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.

                  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