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diff --git a/old/66637-0.txt b/old/66637-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b5f934b..0000000 --- a/old/66637-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7353 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Honor of Thieves, by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Honor of Thieves - -Author: C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne - -Release Date: October 31, 2021 [eBook #66637] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at - https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive/American - Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HONOR OF THIEVES *** - - - - - -HONOR OF THIEVES - - - - - HONOR OF THIEVES - - A Novel - - BY - C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE - AUTHOR OF - “THE NEW EDEN,” “THE RECIPE FOR DIAMONDS,” “ADVENTURES OF - CAPTAIN KETTLE,” “THROUGH ARCTIC LAPLAND,” ETC., ETC. - - [Illustration] - - R. F. FENNO & COMPANY : 9 AND 11 EAST - SIXTEENTH STREET : NEW YORK CITY - LONDON—CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY - 1899 - - Copyright, 1895-1899 - BY - C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE - - _Honor of Thieves._ - - - - - TO - MY VARIOUS SHIPMATES - AND SHOREMATES - ON SEA AND AMERICAN LAND IN 1893 - IN MEMORY OF - WHAT WE SAW TOGETHER AND WHAT WE DID. - - C. J. C. H. - - - - -PREFACE. - - -“It seems to me,” said a philosopher once, “that there are no entirely -good men in the world, and none completely bad. Single out your best -man, and you will find that he lacks perfection in some part of him; and -examine your worst, and you will see that he has at least one redeeming -quality.” - -In this book the men mostly verge towards bad: but some are better than -others. Because they are merely human, they act according to their -lights. You may meet others like them any day if you go out and about, -and most of them give extremely good dinners. Till they are found -out, you consider them amusing: afterwards, being better than they, -you instantly set them down as most pernicious scoundrels, and shake -hands with yourself, and write to your tailor to order more noticeable -phylacteries on the next new suit. This is called “keeping up a healthy -moral tone,” and does a great deal of good in the world. - - SCALLOWAY, - SHETLAND ISLANDS, - 1895. - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - CHAPTER PAGE - - I. The Antecedents of Patrick Onslow 11 - - II. A Fortune for the Pair of us 18 - - III. The Requirements of Mrs. Shelf 27 - - IV. Business at a Ball 36 - - V. Bimetallism 44 - - VI. The Tempting of Captain Owen Kettle 55 - - VII. £500,000—in Gold 66 - - VIII. The Send-off 75 - - IX. Ground-Bait 88 - - X. Mutiny 100 - - XI. To-Night 111 - - XII. A Dereliction 124 - - XIII. Three for Twenty-seven 137 - - XIV. A Pirates’ Harbor 147 - - XV. Results in London 162 - - XVI. For the Birthday List 170 - - XVII. In the Matter of a Trust 184 - - XVIII. The Plume-Hunters’ Dinner-Party 198 - - XIX. Subjects for Matrimony 213 - - XX. At Point Sebastian 224 - - XXI. The Cyclone 235 - - XXII. Mr. Shelf’s Little Surprise 250 - - XXIII. Decisions 263 - - XXIV. A Flight and a Resting-place 277 - - XXV. Closing Strands 288 - - XXVI. The Lucky Man 295 - - - - -HONOR OF THIEVES. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -THE ANTECEDENTS OF PATRICK ONSLOW. - - -Miss Rivers picked out the name of Patrick Onslow in the society paper -which lay upon her knee, and drew idle circles round it with a pink -ball-pencil. Fairfax tugged at his mustache, and returned to the subject -which they had been discussing. - -“The fellow has,” said Fairfax, “a genial insolence of manner which seems -rather taking with some people. But I confess I shouldn’t have thought -him the man you would have cared to see twice, Amy.” - -“You’re prejudiced, obviously; and I’ve a good mind to say maliciously -prejudiced. I don’t know how much you saw of him, because I can’t be -invited to a Wanderers’ Club dinner; you don’t know how much I saw of -him, because you missed some distant train and didn’t come here to the -ball last night. But I’ll tell you: I saw all I could. He’s perfectly -and entirely charming. He’s been everywhere, done everything, and he -isn’t a bit _blasé_.” - -“I heard,” said Fairfax, “that Mrs. Shelf was lionizing Onslow round last -night as the great traveler. Does he belong to the advertising variety -of globe-trotter? Did he sit in a side room and hold a small audience -spellbound with a selection from his adventures?” - -Miss Rivers shrugged her shoulders. “Not he. But you know what Mrs. Shelf -is when she gets any show person at one of her functions. The poor man -had to stand it for a while, because she held on to him as though he -might have been her fan. But he escaped as soon as he decently could by -saying he wanted to dance. He asked me to give him the fourth waltz. I -did it out of sheer pity, because I saw Mrs. Shelf’s thumbscrews were -making him writhe.” - -“’Shows how little a man knows about the girl he’s engaged to. Now, I had -always imagined that, having the pick of the men, you invariably wrote -down the best dancers, and never saddled yourself with a stranger who was -a very possible duffer.” - -Amy Rivers laughed. “That’s generalizing. But it was different last -night, because, so to speak, I’m a member of the household here. A ward -counts as a sort of niece, doesn’t she? Or between that and an adopted -daughter? But, anyway, it was out of sheer pity for Mr. Onslow in the -first instance, and it was with distinct qualms that I let him take me -down to dance. I quite intended, after half a round, to say the room was -too crowded, and go and sit somewhere. That is to say, I made up my mind -to do this when he asked me. However, when I dropped my fingers on his -arm to go down-stairs, I had my doubts. You know after two seasons one -gets instinctively to know by the first touch how a man will dance. And -when he put his arm around me, and we moved to the music, I felt like -going on forever. Waltzing is hard just now, because it’s in a transition -state between two styles; but his dancing was something to dream about. -We started off with the newest quick waltz. Hamilton, it was just lovely! -He was so perfect that just for experiment I altered my step—by degrees, -you know. Automatically, and without anything being seen, he changed too; -and we were dancing the old slow glide before I knew. And his steering -was perfect. In that whirling, teeming, tangled mob he never bumped me -once. I gave him two more waltzes, and cut another couple in his favor.” - -“Which makes five in all,” said Fairfax, rather stiffly. - -Amy Rivers took his hand and patted it. “Don’t be cross, dear. You know -how I love a good dance, and one doesn’t meet a partner like Mr. Onslow -every day. I suppose he’s done his waltzing in Vienna and Paris, and -Yorkshire, and New Orleans, as well as here in London; and by averaging -them all up he can’t help but be good.” - -“Is it from going to those places that Mrs. Shelf called him the Great -Traveler?” - -“Of course not! Hamilton, how stupid you are about him! Why, he’s -rummaged about in every back corner of the world, so they say.” - -“So they say, yes! Teheran to Timbuctoo. But what does he say himself -about his wanderings beyond the tram-lines? Shuffles mostly, doesn’t he? -And who’s met him anywhere? Not a soul will come forward to speak. I -tell you, Amy, there’s something uncanny about this Patrick Onslow. He -turns up here periodically in London after some vague exploring trip to a -place that isn’t mapped, and you can never pin him to tell exactly where -he’s been. He comes with money, spends it _en prince_, and then goes off -again, nominally perhaps to the Gobi Desert, and returns with another -cargo.” - -“How romantic!” said Miss Rivers. - -“Yes, isn’t it?” said her _fiancé_ drily. “If he’d lived a century -earlier, one would have said he’d got a sound business connection as a -pirate somewhere West Indies way. As this year is eighteen ninety-three, -and that explanation’s barred, one simply has to accept him as an -uncomfortable mystery.” - -“Hamilton, how absurd you are! Wherever did all this rigmarole come from?” - -“From the club, and London gossiping places generally. I suppose we ought -to be indebted to Onslow for providing us with something to talk about.” - -“But tell me; if his antecedents are so queer, how is it he goes about -so much here? He’s apparently asked everywhere—at least, so Mrs. Shelf -says—and he knows everybody who’s worth knowing.” - -Fairfax laughed. “Why does London society take up with an ex-bushranger -from Australia, or a glorified advertising cowboy from the wild, wild -West? Simply because London society is extremely parochial, and gets -desperately bored with its own little self undiluted. Now, Onslow has -undoubtedly wandered about outside the parish; and occasionally he lets -drop hints which make one think he’s seen some queerish ups and downs -in places where polite society doesn’t go; and, in fact, he preserves -a good-humored reticence about most of his doings. This makes people -thoughtful and speculative. If a Chinese extradition warrant was to turn -up to-morrow to arrest him for sticking up a three-button mandarin -beyond the Great Wall, nobody would be a bit surprised; or if he were to -tell the City this afternoon that he’d a concession for a silver mine -in an unexplored part of Venezuela which he wished to dispose of at -reasonable rates, we’d take it with pleased equanimity. Now, you know, -Amy, there’s a fearful joy in entertaining a man of that stamp.” - -“Especially when he’s as fascinating as Mr. Onslow can be when he -chooses. And such a waltzer! But you speak as if he was a savage from -some back settlement, come into decent society for the first time. He -isn’t that in the least. He’s a gentleman distinctly.” - -“My dear Amy, I never meant to suggest that he was not. There’s no -particular secret about his life. He comes of a good west-county family; -was a Harrow boy, and played in their eleven; went through Cambridge; -and afterwards found a berth in the Diplomatic Service. Then, by way of -variety, he got engaged to be married to a girl who jilted him; on the -strength of which he began to run wild. He started on six months’ leave -for a trip into Tibet, but he stayed beyond the limits of the postal -system for two years and a half, and when he got back to England the -Diplomatic Corps found that they could get on very well without him. So -he continued his rambles. He doesn’t seem able to settle down.” - -“That’s because he can’t forget the girl who threw him over,” exclaimed -Miss Rivers. “How awfully romantic! I wonder who she was? She couldn’t -have been anybody nice, or she wouldn’t have done it, because he’s a -regular dear. And fancy his remembering her all this time! I just love -him for it.” - -“Some fellows,” remarked Fairfax judiciously, “would get jealous if the -girl they were going to marry talked about another man this way.” - -Miss Rivers reassured him first practically, and then in words. “You -goose!” said she; “if I cared for him in that way, don’t you see, I -shouldn’t have spoken about him to you at all.” - -Fairfax did not answer directly. He kissed her thoughtfully, and after a -while he said: “I’m not superstitious, dear, as a general thing. Work in -a shipping office tends to make one painfully matter of fact. But for all -that, I wish this fellow Onslow would either marry or get crumpled up in -a cab accident, or have himself safely fastened down out of harm’s way -somewhere. I’ve got a foreboding, Amy, that he’s going to do a bad turn -either to you or to me—which means both of us. I know it’s absurd, but I -can’t get rid of it.” - -“How creepy!” said Amy Rivers. “But what nonsense, Hamilton!” - - - - -CHAPTER II - -A FORTUNE FOR THE PAIR OF US. - - -Mr. Theodore Shelf’s carriage and pair drew up at the smartest house in -Park Lane, and Mr. Theodore Shelf went up the steps and entered the door -which a man servant opened for him. He was a stout, middle-aged man, -with a clean-shaven face, and a short frock-coat of black broadcloth. -He allowed himself to be eased of his hat and umbrella, and then -passed through the gorgeous hall to the rosewood billiard-room at the -back. There he found his guest, Mr. Patrick Onslow, in shirt-sleeves, -practising fancy shots by himself. - -“What, alone, Mr. Onslow?” - -“Why, yes. I did have a hundred up with your niece earlier, but some one -came for her.” - -“Niece? Oh, Amy, you mean—Miss Rivers? Ah, my dear sir! from the love we -have for her in this household, and the way we treat her, you naturally -fancy she is a blood relation. It is a graceful compliment for you to -pay, Mr. Onslow; but it is my duty to correct you. Miss Rivers is legally -only my ward.” - -“Ward? Oh, see that? Red hard against the cushion, and white bang over -the bottom pocket. Neat cannon, wasn’t it, considering the long time -since I’ve handled a cue?” - -“The only child of my late partner. You know, the firm still stands as -Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf. We call ourselves on the billheads, ‘Agents -to the Oceanic Steam Transport Co.,’ though, of course, we really own the -whole line. You see our flag, sir, in every sea.” - -“I know. Nagasaki to Buenos Ayres; gin and gunpowder on the West Coast; -coals and cotton at New Orleans.” - -“And we do not send our steamers for the business of trade alone, Mr. -Onslow. We pick our captains and officers with an eye to a holier -purpose. We trust that they spread a Christian influence in all their -ports of call,” observed Mr. Shelf unctuously. - -“Yes; I saw them at work once at Axim, on a tramp steamer you sent down -there. They were taking Krooboys on board. The skipper received them -on one of the bridge-deck ladders with a knuckleduster, and kicked ’em -along. The chief stood by with a monkey-wrench and tickled them with that -as they passed down to the lower deck aft. They mentioned at the time -that this process had a fine Christianizing influence; prevented the boys -from being uppish; showed ’em what the white man could do when he liked; -taught ’em humility, in fact. I say, there’s a pull towards this bottom -pocket. People have been sitting on the table.” - -“Mr. Onslow—Mr. Onslow, you are making a very serious accusation against -one of my ship’s companies.” - -“Accusations? I? Never a bit of it. The fellows only acted according to -their lights. That’s the only way sailormen know of getting Krooboys to -work; and it was a case of squeezing the work out of them or having the -natural sack from you. And so, as they didn’t know another method, they -fell back on knuckleduster and monkey-wrench. I’ll play you fifty up.” - -Mr. Shelf put up a large white hand. “No; I don’t play billiards myself. -So many young men have been ruined by the pursuit, that I refrain from it -by way of setting an example. But my friends who visit here are not so -scrupulous, and I have the table for them.” - -“Beautiful!” said Onslow. He might have been referring to his own play, -or to Mr. Shelf’s improving sentiment. - -“You see, Mr. Onslow, from my position, so many people look up to me -that it is nothing short of my bounden duty to deprive myself of certain -things, and be, so far as possible, a humble model for them to form -themselves by. Long before a constituency sent me to Parliament, I -devoted my best energies to Christianizing the lower classes, and I hope -not without success. If appreciation is any criterion, I may say that I -was elected president of no less than twelve improvement societies. It -took me much time and thought to attend to them. Yet I wish I could have -given more.” - -“Yes—that pocket does pull; there’s a regular tram-line towards it. H’m, -mighty good work of yours. But doesn’t it sour on you sometimes? Don’t -you want a day off occasionally? A run down to Monte Carlo, for instance?” - -“Monte Carlo! You horrify me, Mr. Onslow. You are my guest, and I cannot -speak strongly; but this is a very poor jest of yours.” - -“Well, perhaps you know best about that place. Monte Carlo is risky at -the best of times for some folks, because you’re bound to meet crowds of -people you know; and if they aren’t on the razzle-dazzle too, and pinned -to decent silence through their own iniquities, some of them are apt -to split when they get home again. But I don’t know why you should be -horrified, seeing that we are _entre quatre yeux_ here, and not on one of -your pious example platforms. You know you’ve been in a far hotter shop -than Monte Carlo.—See me pot that red? Ah, _rouge perd_—Barcelona, to -wit. If you remember, you were staying at the Cuatro Naciones, and at -nights you used to cross the Rhambla, and——” - -“Mr. Onslow, how did you know all this?” - -“Do you remember objecting to take a sheaf of obvious spurious notes, -and there was a row, and somebody whipped out a knife, and somebody else -floored the knife-man with a chair?” - -“Yes—no.” - -“After which you very sensibly bolted. Well, I had only just that moment -come in, but I saw you were a fellow-islander, and that’s why I handled -the chair. You don’t remember me, and I didn’t know your name, but I -recognized you the moment your wife introduced us, because I never forget -a face.” - -“You’re mistaken. I never was in such a place in my life, sir. Think of -the position I occupy. Why, the thing’s absurd!” - -“Now, my good sir, why waste lies? I’m not going to show you up. No -fear. Why should I? It would probably ruin you, and I should stand -self-convicted of being in the lowest and most desperate gambling hell -in Europe, without being made a sixpence richer by the transaction. Only -you didn’t know me, and you thought I didn’t know you; and I thought it -would be handier if we were open about one another’s little ways at once -before we went any further. Who knows but what we might be partners in -some profitable business together?” Onslow put his cue down and faced -his host, with hands deep in his trousers pockets. “It’s worth thinking -about,” he observed. - -Mr. Theodore Shelf stood before the fireplace and drew a handkerchief -across his forehead with trembling fingers. “What business do you refer -to?” he asked at length. - -“None whatever. I’m not a business man. I make discoveries and don’t know -how to use them. You are a business man and may be able to see where the -money profit comes in. If you can, why then we’ll share the plunder. If -you can’t, we’re neither of us worse off than before.” - -“But this is vague. What sort of discoveries? Have you found a mine?” - -“No, sir; in the present instance a channel!” - -“A channel?—I don’t understand you.” - -“A deep-water channel leading in to a certain coast, where everybody else -supposes there is nothing but shallow water. The Government charts put -down the place as partly unsurveyed, but all impossible for navigation. -The upgrowth of coral, they say, is turning part of the sea into dry -land. In a large measure this is true; but at one point—which I have -discovered—a river comes down from the interior, and the scour of this -river has cut a deep narrow channel out through the reefs to the deep sea -water beyond.” - -“Well,” Shelf broke in, “I see no value in that.” - -“Wait a minute! In confidence I’ll tell you it is on the West Coast of -Florida—on the Mexican Gulf coast. The interior of southern Florida -is called the Everglades. It’s partly lake, partly swamp; built up of -mangroves, saw-grass, cypress trees, and water; tenanted by snakes, -alligators, wild beasts, and a few Seminole Indians. Only one expedition -of whites has been across it—or rather only one expedition known to -history. But I’ve been there, right into the heart of the Everglades; in -fact, I’ve just come from there; and I netted £1000 out of the trip.” - -“How?” asked Shelf, eagerly. - -“Never mind exactly how. That’s partly another man’s business. Shall we -say the other man gave me a commission there, and I carried it out, and -got duly paid? Anyway, that’s sufficient explanation. But now about this -channel I’ve found. If one gives it to the chart people, they’ll simply -say, ‘Thank you,’ and publish your name in one number of an official -magazine which nobody reads. I don’t long for fame of that kind. I’ve the -sordid taste to much prefer gold.” - -“I think I understand you,” said Shelf. “Give me a minute to think it -out.” - -“A week if you like,” said the other; and, picking up his cue, again -returned to the billiard-table. - -The balls clicked lazily, and the rosewood clock marked off the seconds -with firmness and precision. Shelf lay back in his chair, his finger-tips -together beneath the square chin, his eyes watching the shadows which -the lamps cast on the frescoed ceiling. He looked entirely placid. No -one would have guessed the simmer of thoughts which were poppling and -bubbling in his brain. A stream of projects came before him, flashed into -detail, and were dismissed as impracticable. It was the great trait of -this man’s genius that he could think with the speed of a hurricane, and -clear his head of an unprofitable idea a moment after it was born. - -Twenty schemes occurred to him, all to be dismissed: and then came the -twenty-first; and that stayed. He ran a mental finger through all its -leading details: he conned over a thousand minutiæ. It was the thing to -suit his purpose. - -A bare minute had passed, but he needed no more time for his -deliberations. The scheme seemed perfect to him, without flaw, without -chance of improvement. The hugeness of it thrilled him like a draught of -spirit. He was betrayed away from his unctuous calm; his hands dropped on -to the arms of the chair. - -With a heavy start he clambered to his feet, strode forward, and seized -Onslow by the arm. “If your channel and Everglades will answer a purpose -I want, there’s half a million of English sovereigns to be made out of -it.” - -Onslow turned and faced him with a long, thin-drawn whistle. “£500,000! -Phew!” - -“Hush! there’s somebody coming. But it’s to be had if you’re not afraid -of a little risk.” - -“I fear nothing on this earth,” said Onslow, “when it’s to my interest -not to fear. Moreover, though I’m not a saint, my standard of morality -is probably a shade higher than yours. I don’t mind doing some sorts of -dirty things; but there are shades in dirtiness, and at some tints I draw -the line. It’s dangerous to—er—have the tips of these cues glued on so -badly. They fly off and hit people.” - -The billiard-room door had opened, and Amy Rivers had come in, with -Fairfax at her heels. Hence Onslow’s digression. The matter had not been -put in so many words; but he felt sure that the commission of a great -robbery had been proposed to him, and he had more than half a mind to -drive his knuckles into Theodore Shelf’s lying, hypocritical face on the -spot. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -THE REQUIREMENTS OF MRS. SHELF. - - -Mr. Theodore Shelf wanted to drag Onslow off there and then to his own -business-room, on the first floor, to discuss further this great project -which he had in his head; but Onslow thought fit to remain where he was. -Mr. Shelf nodded significantly towards the new-comers, as much as to hint -that a third person with them would be distinctly an inconvenient third. -Onslow turned to them, cue in hand, and proposed a game of snooker. - -“That’s precisely what we came up for,” said Amy Rivers promptly. -“Hamilton, get out the balls. Mr. Onslow, will you put the billiard-balls -away, so that they don’t get mixed?” - -They played and talked merrily. Their conversation turned on the wretched -show at the recent Academy, which they agreed was a disgrace to a -civilized country; and Onslow made himself interesting over the art of -painting in Paris—mural, facial, and on canvas. When he chose he could be -very interesting, this man London had nicknamed “The Great Traveler”; -and he generally chose, not being ill-natured. - -Mr. Theodore Shelf left the billiard-room with a feeling beneath his -waistcoat much akin to sea-sickness. First of all, that plain-spoken -Patrick Onslow had not over politely hinted that he was a canting -hypocrite, and had showed cause for arriving at the conclusion. This was -true, but that didn’t make it any the more digestive. And secondly, he -himself, in a moment of excitement, had let drop to this same pernicious -Onslow (who after all was a comparative stranger) a proposal to make the -sum of £500,000 at one _coup_. True, he had not mentioned the means; -but Onslow had at once concluded it was to be gained by robbery, and he -(Theodore Shelf) had not denied the impeachment. - -Consequently Mr. Shelf went direct to his own room, locked the door, and -fortified his nerves with a liberal allowance of brandy. Then he munched -a coffee-bean in deference to the blue ribbon on his coat-lapel, replaced -the cognac bottle in the inner drawer of his safe, and sat down to think. - -If only he understood Onslow, and, better still, knew whether he might -trust him, there was a fortune to be had. Yes, a fortune! And it was -wanted badly. The great firm of Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf, which called -itself “Agents to the Oceanic Steam Transport Co.,” but which really ran -the line of steamers which traded under that flag, might look prosperous -to the outer eye, and might still rear its head haughtily amongst the -first shipping firms of London port. But the man who bragged aloud that -he owned it all, from offices to engine-oil, knew otherwise. He had -mortgages out in every direction, mortgages so cunningly hidden that -only he himself was aware of their vast total. He knew that the firm was -rotten—lock, stock, and barrel. He knew that through any one of twenty -channels a breakup might come any day; and, following on the heels of -that, a smash, which would be none the pleasanter because, from its size -and devastating effects, it would live down into history. - -He, Theodore Shelf, would assuredly not be in England to face it. Since -his commercial barometer had reached “stormy,” and still showed signs of -steady descent, he had been transmitting carefully modulated doles to -certain South American banks, and had even gone so far as to purchase -(under a _nom d’escroc_) a picturesquely situated estançia on the upper -waters of the Rio Paraguay. - -There, in case the tempest of bankruptcy broke, the extradition treaties -would cease from troubling, and the weary swindler would be at well-fed -rest. - -But Mr. Theodore Shelf had no lust for this tropical retirement. He -liked the powers of his present pinnacle in the City. And that howl of -execration from every class of society which would make up his pæan of -defeat was an opera that he very naturally shrank from sitting through. - -As he thought of these things, he hugged closer to him the wire-haired -fox-terrier which sat upon his lap. - -“George, old friend,” said Mr. Shelf, “if things do go wrong, I believe -you are the only thing living in England which won’t turn against me.” - -George slid out a red tongue and licked the angle of Mr. Shelf’s square -chin. Then he retired within himself again, and looked sulky. The door -had opened, and Mrs. Shelf stood on the mat. There was a profound mutual -dislike between George and Mrs. Theodore Shelf. - -“You alone, Theodore? I thought Mr. Onslow was here. However, so much the -better. I have wanted to speak with you all the morning. Do turn that -nasty dog away!” - -George was not evicted, and Mr. Shelf inquired curtly what his wife was -pleased to want. She seldom invaded this business-room of his, and, -when she did, it was for a purpose which he was beginning to abhor. She -came to the point at once by handing him a letter, which was mostly in -copperplate. He read it through with brief, sour comment. - -“H’m! Bank. Your private account overdrawn. That’s the third time this -year, Laura. Warning seems to be no use. You are determined to know what -ruin tastes like.” - -“Ruin, pshaw! You don’t put me off with that silly tale. To begin with, -I don’t believe it for an instant; and even if it were true, I’d rather -be ruined than retrench. You and I can afford to be candid between -ourselves, Theodore. You know perfectly well that we have gained our -position in society purely and solely by purchase.” - -“To my cost I do know it. But having paid your entrance fee at least -eight times over, I think you might be content with an ordinary -subscription. The ball last night, for instance——” - -“Was necessary. And I couldn’t afford to do the thing otherwise than -gorgeously.” - -“Gorgeously! Do you think I’m a Crœsus, Laura, to pay for gearing one -room with red roses, and another room with pink, and another room with -Marshal Niels for fools to flit in during one short night? This morning’s -paper informs me that those flowers came by special express from Nice, -and cost five hundred pounds.” - -“And yet you twit me with extravagance! All the papers have got in that -paragraph, as I took care they should; and everybody will read it. Yet -the flowers only cost a paltry three hundred pounds, so that in credit I -am two hundred to the good, because I have clearly given _the_ ball of -the season. Theodore, you are short-sighted; you are a fool to your own -profit. By myself I shall make you a baronet this year, and if you had -only worked in your own interests half as hard as I have done, you could -have entered the House of Lords.” - -“Titles,” said Shelf grimly, “for people of our stamp, are only given -for direct cash outlay in almshouses, or picture galleries, or political -clubs. Before they are bestowed, a Crown censor satisfies himself that -one’s financial position is broad and absolutely sound. There are reasons -connected with those matters which block you further and further from -being ‘milady’ every day.” - -Mrs. Shelf shrugged her shoulders in utter unbelief. “Your preaching -tendencies cover you like a second skin, Theodore. It seems as if you -never drop the conventicle and the pleasure of pointing a moral at one. -Believe me, is isn’t a paying speculation, this cant of yours. At the -most they would only give you a trumpery knighthood for it. But go your -own way, and I’ll go mine. You shall be made in spite of yourself.” - -Mrs. Shelf noticed that at this point her husband’s eyes were beginning -to glow with dull fury. She objected to scenes; and, dropping the -subject, reverted once more to her present needs. - -“However, let us stop this wrangle, and come to business. I wish you to -see to that impertinent circular from the bank. I have several checks -out, and unpresented; I am absolutely compelled to draw others to-day, -for trifles which will add up to about a thousand. You will kindly see -that they are honored. It is all your own fault, this trumpery worry -about nothing. You should not try and screw me down to such a niggardly -allowance.” - -Shelf stood up, and the dog on his lap leaped hurriedly to the ground -growling. “Woman!” he said passionately, “you won’t believe me; but if -you will go on in this mad extravagance, you will soon learn for yourself -that I am not lying—perhaps very soon. Perhaps to-morrow. When a shameful -bankruptcy does come, then you can play your hand as you please. I shall -not be here to hinder you any longer. Where shall I go, how I shall -lead my new life, who will be my partner, are matters which you will be -allowed no finger in. So long as things last here, I shall observe all -the conventionalities; and, if you appreciate those, you will find it -wise to reconsider your present ways. I tell you candidly that if the -firm does go down, not only England, but half the world will ring with -its transactions. Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf,” he went on with scowling -fury, “were honest, prosperous tradesmen once, before their ways were -fouled to find money for your cursed ambition.” - -There was a new look on Theodore Shelf’s clean-shaven face which his -wife had never seen before, and an evil glint in the eyes which scared -her. Irresolutely she moved towards the door and put her fingers upon -the handle. Then she drew herself up and stared him up and down with a -look of forced contempt. “You will be good enough,” she said coldly, “to -attend to the business which brought me here. I am going now to draw the -checks I spoke about.” - -Shelf looked at her very curiously. “Go,” he said, “and do as you please. -You are a determined woman, and, because I am determined myself, I admire -your strength of will; but for all that I think I shall murder you before -I leave England.” - -Mrs. Shelf laughed derisively, but with pale lips; and then she opened -the door. - -“What fine heroics,” she said. “But thanks for seeing after my balance. I -must have that money.” - -She passed through the door, closing it gently behind her, and Shelf -returned to his armchair. - -“George,” he said, as the fox-terrier stood up against his knee, “if -that woman were only struck dead to-day, there are two thousand families -in England who would rejoice madly if they only knew one-tenth part of -what I know. Poor beggars, they have trusted me to the hilt, and she -makes me behave to them like a fiend. D’you know, my small animal, I wish -very much just now an earthquake or a revolution or something like that -would occur, to shuffle matters up. Then if I got killed I should be -spared a great deal of worry; and if I didn’t, why I’ve got large hands, -and I believe could grab enough in the general scramble to suit even -her. As it is, however, with neither earthquake nor revolution probable, -I’m a desperate man, ready to take any desperate chance of commercial -salvation. Eh, well!” he concluded, as he reached for a paper-block and -rested it on George’s back, “worrying myself about the matter won’t -improve it. The only thing is to try and keep things running in their -present groove.” He broke off and scribbled a Biblical text. “Other men -would have been suspected long before this. But my reputation has saved -me.” He smiled to himself softly. “What a thing it is to be known as a -thoroughly good man!” - -He broke off at this point, and applied himself with gusto to writing his -sermon for the ensuing Sunday. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -BUSINESS AT A BALL. - - -When people are engaged, they usually contrive to meet with frequency, -and so Amy Rivers showed no very great surprise at seeing Fairfax again -later in the evening. She only said: “Why, I didn’t know you knew the -Latchfords.” To which Hamilton Fairfax replied that he did not know them, -but had met another man at the club who was coming to the party, and that -the other man had brought him. - -“An extra male never matters at a big dance,” said Fairfax. “Besides,” he -went on, “I wanted particularly to see you this evening. Since we parted -last, I’ve heard of an estate for sale in Kent which I fancy would just -suit us. The present holder wants money, and therefore it’s going cheap; -but there’s another fellow after it, and I’ve only got the refusal till -to-morrow morning. So you see I want your views on the subject at once.” - -“Very well,” said Miss Rivers; “you shall tell me about it in, say, -three dances from now. There are no programs here to-night; but I have -promised the next two waltzes and the square, and don’t particularly -want to cut them. In the mean time, I wish you would go and talk to Mrs. -Shelf. She said when we were driving here that she wanted to speak to -you. I don’t know about what, but she’ll tell you that herself.” - -“Right!” said Fairfax. “Ta-ta for the present!” And he went through the -rooms till he saw the blaze of diamonds and rubies which decked the -handsome person of Mrs. Theodore Shelf. - -Mrs. Shelf had, as usual, a concourse of men round her. She was a woman -who deliberately cultivated the art of fascination, because it was -essential to her ambition; and men are always willing to be dazzled and -fascinated. They were laughing when Fairfax came up. She saw him from the -corner of her eyes, but for the moment took no notice of him. She leaned -forward and delivered another sentence to the men before her through -the top feathers of her fan, which sent through them another thrill of -merriment; and then shut the fan with a click and turned to Fairfax. - -The other men went away, still laughing, which was quite typical of Mrs. -Shelf’s powers. She always concluded her audiences dramatically. No -actress on the stage had more knowledge of how to bring about an artistic -“curtain.” - -She watched them go with a smile of mild triumph, but when she turned to -Fairfax this had flitted away. There was distinct annoyance on her face. - -“Why don’t you know these people here?” she asked. - -“Well, I suppose I may say that technically I do know Lady Latchford now. -The chap who brought me introduced me to her. But of course she’ll have -forgotten me by this time.” - -“Then why didn’t you stop and talk to her—amuse her—or, better still, -be impertinent to her? You ought to have known the Latchfords before. -Indeed, I thought you did; but to slip in like that, without a noise, was -worse than a mistake—it was a crime. Don’t you know that the Latchfords -are useful? Really, Hamilton, you make me angry. You never make the -slightest effort to get on, and know people who will be useful to you, -and all that.” - -Fairfax felt half amused, half annoyed. He shrugged his shoulders. - -“I don’t know what Amy will do with you when she marries,” Mrs. Shelf -went on. “You’ve no dash about you, no smartness. If you are left to -yourself, you may make money, but you will never make a name.” - -“I’m not a man,” said Fairfax, with a half-angry laugh, “who would ever -walk about in spurs and blow a trumpet.” - -“No,” replied Mrs. Shelf; “you would, if you had your own way, work ten -hours a day in the City, and then come home and sleep. Once a month you -would give a dinner party to City friends, and talk shop the entire -evening. In the end you would die, and have written on your gravestone, -‘This was a dull, honest man, who made a million of money and no -enemies.’ Now I,” said Mrs. Shelf, “should feel lonely beyond belief if -I didn’t know that there were people who hated and feared me. It gives -one the sense of power, and that means confidence; and a woman with -confidence gets on. It is only your harmless fool who is popular all -round, and a person whom everybody in their innermost hearts despise, -whatever they may say of him aloud. You must shake this mood off, -Hamilton. Begin now. Go up to the Latchford woman, and be impertinent -to her. Say the floor’s so bad you can’t dance on it, or the supper’s -poisoned you, or that there’s a woman here who picks pockets. Put it -nicely, you know, and make it cut, and then she’ll ask you to her next -function, because she’ll think you too dangerous to make an enemy of.” - -“I don’t feel equal to the job,” said Fairfax. “It would probably end in -my being kicked there and then out of doors if I attempted such a thing.” - -“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Shelf. “Polite impertinence is the best possible -_cachet_ nowadays. And you must cut out some style for yourself. Go and -begin now.” - -She dismissed him with a tap of her fan, and beckoned another man up. - -Fairfax went off willingly enough, but he did not go and impress himself -upon his hostess’s memory by the crude process of baiting her. Instead, -he hung about the rooms and idled away his time till Amy Rivers was ready -for him, and then, slipping her arm through his, led her to a niche on a -secluded staircase. - -“Now,” she said, “tell me all about this place in Kent.” - -He told her soberly and quietly all the details, and waxed dry over -leases and repairs of outbuildings. - -“It sounds lovely,” she said when he had finished; “but you don’t seem -very enthusiastic over it yourself.” - -“That’s not my way, dear. Mrs. Shelf has been telling me what a very dull -young man I am, and suggested that I should commence improving matters by -going up and insulting my hostess. I’m afraid I haven’t done it. To begin -with, I couldn’t; and to go on with, she’d squash me out of existence -with a look, if I made the attempt. You see, Amy, I know my limitations; -I’m a tolerably heavy person, with limited powers of speech, and a -subdued sense of humor.” - -“You might be brighter, that’s a fact,” Miss Rivers admitted candidly. - -“If you are tired of me, dear——” - -Miss Rivers craned her neck down the line of the banisters, to make sure -that no one was looking, and then drew Fairfax to her, and gave him a -kiss. - -“Don’t be a great goose!” she said. “Only don’t think that I am going to -agree with you in everything. That would be far too dull and copy-booky. -And don’t think I imagine you perfect. I should hate you most cordially -if you were.” - -“What are my faults?” - -“Do you think I could tell you the whole list in a single evening? No, -sir. Some day, when I am more than usually annoyed with you, I will begin -early and read out a chapter of them. Till then, I’ll bear with the lot. -Tell me some more about this place in Kent.” - -“I have told you all I know. If you like the idea, we might run down -to-morrow and see it ourselves, before we finally decide on the purchase. -The only thing is about the price. You know I’m a tolerably well-off man, -dear, but there are limits to my capital, and most of it is well locked -up. Of course this place has to be paid for in cash, which is the reason -for its going so cheap.” - -“Well?” - -“Well, I am afraid that alone it would not be wise for me to purchase it. -But then one cannot get over the fact that you are an heiress—excuse my -being unromantic and practical—and we are presumably not going to live on -my income only. And so, if the house and its grounds should suit us, I -was wondering whether you would feel disposed——” - -“Oh, my dear child, how you do beat about the bush! Of course I’ll help -buy the place if we like it. Why shouldn’t I? There’s heaps of money, and -there’s no earthly reason why we shouldn’t use it.” - -“But will the trustees let you have it?” - -“I’m not of age for another year, but the trustees have discretionary -power. At least, Mr. Shelf has, and he never thwarts me in anything. -I believe he’d do anything for me. He is really the kindest man. If -you like, Hamilton, I’ll see him about it before he goes out to-morrow -morning.” - -“I think that will be best, dear. You see, in the present state of the -offer, one has to rush things.” - -“How much am I to ask him for?” - -“Fifteen thousand pounds would do. I can manage the rest.” - -“Oh, he’ll let me have that without any trouble at all. I’m sure of it. -And if the other trustee was awkward, he’d advance it to me for the year -out of his own pocket. Listen, there’s the music going again. Aren’t you -going to dance with me to-night, Hamilton?” - -“Ye-es, a waltz, or anything like that. But they’re playing that -abominable barn-dance. I think it’s idiotic. Makes such a show of one’s -self. Let’s sit it out here.” - -“Not I. I love the barn-dance. I do it well, and I dress for it. -Consequently, my dear boy, I’m not going to miss it. You needn’t kick up -_your_ heels unless you like, but I warn you I’m going to disport myself. -Come along, and take me down-stairs. There now! you’ve ruffled my hair -again.” - -“Come along, then,” said Fairfax. “You can knock over my worst -prejudices. I’ll dance two barn-dances with you if I get the -opportunity.” - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -BIMETALLISM. - - -It was late in the evening when Patrick Onslow again found himself _en -tête-à-tête_ with his host. There had been people in to dinner at the -house in Park Lane, but these had gone, and Mrs. Shelf and Amy Rivers -followed them to Lady Latchford’s dance. Mrs. Shelf had wished to carry -Onslow also in her train, but that person stayed behind by a request -which he could not very well refuse. “You will favor me very much by -remaining here for the rest of the evening, Mr. Onslow,” Shelf had said -in his pompous way. “I have matters of the greatest moment which I wish -to discuss with you.” - -“I hardly know how to begin,” Shelf confessed uneasily, when they were -alone. - -“Then let me make a suggestion,” said Onslow, with a laugh. “Come to the -point at once. Let’s have the plot without any introductory chapters. -You’ve told me you’ve got a scheme on hand for turning my discovery into -currency, and you’ve rather hinted that it’s a dirty scheme. The only -question is, how dirty? Thanks to pressure of circumstances, I’m not an -over-particular person; but on points I’m very squeamish; or, in other -words, I draw the line somewhere. Unless I’m very vastly mistaken, your -plan will involve one in downright knavery, which is a thing all sensible -men avoid if possible. Now, in my ignorance, I fancied the find might be -turned to account without climbing down to that.” - -“Oh,” said Shelf, eagerly, “then you had a scheme in your head before you -came to me?” - -The other shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigar. “Just