorsement,” said Cassandra, with a nod at Helen.
+“With such testimony I cannot see how you can refrain from taking my
+advice in this matter; and I tell you, ladies, that this man Kidd has
+made his story up out of whole cloth; the men of Hades had no more to do
+with our being here than we had; they were as much surprised as we are to
+find us gone.  Kidd himself was not aware of our presence, and his object
+in taking us to Paris is to leave us stranded there, disembodied spirits,
+vagrant souls with no familiar haunts to haunt, no place to rest, and
+nothing before us save perpetual exile in a world that would have no
+sympathy for us in our misfortune, and no belief in our continued
+existence.”
+
+“But what, then, shall we do?” cried Ophelia, wringing her hands in
+despair.
+
+“It is a terrible problem,” said Cleopatra, anxiously; “and yet it does
+seem as if our woman’s instinct ought to show us some way out of our
+trouble.”
+
+“The Committee on Treachery,” said Delilah, “has already suggested a
+chafing-dish party, with Lucretia Borgia in charge of the lobster
+Newberg.”
+
+“That is true,” said Lucretia; “but I find, in going through my reticule,
+that my maid, for some reason unknown to me, has failed to renew my
+supply of poisons.  I shall discharge her on my return home, for she
+knows that I never go anywhere without them; but that does not help
+matters at this juncture.  The sad fact remains that I could prepare a
+thousand delicacies for these pirates without fatal results.”
+
+“You mean immediately fatal, do you not?” suggested Xanthippe.  “I could
+myself prepare a cake which would in time reduce our captors to a state
+of absolute dependence, but of course the effect is not immediate.”
+
+“We might give a musicale, and let Trilby sing ‘Ben Bolt’ to them,”
+suggested Marguerite de Valois, with a giggle.
+
+“Don’t be flippant, please,” said Portia.  “We haven’t time to waste on
+flippant suggestions.  Perhaps a court-martial of these pirates,
+supplemented by a yard-arm, wouldn’t be a bad thing.  I’ll prosecute the
+case.”
+
+“You forget that you are dealing with immortal spirits,” observed
+Cleopatra.  “If these creatures were mortals, hanging them would be all
+right, and comparatively easy, considering that we outnumber them ten to
+one, and have many resources for getting them, more or less, in our
+power, but they are not.  They have gone through the refining process of
+dissolution once, and there’s an end to that.  Our only resource is in
+the line of deception, and if we cannot deceive them, then we have ceased
+to be women.”
+
+“That is truly said,” observed Elizabeth.  “And inasmuch as we have
+already provided ourselves with a suitable committee for the preparation
+of our plans of a deceptive nature, I move, as the easiest possible
+solution of the difficulty for the rest of us, that the Committee on
+Treachery be requested to go at once into executive session, with orders
+not to come out of it until they have suggested a plausible plan of
+campaign against our abductors.  We must be rid of them.  Let the
+Committee on Treachery say how.”
+
+“Second the motion,” said Mrs. Noah.  “You are a very clear-headed young
+woman, Lizzie, and your grandmother is proud of you.”
+
+  [Picture: “You are a very clear-headed young woman, Lizzie,” said Mrs.
+                                  Noah]
+
+The Committee on Treachery were about to protest, but the chair refused
+to entertain any debate upon the question, which was put and carried with
+a storm of approval.
+
+Five minutes later a note was handed through the port, addressed to
+Cleopatra, which read as follows:
+
+    “DEAR MADAME,—Six bells has just struck, and the officers and crew
+    are hungry.  Will you and your fair companions co-operate with us in
+    our enterprise by having a hearty dinner ready within two hours?  A
+    speck has appeared on the horizon which betokens a coming storm, else
+    we would prepare our supper ourselves.  As it is, we feel that your
+    safety depends on our remaining on deck.  If there is any beer on the
+    ice, we prefer it to tea.  Two cases will suffice.
+
+                                                      “Yours respectfully,
+
+                                        “HENRY MORGAN, Bart.; First Mate.”
+
+“Hurrah!” cried Cleopatra, as she read this communication.  “I have an
+idea.  Tell the Committee on Treachery to appear before the full meeting
+at once.”
