diff --git a/Modules/Module1/Module1.md b/Modules/Module1/Module1.md
index 06a6d487d..57c3bf567 100644
--- a/Modules/Module1/Module1.md
+++ b/Modules/Module1/Module1.md
@@ -181,19 +181,19 @@ You may update both simultaneously from Visual Studio by selecting.
 
 What is the difference between Git and GitHub?
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: The difference is that Github uses Git in order to share the codes.
 
 What is the difference between a git commit and a git push?
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: The difference is that commit is saving it and push is uploading it.
 
 What is the difference between a pull, and an upstream pull?
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: The difference between a pull and a upstream pull is that upstream pull is merging that one that you forked and pull is forking.
 
 What part of these instructions was unclear or incomplete?
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: None I understand them.
 
 Type down any class notes below this sentence:
 
diff --git "a/Modules/Module2/Daniel Cintr\303\263n.PNG" "b/Modules/Module2/Daniel Cintr\303\263n.PNG"
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..a2be049db
Binary files /dev/null and "b/Modules/Module2/Daniel Cintr\303\263n.PNG" differ
diff --git a/Modules/Module2/Module2.md b/Modules/Module2/Module2.md
index 24913ea9a..d43ff9505 100644
--- a/Modules/Module2/Module2.md
+++ b/Modules/Module2/Module2.md
@@ -131,23 +131,23 @@ Typing `python` *(or `python3`)* into the terminal will enter the Python console
 What is a benefit of using Markdown?
 https://www.markdownguide.org/getting-started/
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer:  Markdown is portable. Files containing Markdown-formatted text can be opened using virtually any application.It can also be used to create websites
 
 What does "cd" stand for?
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: It stands for changing directory
 
 Did you get stuck at any point or become confused with your console? (yes/no) If so, what happened? How did you solve it?
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: No
 
 Did you consider searching google for other commands to run? What did you try? 
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: I never considered.
 
 What would you like to program? 
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: I would like to program computers.
 
 Type down any class notes below this sentence:
 
diff --git a/Modules/Module3/Daniel-Cintron-Ticketera.py b/Modules/Module3/Daniel-Cintron-Ticketera.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..aea04bcab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Modules/Module3/Daniel-Cintron-Ticketera.py
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+print("Miss World 2021")
+print("The cost of each seat is as follow: Club Seat = $350, Nivel Principal = $350, Nivel Superior = $75")
+
+Club_Seat = int(input("How many tickets sold for Club Seat? ="))
+Nivel_Principal = int(input("How many tickets sold for Nivel Principal="))
+Nivel_Superior = int(input("How many tickets sold for Nivel Superior="))
+
+def SectionSales(Club_Seat, Nivel_Principal, Nivel_Superior):
+ print(f"The cost for Club Seat Tickets is: {int(Club_Seat) * 350}")  
+ print(f"The cost for Nivel Principal Tickets is: {int(Nivel_Principal) * 350}")  
+ print(f"The cost for Nivel Superior Tickets is:  {int(Nivel_Superior) *75}")
+ print()
+SectionSales(Club_Seat, Nivel_Principal, Nivel_Superior)
+Sales_CS = Club_Seat * 350
+Sales_NP = Nivel_Principal * 350
+Sales_NS = Nivel_Superior * 75
+def TicketsTotal( Sales_CS, Sales_NP, Sales_NS): 
+        print(f"The total of tickets sales is ${int(Sales_CS) + int(Sales_NP) + int(Sales_NS)}")
+print()
+TicketsTotal(Sales_CS, Sales_NP, Sales_NS) 
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Modules/Module3/Module3.md b/Modules/Module3/Module3.md
index 44d718e32..3a419abca 100644
--- a/Modules/Module3/Module3.md
+++ b/Modules/Module3/Module3.md
@@ -96,24 +96,24 @@ print(type(age))
 
 What is the difference between "42" and 42.
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: first is a spring and the other is an intenger
 
 Define the boolean operators: >, <, ==, >=, <=
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer:>:grester than <: less than ==:equals >=: more or equal than <=:less or equal than
 
 How do you address an index in an list? Write a python code that assigns 34 to a new variable by accessing the value stored in:  
         arr = [4, 3, -1, 4, 34]
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer:arr{4}
 
 What is the first index of a list? Why?
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer:0 Because pyhton starts with 0
 
 Provide an original example of a null value. It must prove your understanding of the concept.
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer:If there is othing it is a null value.
 
 Type down any class notes below this sentence:
 
diff --git a/Modules/Module4/Daniel Cintron-Calculator.py b/Modules/Module4/Daniel Cintron-Calculator.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..0db9061fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Modules/Module4/Daniel Cintron-Calculator.py	
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+# print("Hello World")
+# print(input("What is your name?: "))
+# myName = input ()
+# print("It is good to mmet you", myName)
+# print("What is your age?  :") 
+# myAge = input()
+# print("You will be " + str(int(myAge)+5)+" in 5 years")
+print("Rectangle Area Calculator")
+print("""
+-----------------------
+|                     |
+|                     |
+|                     |
+|                     |
+|                     | 
+-----------------------
+""")
+mywidth = int(input("What is the base or width of the square: "))
+myheight = int(input("What is the height of the figure: "))
+print("The Area of the rectangle is: ", mywidth * myheight)
+print()
+def AreaOfRectangle(width, height):
+ print(f"Area of the rectangle is {int(width) * int(height)}")  
+print("Width is 15 cm")
+print("Height is 11 cm")
+AreaOfRectangle(15, 11) 
+
diff --git a/Modules/Module4/Daniel-Cintron-Calculator.PNG b/Modules/Module4/Daniel-Cintron-Calculator.PNG
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..6c9a5c1d7
Binary files /dev/null and b/Modules/Module4/Daniel-Cintron-Calculator.PNG differ
diff --git a/Modules/Module4/Daniel-Cintron-Ticketera.PNG b/Modules/Module4/Daniel-Cintron-Ticketera.PNG
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..b853aefcb
Binary files /dev/null and b/Modules/Module4/Daniel-Cintron-Ticketera.PNG differ
diff --git a/Modules/Module4/Module4-1.PNG b/Modules/Module4/Module4-1.PNG
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..3457c951c
Binary files /dev/null and b/Modules/Module4/Module4-1.PNG differ
diff --git a/Modules/Module4/Module4.md b/Modules/Module4/Module4.md
index afc1e494f..fb8e1dbc0 100644
--- a/Modules/Module4/Module4.md
+++ b/Modules/Module4/Module4.md
@@ -126,9 +126,7 @@ print(f"Or use the print directly {myNumber}")
 ### [The Geometric-Functions project corresponds to this lecture.]((/../../tree/main/Projects/Geometric-Functions/Geometric-Functions.md))
 
