path: root/66637-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 66637 ***

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 66637 ***