+
+The committee was summoned, and Cleopatra announced her plan of
+operation, and it was unanimously adopted; but what it was we shall have
+to wait for another chapter to learn.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+MAROONED
+
+
+WHEN Captain Holmes arrived upon deck he seized his glass, and, gazing
+intently through it for a moment, perceived that the faithful Shem had
+not deceived him.  Flying at half-mast from a rude, roughly hewn pole set
+upon a rocky height was the black flag, emblem of piracy, and, as Artemus
+Ward put it, “with the second joints reversed.”  It was in very truth a
+signal of distress.
+
+“I make it a point never to be surprised,” observed Holmes, as he peered
+through the glass, “but this beats me.  I didn’t know there was an island
+of this nature in these latitudes.  Blackstone, go below and pipe Captain
+Cook on deck.  Perhaps he knows what island that is.”
+
+“You’ll have to excuse me, Captain Holmes,” replied the Judge.  “I didn’t
+ship on this voyage as a cabin-boy or a messenger-boy.  Therefore I—”
+
+“Bonaparte, put the Judge in irons,” interrupted Holmes, sternly.  “I
+expect to be obeyed, Judge Blackstone, whether you shipped as a Lord
+Chief-Justice or a state-room steward.  When I issue an order it must be
+obeyed.  Step lively there, Bonaparte.  Get his honor ironed and summon
+your marines.  We may have work to do before night.  Hamlet, pipe Captain
+Cook on deck.”
+
+“Aye, aye, sir,” replied Hamlet, with alacrity, as he made off.
+
+“That’s the way to obey orders,” said Holmes, with a scornful glance at
+Blackstone.
+
+“I was only jesting, Captain,” said the latter, paling somewhat.
+
+“That’s all right,” said Holmes, taking up his glass again.  “So was I
+when I ordered you in irons, and in order that you may appreciate the
+full force of the joke I repeat it.  Bonaparte, do your duty.”
+
+In an instant the order was obeyed, and the unhappy Judge shortly found
+himself manacled and alone in the forecastle.  Meanwhile Captain Cook, in
+response to the commander’s order, repaired to the deck and scanned the
+distant coast.
+
+“I can’t place it,” he said.  “It can’t be Monte Cristo, can it?”
+
+“No, it can’t,” said the Count, who stood hard by.  “My island was in the
+Mediterranean, and even if it dragged anchor it couldn’t have got out
+through the Strait of Gibraltar.”
+
+“Perhaps it’s Robinson Crusoe’s island,” suggested Doctor Johnson.
+
+“Not it,” observed De Foe.  “If it is, the rest of you will please keep
+off.  It’s mine, and I may want to use it again.  I’ve been having a
+number of interviews with Crusoe latterly, and he’s given me a lot of new
+points, which I intend incorporating in a sequel for the Cimmerian
+Magazine.”
+
+“Well, in the name of Atlas, what island is it, then?” roared Holmes,
+angrily.  “What is the matter with all you learned lubbers that I have
+brought along on this trip?  Do you suppose I’ve brought you to whistle
+up favorable winds?  Not by the beard of the Prophet!  I brought you to
+give me information, and now when I ask for the name of a simple little
+island like that in plain sight there’s not one of you able so much as to
+guess at it reasonably.  The next man I ask for information goes into
+irons with Judge Blackstone if he doesn’t answer me instantly with the
+information I want.  Munchausen, what island is that?”
+
+“Ahem! that?” replied Munchausen, trembling, as he reflected upon the
+Captain’s threat.  “What?  Nobody knows what island that is?  Why, you
+surprise me—
+
+“See here, Baron,” retorted Holmes, menacingly, “I ask you a plain
+question, and I want a plain answer, with no evasions to gain time.  Now
+it’s irons or an answer.  What island is that?”
+
+“It’s an island that doesn’t appear on any chart, Captain,” Munchausen
+responded instantly, pulling himself together for a mighty effort, “and
+it has never been given a name; but as you insist upon having one, we’ll
+call it Holmes Island, in your honor.  It is not stationary.  It is a
+floating island of lava formation, and is a menace to every craft that
+goes to sea.  I spent a year of my life upon it once, and it is more
+barren than the desert of Sahara, because you cannot raise even sand upon
+it, and it is devoid of water of any sort, salt or fresh.”