 
-# Class Discussion
-## Answer the questions on the Markdown file located within your <u>`Module4`</u> directory (Module4.md)`(12pts)`
-<!-- Welcome! These are your questions. -->
+!-- Welcome! These are your questions. -->
 <!-- Answer using full sentences to receive all points. -->
 <!-- 
 
@@ -136,19 +134,26 @@ Evaluate the following code. Is the code written correctly? What would be the co
         print('This message has a syntax error!")
         print(Churrigueresco)
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer:  print("This message has a syntax error!")
+        print("Churrigueresco")
+
 
 Evaluate the following code. Is the code written correctly? What would be the correct code?
         someNumber=360
-        print(' The Number is someNumber ')
+        print('The Number is someNumber')
 Expected:  The Number is 360
 
  - Answer:
+ myNumber = 360
+ print(f"The number is {MyNumber}")
 
 Define a function that takes 2 or more string parameters and prints a single line using them as part of a functional string. The function may do anything you chose but the function name and parameter names must be representative of what they are.
 
  - Answer:
-  
+myName = "Daniel Cintron"
+myAge:int = 14
+myString = f'Hello {myName}! Your are {myAge}.'
+print(myString)
 
 
 Refer to this documentation webpage and google for the exercises below:
@@ -161,6 +166,9 @@ Which code returns the length of the string s0:
 s0 = "What is my length? Store it as a number in a variable."
 
  - Answer:
+ s0 = "What is my length? Store it as a number in a variable"
+ ss0 = len(s0)
+ print(ss0)
 
 How do you create a substring in python?
 Create a substring of s1 containing only my name. Store it in a variable called ss1.
@@ -168,11 +176,15 @@ https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-substring-a-string-in-python/
 
 s1 = "Hello Student! My name is Carlos Jose Cobián. I enjoy coding and video games!"
 
- - Answer: ss1 =
+ - Answer: ss1 = "Hello Student! My name is Carlos Jose Cobian"
+ ss1 = (s1[26:44])
+ print(ss1)
 
 Capitalize every letter of ss1 using a function. Store it in a variable called SS1.
 
- - Answer: SS1 =
+ - Answer: SS1 =ss1.upper()
+     print(SS1)
+ 
 
 
 This last section is not worth any points, but is worth looking into. It is good string manipulation practice and contains exercises that you may see in a pop quiz! 
diff --git a/Modules/Module4/Modulo4.py b/Modules/Module4/Modulo4.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..a6a6ed706
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Modules/Module4/Modulo4.py
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+# print("What did you have for Breakfast?")
+# meal="sandwich"
+# print(meal)
+# print("What did you have for lunch?")
+# meal="pasta"
+# print(meal)
+# print("What did you have for dinner?")
+# meal="lasagna"
+# print(meal)
+
+myNumber = 360
+print(f"The number is {myNumber}")
+
+#Define a function that takes 2 or more string parameters and prints a single line using them as part of a functional string. The function may do anything you chose but the function name and parameter names must be representative of what they are.
+
+# Answer:
+myName = "Daniel Cintron"
+myAge:int = 14
+myString = f'Hello {myName}! Your are {myAge}.'
+print(myString)
+
+
+
+s0 = "What is my length? Store it as a number in a variable"
+ss0 = len(s0)
+print(ss0)
+
+s1 = "Hello Student! My name is Carlos Jose Cobian"
+ss1 = (s1[26:44])
+print(ss1)
+
+SS1 =ss1.upper()
+print(SS1)
+ 
+
+
diff --git a/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-RockPaperScissors.PNG b/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-RockPaperScissors.PNG
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..dca81749e
Binary files /dev/null and b/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-RockPaperScissors.PNG differ
diff --git a/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-Simpsons-Shipping.PNG b/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-Simpsons-Shipping.PNG
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..21c59bf97
Binary files /dev/null and b/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-Simpsons-Shipping.PNG differ
diff --git a/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-Simpsons-Shipping.py b/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-Simpsons-Shipping.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..232c08d2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-Simpsons-Shipping.py
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+print("Welcome to Simpsons' Shipping")
+weight:float = float(input("What is the weight of your package?"))
+#ground shipping
+
+if (weight == 2 or weight < 2):
+    cost_ground = float(weight * 1.75 + 20)
+    print("Ground Shipping: $", float(cost_ground))
+elif (weight > 2 and weight <= 6):
+    cost_ground = weight * 3.50 + 20
+    print("Ground Shipping: $", float(cost_ground))
+elif (weight > 6 and weight <= 10):
+    cost_ground = weight * 4.50 + 20
+    print("Ground Shipping: $", float(cost_ground))
+else:
+    cost_ground = weight * 5.25 + 20
+    print("Ground Shipping: $", float(cost_ground))
+#courier shipping
+
+if (weight == 2 or weight <2):
+    cost_courier = weight * 3.50 + 5
+    print("Courier Shipping: $", float(cost_courier))
+elif (weight > 2 and weight <= 6):
+    cost_courier = weight * 7.00 + 8
+    print("Courier Shipping: $", float(cost_courier))
+elif (weight > 6 and weight <= 10):
+    cost_courier = weight * 9.00 + 12
+    print("Courier Shipping: $", float(cost_courier))
+else:
+    cost_courier = weight * 10.50 + 15
+    print("Courier Shipping: $", float(cost_courier))
+#drone shipping
+
+if (weight == 2 or weight <2):
+    cost_drone = weight * 5.25 
+    print("Drone Shipping: $", float(cost_drone))
+elif (weight > 2 and weight <= 6):
+    cost_drone = weight * 10.50 
+    print("Drone Shipping: $", float(cost_drone))
+elif (weight > 6 and weight <= 10):
+    cost_drone = weight * 13.50 
+    print("Drone Shipping: $", float(cost_drone))
+else:
+    cost_drone = weight * 15.75 
+    print("Drone Shipping: $", float(cost_drone))
+#ground shipping premium
+
+print("Ground Shipping Premium $150")
diff --git a/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-magic8.PNG b/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-magic8.PNG
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..4dec6d396
Binary files /dev/null and b/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-magic8.PNG differ
diff --git a/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-magic8.py b/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-magic8.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..b5d238d79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Modules/Module5/Daniel-Cintron-magic8.py
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+import random
+
+print("Welcome to the totally legal and not a scam magic 8 ball business")
+Name=input("WHAT IS YOUR NAME?")
+print(f"Hi:{Name}")
+Question=input("What is your question?")
+print(f"{Question}")
+
+ 
+random_number = random.randint(1,12)
+if random_number == 1:
+    print("Yes - definitely so.")
+elif random_number == 2:
+    print("It is decidedly so.")
+elif random_number == 3:
+    print("Without a doubt.")
+elif random_number == 4:
+    print("Reply hazy, tray again")
+elif random_number == 5:
+    print("Ask again later")
+elif random_number == 6:
+    print("Better not to tell you now.")
+elif random_number == 7:
+    print("My sources say NO")
+elif random_number == 8:
+    print("Outlook not so good.")
+elif random_number == 9:
+    print("Very doubtful.")
+elif random_number == 10:
+    print("0%")
+elif random_number == 11:
+    print("50%/50%")
+elif random_number == 12:
+    print("100%")        
+else:
+    print ("error")    
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Modules/Module5/Module5.md b/Modules/Module5/Module5.md
index c868f02f7..464bcad81 100644
--- a/Modules/Module5/Module5.md
+++ b/Modules/Module5/Module5.md
@@ -82,8 +82,19 @@ Give a python example for each logic operator in the module image.
 