a dim outline, -nothing more. You see, the interior of the Everglades is absolutely -untouched, by the white man’s weapons. It was vaguely supposed to be one -vast lake, with oases of slime and mangroves. The lake was reported as -too shallow for boats, and abounding with fevers, agues, and mosquitoes. -Consequently it remained unexplored, and on the end of the Florida -peninsula to-day no white man (barring myself and one or two others) has -ever got further than five or eight miles in from the coast. Now, as -I’ve told you, I was lucky enough to hit upon a fine deep ship-channel -going in as far as the center line, and I don’t know how far beyond -inside. There is good fertile country, a healthy climate and the best -game-preserve on this earth. For the first comers, that interior will -be just a sportsman’s paradise. My idea is two-wise. First sell the -cream off the sport. Some men will give anything for shooting, and in -this case there will also be the glamour of being pioneers. Each one -will start determined to write a book of his opinions and doings when he -gets back. By chartering a steamer and treating them well on board, they -would have sporting _de luxe_, and one ought to get quite five-and-twenty -chaps at five hundred guineas apiece. That gives the first crop. For the -second, buy up an enormous tract of the land, which can be got for half -nothing—say ten or fifteen cents an acre—boom it, and resell it in lots -to Jugginses. They’ll fancy they’ll grow oranges, as all Englishmen do -who try Florida. Perhaps they may grow them: who knows, if they keep off -whisky and put in work? But that won’t be the promoters’ concern. They -don’t advertise that the land _will_ produce oranges; they only guarantee -that it would if it was given a chance; and that’s all correct. Perhaps -this is rough on the Jugginses; but as they crowd these British Islands -in droves, and are always on the look-out for some one to shear them, -I don’t see why an Everglades Company shouldn’t have their fleeces as -well as anybody else. They’re mostly wasters, and wouldn’t do any mortal -good anywhere; and it’s a patriotic deed to cart them over our boundary -ditch away from local mischief. Besides, even if the worst comes to the -worst, and the orange industry of Florida still refuses to make headway, -the would-be growers needn’t starve; nor need they even do what they’ll -probably hate more—and that’s work. There’s always sweet potatoes and -mullet and tobacco to be got, and if that diet doesn’t cloy, a man can -have it there for mighty little exertion. Come, now. That’s the pemmican -of the plan. What do you think of it?” - -“Much capital would be needed.” - -Onslow shrugged his shoulders. “Some, naturally, or I shouldn’t have come -to you. If I’d seen any way to pouching all the plunder single-handed you -may bet your life, Mr. Theodore Shelf, I shouldn’t have invited you into -partnership.” - -“Returns, too, would be very slow.” - -“Not necessarily. Float the company, and then turn it over to another -company for cash down.” - -“Moreover, when the—er—the young men you spoke about, found that the -orange-groves did not produce at once in paying quantities, they would -write home, and their parents would denounce me as a swindler in the -newspapers.” - -“No, not you; the other company—the one you sold it to. But then -apologists would arise to show that the Jugginses—don’t shy at the word, -sir—were lazy and ignorant, and also that they absorbed the corn whisky -of the country in excessive quantities. And then that company could grin -smugly, and pose as a misunderstood benefactor. So its profits wouldn’t -be smirched in the least. Grasp that?” - -“Yes, yes: I dare say you have worked it all out to yourself, and thought -over the details so many times that the whole scheme seems entirely -plausible. But looking at it from the view of a business man, I cannot -say that it appears to be an enterprise I should care to embark in. You -see it is so very much beyond the scope of my general operations that -I—er—hesitate—er—you understand, I hesitate——” - -“Yes,” said Patrick Onslow, quietly, “you hesitate because you’ve got -something ten times more profitable up your sleeve.” - -Shelf started, and shivered slightly. - -“You may as well be candid and open with me,” Onslow continued, “and -tell me what you are driving at. If it suits me, I’ll say so; and if it -doesn’t, I’ll let you know with surprising promptness. And again, if we -don’t trade, you may rely on me not to gossip about your suggestion. I’m -not the stone-throwing variety of animal. You see I live in a sort of -semi-greenhouse myself.” - -There was a minute’s pause, during which Theodore Shelf shifted about as -though his chair was uneven rock beneath him. Then he jerked out his -tale sentence by sentence, squinting sideways at his companion between -each period. - -“You know I’m a shipowner in a large way of business?” - -Onslow nodded. - -“Ships are occasionally lost at sea: steamers, even new steamers straight -out of a builder’s yard, and well found in every particular.” - -“So I’ve read in the newspaper.” - -“And every shipowner insures his vessels to the full of their value.” - -“Except when he has a foreboding that they will come to grief on -a voyage. Then, so rumor says, he usually has the forethought to -over-insure.” - -Mr. Theodore Shelf passed a handkerchief over his forehead, and started -what was apparently a new topic. - -“There is a silver crisis on just now in the United States, and by this -morning’s paper the dollar is down at sixty cents. American gold is not -to be had. English gold is always worth its face value. What more natural -financial operation could there be than to ship out sovereigns, and -profit by the discrepancy?” - -“Ah,” said Onslow, “so the new and valuable steamer, which, though -over-insured, is likely to be reported lost, is evidently to have a -consignment of specie on board. £500,000 I fancy you mentioned as -the figure in the billiard-room this morning. Well, if one is going -in for robbery—or piracy, I suppose it would turn out to be in this -instance—there’s nothing like a large _coup_. It’s your niggler who -usually fails, and gets laid by the heels. Drive on, and be a little more -explicit.” - -“Couldn’t the steamer be lost somehow in the Gulf of Mexico, and a boat -containing the boxes of specie find its way through this channel of yours -into the interior of Florida?” - -“How—lost?” - -Mr. Shelf mopped his forehead again. “Don’t steamers,” he asked, “don’t -they sometimes have sad accidents which—which cause them to blow up?” - -“Such things have been known. But it’s rather rough on the crew, don’t -you think?” - -“Oh, poor fellows, yes. But a sailor’s life is always hazardous. Indeed, -what can he expect with wages at their present ruinous rate? Shipowners -must live.” - -“Oh, you beauty!” said Patrick Onslow. - -“I must ask you,” cried Shelf with a sudden burst of sourness, “to -refrain from these comments, sir. But tell me, before I go any further in -this confidence, am I to count upon your assistance?” - -“That depends upon many things. To begin with, there’ll have to be -modifications before I dabble. I’m not obtrusively squeamish about human -life—my own, or other people’s. On occasion I bagged my man—because he -had twice shot at me. Still, piracy, complicated with what practically -amounts to murder, is an art which I haven’t trafficked in as yet; and, -curious to relate, I don’t intend to begin. Your scheme is delicious in -its cold-bloodedness; but it would look better if it were toned down a -trifle. By the way, better help yourself to a drink. Your nerves are in -such a joggle, that I fancy you’ll faint if you don’t. I notice there’s -no blue ribbon on your evening dress. Humph! That’s a second mate’s -nip—four fingers, if it’s a drop; apparently you are used to this. Tell -me now, what honorarium do you propose I should take for engineering this -piece of rascality in your favor?” - -“I will give you five hundred pounds!” - -“Now, would you, really? Not even guineas?” - -“Mr. Onslow, I’ll make it a thousand. There!” - -“Mr. Theodore Shelf, when a monkey wants a cat to pull chestnuts for him -out of the fire, he first has to be stronger than the cat. You don’t -occupy that enviable position. In fact, I have the whip-hand of you in -every way. We need not particularize, but you can sum the items for -yourself. Now I’ll make you an offer. Half of all the plunder, and entire -control of everything.” - -“Great heavens! do you want to ruin me?” - -“I don’t care in the least if I do. Your welfare doesn’t interest me. But -my services are on the market with a _prix fixé_, and you can take ’em or -leave ’em. That’s final.” - -Shelf burst into a torrent of expostulations; exciting himself more and -more as he went on; till at last he stood before the other with gripped -fists and the veins ridged out down his neck, inarticulate with fury. - -Onslow heard him out with a contemptuous smile, but when the man had -stormed himself into silence, then he spoke, coolly and coldly: - -“When one trades in life and death, the brokerage is heavy. You have -heard my offer. If you don’t like it, say so without further palaver, -and I’ll leave you now—with your conscience, if you have a rag of such a -commodity left.” - -“You may sit where you are,” replied Shelf sullenly. - -“Well and good. That means to say my terms are accepted. I’ll pin you to -them later. But for the present let me observe to you something else, -so that there may be no misunderstanding between us. I’ve been rambling -up and down the world half my life, and I’ve met blackguards of most -descriptions in every iniquitous place, from Callao to Port Saïd—forgers, -thieves, murderers of nearly every grade of proficiency. But they say -that the prime of everything gets to London, and I verily believe now -that it does, for by Jove, you are the most pernicious scoundrel of all -the collection!” - -“Sir!” thundered Shelf, “am I to listen to these foul insults in my own -house?” - -“Oh, I quite understand the obligations of bread and salt; but you are -beyond the pale of that. You are a noxious beast who ought to be stamped -out. Still you can be useful to me; so I shall hire myself out to be -useful to you. But I have brought these unpleasant facts under your -notice, to let you thoroughly understand that I have summed you up from -horns to hoofs, and to point out to you that I wouldn’t give a piastre -for your most sacred word of honor. We shall be bound to one another in -this precious scheme by community of interests alone; and if you can -swindle me, you may. Only look out for the consequences if you do try it -on. I never yet left a score unpaid. We’re _Arcades ambo_—rascals both; -only we’re different varieties of rascal. I know you pretty thoroughly; -and if you don’t know me as well, possibly you will before we’ve done -with one another. And now, if it please you, we’ll go into the minuter -details of this piece of villainy, and sketch out definitely how we -are to steal this half a million in specie, and this valuable steamer, -without committing more murder than is absolutely essential to success.” - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -THE TEMPTING OF CAPTAIN OWEN KETTLE. - - -“If one might judge from the lacquered majesty of your office -appointments,” said Patrick Onslow, taking one of the big chairs in -Shelf’s inner sanctum, “your firm is doing a roaring fine business.” - -Mr. Theodore Shelf seated himself before his desk and began sorting -out some papers. “The turnover,” he said evasively, “is enormous. Our -operations are most extensive.” - -“Extensive and peculiar,” commented Onslow. - -“But I regret to say that during the last eighteen months the firm’s -profits have seriously decreased, and the scope of its operations been -much hampered. I take credit to myself that this diminution could have -been prevented by no action on my part. It is entirely the outcome of -the times, and the lazy greed of the working classes, fomented by the -frothings of paid agitators. The series of strikes which we have had to -contend against is unprecedented.” - -“Is it? Well, I don’t know. There have been labor bothers all down -through history, and I fancy they’ll continue to the end of time. If -you’ll recollect, there was a certain Egyptian king who once had troubles -with his bricklayers, and I fancy there have been similar difficulties -trotting through the centuries in pretty quick succession ever since. -Of course, each man thinks his own employés the most unreasonable and -grasping that have ever uttered opinion since the record began; that’s -only natural. But I might point out to you that in definite results you -aren’t in the worst box yet. Your chariot hasn’t been upset in the Red -Sea so far, and it may be that a certain operation in the Mexican Gulf -will grease up the wheels and set it running on triumphantly. Grumble if -you like, Mr. Shelf, but don’t make yourself out to be the worst-used man -in history. Pharaoh hadn’t half your opportunities.” - -“Yes, yes,” said Shelf, who didn’t relish this kind of conversation; “but -we will come to business, if you please.” - -“Right you are. Let’s finish floating the swindle.” - -“Mr. Onslow!” exclaimed the other passionately, “will you never learn -to moderate your language? There are a hundred clerks within a hundred -feet of you through that door, and sometimes even walls can listen and -repeat. Besides, I object altogether to your phraseology. We engage in no -such things as swindles in the City. Our operations are all commercial -enterprises.” - -“Very well,” said Onslow, shrugging his shoulders; “don’t let’s squabble -over it. You call your spade what you like, only I reserve a right to -clap on a plainer brand. We’re built differently, Mr. Shelf. I prefer -to be honest in my dishonesty. And now, as I’ve said, let’s get to -business. You say the charter of this steamer of yours, the _Port Edes_, -has expired, and she is back on your hands. She’s 2000 tons, built under -Lloyds’ survey, and classed 100 A1. She’s well engined, and has just -been dry-docked. She’ll insure for every sixpence of her value without -comment, and there’s nothing more natural than to send out your specie in -such a sound bottom. Remains to pick a suitable complement.” - -“I’ve got a master waiting here now by appointment. His name is Kettle. I -have him to a certain extent under my thumb, and I fancy he will prove a -reliable man. He was once in our firm’s employment.” - -“Owen Kettle, by any chance?” - -Mr. Theodore Shelf referred to a paper on his writing-table. “Captain -Owen Kettle, yes. He was the man who lost the _Doge of Venice_, and since -then he’s never had another ship.” - -“Poor devil! yes, I know. That _Doge of Venice_ case was an awful -scandal. Owners filled up the Board of Trade surveyor to the teeth with -champagne, or she’d never have been passed to sea. As it was, she’d -such an unholy reputation that two crews ran from her before they could -get her manned. She was as rotten as rust and tumbled rivets could make -her, and she was sent to sea as a coffin ship to earn her dividends -out of Lloyds’. Kettle had been out of a job for some time. He was a -desperate man, with a family depending on him, and he went as skipper, -fully conscious of what was expected of him. He did it like a man. He let -the _Doge of Venice_ founder in a North Sea gale, and, by a marvelous -chance, managed to save his ship’s company. At the inquiry, of course, -he was made scapegoat, and he didn’t contrive to save his ticket. They -suspended his master’s certificate for a year. On the strength of that -he applied to owners for maintenance, putting it on the reasonable claim -of services rendered. Owners, being upright merchants and sensible -men, naturally repudiated all knowledge or liability; said he was a -blackmailing scoundrel as well as an unskilful seaman; and threatened him -with an action for libel. Kettle, not having a solitary proof to show, -did the only thing left for him to do, and that was eat dirt or subside. -But the incident and the subsequent starvation haven’t tended to sweeten -his temper. Latterly he’s been serving as mate on a Pacific ship, and he -was just a terror with his men. He simply kept alive by carrying his fist -on a revolver-butt. There isn’t a man who’s served with Red Kettle three -weeks that wouldn’t have cheerfully swung for the enjoyment of murdering -him.” - -“You appear to know a good deal about this man.” - -“When it suits my purpose,” returned Onslow drily, “I mostly contrive to -know something about anybody. However, it’s no use discussing the poor -beggar any longer. What’s amiss with having him in now?” - -Shelf touched one of the electric buttons which studded the edge of his -table, and a clerk appeared, who went away again, and shortly returned. -With him was a dried-up little man of about forty, with a red head and a -peaked red beard, who made a stiff, nervous salaam to Mr. Theodore Shelf, -and then turned to stare at Onslow with puckered amazement. - -Onslow nodded and laughed. “Been carrying any more pilgrims from Port -Saïd to the Morocco coast on iron decks?” he asked. - -“I never did that,” snapped Captain Kettle. - -“Ah, one’s memory fails at times. I dare say also you forget a water -famine when the condenser broke down, and a trifling affray with -knuckledusters and other toys; and a dash of cholera; and nine dead -bodies of Hadjis which went overboard? Perhaps, too, you don’t remember -fudging a clean bill of health, and baksheeshing certain officials of his -Shereefian Majesty?” - -“No,” said Captain Kettle sourly, “I don’t remember.” - -“I’m going to forget it also, if you’ll prove yourself a sensible man, -and deal amicably with Mr. Shelf and myself. I’m also going to forget -that when you were shipping rice for Calcutta in ’82 you rented mats you -called your own to the consignor, and made a tidy penny out of that; and -I shall similarly let slip from my memory a trifling squeeze of eight -hundred dollars which you made out of a stevedore in New Orleans, before -you let him touch your ship, in the fall of ’82.” - -“You can’t make anything out of those,” said Kettle. “They’re the -ordinary customs of the trade.” - -“Shipmasters’ perquisites for which owners pay? Exactly. I know some -skippers consider these trifles to be their lawful right. But a court of -law might be ignorant enough to set them down as robbery.” - -“I should like to know where you’ve got all these things from,” Captain -Kettle demanded, facing Onslow, with his lean scraggy neck thrust forth -nearly a foot from its stepping. “I should like to know, too, how you’re -here? I’d a fancy you were dead.” - -“Other people have labored under that impression. But I’ve an awkward -knack of keeping alive. You’ve the same. The faculty may prove useful -to us both in the course of the next month, if you’re not ass enough to -refuse £500.” - -“Ho! That’s the game we’ve got bent, is it? What old wind-jammer do you -want me to lose now?” - -“Sir!” thundered Shelf, lifting his voice for the first time. “This is -pretty language. I would have you remember that but a short time ago you -were in my employ.” - -“And a fat lot of good it did me,” retorted the sailor. “But,” he added, -with the sudden recollection that it is never wise of a master mariner to -irritate any shipowner, “but, sir, I wasn’t talking to you. I fancied it -was Mr. Onslow here who was wanting to deal with me.” - -“Then your fancy carried you astray, captain,” said Shelf. “Come, come, -don’t let’s get angry with one another. As I repeatedly impress on all -who come in contact with me, there is never any good born out of words -voiced in anger. Mr. Onslow has seen fit to mention a few of your—shall I -say—eccentricities, just to show—er—that we understand one another.” - -“To show he’s got his knife in me, Mr. Shelf, and can wraggle it if he -chooses.” - -“What a fractious pepper-box it is!” said Onslow, with a laugh. “Man, -dear, if I’ve got to be shipmate with you for a solid month, d’ye think -I’d put your back up more than’s necessary? If you remember me at all, -you must know I’m the deuce of a stickler for my own personal comfort and -convenience. You can bet I haven’t been talking at you through gratuitous -cruelty. But Mr. Shelf and I have got a yarn to bring out directly, which -is a bit of a coarse, tough-fibered yarn, and we didn’t want you to give -it a top-dressing of varnish. So, by way of safeguard, I pointed out to -you that if we show ourselves to be sinners, you needn’t sing out that -you find yourself in evil company for the first time.” - -Mr. Theodore Shelf had been shuffling his feet uneasily for some time. -Onslow’s method of speech jarred him to the verge of profanity. His -own saintliness was a garb which he never threw entirely away at any -moment. His voice had always the oily drone of the conventicle. His smug -hypocrisy was a perennial source of pride and comfort to him, without -which he would have felt very lonely and abandoned. - -At this point he drew the conversation into his own hands. It had been -said of him that he always addressed the House of Commons as though he -were addressing a congregation from the pulpit of his own tin tabernacle, -and he preached out his scheme of plunder, violence, and other moral -uncleanness with similar fervent unction. Onslow was openly amused, and -once broke out into a mocking laugh. He was never at any pains to conceal -his contempt for Mr. Theodore Shelf; which was more honest than judicious -on his part. - -Kettle, on the other hand, wore the puckered face of a puzzled man. The -combination of cant and criminality was not altogether new to him. Men -of his profession are frequently apt to behave like fiends unbooted at -sea, and then grovel in clamorous piety amongst the pews of some obscure -meeting-house during all their stay ashore. It is a peculiar trait; -but many a sea-scoundrel believes that he can lay up a stock of fire -insurance of this sort, which will comfortably see him through future -efforts. In Kettle’s mind, however, shipowners were a vastly different -class of beings, and so it never occurred to him that the same might -apply to them. - -In this attitude Captain Kettle listened to the sermon which was reeled -out to him, and rather gathered that the project he was exhorted to take -part in was in some obscure manner a missionary enterprise promoted -solely in the honor and glory of Mr. Theodore Shelf’s own particular -narrow little sect; and had Mr. Shelf made any appreciable pause between -his sonorous periods, Kettle would have felt it his respectful duty to -slip in a humble “Amen.” But the dictator of the great shipping firm was -too fearful of interruptions from his partner to give any opening for a -syllable of comment. - -But if Captain Owen Kettle was unversed in the finer niceties of the -art of hypocrisy, he was a man of angular common-sense; and by degrees -it dawned upon him that Mr. Shelf’s project, when removed of its -top-dressing of religion, was in its naked self something very different -from what he had at first been drawn to believe. - -As this idea grew upon him, the devotional droop faded from the corners -of his lips, and his mouth drew to a hard, straight line, scarcely to be -distinguished amongst the curving bristles of hair which surrounded it. -But he made no interruption, and drank in every word till the speaker had -delivered the whole of his say. Then he uttered his decision. - -“So, gentlemen, you are standing in as partners over this precious -business? And because you know me to be a poor broke man, with a wife -and family, you naturally think you can buy me to work for you off the -straight. Well, perhaps that’s possible, but there are two ways of doing -it, and of the two I like Mr. Onslow’s best. When a man’s a blackguard, -it don’t make him swallow any the sweeter for setting up to be a little -tin saint. And I don’t mind who I say that to.” - -“My good man,” snarled Shelf, “do you mean to threaten me?” - -“No, I don’t. I just gave you my own opinion, as from man to man, -just because I respect myself. But I’m not going round to your place -of worship to shout it out to them that sit under you. They wouldn’t -believe me if I did. Not now at any rate. Besides, it wouldn’t do me any -good, and I couldn’t afford it. I’m a needy man, Mr. Shelf, as you have -guessed; and that’s why I’m going to accept your offer. But don’t let us -have any misunderstanding between ourselves as to what it foots up to. -What I’m going to sign on for directly, when you hand me the papers, is -a spell of piracy on the high seas, neither more nor less. And I’m going -to have my money all paid down in advance before I ring an engine-bell on -your blasted tramp of a steamer. I guess that’s fair enough. My family’ll -want something to go on with if I’m caught, because if one’s found out -at this game it’s just a common ordinary hanging matter. Yes, sir, swing -by the neck till I’m dead as an ax, and may Heaven have mercy on _your_ -miserable tag of a soul! That’s what this tea-party means, and for your -dirty £500 you’re buying a live human man.” - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -£500,000—IN GOLD. - - -The little red-bearded man had gone, slamming the door noisily behind -him. Shelf mopped his large white face with a scented pocket-handkerchief. - -“Do you think,” he said nervously—“do you think we may trust him?” - -“To begin with, we’ve got to now, whether we like it or not. He’s nothing -to gain by playing traitor.” - -“But would he betray us in case of success?” - -“Perhaps,” said Onslow, “he won’t have the chance. Other hands on that -steamer will have to share the secret in whole or in part. Perhaps they -won’t all of them come through it alive. If you remember that we are -plotting deliberate piracy on the high seas, you will recognize that -there is precedent for a considerable percentage of casualties.” - -The City man shuddered. Through the double windows came the sullen roar -of a London street, and in imagination he seemed to distinguish the howl -of the crowd joined in execration against him. - -His eye fell upon a paper on the desk. It was the formal notice from her -bankers that his wife’s account was heavily overdrawn. He lifted the -paper, and tore it with his teeth; and then he smote the table with a -shut fist, so that geysers flew from the inkwells. But his passion found -no outlet in words. He spoke in his platform voice, and said nothing -about the prime compelling force. - -“We will not talk of these unpleasant details, if you please, Mr. Onslow. -I—my heart is weak, I think, and they turn me sick. But at whatever cost, -we must go through with the affair. It is necessary that I make a heavy -_coup_ within the next month, or the consequences may be disastrous.” - -“Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf will go down? Quite so. I’m also at the -end of my cash balance, so that money seems to be the impelling power -for each of us. But come now, wake up, sir, and let’s get on with the -business. I’m not so sweet on this City atmosphere of yours that I care -to spend another morning down here if it can be avoided. How are you -going to raise the specie?” - -“I’ll proceed about it at once,” said Shelf, pressing another of the -buttons on his desk. “You may as well witness every step of the process.” - -In answer to the bell, Fairfax came into the room, nodded rather stiffly -to Onslow, and turned to Shelf with an expectant: “Yes, Sir?” - -In terse, business-like phrase his principal touched upon the silver -crisis in America, and the gold famine in the Southern States. Then he -explained the external view of his projected enterprise. - -“The _Port Edes_,” he said, “is in the Herculaneum Dock, returned on our -hands to-day. Wire Liverpool at once, asking for freights to Norfolk -Virginia, Pensacola Florida, Mobile Alabama, or New Orleans, at lowest -rates. New Orleans is her final port, and offer that at fifteen per cent. -less. Captain Owen Kettle will be in command, and he sails in four days -from this. When you have deputed your clerks to do this, go yourself to -the bank and negotiate for half a million in gold, to be delivered on -board the _Port Edes_ in dock. The insurance policy on the money will be -deposited with the bank to secure them in full for the loan itself, and -for their other charges the credit of the house will easily suffice. Is -that clear?” - -“Perfectly,” said Fairfax; “but I should like to remind you of one thing: -wharf thefts at New Orleans are notorious, and you’ll have to pay -heavily to insure against them.” - -“I know—more heavily than for risks across the ocean and the run up the -river. Underwriters are justly nervous about those all-nation thieves. -But in this instance I propose to save myself that fee, and insure in a -different way. Mr. Onslow is going out on the _Port Edes_ expressly as -my representative, and I fancy that he and the captain together will be -capable of seeing to safe delivery. The ship’s arrival will be reported -by telegraph from the pass at Mississippi Mouth, and my New Orleans agent -can calculate her appearance alongside the levee to a quarter of an hour. -He will meet her with vehicles and a strong escort of deputy-sheriffs as -she brings in to her berth, and will take the specie-boxes off by the -first gangway which is put ashore, and carry them straight to a bank. -Does this strike you as a sound course?” - -“Yes,” said Fairfax thoughtfully; “I see no undue risks. By the way, as -the _Port Edes_ is merely a cargo tramp, and doesn’t hold a certificate -for passengers, I’m afraid the Board of Trade would not let Mr. Onslow -travel by her simply as the firm’s representative. But that could be -easily overcome.” - -“Oh,” said Onslow, “I’ll sign on articles in the usual way as one of -the ship’s company—as fourth mate, say, or doctor, with salary of one -shilling for the run. ’Tisn’t the first time that pleasing fiction has -been palmed upon a shipping-master. It doesn’t deceive any one you know, -because the rate of wages gives one away at the outset. But the country’s -paternal, mutton-headed shipping laws are obeyed, and so everybody’s -pleased.” - -Fairfax laughed and went into the outer offices, and Patrick Onslow -turned to the shipowner with a couple of questions. - -“To begin with,” he said, “why did you offer freights to Norfolk, and -Pensacola, and Mobile, and those places? If you call in there, the -natural thing would be to get the specie ashore and express it by -railroad direct to New Orleans. If you miss that chance, and start -carrying it round by sea, the thing looks fishy at once. Now, fishiness -is an aspect which we can’t afford in the very least degree. The swindle -will call up enough sensation in its most honest and straightforward -dress.” - -“My dear Mr. Onslow, please give me credit for a little more finesse. I -see the objection to intermediate ports as much as you do, but I merely -mentioned them to Fairfax as a blind. To begin with, it is a hundred to -one chance against our getting any cargo at all consigned to them at this -season of the year, even if we offered to carry it gratis. In the second -place, if it was offered, I could easily get out of it in fifty ways. -Afterwards, when the deplorable accident takes place, an inquiry into -this will help to draw off attention from your Floridan Peninsula. Any -one inclined to carp will instantly be told that we were equally ready to -put the specie ashore on the Virginian coast if our other cargo had led -us there. What do you think of that now?” - -“Beg your pardon. That’s clear-sighted enough, and should work correctly. -But I fancy my other objection is better founded. What in the name of -plague did you go and economize over insurance for? Why didn’t you get -the stuff underwritten slap up to the strong-room of the bank?” - -“To save £500. If you aren’t going past the middle of the Mexican Gulf, -what is the use of wasting money by insuring further?” - -“£500 in a deal of £500,000! A mere straw in a cartload!” - -“That, my dear Mr. Onslow, is business. As I often assure my young -friends commencing life, if one takes care of the pennies, the pounds -will take care of themselves. It is by looking after what you are pleased -to consider trivial sums like these that the firm of Marmaduke Rivers and -Shelf has risen to its present eminence.” - -“Oh, wind!” retorted Onslow. “Don’t tell me!” - -“Sir!” exclaimed Shelf. - -“Well, if you will have it, the eminence appears to be uncommon tottery, -and because of your miserable meanness you’re doing your best to bring it -over. It’s just trifles like this that tell. Consider what will happen -after the catastrophe. There’ll be an inquiry that will lay everything -bare down to the very bed-plates. Do you think they won’t jump on this -point at once? The stuff is fully insured up to New Orleans; it isn’t -insured on the levee, and in the streets, where the thefts are notorious. -Doesn’t this drop an instantaneous hint that it was never intended to get -so far?” - -“No,” said Shelf sourly. “I don’t see that it does.” - -“Then,” retorted Onslow, “I differ from you entirely; and as I’m to be -the active agent in this affair, and have to take the first and gravest -physical risk, I do not choose to have my retreat unnecessarily hampered. -I must insist upon your recalling Fairfax for additional instructions. -What extra insurance has got to be paid.” - -“Then pay it yourself,” angrily exclaimed Mr. Shelf. - -“That’s outside the bargain. Working expenses are your contribution to -the partnership. And besides, for another thing, I couldn’t plank down -that money if I wished. I haven’t it in the world.” - -“Mr. Onslow, I believe you. Will you extend the same courtesy to me when -I tell you that if I were to attempt raising even such a trivial sum as -£500 to-day it would precipitate me into bankruptcy to-morrow.” - -“Whew! Are you nipped as badly as all that?” - -“I have a remorseless drain on me which drinks up the profits of this -business like a great sponge. It is a domestic drain, and I cannot resist -it.” - -“You poor beggar!” said Onslow, with the first scrap of sympathy he had -yet shown to his partner. “I believe I understand, and it tones down -your dingy color. You aren’t quite all black. I believe by your own -painting you’re only a moderate sort of gray. And if I’ve been beastly -rude and hard with you, because I’ve considered you a soapy scoundrel -playing entirely for your own hand, I’ll apologize to you. That isn’t in -the least polite, but I think it’s plain, and perhaps we shall get on -together better now. But about this bankruptcy. It’ll be rather a mess if -you go smash before our Florida operation realizes its profits. It will -thicken the inquiry, you know, to a very unpleasant keenness.” - -“I think I shall keep on my feet, Mr. Onslow. I trust, I pray I shall; -and, moreover, I thank you for what you have said. I do confess that your -manner of speech has wounded me much at times.” - -“Oh, as to that,” returned Onslow, “I mostly say ‘spade’ when I mean it, -and I don’t care to mix religion with theft, when I’m talking with a -co-conspirator. But I fancy we understand one another more comfortably -now, and I’ll leave you to make the rest of the arrangements here in -London. This afternoon I’ll pick up Kettle and run down to Liverpool and -get things in hand there. They’ll require care. To begin with, there’s -a suitable armament to be smuggled on board without advertisement. And -there are other nefarious preparations to be made. Piracy on the high -seas is not a thing to be undertaken lightly nowadays; nor is murder.” - -“Oh, heavens!” cried Shelf, “don’t speak of these horrors.” - -“I speak of them,” replied Onslow grimly, “because it is right that you -should understand what will probably be done. I don’t intend to redden my -fingers if it can be avoided; but as I put my neck in jeopardy, failure -or no failure, I naturally don’t intend to hesitate at any action which -will bring unqualified success. Only understand fully, Mr. Theodore -Shelf, that piracy you are already an active sharer in, and if there’s -murder done to boot, you will be as guilty as the worst, even though -you sit here in your snug London offices whilst other rougher men are -handling pistol and knife in the Gulf or in a Floridan mangrove swamp.” - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - -THE SEND-OFF. - - -The _Port Edes_ had gained the name of an unlucky ship. She had slain -three men in her building; she had crushed another to death the day -before she left the slips; and, though only three years in the water, she -had already maimed enough hands from various crews to make her a full -complement. Some vessels are this way; from no explainable cause there -seems to be a diabolic fatality about them. - -It is not to be supposed that sailormen rush to join a craft of this -sinister reputation. Although they are called asses in the bulk, they -are only asses in part. They always try for the best berths first. But -because there are not enough of these to go round; and because, thanks to -the Dago and the Dutchman, there are not sufficient berths of any sort -whatever to supply all aspirants; it is always possible to man any vessel -which a Board of Trade official will pass through a dock gates. - -Just as no man is ever successful in anything without due cause, so -_per contra_ few sailormen are down on their luck except through some -peculiar trait of incapacity. So that on your unpopular ship, be she -tramp-steamer, or eke weeping wind-jammer, you do not get much pick of a -crew. You have to put up with what other people have left, and it does -not take you long to learn that your beauties have not been rejected for -their excellences. - -It was this way on the _Port Edes_. Forward and aft, engine-hold and -pantry, each man on board of her had his private sea-failings. Between -them they lacked wakefulness, eyesight, decision, strength of fist, -strength of language, seamanship, and common sobriety. Amongst the -deck-hands there were virulent sea-lawyers; in the stokeholds there was -_âmes damnées_ wanted by several Governments. The engineers were skilful -in gaining the smallest possible knottage per ton of coal; the mates were -all slipshod navigators, untrustworthy even to correct a compass and -useless to drive a truculent crew. - -Over all was Owen Kettle, master mariner. Whatever his failings might -be (and the index of them tailed out), they did not show prominently at -the head of such a ship’s company. Like all men in the merchant marine, -he had been bred in the roughest school; but, unlike his successful -brethren, he had not graduated later on to the smooth things of a -well-manned passenger liner. For his sins he had remained the pitiful -knock-about skipper, a man with knife-edged words always ready on the lip -of his teeth, a leaden whistle in one jacket-pocket, and a lethal weapon -in the other. He was an excellent seaman and navigator—a man capable of -going an entire voyage without taking off his clothes or enjoying one -watch of regular sleep. Whilst in command at sea, he credited himself -with the powers of a Czar, and was entirely unscrupulous in gaining -ends which expediency or his owners laid down for him; and though not -physically powerful, he had the pluck of a dog, and an unholy reputation -for marksmanship. Taking into allowance these qualifications, it may -be understood that for the handling of such a menagerie of all-nation -scoundreldom and incapacity as bunked in the S. S. _Port Edes_, no better -man than Owen Kettle breathed in either hemisphere. - -The crew signed their marks on the articles at the shipping office in -the Sailors’ Home, and went off grumbling to get rid of their advances. -Later, most of them turned up on the steamer; some with their worldly -goods done up in dunnage sacks (which look to the uninitiated like -pillow-slips); some apparently possessing nothing but the squalid raiment -they stood up in. There was not one of them dressed like a sailor, -according to the conventional idea, yet most of them had made their -bread upon the seas since early boyhood, which shows what conventional -ideas are sometimes worth. They were most of them oldish men, and looked -even older than their years. - -The engineers came on board early, for the most part in scrubby blue -serge, and sour black temper. They grumbled at the mess-room in broad -Glaswegian, prophesied evil (in advance) about the capacities of the -mess-room steward and the ship’s cook, dumped their belongings into their -various rooms, and changed to apparel more suitable for tail-twisting in -the unclean regions below. Then they went on duty, quarreled with the -donkeyman who was making steam for the winches, and proceeded to split up -their crew of firemen and trimmers into watches, and apportion them to -furnace doors and bunkers. - -The three mates, the boatswain, and the carpenter were also on board -betimes, most of them large-headed with recent libations, and feeling -cantankerous accordingly. There was a small general cargo being -shipped for New Orleans, and it gave these worthy officers ease to -find occasional acid fault with the stevedore’s crew or the crane men -on the wharf; but, for the most part, they shuffled about the decks in -easy slippers, attending to the various ship duties in massive sneering -silence. - -Patrick Onslow came into the chart-house on the bridge-deck, closing the -door behind him. “A cheery, amiable crowd you’ve collected,” he said. - -“Aren’t they?” replied Captain Kettle from a sofa locker. “They’re just -a terror of a crew. You wait till we get to sea, and they start on -mischief. My mate’s a cur; he wouldn’t stand up to a Chinaman. And the -rest of the after-guard is much of a pattern—picked that way on purpose. -Oh, I tell you, Mr. Onslow, that I stand alone, and I shall have my hands -full. But let ’em start, the brutes. I’ll haze them. It isn’t a new sort -of tea-party, this, with me.” - -“You’re going into it with your eyes open, anyway.” - -“Oh don’t you make any error, sir,” said Kettle. “I know my job. And if I -warn you, it’s because you’ll see things for yourself, and perhaps join -in at them. I don’t go and tell everybody. Not much. They think ashore -I’ve got a real soft thing on this time. Why, do you know, Mr. Onslow,” -he added, with a thin, sour grin, “my old woman wanted to come with me -for the trip. She said it was so long since she’s had a whiff of outside -air, that now I’d such a tidy steamboat under me, she couldn’t miss the -chance. Yes, sir; and she said she’d bring one of the kids with her that -wanted to be a sailor, like his daddy! I tell you, she was that took on -the idea she’d hear no refusal; and I had to write a letter to owners, -and get them to wire back a ‘No’ she could read for herself. It’d look -well set to music, that tale, wouldn’t it? Sort of jumpy music, you know, -with a yo-heave-humbug chorus to it, same as all sailors’ songs have that -you hear in the halls.” - -Onslow shrugged his shoulders. “What can you expect at the price?” he -asked. “This isn’t a twelve-pound-a-month berth; and you’ve threshed -across the Atlantic in a worse ship for less.” - -“Don’t you mistake me,” retorted Kettle. “I’m working for full value -received; and there’s many an old sailor’d like to be in my shoes, if he -only knew. I’m not grumbling at the berth, only when a man’s on a racket -of this kind, it’s a bit hard on him to have a wife and kids he’s fool -enough to be fond of. It’s an ugly amusement, lying to them like a play -actor, when you know it’s ten chances to one you’ll never see English mud -again. That’s the way it cuts, though I suppose you’ll think it all a -sailor’s grumble. Perhaps you aren’t a married man?” - -“No; I’m not.” - -“But you’ve got people who care for you?” - -Onslow gave the ghost of a smile, and then laughed. “No,” he said, “I -can’t even boast of that. Acquaintances are mine in thousands; but -friends—well, all friendship has its breaking strain. I’m a bit like that -comfortable, contemptible person, the Miller of the Dee. I believe I did -care for somebody once; and she made me think she cared for me. Probably -she lied, because, under persuasion, she went off with another man. Bah! -though, what does it matter? Kettle, we’re talking rank sentiment, and -that’s an unprofitable employment for men engaged on a piece of delicate -business. And—here’s a gentleman come to tell me that the consignment of -specie is just commencing to arrive. Now, captain, the stuff’ll be in -iron-bound boxes, and you and I have got to weigh each one separately, -and check the invoice. Then we’re to act as our own stevedores, and stow -half of it in the cabin next my room, and half of it across the alley-way -next the mate’s.” - -“Why divide it?” - -“Because the weight is big, and it would give your steamer a heavy list -to starboard.” - -“Oh, as to that, never mind. We can easily bring her up again with a -trimming tank; and I shouldn’t feel comfortable if any of the stuff was -in that room next the