+
+“What did you live on during that year?” asked Holmes, eying him
+narrowly.
+
+“Canned food from wrecks,” replied the Baron, feeling much easier now
+that he had got a fair start—“canned food from wrecks, commander.  There
+is a magnetic property in the upper stratum of this piece of derelict
+real estate, sir, which attracts to it every bit of canned substance that
+is lost overboard in all parts of the world.  A ship is wrecked, say, in
+the Pacific Ocean, and ultimately all the loose metal upon her will
+succumb to the irresistible attraction of this magnetic upper stratum,
+and will find its way to its shores.  So in any other part of the earth.
+Everything metallic turns up here sooner or later; and when you consider
+that thousands of vessels go down every year, vessels which are
+provisioned with tinned foods only, you will begin to comprehend how many
+millions of pounds of preserved salmon, sardines, _pâté de foie gras_,
+peaches, and so on, can be found strewn along its coast.”
+
+“Munchausen,” said Holmes, smiling, “by the blush upon your cheek,
+coupled with an occasional uneasy glance of the eye, I know that for once
+you are standing upon the, to you, unfamiliar ground of truth, and I
+admire you for it.  There is nothing to be ashamed of in telling the
+truth occasionally.  You are a man after my own heart.  Come below and
+have a cocktail.  Captain Cook, take command of the _Gehenna_ during my
+absence; head her straight for Holmes Island, and when you discover
+anything new let me know.  Bonaparte, in honor of Munchausen’s remarkable
+genius, I proclaim general amnesty to our prisoners, and you may release
+Blackstone from his dilemma; and if you have any tin soldiers among your
+marines, see that they are lashed to the rigging.  I don’t want this
+electric island of the Baron’s to get a grip upon my military force at
+this juncture.”
+
+With this Holmes, followed by Munchausen, went below, and the two
+worthies were soon deep in the mysteries of a phantom cocktail, while
+Doctor Johnson and De Foe gazed mournfully out over the ocean at the
+floating island.
+
+“De Foe,” said Johnson “that ought to be a lesson to you.  This realism
+that you tie up to is all right when you are alone with your conscience;
+but when there are great things afoot, an imagination and a broad view as
+to the limitations of truth aren’t at all bad.  You or I might now be
+drinking that cocktail with Holmes if we’d only risen to the opportunity
+the way Munchausen did.”
+
+               [Picture: That ought to be a lesson to you]
+
+“That is true,” said De Foe, sadly.  “But I didn’t suppose he wanted that
+kind of information.  I could have spun a better yarn than that of
+Munchausen’s with my eyes shut.  I supposed he wanted truth, and I gave
+it.”
+
+“I’d like to know what has become of the House-boat,” said Raleigh,
+anxiously gazing through the glass at the island.  “I can see old Henry
+Morgan sitting down there on the rocks with his elbows on his knees and
+his chin in his hands, and Kidd and Abeuchapeta are standing back of him,
+yelling like mad, but there isn’t a boat in sight.”
+
+“Who is that man, off to the right, dancing a fandango?” asked Johnson.
+
+“It looks like Conrad, but I can’t tell.  He appears to have gone crazy.
+He’s got that wild look on his face which betokens insanity.  We’ll have
+to be careful in our parleyings with these people,” said Raleigh.
+
+“Anything new?” asked Holmes, returning to the deck, smacking his lips in
+enjoyment of the cocktail.
+
+“No—except that we are almost within hailing distance,” said Cook.
+
+“Then give orders to cast anchor,” observed Holmes.  “Bonaparte, take a
+crew of picked men ashore and bring those pirates aboard.  Take the three
+musketeers with you, and don’t let Kidd or Morgan give you any back talk.
+If they try any funny business, exorcise them.”
+
+“Aye, aye, sir,” replied Bonaparte, and in a moment a boat had been
+lowered and a sturdy crew of sailors were pulling for the shore.  As they
+came within ten feet of it the pirates made a mad dash down the rough,
+rocky hillside and clamored to be saved.
+
+  [Picture: The pirates made a mad dash down the rough, rocky hill-side]
+
+“What’s happened to you?” cried Bonaparte, ordering the sailors to back
+water lest the pirates should too hastily board the boat and swamp her.