  - Answers:
    - OR:
+   pinneapples:6
+   if (pinneapples > 2 or pinneapples < 7):
+    print("You have less pinneapples.") #true
    - AND: 
+   pinneapples:8
+   if (pinneapples > 1 and pinneapples < 9):
+    print("You have few pinneapples.") #true
    - NOT: 
+   pinneapples:6
+   if not (pinneapples > 2 or pinneapples < 7):
+    print("You have less pinneapples.") #false 
+    else:
+    print("You have more pinneapples")
 
 
 Type down any class notes below this sentence:
diff --git a/Modules/Module5/RockPaperScissors.py b/Modules/Module5/RockPaperScissors.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..2158523a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Modules/Module5/RockPaperScissors.py
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+import random
+print("Welcome to Rock, Paper, Scissors Game!!!")
+RPS = ("rock", "paper", "scissors")
+
+playerChoice = input("Lets play. Choose one: rock, paper, scissors\n")
+
+computerChoice = random.choice(RPS)
+print(f"Computer selected: {computerChoice}")
+print(f"Player selected: {playerChoice}")
+
+if(playerChoice == computerChoice) :
+    print("You tied :-/")
+
+elif(playerChoice == "rock" and computerChoice == "scissors") :
+    print("Rock crushes Scissor. You won! :)")
+     
+elif(playerChoice == "rock" and computerChoice == "paper") :
+    print("Rock gets suffocated Paper. You lost! :)")
+
+elif(playerChoice == "paper" and computerChoice == "rock") :
+    print("Paper suffucates Rock . You won! :)")   
+
+elif(playerChoice == "paper" and computerChoice == "scissors") :
+    print("Paper gets decapitated by Scissors. You lost! :)")
+
+elif(playerChoice == "scissors" and computerChoice == "rock") :
+    print("Scissor gets crushed by Rock. You lost! :)")
+
+elif(playerChoice == "scissors" and computerChoice == "paper") :
+    print("Scissor cuts Paper. You won! :)")
+  
+else:
+    print("Something isn't right, maybe try again")
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Modules/Module6/Module6.md b/Modules/Module6/Module6.md
index f83374493..404e7fbc8 100644
--- a/Modules/Module6/Module6.md
+++ b/Modules/Module6/Module6.md
@@ -75,23 +75,32 @@ myStudent = Student(**studentJson)
 
 What does JSON Stand for?
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: It stands for Java Script Object Notation
 
 Why are JSON formats important?
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: Its important because its a tool that can share data like audio and video
 
 Create an example of a JSON object with at least 4 values. It may represent anything but it must be original.
 
  - Answer:
+ The perfect hamburger
+ # experimentationData = {
+
+#  "cheese" : "American",
+#  "meat : "medium rare",
+#  "sauce" : "mayonese", 
+#  "bud" : Pan pepin,
+
+# }
 
 What is the difference between serialization and deserialization?
 
- - Answer:
+ - Answer: The difference is that serialization converts an object into string, and deserialization does the opposite it converts string into object.
 
 Research data persistance. What did you find?
 
- - Answer: 
+ - Answer: I found that data persistence is the continuance of an effect after its cause is removed.
 
 Type down any class notes below this sentence:
 