mate’s. You see, Mr. Onslow, any one on board can -go down that alley-way. In fact, it’s the only road from end to end of -the ship, unless you go up over the bridge deck. And I’d not guarantee -but what the bait wouldn’t make some of them beauties try and tamper -with the door. It’s big enough to smudge the honesty of an archbishop, -if he was only earning four pounds a month. Now, the room next yours has -iron walls, and opens only into the inner cabin. There’s a good lock on -it already, and if I make the carpenter bend on four more, you’ll have a -strong-room the Bank of England might boast about.” - -“That sounds sensible,” commented the envoy from the bank. - -“Very well,” said Onslow, “I believe it is the best plan. Now, if you -please, we’ll have the weighing-machine in the main cabin, and if you, -sir, will instruct your men to bring in the boxes one by one, I’ll -satisfy myself that they agree with the tally, and Captain Kettle shall -build them up in the state-room before us both. It’s a very responsible -job we have upon us, and the more counter-checkings and precautions we -can put into it the better for our several reputations.” - -It was a responsible job. Not every day is specie to the tune of half a -million British sovereigns shipped from a Liverpool dock; and because -gold-boxes are made in a conventional pattern, the shipment was spotted, -and crowds gathered to stare at the cased-in wealth. - -As staring dumbly is dry work, self-appointed orators amongst the -crowd naturally distributed gratis their own private opinions upon the -situation; and, according to their luck or eloquence, these attracted -larger or smaller audiences. No one took them very seriously, and they -for the most part treated the subject in a jocular vein. It was not till -Captain Kettle and the Mersey pilot had gone on to the upper bridge, and -the mate on the fore-deck had cast off the first bow-fast, that a prophet -arose who spoke of the gold shipment in another key. - -He was a wild, unkempt, knock-kneed man, who attracted first attention by -tying a crimson handkerchief to an umbrella and brandishing it above his -head. Being on the face of him a creature who never, if he could avoid -it, put his hand to honest labor, he naturally addressed the crowd at -large as “Fellow workers.” These things awoke a slight humorous interest; -and because the man had the gift of glib and striking speech, the crowd -continued to listen after the first pricking up of their ears. - -The man’s discourse need not be reported in detail. He was an anarchist, -red, rampant, and ruthless; and by means of arguments, some warped, some -fair enough, he pointed out to his hearers that the mission of the _Port -Edes_ was another knife-thrust of capital into the ribs of labor. The -statement met with a very mixed reception, but the anarchist silenced -both the jeers and the applause with a beseeching wave of his hand, and -followed along the curb of the wharf the steamer, which was commencing to -float towards the dock gates. He spoke to those on board her now rather -than to his more immediate following, and unclean faces stared at him -from over the line of bulwarks. - -“To any man of you who values life,” he cried, “I offer a solemn warning. -That ship is doomed; she will sink in mid-ocean, blown apart by our -petards, and her ill-gotten cargo will be hurled out of capital’s reach -forever. Those who are misguided enough to be her guardians will be blown -into space. Listen, you men of her crew. Jump on the pier-head yonder as -she passes into the basin, and take the consequences. The brutal laws of -this country will hurl you into prison; but better a season dragging out -a martyr’s sentence, than death as an enemy to the workers’ cause.” - -At this point the strong right hand of the law descended on to the -speaker’s elbow; and then, because he attempted to resist, the -willing right knee of the law jerked up suddenly into the small of -that anarchist’s back; after which he was haled ignominiously to a -police-station, and the place of his speaking knew him no more. - -But the fellow’s threats had not been without their result. Every hand -on the _Port Edes_’ deck had heard them distinctly, and disquiet arose -under the belts of nine out of ten. The mates grew nervous and the men -inattentive; and, from the bridge, Captain Kettle’s voice and whistle -kept ringing out with biting clearness. As it was, only one man attempted -to put the warning into practical effect. He was a miserable, half-clad -wretch, a coal-trimmer by rating, already repentant of the spell of -physical toil which he had signed on for. - -Passing through the lock-gates into the basin, the steamer’s port quarter -swung gently towards the wall. A sailor, in readiness, dropped from -above and ran aft with the lanyard of a cork fender. The trimmer jumped -on the bulwarks, and one might have thought that he was going to bear -a hand—an unnecessary hand. The sailor did so, and cursed him for his -officiousness. The donkeyman, however, who was oiling the after-winch, -had other ideas on the subject, and stood by for a rush. So it befell -when that trimmer was getting himself ready for a spring back on the -quay-head, the donkeyman’s long legs took him rapidly across the red iron -decks, and when the trimmer was already in mid-air, the donkeyman’s huge -paw descended upon the slack of his black breeches, and drew him back as -though he possessed the weight of a feather pillow. Whereat the crowd at -the pier-head yelled with delighted laughter, and the dingy steamer made -her way stolidly on to the muddy waters of the Mersey ebb, which bubbled -against the lip of the walls beyond. - -“Curse you!” snarled the trimmer, “what’s that for?” - -“Because we’re short-manned in the stokehold already, me son; an’ if -there’s a hand goes, it’s meself that’ll have to stand watch and watch in -his place. Havin’ got you, I shall be a jintleman now, and slape in my -bed at night all the way to New Orleans. See that?” - -“This mucky old tramp’ll be blowed up sure’s death, and I shall be -killed.” - -“Well, bless me!” retorted the donkeyman; “who’d miss you if you was -killed—always supposing you weren’t wanted for our furnaces? Here, get -up, you half-baked scum of the workhouse, and tumble below. Thank your -stars the old man hasn’t seen you from the bridge. But don’t give me any -more of your lip, or I’ll report you to him and the chief to boot. Now, -_mosey_.” - -The coal-trimmer blew his nose on his gray neck-handkerchief, and -shambled off below, muttering. The donkeyman returned to his winch, -unbent the chain, and sent it down into the adjacent hold. Then he -retired to the poop deck-house, where he lived with the carpenter and -boatswain, and offered to bet those worthies (who had just come in for -dinner) that Captain Kettle shot some one on board before the _Port Edes_ -tied up against New Orleans levee. - -“He’s a just holy terror, our old man,” observed the donkeyman -cheerfully. “I sailed with him once before, and he unbent a -quartermaster’s front teeth with the bridge telescope before we were -three days out. With the smudgy crowd we’ve got here now, it’s a pound -to a brick they start him moving, even sooner than that. Not that I mind -myself. Sea’s dull enough as a general thing, and I like to see a bit -of life throwing about. And at that game, little Red Kettle’s good as a -Yankee skipper any day.” - - - - -CHAPTER IX. - -GROUND-BAIT. - - -For reasons, the _Port Edes_ took the “North about” course; that is, she -headed across south of the Banks of Newfoundland nearly to Cape Hatteras, -and then braved the three-knot current of the Gulf Stream by passing down -the Florida Channel on the western side of the Bahamas. They had carried -good weather with them—light head breezes or calms—all the way; and, -although coals were dear and the day’s outlay was limited to twenty-eight -tons by order, the steamer usually averaged ten and a half knots, despite -the unskilfulness of the engine-room staff. - -In a canvas chair on the bridge deck under the lee of the fiddley sat -Patrick Onslow, with a pipe between his teeth and Pierre Loti’s “Fantôme -d’Orient” in his lap. He was distinctly idling. For the moment he was -wondering how, from so transparently blue a sea, the spray which jumped -from the wave-crests could be colorless and opaque. Then, by following -with the eye a tangle of yellow Gulf weed which floated past, his -attention was carried away to some little gray spouts of fog, which -told of whales and their calves taking a summer outing in the milk-warm -waters of the south. Beyond, his eyes fell upon one of the screw-pile -lighthouses with which the United States Government has fringed the -Florida shoal; and on the far horizon sprouted the wind-threshed tops of -some scattered cabbage palms, which told that there at least the shallow -sea was sea no more. At the back of these palms lay the mysterious -shelter of the Everglades. - -A thought passed through Patrick Onslow’s mind, a thought of the drama -to be played under shelter of those recesses within the next few days, -and he frowned. He thrust the thought from him as an impertinence, and -turned again to his novel. But he was destined just then to read no more -from that dainty vignette of Stamboul. Through the grating of the fiddley -above his head came a frightened shout; then a chorus; then a prolonged -clattering, as iron tools were thrown on the floor-plates, and the boots -of scared men smote the rungs of the ladders. - -Onslow gave a quick smile to himself, as though he understood something; -then mounted a look of concern on his face, and, getting up from his -chair, crossed to port and strode up to the break of the bridge-deck. -The captain, coming out of the chart-house, joined him. From the door -of the alley-way beneath them rushed a crowd of frightened men—trimmers -and stokers, stripped to the waist, engineers in dungaree—all the human -contents of the lowest hold. Kettle singled out the Chief with his eye, -and addressed him with sour irony— - -“’Afternoon, Mr. McFee. Fine, isn’t it, for the time of year? Have your -curs forgotten that they’re paid to work this steamboat up Mississippi -River to a city called New Orleans? Or have they induced the other watch -to go below and give them a spell?” - -“Guid God, sir, dinna jest!” replied the Chief. - -“Ye remember what yon scoundrel said on Liverpool dock wall? Weel, he’s -been as guid as his words, sir. We’ve found an infernal machine already.” - -“Well?” drawled Kettle. - -“Man, we may be blown to the sea-floor any minute.” - -“Sea whisky! sea grandmother!” - -“Man, sir, see wi’ your own een. By God’s guid mercy the donkeyman picked -it from among the coals, or it’s no knowin’ where we’d bin this blessed -moment!” - -“Hand it up here,” the skipper commanded shortly. - -The burly donkeyman, half grinning, half afraid, came up the iron steps -and handed the captain a box painted to look like a knob of coal. - -“It was ticking when I picked it up, sir,” he said, “but when I handled -it, the ticking stopped.” - -The captain took the thing in his hand. It started on a fresh _cluck_, -_cluck_, and the grimy men on the iron decks below humped their shoulders -as though to better receive a blow, and began to shuffle away towards the -bows. - -“Oh, it may be something dangerous,” said Captain Kettle, and he hove his -burden over the side, “or it mayn’t. Looked to me like a toy to frighten -flats. There’s only one man with the pluck of a roach amongst you, and -here’s half-a-crown for him.” - -The donkeyman’s black forefinger knuckled his greasy cap. - -“As for the rest, your mothers must have suckled you on pigeons’ milk, -and then sent you to a girls’ school to dry-nurse. You pack of beauties! -Oh, you cowardly, bobby-hunted gems! If the thing was found, well, found -it was, and the donkeyman brought it on deck. What do you want to foul -the clean air for with your dingy stinking carcasses before your watch -was out? I’ll log every man of you for this; yes, Mr. McFee, and Mr. -Second, and Mr. Third, I’ll dirty your tickets for you as well, and if -you give me another ounce of bother I’ll take care you none of you ever -get another berth so long as the universe holds water to carry shipping. -You cowardly hounds! Oh, you trust me!” - -The men slunk back into the alley-way again out of shot of the skipper’s -tongue, and the engineers, plucking up courage first, led the way below. -Some one clattered a shovel on a firebar. Instinct made the trimmers obey -the signal, and they went to the bunkers. The firemen followed, and the -steam-gauge remounted before it had received any appreciable check. It -was all an affairs of five minutes. - -Kettle passed a forefinger round the inside of his shirt-collar, and -strolled across with Onslow to where the deck-chairs straddled in the -shade of the fiddley. “They’re a holy crew, aren’t they?” said the master -of the _Port Edes_. - -“I think they’re what we want. We should be rather out of it with a -plucky lot who insisted on standing by us at a pinch.” - -“Oh, don’t you make any error about that,” replied Kettle. “They’d have -been shaky anyway, but this bogus clockwork devil of yours fixes them to -a nicety. It’ll be every Jack for himself when the scare comes, and Davy -Jones take the steamer, and the others. Oh, they’ll run like a warren of -rabbits. The brutes!” - -Kettle broke off abruptly, and stared moodily over the Gulf Stream. A -flying-fish got out of the blue water and ran across the ripples like a -silver rat. A school of porpoises snorted leisurely up from astern, and -passed the steamer as though she had been at anchor. And the tangles of -the gulf-weed floated past like reefs of tawny coral. - -“Do you ever read poetry?” the skipper suddenly asked. - -Onslow slewed round his head and stared. The idea of this vinegar-mouthed -little savage talking of poetry very nearly made him break into wild -laughter. With an effort he steadied his face and said quietly, -“Sometimes.” - -“I’m glad of that. Somehow I hadn’t dared ask you before, but now I know, -Mr. Onslow, I like you all the better. It gives us something in common -we can talk about without being ashamed. We can’t very well discuss the -other matter which binds us together and respect ourselves at the same -time.” - -“Quite right. You and I, captain, are shouldered to common piracy by the -force of circumstances; but I always kick myself when I think about it. -There’s no glamour of romance about our intended villainy, or the way -it’s being led up to.” - -“Not a bit. Byron wrote about piracy, but Byron was no seaman, and he -didn’t know what hazing a crew meant. A thief’s a dirty scoundrel all -the world over, and always has been; and a sea thief, having the scum of -the earth to handle, has to make himself the crudest brute on earth if -he wants to succeed. I think it’s that which put me out of liking with -Byron and all those poets who’ve written about movement at sea. They give -a wrong idea of men’s motives and actions, and when they get talking on -shop, they’re that inaccurate and absurd they make one tired. No, Mr. -Onslow, give me a land poet, who talks about farms, and primroses, and -tinkling brooks, and things he understands, and with that man I can sit -through two watches on end. Reading him may make me feel low, but it -doesn’t do a man harm to be that way sometimes. Ye see, Mr. Onslow, a -scuffle, or a row with a mutinous crew, is just meat and drink to me. -Yes, sir, that’s the kind of brute I am.” - -They chatted and basked during the rest of the afternoon, whilst the two -mates off watch painted ironwork, and the crew off duty grumbled and -smoked and slept in the stuffy forecastle. The cabin tea came. Kettle, -at the head of the table, preserved a sour silence, and Onslow and the -mates carried amongst them a strained civility. And then skipper and -supernumerary officer returned to their canvas chairs beside the fiddley -on the bridge-deck. - -The Gulf Stream rippled crisply over the steamer’s wake astern, and the -small wavelets of a calm licked the yellow rust-stains which patched her -sweeping flank. Before them the narrow sea was the color of a dull blue -roofing-slate. The bright, hot day had faded; the brilliant cobalt had -filtered away from overhead, and a silver nail-paring of moon peered from -a sky of amorphous violet, still lighted in its higher flats by the sun’s -after-glow. - -On the horizon line was what at first appeared to be a steamer’s smoke, -but what the glass showed to be the reek of a fire on the invisible, -low-lying Florida coast. No blaze-glow could be seen. It might be a -fisher’s camp-fire on an outlying key; it might be a game-driving of -Seminole Indians beyond the explored coast-fringe, in that unknown tangle -of trees and grasses and lagoons, the Everglades themselves. - -“It’s worth living, Mr. Onslow, times like these,” said Kettle, when they -had sat there in silence till the warm night had spread all over, and the -white stars were beginning to show in multitudes through its gaps. - -The other nodded, sucking at his cold pipe. “None of those poets have -ever put all this down on paper. They’ve got parts—bits—but not all. I -fancy it is because they haven’t seen the thing for themselves. I’ve -tried myself, but I haven’t made much account of it.” - -“What, you—you’re a poet?” Onslow rapped out. - -“I knock off a bit of verse occasionally,” said the skipper complacently. -“When I’m in the mood, that is. It generally comes times like this—when -I’ve been tail-twisting the hands, and have a spell of a rest and a think -afterwards.” - -“I see—the outcome of the vivid contrast,” said Onslow. He imagined -to himself that these boasted poems would be of the “heroic” order, -to the verge of melodrama. As it happened, he could not conveniently -have made a worse guess. Kettle lugged from his pocket a doubled-up -exercise-book, reddened slightly under the tan, and handed it across. His -companion flattened out the crease, and, in the light which came from a -chart-house port, dipped into the manuscript verses for himself. To his -astonishment, they were one and all sonnets and ballads which might well -have been written by a sentimental schoolgirl. They breathed of love and -devotion and premature fading away, and at least three gushing adjectives -qualified each tender noun. - -There was no word about the sea, on which their author had spent his -life, or of the things of the sea, with which he had had all his -dealings. He knew about these as few men did, but they seemed common -to him, and unclean. Consequently he had delivered himself of an ode -to that Spring which he had never witnessed ashore, and love songs to -ladies he had never met outside the covers of cheap fiction. It was all -imagination, and untutored, uninspired imagination at that. - -As a result, Onslow found the poems too killingly funny for words, and -was consumed with a wild desire for laughter; but, with that red-bearded -little savage, their maker, glaring anxiously at him from the opposite -shadow, he dare not let so much as the tail of a smile dance from the -corner of his mouth. He had to enjoy and endure in silence; and, with the -exercise-book thrust out to the yellow light-stream, he read on through -the stanzas diligently. - -In one, evidently autobiographical, the writer spoke of himself as a -“timid frail gazelle,” in another he addressed his remarks from the -mouth-piece of a “coy and cooing turtle-dove,” to a “sylphlike maiden of -haughty mien,” who, at the time of the narration, was the “bewitching, -entrancing, unparalleled queen” of another gentleman’s hearth. An “Ode -to Excellence,” which commenced “Hairy Alfred, brother bard,” was -evidently directed at a contemporary; but the past was cared for in -“Cleopatra, a lament,” which a footnote stated could be sung to the tune -of “Greenland’s Icy Mountains.” - -Probably as a collection Captain Kettle’s was unique in its clumsy, -maudlin sentiment, and its general unexpectedness. - -Meanwhile the author was fidgeting nervously. He had not got over -that initial nervousness which publication gives. He hungered for a -criticism—favorable if possible. At last he made bold to ask for it. - -“You’re a wonderful man, Kettle,” returned his companion, quite meaning -what he said; “and unless I had seen those verses for myself, I’d never -have believed you capable of producing them, no matter what had been told -me about your powers.” - -The poet gave a sigh of relief, and was going to pursue the subject -further, when something fell upon his ear which turned his thoughts into -a very different key. - -“By James! there’s the engine stopped. What’s up now, I wonder?” - -He jumped to his feet, and stood with neck craned out, listening. The -ring of heavy boots made itself heard on the engine-room ladders. Then -there was a murmur of voices and a pattering of footsteps from the -forecastle, and presently a stream of men began to ascend the bridge-deck -ladders. Amongst the growing babel of voices came references to the gold: -“Half a million yellow sovereigns, boys!” and threats there was no -mistaking. “Teach the old man manners, or put him over the side!” - -By an evident previous arrangement the men were massing themselves on the -port side of the bridge deck. - -“Mutiny, by James!—that’s what this means!” commented Captain Kettle in -an undertone. - -He was cool as ice, and on the moment had decided how to act. - -“Now, Mr. Onslow, slip into the chart-house for your pistol. I have mine -in my pocket. It’s us two against the crowd of ’em, and we’ll finish out -top side. Oh, don’t you make any error; it’ll be a red night’s work for -those dogs. But we’ll rub the fear of death into them before we’ve done -this time—into those that are left, that is. Get your pistol, quick, sir, -and skin your eye for handy shooting!” - - - - -CHAPTER X. - -MUTINY. - - -Patrick Onslow came out of the chart-house with all the armament he could -lay hands upon; to wit, three revolvers. He gave one to the Captain and -put the others in his own jacket pocket, so that they had a brace apiece. -From the other side of the bridge-deck the clamor of the men rose high -into the night; and the steamer’s fore-truck began to swing past the -stars. Her engines had stopped, the quartermaster had deserted the wheel, -and the Gulf Stream was taking her as simple flotsam whither it listed. - -There was no starboard ladder to the upper bridge, but Kettle swung -himself lightly up by a funnel-stay and a stanchion, and climbed over -the canvas dodger. Onslow followed as nimbly. The mate of the watch -received them with a frightened sidelong glance, but no words; and then -he vanished into the darkness. - -Captain Owen Kettle stumped cheerfully across to the port side of the -bridge and looked down. Beneath him, massed and moving, was apparently -every man of his crew. The electric lamp from inside the head of the -companion-way blazed full upon them, dazzling some of the group, and -blinding the others with dense black shadow. With folded arms he looked -down on them for a full minute, with a silent, sneering laugh, till -the upturned faces, which had been quiet in expectation, began to grow -clamorous again. Then he waved them to noiselessness, and spoke. - -The man’s words were not conciliatory. He addressed his hearers as dogs, -and wished to know, in the name of the Pit, why they had dared to leave -their duties and their kennel to come to sully his bridge-deck. - -The harangue was brief and beautifully to the point. An ordinary seaman -stood out into the middle of the circle of light, and made reply: “You -gall us togs, und you dreat us as togs, und we’re nod going to schtandt -it no longer. This grew temants its rechts!” - -“Hallo!” said Kettle, “got a blooming Dutchman to speak for you? Well, -you must be a hard-up crowd! See here now, if you do want to talk, have -your say, and be done with it. English is the official language on this -ship; understand that, and don’t waste my time.” - -The German seemed inclined to bluster and hold his ground, but he had no -backers. - -“If you’re undecided,” suggested Captain Kettle, “you’ve got a nigger -amongst you; why not set him on to talk? If you were men, I wouldn’t say -it; but he’s as much a man as any of you, and perhaps he’ll throw in a -sand-dance to enliven proceedings.” - -The negro, from somewhere on the outskirts of the crowd, broke into -a loud guffaw, till some one kicked him on the shins, and sent him -away yelping _diminuendo_ into the farther darkness. An angry growl -went up from the white men at the taunt, and one of them, a whiskered -quartermaster in a cardigan jacket, stepped out and spat into the circle -of light. He looked round to catch the encouraging glances of his mates, -and then lifted up his face towards the upper bridge. “See here, Captain -Kettle, you’d better not try us too far. This isn’t a slave ship you’re -commanding. It’s a common, low-down, British tramp; and the law looks -after the deck-hands and all the rest of us.” - -“Now that’s fair speaking,” said Kettle. “I’ve a profound respect for -the Merchant Shipping Act and all the rest of the laws. My lad, if you -fancy you’ve anything to complain of, a sea-lawyer like you must know the -remedy. Get your witnesses and go with them before the British Consul in -New Orleans.” - -“A fat lot of good that would do,” retorted the man. “What consul ever -believed an old sailor against the skipper? No, sir; we’d only get -penitentiary for our pains. Besides, what we want—and what we intend to -have—is an alteration in things, beginning now.” - -“Ah! I see. And what would you like? Shall I have a hold cleared out and -fit up with four-post beds for you to make a drawing-room of? Shall I -order my steward to hand iced pop round to the gentlemen who are heavin’ -coals in the stokehold? Come now, out with it!” - -The little captain was deliberately irritating the men, and Onslow -marveled at his recklessness. Once let an outbreak start, and he and -Kettle stood not one chance in a million of living through it. But Kettle -knew his game, and was playing it well. - -Only one man laughed, and his laugh closed up again in a moment like the -snap of a watch. Some scowled, a few swore; the quartermaster in the -cardigan jacket alone remained unmoved. Of Kettle’s outrageous raillery -he took no notice whatever, but continued his plaint in a solid monotone, -as though he had been reading it from a book. - -“In the first instance, it’s the grub we complains of, partic’ly the -sugar. It ain’t sugar at all; it’s just a slump of molasses.” - -“That,” said Kettle, “is due to your own laziness. The bottom of a sugar -barrel’s always that way unless you turn it end for end every day or so. -The molasses ’d settle through the Queen’s sugar at Windsor and spoil -half of it unless the barrel was looked to. By James!” he continued, with -a first show of fury, “is it for this you dogs have turned yourselves -into a howling pack of mutineers, and let my ship drift like a hen-coop -towards Newfoundland?” - -The quartermaster was obviously disconcerted by the attack, so much so, -in fact, that he missed the next few counts of his indictment, and came -at once to the main head. - -“It’s a rise of wages that we insists on principally,” he said. “We -take it we’ve been signed on for this run to New Orleans under false -pretenses. Nothing was said about the sort of cargo we was to carry, -which, naturally, incites them anarchist chaps to vi’lence. We’re -suffering undue risks. There’s been one devil machine found already, and -as like as not there is others besides. The bloomin’ ole tramp may go up -any minute; and because we’re standing that risk, we say we ought to be -paid accordin’. The cargo can stand the pull, and if you aren’t willing, -the hands here has made up their minds to broach it for themselves.” - -Kettle did not answer at once. He seemed to be twisting words over and -over in his mouth, and then gulping them down his throat and bringing -up others. It was a full minute before the man found speech, but then -it came from him in a torrent. “You great fools!” he cried, “this isn’t -an ordinary cargo that you can help yourselves out of, and let the -underwriters stand treat. You bet the tallyman won’t wink at any yarn -about ‘damaged in transit’ over the stuff we’re bringing out. If there’s -so much as a miserable half-sovereign missing, the whole crowd here, cook -and captain’s dog, stay in a New Orleans calaboose till it’s found, and -then come out with their tickets dirtied. Oh! you one-eyed, mutton-headed -fools!” - -Onslow stared at the man curiously. His truculent tone had left him -completely. His hands had quitted the pistol-butts and were gripped on -the bridge rail. His elbows were beating nervously against his ribs. - -From some mouth in the blacker shadow came a deep, derisive laugh; and -then a voice (presumably from the laugher) said: “Who wants to go to New -Orleans? Who wants to go nearer than the next key, or reef, or sandbank, -or whatever it may be? Let’s pile up the blazing old tramp on that, and -then boat-cruise across to Cuba. There’s nice, snug bays in Cuba, where -the _guardacostas_ don’t ask questions; or, if they did, a bit of yellow -ballast out of the boats would stop their jaws quick enough.” - -The voice laughed again and ceased. - -“Who spoke there?” Captain Kettle demanded. - -Out rolled into the bright circle the massive body of the donkeyman. - -“You!” - -The donkeyman knuckled his greasy cap in assent. - -“I’m your man, Capt’n,” he said, “but I’d be pleaseder to help ye -carrying out the crew’s wishes than going agin them. You’ll be dealt by -honustly, Capt’n—liberally—yes, better than ye ever have been in this -world yet, or ever will be again—an’ the steamer will be lost at say. -Blowed to rivuts an’ ould iron by a conspirathor’s bomb. It’s a most -natural ending for her.” - -Kettle stared at the donkeyman with his mouth agape, and the eyes -standing out of his head. His face was thrust out at full neck’s length; -his fingers beat a vague tattoo on the white iron rail of the bridge. - -Then the crew’s original spokesman lifted up his unlucky voice for the -second time: “Ach, vriends, we’re vasting minutes. We haf made up our -mindts. Why should we not go und tivide ter cold mitout furder pother? -Cood Ole Man! come and sgramble for a share like ter rest of us.” - -Slowly Captain Kettle stiffened. His eyes lost their stare and glinted -unpleasant fire in their more proper orbits; his lower jaw closed up with -a snap; his fists slid to his jacket pockets and gripped there. - -“You painted Dutchman!” - -The crew rustled uneasily. - -“Do I live to hear a set of dogs like you dictating to me? Does any man -here think he’s going to have an inch of his own way aboard of me?” - -“Come, Captain Kettle,” said the quartermaster, who had talked before, -“don’t be unreasonable. The Dutchman means well, though he didn’t put it -Bristol fashion. And besides, we’ve made up our minds to share in that -gold, and you’d better chip in and share too, without a dust. It’ll be -a deal comfortabler for all hands, and besides, it’s got to be done, -anyway. We’re all determined, and we’re too many for you, even if Mr. -Onslow does stand in on your side.” - -Kettle’s face lit up with the joy of battle. “Are you, by James!” he -snapped. “We’ll see about that. I’d handle twice your number to my own -cheek any day. I done it before, on a dashed sight uglier lot than you, -and came out top side; and I’m going to do it again now. Mr. Onslow’s -with me, too, this time, and we’ve got twenty bullets amongst us that’ll -all go home in somebody’s ribs before any of you get at hand-grips with -us. Now just play on that, you scum. There’s not a one of you got a -pistol.” - -“Oh! haven’t we?” commented a nasal voice on the outskirts of the crowd, -“I guess you’re out there, mister. I’m heeled for one.” - -_Crack!_ - -The man shrieked and fell in a limp heap on the deck. His weapon -clattered down beside him. Kettle kept his smoking pistol-muzzle raised -steady as an iron wrist could hold it. - -The others instinctively drew at first away from the fallen man; but one -ordinary seaman, younger and more plucky than the rest, darted forward -to regain the fallen revolver. As his fingers closed over it, his eyes -instinctively sought the bridge. Onslow had his revolver sighted over the -crook of an elbow; Kettle his at arm’s length. Both were covering him. - -“Fling that thing overboard, or you’ll be dead before you can wink!” - -The crew’s only revolver span through the air, and hit the water with a -tinkling splash. - -“Now stand forward the two fools who have been your spokesmen.” - -The crowd stood like men petrified. - -“Quick, or I’ll make practise into the brown of you!” - -The quartermaster in the cardigan jacket stepped out of his own accord, -undefiant now, and white. The German was hustled to his side. - -“Have you got a coin, quartermaster?” - -“No, sir.” - -“Have you—sausage?” - -“Yes, _herr_.” - -“Then spin it up, and do you, quartermaster, call to him. And mind you -call right, because I’m going to shoot the loser, and perhaps you are the -least useless of the two. Spin, confound you! Spin, sausage, or by James -I’ll shoot you where you stand, and settle it that way!” - -The German put something between his dished palms and shook it violently; -then clinched one hand, and thrust it out into the full blaze of the -lamplight. - -The quartermaster cried “head.” The other unwrapped his grimy fingers -with slow jerks, and showed. The coin was a halfpenny, Britannia -uppermost. The quartermaster buttoned his cardigan jacket, and drew -himself up to face the upper bridge. - -“Hold up your hand!” - -It shot up to the full length, fingers splayed out. Then _crack!_ and -a bullet ripped through the middle of the palm. The fellow let out a -short yelp of surprise, and clapped the wounded member tightly under his -armpit. The men around him, utterly cowed, stood in frozen silence; and -Captain Owen Kettle from the bridge waved slow patterns over them with a -revolver muzzle. - -Then he crammed both weapons into his jacket pockets again, and gave -orders—sharply, crisply, and with decision. - -“Watch below, get forward, and turn in. Watch on duty, go to your posts. -Quartermaster of the watch, tumble up here. Sou’-west and by sou’.” - -A quartermaster ran briskly up the bridge ladder. - -“S’-west and by sou’ it is, sir,” he replied. It was the only comment any -of the crew made to Captain Kettle on his method. - - - - -CHAPTER XI. - -TO-NIGHT. - - -Another day and another sky. Now the blue Gulf waters were as leaden and -dense as that one looks upon in a hard North Sea gale; and the heavens -overhead were full of lurid grays which raced one another in sliding -chase till they were lost in the northern mist drifts. The steamer rolled -heavily to a steep beam sea; and when it could be seen, the iron of her -lower decks, forward and aft, gleamed as though it had been new-coated -with ocher varnish. But this was not often, for four minutes out of every -five the decks were filled with a clamoring, hissing pond of green and -cotton-white, which the scuppers could only empty piecemeal. - -The time was evening—twenty hours after the quelling of the mutiny, -and the three tenants of the upper bridge were the only human beings -on any of the outer decks. On the midship grating stood a high-heeled -quartermaster holding on to the spokes of the steam wheel, browsing on -plug tobacco, and keeping his eyes mechanically fixed on the jumping -compass card. Alternately climbing and descending athwartships as the -bridge swung under him, the third mate took his sea constitutional in -rubber thigh-boots, with hands thrust into the waistbelt of his breeches. -As officer of the watch, every time he passed the binnacle he faced front -and took a regulation peer round the foggy line of horizon, with an utter -lack of interest. He was an elderly man, the third mate, and the sea held -no more surprises for him, and no more interest, and no more pleasures. -If ever he had ambition, he had lost it years since. His aim in life was -to hold a position of small responsibility, and earn a monthly wage with -the smallest possible outlay of exertion, either mental or physical. - -The remaining occupant of the bridge sat on a camp-stool under the lee of -the weather dodger, with his red peaked beard on his chest, his slippered -feet stuck out in front, his elbows crooked out behind him, and hands -deep in his jacket pockets. Every time the third mate’s footsteps neared -him his eyes opened, and for an instant flashed round to the right-hand -angle of their orbits. Between whiles he slept. It was owing to this -faculty of literally snatching moments of rest that Captain Kettle, at -the end of his twenty hours’ spell on the upper bridge, was as fresh as -though he had just got up from a clear night’s sleep. This watchfulness -was necessary, for, as the experienced skipper was quite aware, fully -half the hands would have gladly tossed him overboard if they could have -grappled him without danger to themselves. - -Presently, however, he dropped his doze with a snap, and slewed round to -face the head of the bridge ladder, entirely wakeful. - -A head showed itself, black-haired, with a clean-shaven, bright, -determined face. The corresponding body followed—lean, tall, muscular. - -“Ah, Mr. Onslow, you’ve brought me some provender? Thanks indeed. What? -Sandwich and tea? Couldn’t be better.” - -“I have whisky in my pocket.” - -“Not for me now. Wait till we get ashore, and then I’ll booze with any -man to his heart’s content. The game I’m on now is like a boat-race—if a -man wants to win he’s got to diet himself.” - -The third mate, to show to any chance onlooker that he was not in -sympathy with the unpopular captain, planted himself in the angle of the -lee dodger, which was the greatest distance that the ties of duty would -allow him to depart. Kettle, with an acid grin, drew his companion’s -attention to this move. - -“What’ll that chap do to-night when the fun begins?” - -“Bolt like a rat with the first alarm. He’d show pluck if he was paid for -it, would my third mate; but not being paid, he’ll take the best care -possible of his own ugly hide. He isn’t a fellow who’d ever like a tight -corner for its own sake. There’s not an atom of the sportsman about him.” - -Onslow laughed. “You’re just the other way, Captain.” - -Kettle’s face clouded. “It’s a fact,” he said. “Times I am that way—curse -my cantankerous luck.” - -“Your weakness in that direction came in handily for me yesterday.” - -“You’re right, Mr. Onslow, right all through. By George, I’d half a mind -to chip in with these rogues and grab what I could. It was a tempting -chance, and it would have been a deal more profitable to me than what I’m -in for now. As for the honesty of the thing, there wasn’t a pin to choose -between it and this racket of yours and Mr. Shelf’s. But it was that -Dutchman’s gall that put me off. If he’d held his silly jaw, and if those -other bladder-heads had let me understand I was to hold the pistol-hand -over them, well, the _Port Edes_ would have coral rock spouting through -her bottom plates this minute, and I’d be a man owning a matter of three -to five thousand pounds. That’s putting it straight.” - -“So,” said Onslow, “I suppose I have to thank the said Dutchman for -carrying a sound windpipe this minute?” - -“No,” replied Kettle thoughtfully, “I don’t think it. I fancy you’d have -behaved reasonable over the new deal, and then I’d have stood by you. -Especially,” he added slowly, as though from after-thought, “especially -if those dogs thought that you’d have been safer out of the way. What,” -he asked with a sudden frown, as though the subject annoyed him—“what -have you been doing with yourself this afternoon?” - -“Physicking a sick fireman principally. The stokehold temperature was 105 -degrees, and as he amused himself drinking condensed water by the quart -together, the somewhat natural consequence was cramp in the stomach. They -sent him up by the ash-lift, and your steward dosed him with chlorodyne -and laudanum, and tincture of rhubarb. The result wasn’t encouraging.” - -“Oh, there’s never any knowing what to do with a sick stoker’s inside. -But one of those drugs ought to have fetched him.” - -“Perhaps one did; but the other two didn’t seem to fit his ailment.” - -“Well, he had them for nothing, so I don’t see what call he had to -complain. I never saw such a crew for physic. They’ve drunk that big -chest half dry as it is, and if I’d let ’em, they’d have drunk it three -times over. What did you do to the chap? Fill him up on the same again, -or try a pill? There’s ten sorts of pills in that chest, beauties some -of them. You should have tried him on those little silver-coated chaps -marked C. They’re regular twisters.” - -“Well, you see, he was twisted enough already, poor devil, and if it -hadn’t been for the donkeyman holding him, he’d have been overboard -through the ash-shoot to be rid of his misery. So as it was I gave him a -tumblerful of raw whisky, and that seemed gradually to untie him again -out of his knots.” - -The captain snorted. “You’re greener than I thought, Mr. Onslow. If we’d -been going on, you’d have had half the crew sick on your hands for a dose -of that kind. They’re bad enough after sour, square doctor’s physic, but -for a tumbler of liquor and a spell of idleness, an old sailor would have -an ear and three toes cut off any day. However,” he added, rising stiffly -to his feet and stretching, “the chief and donkeyman’ll see he doesn’t -malinger for long. They are none of them sweet on doing another man’s -work, that gang. Heigh-ho! See that line of surf we’re bringing over the -lee quarter?” - -“The Tortugas?” - -“The Dry Tortugas. There’s a Yankee convict station on one of them.” - -“Don’t mention it.” - -Kettle grinned. “We shall have made enough westing soon, and then our -course will be pretty nearly due north, so as to dodge the Gulf Stream as -much as possible, and,” he added, in a lower tone, “to get the ship as -near as may be to your channel into Florida before we jettison the crew.” - -“We shall run into the ship tracks from all the northern Gulf ports to -Europe.” - -“I know, and we must take our chance of not being spotted. For a western -sea there’s a regular string of traffic tailing down to the Dry Tortugas. -There you are, for one. Look at that old wind-jammer.” - -He jerked with his thumb towards a green-painted wooden Italian barque, -which was squattering past less than a quarter of a mile away, right -athwart the last rays of the windy sunset. She was driving merrily -homewards, sending her bows into it till the seas creamed against her -cat-heads and darkened her jibs with brine up more than half their -height. She was methodically reducing sail, and a dozen many-hued, -picturesque tatterdemalions were aloft on the fore-topgallant yard -hammering the struggling canvas into the gaskets. - -“The cowardly Dagos,” said Kettle; “that’s always their way. Snug down -to topsails as soon as it gets dark, even if there’s only a cat’s-paw -blowing. By James! with a breeze like this I’d be carrying royals on that -old tub. And yet,” he went on, with his beard in the heel of his fist, -and his eyes gazing out over the tumbling waters—“and yet they say there -used to be poetry in a craft of that sort, whilst there never was, and -never will be, with a steamer. I suppose the reason is, that a poet has -to be a man who knows nothing whatever about what he writes upon. I know -that some chaps who string verses nowadays have been on a steamboat and -smelt the smells of her, and seen her lines, and watched the men who do -the work; and yet they make no poetry about it. But of the old crew who -wrote about moaning harbor-bars, and fair white pinions, and lusty wooden -walls, and trusty hearts of oak—why, they knew no more about the thing -than a London bobby does of angels. And that, I suppose, was why their -stuff is called poetry, and the lubberly old wind-jammers poetical. You -give me a smart steamboat, Mr. Onslow; there’s all the romance on her an -old sailorman’s got any use for; and he understands it, too, even if he -can’t put it down on paper.” - -“I believe you’re right,” said Onslow thoughtfully, “and some day a new -Dana or a new Michael Scott will come ashore from the upper bridge, -or from an electric-lighted forecastle, or from a forced-draught -engine-room, and show it to us plainly; whereupon we shall swear that we -saw it for ourselves all along. But,” he went on, with a sudden frown, -“for the present let that drift. You and I have enough to think of in our -immediate present without speculating over a possible prophet which is to -arise.” - -“We have; but so much must be arranged by the chance of the moment that -I don’t see we can do much good by talking it over now. All arrangements -that can be made ahead, I fancy we’ve got fixed up already. By the way, -I suppose you are sure that your explosion in the forehold won’t be too -big? It would be an awkward do for us if the old ship’s bottom was really -blown out in sober earnest.” - -The sun had gone entirely out by this time, and the young moon was -sailing high amid scurrying cloud-banks. In the white and shifting light, -Patrick Onslow’s face looked pale and anxious. - -“You’re sure,” Kettle repeated, “it won’t be a case of the engineer being -hoisted with his own thingammy?” - -“No, I’m not sure; and that’s what bothers me. You see, one couldn’t -quite get an expert to measure out the precise necessary dose, and I’ve -had to guess at it. I daren’t undercharge my bomb. If our explosion was a -fizzle, and the crew didn’t get scared and run, why then they’d take her -up to New Orleans whether we liked it or not; and she’d be examined. Then -that intake valve couldn’t be missed, and it couldn’t be explained away. -Man, as you know, the thing’s as big as a sluice-gate!” - -“All the bilge pumps in the Gulf of Mexico couldn’t make headway against -that valve, once it was fairly opened. It’s the quickest and cleverest -way of scuttling a steamboat I ever heard of or read about. But I don’t -quite see how the valve is going to be turned.” - -“You leave that to me.” - -“You seem used to the game,” said Kettle, with a half sneer. - -“No, I’m not,” returned the other quickly. “I’ve never had my fingers in -anything so ugly or so dirty before; and because I don’t want to have -the experience over again, I’m going to make this turn to a big profit, -or get killed in the trying. I’m tired and sick of this wild, bucketing -life. A woman drove me to it; but I believe, if I had the means to settle -down in comfort now, I could forget all about her, and wake up other new -interests.” - -“Well,” said Kettle, “I hope we may each of us buy a farm out of this -racket; but, I tell you straight, I’m not over sweet on the chances. To -begin with, you and I can’t handle this steamboat alone. It’s an absolute -certainty we must have another hand to help us. You’ll have to take -the wheel and pilot her through if you can, though that’s a mighty big -job for one man, and the odds are about ten to one you’ll pile her up -somewhere. I’ve got to be below. At a pinch I might drive the engines, -though I don’t know much of the trade; but I can’t do that and fire six -two-hole boilers, and wheel coals out of the bunkers as well. Now, I -think the donkeyman is the chap we want. He understands his way about -down there, he’s as strong as a winch, and I fancy he knows which side -his biscuit’s margarined.” - -“Yes, I’m with you there. We’ll have the donkeyman if he’ll come.” - -“Then why not sound him now?” - -“Because I’ll hint of this infernal scheme to no one till it’s fairly -ablaze. Man! if a ghost’s whisper of it got about, the crew would rise -and grab us, pistols or no pistols. They have that amount of scare in -them they’d walk straight up to a Maxim gun. They’d trample us out of -existence before we could fairly look round. No, my neck itches enough as -things are at present; and if another on board now besides you knew what -was going to be done to-night, I should feel a bowline noose inside my -collar, with half a dozen hangmen beginning to tug at it.” - -“See here, Mr. Onslow,” said the shipmaster, “are you getting sorry you -came out on this trip?” - -The other laughed harshly. “Sorry? Whatever have you got in your head -now? If I do a thing, I do it with my eyes open, and I make a point of -never indulging in useless regrets afterwards. No, Captain Kettle, I’m -going through with this matter, whether it succeeds or it fails; whether -it is brought about without injury to a single human soul, or whether -it costs the last pant of breath for every one in this ship. But I own -to you I am nervous. The only things which we can be sure will happen, -are the unexpected; and we can’t prepare for those; and the want of -preparation may ruin us.” - -“It’s a big gamble,” assented Kettle, “and I wish I could say, ‘May the -Lord defend the right!’ But I can’t, and you can’t, and, least of all, -Shelf can’t. It’s a devil’s job anyway, and he don’t always stand by his -men. The only thing is, even Nick can’t diddle my wife and kids out of -the insurance I made for them; so, personally speaking, I don’t much care -what happens. You go below to your room now, and get a caulk of sleep. -You’ll want it. And, first, if you please, I’ll shake hands with you. -We’ve never done it before, because a nod’s been enough other times; but -this is different. You’re a decentish sort; and I fancy if that woman -hadn’t meddled, you wouldn’t have been shipmates here with me to-night.” - -They exchanged a quick handgrip, each looking rather ashamed of himself; -and then Onslow went down the bridge ladder whistling, and Owen Kettle -resettled himself on his camp-stool. When next they met, the tragedy of -the _Port Edes_ would have begun, and in it perhaps both would die by any -out of ten violent deaths. - - - - -CHAPTER XII. - -A DERELICTION. - - -Eight bells—midnight. - -The look-out in the crow’s-nest forward chanted his last melancholy -“All’s well!” and gave way to the relief from the next watch. He climbed -down by the cleats in the iron mast, and went to the starboard door in -the forecastle. Other men followed him, jumping like cats along the -streaming decks; and others came a little later—dingy fellows with -neckclouts like dishcloths, who went in at the port door; these last -being the goats of shipboard, the firemen and trimmers, who were divided -off from the more high-caste deck-hands by a fore-and-aft bulkhead. - -The third mate and the quartermaster, too, from the upper bridge, were -replaced by another quartermaster and another mate; and they also went -to the places appointed for them, and the snores of their breathing soon -rattled against the bunk coamings. Only two men on the _Port Edes_, who -were not on the roster of duty, stood that windy morning’s first watch. -Under the lee of the canvas shelter Captain Kettle sat huddled on his -camp-stool in a style which no man could distinguish with certainty -between wakefulness and sleep; and below in his room, which opened off -the main cabin, and was next the treasure-chamber, Patrick Onslow was -dabbling in something which the laws of nations would stigmatize as -felony, and that of complex degree. - -There were two berths in the room—the upper one against the window -port, which he slept in, and the lower, which contained two spread-out -portmanteaus. Beneath this last were drawers in which the captain’s -steward kept table linen, disused corks, the carpet which the chart-house -sported in harbor, and other articles of ship’s use. Onslow had two of -these drawers out on the floor, and from the recess of their site had -drawn two fine green-silk-covered wires. - -He disentangled the coils, taking care to avoid a kink, and then -unscrewed the porcelain switch which governed the room’s electric lamp. -Beneath were certain pieces of metal embedded in vulcanite. - -Patrick Onslow gave his arms a preliminary stretch, a bare wire terminus -in each hand. His fingers were trembling, as whose would not have been in -the same situation? - -He noticed it, and commented to himself on the circumstance: “That’s -excitement, I suppose—excitement pure and understandable. Not being a -man of stone, I can’t help being thrilled with the majesty of the moment, -the sublime vagueness of my knowledge of what will happen when a current -flashes through these wires. I’m not a coward. People who write about -other men’s feelings when Death is beginning to paw them on the shoulder, -write mostly from the imagination; and, so far as I’ve seen, they all do -it wrong. I’ve been there; I’ve felt the old man’s bony touch more than -once; and so I know. A man isn’t of necessity terrified; phantoms of his -past deeds do not invariably flash before him; nor does he always lose -his nerve, and move like a cheap automaton. I can’t speak for others; -but what I personally have felt has been a dull carelessness for what -is going to happen, and a curiosity about what will come afterwards. It -seems to me that a thinking man, with the ambition of a mouse, should -never fear death, because once dead, he becomes wiser than all the living -remnant of the human race. There are men, I know, whom physical danger -turns into a helpless mass of palpitating nerves. Shelf, for instance, -is one of those. By Jove!”—he smiled grimly—“by Jove! I’d give a finger -to have Theodore Shelf in my shoes just now, and force him to couple -these wires, and spring the mine with his own fat, white fingers. I -believe—yes, I verily believe the experience would turn him honest. Ah, -there goes one bell. Time’s up.” - -Through a lull in the wind, the tenor clang of the ship’s bell came -down to him, and on its heels, more dimly, the look-out’s dissyllabic -assurance in the dismal minor key that he was awake, and had nothing to -report. - -Then Patrick Onslow made connection, and sent through the green-silk -covered wires a current direct from the steamer’s dynamo; and on that -moment was thrown against the iron roof of the state room as though the -infernal machine had exploded beneath his very feet. - - * * * * * - -The camp-stool was kicked into the air, the wet canvas dodgers shed water -in streams, and Captain Owen Kettle fell spread-eagled on the planking -of the bridge. From the hatch in the fore-deck before him had sprung -a volcano of ruddy flame spurting through vast billows of smoke; the -iron plating round it buckled and split; and the whole steamer gave a -trembling, frightened leap. Presently, from the black, windy night above, -there fell an avalanche of _débris_ which smote the steamer and the water -round, like canister-shot from a distant cannonade. - -Then came a thumping jar from the engine-room, repeated twice over; and -then the engines stopped. - -“My God,” thought Kettle, “he’s overshot the mark! If she’s broken down, -we’re done for.” - -But for all that he did not lose for an instant his presence of mind or -instinct of command; but, picking himself up, clapped a stumpy leaden -whistle between his lips and blew shrilly. - -At first no one answered his summons. From the forecastle, from the -stokehold, from aft, came the ship’s company, making by instinct for -the high land of the bridge deck; and from his eminence the little -captain scowled down upon them and swore. It is not a wholesome sight -to see grown men screaming through sheer terror; and the sooner they -are dissociated, either by words or blows, from this frame of mind, the -more they will be able subsequently to respect themselves. By dint of a -vinegar tongue, and suggestive movements towards a pair of implements -which bulged his jacket pockets, Kettle drove a gang of five to set the -mizzen trysail to keep the steamer head to sea. She was rapidly losing -her way, and if she broached-to beam-on with that heavy sea running, the -lower decks would be filled with green water continuously, and that, -with such a gaping rent where the hatch had been, meant simply a rapid -swamping. - -Then the captain looked round him, seemingly for a messenger. The mate -of the watch hung on to the handle of the engine-room telegraph, which -still pointed to “full speed ahead,” looking dazed and helpless. The -quartermaster’s hands were mechanically sawing at the spokes of the -wheel, but it was equally evident that he also did not know what he was -doing. Just then Onslow raced up the bridge ladder three steps at a time. - -“Ah,” cried Kettle, “now you are a man who can keep his head in a bit -of a fluster, and by James you’re the only one on board. Just tumble -forward, will you, and get down into that hold? See what’s wrong.” - -Onslow nodded and turned to go without a word. From two or three of the -men a thin cheer rose as he passed them, and before he had gained the -bottom of the ladder on to the iron lower deck, half a dozen were on the -top rungs after him. Sailors will seldom refuse to follow when a superior -shows the way; and besides, these fellows were getting over their first -panic, and were beginning to be ashamed of themselves for giving way to -it. - -The mizzen trysail was not then set, and because the steamer’s way had -left her, she was falling off into the trough, and rolling bulwarks under -to every sea. She was shipping water fast. The creaming, solid masses -sluicing across the deck-plates smote the men breech high with the weight -of rams; and he who, when the waters were upon him, left his hold, would -have been swept like a cork to leeward. But, by the hatch-coamings, the -winches, and odd wet streamers of rope, they clawed their way forward, -and cowered round the great hole made by the explosion, holding there by -the edge of the twisted, riven plates. The seas creamed over their heads, -falling in noisy cascades into the blackness below, and from out of that -darkness, above all the bellowing of wind and the clanging of iron and -the other din, came a sodden whistling of water, which seemed to confirm -the worst fears. - -“Pooh!” said some one, trying to be cheery, “that’s only the small sup -she’s shipped since the hatches were blown off. The bilge pumps’ll soon -kick that drop overboard.” - -“Guess you lie,” said another, with a weary shake of the head. - -Then the ink of the heavens overhead was splashed with a vivid fork -of lightning, and the men saw Onslow, with his face as white as his -teeth, lowering himself over the brink, and gripping with his knees a -twisted iron pillar below. The light above slapped out, and within the -dim, jagged outline of where the hatch had been all was blackness. And -overhead the thunder rumbled like the passing of a Titan’s gun-train. -The men shivered. One of them, an old, white-haired able-seaman, was -physically sick. And meanwhile the _Port Edes_ rolled through forty-two -degrees, and the Gulf water flowed in green and black over each bulwark -alternately. - -The men hung over the dark abyss of the hatch listening intently, and -above the noises of the gale they could hear the sullen wash of water in -the hold growing heavier and more sullen with every roll. Another flash -of lightning blazed out overhead, painting white the shaft of the hatch, -and showing at its foot a muddy sea, full of floating straws, and barrel -staves, and litter. Onslow was out of sight. And the lower hold was -afloat almost to its deck-beams. - -But presently the explorer returned, swimming rather than walking—as -another flash showed them—and he leaped to the battens which made the -stairway to overhead with the haste of a man who knows that the waste of -moments may well cost human lives. The men clustered about him round-eyed -as he gained the deck for a word of what he had seen, but he brushed -through them roughly and made for aft. It seemed to them that no spoken -sentence could have given a worse report of what had befallen than -this mute action. The fellows knew that officers always made the best -of everything, if there is a best to be made; and so the silence was -terribly suggestive. - -At the same moment, as if to confirm their worst fears, the steamer took -a heavy sea clean over her forecastle head; and above the din of the -water, as it came cascading down into the lower deck, there arose wild -cries of, “She’s sinking!” “Her bottom’s blown out!” “She’s settling by -the head!” - -Yelling these tidings, the men scampered back to the bridge-deck, where, -saving for the few driven off to set the mizzen trysail, all the rest of -the steamer’s complement were collected. - -“She’s settling by the head! It’s making a clean breach over her this -minute! She’ll be down with us if we don’t look quick!” - -Then another voice cried: “Let the foul old tramp go to hell by herself. -She shan’t drown me, for one, while she’s got a boat that’ll swim. Come -along, boys!” Whereupon a mixed half-dozen of deck-hands and firemen made -a rush for the foot of the upper bridge ladder. - -At the head of that ladder stood Captain Kettle, grinning like a tortured -fiend. The crew were acting precisely as it had been planned that they -should act. They were doing what a laboriously-formed plot had compelled -them to do. But at that moment the little captain’s weakness for battle -nearly got the better of him, and was within an ace of making him -attempt to upset the entire apple-cart. The idea of his men—the despised -all-nation rabble, whom he had brow-beaten into subjection all across the -broad Atlantic—taking the initiative into their own hands now, was too -much for him to swallow in a single dose. Sooner than submit, he would -have ruined everything ten times over. Consequently he drew on the first -man who advanced up the ladder, and his eyes lit up with the steady, -passionless glare of slaughter. - -The fellow was brave enough—desperate, too, as a man could be—but upon -certain death he hesitated to advance. Indeed, when Kettle, coming down -the ladder himself, thrust him furiously back with a black pistol muzzle, -he retreated to the bridge-deck, as did those who were with him. - -But the other men of that worthy crew had no mind to be tyrannized over -any longer when the steamer was momentarily settling down under their -feet, and drowning was an immediate question. By the funnel stays and by -one another’s backs they swarmed on to the top of the fiddley, and thence -gaining the boat platforms, set about cutting adrift the grimy awnings -with their knives, and clearing away the tackles and falls. They shipped -rudders and fitted the plugs, and one or two, with more forethought than -their frightened fellows, shouldered the boats’ water-breakers and took -them aft to where the condenser-tap gave upon the lower deck. - -Kettle did not interfere. He had held the bridge-deck ladders against -all comers, and in some cranky way felt that his honor was unsmirched. -But he gave no help, no hint, no further order, and surveyed the scene -with folded arms and a sour, thin smile. Patrick Onslow, being moved by a -different set of feelings, acted more humanely. - -“Take time, men,” he sung out coolly, “if you will be cowards and leave -the ship. I don’t think she’ll sink—at any rate not yet.” - -The men had knocked away the chocks, hoisted the boats, and swung the -davits outboard. - -“Keep your heads, you trembling idiots! Pass your painters forward -before you begin to lower, and don’t lower till you’ve victualled the -boats. You’ve at least a hundred-and-fifty mile run before you can make -Charlotte Harbor, which is your best port with this wind blowing; and as -like as not you’ll miss your road when you get inshore among the keys and -reefs, and be a week getting there.” - -A few of the men, seeing the force of this, ran below and raided the -galley and the steward’s store-room of what they could lay hands upon. -But they only brought up one load of tins. They were frightened lest -the others should in their terror go off without them. So they bundled -their gleanings pell-mell on to the floor gratings, and, with a dozen -men in each, the boats began to lower away. When they touched water, -the falls were let go to overhaul as they chose, and then unhooked. The -boats rode by their painters, swooping on one sea up to the level of the -bridge-deck, diving twenty feet down in the next trough, and lying in -very great danger of being stove to pieces. - -A man in each was standing by the painter, others were getting out oars. - -“Where’s the donkeyman?” cried some one. - -“And Mr. Onslow?” - -“And the skipper?” - -“Oh, in the boat.” - -“Then cast off. We’ve got all, and we must be clear of the ship before -she founders, or she’ll take us down too in her wash.” - -The painters were slipped, and from either beam the steamer’s lifeboats -diverged under the backing impulse of their oars. Out of sight of one -another they dropped astern, and each picking a favorable chance, they -slewed round in a pother of spray. - -Then they stepped their masts; and then, one under a jib, and the other -under close-reefed lug, they drove away before the wind, leaving the -setting of a course for after consideration. - -Steamer sailors are not used to small-boat sailing in a heavy sea, and it -takes them some time to wear down the novelty of it. By a providence, -there was the second mate in one, an old North Sea smacksman, to take the -tiller, and an able seaman from the same school in the other boat, who -was also competent to manage her. The boats were built for the weather, -but they required handling; and excepting these two men, there were -no others up to the task. The rest trimmed ship, some of them baling, -some too frightened to do anything but cling on to a thwart—these last -from the fireholds mostly—and with their complements in this danger and -disorder, the _Port Edes’_ two lifeboats drove away into the night and -the north-north-east. - -Three men on the steamer, from inside the chart-house, watched the boats -go away; and one of them, the donkeyman, was wondering what kind of fool -to call himself for being left. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII. - -THREE FOR TWENTY-SEVEN. - - -“Now, my lads,” said Kettle, “you’ve got to hump yourselves, or we’ll -have the steamer swamping beneath us. It’ll be touch and go, anyway. Mr. -Onslow, you will have the deck all to yourself—after you’ve done your -job on the forehold, of course; and you’d better jump lively after that -at once. Every gill of water tells now, and it strikes me if we get very -much more of the Mexican Gulf on board the decks will blow up, and she’ll -go down like kentledge ballast.” - -Onslow darted away through the doorway. - -“And now, Mister Sullivan, understand that although I still continue -to rate as skipper of this craft, for the present I’m going to work as -fireman and coal-trimmer. You will be chief engineer; and I’m the sum -total of your crew; and between us we’ve got to do the work of seven -horses and one mule. Are the bilge-pumps clear?” - -“Yes, sor.” - -“And has she still a good head of steam?” - -“She has. None’s been blown off.” - -“Then pick up your feet and let’s go to your hardware shop and start in -work.” - -“Wait a bit, sor,” said the donkeyman. “There’s things here I don’t -understand. Aren’t the lives of us in beastly danger? Didn’t them boats -go off because the steamer’s sinking?” - -“Do you,” retorted Kettle, “consider me one of those fancy sorts of -maniac, who have no wish to survive the loss of a ship? I tell you I -should have been drowned eight times already if that had been my lay. No, -Mr. Chief, fair fight’s right enough, and I’d stand up to Nick in that, -and value my life at less than a rice-mat; but, at other times, you bet, -I’m no fool to chuck it away.” - -“But,” said the donkeyman, “what gets me’s this. If the blooming -steamer’s bottom’s shot out, what’s the fun in messing with it? The -Mexican Gulf will circulate through that hole longer than our bilge-pumps -will run.” - -“You tire me,” said the little man. “Who said she’d her bottom blown out? -I tell you this steamer was sunk a few plates above her usual trim—for -reasons; and now we are going to pull her up again. See here, do you take -the synch from me, Mr. Chief, and ask no more questions, and you’ll get -told no lies. It’ll pay you. If you do as you’re bid aboard of me you’ll -have sovereigns enough given you to work through the biggest spree that -was ever spread out in a seaport town.” - -The big donkeyman appreciatively drew the back of a hand across his -muzzle. - -“Ah, Captain dear,” he said coaxingly, “I’d just like to hear ye mention -a figure.” - -“Call it two ten-pound notes.” - -“Then, be Christopher, I’m yer man for any piece of devilment in the -calendar! Come along, Captain dear. ’Tis a melojious little man y’ are, -for all they say against yez.” - -Meanwhile the steamer was becoming more and more waterlogged with every -plunge and roll, and Patrick Onslow feared that his dangerous stratagem -for driving away the crew had been carried too far. It seemed to him -impossible that they could salvage her now. True, she was brought up to -the wind by the after-canvas, and her rollings were not of such sickening -strength; but the stern loomed high in the wild night air, and the bows -lunged deep into every successive sea that rolled up from the stormy -south, taking green water over the forecastle head in masses which -scoured anchors and windlass to the naked iron. - -The wash found its way below through that jagged gap in the lower deck -in crashing water-falls, and every moment, too, the opened valve beside -her keel was gushing in fresh gallons to the swamping holds. Any larger -sea which swept up now might well settle over her solidly, and launch -her with bursted decks on to the sponges and the coral growths a hundred -fathoms below. - -Some men, in the face of such conditions, would have been mazed, -helpless—physically incapable, in the presence of that solitude, of -making any necessary effort; for it is one thing to do a desperate matter -before the eyes of an applauding crowd, and another when the Devil -below is your only appreciative onlooker. It would have been beyond the -capabilities of Captain Kettle, for instance. Onslow, however, was the -one man in the million to whom the adventure was as meat and drink. If he -succeeded, then the profit was his; if he failed, death would be useful -to him; and anyway there was the wild excitement of the moment, which was -a meal to be enjoyed, and one which nothing could snatch away. - -It was in this mood of mind that the man on whose actions the very -outer-air existence of the _Port Edes_ depended left his fellows in the -chart-house, and raced forward to where the jagged lip of the forehold -hatch yawned to the swilling seas. Without lantern, without so much as -a look before him, he lowered himself on to the twisted battens below, -with the clean water raining on to him from above, and muddy wavelets -squirting up from beneath; and then when the steamer gave a heavy send, -and the more solid wash from the hold smote him heavily upon the thighs, -he loosed his grip, and dived like a stone through the brimming shaft-way -of the hatch. - -Seconds passed, a minute, two minutes, and still he did not reappear. -Three minutes. Then the rounded outlines of something black rolled to the -surface, and surged about limply with the swill of the water. - -For a while it stayed so; then, swung by a heavier pitch of the steamer, -it was washed to the back of a stanchion, where it hung. The slopping -water beneath ebbed steadily. The valve in the steamer’s bottom had been -closed. Her bilge pumps were running at speed. - -During a whole hour Patrick Onslow lodged behind that iron pillar, a -mere boneless mass of flesh and clothes; and then the pains of life came -into him again with shivers and shudderings. The thin gray light of the -dawn was filtering down through the jagged opening above when first the -trembling lids slid from his eyeballs; but for still another thirty -minutes he was a thing of no wit, breathing truly, but caring naught for -all the world contained. - -Then a sucking, sobbing noise from the depths of the hold far beneath -broke upon his ear, and the languid brain began to work. With an effort -he sat up, dizzily holding to the pillar, trying to think where he was, -and how ran recent history; and by degrees the details strolled back -to him. Before, however, he had gathered all his senses, or a working -quantum of strength, he had a visitor in the shape of the donkeyman, who -clattered up over the decks with plate-shod boots, and crouched beside -the gap above on knees and hands. - -“Have you been getting hurt, now?” inquired this new-comer. - -“About nine-tenths drowned, I fancy, if that counts. But I’m pretty near -all right again now.” - -“Ye don’t look ut,” replied the donkeyman candidly. “Barrin’ the tan, -ye’d be blue and lard color about the face this minute. But I feared -there was something wrong through not seeing ye on the bridge, so I -nipped into the chart-room and pockutted a whisky-bottle that was lying -convenient—in case. Pull at the small end, sor.” - -The bottle was handed down, and Onslow lifted it, his teeth chattering -against the nozzle like castanets; but the spirit drove up color into -his face, and set the sluggish blood once more on its appointed journey -through his limbs and trunk. - -“What has happened since I left you?” he asked. - -“Well, first, sor, the captain and meself had a little friendly -discussion about what’s been happening, and came to a bit of a financial -agreement. But I will say that I figured me new terms very low when I -understood it was a thrifle of a conspiracy that ye wanted me to stand -in at. And then, sor, we went below to the engine-room and turned steam -into the bilge pumps, to heave this nasty slop of water overboard; -after which, as chief, I set about making a thrifting repair to the -low-pressure engine. Ye see, when that explosion took place, a bit of a -casting jumped into the crank-pit, and got jammed there hard before they -could stop her. I’ve had a fair do at elbow work, cutting it out cold; -but it’s clear now, and she runs as sweetly as she did the day she left -the shops. But oh, Mr. Onslow, I wish you could see the Old Man. The -sight of that little chap, shoveling coals, and swearing, and tumbling, -and burning himself, is enough to make the ghosts of some dead firemen I -know about grin and dance sand-jigs in their graves.” - -The donkeyman was inclined to be garrulous, and evidently lusted for a -considerable chat; but, with returning strength, Onslow’s anxiety grew -on him again, and he climbed out on deck keen to be once more in action. -His knees were tottery, and the donkeyman gave him an arm aft. But when -he had climbed up the ladder and gained the bridge deck, he stood for a -minute staring, and then threw up his hands and pitched forward on to the -planking, as though a bullet had bitten the life in his brain. - -The big donkeyman also was startled. Out of the morning mists of the -south there had come up a small center-board schooner of some fifteen -tons—an oysterman, perhaps, in the season, and now a sponge-gatherer or -a mere coaster. She was coming down over the seas dry as a gull, driving -along under her boom foresail and jib. - -The donkeyman’s eye hung on her as she surged past the rust-streaked -flank of the steamer, some twenty fathoms away, not because the sight -of a little white-painted schooner was new to him, not because he was -impressed by the danger to the _Port Edes’_ enterprise in her being seen -by any alien eye, but on account of the tiny vessel being handled (in -what to her was distinctly ugly weather) by so extraordinary a person as -a young and pretty girl. No one else was on deck, and the girl sat on the -coaming of the cockpit, tiller in one hand, tiller rope in the other, as -unconcernedly as though she had been an ancient mariner, bred and aged in -fore-and-afters. - -She was a girl, too, with looks much to the Irishman’s liking: with -copper-red hair, whose ends blew out from beneath a green Italian’s -nightcap; laughing, impudent features, with the color whipped up into -warm pinks by the wind; a figure of pretty curves; and the shapeliest -little brown fists in the world splayed on the tiller and gripping the -restraining tiller-rope. She was fairly well up to the eyes in her -steering, but she found time to throw an _œillade_ towards the steamer, -which Mr. Sullivan answered with a yell intended to show his complete -admiration, and a swirl of his greasy cap. It was then that Onslow fell, -and the donkeyman took his eyes from the schooner, and picked him up and -once more applied the whisky-bottle. “More drowned than I thought for!” -he muttered. “It’ll be a pig’s mess for us if he goes ill.” - -But Patrick Onslow had not fainted through the effect of his recent -struggle with death. It was quite another matter which had dealt him the -sufficing shock. - -In the steerer of that little schooner he had seen the sister of the -woman to whom he had once been affianced, who had discarded him for -another man, who had driven him from a sedate English life to be a -wanderer and a vagabond upon the face of the earth. His roamings had -begun and continued only because the image of this one woman had refused -to leave his thoughts; and the half-sarcastic nickname of “The Great -Traveler” had been gained without any seeking on his part. - -Five long desperate years had passed since the blow fell upon him, and -time was doing its work. He had begun to forget her; to promise himself -that, this present enterprise accomplished, he would eliminate the -past, and lead a different and cleaner life; and yet, here, on the most -unlikely corner of God’s earth, her sister passed like a stage figure -before his eyes—the sister from whom she was never parted. - -The shock came upon him as a thunderbolt from a blue sky. He had fancied -her to be in England, Europe, Australia—anywhere but here. In his weak -state the surprise was too great. Again the gush of the waters thundered -in his ear; again the light faded from his eyes; and this time he dived -into blank unconsciousness. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV. - -A PIRATES’ HARBOR. - - -Windless swell and a burning sky. Ahead, broken palings of mop-headed -tree-trunks growing straight across the sea; on one beam, scattered -patches of white, where the surf crumbled over hidden coral reef; on -the other, the bright blue water of the Mexican Gulf, with its yellow -floating tangles of weed. A steamer lunging through the rollers at a -small six knots. - -On her decks was visible one man, and one alone, and he was on the upper -bridge, with his fists on the spokes of the steam steering-wheel. He -was swaying with weariness, his eyes were dull and leaden, his cheeks -were of an unwholesome yellow, because the tan would not let them turn -pale white. Yet his task was one which put to the strain every piece of -his alertness. He was taking a steamer drawing nineteen feet through a -channel of whose very existence no man on earth besides himself had ever -guessed; and already he was deep in sea-territory which the charts of -1893 still mark as “unsurveyed.” He had vaguely found the channel some -months before in an open boat, and written cross compass-bearings on the -back of a crumpled envelope. These he carried in his head now, and used -as the sea-marks closed; but they were a frail reed for much dependence. - -For such work a leadsman is an absolute necessity; and on board the _Port -Edes_ a leadsman was an absolute impossibility. The remaining two of her -manning were working as ten men to keep up any head of steam for her -engines. And so Patrick Onslow took his soundings with eye and nostrils, -as do some of the more ancient of the coaster folk; and instinct did not, -upon the whole, serve him badly. Twice he scoured the steamer’s bottom -plates over branching coral plants, which broke away with clattering -jars, and let her through to deeper water ahead; and once he ran upon a -tail of white sand, which pinned her just forward of ’midships. But he -rang off the engines, waited till the scream of the escape-pipe showed a -full head of steam, and then on a flowing tide put her full speed astern, -and slid clear. - -The skipper in the stokehold below waxed blasphemous at the man who had -“got the shore on board;” but he did not cease from shoveling coals; -neither did the big donkeyman, save at those moments when the clang of -the telegraph-bell called him to stand by the throttle or reversing gear -in the engine-room. - -So the _Port Edes_ drew up this narrow, unknown sea-river, through the -shallows which fill that bight of the S. W. Floridan coast, and the tired -man who was governing her steered every hour with stronger confidence and -duller consciousness. Now he held on to what was apparently an unbroken -line of surf, where, if the steamer struck, she would be a stove-in -wreck within the hour; but as she closed with it a passage opened out -which took her through in clear water, although the yeasty surges of the -backwash would leap like live things far up her sides, and scream and -bellow through the scuppers. Now he dodged, with helm hard a-starboard -one minute, hard to port the next, amongst an archipelago of unnamed -keys, where the first mangrove trees were getting to work at building -these outlying scraps of animal stone into part of the North American -continent. - -Beyond was a broad, smooth lagoon, shimmering in the sunlight, dancing -with little silver waves, and beyond, again, was a wall of woodwork -growing in one solid mass of trunks from behind the tangle of slimy -mangroves which sprawled along the water’s edge. Bare land was to be seen -nowhere; all was blotted out by the rank luxuriance of the subtropical -flora. - -The steamer held on her course athwart this placid sea-lake, aiming -straight as a rifle-shot for what appeared to be the densest part of the -forest. But as she neared it, an overlapping cape gradually distinguished -itself from the rest of the greenery, and directly afterwards banks of -milky sand opened out, with a gut of river between them. - -Onslow steered on, sitting upon the grating now, and holding the wheel -one-handed by the lower spokes; and in the fat, hot stew of the stokehold -below, Kettle and the donkeyman shoveled coal to the light of reeking -slush-lamps and the tune of furnace-roar. - -The steamer, in grip of the river-stream, swung round the bights and -twistings, finding deep water everywhere, though often she could not -make the turn quickly enough, and bruised with her forefoot the slimy -mangrove-stems which marked the bank. But the current was strong, and -each time swept her clear, and those below were scarcely conscious of the -graze. - -Knot by knot, the brine of the Mexican Gulf was being left behind, and -the noises of the woods and odors of the trees and the swamps were -closing in upon them. The swell fanning out from the steamer’s wake -wetted the alligators in their basking-places behind the saw-grass; -and the reek from her smoke-stacks scared the stilt-legged waterfowl -afish in the shallows. She coasted round a bayou of black water, walled -in by stern ranks of cypress-trees; she cut across another with -graceful-leaved palmetto-scrub on either hand, and ragged cabbage-palms -sprouting out from above. And then she swung again where the river -forked, and steamed down a straight, unswerving water-line, which led to -the very heart of the Everglades. - -But the pace was slowing now; slowing, indeed, till the steamer would -hardly steer against the current, which ever and anon gripped her by the -head or the tail, and carried her with sullen sheerings on to mangrove -cluster or tree-clad bluff. And the reason was that the head of steam was -failing. Captain Owen Kettle, as more Christian men have done before, -ignored his own previous preachings when the application came in, and -proved only human soon after he had taken up the _rôle_ of fireman. -Driven half lunatic by the heat and the work, he kept dipping his lips -in the water-bucket, and drinking heavy draughts. As a consequence, that -unpoetical complaint, cramp in the stomach, overtook him at last, and -tied him into those ungainly knots of torture which he had so frequently -observed upon scientifically in others. But, as there was no one at -hand to administer the heroic remedy of chlorodyne _cum_ rhubarb _cum_ -laudanum _cum_ pill, and give him something else to think about, in the -original kind of knots he remained. - -The donkeyman, with a hearty Belfast curse, tried to do double work; -but, as he had been laboring quite to the top of his strength for many -hours previously, the effort did not meet with unqualified success. As -anyone with less dogged, wooden pluck might have known, it is impossible -for one man to fire a twelve-furnace steamer, wheel himself coal from the -bunkers, and act as engineer and greaser when required, however great be -the initial supply of brute force with which God has endowed him. Every -time he wiped the wet from his eyes and looked at the steam-gauge, it had -climbed down since the time before; and however furiously he might heave -new fuel on to the caking clinkers, that jumping index would continue its -downward crawl. - -The oiled rumbling of the engines slowed, and grew more sluggish, and -then the ponderous cranks took to stopping on a turn, as though to -gain strength for the next round. But this did not go on for long. The -donkeyman felt a gentle heave of the foot-plates beneath him, and then -a heel which was not recovered. “And begor!” said he, “the bucking old -tramp’s tuk the ground at last, thanks be!” - -He pitched his shovel through a dull glowing furnace-door, and turned to -where the little Captain was lying on the polished foot-plates, holding a -yellow, flaring slush-lamp before him to see through the stifling, dusty -gloom. - -“Gum!” he exclaimed, “the Old Man looks pretty sick. I’ll crane him up in -the ash-lift.” - -This he did, and took his commanding officer into the main cabin, where -the air was bright and baking, and the mosquitoes were biting like dogs. -Then, throwing back the lid of the medicine-chest (which stood beside -the door into the companion way), he gazed appreciatively at the rows of -bottles, unstoppered one or two and sniffed at their contents, and then -slammed down the lid again as a thought struck him. - -“No,” he said, “I’m blistered if I do! Red Kettle wouldn’t give me physic -last time I thought I’d like a dose, an’ now I’ll see how he fancies -getting round on nothing. Fair play’s a jool. I’ll just report to the -pilot, an’ then turn in.” - -The “pilot,” however, when the donkeyman had wearily hauled himself on to -the upper bridge and stood by his side, proved to be so dead asleep that -no amount of shouting or shaking would wake him. Even the flies did not -make him wince. - -“Sor, wake or ye’ll be sunstrook, if ye’re not that already. Rouse, sor; -I can’t lug ye below, an’ I can’t rig an awnin’. I’m too tired to spake -again; but if yez stay here ye’ll fry like a rasher an’ be ate by flies. -There’s a whopping skeeter in each of yer eyeholes this minut, an’ a kind -of a locust browsing on the end of yer snout. Listen! I’m knockin’ wid a -boot-toe on yer ribs. Well, man, now, if ye won’t listen to reason, it’s -just leavin’ yez I am to stew in yer own juice.” - -The donkeyman clumped heavily back down the ladder, and went with weary -steps aft along the bridge-deck towards his own place. But at the break -of the deck he paused, spread his grimy, shiny elbows on the rail, and -indulged in a thin, small whistle. - -“Now here,” he soliloquized, “we have come, as the skipper remarked, -up an unbeknown drain, to which man’s improvements have not been -introjuced, and there’s callers turning up already. That was the nose -of a gaff-taups’l squintin’ between those treetops down-stream a minute -ago, or I’m a Dago. D’ye know, Mr. Sullivan, chief of the _Port Edes_, -I’m beginning to think ye’d have got better value if ye’d gone cruisin’ -off by an’ large with the other boys in the lifeboats. Thrue, there’s the -twenty one-pound notes to dhraw, and a daisy of a spree to have if ye can -get anywhere to have ut; but ye’ve worked that wage out already, me son, -an’ it rather seems as though there’s more laboriousness to follow.” - -He yawned cavernously. “’Tisn’t often I’d say ‘No’ to a bit of a -scrimmage, but theatricals are not to my taste just now at all. Too much -overtime ruins the sense of humor.” - -He yawned again, and blinked his eyes drearily. “You must turn in now, -Mr. Sullivan dear, or ye’ll fall down here and be ate alive by the -skeeters an’ other wild beasts of the forrust; and if the explorers who -are underneath that white gaff-taups’l want to come aboard here and make -throuble, so far as you’re concerned they’ll be let.” - -And with that the donkeyman staggered away to his room beneath the poop, -sat over the edge of his bunk, and was snoring melodiously before his -head and his heels were on the blanket. - -Meanwhile, a mile lower down, a small center-board sloop was turning to -windward up the river, but making little headway against the current. A -negro stood in her fore-scuttle, with his elbows on the deck. Two others -sprawled on either side of him. A big white man lay spread-eagled on the -top of the coach-roof of the cabin, and another stood in the cockpit -steering. - -Of all the quintette, the man at the tiller was the only one who showed -signs of energy, and his energy had sulphurous anger mixed with it. He -was a bowed, shambling creature, with one eye red and the other missing, -with long, hairy, ape-like arms, and with a dumb impediment of speech, -which threw him into paroxysms of temper every second time he opened his -lips. Once or twice, when his malady struck him voiceless in the middle -of a sentence, the other white man laughed; and then, when his tongue -served him again, the helmsman would break off from the text and rap out -a stream of poisonous cursings. - -At last he climaxed these by the only vituperation which no American can -listen to unmoved, and the man on the coach-roof dropped his indolence -like a flash, and was on him before