+
+“We are marooned,” replied Kidd, “and on an island of a volcanic nature.
+There isn’t a square inch of it that isn’t heated up to 125 degrees, and
+seventeen of us have already evaporated.  Conrad has lost his reason;
+Abeuchapeta has become so tenuous that a child can see through him.  As
+for myself, I am growing iridescent with anxiety, and unless I get off
+this infernal furnace I’ll disappear like a soap-bubble.  For Heaven’s
+sake, then, General, take us off, on your own terms.  We’ll accept
+anything.”
+
+As if in confirmation of Kidd’s words, six of the pirate crew collapsed
+and disappeared into thin air, and a glance at Abeuchapeta was proof
+enough of his condition.  He had become as clear as crystal, and had it
+not been for his rugged outlines he would hardly have been visible even
+to his fellow-spirits.  As for Kidd, he had taken on the aspect of a
+rainbow, and it was patent that his fears for himself were all too well
+founded.
+
+Bonaparte embarked the leaders of the band first, returning subsequently
+for the others, and repaired with them at once to the _Gehenna_, where
+they were ushered into the presence of Sherlock Holmes.  The first
+question he asked was as to the whereabouts of the House-boat.
+
+“That we do not know,” replied Kidd, mournfully, gazing downward at the
+wreck of his former self.  “We came ashore, sir, early yesterday morning,
+in search of food.  It appears that when—acting in a wholly inexcusable
+fashion, and influenced, I confess it, by motives of revenge—I made off
+with your club-house, I neglected to ascertain if it were well stocked
+with provisions, a fatal error; for when we endeavored to get supper we
+discovered that the larder contained but half a bottle of farcie olives,
+two salted almonds, and a soda cracker—not a luxurious feast for
+sixty-nine pirates and a hundred and eighty-three women to sit down to.”
+
+“That’s all nonsense,” said Demosthenes.  “The House Committee had
+provided enough supper for six hundred people, in anticipation of the
+appetite of the members on their return from the fight.”
+
+“Of course they did,” said Confucius; “and it was a good one, too—salads,
+salmon glacé, lobsters—every blessed thing a man can’t get at home we
+had; and what is more, they’d been delivered on board.  I saw to that
+before I went up the river.”
+
+“Then,” moaned Kidd, “it is as I suspected.  We were the victims of base
+treachery on the part of those women.”
+
+“Treachery?  Well, I like that.  Call it reciprocity,” said Hamlet,
+dryly.
+
+“We were informed by the ladies that there was nothing for supper save
+the items I have already referred to,” said Kidd.  “I see it all now.  We
+had tried to make them comfortable, and I put myself to some considerable
+personal inconvenience to make them easy in their minds, but they were
+ungrateful.”
+
+“Whatever induced you to take ’em along with you?” asked Socrates.
+
+“We didn’t want them,” said Kidd.
+
+“We didn’t know they were on board until it was too late to turn back.
+They’d broken in, and were having the club all to themselves in your
+absence.”
+
+“It served you good and right,” said Socrates, with a laugh.  “Next time
+you try to take things that don’t belong to you, maybe you’ll be a trifle
+more careful as to whose property you confiscate.”
+
+“But the House-boat—you haven’t told us how you lost her,” put in
+Raleigh, impatiently.
+
+“Well, it was this way,” said Kidd.  “When, in response to our polite
+request for supper, the ladies said there was nothing to eat on board,
+something had to be done, for we were all as hungry as bears, and we
+decided to go ashore at the first port and provision.  Unfortunately the
+crew got restive, and when this floating frying-pan loomed into view, to
+keep them good-natured we decided to land and see if we could beg,
+borrow, or steal some supplies.  We had to.  Observations taken with the
+sextant showed that there was no port within five hundred miles; the
+island looked as if it might be inhabited at least by goats, and ashore
+we went, every man of us, leaving the House-boat safely anchored in the
+harbor.  At first we didn’t mind the heat, and we hunted and hunted and
+hunted; but after three or four hours I began to notice that three of my
+sailors were shrivelling up, and Conrad began to act as if he were daft.