diff --git a/Projects/ASCII-Initials.py b/Projects/ASCII-Initials.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..ad84931af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Projects/ASCII-Initials.py
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+print("""
+DDDDD  EEEEE CCCCC  M     M
+D    D E     C   C  M M M M
+D    D E     C      M M M M
+D    D EEEEE C      M  M  M
+D    D E     C      M     M
+D    D E     C   C  M     M
+DDDDD  EEEEE CCCCC  M     M
+""")
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Projects/CSI-Daniel-Cintron-ACSII-1..PNG b/Projects/CSI-Daniel-Cintron-ACSII-1..PNG
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..33a5990dc
Binary files /dev/null and b/Projects/CSI-Daniel-Cintron-ACSII-1..PNG differ
diff --git a/Projects/Cigar-party.py b/Projects/Cigar-party.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..c604a6fd8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Projects/Cigar-party.py
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+def cigar_party(cigars, is_weekend):
+  if is_weekend == True and cigars >= 1:
+      print("succesful")
+elif
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Projects/Daniel-Cintron-Hangman.py b/Projects/Daniel-Cintron-Hangman.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..68526a6d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Projects/Daniel-Cintron-Hangman.py
@@ -0,0 +1,139 @@
+import random
+word_list = ["Estofón","Asopao","Guachafita","Bibí","Gabete","Babosería","Dron","Lonchera","Chavar","Ponchar"]
+
+def get_word(word_list):
+    word = random.choice(word_list)
+    return word.upper()
+
+def play(word):
+   word_completion = "-" * len(word)
+   guessed = False
+   guessed_letters = []
+   guessed_words = []
+   tries = 6
+   print("Let's play Hangman")
+   print("Theme: Puertorriqueñismos")
+   print(display_hangman(tries))
+   print(word_completion)
+   print("\n")
+   while not guessed and tries > 0:
+       guess = input("Guess a letter or word").upper()
+       if len(guess) == 1 and guess.isalpha():
+         if guess in guessed_letters:
+              print("You already tried", guess, "!")
+         elif guess not in word:
+              print("Isn't in the word :(")
+              tries -= 1
+              guessed_letters.append(guess)
+         else:
+              print("Nice one", guess, "is in the word!")
+              guessed_letters.append(guess)
+              word_as_list = list(word_completion)
+              indices = [i for i, letter in enumerate(word) if letter == guess]
+              for index in indices:
+                  word_as_list[index] = guess
+              word_completion = "".join(word_as_list)
+              if "-" not in word_completion:
+                  guessed = True
+       elif len(guess) == len(word) and guess.isalpha():
+          if guess in guessed_words:
+              print("You already tried", guess, "!")
+          elif guess != word:
+              print(guess, "Is not the word :(")
+              tries -= 1
+              guessed_words.append(guess)
+          else:
+              guessed = True
+              word_completion = word
+       else:
+          print("Invalid input")
+       print(display_hangman(tries))
+       print(word_completion)
+       print("\n")
+
+   if guessed:
+      print("Good job, your not a loser!!! :)")
+   else:
+      print("I'm sorry, but you ran out of tries. The word was" + word + "Get a life!")
+
+
+
+
+
+def display_hangman(tries):
+    stages = ["""
+                    --------
+                    |    | 
+                    |    O 
+                    |   /|\\
+                    |    |
+                    |   / \ 
+           
+                      """,
+                      """
+                    --------
+                    |    | 
+                    |    O 
+                    |   /|
+                    |    |
+                    |   / \ 
+           
+                      """,
+                      """
+                    --------
+                    |    | 
+                    |    O 
+                    |    |
+                    |    |
+                    |   / \ 
+           
+                      """,
+                      """
+                    --------
+                    |    | 
+                    |    O 
+                    |    |
+                    |    |
+                    |   / 
+           
+                      """,
+                      """
+                    --------
+                    |    | 
+                    |    O 
+                    |    |
+                    |    |
+                    |     
+           
+                      """,
+                      """
+                    --------
+                    |    | 
+                    |    O 
+                    |    
+                    |    
+                    |    
+           
+                      """,
+                      """
+                    --------
+                    |    | 
+                    |    
+                    |   
+                    |    
+                    |    
+                    -   
+                    """
+     ]
+    
+    return stages[tries]
+
+def main():
+    word = get_word(word_list)
+    play(word)
+    while input("Again? (Y/N)").upper() == "Y":
+        word = get_word(word_list)
+        play(word)
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    main()
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Projects/Daniel-Cintron-Snake.py b/Projects/Daniel-Cintron-Snake.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..b49f34d42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Projects/Daniel-Cintron-Snake.py
@@ -0,0 +1,126 @@
+import random
+import pygame
+import time
+pygame.init()
+
+red = (230, 44, 13) #score
+orange = (255, 185, 10) #food
+purple = (178, 17, 194) #background color
+green = (124, 255, 10) #snake
+black = (0, 0, 0) #game over
+
+dis_width = 600
+dis_height = 400
+
+dis= pygame.display.set_mode((dis_width, dis_height))
+pygame.display.update()
+pygame.display.set_caption("The Snake GAME")
+game_over=False
+
+clock = pygame.time.Clock()
+snake_speed = 15
+snake_block = 10
+
+font_style = pygame.font.SysFont(None, 25)
+score_font = pygame.font.SysFont(None, 25)
+
+def My_Score(score):
+    value = score_font.render("Your Score:" + str(score), True, red)
+    dis.blit(value, [0,0])
+
+def my_snake(snake_block, snake_list):
+    for x in snake_list:
+        pygame.draw.rect(dis, green, [x[0], x[1], snake_block, snake_block])
+
+def message(msg, color):
+    mesg = font_style.render(msg, True ,color)
+    dis.blit(mesg, [dis_width/8, dis_height/4])
+
+def gameRestart ():
+    game_over = False
+    game_close = False
+
+    x1 = dis_width/2.1 #width where cube is
+    y1 = dis_height/2.5 #height where cube is
+
+    x1_change = 0
+    y1_change = 0
+
+    snake_List = []
+    length_of_snake = 1