he could resist. The aggressor -was lusty, and he shook the steersman as a big dog shakes a rat, with -ponderous wrenches; and because the sloop carried a strong weather helm, -when the tiller was let go, she ran up into the wind with her canvas -slatting wildly. - -“You snake-mouthed little skunk! you’d say that to me, would you? I -thought I learned you once before how far you might go. You’ve had one -eye gouged for this game less’n a month back, and if you fling your -twisted, stuttering tongue at me any more, by gum, I’ll pocket the other!” - -The blacks on the fore-deck chuckled and spluttered; but the big man hove -an iron bucket at them, with curt command to “quit that ye-hawin’,” which -they did with a yell and a sudden veiling of ivory. Then, by an indolent -sprawling of the arms and legs, he gained his basking-place again on the -top of the cabin-roof, and once more the steersman got the sloop under -command. - -The next three boards were made in silence, save for the creaking of gear -when she went about; and then the one-eyed man broke out again— - -“You’re sure it wasn’t a Government bo-o-o-at, Hank?” - -“Government be sugared! She wasn’t the right build, to start with. -Besides, if Government knew this channel at all, you bet it’d be said -so in all the papers. And _she_ did know it, or she wouldn’t have gone -buzzing past at six knots without a leadsman. Seems to me someone’s -split, and she’s some darned Britisher come to cut out our game for -themselves.” - -“You tire me. Plume-hunting’s illegal by these bub-bub-blessed bird laws, -and so’s selling whisky to Injuns. As it is, we’ve trouble enough to -sneak in and out of the ’Glades in this sus-sus-sus-s-s-lip of a sloop, -so how in snakes d’you expect they’d do it in a thousand-ton——” - -Here the man’s infirmity blocked his speech for a minute. He snarled out: -“Oh, I’ve no use for a blank puttyhead like you!” - -Hank laughed, and put tobacco into his mouth. “Go it!” he said—“go it, -right close to the end if you like; but bring up short of that, or I’ll -gouge you, sure’s death!” - -The steersman grinned a spasm of fury. He longed much to use again the -unpardonable phrase, but he forbore. He felt that his friend would be as -good as his word. So he ceased from speech altogether, and a negro on the -fore-deck enlivened the silence with the Jordan Hymn, giving full value -to every possible shake and turn. - -A porpoise surged past them, making for the open after a day’s -fresh-water fishing, and once or twice an alligator’s eyebrows and snout -showed like knots of black wood floating up against the current, for -this was territory where the skin-hunter’s rifle had not scared them -altogether into night-work. The sloop’s pace up-stream was small and it -was not till just before nightfall that she rounded a cape where high -black pines stood up like soldiers on parade around the water’s edge, and -there saw the intruder. The steamer was grounded on a sandbank athwart -the stream, and lay, with a two-foot list, away from the current. Not -until they were close aboard of her could those on the sloop see the gold -lettering on her counter. - -“B-b-both lifeboats gone! Say, that’s rum!” - -“‘_Port Edes_, of London,’” Hank read. “_Port Edes_? I seem to know -that name.” He swung his long legs down over the cabin doorway, and -sat staring at his companion with open-mouthed wonder. “Hallo, Nutt!” -he said, “what’s wrong now! I haven’t seen you wear that kind o’ face -before. You couldn’t look pleaseder if I’d said your rich uncle had gone -dead. There’s no pards of ours aboard of her, is there?” - -The one-eyed man’s face was lit up with an unholy joy. “Don’t you know?” -he stuttered out. “The biz was in all the papers. That steamboat was -bringing out half a million of sovereigns. Her port was New Orleans; and -she’s got here. By gum, I s’pose they think they’re going to s-s-steal it -all by themselves.” - -“Steal? What do you mean?” - -“Oh, you idiot! What would they come here at all for if it was all right?” - -“Who’s they?” inquired Hank. - -“I gug-gug-guess we shall know that soon,” returned the one-eyed man -grimly. “Hi, you niggers there, forward! I s’pose you got razors hid -somewhere in yer pants?” - -“Say,” drawled his friend, “you’d mebbe better go slow over this deal, -Mr. Billy Nutt. The steamer does look asleep, but if you start making -your self ugly too soon, somebody may wake up and pull off guns at us.” - -“I’ve been mum-mum-missed before.” - -“So’ve I, sonny. That’s why there’s all the more chance of being hit now. -You go slow, Billy Nutt; just go slow. If they see that ugly face of -yours and hear you talk, somebody’ll shoot, sure’s death.” - -“Shoot or no shoot,” retorted the man at the tiller, “I’m going to have -some of their plunder before a dozen hours are over, or else be a deader. -I never had a chance like this in all my life before, and I’ll never -geg-geg-get another.” - -“You bet not,” agreed his friend. “Nor’ll I. That’s why I’ll stand in -with you over this deal down to the last chip. I guess it’s the one soft -thing I’ve been looking for all through a lifetime. I thought once I was -going to make my pile out of breaking Monte Carlo. Then it was a corner -in pork. Then we tried to stick up a mail train and raid the dollars out -of the express car. But all these operations kinder weakened when it came -to the point. I s’pose we didn’t put enough jump into them. But we’ll not -get euchred for want of that here. No, siree. You and me, Billy Nutt, ’ll -either come out topside over this deal, or else die in our boots. You -hear me. I reckon,” he added, in a lower voice, “we can count well on the -niggers, too. They’re not exactly a camp-meeting crowd. They’re toughs -that a racket like this’ll suit as nat’ral as chicken-stealing.” - -He bent forward over the coach-roof and communicated the scheme to the -negroes in a few words. The mobile African faces changed like children’s. -They became savage and animal-like. The fellow who but a short while -before had carried such a look of touching devotion as he trolled out -the Jordan Hymn, ceased almost to be human. In a flash he had turned to -a lustful, savage beast, with glinting yellow eyeballs, gripping a razor -with one black paw and ready to grapple anything with the other. The -veneer of American civilization had slid from him like some tattered -wrap. He was a fitting specimen of the most dangerous “made” race of -which this world can at present boast. - -Even Hank was half alarmed at the furies he had unchained. “See here, -fellows!” he said, as an after-thought. “Just take care which way you run -when we get aboard that steamer, and don’t get foul of Billy Nutt and me. -If you try any of your blame’ nigger carving games on us, I guess you’ll -turn into cold meat quicker’n you can wink. Nutt and me are the handiest -men with guns in this section of Florida.” - -“All right, boss; no shirt!” said he of the razor. - -“Well, I was just telling you,” returned the big man. “And now, quiet, -all hands. If we can slip aboard without anybody hailing us, it’ll be -healthier for us, whatever it may be for other people.” - -Once more the noises of the forest, and the occasional creaking of the -sloop’s gear, made up the only sounds; and from beyond the western -treetops the brazen sun took a final glare at them before it dived to -rest for the night. The negro who had been singing the hymn sat on the -fore-deck, and stropped a razor on the bare sole-leather of his foot. The -two white men re-charged their revolvers. - - - - -CHAPTER XV. - -RESULTS IN LONDON. - - -“How awfully ghastly!” said Amy Rivers. - -“Yes,” said Fairfax; “those anarchist people ought to be shot down like -dangerous wild beasts whenever they open their mouths! Think of it! not -only a fine ship, but half a million in specie, blotted out of existence -by this murderous bomb! It will come fearfully heavy on some of the -underwriters. There will be a black pay-day at Lloyd’s when they settle -up over this. You never saw such excitement as there is in the City. -Papers were selling at half a crown apiece!” - -“And is it certain that poor Mr. Onslow is drowned?” - -“I’m afraid, practically so. The two lifeboats were picked up next -morning, and their crews taken into Mobile. When they came to count heads -it was found that the captain and Onslow and one of the engine-room -hands were missing. In the hurry of the escape they seem to have got -into neither lifeboat. The telegram says that no other boat would have -lived a minute in the sea that was running at the time, even if one had -been lowered. And the mate, who writes, does not think that this was -even attempted, because the _Port Edes_ sank before the two lifeboats -had driven out of sight. We had a private cablegram at the office before -I left, and that told how other steamers crossing that part of the Gulf -had been on the look-out, but up to then not even so much as a scrap of -wreckage had been sighted. So I fear it is past a doubt that she sank -like a stone in deep water, and took those poor fellows down with her.” - -“It is horribly sad, especially when one remembers what I heard this -morning, Hamilton. The girl Mr. Onslow went wild about six years ago is -out in Florida this minute, and free. Duvernay, the man she married, -died six months ago of malarial fever. You know Mr. Onslow was engaged -to her just after he left Cambridge and went as an _attaché_, and was -desperately fond of her, as I imagined he could be; and when her people -forced her into marrying the other fellow, he threw up his post and -wandered into all the most out-of-the-way corners of the earth to try -and forget things. What makes me so interested is this: I’ve just found -out that she was a Miss Mabel Kildare before she was married, and when I -was a child I used to know her sister Elsie very well indeed. In fact, -I believe we were some sort of cousins, and for half a year we had the -same governess together, and were as intimate as two children could be. -Then her sister married Mr. Duvernay, who had a colonial appointment, and -Elsie went with them abroad, and we dropped completely out of touch with -one another. Strange, isn’t it, that I should hear of her again the same -day that brings news of poor Mr. Onslow’s death?” - -“It’s a small world this,” said Fairfax, sententiously, “and coincidences -are the commonest things in it. I suppose in a novel the pair of them -ought to have come together, and forgiven the past, and married, and -settled down in a villa residence with ivy and clematis attachment, and -lived happily ever afterwards. Unfortunately, real life is balder and far -less romantic.” - -“You seem out of spirits,” said his _fiancée_, linking her fingers over -his arm. - -“I suppose I am. To begin with, this _Port Edes_ business isn’t -calculated to enliven one; and then, on the top of that, I’ve had -another taste of your blessed guardian’s business methods, which has -nearly sickened me out of the office altogether. You know about this -‘Brothers Steamship Company’ which he is trying to float? Well, we -had a preliminary meeting to-day—quite a thousand people, and all, -comparatively speaking, poor. They were, for the most part, the gang he -preaches to on Sunday, with a sprinkling of skippers out of work, and -other sea-faring folk who had saved a trifle of money. - -“Shelf commenced the business with prayer, which is right enough at its -proper time, but struck me as being particularly out of place there. -The audience, however, groaned approval, and their confidence in the -man seemed to be strengthened. He followed this up with a clever speech -about the profits to be made out of the modern sea-carrying trade, and -enlarged upon the notorious fact that the losses of the business largely -arose from the lack of interest on the part of the ship-masters and other -officers. This last, he said, would be entirely removed in the Brothers -S. S. Co., because, by the articles of association, no man would hold a -responsible position on any one of their vessels who was not an actual -shareholder of the company. And then he pointed out that there was an -eight per cent. dividend guaranteed on preference stock, and a certain -fifteen or eighteen per cent. on the ordinary, and wound up with another -dose of cant. The company, he said, would not be alone content with -earning income for its bond-holders; it would have as its equal object -the spreading of the Gospel and the civilization of England to the -uttermost parts of the globe. - -“Then the meeting cheered and amenned, and wrote out an application for -10,000 £5 shares then and there in the room on forms which were handed -round; and down your blessed guardian went on his knees again, and prayed -for grace to bless his efforts; and when the poor fools dispersed, Mr. -Theodore Shelf and I drove back to the offices. - -“‘Look here,’ I said to him; ‘you’ve put me down on the directorate of -this thing with a salary of £1000 a year. I want to resign.’ - -“‘What on earth for?’ - -“‘Oh! Shall we say I haven’t sufficient loose money to take up enough -shares?’ - -“‘But,’ he said quickly, ‘you needn’t take up many. You can draw your -first quarter’s salary and pay that back to the company’s bankers on your -first call. That will qualify you.’ - -“‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to do that. I’m going to be mixed up with -this new company in no degree whatever. Flatly, I don’t believe in the -thing one bit. It’s a notorious fact that freights are so low just now -that thousands of tons of shipping is laid up because it can’t be run at -a profit; and if you put more in commission, freights will tumble down -still lower.’ - -“‘You speak from your ignorance,’ he said. ‘I should remind you that I -am by far an older man, and have a much deeper experience. The business -of Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf is a lasting monument of what my humble -talents can accomplish, and you will some day see for yourself the -newer company on an equal footing. Did you not notice what enthusiastic -confidence in its prosperity those humble friends of mine showed this -afternoon?’ - -“‘A fat lot they know about the shipping business,’ said I. ‘In the -mood you worked them up to, they’d have believed in an advertising -stock-broker’s circular if only there were a text at the head of the -page.’ - -“Shelf pulled the check-string, and his brougham stopped against the -kerb. ‘Mr. Fairfax,’ said he, ‘your attitude pains me. Let us part here -for the time, and let us both pray that when next we meet you may be in -a more Christian mind.’ Whereupon out I stepped, and came along here -to Park Lane. Amy dear, I don’t like the look of things at all. The -other business, the ‘Oceanic Steam Transport Company,’ as it is called -officially, is by no means in a healthy condition, and, remembering that, -it seems to me that starting this new company is something very nearly -approaching a swindle. I believe that Theodore Shelf is finding out that -he is in low water, and is getting desperate.” - -“I don’t know about the last,” replied the girl, thoughtfully; “but as -for being in low water, there I think you are wrong. Every week here -they seem to spend more money than they did the week before. Mrs. Shelf -was at a picture sale yesterday, and bought two old masters at four -thousand guineas apiece, and it isn’t likely she’d throw away that sum -on what is absolutely and entirely a luxury unless money were pretty -plentiful with her.” - -“It can’t go on at this pace,” said Fairfax. “I know what the limits of -the business are, and I’m certain it can’t stand the drain on them which -all this gorgeousness must entail. Last year the profits were almost -nil, and yet did Mrs. Shelf retrench at all? Not a bit. She goes in for -more and more display every week she lives. This pace must bring about a -wreck, and if the ‘Oceanic Steam Transport Company’ goes down, it is an -absolute certainty that this new ‘Brothers Company’ will be swamped with -it.” - -“And then?” - -“More than a thousand poor people, for the most of them old, will find -that the savings of a lifetime have vanished into nothingness before -their eyes. It is an awful thing even to think such a suspicion against -a man; but the idea is growing upon me, and Theodore Shelf saw what I -thought when he showed me out of his brougham this afternoon.” - -“Then what,” asked the girl in a horrified whisper, “will you do?” - -“Nothing. What can I do? To breathe a word of it aloud would be a libel; -and if I did not get sent to jail, they would pack me off to Hanwell as -a malicious madman. Shelf’s name is as good as a banknote in the City -this day, and, for everybody’s sake, I trust that I have wronged him -foully, and that it may always continue so. But, Amy dear, I have a heavy -foreboding on me that in less than half a year’s time there will be a mob -of wretched people shooting themselves or going to the workhouse because -he has ruined them, and they haven’t the pluck or the thews left to -commence life afresh.” - - - - -CHAPTER XVI. - -FOR THE BIRTHDAY LIST. - - -Mr. Theodore Shelf was a _gourmand_ of the first water. He preached most -violently against all people who drank to excess, and seemed scarcely to -discriminate between these and other people who were decorously moderate. -He included them all in one sweeping anathema, and rammed home his -charges with countless texts always once a Sunday, and usually on several -weekdays as well. He was a powerful exhorter in his own particular narrow -groove, was Mr. Theodore Shelf, and a vast number of people believed in -him, and put out their savings to usury under his directions. - -But he was, as I say, a _gourmand_ of note. He paid his _chef_ £300 a -year, and would have thought himself permanently injured in constitution -if his truffles by accident happened to be English, and not from Perigord -Forest. He over-ate himself habitually, and made no particular disguise -about it. There is no influential society to make a national sin of -bestial over-feeding, or otherwise Mr. Theodore Shelf would doubtless -have posed as an ascetic in public, and—kept biscuits and a jar of _foie -gras_ beside the brandy-bottle in the safe. There wasn’t a man in England -who knew better how to get the votes of his clique, and their influence, -and the handling of their money. There was not a man in Europe less -inclined to mortify the flesh or undergo exertion without adequate return. - -He was not a vastly clever man, if one came to add him up. He had climbed -from a humble clerkship to a very giddy eminence by the nice exercise -of three strong faculties. He had great discrimination, he was a quick -thinker, and he was brilliantly unscrupulous. - -When he saw a move that would eventually pay him, he had the wit to -single it out in an instant from a thousand others, and decide on the -road which led to his own personal profit. Then he disregarded the sneers -of the well-dressed crowd—rather courted them, in fact, when they enabled -him to pose as a martyr—and went in for the project heart, tongue, and -soul. He could put such beautiful unction into the performance that -even the most bigoted of the enemy never thought of questioning his own -personal sanctity; and meanwhile the great earnest mob of his followers -were chorusing the man’s praises with fervor and fanatical zeal. - -It has been stated that Mr. Theodore Shelf was a man entirely wanting -the saving salt of humor. But this I think is wrong. When he was alone he -would take George on his knee, and whisper in that small animal’s ear, -and call up a sardonic expression amongst the smug, sanctimonious lines -of his face that was not carried there in outer life. At times, too, he -would even laugh—a new, gleeful laugh; far different from the saintly -reproving smile which was the only sign of mirth that ever illuminated -his features before a more talkative confidant. But then George was -taciturn; he could express whole pages by one quick pucker of the nose -and half a tail-wag; and he was never known to gossip. Perhaps it was -because he made such a prodigiously safe confidant that Mr. Theodore -Shelf was so fond of George. - -In social standing George was not a gentleman. Nature had intended him -for the professional extinction of rats, and given him a preternatural -gutter cleverness. Fate had him surrounded with affluence and regular -meals. The pursuit of rats was forbidden him; battles with canine -acquaintances were discouraged; and his one dissipation was sneaking -away from his residence and making love to the barmaid in an adjacent -public-house in return for biscuits and sugar. As a general result he -waxed portly, and could look upon most kinds of rascality with a lenient -eye, and perfectly understood why Mr. Shelf’s private brandy-bottle -lodged in retirement from the public view. - -Now, Mr. Theodore Shelf’s dinner parties—as sent up by the inventive -and excellent _chef_ aforesaid—were celebrated all over London, which, -despite all the charges laid against it by Continental neighbors, is -a city which does contain some people who appreciate the exquisite in -food. Shelf, who despised no means of furthering his material interests, -naturally traded upon his celebrity in this matter, and distributed his -dinner invitations with a keen eye to some adequate return. But he was -usually content to leave the actual making-up of all parties to his wife. -He could quite trust her in this matter. She was not likely to expend a -single cover uselessly. She had a wonderfully nice appreciation of the -main chance. A clever woman, Mrs. Shelf. - -On the night of the day that the Brothers Steamship Company was floated -she had arranged a dinner-table at her house which is destined to live -down through time. There was a great Cabinet Minister present, who, as -the chief guest, took her down to dinner; and there was also in the room -the Ambassador from one of the greater Continental Courts, with whom the -Minister had, after dinner, ten minutes of quiet, informal talk in the -corner of the drawing-room. That talk laid the groundwork of a certain -international agreement, afterwards elaborated, which has never yet been -made public. But some day it will be sprung upon Europe with a crash, and -a whirlwind of wonder; and then the papers will refer to Mrs. Theodore -Shelf’s dinner-table as a manufactory of history. - -Be it confessed, however, that Mrs. Shelf had not asked the two to meet -through any high-minded wish to better the Empire. She was singularly -untrammeled by patriotism of that variety. The principal Power whose -betterment she had at heart was the House of Shelf, as consisting of -husband and self; and when she sat down at the head of her table, and -watched the great Minister next her unfold his napkin, she made up her -mind to do great deeds that night. - -She did not rush headlong to the attack. She had prepared her ground -skilfully, and knew how to play her game with due deliberation. On the -other side of the Minister was Amy Rivers—a bright, sprightly personage, -of whom he was extremely fond, and to whose conversation his hostess -cleverly dismissed him before they were halfway through the _hors -d’œuvres_. - -Oysters _à la Sibérienne_ followed, and as the great man was selecting -the plump natives he fancied from their tray of ice, he turned round to -Mrs. Shelf, as though to engage in talk with her. But her time was not -yet ripe. The Minister was a professed _gourmet_, and the wines that -night were the best the world could produce. Theodore Shelf made no -objection to these. He professed to abstain from wines himself, but he -provided them for others, as he did billiards. And Mrs. Shelf trusted -that the glorious vintages would sweep the austerity from the Minister’s -soul. - -The Minister sipped his Chablis, and his eye kindled. - -“I shouldn’t like,” he said to Amy Rivers, “to be a poor man, and not -know people, and not go out anywhere. The sweets of life are its pleasant -surprises. That’s the best wine of its name in England this minute.” - -“I am not,” replied Miss Rivers, “going to talk food with you. If you -want that, you must shout down the table at Mr. Shelf.” - -“Oh, youth, youth!” said the Minister, “how much you miss! At one time I -thought Dublin porter an excellent tipple to drink with my oysters; and -as for you, my dear, you don’t trouble your head about it at all. I used -to think I’d like to marry you, supposing Heaven made me single again. -But now——” - -“Now, I suppose, I shall have to put up with Hamilton Fairfax, as -arranged. Well, there are worse fates.” - -“You seem to bear up under it wonderfully.” - -“Don’t I? You can come to the wedding, if you’ll promise not to look too -woebegone.” - -“I sha’n’t come. I shall send you an inexpensive present with black edges -to it.” - -“So long as it isn’t _entrée_ dishes. We’ve tons of them already. I -thought I’d mention it, because one knows how your tastes lie.” - -The great man squeezed lemon on to the last of his oysters, and ate it -with a satisfied nod of the head. - -“Date fixed?” he asked. “If it is, break the sad news to me gently. Don’t -be too cruel.” - -“The date’s fixed within limits. We’ve bought a place to live in: and, if -it’s ready, we shall be married the day I come of age.” - -“Bought a place, have you? Come, this looks like business. Where is it? -Got a good cook? Any shooting? Going to ask me down? Because, if you do, -I’ll come and teach you how to make me comfortable.” - -“Yes, I believe you could do that last. Those papers which don’t call you -the Pope of Politics every morning, say you’re the most incapable man in -Britain in most matters; but I never heard that the most vicious of them -ever accused you of living in discomfort. You’ve a wonderful knack of -looking after yourself.” - -“Haven’t I? Don’t spoil your health with salted almonds; nibble one of -these Riviera olives. Life is made for suiting your own tastes as much -as possible, and, where practical, making your neighbors pay for them. -Why isn’t Fairfax here to-night? Are we all too big for him?” - -“Hamilton is away on business, looking after the place we’re going -to buy in Kent. I shall see him later. But just now I’m having a -holiday,” said Miss Rivers. “I wanted to flirt with you. You’re safe and -amusing—amusing, that is, when you keep off the _menu_. Where are you -going to after here to-night?” - -“Oh, to a horrible political thing, where we shall all be good, and talk -humbug, and be bored to death. If I hadn’t chanced to be in the Cabinet, -I should probably have gone to see a prize-fight.” His eye traveled down -the table to where Theodore Shelf was looking saintly, with his head on -one side, and washing his large white hands with invisible soap. “I’d -chance it, my dear, and go, if I thought I could manage to meet——” - -Amy Rivers had followed his glance. She turned to him with a demure smile. - -“Well,” she said, “who?” - -“Oh, just one or two of my colleagues on the same side of the House. Hang -it all, Amy, the fellows can’t always be what they set up for in front of -their clients.” - -Miss Rivers laughed. - -“You’re a bold, bad lot,” she said. “I know I shall see you in the -police-court one of these days for breaking lamp-posts, or running away -with a hansom cab. There’s a vein of wickedness in you that’s completely -thrown away in a Cabinet Minister.” - -His lordship grinned, and turned to Mrs. Shelf. He admired Mrs. Shelf -because she was an extremely handsome woman. He rather dreaded her just -now, because he knew she wanted something out of him. And he had to talk -to her because it was policy to do so. - - * * * * * - -The complete Art of Spreading Butter is not one to be mastered by -everybody. In the lower grades it is easy: any one can tickle a fool. But -when the subject has wallowed in all the cleverest kinds of flattery for -many years of his life, then it is a different matter. If you set about -your work in a clumsy way, he begins at once to mildly hate you. If you -only half do it, the man is resentful because he has not received his due. - -Mrs. Shelf avoided the pitfalls. The great Minister stayed suspicious—she -could not alter that—but she put him in a most excellent humor with -himself; and the dinner was surpassing good. He took kümmel and cognac -for his liqueur, and she watched an ecstasy flicker to his face as he -drained the little glass. The hum of the talk rose high in the room, and -her voice met his ear alone. He heard her asking that Theodore Shelf -might be elevated to the House of Lords. - -He put the glass to the table, still holding the stem between his -fingers. He looked at it thoughtfully, shaking his head the while. - -“My husband is a power you can’t neglect,” she continued. “He always -votes straight for your party.” - -“Yes, he is _one_ of us,” the Minister admitted softly, with a gentle -emphasis on the numeral. - -“So far. But he has his principles to consider. He might find it -necessary, from the dictates of his conscience, to separate himself from -you on one or two matters in the next session. I’m afraid his following -would go with him. You know he has vast influence with a certain class.” - -The Minister stretched out lazy fingers, and took a saltspoon, and -made two little neat heaps of salt on the table-cloth; and, after -consideration, added a third. - -“Pooh!” said Mrs. Shelf, “there are five certain, and I could tell you -their names if you didn’t know them already. My husband makes six. That -counts twelve votes on a division. But, of course, the Government is -strong enough to stand it.” - -The Minister thoughtfully built four salted almonds into an arch, and -piled two more at the back of them. “Cave!” he murmured, and then with -a tap of the finger sprawled them on the table-cloth. “There’s nothing -certain in this life,” he said. - -“There are caves and caves; and some bring down Governments. My husband -and his followers are extreme men, and, as I have heard you say yourself, -there is no class of creature so resolute and bigoted as a fanatic. If -once an extreme man makes up his mind, all the argument on earth will not -change him. But perhaps you don’t mind a dissolution? Perhaps you’ve done -so well, and passed so many popular measures since you’ve been in power, -that you’d like to meet the country at once?” - -The Minister grinned like a man in pain. “A knighthood,” he said, “is a -very fascinating thing. It is the reward of the faithful. I think—I say I -think—I could lay my hands upon one spare knighthood, and might give it -away if I saw an adequate return.” - -Mrs. Shelf smiled amusedly at the diamonds on her comely wrist. - -“A knighthood? That’s the thing City men have, isn’t it, when they make -money by selling patent mousetraps, or happen to be Lord Mayors, or -something like that? Unfortunately, my husband would not qualify for a -knighthood. He is not a small pedler. His—what shall I say?” - -“Operations are more extensive?” - -“Precisely. He does things on a fine scale. For instance, he has, as I -said, at this very moment twelve votes at his command, which might make -a very considerable difference on a division. You see, conscience is a -great thing with him. He could never neglect it. But if he was in the -Upper House....” - -The great Minister could comfortably have shuddered. He was a peer -himself, and was jealous for his caste. But, as it was, he repressed -this piece of outward emotion, and contented himself with saying -“No,” quietly, softly, and with entire decision. Then, with a swirl -of brilliant talk there was no arresting, he deliberately changed the -conversation. Mrs. Shelf submitted. She had another card still to play. -And until she picked up the ladies with her glance, and led them away -up-stairs, they two spoke of oranges from many points of view. They -agreed that the large tangerines of Majorca were the only oranges fit to -eat in England, and discussed the various means of getting them imported -_viâ_ Marseilles without suffering them to lose more than a fraction of -their flavor. - -The Minister, fatuous man, thought that she had given in to him, and -chuckled inwardly at his victory, and when the ladies had gone, he -turned to his next-door neighbor and talked on the ethics of Irish -cock shooting with a light and easy mind. But for the next move in the -drawing-room he was frankly unprepared. He had come to Park Lane on the -clear understanding that a _tête-à-tête_ was to be contrived for him with -the Ambassador; for it is in this way that the great treaties which dally -with the fate of nations receive their birth-push. I do not say that -the matter of peace or war depended upon that interview; but sufficient -hung on it to make the great Minister very anxious, because he had been -deputed by his colleagues in the Cabinet to bring this thing about, and -had solemnly undertaken the charge. - -And, lo! the chance of this momentous minute’s chat was to be withheld. -Mrs. Shelf, calm, clever, magnificent, came to his elbow the moment -he entered the drawing-room, and stayed there. He was frosty, he was -inattentive, he was almost rude, but he could not shake her off. She was -cool, insistent, fluent. She made him sit on a sofa by her side, and -laughed almost openly at the attempts he made to shake loose from his -bondage. - -At last he broke off in the middle of an aimless sentence, and looked -her between the eyes. She returned the glance most squarely. There was a -pause between them, and then— - -“By the way, baronetcy?” he murmured. - -It was nothing on earth to do with what they had been speaking about the -minute previously, but the sentence did not require a footnote to explain -it further. - -“H’m!” she said. “When?” - -“In the next Birthday List.” - -“Thanks. Now you go into the further drawing-room and talk to the -Ambassador, and I will clear the people away. I suppose ten minutes will -be enough?” - -“Ample,” said the great Minister, rising. Then he added: “By Jove! you -are a clever woman. You’re cleverer than your husband.” - -“I know I am,” said Mrs. Shelf. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII. - -IN THE MATTER OF A TRUST. - - -“Mr. Fairfax, sir, to see you.” - -“Say that I cannot see him.” - -The butler hesitated a moment, and then begged Mr. Shelf’s pardon, and -hinted that Fairfax seemed to have anticipated some such message. - -“He said, sir, I was to explain it was on very important business, or he -would not have called so late at night. And he said, too, sir”—here the -butler hesitated again—“that he _must_ see you.” - -“Tell him——,” Shelf began passionately; but there he stopped, and the -rest of the sentence was lost. Fairfax had walked into the room. - -The butler stood his ground, glancing with nervous respect from one to -the other, till Shelf waved him to the door, through which he vanished -noiselessly, with an apologetic sigh of relief. Then the other two faced -one another. - -“I must say, sir,” the shipowner began, with icy politeness, “that after -what has occurred between us this day your intrusion strikes me as -vastly wanting in taste. Of course, as a Christian, it has been my duty -to forgive you the injurious thoughts which you bore against me; but, as -a frail human man, I confess to have been so wounded by them that the -sight of you tempts me to the sin of anger afresh. But, perhaps, sir, you -have come here to express contrition, and to ask that I will hand back -the resignation of the directorate which you so rudely thrust upon me.” - -“I have come,” replied Fairfax, shortly, “for neither one thing nor the -other. I am not calling upon you in your City capacity at all. I want -to speak with you in your position of trustee to the lady whom I am now -shortly going to marry.” - -“She has sent you?” - -“She is perfectly aware of my errand. A property in Kent has suddenly -come into the market which will go for a comparatively low sum for -cash down. I have been spending the day examining it, and meanwhile my -solicitor has been going through the deeds. The place will suit us to the -ground, and the title is as clear as could be wished for.” - -“So you wish to buy this property with your wife’s money?” Shelf asked -with a sneer. - -“I am not disguising from myself the fact that Amy is an heiress. At -the same time, I am not altogether a pauper myself. But I don’t think -we two need go into that part of the money question, Mr. Shelf. As a -point of fact (as you know quite well), she and I first met one another -abroad, and fell in love, and got engaged without knowing a single word -about our mutual outlook, social or financial. The point here is that Amy -wants to become part purchaser in this Kent property with myself, and -on her behalf I come to you for the formal permission. You know by the -terms of her father’s will she was to have all her wishes with regard -to the property taken into consideration after she reached the age of -twenty-one, but was still to be under the semi-guidance of the trustees -till she reached her twenty-third birthday.” - -“I am only one of the trustees,” said Shelf. “You must arrange to bring -my co-trustee up to meet me, and then I will talk the matter over with -him.” - -“I have called on that reverend gentleman before I came to you,” said -Fairfax, “and he quite meets with mine and Amy’s views. He will come up -to town and see you himself in the morning at the City office. But in the -mean time he sends his permission in this letter.” - -Fairfax selected a paper from his pocket-book and handed it to Mr. Shelf. -“I suppose you recognize the signature,” he said. - -Shelf started, the paper rustling between his large white fingers. He -had a sentence on the end of his tongue, but with an effort he swallowed -it. Then, with a frown and a quick catching of the breath, he turned to -the letter and read it through. As it chanced, Fairfax had seen that -momentary look of disquiet, and being a young man of some penetration, -he argued down to the reason of it. “Why,” he asked himself, “should the -old hypocrite be upset when I ‘supposed he recognized his co-trustee’s -handwriting?’ I’m bothered if I can see any definite reason, but there -must be something pretty fishy somewhere. Theodore Shelf is not the man -to let slip that kind of nervousness without some very excellent cause. -I’m beginning to think that those of Amy’s interests which are in his -hands will be none the worse for being a little looked after.” - -Mr. Theodore Shelf glanced up from the letter. “Of course you -understand,” he said, “that I cannot act upon an informal communication -like this? My co-trustee is a most excellent Christian, but, I regret to -say, a bad man of business.” - -“Pernicious, to say the least of him. He seems to have the flimsiest -notion of the use of paper and signatures. Still, he means entirely well, -and that is why I do not want to worry him unduly. So, with permission, -Mr. Shelf, and to take the burden of details off your shoulders as -well as off his, I will instruct my own solicitor to see to all the -preliminaries as to which stock will bear selling out of best.” - -“You take it for granted,” said the shipowner sourly, “that I shall not -put my veto on this scheme for spending my ward’s money.” - -“Why should you? You have given your consent to the marriage, and -whatever may be your personal feelings towards me, at any rate, you like -her. She wishes to marry me, and intends to do that anyway; she wishes -for this estate, and I do not see that you have any reasonable grounds -for refusing to gratify her wish; besides, as an investment, the thing is -as good as a first mortgage or Three per cent. Corporation Stock.” - -“There are many grave objections to this course,” said Shelf. - -“Then, perhaps,” said Fairfax, “you will tell me what they are?” - -“I do not see that I am called upon to do anything of the kind.” - -“There we differ. Moreover, Mr. Shelf, you force me to a very unpleasant -conclusion.” - -“And what, sir, might that be?” - -“Well, this,” said Fairfax, with a significant stare: “You’ve got -that money so—shall we say, securely—locked up, that it isn’t readily -available for this new investment.” - -“You are talking like a child,” said Mr. Shelf, noisily. - -“I am talking like a plain business man,” Fairfax retorted, “who intends -to take reasonable care of his future wife’s property. I think that will -explain my views; and, as nothing more need be said on that matter, I -will leave you. The other trustee will call upon you at midday to-morrow, -and I shall make it my duty to accompany him. So, for the present, sir, -_au revoir_.” - -Fairfax left the room, and Mr. Theodore Shelf lay back in a swivel -writing chair. Mechanically his fingers stretched out and dallied with -a book which lay on the table. It was a Bradshaw. Once, indeed, he -opened it, and turned up the pages of the express service between London -and Southampton; and, for a full half-hour held it with his finger as -a page-marker; but at the end of that time he flung the book savagely -across the room, and stood up with clenched fists and the veins standing -out of his forehead. - -“Amy may thank Fairfax for saving her property,” he muttered, “and a -thousand people will curse him for doing it. I believe I’m a fool not to -bolt now with what I’ve got, because nothing short of a miracle can bring -me up again. Still, there’s the money subscribed by those poor wretches -for this new company yet in hand, and that will stave off the immediate -present. There’s just a chance that Onslow’s _coup_ may be realized on -in time, and, if that comes off, I’m all right again. And if it doesn’t, -there’s the estançia on the Rio Paraguay always ready. Yes, George, old -chap, that it is. Snug and warm, beyond worries, safe from extradition. -I’ll risk it.” - -The wire-haired terrier was rubbing against his leg. He lifted the dog on -to the cushion of an easy chair, and went to his safe. He took from that -a bundle of papers, and spread them on his writing-table. - -They were the trust deeds and other papers connected with Miss Amy -Rivers’ property. Some of them were documents distinctly worth locking -up, because if the Public Prosecutor could have run his eye through -the collection for one short five minutes, he would infallibly have -procured for the saintly Mr. Theodore Shelf seven complete years of penal -servitude. - -It is an unpleasant thing to level such a hint against so good a man; -but a fact or so will show solid reason for it. During the two preceding -years—partly through depression in trade, partly through his wife’s -broadcast extravagance—Theodore Shelf had found himself in desperate -straits for money. He had raised funds this way and that by all -legitimate means; had plunged, but with evil fortune; and finally had -been reduced to making his daily income by less reputable means. For long -he had laid covetous eyes on the fortune of his late partner, Marmaduke -Rivers, which was held in trust for the daughter by himself and a canon -of Winchester; and at last, in a moment of desperation, he determined to -have the use of it. The co-trustee was a man who had taken a double-first -at Oxford, and apparently spent all his life’s energies over the -process. He had settled down into an amiable country parson, who bred -prize-bantams, and wrote books on Armenian folk-lore. He was extremely -upright, vastly unsuspicious, and on matters of business possessed -an ignorance of unusual profundity. He respected Theodore Shelf, and -disliked him with an equal intenseness. - -When Shelf made up his mind to tamper with the Rivers property, he did -not go through the formality of asking this good gentleman’s leave and -permission. He simply forged himself a power of attorney, signed it with -the excellent canon’s name and set to work. Being a man who never did -anything by halves, he did not take two bites at the cherry. He annexed -the whole of his ward’s property, lock, stock, and barrel, and paid -in the usual interest to her bankers with entire regularity. Humanly -speaking, there was not a chance of his being found out; and when fortune -smiled on him again he had every intention of repaying to the uttermost -farthing what he had taken. As has been said, he liked Amy Rivers -extremely, and, if he had not had his worthy self to consider, he would -have been the last person in the world to do her an injury. - -And now this pestilent fellow Fairfax must need step in, bristling with -suspicion, and evidently intending to have money or an inquiry. Of -course, the latter was a thing which Mr. Shelf could not stand for one -minute. At the first glance it would be shown that the trust property did -not exist in its former state, and that the interest had been paid into -the bank out of Mr. Shelf’s own pocket. And so there were only two things -which could be done; either bolt forthwith, or pay the plundered trust -out of some other fund, and hope that the Providence which guards knaves -would pull things straight again. Mr. Shelf had chosen to take the latter -course, and it was the money subscribed by the wretched shareholders of -the Brothers Steamship Company which was alienated by him to make good -the property