+Hawkins burst right before my eyes.  Then Abeuchapeta got prismatic
+around the eyes and began to fade, and I noticed a slight iridescence
+about myself; and as for Morgan, he had the misfortune to lie down to
+take a nap in the sun, and when he waked up, his whole right side had
+evaporated.  Then we saw what the trouble was.  We’d struck this lava
+island, and were gradually succumbing to its intense heat.  We rushed
+madly back to the harbor to embark; and our ship, gentlemen, and your
+House-boat, was slowly but surely disappearing over the horizon, and
+flying from the flag-staff at the fore were signals of farewell, with an
+unfeeling P.S. below to this effect: ‘_Don’t wait up for us_.  _We may
+not be back until late_.’”
+
+There was a pause, during which Socrates laughed quietly to himself,
+while Abeuchapeta and the one-sided Morgan wept silently.
+
+“That, gentlemen of the Associated Shades, is all I know of the
+whereabouts of the House-boat,” continued Captain Kidd.  “I have no doubt
+that the ladies practised a deception, to our discomfiture, and I must
+say that I think it was exceedingly clever—granting that it was desirable
+to be rid of us, which I don’t, for we meant well by them, and they would
+have enjoyed themselves.”
+
+“But,” cried Hamlet, “may they not now be in peril?  They cannot navigate
+that ship.”
+
+“They got her out of the harbor all right,” said Kidd.  “And I judged
+from the figure at the helm that Mrs. Noah had taken charge.  What kind
+of a seaman she is I don’t know.”
+
+“Almighty bad,” ejaculated Shem, turning pale.  “It was she who ran us
+ashore on Ararat.”
+
+“Well, wasn’t that what you wanted?” queried Munchausen.
+
+“What we wanted!” cried Shem.  “Well, I guess not.  You don’t want your
+yacht stranded on a mountain-top, do you?  She was a dead loss there,
+whereas if mother hadn’t been in such a hurry to get ashore, we could
+have waited a month and landed on the seaboard.”
+
+“You might have turned her into a summer hotel,” suggested Munchausen.
+
+“Well, we must up anchor and away,” said Holmes.  “Our pursuit has merely
+begun, apparently.  We must overtake this vessel, and the question to be
+answered is—where?”
+
+“That’s easy,” said Artemus Ward.  “From what Shem says, I think we’d
+better look for her in the Himalayas.”
+
+“And, meanwhile, what shall be done with Kidd?” asked Holmes.
+
+“He ought to be expelled from the club,” said Johnson.
+
+“We can’t expel him, because he’s not a member,” replied Raleigh.
+
+“Then elect him,” suggested Ward.
+
+“What on earth for?” growled Johnson.
+
+“So that we can expel him,” said Ward.  And while Boswell’s hero was
+trying to get the value of this notion through his head, the others
+repaired to the deck, and the _Gehenna_ was soon under way once more.
+Meanwhile Captain Kidd and his fellows were put in irons and stowed away
+in the forecastle, alongside of the water-cask in which Shylock lay in
+hiding.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+THE ESCAPE AND THE END
+
+
+IF there was anxiety on board of the _Gehenna_ as to the condition and
+whereabouts of the House-boat, there was by no means less uneasiness upon
+that vessel itself.  Cleopatra’s scheme for ridding herself and her
+abducted sisters of the pirates had worked to a charm, but, having worked
+thus, a new and hitherto undreamed-of problem, full of perplexities
+bearing upon their immediate safety, now confronted them.  The sole
+representative of a seafaring family on board was Mrs. Noah, and it did
+not require much time to see that her knowledge as to navigation was of
+an extremely primitive order, limited indeed to the science of floating.
+
+When the last pirate had disappeared behind the rocks of Holmes Island,
+and all was in readiness for action, the good old lady, who had hitherto
+been as calm and unruffled as a child, began to get red in the face and
+to bustle about in a manner which betrayed considerable perturbation of
+spirit.
+
+“Now, Mrs. Noah,” said Cleopatra, as, peeping out from the billiard-room
+window, she saw Morgan disappearing in the distance, “the coast is clear,
+and I resign my position of chairman to you.  We place the vessel in your
+hands, and ourselves subject to your orders.  You are in command.  What
+do you wish us to do?”
+
+“Very well,” replied Mrs. Noah, putting down her knitting and starting
+for the deck.  “I’m not certain, but I think the first thing to do is to
+get her moving.  Do you know, I’ve never discovered whether this boat was
+a steamboat or a sailing-vessel?  Does anybody know?”