+
+    foodx = round(random.randrange(0, dis_width - snake_block) / 10) *10
+    foody = round(random.randrange(0, dis_height - snake_block) / 10) *10
+
+    while not game_over:
+        while game_close == True:
+            dis.fill(purple)
+            message("HAHA, YOU LOST! Press Q-Quit or P-Play Again", black)
+            pygame.display.update()
+
+            for event in pygame.event.get():
+                if event.type==pygame.KEYDOWN:
+                    if event.key == pygame.K_q:
+                        game_over = True
+                        game_close = False
+                    if event.key == pygame.K_p:
+                            gameRestart()
+
+        for event in pygame.event.get():
+            if event.type==pygame.QUIT:
+                game_over=True
+            if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
+                if event.key == pygame.K_LEFT:
+                    x1_change = -snake_block
+                    y1_change = 0
+                elif event.key == pygame.K_RIGHT:
+                    x1_change = snake_block
+                    y1_change = 0
+                elif event.key == pygame.K_UP:
+                    x1_change = 0
+                    y1_change = -10
+                elif event.key == pygame.K_DOWN:
+                    x1_change = 0
+                    y1_change = snake_block
+        if x1 >= dis_width or x1 < 0 or y1 >= dis_height or y1 <0:
+            game_close = True
+
+        x1 += x1_change
+        y1 += y1_change
+        dis.fill(purple)
+        pygame.draw.rect(dis, orange,[foodx, foody, snake_block, snake_block])
+        # pygame.draw.rect(dis, green,[x1, y1, snake_block, snake_block])
+        snake_head = []
+        snake_head.append(x1)
+        snake_head.append(y1)
+        snake_List.append(snake_head)
+        if len(snake_List) > length_of_snake:
+            del snake_List[0]
+            
+        for x in snake_List[:-1]:
+            if x == snake_head:
+                game_close == True
+
+        my_snake(snake_block, snake_List)
+        My_Score(length_of_snake -1)
+
+
+        pygame.display.update()
+
+        if x1 == foodx and y1 == foody:
+            foodx = round(random.randrange(0, dis_width - snake_block) / 10) *10
+            foody = round(random.randrange(0, dis_height - snake_block) / 10) *10
+            length_of_snake += 1
+
+        clock.tick(snake_speed)
+
+        font_style = pygame.font.SysFont(None,25)
+        score_font = pygame.font.SysFont(None,25)
+
+
+    # pygame.display.update
+    # time.sleep(5)
+    pygame.quit()
+    quit()
+
+gameRestart() 
diff --git a/Projects/Projectile-Motion/ExperimentalData.py b/Projects/Projectile-Motion/ExperimentalData.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..05a89f222
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Projects/Projectile-Motion/ExperimentalData.py
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+class ExperimentalData:
+    def __init__(self, gun:str, cartridge:str, rounds:str, velocity_ms:int, Building:str, BuildingHeight:int, planet:str):
+        self.gun = gun
+        self.cartridge = cartridge
+        self.rounds = rounds
+        self.velocity_ms = velocity_ms
+        self.Building = Building
+        self.BuildingHeight = BuildingHeight
+        self.planet = planet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Projects/Projectile-Motion/Projectile-Motion.PNG b/Projects/Projectile-Motion/Projectile-Motion.PNG
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..960e0f758
Binary files /dev/null and b/Projects/Projectile-Motion/Projectile-Motion.PNG differ
diff --git a/Projects/Projectile-Motion/Projectile-Motion.json b/Projects/Projectile-Motion/Projectile-Motion.json
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..fb85d13d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Projects/Projectile-Motion/Projectile-Motion.json
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+[{"gun": "DT MDR", "cartridge": "5.56x45mm", "rounds": "HP", "velocity_ms": 947, "Building": "Minillas South Tower", "BuildingHeight": 244, "planet": "Earth"}, {"gun": "DT MDR", "cartridge": "5.56x45mm", "rounds": "FMJ", "velocity_ms": 957, "Building": "Minillas South Tower", "BuildingHeight": 244, "planet": "Mars"}, {"gun": "DT MDR", "cartridge": "5.56x45mm", "rounds": "M855", "velocity_ms": 922, "Building": "Minillas South Tower", "BuildingHeight": 244, "planet": "Jupiter"}, {"gun": "DT MDR", "cartridge": "5.56x45mm", "rounds": "M855A1", "velocity_ms": 945, "Building": "Minillas South Tower", "BuildingHeight": 244, "planet": "Neptune"}, {"gun": "DT MDR", "cartridge": "5.56x45mm", "rounds": "M856", "velocity_ms": 874, "Building": "Minillas South Tower", "BuildingHeight": 244, "planet": "Saturn"}]
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Projects/Projectile-Motion/Projectile-Motion.py b/Projects/Projectile-Motion/Projectile-Motion.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..d8d9c4b0f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Projects/Projectile-Motion/Projectile-Motion.py
@@ -0,0 +1,79 @@
+import math
+from ExperimentalData import ExperimentalData
+
+from pathlib import Path
+import json
+import os
+
+# gun = "DT MDR"
+# cartridge = "5.56x45mm"
+# rounds = "HP" 
+# velocity_ms = 947
+
+# Building = "Minillas South Tower"
+# BuildingHeight = 244
+
+# gravity = 9.81
+
+
+def ProjectileFunction(experimentalData:ExperimentalData):
+    planets = ["Mercury", "Venus", "Earth", "Mars", "Jupiter", "Saturn", "Uranus", "Neptune"]
+    g_ms2 = [3.7, 8.87, 9.81, 3.711, 24.79, 10.44, 8.69, 11.15]
+    planet = planets.index(experimentalData.planet)
+
+    time_s =math.sqrt((2 * experimentalData.BuildingHeight) / g_ms2[planet])
+
+    # distance = experimentationData([velocity_ms] * time_s)
+    distance = (experimentalData.velocity_ms * time_s) 
+
+    print(f"The gun chosen was {experimentalData.gun} its cartridge is {experimentalData.cartridge}, its rounds are {experimentalData.rounds} and the bullets velocity was {experimentalData.velocity_ms}.m/s")
+    print("Its the product of the US-based company Desert Tech LLC MDR rifle is a modular, multi-caliber weapon with compact bullpup layout. Barrel lengths and calibers can be changed by the end user within minutes with a minimum amount of tools.")
+    print(f"The projectile will go to a distance of {distance}, and the time it will take to cover it is {time_s} and the planets and gravity is {experimentalData.planet}")
+#Convert your parameters into a single JSON Object.
+# experimentationData = {
+
+#  "gun" : "DT MDR",
+#  "cartridge" : "5.56x45mm",
+#  "rounds" : "HP", 
+#  "velocity_ms" : 947,
+#  "Building" : "Minillas South Tower",
+#  "BuildingHeight" : 244,
+#  "Planet" : 9.81
+
+# }
+
+
+#experimentalData = ExperimentalData("DT MDR", "5.56x45mm", "HP", 941, "Minillas South Tower", 244, 9.81)
+
+myDataSet = [