of Miss Amy Rivers. - -It required not many strokes of the pen to do this; but, after -restitution had been made, Mr. Theodore Shelf commenced coquetting with -a more delicate piece of business. He desired to hide his tracks. It was -his wish that, even if the worst came, and he had to fly the country as a -detected swindler, no one should know that he had tampered with his own -ward’s trust money. - -It seems almost laughable that the man should have put himself to this -piece of pains. In the vast sweep of his other ponderous frauds, this -very natural one might well pass without special obloquy from the great -shorn public. But it was not for the general ruck of his victims that -Shelf was working then. He had sacrificed a thousand (under compulsion) -to repay one; and, having made repayment, he wanted to cancel the odium -of robbery. Next to himself and his dog, he probably loved Amy Rivers -better than anything in all the world; and, if the worst came, and he had -to go, it would be pleasanter for him to think that she, at least, would -have nothing but kind memories of him. She would know quite well that he -might have included her fortune in his other robberies, because Fairfax -would tell her that, if she did not guess it for herself; and she would -feel a kindness towards him for his forbearance. - -Of course, he would be getting this genial sentiment under false -pretenses, but that was a trifle which counted as nothing to Mr. Theodore -Shelf. Your true hypocrite deludes no one more perfectly and artistically -than himself when he sets squarely about it. - -The time was long past midnight when he had finished tampering with -the last of the papers on his writing-table; and, as he passed the -blotting-paper over his final forgery, he heard the clash of the front -door in the hall below. Quickly bunching the papers together, he put them -into the safe, locked it, threw himself into an easy chair, and picked -up a quarto volume of his own published sermons. He was serenely reading -these when his wife sailed majestically into the room, with Amy Rivers at -her side. - -The girl stepped forward, took both of his hands in hers, and shook them -warmly. “All congratulations,” she said. “I’ve only just heard. May I -call you ‘Sir Theodore’ in advance?” - -Shelf let the book slide to the floor, and sat up staring first at one -and then the other. “I am much obliged to you, Amy dear,” he said at -last; “but, upon my word, I don’t know what you mean.” - -“It’s out!” she said. “Everybody was talking about it to-night. You’ll -be gazetted in the next Birthday List. And not a trumpery knighthood, -either. You’re to be a full-blown baronet—no less.” - -Theodore Shelf lay back in his chair with a very queer expression on -his face. He put his white fingers together under his chin, and stared -curiously at his wife. “Your doing, I suppose, Laura?” - -“You may thank me for it entirely,” she replied with a smiling bow. “I -arranged for it here with the Minister; and at the two places where we -looked in at afterwards, I told the news to three of my dearest friends -in the very strictest of confidence. Consequently, it is all over London -to-night, and will be in all the papers in England to-morrow. Would you -like to congratulate me?” - -“I’ll wait,” said the shipowner, “till I see you Lady Shelf. The title is -not formally given over for a fortnight, and between now and then so much -may happen. Man is but a frail creature.” - -“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Mrs. Shelf, disgustedly, “don’t cant now. -When you are Sir Theodore I can’t have you disgracing me by preaching -and holding forth to those low people you used to know. You must cut all -that connection. Good heavens, Theodore, you can’t like it! And there’s -really no more to be got out of that sort of thing. You’ve used those -dreary, goody-goody folks, and made your fortune out of them, and let -that suffice. Now, if you want to get on further, you’ve got to pick up -with another set. Don’t you understand?” - -For reply Theodore Shelf burst into a sudden wild cackle of laughter. - -His wife drew back a step, half-scared. She had scarcely ever heard the -man laugh once in all her life with him; never like that; and she did -not know what to make of it. But at last he stopped and spoke. “You’re -a clever woman, Laura, and a handsome one. I’ve never seen you look so -fine as you do to-night. But you are a bit too rapid in some of your -movements. You’re counting at present that, beyond a doubt, the servants -will be calling you ‘miladi’ within a fortnight, and I suppose you’ll -go out to-morrow and get a new card-plate engraved. Well, my dear, if I -were you, I’d wait. A fortnight is fourteen days, and in every minute of -that time something may happen to bring you an appalling disappointment. -For instance, I may die. Take it that the Almighty does make me die, and -where then comes in the use for your new card-plate? There is precedent -for creating a baroness, I grant you; but I don’t think they are likely -to manufacture another precedent by making you Lady Shelf in your own -right if I am not at hand to share the dignity.” - -A servant came in and announced that Fairfax was in the hall below. -Amy Rivers said “Good-night” hurriedly, and slipped out of the room. -Mrs. Shelf took up her stand in front of the fireplace, flushed with -triumph and wrath, and looking her superbest. “You are talking the -merest nonsense, Theodore,” she said, “and before that girl, too! Thank -goodness, she is practically one of the family, and will not gossip. -Die, indeed! You die! what an absurdity! One would think, to hear you, -that the world was coming to an end before the Birthday List is out. Of -course you will have the baronetcy. There can’t be a doubt about it now, -thanks to me.” - -“What do you want me to say?” Shelf asked. - -“Well, to begin with, in common decency you might thank me. If it had not -been for my diplomacy in this house to-night, you would only have had a -beggarly knighthood offered, if as much as that. You have the chance of -making a sensation now.” - -Shelf stood slowly up, and strode up to the hearth-rug and faced her, -with his head thrust forward and his arms folded across his breast. -“Yes,” he said slowly, “I have a chance of making a sensation—one of -the biggest of the century; and mostly owing to your efforts. The Lord -grant that the chance slips away from me! You are very beautiful and very -clever. But I believe, Laura, that you are the devil, sent expressly on -earth to tempt. You’d better go to bed now, and leave me. This is one of -the times when I am tempted to kill you.” - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII. - -THE PLUME-HUNTERS’ DINNER-PARTY. - - -The one-eyed man, Mr. Billy Nutt, and his friend and partner, whose -name was apparently Hank without further attachment, made a livelihood -by transgressing the laws of the United States and supplying a strong -demand. Ladies of Society wished for egret plumes and other feathers -for external adornment, and the Seminole of the Everglades desired corn -whisky for his stomach’s sake; and whilst Game Regulations forbade -collection of the first, Indians’ Protection Acts vetoed all distribution -of the second. And for the transgressor there were distinct and heavy -penalties. - -But, to begin with, States law does not carry very far in Florida, -which is the home of outlaws; and, in the second place, Mr. Nutt and -friend were both “wanted” on several counts already, amongst which -unjustifiable homicide ranked high; so that they were men entirely -reckless, and inclined to look upon poaching, and illicit whisky peddling -to the aboriginal, as the mildest of mild peccadilloes. Moreover, as in -furtherance of their business they were extremely well armed, and apt to -shoot first and reflect afterwards when annoyed, they were not persons to -be argued with by any of the more gentle methods. - -The three men on the steamer were in no way prepared to receive these -dubious visitors—were, in fact, completely oblivious of their approach, -being still chained in the deadest slumber. The sun had drooped below the -treetops, and already the night noises of the forest were beginning—the -rattle of crickets and toads in the trees, the grunting of the bullfrogs -in the swamp, the dry rustle of the jar-flies, and the warm hum of the -never-sleeping mosquito. In the darker tree aisles there commenced the -fireflies’ brief snappings of light; and in the black, shadowed water of -the bayous were other phosphorescent glows, like these, only coming from -the eyes of some prowling alligator. - -The sloop ran down her jib topsail, and as the iron hanks screamed -along the stay a negro trotted nimbly out along the flat bowsprit top -to secure the sail in its gaskets. The wind was dropping with the sun, -and because the current raced manfully down the bight where the stranded -steamer was lying, the sloop made but a fathom or so to the good by -every board across the river. The one-eyed man danced a barefoot tattoo -of fury on the floorboards of the cockpit at this slowness; and his -loose-limbed partner, who still sprawled on the cabin-roof, chuckled with -easy amusement. But the breeze held long enough for their purpose. They -ran up above the steamer, and the steam ground their planking against -the rust-streaked iron. A pair of davit-falls hung down, with the blocks -weed-covered in the water; and overhauling one of these, they made it -fast round the bitts. Then, swarming up the other fall, the whole five of -them gained the bridge-deck above. - -Instinctively, when once their feet were on the warm gray planks, each -man, black and white, handled his weapon ready to fight or argue as -might be demanded of him; but no one appeared to seek explanation of -their presence; and from staring about them, they took to staring at -one another rather foolishly. If one has been expecting a brisk game of -murder, and one meets with empty silence, it rather spoils the sequence -of ideas. - -“Come to think of it,” said Hank in an oppressive whisper, “if there’d -been an anchor watch, they’d have hailed us before we got this far. I -bet the Old Man’s asleep in the chart-house. ’Twouldn’t be a bad idea to -bottle him.” - -He pattered across the deck, right hand inside his shirt bosom, pistol -gripped in that, and peered in through the open door. The place was -tenanted by no living thing larger than flies and cockroaches. He drew -back half scared by the eeriness of it, and then beckoning his mates, -headed them down the companion ladder, treading like a stage conspirator. -At the foot, two doors opened, one into the alley-way which was empty, -the other into the main cabin, on the floor of which Kettle had been -deposited by the donkeyman. But in the culminating spasm of his cramp, -the little captain had rolled away out of sight under the table, and so -to all appearance this place was deserted also. - -The men peered about them, and ran aft, poking their noses in pantry -and galley and engine-room. Coming back through the alley-way they -searched the two mates’ rooms, and found them empty; and going out -on the iron fore-deck, found the forecastle deserted also. Then they -gathered round that gaping rent where the fore-hatch had been, in curious -wonder, examining the crumpled plates which were yellow with new rust, -and pointing out to one another the twisted stanchions and splintered -_débris_ below. And at this they were engaged when the sun took its final -dive beneath the waters of the Mexican gulf to westward, and the tropical -darkness snapped down upon them like the shutting of a box. - -“Hank,” said the one-eyed man, “this gets me. What in snakes have they -been doin’ to this blame’ steamboat, and for why have they gug-gug-gone -off and left her?” - -“Euclid’s out of my line,” said Hank, oracularly. - -“Oh you blank puttyhead,” retorted his friend, “th-th-ink!” - -“You tire me. If they aren’t here they aren’t. P’r’aps they’ve gone off -and toted the boodle to a _cache_. P’r’aps it’s left right here aboard, -and if it is I guess we shall find it when we want it. What I’m on for -now’s grub. I hain’t had a Christian meal for three months, thanks to -this new sheriff bustling after us, and I’m about sick of mullet and -sweet potatoes. But, please our luck, we’ll raid their store-rooms here -and fix up a regular hotel supper for to-night. That’s me. Now, come -along, fellers.” - -The negroes chuckled and crowed, capering like children, and went off -with the tall man towards the galley, and Nutt, after an ineffectual -attempt to speak (which threw him into a paroxysm of fury), presently -followed them. - -The feast was _sui generis_. They found grease, baking powder, and flour, -and made doughnuts; they hotted three tins of Julienne soup; they baked a -great mass of salt pork on a bedding of white beans; they made a stew of -preserved potatoes, Australian mutton, and _pâté de foie gras_; and, as -a _chef d’œuvre_, one of the negroes turned out some crisp three-corned -tartlets stuffed with strawberry jam. Then Hank, with a lamp in one hand, -a cylinder of plates in the other, and a whole armory of knives and forks -bristling from his pockets, pattered off to the main cabin to lay the -table. - -At the doorway he stopped, gaping, and because the instinct of the -much-hunted made his right hand slip round to a certain back pocket, the -plates went to the ground with a crash. In the swivel-chair at the head -of the table was huddled a man, a small man, with a cold cigar bitten -tight between his teeth, a man so grimy with coal-dust that Hank couldn’t -have sworn whether the short, peaked beard which rested on his chest was -black or red or prussian-blue. - -“Oh, don’t you trouble to be polite,” said the man in the chair. “I’m -mighty glad to see any one who can talk, or use a pair of hands.” Here he -lifted his nose and sniffed the air like a hound. “Is that supper you’re -cooking?” - -“I reckon.” - -“Found anything to wash it down with?” - -“There was a dozen bottles of beer, but we wanted those between whiles, -and I guess they’re drunk.” - -“There should have been more, but I suppose my lousy steward has necked -them. However, this is a big night, and this is the first time I’ve -seen you and your mates, and so I guess champagne’ll be good enough for -us. There’s a case in that end room ready a-purpose for this sort of -celebration day. Perhaps you’ll fetch it out; I’m weak still.” - -Hank obeyed, wonderingly, and laid the table, and brought on the viands, -in which he was assisted by Nutt and the blacks. - -Then Captain Kettle spoke again. - -“Oh, look here, friends, I’m not going to sit at table with niggers. I -take it this isn’t a blessed missionary meeting.” - -It seemed as though there would be a row. One of the blacks stated his -intention of taking no “sass from that po’ white trash,” and another -openly drew a razor, and made suggestive motions with it through the air. - -“Of course,” said Kettle, “if you two gentlemen have chucked your color, -and care to feed with those ornaments, you can do it. Only I’m a white -man, and have my pride.” - -“That’s right,” said Nutt. “Picnicking on the sloop’s different. But this -is a regular hotel supper, with napkins and a table-cloth, and I guess -anything colored ’ud spoil the tone. Say s-s-s-sonnies, you mosey.” - -“I done cooked most this yer grub,” whined he of the razor, “an’ I’se -gwine t’eat my belly-load.” - -“Well, collar what you want to eat till you bu-s-s-s.” - -“Yes, but whar’ll we go?” - -Nutt looked at Captain Kettle. The little man in the swivel-chair gave -his African guests full leave to go to a place considerably hotter -than the engine-hold; suggesting the mess-room as an after-thought and -alternative; whither they betook themselves, grumbling. And then the -three whites commenced their meal. - -Kettle unwired a champagne bottle with a fork, and poured out three long -tumblers of dancing froth. “Wine!” said Hank. “Oh, my Jemima!” - -“Geg-geg-got any ice?” queried the one-eyed man. - -“Ice is off,” replied the captain. “Things have been that hot this trip -it gave up and melted.” - -“You seem to got your manners on ice, Mr. Billy Nutt,” said his friend. -“Now I see an elegant hotel meal in front of me, and I’m going to make -a pig of myself, and be jolly well thankful. I hain’t any use for your -high-toned sort of canoosering. See here, stuff your silly mouth, and -quit grumbling right now. D’ye hear me?” - -His guests ate, and Kettle made small talk for them, at the same time -playing a good knife and fork himself. The food seemed to straighten his -back and knock the limpness out of him; but Mr. Nutt and his friend were -lapping their champagne too industriously to see any significance in the -change. They were enjoying themselves with a gusto to which the ordinary -gourmand is a stranger. Probably there is nothing on earth so nauseating -as a severe course of the Floridan sweet potato. And, consequently, there -is no diet so calculated to make one appreciate a more generous _menu_. - -The meal crept steadily through its courses, and the empty bottles grew -on the cabin floor. No one got drunk. Captain Kettle’s own libations were -sparing, and the others had each a high co-efficient of absorption; still -all were exhilarated, and ripe for mischief or merriment as might befall. - -“Say, cap,” said the long man, as he dallied with his last strawberry -tartlet, “isn’t it so that you’ve got this fine steamboat of yours -ballasted with sovereigns?” - -“It’s so,” said Kettle, “or something very like that.” - -“Your own?” - -“Oh Lord, no. Just freight consigned to New Orleans, and brought here by -that blow-up I was telling you about. I suppose that you gentlemen’ll -have no objection to bearing a hand aboard o’ me now you are here? I’m a -bit short-manned, and it ’ud be a pity to let freight like that rust for -want of fingering.” - -Hank grinned at his _vis-à-vis_, and then turned to the little skipper in -the swivel-chair. “No,” he said, “I don’t see there’s anything wrong with -that. I’m afraid, though, if we chipped in we couldn’t sign on so far as -Noo Orleans.” - -“New Orleans be sugared,” cried Captain Kettle. “Haven’t I spoke plain -enough already? Don’t you understand all this racket’s a blessed swindle? -The steamer’s going to have the name-plate on her engines altered, and -the label on her stern changed, and a different pattern painted on her -smoke-stacks, and a coat of gray clapped on her outside. And then, when -she’s so bedevilled her own builder wouldn’t know her, we’ll run her -round to some South American port where the least number of questions -will be asked, and sell her for what she’ll fetch. But only the steamer, -mark you. I reckon she’s carried the freight far enough. That’ll be -struck out of her here.” - -“You bet,” said Nutt, rubbing his hands. “We’ll _corral_ the dollars -for you right here till you come back. You shall have our niggers to -s-s-stoke for you, if you can get ’em, and can manage ’em. But they’re -fair toughs. Perhaps you’d w-w-weaken when you came to know ’em a bit.” - -“I’d handle,” retorted Kettle, “a crew of old Nick’s firemen, raw out of -hell, if I was put to it. Don’t you make any error. I’ve kept my end up -with the worst crowds a man ever put to sea with. By James!” he went on, -with a blow at the table, “by James! I’d handle you, Mr. Nutt, if you -were signed aboard o’ me, till you couldn’t call your soul your own.” - -“You’d w-w-which?” snarled Nutt, rising in his chair. - -“Sit, you swine,” said his partner, “and be quiet. You tire me. What -are you riling the gentleman for, just when we were getting so nice and -friendly with him?” - -“You—lemme alone.” - -“I’ll smash your ugly little face in if you don’t keep it shut.” - -The one-eyed man tried to retort, but his infirmity gagged him, and a -spasm of wild fury bit into all his muscles. - -His friend wagged a derisive finger. “There’s an image for you, cap. -Look at the creature, froze like a Chinese potdog; look at him and don’t -laugh. And, say, just reach me another bottle of wine, it will be so -good. Thanks, siree. I wouldn’t care if I died drinking this. Here’s our -blessed health. Good old cap; you stick to me and I’ll stick to you; and -if Mr. Billy Nutt can’t swallow his tantrums and join us two gentlemen -like another gentleman, by Jemima, we’ll give him what he’s got for his -share, and set him adrift in an empty bottle. You hear me, Billy Nutt?” - -“You spup-luttering fool. You boosey, drunken puttyhead.” - -“I’m not drunk,” retorted Hank, “but I’m merry. Have a sup yourself, -and then perhaps you’ll be better company.” With which advice a liberal -heeltap of champagne splashed in Nutt’s face. - -The man sprang to his feet, glowering like a fiend. What followed was -completed before a watch could tick twice. For once the gift of speech -did not desert him. The fatal words bounced glibly off his tongue, and -Hank’s vengeful hands shot out. In an instant the pair were grappling -together, and a gouging thumb did its horrid work. Then, tearing himself -away, eyeless, the lesser man ran screaming blindly into the sideboard -at the other side of the cabin. His friend pitched stiffly forward, and -fell face downward amongst the dishes, lying there without so much as a -quiver. He was stone dead. With the black-handled knife that had carved -their baking of pork, Nutt had stabbed him from the shoulder down through -his heart. - -“That saves my cartridges,” said Captain Kettle, and took his cocked -revolver from where it lodged between his knee and the under side of the -table. - -He passed swiftly out through the pantry door, and was just in time for -what he expected. The negroes, alarmed by Nutt’s shrieks, were rushing -from the mess-room to see what had gone wrong. He charged and drove them -furiously back. They turned and ran before him, tumbling over one another -in their scared haste; and then he took up his place in the doorway, -threatening them with steady weapon and crisp, decisive tongue. - -“Quick,” he cried, “quick, you scum; unload yourselves. Pitch overboard -your knives and razors and whatever you’ve got, or, by James, if a man of -you stops to think, I’ll blow his brains through the port-hole.” - -The negroes obeyed him in sullen, frightened silence, and stood with -elbows up facing him as he covered them. Kettle watched the three with -steady eye; but his ear was cocked down the passage, drinking in every -rustle which came from the place he had left. - -The shriekings of the eyeless man in the cabin had given way to groans; -and then there came the sound of bumps and scratchings, as though he were -blundering madly about to find something; and then the pattering of naked -feet as he groped his way up the lead-covered steps of the companion. So -intently did they follow this one man’s movements that it seemed to them -as though all other sounds were hushed, even to the never-ceasing hum of -the insects. - -With awe the listeners held their breath for what might come next. But -they had not long to wait. From the deck above there burst out a wild -tirade of hate and blasphemy, which ended in a shrieking cry of despair -and a plunging splash; and once more the distant noises of the night -closed in upon them. - -“Nutt,” said Captain Kettle, “is dead, and I’m almost sorry. I believe I -could have liked that man. He’d grit in him, had Nutt, and he wouldn’t -take cheek from a living soul. Your other boss also is dead; killed by -Nutt. So you’re my niggers now, and will be till I’ve done with you.” - -“Whord you mean?” one of the captives asked, with a whine. - -“You’ll have to do what niggers were sent in the world for, and that’s -work. Your fool of a government says you aren’t slaves now, and so I -won’t treat you as such. That is, you’ll be paid. But I shall get my -money’s worth out of you first.” - -“I guess this is a free country. You can’t make us work unless we choose.” - -“I’ve had that said before to me,” Kettle rejoined grimly, “by better men -than you—white men—and they changed their minds when I got to handling -them. You’ll see later. But for now you’ve got to stay here; and if you -get out, and I find you rambling, you’ll be shot like crows. You quite -understand?” - -He shut the mess-room door and locked it, and once more went to the main -cabin. The tall man lay exactly as he had fallen, and from underneath his -neck five tricklets of red spread out across the slopped table-cloth, -like the fingers of a monstrous hand. The lamplight fell also upon other -smearings of red, where Nutt had groped his way round the panelling. -Kettle leaned up against the rail of the sideboard and wiped his face -with a napkin. Perspiration had loosened the coal dust, and the skin came -out white, with only here and there a smudge of the old grime. - -“Supposing,” he said to himself, “we were nabbed now, and there was a -trial, who’s to prove I didn’t put the pork-knife in that man? Oh dear -Lord, what a hat it’s getting.” - - - - -CHAPTER XIX. - -SUBJECTS FOR MATRIMONY. - - -Miss Kildare gave a shrug to her shoulders. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose -it is a different me. I’ve got my hair done up, and longer skirts, and -all the rest of it. In fact, like the young person in the book, I’ve -growed. But I don’t see that you have altered much, except that you’re -just a tiny-iny bit crows-footy about the eyes. You haven’t even grown a -mustache, as I always wanted you to do.” - -“Didn’t know I was going to meet you, or I might have spared my razor.” - -“I wish you’d known, then. But fancy your turning up here of all places. -It is an extremely small world—there’s no doubt about that. Well, Pat, as -we’ve each said at least twenty times apiece how surprised we are to see -one another, suppose you come out on to the piazza and tell me things. We -shall have a crowd round us if we stay here in the hall much longer.” - -“My dear child, what things?” asked Onslow, laughing. “I’ve been -chattering history to you ever since I turned up at the hotel.” - -The girl seated herself in a cool, cane rocker, and picked up a palm-leaf -fan. “Hundreds of things. To begin with, what are people wearing in Town -just now?” - -“In London? Oh, frock coats, rather longer than ever, and narrow-stripe -trousers, and toppers with just twopennyworth of curl in them—not more.” - -“But I mean the women?” - -“Fifteen yards to the skirt, and they’re beginning to drape them. The -fashionable deformity at present is elephantiasis of the biceps—I mean -gigot sleeves. They start at the ears, and go down to the elbows—some of -them further.” - -“Ah,” said Miss Kildare, thoughtfully, “I used to have good arms. Not -quite as nice as Mabel’s, though. But latterly I haven’t been in places -where evening dress was used. By the way, do you dance still?” - -“Keen on it as ever.” - -“What’s the waltz like now?” - -“Capering on hot bricks. Heaps more exercise to the furlong. People kill -themselves at it much sooner.” - -“Reverse?” - -“In the north of England, where they all dance well, they’re like the -Americans, and go each way alternately. In London and the south, where -most of them waltz vilely, reversing is Aceldama.” - -“I suppose,” said Miss Kildare, with her eyes meditatively following -a bronze-green humming-bird which was darting about a trumpet-vine on -the piazza rail, “I suppose we shall have a hop here to-night. I shan’t -reverse; and when my partners ask why, I shall tell them it’s the latest -thing. One always likes to be as English as possible. Tell me something -else that it’s toney to do.” - -“Read nasty novels, written by women you wouldn’t sit in the same room -with, and then gush about them afterwards. That’s a very fashionable -amusement with the up-to-date young women.” - -“Ugh, Pat, don’t be a pig. Besides, that wouldn’t suit my style a bit.” - -“But why want to change, Elsie? Don’t you appreciate yourself as you are -at present? I’m sure other people would.” - -“That’s blarney.” - -“No,” said Onslow, judicially, “I think it’s ordinary fact.” - -“Is it really, though? I am glad. You know, I’ve thought lately my -present stock-in-trade wouldn’t pass muster outside Florida. I can handle -a boat in any weather, and ride anything that’s called a horse, and can -dance decently in American fashion; but I can’t do anything else, except -perhaps talk, if that counts.” - -Onslow laughed. “You are refreshing,” he said. “But why this inventory of -stock?” - -“Because, Pat, I’m wondering how I shall get on in England. I’m going out -there this fall. I’m two and twenty, you know, and I can do as I like, -and living in the back blocks is beginning to pall.” - -“Going there by yourself?” - -“No, I’m not quite so independent as that. The Van Liews, the people I’m -staying with here, spend the winter in London, and they’re going to take -me with them.” - -“And afterwards, you come back again to the States?” - -Miss Kildare again watched the bronze-green humming-bird. “_Quien sabe?_” -she said. “I may be induced to stay.” - -“What! You’re going to get married?” - -“Why not, if I have an invitation? Twenty-two’s getting on.” - -“Ah,” said Onslow, and set to rocking his chair. - -“Yes?” - -“I didn’t say anything.” - -“You said ‘Ah,’ Patrick, and that meant you thought a lot besides.” - -“Quite right, I did. It had never quite struck me till then that you were -a completely grown-up young woman now, and might any day see a man to -go into permanent partnership with. It’s a bit of a jar—I mean, it comes -oddly to one at first to think of you as married, Elsie.” - -“_Shoo-ssh!_ Pat, get up and drive that humming-bird away. He won’t go -for me, greedy little beast; and if he stays any longer I know he’ll -over-eat himself. Well, you’d better brace yourself up for a blow, -because married I mean to be some day. Who knows but what you’ll beat me -in the race?” - -“I?” - -“Why not? When Duvernay died, Mabel became a widow.” - -“That,” said Onslow, “is the usual sequence of events.” - -“You know she never wanted to marry him.” - -“So I was led to understand some five years back. Yet marry him she did -nevertheless, and that after due publication of banns. I might remark, -Elsie, that that humming-bird you were interested in is still gorging -himself out of those red flowers just on the other side of you.” - -“Some creatures never know when to stop. Now I do,” said Miss Kildare. -“That’s the bell for dinner. I must go and tidy myself.” - -Meanwhile in that same Floridan hotel a certain Mr. Kent-Williams, a -young gentleman of England, who was throwing poker dice at the bar with -two friends for ante-prandial cocktails, was looking at the same subject -from a different coign of view. He was a young gentleman who had not -made a conspicuous success of himself at home, and had been deported -to Florida with a view to extracting a fortune from orange growing. -As on reaching the spot he found this was difficult of achievement, -he wisely did not worry his brain with any vain attempts, but was -content with living in inexpensive retirement under a palmetto-shuck -for nineteen-twentieths of each quarter, and blossoming out during the -remaining days in riotous living at the Point Sebastian hotel on the -allowance which reached him from home. And with him were two others who -had been softly nurtured, and who were also taking their quarterly nip of -semi-civilization. - -“I tell you,” said Mr. Kent-Williams, “she’s a clinking fine specimen, -that Kildare girl, and, by Jove, I ought to be a judge if any one is -round here. Look! three sevens, first shot: good, I’ll keep these, and -see if I can rattle out another. She’ll go to England and marry a duke -as sure as fits, don’t you know. I wonder if Onslow will hitch on to the -other sister. Looks like it, his coming here after the Duvernay beast -turned up his toes. I never could stand Duvernay; not a ’Varsity man, -don’t you know, and hadn’t been anywhere to school. Simply a bit of -money, and thought he could swagger on that. By Jove! two bullets. That -makes me a Full House, and I’ll stand on it. Collar the box, Willie, dear -boy, and beat me if you can.” - -“No,” said Willie, scooping the dice into the leather box, and -thoughtfully stirring them before he emptied on to the pewter counter. -“I don’t think—ar—Duvernay was anybody. I did know him here, of course, -because one couldn’t help it, but I—ar—don’t recollect meeting him at the -club or anywhere before we—ar—came out. By ged! look there! Fours first -shot. Of course, the Kildares are all right as far as family goes, but -they’re poor as regards the—ar—almighty dollar. If it wasn’t for that, by -ged! I wouldn’t mind going in for the fair Elsie myself. Wobinson, old -chappie, take the box and agitate. You won’t beat my four ladies.” - -“I wish,” said Kent-Williams, meditatively, “I knew what Onslow was going -to do. Mabel Duvernay’s a charming woman, and she’s got at least £500 -a year. I don’t want to make a fool of myself if Onslow’s still in the -running. And, by Jove! I know she’s as fond of him as ever. That beast -Duvernay used to twit her with it when he was in an extra vile temper.” - -“Go slow,” advised Robinson, “and hang back for bets. Here, I can’t -improve on two pairs, so you and I throw again. Here’s the box. By the -way, why not ask Onslow yourself? You knew him well enough at Cambridge, -and you aren’t shy.” - -“I’m not shy, dear boy, and I used to know Patrick Onslow well before -I came out. He’s a devilish genial fellow, so long as you rub him the -right way, but I shouldn’t like to cross-question him too much about Mrs. -Duvernay. You see, don’t you know, he was most infernally struck on the -lady before she was married, and he’s one of those fellows with a long -memory, who don’t forget. Now I, dear boy, have been in love with heaps -of women in my time, and they with me; but when they gave me the chuck, -or I got tired of them, I didn’t break my blessed heart, or play the -goat, or do anything of that kind. I simply went on to the next caravan, -which is a devilish comfortable amusement. But old Pat isn’t built that -way. He’s one of those fools who would get gone on a woman and keep her -in mind for years and years afterwards. Mighty dreary sort of game to my -way of thinking. By Jove! four kings. If you beat those, dear boy, may I -live on sweet potatoes and mullet for all the rest of my natural life.” - -“Oh, Lord,” said Robinson, “£500 a year—twenty-five hundred dollars! -One could pig along with that very comfortably in lots of places. What -unlucky brutes some of us are. Oh, curse it, just my form; two pairs -again. We won’t prolong the agony. My shout—what’ll you fellows have?” - -They drank their cocktails, and went into the vast, bare dining-hall, -where a shining negro waiter supplied each with a tumbler of iced tea and -two dozen oval dishes of comestibles. - -“Onslow seems thick enough with the Kildare girl,” Kent-Williams -observed. “But, of course, he knew her when she was a kid, and they’d -have heaps to talk about. What do you think, Willie?” - -“How should I know, dear chappie? I’m not one of those thought-reading -fellows. But perhaps she’s—ar—telling him about her sister. Girls -always try and run a fellow for their sisters if they can’t get the -fellow—ar—for themselves.” - -“Here, waiter!” shouted Robinson, “what did you bring sweet potatoes for? -Nobody ordered them. Take the damned things away and bury them.” The -waiter grinned and vanished with the dishes, and Robinson set to savagely -tearing at a tough beefsteak with a silver-bladed knife. “Money’s run -out,” he grumbled, “and back we go to-morrow to live like wild beasts in -a palmetto-shuck, on that accursed food and nothing else. I believe that -foul, grinning nigger knew, and brought those sweet spuds here just to -insult us. I’ve a great mind to break his beastly neck.” - -“What’s the use of getting hot over it this weather?” said Kent-Williams. -“If you did break the nigger’s neck it wouldn’t add to your income, and -that’s the only occupation I know worth living for.” - -“And, therefore, you want to marry Mrs. Duvernay?” - -“Or any one else with a modicum of dollars. I’m not prejudiced. Believe -me, dear boy, I could pour out a whole wealth of affection on sweet -Mabel or sweet Kitty, or sweet anybody else who was able to support -me in moderate comfort. At present my talents are thrown away during -nineteen-twentieths of the year, because Nature never intended me to -shine as a noble savage. Consequently, dear boy, I’m ready to throw -myself away on any one.” - -“Oh, I like that,” said Robinson. “You might have married a girl here -last winter.” - -“The traveling English person without the aitches? Yes, dear boy, I did -think about it. But I came to the conclusion that she was too old to -reform, and, don’t you know, one really couldn’t stand living with an -aitchless person eternally for any amount of income. Of course, it was a -sacrifice, and the poor girl was very let down; but I think she’ll get -over it in time. They all do.” - -“Probably she has done,” said Robinson, grimly. “From what he said, her -father was quite resigned to your loss before he left here.” - -“My prospective father-in-law was sordid. He couldn’t appreciate a -gentleman. Now, Mabel’s papa is in a better land, and, by Jove! that’s a -great point in her favor. I never could stand paternal advice.” - -“You seem to be making pretty sure of getting the lady.” - -“I’m not at all sure, but I want to find out how the land lies. And, -by Jove! clever thought! I know how to do it. I’ll go to Onslow after -dinner, tell him I’m going to call on Mrs. Duvernay to-morrow, and offer -to take him down there in my dug-out. I shall soon see what his game is. -If he’s after her still, he’ll look jealous, and trust me for seeing it; -and if he isn’t, why it’s a walk-over.” - -“All the same,” remarked his other friend, “I don’t think I’d—ar—put very -long odds on you, old chappie. There’s nothing certain in this life, and -widows are apt—ar—to keep a fellow dangling till a fellow gets tired. -Finished? Then let’s go to the bar and throw for liqueurs. Mine’s _crême -de menthe_.” - - - - -CHAPTER XX. - -AT POINT SEBASTIAN. - - -Now the great rambling, wooden hotel in which Miss Elsie Kildare was -staying under care of her friends, the Van Liews, though on the end -of a telegraph-wire, and within easy day’s steam of a railroad, was -not particularly far in crow’s-flight from that uncharted river where -the _Port Edes_ lay stranded on a sand-bar. The hotel, in fact, backed -upon the Everglades, and faced the blue, crisping waters of the Mexican -Gulf. At one side of it was a plantation of sisal hemp, and beyond that -thickets of saw-grass, and beyond again cypress-trees and cabbage-palms -sprouting from an undergrowth which was bound into an impenetrable -_cheveux de frise_ with wait-a-bit thorn. At the other side were newly -planted umbrella-trees, two decrepit orange-bushes without fruit, twenty -luxuriant chumps of elephants’ ears, and then straggles of palmetto-scrub -right down to the soft white banks of Gulf sand. Beyond was clear blue -water, with a rickety wooden wharf straddling a mile out into it, like -some uncouth, gray-legged centipede. And beneath the water, dented rusty -food-cans grew intimate with the coral polyp. - -In winter time, Point Sebastian was a resting-place for nabobs of the -north, and a congregation spot for those delightful American women who -leave a convenient husband at work elsewhere on the dollar-mill. But, -in the warmer months, these worthy people did their pleasure-living at -the sea beaches of the north, or the hotels of the Alleghanies; and the -rest-house at Point Sebastian locked and covered most of its glories. The -Floridan who stays in Florida all summer does so usually because of a -tightness in the exchequer; and for the few of him who came to dissipate -a small but hardly scraped-up hoard in a spell of semi-civilization, a -tenth of the available rooms made ample lodging place. - -Still there was a summer season of sorts at Point Sebastian, which -was merry enough in its way. Most nights, on the parquet of the hall, -a cheery score danced under the glare of electric lights to the lilt -of Teuton fiddles; and in the cool gloom of the piazzas outside, if -straitened means did prevent the actual drafting of marriage contracts, -even penury undisguised could enjoy the dallyings of the week’s -flirtation. Mr. Kent-Williams and his tribe were entertaining fellows -enough to meet for a limited time, and maidens, come into the hotel for -an annual outing, basked in the odor of their pretty sayings, and frankly -prepared themselves for nothing beyond temporary amusement. - -Patrick Onslow met at least five men there he knew, which shows the -great advantage of being a University man; because, since at Oxford -and Cambridge they most successfully refrain from teaching anything -that is of commercial use to any one except a parson or a doctor or a -school-master, it naturally follows that many men from those seats of -learning fail to make a living at home, and drift across the seas. - -He did not make the smallest secret about his advent. As the newspapers -had told them already, he had been on the unlucky _Port Edes_ when she -came to grief, but had managed to get ashore by a marvelous streak of -luck, and found himself at a spot where, less than a year ago, he had -been wandering about on a shooting expedition. Thence he had made his way -in a dug-out, bought from a Seminole, to the hotel on Point Sebastian. -_V’la tout_. There was nothing surprising about it. He had had several -opportunities for drowning before that, but none of them had ever come -off. So he supposed that the _Parcæ_ marked him out to live. And—what -would they have? His shout. - -At that period Mr. Patrick Onslow was feeling extremely pleased with -himself. He hated the work at which he had been engaged, as any man must -hate being mixed with a swindle, be it great or small. And the end seemed -near—the end, conjoined to full success. - -He had had a struggle for it, because once more Captain Kettle had felt -inclined to fight for his own hand rather than do all things for mere -employers, who only paid him a small salary. It was when Onslow woke from -that dead sleep on the wheel grating of the upper bridge, and came down -to learn of the tragedy of the plume-hunters which had taken place during -his unconsciousness, that he got the first hint of this. The little -captain received him with cold stiffness, was wooden when asked for any -suggestion, and snarled when Onslow inquired what ailed him. It was the -donkeyman who put the difficulty into words. - -“And, captain, now,” said he, “how much might yez be getting out of all -this for yerself?” - -“£500.” - -“Begor it’s a mighty lot of money, and little enough too. I wish I’d it -meself, an’ more. I’d like a house ashore, an’ a wife, an’ an ass-cart -that I might dhrive her out in like a gentleman, besides other things.” - -“Oh, stop that. Don’t tell me what a man might do if he’d his pick -of the money in this ship. I can figure that out for myself without -suggestions from any blasted Irishman. Have been doing in fact.” - -“Ah, now, captain dear, don’t be cross wid me, because I was going on to -say that in case of trouble—in case there was, we’ll say, a thrifling -argument, I’d be on your side. Mr. Onslow, you’re a gentleman, an’ I like -ye well, but the captain here’s me officer—an’—well, sor, a boy must look -after himself sometimes, ’specially when there’s a chance like this ready -to his fingers. ’Twon’t come again in a lifetime.” - -“Probably not,” said Onslow. He lay back in his chair with linked fingers -behind his head. “Look here, Kettle, if you want to shoot me, pull out -your gun and get it over. Then you and Sullivan can run the cargo where -you please, and share it how you like. But that’s the only way you’ll -make me consent to your taking what’s beyond your due. Shelf trusted me, -and, by Jove, I’m going to act fairly by Shelf if he were a ten times -bigger thief than I know him to be already. Now then, jump quick; let’s -have it over.” - -They were in the chart-house. Captain Kettle puckered his head for a -minute’s thought, and then, getting up, shut and locked the starboard -door. He took that key, and the key also of the other door, which gave -upon the head of the companion-way, and handed them both to Onslow. - -“Now, sir,” said he, “you lock me and the donkeyman in here, and go and -do as you like. But I advise you to take your infernal gold somewhere out -of this ship, because as sure as it’s there when I next come out of this -room, so sure do I go and loot it. That’s my bunk there, bang above the -place where it’s stowed, and I’ve sat on top of those sovereigns like a -hen every watch below I’ve had this voyage, and heard ’em chinkle, and -wondered what they’d hatch out into. You perhaps, understand what I mean?” - -Onslow nodded. - -“Then take the synch from me, sir, and cart your boxes away as quick -as you can. Poor men like me shouldn’t have big temptations. It isn’t -healthy—for their neighbors. No, by James! Here, get out of this, Mr. -Onslow, or I shall be doing you a violence yet; and mind you lock the -door. Donkey-man, you hound, there’s whisky in that bottom locker. Take -the clean glass yourself, and give me the dirty one.” - -Onslow read the little man’s mind to a comma, and bowed gravely without -speaking. Then he did as he was bidden with the door and key, and went -below, and began the Herculean task of bringing up the iron-bound specie -boxes one by one out of the cabin where they had ridden from the Mersey -dock. He placed them in the port quarter boat, which he had lowered from -its davits flush with the bridge deck rail; and when she was loaded he -put the boat into the river. He rowed her far up stream, past bights and -bayous, till he found a narrow canal leading off the main river through -mangrove clumps, and held on up that till the boat reached a great round -vat of black water, walled all around with solemn cypress-trees, and -roofed to darkness by their fringing branches. - -One by one the boxes were raised on the gunwale and launched with a -sullen plunge; and it seemed an age before the foul-smelling bubbles came -up to tell that they had sounded bottom. And then away back for another -load. And then for a third. The inky water closed over all, and not so -much as a splinter from one of the boxes floated on the surface. - -Small fear of any one raiding that _cache_, Onslow thought; and two days -later, with a clear mind, he was cabling “_Right_” to Theodore Shelf from -the Eastern Union Telegraph Company’s Office in the hotel hall at Point -Sebastian. - - * * * * * - -Now, modern science enables us to cry a message by wire round half -the earth at breakfast time, and have an answer returned to us before -the gong sounds for luncheon; and it was in anticipation of a quick -exchange of news like this that Onslow had come to the nearest outpost of -civilization. - -He had hidden his £500,000 of gold, released the two men in the -chart-house, with instructions that when they felt inclined (or -sufficiently recovered) for work they should, with the negroes’ help, set -about transforming the steamer’s appearance; and afterwards had made his -way, partly overland by an Indian’s path he knew of, partly in dug-out -through lagoon and bayou, to Point Sebastian. It was an entire surprise -to him to meet Miss Kildare there. But this time it was no special shock. -That early morning glimpse of her in the schooner had warned him of her -neighborhood. - -He got a return message to his cable it is true; but not before noon on -the following day. It said “_Take no steps: am writing_,” and seemed to -hint at a change of plan. - -In another place he might have resented the delay. At least eleven days -must pass, and probably more, before a letter could reach him; and all -the while he would be condemned to inaction and anxiety. But, as it was, -he read Mr. Theodore Shelf’s reply cablegram with a frown, which was -quite evanescent, and felt a mild satisfaction in the respite. In the -afternoon he took out Miss Kildare to fish for tarpon. - -By one of those singular chances which occur every century or so, a -tarpon they did actually catch on that first day of fishing, a thirty -pound monster, with glittering silver scales on him as big as dollars, -who gave three hours’ frantic fight before he turned his belly to the -skies, and submitted to traveling beachwards in the boat. - -“We got him between us,” said Miss Kildare. “That’s my first, and I’ve -tried for him times out of number.” - -“My first also, and I’ve tarpon-fished for weeks.” - -“We seem to bring one another luck.” - -“It’s an undoubted fact, Elsie, we do.” - -The deduction seemed to give rise to thoughts in each of them, and they -let their eyes rove vaguely over the blue Gulf waters for the next few -minutes without speaking, whilst the boat rode gently over the windless -swells which slid in through the outlying keys. A porpoise surged past -them, coughing as he chased a shoal of mullet; and, overhead, a string -of purple and yellow cranes screamed wearily as they flapped home to the -Everglades after a day’s hard fishing on a growing reef. - -“They’ve all got to make their living,” said Onslow. - -“Who?” asked the girl. - -“I was thinking of those animals in the water and in the air, and, by -analogy, the rest of the animal world. We all of us prey on something -else, down to the ass who eats grass; or else we die.” - -“That’s a very sage remark, Pat. Have you been reading Schopenhauer -lately, or is your bank account unhealthy?” - -Onslow laughed. “Was it pessimistic? I’m not given that way as a general -thing. It’s so much pleasanter, for one’s self and everybody else, to -look at matters from the cheerful point of view. But I was thinking at -the time that if I’d been well off, and if other things had not happened -as they did, my life would have been written very differently.” - -“You mean you might have been her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Court of -Timbuctoo?” - -“Or something in that line, possibly—yes.” - -“Mabel,” said the girl, “is free now.” - -Onslow nodded dreamily, and once more let his gaze roam out across the -waters. The boat rode uncared for over the gentle oily swells, and the -sound of the surf crumbling on the distant keys fell on his ears, and -droned to him a lingering tale of might-have-been. Mabel was free! The -woman who had once promised to be his wife—the woman whose memory had -driven him from pillar to post across the world through all those long, -wild years, because his abiding love for her was too great a torment to -be borne when he rested for a breathing space in one spot, and had time -for thought. The woman who had, by pressure, been made to marry another -man, whom neither on her wedding day nor at any after time did she ever -love, was free again. Mabel Duvernay now, and Mabel Kildare no longer; -but Mabel still, and free. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI. - -THE CYCLONE. - - -A shining-faced negro waiter came up in answer to the bell, and brought -tumblers of tinkling ice and water. Both Onslow and Miss Kildare drank -thirstily, and then lay back again in their cane chairs, panting. The -close heat was something terrible. There was not a breath of either sea -breeze or land breeze, and the electric fan which whirred on the table -behind them did little more than send a blast of sickly warmth. Down the -long line of the piazza were the rest of the people in the hotel, the -men cursing and mopping their faces, the women with closed eyes fanning -themselves languidly. And, overhead, the shingles of the roof crackled -and rustled in the baking air as though they were alive. - -Night came, and the bell clashed out its summons to dinner, but no one -went in. The wooden sides of the hotel, baked through and through by a -month of tropical sun, had made the rooms unendurable. So they stayed -where they were, in the hot, oppressive dark, and blinked at the white -summer lightning which splashed the violet heavens in front of them. In -heavy panting beats the night seemed to close down upon them and pen them -in, so that it was a labor to breathe. - -“I can’t stand this,” said Miss Kildare at last. - -“You’ve got to,” replied Onslow, wearily, “unless you choose to go down -the beach and sit in the water with your clothes on.” - -“That would be some relief, although the water is as hot as tea. But I -shan’t do that. I shall walk out along the pier over the sea. One may -faint half way, and tumble over and get drowned; but anyway that’s better -than staying here and being cooked slowly.” - -They got up together, and strolled wearily over the loose white sand, -and then more crisply over the worn decking of the pier. Between the -lightning flashes, the darkness above them was the darkness of a cave; -but faint, phosphorescent fringes showed out amongst the piles beneath, -and these guided them from walking over the edge of the planks. - -“You shouldn’t stay down here this weather,” Onslow said, as they paced -down the narrow platform, with fingers intertwined. “You’ll lose your -color and your beauty if you do, and get thin and sallow like Mrs. Van -Liew.” - -No reply came, and Onslow said nothing more, but walked on thinking. - -“You’ve been here now nine whole days, Pat,” the girl said, breaking -silence for the second time, when they were half a mile from the shore. - -“It can’t be. Yes, you’re right. Nine days! Time has gone quickly. What -have we been doing all the time? Fishing once or twice, and a picnic to -that Mound-Builder’s place down the canal; and I believe that’s all. -We’ve just talked, and sometimes not even talked. You and I, little girl, -know one another well enough to be companionable without always chatting. -You see, we’ve always known one another. But still, nine solid days! I’d -no idea till you spoke how long it was in actual point of time. It’s been -very restful.” - -“You seem to have found it so. You’ve stayed all the time close about -here. Do you know you have not once gone so much as a dozen miles from -Point Sebastian.” - -Mrs. Duvernay’s place was fifteen miles away. Onslow saw the point. - -“No,” he said. “I haven’t found time. You and I have had so much to tell -one another, Elsie.” - -“We always have been very good friends,” said the girl, and was going -to add something else when her words were drowned by a furious crash of -thunder. - -There had been no working up to it. The summer lightning was noiseless, -and there had not been so much as a mutter of thunder all the day. The -great bellow of noise had come in an instant without a rustle of warning. - -“That’s close overhead,” Onslow remarked, “and something else will -follow. If it’s rain, we shall have a deluge falling in ropes, but I -fancy we’re in for something different. We had better turn back, Elsie.” - -“In view of this heat, a wetting would be a distinct luxury; but I think, -as you say, there is something else coming besides. Oh, Pat, here it is. -Run, or we shall be caught.” - -The storm gave but one weird moan, a rustle and a shriek from over the -treetops, and then was upon them. In a minute it was blowing with a -hurricane force which no human being could stand against. - -The wind plucked the feet from under them, and they fell to the decking -of the pier, gripping with their fingers in the gaps between the planks. -A storm of sand and leaves and twigs beat against their heads. The crazy -tressle-work of the pier buckled and swung beneath their bodies. - -“We must get shorewards,” Onslow yelled in his companion’s ear; “this -jam-crack thing will go by the board directly.” - -“Right, oh,” came back the response cheerily enough, and together they -began to warp themselves towards the beach and the wind, plank at a -time. The girl was strong, and accustomed to using her muscles; but -skirts are a poor rig to play caterpillar in, and her progress was slow -even with Onslow’s help. When they had gained a score of yards, she bade -him leave her to make the best of his own way. “I shall get along all -right,” she cried. “Go and tell them I’m coming.” - -“Naturally I should,” he shouted back with a laugh. “Here, let me link my -arm inside yours. That’s right. Now we’ll ferry along at twice the pace.” - -But they did not get much further. A minute afterwards, to the kick of a -harder squall, the gray old pier tottered and clattered and crunched, and -the wind was filled with flying boards, and Onslow found himself with one -arm clutching the weed-clad stump of a pile, and the other wrapped round -Elsie Kildare. - -“Hurt?” he shouted anxiously. - -“Not a bit. Sound as a bell. You?” - -“All right.” - -“But where’s the water? There should be six feet here, and I can feel -none.” - -“Blown away to sea. We may thank God the wind is not on-shore, or we’d -have been drowned, as hundreds of other poor wretches are this moment. -Ah! That’s a shave.” - -A lightning flash showed them a huge tree plucked from its roots, and -blowing past them, squirming and crashing about like a live mad thing. -Then a heavy squared roof-beam hit their jagged pile, and missed Onslow’s -arm by a nail’s breadth. - -“The hotel’s going down,” he shouted. “The air will be full of this stuff -in a minute, and if we try to move we shall be brained before we’ve got a -yard. Crouch down, dear, at the bottom of the post.” - -“You too?” - -“No, there isn’t room.” - -“Then I shall stand.” - -She dragged at his sleeve and pulled him to her side. “Stay by me here, -Pat. You might get swept away, and I couldn’t bear that.” - -“Of course, I’ll stay by you, dear. I’ll never go till you turn me away.” -He took new grip with his arms, pinning her between his breast and the -weed-ragged leg of the pile. “Elsie, I want to tell you something. You -know I’ve always liked you as a friend; but now it has come to more than -that. Much more. Love, darling. Once my mind was full of another woman, -and I thought I could never care for any one else as I cared for her. -But that was years since—thousands of years it seems now—and, Elsie, -I’ve—I’ve—forgotten her. She is only a name to me; and your sister. Dear, -if we get away from this, do you think you could like me, too, a little -more than an ordinary friend?” - -She put her lips to his ear. “Do you think we shall come out of it alive, -Pat? Tell me honestly.” - -“I hope so.” - -“Honestly, Pat.” - -“I’m afraid, darling, it’s a poor chance.” - -Her soft, wet cheek nestled against him, and strands of her hair -intertwined themselves with his. “Pat,” she said, “you never knew, but I -loved you all along from the first.” - - * * * * * - -Then, for the first time during many years, Patrick Onslow knew what it -was to fear death. Before-time life had held many torments for him, and -if lead or water or steel chose to show him the Great Secret, he did -not very much care. Now it was all different. He lusted to live with a -fierceness which almost drove him mad. - -“You are trembling,” the girl said anxiously. - -“I know I am. You have made me a rank coward, dear.” - -She understood him, and kissed his mouth; but no other words passed -between them. - -The cyclone blew on, bellowing and tearing, and the fiends’ fingers -of the wind did mischief beyond all reckoning. Timber which had stood -hundreds of years, ceibas and cypresses, live oaks and pines, sprawled -down amongst the tangled undergrowth, mere masses of splintered -matchwood. The mangrove thickets were clogged with stones, with grasses, -with gray tangles of Spanish moss. Lakes were licked from their beds -and spirted far over the creaming waters of the Gulf. The land birds -were driven like helpless spume-flakes far away to sea, and choked -with the gale before they were flung breathless from its clutches. The -palmetto-shucks of the humbler coast-dwellers vanished in dust. The frame -houses of the better-to-do burst at all their angles, and spread like -platforms upon the ground. - -And meanwhile the great straggling, wooden hotel on Point Sebastian -dissolved away like a sandbank in a flooded estuary. First the -heat-twisted shingles had been stripped off, flying away into the wind -like some strange dark fowl sent as _avant-couriers_ of more fearsome -things to come. Then weather-boards followed, singly and in coveys; then -gable-ends and joists and rafters; all floating and pitching in the air -as though the wind had the density of a tossing ocean stream. Chairs and -wooden bedsteads, clothes blown out into grotesque shapes, as though the -freakish spirits of the storm had donned them, the scantling of the long -piazzas, and still more boards, whirred out into the night and vanished -for ever down the track of the cyclone. And in the thick of this devil’s -bombardment crouched men and women, and other things, shapeless and -horrible, which had been men and women once. The tale of the dead grew -with awful pace that night. - -Once there was a slight lull in the blast of the gale, and the driven-out -waters of the shore began to return, and swirled knee-high about the two -who were taking refuge at the foot of the pile. - -“Come,” said Onslow, taking the girl by the hand, “we must run for it.” -And he led the way beachwards, blundering through piled up mounds of -wreckage, whilst the stinging spindrift swirled around their heads and -bit them upon the face like whips. But a flying missile from out of -the inky blackness struck him on the curve of the temple before he had -gone with her twenty yards, and the grip of his fingers loosened, and -he swayed and fell without a word. The girl threw herself on his body, -wailing that he was killed and that she too would stay there and die; but -a wild hope seized her that he might be only stunned, and she took his -body in her arms, and half dragging, half carrying, began to go with him -once more by tedious inches towards the beach. - -Then the cyclone burst out afresh with all the torrent of its fury, and -to move or even stand against the wind was a thing impossible. The girl -and her burden were flung heavily to the ground, and a mass of driving -wreckage slid above them and pressed them down. “Oh, Pat, Pat,” she -cried, “I did so want to live with you, and now we must both die here.” - -Three terrible hours more they spent there, the girl expecting violent -death to fall on her every next second, the man in her arms gradually -returning to consciousness. And then, like an organ whose wind-chamber -has emptied itself, the cyclone suddenly dropped its voice. It had arisen -in a minute to the full of its strength, and in a single minute it lulled -to a breathless calm, leaving the air scoured and sweet, and the land a -tangled desert. The sea alone remembered its lashing actively, and fumed -in a swell of sullen majesty in its deeper parts, and sent its angry -waters back in rippling surf on to those shallow western beaches from -which it had been so ruthlessly evicted. - -It was from this last returning tidal wave that the final danger came, -but the two under that pile of wreckage managed to slip from beneath the -wood when the waters loosened it, and run in the breaking dawn to the -higher ground beyond. They were bruised, both of them, and Onslow was -bleeding from a jagged cut on the head; but after all, their hurts were -trifling compared with what they might have been. Three thousand people -died in that night’s work amongst the Southern States; and the air was -torn with the moan of those who were left, lamenting as they sought their -dead. - -That day all who could lift a pair of hands had work to do, and the next, -and the next; but on the fourth day from the cyclone, when the fallen -had been buried and the quick housed, Onslow managed for the first time -to get a word _en tête-à-tête_ with this woman who had said she loved -him and had promised to be his wife. He had conned the matter over in -his mind, and after heavy argument had decided not to hold any of his -affairs secret from her; this of course having particular reference to -the one affair by which he hoped to make a competence. He had visions of -difficulties with her over it, but he began his confidence artfully. - -“Elsie,” he said, “I came here to Florida on business.” - -“Then,” replied Miss Kildare, “I’d like to give business a knob of sugar -to eat and flowers to wear on his headstall. What color was business? -White?” - -“Black, distinctly black, but valuable. In figures, slightly more than a -quarter of a million in English money ought to come to me for my share -out of him; or rather, as it now is, our share; yours and mine, dear.” - -“Oh, you duck, Pat! You don’t mean to say I’m to marry a rich man? -Wherever did you steal the money from? Speculation?” - -“Speculation of sorts, though steal describes it better. It’s there, and -that’s the main thing.” - -“Money in the pocket is better than ten plans to get it there any day. -Pat, we’ll have a big steam yacht, and when we get sick of London we’ll -go and see all the rest of the world. But you of all people to become a -successful speculator! Tell me, what have you been making your corner in? -Nothing unclean I hope, like short ribs of pork?” - -“Gold, if that will suit your ladyship.” - -“Oh, this is delightful. You’ve been trading on American necessities. -Tell me all about it. I think I can follow. One hears so much about the -silver question, that one can’t help understanding it a little.” - -So, with a pardonable _couleur de rose_, wherever tinting was available, -Onslow told the story of his finding the channel into the Everglades, -his compact with Shelf, the hazardous voyage of the S. S. _Port Edes_, -and the subsequent disposal of the specie. The girl listened to the tale -with close attention and unmoved face. Even the account of the mutiny -and the gruesome encounter between Nutt and his friend failed to call up -comment, because in domestic Florida a little dashing homicide is such a -very common occurrence. But when Patrick Onslow had finished his say and -looked to her for approval, he only got a grave and decisive shake of the -auburn head. - -“Well, dear,” he asked at last, made very anxious by her silence. - -“No, Pat,” she said quietly, “I can’t share in a fortune which has been -laid up that way. Heaven knows, I’m not squeamish. Hearing what I do out -here about Trusts and Corners and Syndicates, and seeing what I can’t -help seeing of the way the people around make their living, and still -evade the law and retain respect, my notions of morality are very easy -and slack. But——” - -“But I have gone too far?” - -She bowed her face gravely. - -“And so,” he said bitterly, “after all that I have gone through, and all -I’ve done, you want me to give this fortune up. My God, Elsie, you know -what a hateful thing poverty is as well as I do. Think what this money -would buy. Love for one another we have already, and we can get besides -every pleasure the heart can wish for. I know as well as you do that it -was dirtily earned, and I hated the work of getting it, and I’ll never -dabble in anything so foul again. My instincts bid me live as an upright -gentleman, and with the proper income I could do that, and forget I was -ever anything else. When I cease to be poor, I cease to be in the way of -temptation. Don’t you see? And, besides, there is no chance of being -found out. The money is supposed to be blotted out of existence, and -it’s there now in the ’Glades as a private mine to dig at as we choose. -Besides, I’m bound in honor to go on after getting thus far. It isn’t as -if I were working for my own hand alone. Shelf’s my partner, and I can’t -neglect Shelf’s interests for a sentiment.” - -“Mr. Shelf may do as he chooses, Pat; you yourself may do as you choose, -dear; but I can’t alter what I’ve said. I love money, Heaven knows, -but I couldn’t use money of that sort. You might forget how it came: I -couldn’t. I can’t forget some things. I’ve a terrible memory when I don’t -want it to act. I tried to forget you, Pat, ever since you left us in -England till the day I saw you here, but I couldn’t. I used to pray for -forgetfulness all those years, and it wouldn’t come; and if I were to -marry you now, dear, with that money, I should always remember, just in -the same way.” - -“What is the use of carrying thumbscrews in your pocket?” he asked half -angrily. - -She smiled a little pained smile. “Can’t help it, Pat. I suppose it’s the -way I’m built. But I’m only telling you facts.” - -“I thought,” he said brusquely, “you wanted to go back into society, and -have a steam yacht; and do things comfortably. Now, without this quarter -of a million which is lying ready to be picked up, you have two hundred -a year, and I have three, which make five hundred pounds in all. I might -point out to you that one can’t do much continuous splashing amongst -smart people on that, in London or anywhere else. Unless, of course, you -married some one else.” - -She flushed painfully. “Oh, Pat,” she said, “I don’t think I deserved -that from you.” - -He dropped his arms round her and drew her to him tenderly. “No, dear, -you didn’t. I was a brute. But it’s hard for a man to speak soberly when -he’s just had all his plans smashed to the smallest kind of fragments, -and stamped upon by the only person in the world whose opinion he cares -a rap about. Of course I know all this business was a theft, a piece of -piracy pure and simple. But circumstances elbowed one into it, and I -bowed my head to them. Circumstances—you, that is, and you entirely—now -drag me out of it, and I’m going to bow again, and say ‘Kismet.’ Only I -wonder what will become of the money. I swear Shelf shan’t have the whole -half million and the steamer too. But I don’t see how we are to give my -share back to the rightful owners. One can’t very well draw a cheque on -the Everglades, and send it to them anonymously by post.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXII. - -MR. SHELF’S LITTLE SURPRISE. - - -Mr. Theodore Shelf had reached the end of his tether, and, like a shrewd -business man, he knew it. There is a certain mad excitement in standing -on a high ledge of an iceberg when the steps which you have clambered -up by have splintered away, and the hundred-foot cliffs above are -threatening every instant to descend in crashing avalanche. You know -you have to jump into the cold green waters below, or be crushed out -of existence; and lingering to the very last second is not without its -fierce pleasures. The dive is chilly; the waters beneath unknown; final -escape most hazardous. But it is not these things which make you loiter; -it is the nearness of the crash behind; and that is fascinating beyond -all words. - -Mr. Shelf was in a similar position. He knew that his commercial ledge -was growing more and more dangerous every minute, by reason of the Law -of the Land which loomed above, and yet for the life of him he could not -tear himself away. He had waiting for him that snug _estançia_ on the -banks of the Rio Paraguay which he had time-before made ready against a -possible cataclysm; but it was left to wait. The excitement of lingering -on in London was meat and drink to him. His daring would be spoken about -afterwards; and though, it is true, he might not be blessed, still he -would not be forgotten. - -That last was, perhaps, the chief reason which made him stay on. The -vanity of the man was colossal. He had been tickled by the improving -young men, he had been tickled in his tabernacle, he had been tickled by -a parliamentary constituency; but these did not glut him. He wanted more, -far more; and if he could not distinguish himself in the way his wife -had hoped, he would at last be famous in his fall. If only he could have -stayed on three days more and seen his baronetcy gazetted in the birthday -list, he could then have made the most sensational exit on record. But -even debarred of this—for he could not avert the crash by even those -three short days—he did not intend to depart without his special ruffle -of Society drums. - -He had a scheme, too, in his waiting, of taking a vengeance on this -same wife who had made it necessary for him to fall at all. Without her -wild extravagance he would have been able to weather the commercial -depression which had weighed him down; but she had scoffed at warnings, -and increased the muster-roll of her guests, and fed them on bank-notes. -What this scheme was he confided to no one but George, and George did not -split. George hated Mrs. Shelf to the extent of showing ivory whenever -she was near him. - -“George,” said Mr. Shelf, at the conclusion of one of these grim -confidences, “I shall be a lonely man. You must come out there with me.” - -And George poked a cold black nose into Mr. Shelf’s hand, and said that -he should be vastly disappointed if he was left behind. - -Now Mr. Theodore Shelf intended to have his vengeance on the night of a -ball which his wife was going to give, and which for sheer gorgeousness -and distinguished assembly was to rival by far all her previous efforts; -and he was quite satisfied in his own mind that the action would be -entirely justifiable. Still he was a man not without natural affections. -He was extremely fond of his ward, Amy Rivers, even though, through the -hard commercial shrewdness of Hamilton Fairfax, he had been obliged to -refund her fortune which he had laid hands upon, and so bring nearer -the day of his own ruin. Many men would have visited their natural -annoyance on the girl, but Shelf did not. Indeed, he was only known to be -disagreeable to her once, and that once was the last time he and she had -speech together; and what he said then was entirely to her interest and -without any profit to himself. It was on the morning of the great ball, -and he called her to him in his room, and asked if Fairfax would be there -that evening. - -“Of course,” she said. “Why?” - -“After what has passed between us?” - -“You mean in the City?” - -“I do, my dear. Mr. Fairfax has displeased me much. First of all, -he resigned from the directorate of my new company, the ‘Brothers -Steamship Association,’ on which I had placed him, a very flattering -position for so young a man; and then he caused me deep sorrow in -doubting the pureness of my motives in floating the company at all. I am -long-suffering, Amy, and because it is my duty to bear with the hasty, I -do so as much as possible. But Mr. Fairfax over-stepped the mark. Such a -spirit as his would cause dissension amongst our simple-minded workers, -and I felt it due to them that he should no longer be at their side.” - -“So you gave him the—well, the sack. Of course, I know.” - -“Perhaps,” said Mr. Shelf, with a smile of pain, “he will be able to -obtain employment elsewhere, or, being a young man of means, he may -choose to set up in business for himself; but I fear, my dear, that he -will miss many of the Christian influences which so elevate and purify -the dependents of Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf.” - -Miss Rivers shrugged her shoulders. “Isn’t this,” she said, “to do with -the City and not Park Lane? As Mrs. Shelf says, we’re ordinary society -heathens when we’re here, and as she sent Hamilton his card, I don’t see -that it matters. It’s Mrs. Shelf’s ‘At Home.’” - -“And not mine, Amy? You are right in the word, my dear, but not in the -spirit. As a Christian, of course I have already forgiven the wrong Mr. -Fairfax has done me in doubting the pureness of my motives. But this -humble roof is mine, Amy, and it would grieve me to receive under it any -one with whom I am not on terms of brotherly amity. But perhaps you can -assure me, my dear, that Mr. Fairfax has already repented him of his -hasty and unjust words.” - -“No, that,” said Miss Rivers, “I’m sure he hasn’t.” - -“Then,” replied Mr. Theodore Shelf, with a sorrowful firmness, “I cannot -receive him. I couldn’t do it.” - -“I suppose you know,” the girl retorted sharply, “that if Hamilton does -not come here to-night, I shan’t either.” - -“You are my ward.” - -“I may be. But you’ve never tyrannized over me, and you are not going to -begin now. I tell you flatly that if it’s no Hamilton, it’s going to be -no me. I shall go to Hampstead to stay with my cousin.” - -“I cannot give way in this, Amy. My conscience will not permit me.” - -“Very well. May I have the carriage, or must I order a hansom?” - -“My dear child, I can refuse you nothing in reason. The brougham is now, -as it always has been, entirely at your disposal.” - -Miss Rivers left the room, and Mr. Shelf scrubbed his dog’s ragged head. -“She’s angry with me now, George,” he said, with a fat, satisfied smile, -“but I think she’ll change her mind afterwards. She’s a clever girl, and -she’ll see. So will that young beggar Fairfax, confound him!” - -Then Mr. Shelf put George on a comfortable chair, and turned to his -table. He had, as may be imagined, a good deal of writing to get through, -and a considerable deal of burning; and the work took him till very late. -Then he dressed, slipped out for dinner, and returned by eleven o’clock, -to stand behind his wife, and watch her as she received her guests, and -share with her the warm congratulations on their coming accession to -title. He thought he had never seen the woman look so handsome or so -queenly, and once or twice he half regretted the blow which he was going -to bring down upon her. But then his eyes would fall on the walls of -the room, and the silver lamps, and the flowers; and the items of that -gorgeous display would go into his soul, and wither up any morsel of -compassion which might have been there. - -“A man’s impelling motive is not always under his own hat,” he overheard -some one saying as they passed him, and he applied the words to himself; -and when he remembered the ruthless extravagance which no words or -entreaties of his own could stay, and which alone (so he believed) had -forced him into knavery, he felt that social death was a poor requital to -the woman who had worked his ruin. A knife was more her due. And yet, and -yet, she was such a monstrous fine woman, and so thoroughly clever in the -_rôle_ she had set herself to play. - -It certainly was a gorgeous assembly. Not made up exclusively of the very -best people perhaps, though many of them were there; but it looked wealth -unspeakable. Men in evening dress cannot show this; if they fail to -appear like waiters, that is the utmost they can expect. But the women! -They carried it on their shoulders and backs, as they have done since the -beginning of time. Their dresses were a dream of cost and loveliness, -their jewelery a chain of rainbows. - -“Oh, Lord,” said one young man with predatory instincts, who propped a -wall, “why aren’t I a practising bushranger just now? There’s some of the -finest diamonds in all the world here to-night, and two Johnnies with -pistols could stick up the whole house. Why’s England such a beastly safe -place? If there was a hard, wooden chair anywhere here to sit on and -think, I believe I’d turn anarchist on the spot.” - -“Don’t reduce the crowd to L. S. D.,” said a fellow prop. “It spoils the -poetry of the thing. Now, I find them good enough to look at.” - -“Never said they weren’t,” rejoined the other. “Only thing is they aren’t -mine. Now, I could do very well with the lot of them.” - -“This isn’t Turkey,” said his friend, reprovingly. - -“Oh, not the women. I’ve got one wife, and she’s enough for me. But I’d -like the dresses and the diamonds. I’d sell ’em second-hand to the Jews, -and riot on the proceeds. Talking of sales, come and find some burgundy -cup.” - -They went away from the ballroom, passing down the broad, shallow -stairway, and were going to cross the hall, when a man stopped them and -told them the way was closed. - -“What’s the matter? Has there been an accident?” - -“Well, perhaps it might be an accident, sir. ’Tisn’t for me to say.” - -“Who the devil are you, anyway?” - -“A member of the metropolitan police force, sir; a plain-clothes man, -at your service. Stand back, sir, I say. You can’t come down here. The -police are searching the lower part of the house.” - -“My aunt! Has there been a burglary?” - -“They are looking for Mr. Shelf,” said the policeman, shortly. “There’s -a warrant out against him for embezzlement. But that needn’t affect you -gentlemen and ladies up-stairs. You can go on with your dancing.” - -The two guests looked at one another, and broke into a strained laugh. -Then they calmed their faces again, and went back up the stair. - -“And I was envying that man a minute ago,” said one of them. “Well, ‘all -flesh is but grass,’ as the poor beggar would say himself. Shows how -little you can gauge a man’s finances from seeing what he spends. I say, -bet you a fiver my wife goes to the trial. She knows a judge.” - -The music stopped at the end of a polka, and the gabble of talk burst -promptly out with a clatter, and was carried about all over the house. -But by degrees it hushed, and in its place grew the rustle of whispers. -The scandal microbe travels quicker than his cousin of cholera. Curious -glances were cast over the banisters by men and women, who half hoped, -half feared to see their host led away in custody. - -Some were sorry; some were shocked; a few were grimly glad. The band -broke out into “El Dorado;” and, being the best band in London, it -played it so that the very chairs tried to jig about and dance of their -own accord. But no leather sole kissed the glistening parquet of the -ballroom. The only things that moved there were the music-players, and -a tatter of tulle which whirled about to the gale of the cornet. The -guests in that house were running from it as though the black plague had -broken out. The police had withdrawn their cordon from the bottom of the -staircase, and were leaving the spot, as the careful Mr. Shelf had done -some short time earlier. - -Mrs. Theodore Shelf stood like a woman mazed. She could not change -color, for happily that was fixed, according to the canons of the day; -but she posed herself erectly behind a chair in the drawing-room, and -gripped with her gloved hands upon the back, till muscles arose in -her plump white arms which had never shown there before. Through the -doorless doorway she saw an unbroken stream of her guests, cloaked and -shawled, making their way to the head of the stair. Most kept their -looks studiously before them; and of the few who cast her a glance, -half-scared, half-curious, few added the smallest ghost of a bow. - -Of all that wondrous crowd, no women at all, and two men only, came up to -her before they went. One said, “Good night, Mrs. Shelf.” The other said, -“Good night, Laura; I’m very sorry.” - -Then these followed the rest; and, when all had gone, a white-faced -servant came up and told her what had happened. The police had been quick -with their search, but the man they wanted had been quicker. He had left -the house ten minutes before they arrived. - -“Is that all?” - -“That is all, madame.” - -“Very well,” said Mrs. Shelf. “I shall not want you any more to-night. -Lock up, and then you may all go to bed.” - -Then, picking up her fan, she walked leisurely out of the drawing-room, -and went to her own boudoir. - -That Mr. Theodore Shelf had made his own exit and brought about his -wife’s social downfall most dramatically, even the worst-hit of his -victims could not but admit. The police, with exquisite trouble, -had traced him to Paddington Station, and found that he had taken a -first-class ticket to Liverpool; and, after using the wires, they -returned to bed with the firm conviction that their seaport associates -would meet the gentleman at Lime Street. Of course they could not -possibly guess that he and a wire-haired fox-terrier dog had changed -their route to Monmouthshire, and had arrived in Newport in ample time to -go on board one of the Oceanic Steam Transport Company’s boats, which had -just finished coaling there. - -The police and the victims said a good many things when they learnt -the simple means by which Mr. Shelf had escaped, and they confidently -expected never to see him again in this world, and hoped to miss him in -the next. - -Of all creation, the newspaper proprietors alone blessed the man, in -that he had sent up their circulation with a bounce and a bound. But -even they did not show due gratitude. They dissected his doings with -all the cruelty that ink is capable of, and made derisive comments on -his Christian name. They found no excuse for him; no tittle of good -in all his prodigious enterprises. They painted him black all over, -inside and out, and Great Britain set back its shoulders and howled with -upright wrath over the picture. They published chartered accountants’ -certificates of their sales, and sold their journals to companies on the -strength of the figures, and thanked Heaven in print that they had never -gone so low as to receive benefit from Theodore Shelf. It was only in -private that they rubbed their hands complacently, and spoke of him as a -journalist’s gold-mine. Perhaps this may not strike one as entirely fair; -but it was eminently business-like; and, as a commercial man himself, Mr. -Shelf should have been the last to condemn it. He did though, for all -that. Indeed, circumstances combined to modify his views on many matters -after his exit from polite society. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII. - -DECISIONS. - - -When Onslow arrived back at the _Port Edes_ from Point Sebastian he -found Captain Kettle sitting in the chart-house, with a pen gripped -between his teeth and a rhyming dictionary in his hands surrendering its -reluctant treasures. On the mahogany desk in front of him was a sheet -of much-corrected manuscript, with a capital letter at the commencement -of every line; and beyond, in a jam-pot, was a bunch of waxen-leaved -magnolia flowers, with two coral-pink magnolia cones, set around with a -frill of sheeny leaves. - -Captain Owen Kettle was composing a sonnet on the magnolia, and dogged -work was trying to finish what a one-line inspiration had begun. The two -gaunt mosquitoes, who had slipped into the room when the wire-gauze door -was shut, grew visibly fatter without danger to life or wing. In his fine -creative frenzy Captain Kettle never felt their touch. - -“Hallo, Kettle! Got back at last, you see, and a horrible time I’ve had -of it.” - -“Than Popish saint more holier,” wrote the little man, reading the words -as they sprawled across the paper. “And now I want to get in something -about the smell. ‘Angel-breathed’ is the thing, only it don’t seem to lay -up handily with the rest. Angels are certain to have good breath, and -these flowers smell as nutty as anything I’ve tried. Just take a niff at -them yourself. Well, Mr. Onslow, here you are again, and I haven’t said -I’m glad to see you. But I am. It’s as good as meat to me to put eyes -on you and hear what’s to be doing next. I tell you, it’s been pretty -dull work with the donkeyman off all day bird-shooting, and me as ship’s -husband sitting here on my own tail. I fancy you’d be a bit astonished at -walking on board here same as you would into a house without having to -hail a boat.” - -“A little; not much. I was prepared for anything after what I saw between -Point Sebastian and this.” - -“I fancy they’ll have to bring out new geography books about this part -of Florida. I never saw such a place. Why, sir, the blessed ground -fairly got up and walked during that blow. I don’t think the steamer -shifted much; canted a bit to leeward maybe, but didn’t budge out of her -keel-groove; but it was the shores that fetched weigh. When once they -broke moorings, the trees set back their shoulders and sheeted home, -and great islands bore down on us like ships. The lightning burnt flares -all the time, and I watched through the chart-house ports because no one -could stand on deck outside. I’m not a frightened man, Mr. Onslow, or -a superstitious, but I thought that night was too hard for a cyclone. -I tell you, sir, and you may laugh if you like, I reckoned it up that -Judgment Day had come, and I got the Prayer-book and read myself the -Burial Service clean through, sea bits and all, so as to fetch whatever -happened, land or water. I haven’t led a bad life, Mr. Onslow; pretty -religious ashore, and never sparing myself trouble, in hazing a crew so -as to carry out owner’s business at sea; and when I’d said that Burial -Service, I felt I’d done all that could be expected. There was only one -thing,” the little man added plaintively. “I wished I’d a new-washed -jacket aboard. The one I’d on was that smeared and crumpled I should have -felt shame to appear in it.” - -“Well, I’m glad you weren’t hurt,” said Onslow. “It was a terrible night -for any one in this area.” - -“I came through it, Mr. Onslow, without so much as a finger-nail broken. -So did the donkeyman. He came up here and asked if I wanted him when -the blow began, and when I told him ‘No’ he went to his own room and -turned in and slept till it was over. But the niggers didn’t. When -the steamer began to list they got scared; thought she’d turn bilge -uppermost, I suppose; and bolted down to their fishbox of a sloop which -lay alongside. Of course, when the shores slipped their moorings and bore -down on her, the sloop had to give; and she and the niggers are buried -somewhere yonder to starboard, but where I don’t know. I’ve looked, but -there isn’t so much as a spar, there isn’t so much as a whiff of circus -to put a label on the spot. I’ve had mighty little to do latterly, -and I might have struck up some sort of a sign-board to ’em, niggers -though they were, if I could have fixed the place to an acre; but when -a grave-head gets bigger than that you may be writing ‘here lyeth’ in -more senses than one. So I left them quiet. Of course, with the steamer -high and dry up-country, and the river two miles away through the thick -woods, it wasn’t much good our messing with paint-pots and changing -name-plates. We’d built a new fore-hatch and shipped it, and greased up -the engines; and, as that seemed to me all that was necessary, I’ve given -my shipmate holiday ever since. There’s the making of a sportsman in our -donkeyman, Mr. Onslow. There isn’t a thing that crawls or flies or swims -in this section of Florida that blessed Irishman hasn’t blown off my -old gas-pipe at or tried to catch with a worm on a cod-hook. He wasn’t -keen at first; said he’d been brought up in a works; but when I told him -everything he took was poached, by James, sir, you might think he was -Prince of Wales, the way he sticks at it.” - -“Blood will out!” said Onslow, with a laugh, and he marveled at the -extraordinary toughness of the donkeyman. At all times there is much -sulphur in the water of these Floridan swamps; but since the cyclone the -sulphurous emanations had been stirred and set free, till the presence of -them was almost unendurable. The waters were black to look upon, yellow -to look through: and in the air was a never-failing, never-varying hint -at the odor of ancient eggs. It even stole into the chart-house, and -mingled with the scent of the magnolia blossoms. - -“It isn’t violets,” the captain assented, in reply to Onslow’s comment, -“and there’s fever knocking about in those swamps as sure as there is -in a Hamburg drain. But what’s fever mean, sir, except carelessness and -ignorance? You tackle fever with science, Mr. Onslow, and it hasn’t -a show. And if we haven’t got science aboard here, concentrated and -labelled and bottled down in our medicine-chest, I don’t know where you -will find it. Yes, sir, I will say that—the _Port Edes_ has a romping -fine medicine-chest; and I’ve been through it all myself, so I ought -to know. The donkeyman’s been most ways through it, too; but he’s -on at fever mixtures now, and he’s going solid at them. We’ve three -quart bottles: A for bilious, B for malarial, and C for typhoid; and -the donkeyman has a swig out of each, with a nip of chlorodyne thrown -in, just after his breakfast every morning, and then a rub with some -Rheumatic Cure, and if he isn’t as right as a mail-boat—well, never speak -to me of drugs again. But it’s making a tough man of him, Mr. Onslow, -and that’s what I want, because the donkeyman and I are going to chip in -partnership.” - -“What! buy a steamer together and take her tramping? Well, I hope you’ll -have all manner of luck.” - -“Oh, don’t you make any error,” retorted the captain. “It isn’t -salt-water trading we’re in for. We aren’t such gulls as that. We know -too much about it, both of us. We’re going to start in farming.” - -“Farming? What do either of you know about that?” - -“Oh, don’t you take me for a fool, sir. I can learn as well as any one; -and so can the donkeyman. We shall get three hundred acres of land -granted to the pair of us for nothing in North-West Canada, and even if -crops failed altogether, we’ve enough saved up to live on for the first -two years. We can try it, anyhow, when you give us our discharge from -here. Ever since I worked at sea,” he added plaintively, “I’ve always -wished to be a farmer.” - -“I think,” said Onslow, “I would dissuade you from the attempt if I -could; but I know it’s no use trying, so I will hold my tongue on that -point. As to when your bargain is up with the _Port Edes_, you can put -that at half an hour from now if you like. Anyway, I’m going to leave her -directly, and I never intend to return here again.” - -Captain Kettle’s jaw dropped. “What?” he gasped. - -“I have changed my mind,” Onslow said, “or had it changed for me. For -my part, that gold will remain where it is. I am not going to touch a -sovereign of it.” - -“Look here,” said Captain Kettle, “do you mind telling me? Did you come -against some preacher during the cyclone, and get religion from him?” - -“I think I know what you mean. But you’re on the wrong track. I’m not -the sort who announces publicly that he will cease to be a sinner just -because he finds himself in physical danger.” - -“No,” said Kettle; “come to think of it, I should have known you were -not. I was a fool to ask that question. But it settles it in another -direction. There’s a woman got hold of you.” - -“Or I of her.” - -“Either way. So that’s it? And you told her all about this racket, -because you thought it wrong to hold any secrets of your own, and she -soured on it. Well, that’s woman’s way. And the other lady you spoke -about, she who made you run wild, you’ve forgotten her?” - -Onslow nodded. - -“And she’s forgotten you?” - -“I hope she has; and if she hasn’t I can’t help it.” - -“Well, Mr. Onslow, if this business is to end in a ’bout ship, as soon -as the donkeyman comes back from his hunting I am ready to get under -weigh and be off. But as he isn’t here yet, and as we’ve still a bit of -time to wait, I’d like to hear what is going to become of that £500,000 -and the old ship after all. I’ve been in at the handling of them both -so long that I’m beginning to take quite a friendly interest in their -movements. As you know, I’ve liked them so well at times that I’ve been -half inclined to adopt them myself.” - -“I know; and it is to your honor that you didn’t.” - -“Oh, as to honor, don’t you make any blessed error about that, sir. I’m -a poor man with a family, and a wife that works, Mr. Onslow, and honor’s -a luxury beyond my means. It was just my cantankerousness that prevented -me being a rich man this minute. If the crew hadn’t been so uppish that -night in the gut of the Florida channel, so help me, neither steamer nor -gold would have got as far as this. And if it had come to a scramble, -then you can bet I’m the man to have grabbed the pig’s share. But that -chance is gone and done with, and so we’ll let it pass for the present. -Still, I’d like to hear—if I might—who is to finger the stuff.” - -“Kettle, I’d tell you if I could, but on my soul, I’m not able. My -bargain with the girl I’m going to marry was to pocket no share of the -plunder myself; but, as I warned her when we made our bargain, I was -Shelf’s man still, and couldn’t cease to serve him because of scruples -with my own conscience. And so I was going to set off and carry his half -to the bank which we had agreed upon, when a newspaper arrived to say -that he had gone smash, and was in jail awaiting trial on sixteen heavy -charges. It seems he had tried to make a bolt of it, and very nearly -succeeded; but, through an accident to one of his own steamers, drifted -back into the very hands of the English police.” - -“Having got him,” said Kettle, “they are likely to keep him on hand. -There should be charges enough against that gentleman, if only they can -find half of them, to do anything to him short of hanging.” - -“Quite so,” Onslow agreed. “And I dare say we shall learn the details -about that later. But to come back to the piece of knavery we were -interested in, I may say that Shelf seems to have been prepared for the -smash. Three days ago I had a letter from him (which had been passed on -the road by the newspaper cablegram) telling me to transmit the stuff to -a place in South America, where he would meet it. The money would have -been a pleasant little nest-egg for him to begin life again on somewhere -beyond the allurements of extradition treaties; and I’ve no doubt that -if he had got it he would have sailed ahead brilliantly. But he hasn’t, -and he’s in jail; and he will be set up on high as a warning to the -universe. There are a good many of us thieves, Kettle; and he was the -cleverest of the lot; and he has made a mess of it. Mr. Theodore Shelf -will be a wonderful reforming influence in his fall. He’ll do more good -to the morality of the world by coming a cropper than he ever did by -preaching. However, he clearly couldn’t handle the money if I did send it -to South America now, and, being a convict, he can’t hold property; and -so (perhaps jesuitically) I hold myself clear of all pledge to him; and -that’s how the matter stands.” - -Captain Kettle pulled at his short, red beard. “Then if you two aren’t -taking any, who on earth is to get this money? Hang me if I can see!” - -“The proper owners, whoever they may be,” replied Onslow. “But they’ll -have to be found, and at present I haven’t the vaguest notion as to who -they are. In fact, as we now stand, there’s our half-million of English -sovereigns and a romping fine steamer going a-begging.” - -“Oh, Lord!” mused Kettle, with his eyes upon the jam-pot of magnolia -blossom, “why can’t this boodle be grabbed by a man like me? What have -I done that I should kick up and down the world, and earn my living by -being ugly to crews? If I’d means there wouldn’t be a wholesomer man -between here and heaven. I’d have that farm, with cows on it, and sheep, -and a steam threshing-machine, and I’d ride about the fields on a horse, -and boss the hands just like Abraham did. I’d have the farm-buildings -all painted white, with red roofs; and the house should be painted -stone-color, with green shutters, and red flower-pots in the windows. No -more lodging-house-keeping for the missis in Llandudno. I’d just waltz -in there and turn the brutes she’d been slaving for right out into the -street, and then take her off to my new farm before she’d time to gasp. -We’d have a girl to do the house-work, and my old woman should be a -lady, with nothing to do but trot round after her and see she did it. -The kids—well, I guess I’d send them off to first-class boarding-schools -first, and pay forty pounds each for them every year so long as there -was anything more for them to learn. But they should come to us for the -holidays; and in the evenings they and the missis should sing hymns, and -I’d play the tunes for them on the accordion. I’d teach them to hold up -their heads amongst the neighbors. And on Sunday nights we’d have in the -minister to supper, and fill him out. Yes, Mr. Onslow, that’s the kind -of man I am. Let me bend yellow gaiters and shave my chin, and there -wouldn’t be a better, more God-fearing, more capable farmer ever attended -market. It’s only the sea and the want of money that ever made me hanker -to steal. Yes; poverty’s made me do a heap of mischief one way and -another. I believe,” he added tentatively, “It would be worth somebody’s -while to make me a well-off man even now. I’d be a deal safer that way.” - -“It’s probable,” said Onslow dryly; “at any rate, for the while. But I -don’t feel inclined to pension you off myself. For one thing, I couldn’t -afford it out of my own pocket; and for another, I’m not going to let you -have your pickings from the specie. It’s been trouble enough already, and -if I can’t have it for myself, I’m jolly well going to make my conscience -pat me on the back for handing it over to the right man.” - -“I believe,” said Kettle, “I’d do the same if I were in your shoes; but, -you see, I’m not, Mr. Onslow, and that’s why I wish it could be worked -different. Hallo! here’s the donkeyman back again from his hunting. I -wonder what he’ll have to say to it all? I wonder whether the donkeyman -and I’ll chip in over what we’ve got and a free grant of land in Canada, -or whether we’ll contrive to get independent for life before we leave -this part of the world?” - -“Canada sounds likeliest,” said Onslow. “You and I might have a -shooting-match here in the chart-house till one or other of us was -stretched; but I don’t see that that would better you, because whatever -happens to me, you won’t get at the gold. I’m the only person in the -world who knows where it’s hid, and I’ll cheerfully let you empty your -revolver at me (if I don’t contrive to pot you first), sooner than give -it away. As for finding the stuff yourself, you might as well look for -a pet mosquito in a nigger village. The ground closed up, during the -cyclone, over the place where I put it, and the keenest dollar-hunter -on this planet wouldn’t start to dig up the Everglades haphazard for a -hoard.” - -“Well, Mr. Onslow,” said the sailor, “I’ll admit that sounds like square -speaking. But, all the same, I think I’d like to hear what the donkeyman -has to say upon the question before we close it. You see, he and I are -running partners now, and it’s only right that he should have his say. -The donkeyman has _savvy_, there’s no mortal doubt about that; and if -he sees his way to give the new firm a good solid boost-up over this -business, I’m the man that’s going to help him. I owe that to myself, not -to mention the missis and the kids.” - -“Go on,” said Onslow, “and argue it out with the donkeyman. Only I hope -you’ll see it my way in the end, because I don’t want this entertainment -to end up with a shooting-match. I like you both too well to want to -see either of you die in front of my pistol; and (what I have far more -concern in) I most particularly don’t want to be killed myself just now.” - -“Because you have a lady waiting for you when you get back?” - -“That is so,” said Onslow. “Respectable married life will come to me as a -novelty, and I’m anxious to taste it.” - -“I wonder if you ever will?” said Captain Kettle thoughtfully. - -Then he turned to the donkeyman and gave him a careful sketch of what had -happened, and drew vivid pictures of the bucolic joys to be extracted -from five hundred thousand pounds. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV. - -A FLIGHT AND A RESTING-PLACE. - - -Mr. Theodore Shelf had arranged for an exodus _de luxe_, and flattered -himself that he would have no difficulty in carrying it out. He had got -to know exactly when the police were going to come for him at the house -in Park Lane, and had slipped away from there in his own brougham, so as -to leave himself a comfortable margin of start. He had stepped out of a -railway-carriage at Newport, whilst all the authorities fondly imagined -he was still on his way to Liverpool; and, with George and a small -russia-leather handbag, had taken a cab down to the docks. - -He pulled out his large gold watch, looked at it, and smiled. Punctual to -the minute! He paid his cabman, and, with the dog at his heels, stepped -daintily amongst the litter on the wharf to where a single gang-plank -joined it to the _Gazelle_, one of his own steamers. He went on board and -shook hands with the captain. - -“All your portmanteaux have come, sir,” said that officer. “I saw them -put into your room myself last night.” - -“And the wine?” - -“Nine cases of it, sir, stowed in the cabin store-room. My steward got in -all the other things you ordered exactly as they were written out on the -list, and for a cook I have managed to secure a man off a big Cunarder—by -paying for him, of course. But, then, you told me, sir, I was not to -spare cost.” - -“Quite right, Captain Colson; quite right. Money must be no object when -we have health to consider; and my advisers tell me that it is absolutely -dangerous for me to remain in England any longer. A change is imperative -for me. You are ready to get under weigh?” - -“We finished coaling an hour ago. We are only waiting for you, sir.” - -“Then,” said Mr. Shelf, with a pleasant smile, “do not rob me of another -minute of my hardly-earned holiday, captain. Use your magician’s wand -and waft me from the cares of business and the coal-dust of Newport—as -quickly as ever you may. I will go below now and snatch a wink of sleep; -and when I wake, let it be to breathe the pure sea air as it comes in -sweet and clear and salt from the mouth of the Bristol Channel.” - -The captain was a practical man, who did not appreciate rhapsodies. He -said, “Very well, sir; I’ll get her under weigh at once,” and left for -the upper bridge. - -Mr. Theodore Shelf, with George at his heels, went below, undressed, -and turned in. He slept placidly, and meanwhile the steamer worked out -of dock and began to make her way down the reddened waters of the great -estuary. He dreamed of conquering another financial kingdom for himself -in a South American Republic. It was a very pleasant dream, full of rich -and voluptuous detail. - -When he woke, he began at once the process of cutting himself adrift from -his old life. His clothes of every-day wear—the prim black broadcloth -that he preached in, addressed the House of Commons in, wore for business -purposes in the City—lay in a ruffled heap on the cabin floor. He -unscrewed the port-hole, and dropped the garments one by one on to the -sunny waves which raced by outside. And then he drew from his portmanteau -tweeds of a daring pattern and yellow boots and a smart straw hat; and -in ten minutes he was another man. The smug, hypocritical smile was gone -from his face, and his lips pouted lovingly round an excellent cigar. - -Except by stealth he had not smoked for fifteen years, and as the fumes -went up he felt that he was burning a pleasant incense to his new-bought -liberty. He would have smoked in bed had he thought of it; but as it -was, smoking before breakfast made the next best thing, since both seemed -eminently rakish. - -A deferential steward knocked at his door, and announced breakfast. -Mr. Shelf strolled out into the main cabin, threw his cigar into the -alley-way, and sat up to the table. The captain and the second mate were -mealing with him, and, by the faces of them, they felt out of their -element before the epicurean _menu_ which the Cunarder’s cook had sent -up in place of the usual hash and tea. But Shelf took the lead, and -called for champagne to drink _bon voyage_, and unwrapped himself into -a glittering host, and had them at their entire ease in less time than -it takes to eat a curried egg. There was no holding the man. He was free -with his speech as a bookmaker at Monte Carlo; he was witty, scurrilous, -irreverent; he brought out tales which made even the captain grin -dubiously. In fact, he showed such a fine vein of breezy sinfulness that -the captain (who had been in his service for many a weary year) marveled -at his strength in ever keeping it under. - -George was the only person who understood it all. George sat on a -cushioned locker and grinned and appreciated Mr. Shelf’s changed manner -to the full. If he could have shown derision for the gulls they had left -behind in England, he would have done it cheerfully. Mr. Shelf was all -George’s world. He was a most immoral dog. - - * * * * * - -Now it came to pass that a sudden change swept over the scene. Whilst -Mr. Shelf was initiating his new friends into the beauties of an -after-breakfast liqueur, the steamer’s helm was put hard a-port to avoid -a fishing-boat which had got in her way; and whilst he chose a cigarette -from his elaborate silver case, the steam steering-gear chose to break -down, and before he had lit the dainty roll of tobacco and blown out his -match and inhaled four puffs of smoke, the steamer was hard-and-fast -ashore on one of the outlying reefs of Lundy Island. - -The mate in charge on the bridge had done his best with reversed engines, -but the steamer’s way was too great, and the ported helm gave her a steer -which no one could govern; and so she took the shore on a falling tide. - -Mr. Shelf’s vocabulary lengthened still more surprisingly. The scheme of -easy escape had of a sudden been snatched away. The fear of worse than -death was upon him, and he cursed the mate, the steamer, and all within -her by all the gods he had ever served. The captain suggested that the -blame would fall upon the pilot in charge, and Mr. Shelf cursed the pilot -with fluent rage. The man was in a perfect hysteria of passion and rage. - -But by degrees he calmed down, and, when the shipboard flurry was at an -end, drew the captain aside and addressed him confidentially. - -“When can you get her off?” he asked. - -“Next tide, if I wanted to; but I don’t. My mate’s been below, and he -says there are half a dozen plates started. I’m sorry, Mr. Shelf, but -this is going to be a job for the salvage people. I hope, sir, you’ll -take into consideration that it’s through no fault of mine the old boat’s -got herself piled up. I know you don’t give berths to any officer who’s -once been unlucky, even though he has kept his ticket clean; but, seeing -that I’m a shareholder——” - -“Man!” broke in Shelf, passionately, “you must get her off with the next -tide, and try and push on across the Atlantic. I can’t afford to waste -the time. Good heavens, Captain Colson, you have pumps! What are pumps -for if they can’t counterbalance a bit of a leak? Besides, the weather’s -fine enough.” - -The captain stared. “You don’t seem to understand, sir,” he said. “This -isn’t a new ship, and she’s stove in three compartments, at least. She’d -go down like a broken salmon-can if she put into deep water. Of course, -we should get off right enough in the boats; but, seeing that you were -on board, I fancy the insurance people’d think there was something -hanky-panky about it and refuse to pay. And, any way, if we tried -anything half so mad I should lose my ticket for good.” - -“Man,” said Shelf, putting ten shaking fingers on the captain’s arm, “we -must go on at any risk, if it’s only to Spain—if it’s only to France.” - -The captain looked at him queerly. “What’s this mean?” he asked. - -“I dare not go back.” - -“And why not, please?” - -“I’ve been unfortunate in business, captain, and it is absolutely -essential that I should remain abroad a month or so till matters are -settled up again.” - -“Ho!” said Captain Colson, “I’m beginning to see. And which business, -please, have you been unfortunate in?” - -“What does it matter? Several. Captain, you are wasting time.” - -“There is no immediate hurry, sir,” said the captain, stolidly. “May I -ask if the ‘Brothers S. S. Association’ is down on its luck amongst the -other concerns?” - -“I’m—er—I’m afraid it isn’t very prosperous,” said Shelf. - -“Bust?” inquired the captain. - -“Confound you, yes!” roared Shelf. “What do you mean by questioning me -like this?” - -“I’ve got £300 in that blessed company.” - -“Ah!” said Shelf, changing his tone. “Well, that is unfortunate. But,” he -continued, with a significant nod of the head, “I’ve managed to save a -little something for myself out of the general wreck, and if you will see -me safe out of the country, captain, I’ll underwrite those few shares of -yours for five hundred per cent.” - -“No,” said Captain Colson, “I’m damned if I do! That three hundred’s -about all my pile; but I got it clean, and I’m not going to keep it -dirty.” - -“Do you mean,” said Shelf, with growing terror, “you’re not going to help -me out of the country?” - -“That’s about the size of it.” - -“Good heavens, man, the police will take me, and there will be a trial, -and everything I have done will be distorted and misunderstood! I shall -be eternally disgraced! They will give me penal servitude!” - -“Your fault for earning it,” said the captain. - -“You fool!” broke out Shelf with a fresh snarl; “don’t you see you are -robbing yourself? If you give me up you lose your own miserable £300. If -you get me off you’ll pocket £1500. Hang it, man, I’ll give you three -thousand!” - -“You said,” retorted the captain, “you’d got some pickings out of this -wreck with you! Well, I guess the proper owners’ll have that when the -time comes, and I shall have my sixty-fourth, or whatever it is, along -with the rest. I know twenty decent men who’ve got about all they own in -your rotten concerns, and I wouldn’t think it a fair thing to feather -my own nest whilst they got skinned to the bone.—I’ll trouble you, Mr. -Theodore Shelf, to take your hand off my arm, or you’ll get your bally -teeth knocked down your throat. Don’t you come near me any more—you ain’t -wholesome!” - -“I will take one of the boats,” said Shelf, desperately, “and get out -into the Channel, and try and get picked up by some outward-bound -steamer.” - -“You will do,” retorted the captain, “nothing of the sort. There’s a tug -coming up now to our assistance, and I shall send you off to Bideford in -her in charge of my mate. If you’re awkward, you shall travel with a pair -of rusty handcuffs on your heels. I’m going,” said the captain, with an -acid grin, “to make a bid for popularity in the newspapers. I’m going to -be known as the man who nabbed you when you tried to bolt, and I hope I -shall get some sympathy for it; and I hope some one will be kind enough -to give me another berth in consequence.” - -“Just hear me one minute more,” Shelf pleaded. - -“I’ve got no use for any of your talk,” said the captain, sturdily; “and -there’s the boat in the water. Down you get into her, or else you’ll be -put by a pair of quartermasters. You’ll board the tug, and my mate’ll see -you safe ashore in Bideford. After that, you can go to the devil for me; -but I expect the police’ll be waiting ready for you.” - -Mr. Theodore Shelf stepped on shore at the Devonshire seaport a free man, -and free he remained for that night and the succeeding morning, as there -was no warrant in the town on which to arrest him. The whole place knew -his name, and crowded round the hotel where he stayed with open-mouthed -interest. The local police bit their fingers, and betted odds that -he would commit suicide; and on suicide the wretched man’s thoughts -continually turned. But he could not screw himself up to the pitch. He -read with morbid carefulness the newspaper accounts of the crash, and he -dulled his soul with brandy. Save for one other thing, that was all he -did till the police came and fetched him away. His remaining action was a -typical one. He ordered in a local tailor, and once more attired himself -in somber black broadcloth. The bright-colored tweeds he burnt. If he had -to go back to London, it should be as the ghost of his old self, and not -as the caricature of his new. - -Of the man’s journey to London, and the peering crowds at every stop, -there shall be no further word here; nor of the frenzied attempt to -lynch him, which a crowd of his victims made in Paddington Station; -nor of the sensational trial; nor of the awful details of destitution -which spread all over the face of the land. These things were written -of at length in the daily Press, and the memory of them is new and raw. -Therefore they need not be repeated. - -One other short look at him must suffice for the present time. - - - - -CHAPTER XXV. - -CLOSING STRANDS. - - -Hamilton Fairfax came into the drawing-room of their newly bought house -in Kent and kissed his wife, and sat down in a deep armchair. She perched -herself upon the arm and leaned her shoulder against his. He was looking -gloomy, and she commented on it. - -“I don’t feel cheerful, my dear, and that’s a fact,” he said. “I’ve had -to run down to Portland to see that pernicious old guardian of yours, and -the sight of fallen splendor is never very exhilarating.” - -“Poor Mr. Shelf!” said Amy Fairfax, softly. “I suppose he deserves his -fourteen years, but, on my soul, I’m sorry for him. I wish from my heart -that he had managed to get away in the _Gazelle_.” - -“And scoffed at the law?” - -“Oh, bother the law! I’m thinking of the man; not of what he did. He was -always most kind to me.” - -“If it hadn’t been for some one else who took an interest in you, my -dear, he’d have made off with your fortune with his other plunder.” - -“Don’t blow your own trumpet, Hamilton. I know quite well all about that. -But the facts remain that he didn’t get it; and that he was always fond -of me; and that he maneuvered to get me out of the house that awful night -when the _exposé_ came. That last thing alone would make me think kindly -of him if nothing else did. What is he doing now? Tell me!” - -“Studying the mechanical properties of oolitic limestone; making up to -the jail chaplain; and sampling a diet which is entirely new to him. -He’s gone through his spell of solitary work, and is employed now in the -quarries. He has lost three stone in weight, wears his knickerbocker -suit most jauntily, and looks brown and muscular, and vastly healthy. He -is not so dejected as one might expect. He has a position in Portland -just as he had in London. The humbler operators look up to him and envy -his dashing knaveries. They naturally feel a respect for a man who has -pilfered more pounds than they have stolen pennies, and yet earned no -heavier a sentence.” - -“You are bitter against him, Hamilton.” - -“I know I am, dear, and I can’t help it. The very sight of the man makes -my gorge rise inside me. When I think of the awful misery he has caused -to so many thousands of people, I feel that the only thing suitable for -him is one of those Chinese punishments with physical torture in them. He -couldn’t have risen superior to that. But as it is, he has had strength -of mind to accept the situation philosophically, and use his wit to make -it as endurable as possible. They told me he is a model convict; gets up -early and cleans his cell; sings in chapel with noise and zeal; works in -the quarries with cheerfulness and intelligence; and is as keen to earn -all his marks and his shilling a week without stoppages as ever he was to -turn a profit in the City. He was sent into penal servitude to suffer and -repent, and he isn’t doing either. He’s amusing his brain by humbugging -the chaplain with a well-acted repentance, by courting admiration amongst -the other convicts, and by scheming to get the largest possible amount -of bodily benefits possible under the circumstances. And he’s looking -forward to a snug and comfortable retirement when his spell of prison is -over. He’s a living piece of ridicule to the law that sentenced him, and -I felt that I wanted to make him wear a _cangue_, or to pour boiling oil -over him, to make him properly sorry for himself.” - -“Well,” said Amy, “if married people didn’t differ occasionally, married -life would be very dull. This is one of the times when we counteract -dullness, because here I don’t agree with you in the very least. I’m -quite human enough to be glad that a man I always liked is making the -best of a very bad job. I know he’d feel the same if I were in his shoes. -He always liked me—and George. Now it isn’t many men who, when the -trouble was thickest on them, would have taken all the care he did over a -dog.” - -“Well, George has got a comfortable berth here,” said Fairfax. “But old -Shelf needn’t have made such a fuss about it. We’d have given the animal -a home just for the bare asking.” - -“I like him for the fuss,” Amy retorted. “It wasn’t humbug in the least; -any one could see that. He just loved that dog, and he was genuinely -anxious about what was going to happen to him.” - -The fox-terrier, who was lying on the hearth-rug, gave a lazy tail-wag at -hearing his name mentioned, and blinked sleepily. - -“If fatness is any criterion, George has got a very comfortable job of -it as dog to this establishment,” said Fairfax. “He seems to drop into -altered circumstances as philosophically as his master does.” - -“I wonder what Mrs. Shelf is doing now,” said the young wife, dreamily. -“I wonder if she is alive anywhere. She could not have disappeared more -completely. She was seen on the night of that memorable ball; and the -next morning she was not; and no one seems to have got a word of her -since. I do wonder what has happened to her.” - -“That,” said Fairfax, “is the other piece of news I have for you, and -though you may like her fate, it isn’t to my taste at all. The lady is -not only very much alive, but she is practising her old game with the -most brilliant success in Paraguay. She is now Donna Laura Anaquel (which -is ‘Shelf’ in a Spanish garb), a grass widow, and the leader of State -society in Asuncion. The reigning President is a widower, and the Bishop -of Asuncion has offered to grant Donna Laura a divorce on the ground of -desertion. It is a polite piece of attention, and according to accounts -she could certainly be Mrs. President if she liked; but she has refused -to cut herself adrift from the excellent Theodore; and at the pace she -is going will probably get herself elected Dictatoress of the Republic -at the next election or revolution, or whatever it may be, through sheer -weight of influence and popularity. She is really a most astounding -woman.” - -“She’s as clever as paint, if that is what you mean. But why Paraguay? -and what’s she doing it on? That sort of amusement costs money.” - -“Of course she has money at her command. Previous reputation counts -nothing, either one way or the other, in that blissful republic. But -with money and wit you can do mostly anything you want. As usual, she -has to thank Mr. Theodore Shelf for the sinews of war. He, bless his -heart, foresaw his crash in this country for two whole years before it -came to pass, and bought a fine _estançia_ near Asuncion, and transmitted -shareholders’ money to banks in that city to run it on. She’s got hold -of the lot, and as England has no extradition treaty with the rogues out -there, she’s making it hum. That woman’s a lot too clever for my liking, -Amy; but I’ve one solid hope for her. Either she may meddle with politics -too much and get shot, or else she may work out human justice by spending -up all the stolen hoard, and leave that old rascal Shelf nothing to fall -back on when he gets out of Portland on his ticket-of-leave.” - -“That,” replied Mrs. Fairfax, “is another point on which we will disagree -amiably. According to accounts, there is room for much improvement in -Paraguay in every way. The Shelfs are just the people to bring it about. -They simply bristle with energy. If he had the handling of the finances -of the country they would be bound to take an upward turn; and, for the -social part, she is just the one woman in all the world to lay down an -entire set of new and up-to-date laws. Moreover, she’d make them dress -like Christians and Parisians, and that is an art (if one may believe -pictures) in which they are obviously deficient.” - -“Hum,” said Fairfax. “Your notions may be generous, Amy, but I’m afraid -they lean towards anarchy.” - -“I am grateful to people who have done well by me personally, that is -all. You apparently are not. You might remember, my dear boy, that it was -through Mrs. Shelf that you and I came together in the first instance. -But, perhaps, you are angry with her for that? You may be tired of me -already?” - -Hamilton Fairfax laughed, and drew down his wife’s face to his own, and -kissed her three times. “If you put it that way,” he said, “I shall have -to swallow my resentment against the Shelfs for good and all.” - -“That’s right,” said Amy. “Now I like you ever so much better. I say, -ring the bell and let’s go out for a spin in the tandem.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXVI. - -THE LUCKY MAN. - - -No one ever accused Mr. Reginald Lossing of having brains; no one ever -denied that he had a luck which was monumental. He had a name for luck -which was looked up to and marveled at, even in the society papers. - -Mr. Lossing had no settled trade or profession; he was like unto a lily -in the matter of toil and dress, and he made a very comfortable income -at it. He dabbled in outsiders on the turf, in shares of uncharted gold -mines, in the fascinating game of unlimited loo; and was able to look -complacently on the results. He went into all these and other operations -with a genial, childish simplicity; and, like the banker at roulette, -there always seemed a steady pull in his favor. How it was done no one -knew; he did not know himself; and he and all his world marveled, and -prophesied that his luck would some day turn with a rush and a sweeping -tide. - -When he got mixed up with the Shelf affair it seemed as if this would be -the case. - -There was something very near akin to a panic in Lloyds’ when the total -loss of the _Port Edes_ was reported, and those unfortunates who had -underwritten her were anxious to dispose of their risks at remarkable -prices to any credulous man who believed that this first report was a -_canard_. Consequently there was some pretty steep gambling gone through -in the space of minutes, and more than one small man got broke with -surprising rapidity. - -Now, Master Lossing happened to be in the room as an idle spectator, and -was hit with the excitement, and asked a friend who was a member to act -for him. “I’m going to play a hand in this,” quoth Master Lossing. - -“At what price?” asked his friend. - -“When they get to ninety-eight guineas.” - -“I suppose you know that makes you liable for about £10,800. There’s -£540,000 underwritten.” - -“I’m good for that,” said Lossing; and an hour afterwards proved himself -so, as he had to pay. To this day many Lloyds’ men, who were interested -in that scene, congratulate themselves on having made £10,800 salvage by -a fluke out of a ship that was totally lost. - -It began to dawn on Lossing after the event that he had made a fool of -himself, and that his luck was through; but he had the sense not to -whine aloud, and so his friends forgot the matter in the excitement of -other interests. Lossing did not forget, because the bank had written to -him that his account was overdrawn, and he had several bills which much -wanted paying. Unostentatiously he began to look about him for a means of -making a more regular and steady livelihood. - -As after several months of search this last did not seem any appreciably -nearer, he was able to give full attention to a letter he received -concerning the _Port Edes_ and her cargo. It was unsigned, and bore an -American postmark. It ran as follows:— - -“Sir. I hear that you are now legitimate owner of the _Port Edes_ and -her cargo. She was picked up at sea, and is now in the Everglades of -Florida in (here followed the exact latitude and longitude). The specie -is taken out of her, and you will find it by digging (here came elaborate -cross-bearings and directions). If you are a wise man, and wish to enjoy -what is now legally your own, you will say as little about the matter to -any one as possible.” - -The communication was, to say the least of it, mysterious; but, because -Lossing was a fool, he did not see so many possibilities in it as a man -of more imagination might have done. Moreover, having failed to discover -the suitable occupation, the before-mentioned, he was feeling that the -end of his tether approached, and appreciated the loneliness of the -void which lay beyond. So, with all before him, and nothing behind, he -determined to find out how the matter lay with his own eyes, and with -that purpose journeyed to the hotel at Point Sebastian, now rebuilt with -new magnificence. - -It was the Floridan winter season, and the place was crowded, and amongst -the crowd was Lossing’s old friend, Kent-Williams, again at the end of -a new quarter’s allowance. Mr. Reginald Lossing stayed a week at Point -Sebastian, and, by the kindly offices of Kent-Williams (who remained on -as his guest), he learnt much about the manners and customs of Floridan -society. - -Knowing Patrick Onslow, he heard with interest about his marriage to Miss -Elsie Kildare, and with amusement the details of the send-off. - -“There wasn’t much money throwing about,” Kent-Williams explained, “but -we did the thing in style for all that. She was married from here, and -old Van Liew did the heavy father to perfection. I was best man in a -two-dollar alpaca coat (I’ll trouble you) by way of purple and fine -linen; and a singer-fellow, who was down here for D. T., howled ‘The -voice that breathed o’er Eden’ as good as you could have got it done in -Milan. There was a regular A1 feed to follow, and then the pair of them -went off to the depôt behind the best trotting team in this section. -They’re going to settle out west, but where exactly I don’t know, though -I suppose we shall hear one of these days. We’d high jinks after they’d -gone. Some of the boys got a bit full, and there was a trifle of a row, -and a Balliol man and a Cracker from round here got laid out; but they -were both regular toughs, and nobody missed them; and, besides, a thing -like that lent local color to the wedding.” - -“Yes,” said Lossing, “but touching this other matter I’ve been speaking -about,” and went on to discourse about a certain steamer and some specie, -which was a topic he had very much at heart just then. Kent-Williams -picked up the subject with interest. There seemed to be money in it, and -money was a commodity which he most ardently desired. - -That was not the first conference they had had by any means, nor was it -the last, for some projects take much pre-arranging, especially if the -projectors are not gentlemen of any marked ability or experience. But, at -the end of a week from Mr. Lossing’s first appearance at Point Sebastian, -a definite plan had grown in their heads, and with a small equipment they -set out in a 10-ton schooner for a down-coast river said to lead into the -Everglades—they and five others, whereof two were disrated nautical men, -and one an engineer. - -The saga of their doings for the next six months does not appear, but -it is known that the schooner returned twice, and took back with her -provisions and digging implements (which were paid for in yellow English -gold), and each time gathered two or three more recruits of varied tints. -There must have been quite a colony of them out there, and legends -floated out from the ’Glades of strife amongst themselves and of a fracas -with Seminole Indians. But nothing definite transpired, and, in fact, -the exact location of the colony itself was quite unknown. That part of -Florida does not attract the explorer for many reasons. - -It was not, I may say, till some seven months later that Messrs. -Kent-Williams and Lossing deigned to reappear before the eyes of polite -society, and then (for some reason which may not be very comfortably -explained) it was on one of the Royal Mail Company’s steamboats bound -homewards from a port of Eastern South America. It might have been -remarked that Lossing carried a newly healed scar above his right eyebrow. - -The pair of them sat in cool cane chairs under the shade of the awning, -watching in silence the low shores dip under the sea, and smoking -Brazilian cigars with massive contentment. - -It was Kent-Williams who, when the last palm-tree had disappeared beneath -the waters, first made speech. “So that’s done with,” he said. “I feel -ten years older, but it’s done with, and we’ve got what we wanted.” - -“Done with it is, thank my precious luck,” said Lossing. “I’m glad as -a man can be; but I tell you I’m bubbling with surprise still that the -thing should ever have come in my way. It’s a bigger puzzle than I shall -ever make out in this life. Think of it! First a steamer—my steamer, that -I draw out of a gamble, which is supposed to be sunk—gets up, and goes -overland, and plants herself firmly in the middle of a solid forest, -as though she wanted to grow there like a tree. We have it on the most -reliable accounts that the crew deserted her out in the Mexican Gulf; but -some unknown somebody comes up and paints a different color on one of her -smoke-stacks, and leaves the other as it was, and screws new cast-brass -name-plates on all her engines and fittings, and leaves the lifebuoys -labeled ‘_Port Edes_ of Liverpool.’ But then the gold in her flies two -miles further up-country, and dives twenty feet under the ground, without -disturbing the mangrove roots. And you will please to remember that that -same network of wood cost us two days of hard cutting with an ax before -we got through it. Now, if a man can ravel all that out, I swear he -ought to be burnt for sorcery.” - -“It was the fishiness of the whole thing that impressed me most,” said -Kent-Williams, thoughtfully. “I think, dear boy, we’ve been very wise -chaps in selling your blessed steamer with a brand-new set of names on -her to a Spanish man who gave a low price and asked no questions. It was -quite honest on our part, seeing that the steamer and her cargo were -legally yours; but I shouldn’t be surprised if, by keeping dark, we’ve -saved a lot of trouble for somebody else.” - -“It’s very probable,” said Lossing. “But I wonder who? D’you know, old -man, I’d give a couple of thousand, out of sheer curiosity, just to know -how all this racket has been fixed up. It seems to me some way that Pat -Onslow must have had a finger in it.” - -“Do you think,” retorted Kent-Williams, “that if Patrick Onslow had his -finger on half a million, which no one else knew about, it wouldn’t have -been his half-million? No, sir. That cock won’t fight. Besides, Onslow -was spooning the Kildare girl, and that took up all his time, I guess. -Heigh-ho!” said Kent-Williams. - -“What’s that for?” - -“Which?” - -“The sigh.” - -“Did I sigh? Well, I was thinking about Mrs. Duvernay, the Kildare -girl’s sister, that Onslow was spoons on himself one time. She’s a deuced -nice-looking woman.” - -“So you’ve said before.” - -“I know. Between ourselves, Lossing, dear boy, I went up to her place one -evening and proposed to her; and—this is in confidence, mind—d’you know, -by Jove! she actually refused me. She’s got that fellow Onslow still in -her head, I suppose. But I shall go out and have a look at her again. -Honestly, I was after her £500 a year at first; but now that (thanks to -you) I’m better off, it won’t look so bad; and, really, I like her better -than I thought. She’s a most awfully charming woman.” - -“Whatever did she marry that brute Duvernay for?” asked Lossing. - -“Ah, that,” replied Kent-Williams, “is more than I can tell you.” - - -THE END. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HONOR OF THIEVES *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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