+
+“I think it has a naphtha tank and a propeller,” said Elizabeth,
+“although I don’t know.  It seems to me my brother Raleigh told me they’d
+had a naphtha engine put in last winter after the freshet, when the
+House-boat was carried ten miles down the river, and had to be towed back
+at enormous expense.  They put it in so that if she were carried away
+again she could get back of her own power.”
+
+“That’s unfortunate,” said Mrs. Noah, “because I don’t know anything
+about these new fangled notions.  If there’s any one here who knows
+anything about naphtha engines, I wish they’d speak.”
+
+“I’m of the opinion,” said Portia, “that I can study out the theory of it
+in a short while.”
+
+“Very well, then,” said Mrs. Noah, “you can do it.  I’ll appoint you
+engineer, and give you all your orders now, right away, in advance.  Set
+her going and keep her going, and don’t stop without a written order
+signed by me.  We might as well be very careful, and have everything done
+properly, and it might happen that in the excitement of our trip you
+would misunderstand my spoken orders and make a fatal error.  Therefore,
+pay no attention to unwritten orders.  That will do for you for the
+present.  Xanthippe, you may take Ophelia and Madame Récamier, and ten
+other ladies, and, every morning before breakfast, swab the larboard
+deck.  Cassandra, Tuesdays you will devote to polishing the brasses in
+the dining-room, and the balance of your time I wish you to expend in
+dusting the bric-a-brac.  Dido, you always were strong at building fires.
+I’ll make you chief stoker.  You will also assist Lucretia Borgia in the
+kitchen.  Inasmuch as the latter’s maid has neglected to supply her with
+the usual line of poisons, I think we can safely entrust to Lucretia’s
+hands the responsibilities of the culinary department.”
+
+“I’m perfectly willing to do anything I can,” said Lucretia, “but I must
+confess that I don’t approve of your methods of commanding a ship.  A
+ship’s captain isn’t a domestic martinet, as you are setting out to be.
+We didn’t appoint you housekeeper.”
+
+“Now, my child,” said Mrs. Noah, firmly, “I do not wish any words.  If I
+hear any more impudence from you, I’ll put you ashore without a
+reference; and the rest of you I would warn in all kindness that I will
+not tolerate insubordination.  You may, all of you, have one night of the
+week and alternate Sundays off, but your work must be done.  The regimen
+I am adopting is precisely that in vogue on the Ark, only I didn’t have
+the help I have now, and things got into very bad shape.  We were out
+forty days, and, while the food was poor and the service execrable, we
+never lost a life.”
+
+  [Picture: “Now, my child,” said Mrs. Noah, firmly, “I do not wish any
+                                 words”]
+
+The boat gave a slight tremor.
+
+“Hurrah!” cried Elizabeth, clapping her hands with glee, “we are off!”
+
+“I will repair to the deck and get our bearings,” said Mrs. Noah, putting
+her shawl over her shoulders.  “Meantime, Cleopatra, I appoint you first
+mate.  See that things are tidied up a bit here before I return.  Have
+the windows washed, and to-morrow I want all the rugs and carpets taken
+up and shaken.”
+
+Portia meanwhile had discovered the naphtha engine, and, after
+experimenting several times with the various levers and stop-cocks, had
+finally managed to move one of them in such a way as to set the engine
+going, and the wheel began to revolve.
+
+“Are we going all right?” she cried, from below.
+
+“I am afraid not,” said the gallant commander.  “The wheel is roiling up
+the water at a great rate, but we don’t seem to be going ahead very
+fast—in fact, we’re simply moving round and round as though we were on a
+pivot.”
+
+“I’m afraid we’re aground amidships,” said Xanthippe, gazing over the
+side of the House-boat anxiously.  “She certainly acts that way—like a
+merry-go-round.”
+
+“Well, there’s something wrong,” said Mrs. Noah; “and we’ve got to hurry
+and find out what it is, or those men will be back and we shall be as
+badly off as ever.”
+
+“Maybe this has something to do with it,” observed Mrs. Lot, pointing to
+the anchor rope.  “It looks to me as if those horrid men had tied us
+fast.”