+ExperimentalData("DT MDR", "5.56x45mm", "HP", 947, "Minillas South Tower", 244, "Earth"),
+ExperimentalData("DT MDR", "5.56x45mm", "FMJ", 957, "Minillas South Tower", 244, "Mars"),
+ExperimentalData("DT MDR", "5.56x45mm", "M855", 922, "Minillas South Tower", 244, "Jupiter"), 
+ExperimentalData("DT MDR", "5.56x45mm", "M855A1", 945, "Minillas South Tower", 244, "Neptune"),   
+ExperimentalData("DT MDR", "5.56x45mm", "M856", 874, "Minillas South Tower", 244, "Saturn")
+]
+
+for data in myDataSet:
+    print("\n---------------------------------------\n")
+    ProjectileFunction(data)
+
+# Serialization
+myOutputPath = Path(__file__).parents[0]
+myOutputFilePath = os.path.join(myOutputPath, 'Projectile-Motion.json')
+
+print(myOutputFilePath)
+
+with open(myOutputFilePath, 'w') as outfile:
+    json.dump([data.__dict__ for data in myDataSet], outfile)
+
+    #Deserialzation
+deserialize = open(myOutputFilePath)
+experimentJson = json.load(deserialize)
+
+for e in experimentJson: 
+    print("\n-------------------------------------------------\n")
+    ProjectileFunction(ExperimentalData(**e))
+
+    #json.dump(myDataSet[0].__dict__, outfile)
+
+# ProjectileFunction(experimentalData)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Projects/Web-Scraping/The Treasure Trail b/Projects/Web-Scraping/The Treasure Trail
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..df3ba6fd8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Projects/Web-Scraping/The Treasure Trail	
@@ -0,0 +1,9571 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Treasure Trail, by Frank L. Pollock
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Treasure Trail
+
+Author: Frank L. Pollock
+
+Illustrator: Louis D. Gowing
+
+Release Date: March 13, 2022 [eBook #67627]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+             https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images
+             made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TREASURE TRAIL ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                          THE TREASURE TRAIL
+
+
+[Illustration: “Suddenly Sullivan stood up jerkily on the deck.”]
+
+
+
+
+                          The Treasure Trail
+
+                                  BY
+                           FRANK L. POLLOCK
+
+                   With a Frontispiece in Colour by
+                           Louis D. Gowing
+
+                     Boston L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+                               MDCCCCVI
+
+
+
+
+                           Copyright, 1906
+                       By L. C. Page & Company
+                            (INCORPORATED)
+
+                         All rights reserved
+
+                     First Impression, May, 1906
+
+                            COLONIAL PRESS
+           Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
+                            Boston, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+                     I. The New Leaf
+                    II. The Open Road
+                   III. The Adventurer
+                    IV. The Fate of the Treasure Ship
+                     V. The Ace of Diamonds
+                    VI. The Mystery of the Mate
+                   VII. The Indiscretion of Henninger
+                  VIII. The Man from Alabama
+                    IX. On the Trail
+                     X. A Lost Clue
+                    XI. Illumination
+                   XII. Open War
+                  XIII. First Blood
+                   XIV. The Clue Found
+                    XV. The Other Way Round the World
+                   XVI. The End of the Trail
+                  XVII. The Treasure
+                 XVIII. The Battle on the Lagoon
+                   XIX. The Second Wreck
+                    XX. The Rainbow Road
+
+
+
+
+                          THE TREASURE TRAIL
+
+
+
+
+                       CHAPTER I. THE NEW LEAF
+
+
+“Lord! what a haul!” Elliott murmured to himself, glancing over his
+letter while he waited with the horses for Margaret, who had said that
+she would be just twelve minutes in putting on her riding-costume. The
+letter was from an old-time Colorado acquaintance who was then
+superintending a Transvaal gold mine, and, probably by reason of the
+exigencies of war, the epistle had taken over two months to come from
+Pretoria. Elliott had been able to peruse it only by snatches, for the
+pinto horse with the side-saddle was fidgety, communicating its
+uneasiness to his own mount.
+
+“And managed to loot the treasury of over a million in gold, they say,
+and got away with it all. The regular members of the Treasury
+Department were at the front, I suppose, with green hands in their
+places,” he read.
+
+It was a great haul, indeed. Elliott glanced absently along the muddy
+street of the Nebraska capital, and his face hardened into an
+expression that was not usual. It was on the whole a good-looking
+face, deeply tanned, with a pleasant mouth and a small yellowish
+moustache that lent a boyishness to his whole countenance, belied by
+the mesh of fine lines about the eyes that come only of years upon the
+great plains. The eyes were gray, keen, and alive with a spirit of
+enterprise that might go the length of recklessness; and their owner
+was, in fact, reflecting rather bitterly that during the past ten
+years all his enterprises had been too reckless, or perhaps not
+reckless enough. He had not had the convictions of his courage. The
+story of the stealings of a ring of Boer ex-officials had made him
+momentarily regret his own passable honesty; and it struck him that in
+his present strait he would not care to meet the temptation of even
+less than a million in gold, with a reasonable chance of getting away
+with it.
+
+This subjective dishonesty was cut short by Margaret, who hurried down
+the veranda steps, holding up her brown riding-skirt. She surveyed the
+pinto with critical consideration.
+
+“Warranted not to pitch,” Elliott remarked. “The livery-stable man
+said a child could ride him.”
+
+“You’d better take him, then. I don’t want him,” retorted Margaret
+
+“This one may be even more domestic. What in the world are you going
+to do with that gun?”
+
+“Don’t let Aunt Louisa see it; she’s looking out the window,” implored
+Margaret, her eyes dancing. “I want to shoot when we get out of town.
+Put it in your pocket, please,—that’s against the law, you know.
+You’re not afraid of the law, are you?”
+
+“I am, indeed. I’ve seen it work,” Elliott replied; but he slipped the
+black, serviceable revolver into his hip pocket, and reined round to
+follow her. She had scrambled into the saddle without assistance, and
+was already twenty yards down the street, scampering away at a speed
+unexpected from the maligned pinto, and she had crossed the Union
+Pacific tracks before he overtook her. From that point it was not far
+to the prairie fields and the barbed-wire fences. The brown Nebraska
