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+Project Gutenberg's The Pursuit of the House-Boat, by John Bangs
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+Title: The Pursuit of the House-Boat
+
+Author: John Kendrick Bangs
+
+Release Date: April, 2002  [Etext #3169]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 01/30/01]
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+Project Gutenberg's The Pursuit of the House-Boat, by John Bangs
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+
+THE PURSUIT OF THE HOUSE-BOAT
+
+by John Kendrick Bangs
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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 Caesar 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."
+
+"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."
+
+"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 Caesar.
+
+"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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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."
+
+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, fetes 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 pounds 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 pounds 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 pounds 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 pounds; 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 pounds 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 pounds for the
+watch.  Such carelessness destroys my confidence in him," said
+Shylock, who was the first to recover from the surprise of the
+revelation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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."
+
+"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 pounds 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 fiancees.  What's the quotation on
+fiancees, 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."
+
+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."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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. Caesar'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 Caesar 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 Recamier'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:
+
+Dinners with conversation on the         Marks
+    Theory of Music                       500
+Dinners with conversation on the
+    Theory of Music, illustrated          750
+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 Recamier, 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 Recamier, "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 Recamier 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 Recamier.  "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."
+
+"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 Recamier.  "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 Recamier 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 Recamier
+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 cyclopaedias 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 Recamier.  "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.
+
+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."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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."
+
+"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 melee
+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 Gynaeceum 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!"
+
+"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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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!"
+
+"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 Recamier, "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
+Recamier 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 Recamier, 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 Caesar'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 crepon, with a yoke of lace and a
+stylishly contrasting stock of satin ribbon?"
+
+"It would depend upon how you finished the sleeves," remarked Madame
+Recamier.  "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.
+
+"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
+Recamier.
+
+"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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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."
+
+"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 fiancees"
+
+"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."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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 bonbonniere 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."
+
+"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--"
+
+"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 Caesar.  "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."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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 Recamier.
+
+"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,
+fiances, 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, fiances, 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.
+
+"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 Recamier 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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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."
+
+"Of course he did," said Madame Recamier, "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. AEneas 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 AEneas, 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."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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, pate 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."
+
+"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.
+
+"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 glace, 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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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 Recamier, 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."
+
+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!
+
+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 fiancees, 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Pursuit of the House-Boat, by John Bangs
+