+
+“That’s just what it is,” snapped Mrs. Noah.  “They guessed our plan, and
+have fastened us to a pole or something, but I imagine we can untie it.”
+
+Portia, who had come on deck, gave a short little laugh.
+
+“Why, of course we don’t move,” she said—“we are anchored!”
+
+“What’s that?” queried Mrs. Noah.  “We never had an experience like that
+on the Ark.”
+
+Portia explained the science of the anchor.
+
+“What nonsense!” ejaculated Mrs. Noah.  “How can we get away from it?”
+
+“We’ve got to pull it up,” said Portia.  “Order all hands on deck and
+have it pulled up.”
+
+“It can’t be done, and, if it could, I wouldn’t have it!” said Mrs. Noah,
+indignantly.  “The idea!  Lifting heavy pieces of iron, my dear Portia,
+is not a woman’s work.  Send for Delilah, and let her cut the rope with
+her scissors.”
+
+“It would take her a week to cut a hawser like that,” said Elizabeth, who
+had been investigating.  “It would be more to the purpose, I think, to
+chop it in two with an axe.”
+
+“Very well,” replied Mrs. Noah, satisfied.  “I don’t care how it is done
+as long as it is done quickly.  It would never do for us to be recaptured
+now.”
+
+The suggestion of Elizabeth was carried out, and the queen herself cut
+the hawser with six well-directed strokes of the axe.
+
+“You _are_ an expert with it, aren’t you?” smiled Cleopatra.
+
+“I am, indeed,” replied Elizabeth, grimly.  “I had it suspended over my
+head for so long a time before I got to the throne that I couldn’t help
+familiarizing myself with some of its possibilities.”
+
+“Ah!” cried Mrs. Noah, as the vessel began to move.  “I begin to feel
+easier.  It looks now as if we were really off.”
+
+“It seems to me, though,” said Cleopatra, gazing forward, “that we are
+going backward.”
+
+“Oh, well, what if we are!” said Mrs. Noah.  “We did that on the Ark half
+the time.  It doesn’t make any difference which way we are going as long
+as we go, does it?”
+
+“Why, of course it does!” cried Elizabeth.  “What can you be thinking of?
+People who walk backward are in great danger of running into other
+people.  Why not the same with ships?  It seems to me, it’s a very
+dangerous piece of business, sailing backward.”
+
+“Oh, nonsense,” snapped Mrs. Noah.  “You are as timid as a zebra.  During
+the Flood, we sailed days and days and days, going backward.  It didn’t
+make a particle of difference how we went—it was as safe one way as
+another, and we got just as far away in the end.  Our main object now is
+to get away from the pirates, and that’s what we are doing.  Don’t get
+emotional, Lizzie, and remember, too, that I am in charge.  If I think
+the boat ought to go sideways, sideways she shall go.  If you don’t like
+it, it is still not too late to put you ashore.”
+
+The threat calmed Elizabeth somewhat, and she was satisfied, and all went
+well with them, even if Portia had started the propeller revolving
+reverse fashion; so that the House-boat was, as Elizabeth had said,
+backing her way through the ocean.
+
+The day passed, and by slow degrees the island and the marooned pirates
+faded from view, and the night came on, and with it a dense fog.
+
+“We’re going to have a nasty night, I am afraid,” said Xanthippe, looking
+anxiously out of the port.
+
+“No doubt,” said Mrs. Noah, pleasantly.  “I’m sorry for those who have to
+be out in it.”
+
+“That’s what I was thinking about,” observed Xanthippe.  “It’s going to
+be very hard on us keeping watch.”
+
+“Watch for what?” demanded Mrs. Noah, looking over the tops of her
+glasses at Xanthippe.
+
+“Why, surely you are going to have lookouts stationed on deck?” said
+Elizabeth.
+
+“Not at all,” said Mrs. Noah.  “Perfectly absurd.  We never did it on the
+Ark, and it isn’t necessary now.  I want you all to go to bed at ten
+o’clock.  I don’t think the night air is good for you.  Besides, it isn’t
+proper for a woman to be out after dark, whether she’s new or not.”
+
+“But, my dear Mrs. Noah,” expostulated Cleopatra, “what will become of
+the ship?”