+plains rolled undulating in scallops against the clear horizon; in the
+rear the great State House dome began to disengage itself from a mass
+of bare branches. The road was of black, half-dried muck, the potent
+black earth of the wheat belt, without a pebble in it, and deep ruts
+showed where wagons had sunk hub-deep a few days before.
+
+A fresh wind blew in their faces, coming strong and pure from the
+leagues and leagues of moist March prairie, full of the thrill of
+spring. Riding a little in the rear, Elliott watched it flutter the
+brown curls under Margaret’s grey felt hat, creased in rakish
+affectation of the cow-puncher’s fashion. Now that he was about to
+lose her, he seemed to see her all at once with new eyes, and all at
+once he realized how much her companionship had meant to him during
+these past six months in Lincoln,—a half-year that had just come to so
+disastrous an end.
+
+Margaret Laurie lived with her aunt on T Street, and gave lessons in
+piano and vocal music at seventy-five cents an hour. Her mother had
+been dead so long that Elliott had never heard her mentioned; the
+father was a Methodist missionary in foreign parts. During the whole
+winter Elliott had seen her almost daily. They had walked together,
+ridden together, skated together when there was ice, and had fired off
+some twenty boxes of cartridges at pistol practice, for which
+diversion Margaret had a pronounced aptitude as well as taste. She had
+taught him something of good music, and he confided to her the
+vicissitudes of the real estate business in a city where a boom is
+trembling between inflation and premature extinction. It had all been
+as stimulating as it had been delightful; and part of its charm lay in
+the fact that there had always been the frankest camaraderie between
+them, and nothing else. Elliott wished for nothing else; he told
+himself that he had known enough of the love of women to value a
+woman’s friendship. But on this last ride together he felt as if
+saturated with failure—and it was to be the last ride.
+
+Margaret broke in upon his meditations. “Please give me the gun,” she
+commanded. “And if it’s not too much trouble, I wish you’d get one of
+those empty tomato-cans by the road.”
+
+“You can’t hit it,” ventured Elliott, as he dismounted and tossed the
+can high in the air. The pistol banged, but the can fell untouched,
+and the pinto pony capered at the report.
+
+“Better let me hold your horse for you,” Elliott commented, with a
+grin.
+
+“No, thank you,” she retorted, setting her teeth. “Now,—throw it up
+again.”
+
+This time, at the crack of the revolver, the can leaped a couple of
+feet higher, and as it poised she hit it again. Two more shots missed,
+and the pinto, becoming uncontrollable, bolted down the road,
+scattering the black earth in great flakes. Elliott galloped in
+pursuit, but she was perfectly capable of reducing the animal to
+submission, and she had him subjected before he overtook her.
+
+“It’s easier than it looks,” Margaret instructed him, kindly. “You
+shoot when the can poises to fall, when it’s really stationary for a
+second.”
+
+“Thank you—I’ve tried it,” Elliott responded, as they rode on side by
+side, at the easy lope of the Western horse. The wind sang in their
+ears, though it was warm and sunny, and it was bringing a yellowish
+haze up the blue sky.
+
+    “‘Weh, weh, der Wind!’”
+
+hummed Margaret, softly.
+
+    “‘Frisch weht der Wind der Heimath zu;
+    Mein Irisch Kind, wo weilest Du——?’”
+
+“What a truly Western combination,—horses, Wagner, and gun-play!”
+remarked Elliott.
+
+“Of course it is. Where else in the world could you find anything like
+it? It’s the Greek ideal—action and culture at once.”
+
+“It may be Greek. But I know it would startle the Atlantic coast.”
+
+“I don’t care for the Atlantic coast. Or—yes, I do. I’m going to tell
+you a great secret. Do you know what I’ve wanted more than anything
+else in life?”
+
+“Your father must be coming home from the South Seas,” Elliott
+hazarded.
+
+“Dear old father! He isn’t in the South Seas now; he’s in South
+Africa. No, it isn’t that. I’m going to Baltimore this fall to study
+music. I’ve been arguing it for weeks with Aunt Louisa. I wanted to go
+to New York or Boston, but she said the Boston winter would kill me,
+and New York was too big and dangerous. So we compromised on
+Baltimore.”
+
+“Hurrah!” said Elliott, with some lack of enthusiasm. “Baltimore is a
+delightful town. I used to be a newspaper man there before I came West
+and became an adventurer. I wish I were going to anything half so
+good.”
+
+“You’re not leaving Lincoln, are you?” she inquired, turning quickly
+to look at him.
+
+“I’m afraid I must.”
+
+“When are you going, and where?” she demanded, almost peremptorily.
+
+“I don’t exactly know. I had thought of trying mining again,” with a
+certain air of discouragement.
+
+Margaret looked the other way, out across the muddy sheet of water
+known locally as Salt Lake, where a flock of wild ducks was fluttering
+aimlessly over the surface; and she said nothing.
+
+“I suppose you know that the bottom’s dropped out of the land boom in
+Lincoln,” Elliott pursued. “I’ve seen it dropping for a month; in
+fact, there never was any real boom at all. Anyhow, the real estate
+office of Wingate Elliott, Desirable City Property Bought and Sold,
+closed up yesterday.”
+
+“You don’t mean that you have—”
+
+“Failed? Busted? I do. I’ve got exactly eighty-two dollars in the
+world.”
+
+She began to laugh, and then stopped, looking at him
+half-incredulously.
+
+“You don’t appear to mind it much, at least.”
+
+“No? Well, you see it’s happened so often before that I’m used to it.
+Good Lord! it seems to me that I’ve left a trail of ineffectual
+dollars all over the West!”
+
+“You do mind it—a great deal!” exclaimed Margaret, impulsively putting
+a hand upon his bridle. “Please tell me all about it. We’re good
+friends—the very best, aren’t we?—but you’ve told me hardly anything
+about your life.”
+
+“There’s nothing interesting about it; nothing but looking for easy
+money and not finding it,” replied Elliott. He was scrutinizing the
+sky ahead. “Don’t you think we had better turn back? Look at those
+clouds.”
+
+The firmament had darkened to the zenith with a livid purple tinge low
+in the west, and the wind was blowing in jerky, powerful gusts. A
+growl of thunder rumbled overhead.
+
+“It’s too early for a twister, and I don’t mind rain. I’ve nothing on
+that will spoil,” said Margaret, almost abstractedly. She had scarcely
+spoken when there was a sharp patter, and then a blast of drops driven
+by the wind. A vivid flash split the clouds, and with the
+instantaneous thunder the patter of the rain changed to a rattle, and
+the black road whitened with hail. The horses plunged as the hard
+pellets rebounded from hide and saddle.
+
+“We must get shelter. The beasts won’t stand this,” cried Elliott,