+
+“I guess she’ll float through the night whether we are on deck or not,”
+said the commander.  “The Ark did, why not this?  Now, girls, these
+new-fangled yachting notions are all nonsense.  It’s night, and there’s a
+fog as thick as a stone-wall all about us.  If there were a hundred of
+you upon deck with ten eyes apiece, you couldn’t see anything.  You might
+much better be in bed.  As your captain, chaperon, and grandmother, I
+command you to stay below.”
+
+“But—who is to steer?” queried Xanthippe.
+
+“What’s the use of steering until we can see where to steer to?” demanded
+Mrs. Noah.  “I certainly don’t intend to bother with that tiller until
+some reason for doing it arises.  We haven’t any place to steer to yet;
+we don’t know where we are going.  Now, my dear children, be reasonable,
+and don’t worry me.  I’ve had a very hard day of it, and I feel my
+responsibilities keenly.  Just let me manage, and we’ll come out all
+right.  I’ve had more experience than any of you, and if—”
+
+A terrible crash interrupted the old lady’s remarks.  The House-boat
+shivered and shook, careened way to one side, and as quickly righted and
+stood still.  A mad rush up the gangway followed, and in a moment a
+hundred and eighty-three pale-faced, trembling women stood upon the deck,
+gazing with horror at a great helpless hulk ten feet to the rear,
+fastened by broken ropes and odd pieces of rigging to the stern-posts of
+the House-boat, sinking slowly but surely into the sea.
+
+It was the _Gehenna_!
+
+          [Picture: A great helpless hulk ten feet to the rear]
+
+The House-boat had run her down and her last hour had come, but, thanks
+to the stanchness of her build and wonderful beam, the floating
+club-house had withstood the shock of the impact and now rode the waters
+as gracefully as ever.
+
+Portia was the first to realize the extent of the catastrophe, and in a
+short while chairs and life-preservers and tables—everything that could
+float—had been tossed into the sea to the struggling immortals therein.
+On board the _Gehenna_, those who had not cast themselves into the
+waters, under the cool direction of Holmes and Bonaparte, calmly lowered
+the boats, and in a short while were not only able to felicitate
+themselves upon their safety, but had likewise the good fortune to rescue
+their more impetuous brethren who had preferred to swim for it.
+Ultimately, all were brought aboard the House-boat in safety, and the men
+in Hades were once more reunited to their wives, daughters, sisters, and
+_fiancées_, and Elizabeth had the satisfaction of once more saving the
+life of Raleigh by throwing him her ruff as she had done a year or so
+previously, when she and her brother had been upset in the swift current
+of the river Styx.
+
+Order and happiness being restored, Holmes took command of the House-boat
+and soon navigated her safely back into her old-time berth.  The
+_Gehenna_ went to the bottom and was never seen again, and when the roll
+was called it was found that all who had set out upon her had returned in
+safety save Shylock, Kidd, Sir Henry Morgan, and Abeuchapeta; but even
+they were not lost, for, five weeks later, these four worthies were found
+early one morning drifting slowly up the river Styx, gazing anxiously out
+from the top of a water-cask and yelling lustily for help.
+
+And here endeth the chronicle of the pursuit of the good old House-boat.
+Back to her moorings, the even tenor of her ways was once more resumed,
+but with one slight difference.
+
+The ladies became eligible for membership, and, availing themselves of
+the privilege, began to think less and less of the advantages of being
+men and to rejoice that, after all, they were women; and even Xanthippe
+and Socrates, after that night of peril, reconciled their differences,
+and no longer quarrel as to which is the more entitled to wear the toga
+of authority.  It has become for them a divided skirt.
+
+As for Kidd and his fellows, they have never recovered from the effects
+of their fearful, though short, exile upon Holmes Island, and are but
+shadows of their former shades; whereas Mr. Sherlock Holmes has so
+endeared himself to his new-found friends that he is quite as popular
+with them as he is with us, who have yet to cross the dark river and be
+subjected to the scrutiny of the Committee on Membership at the
+House-boat on the Styx.
+
+Even Hawkshaw has been able to detect his genius.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                 THE END
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+               PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED
+                       LONDON AND BECCLES, ENGLAND
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PURSUIT OF THE HOUSE-BOAT***
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