+reining round. The lumps of ice drove in cutting gusts, and the
+frightened horses broke into a gallop toward the city. For a few
+moments the storm slackened; then a second explosion of thunder seemed
+to bring a second fusilade, driving almost horizontally under the
+violent wind, stinging like shot.
+
+Across an unfenced strip of pasture Elliott’s eye fell upon the Salt
+Lake spur of the Union Pacific tracks, where a mile of rails is used
+for the storage of empty freight-cars. He pulled his horse round and
+galloped across the intervening space, with Margaret at his heels, and
+in half a minute they had reached the lee of the line of cars, where
+there was shelter. He hooked the bridles over the iron handle of a
+box-car door that stood open, and scrambled into the car, swinging
+Margaret from her saddle to the doorway.
+
+It was a perfect refuge. The storm rattled like buckshot on the roof
+and swept in cloudy pillars across the Salt Lake, where the wild ducks
+flew to and fro, quacking from sheer joy, but the car was clean and
+dry, slightly dusted with flour. They sat down in the door with their
+feet dangling out beside the horses, that shivered and stamped at the
+stroke of chance pellets of hail.
+
+“This is splendid!” said Margaret, looking curiously about the planked
+interior of the car. “Why do you want to leave Lincoln?” she went on
+in a lower tone, after a pause.
+
+“I don’t want to leave Lincoln.”
+
+“But you said just now—”
+
+“It seems to me, by Jove, that I’ve done nothing but leave places ever
+since I came West!” Elliott exclaimed, impatiently. “That was ten
+years ago. I came out from Baltimore, you know. I was born there, and
+I learned newspaper work on the _Despatch_ there, and then I came West
+and got a job on the Denver _Telegraph_.”
+
+“At a high salary, I suppose.”
+
+“So high that it seemed a sort of gold mine, after Eastern rates. But
+it didn’t last. The paper was sold and remodelled inside a year, and
+most of the reporters fired. I couldn’t find another newspaper job
+just then, so I went out with a survey party in Dakota for the winter
+and nearly froze to death, but when I got back and drew all my
+accumulated salary, I bought a half-interest in a gold claim in the
+Black Hills. Mining in the Black Hills was just beginning to boom
+then, and I sold my claim in a couple of months for three thousand. I
+made another three thousand in freighting that summer, and if I had
+stayed at it I might have got rich, but I came down to Omaha and lost
+it all playing the wheat market. I had a sure tip.”
+
+“Six thousand dollars! That’s more money than I ever saw all at once,”
+Margaret commented.
+
+“It was more money than I saw for some time after that; but that’s a
+fair specimen of the way I did things. Once I walked into Seattle
+broke, and came out with four thousand dollars. I cleaned up nearly
+twenty thousand once on real estate in San Francisco. Afterwards I
+went down to Colorado, mining. I could almost have bought up the whole
+Cripple Creek district when I got there, if I had had savvy enough,
+but I let the chance slip, and when I did go to speculating my capital
+went off like smoke. The end of it was that I had to go into the mines
+and swing a pick myself.”
+
+“You were game, it seems, anyway,” said Margaret, who was listening
+with absorbed interest. The sky was clearing a little, and the hail
+had ceased, but the rain still swept in gusty clouds over the brown
+prairie.
+
+“I had to be. It did me good, and I got four dollars a day, and in six
+months I was working a claim of my own. By this time I thought I was
+wise, and I sold it as soon as I found a sucker. I got ten thousand
+for it, and I heard afterwards that he took fifty thousand out of it.”
+
+“What a fraud!” cried Margaret, indignantly.
+
+“Anyhow, I bought a little newspaper in a Kansas town that was just
+drawing its breath for a boom. I worked for it till I almost got to
+believe in that town myself. At one time my profits in corner lots and
+things—on paper, you know—were up in the hundreds of thousands. In the
+end, I had to sell for less than one thousand, and then I came to
+Lincoln and worked for the paper here. That was two years ago, when I
+first met you. Do you remember?”
+
+“I remember. You only stayed about four months. What did you do then?”
+
+“Yes, it seemed too slow here, too far east. I went back to North
+Dakota, mining and country journalism. I did pretty well too, but for
+the life of me I don’t know what became of the money. After that I
+did—oh, everything. I rode a line on a ranch in Wyoming; I worked in a
+sawmill in Oregon; I made money in some places and lost it in others.
+Eight months ago I had a nice little pile, and I heard that there was
+a big opening in real estate here in Lincoln, so I came.”
+
+“And wasn’t there an opening?”
+
+“There must have been. It swallowed up all my little pile without any
+perceptible effect, all but eighty-two dollars.”
+
+“And now—?”
+
+“And now—I don’t know. I was reading a letter just now from a man I
+know in South Africa telling of a theft of a million in gold from the
+Pretoria treasury during the confusion of the war. Do you know, I
+half-envied those thieves; I did, honour bright. A quick million is
+what I’ve always been chasing, and I’d almost steal it if I got the
+chance.”
+
+“You wouldn’t do any thing of the sort. I know you better than that.
+You’re going to do something sensible and strong and brave. What is it
+to be?”
+
+“But I don’t know,” cried Elliott. “There are heaps of things that I
+can do, but I tell you I feel sick of the whole game. I feel as if I’d
+been wasting time and money and everything.”
+
+“So you have, dear boy, so you have,” agreed Margaret. “And now, if
+you’d let me advise you, I’d tell you to find out what you like best
+and what you can do best, and settle down to that. You’ve had no
+definite purpose at all.”
+
+“I have. It was always a quick fortune,” Elliott remonstrated. “I’ve
+got it yet. There are plenty of chances in the West for a man to make
+a million with less capital than I’ve got now. This isn’t a country of
+small change.”
+
+“Yes, I know. I’ve heard men talk like that,” said Margaret, more
+thoughtfully. “But it seems to me that you’ve been doing nothing but
+gamble all your life, hoping for a big haul. Of course, I’ve no right
+to advise you. Nebraska is all I know of the world, but I don’t like
+to think of you going back to the ‘game,’ as you call it. Do you know
+that it hurts me to think of you making money and losing it again,
+year after year, and neglecting all your real chances? Too many men
+have done that. A few of them won, but nobody knows where most of them
+died. There are such chances to do good in the world, to be happy
+ourselves and make others happy, and when I think of a man like my
+father—”
+
+“You wouldn’t want me to go to Fiji as a missionary?” Elliott
+interrupted. He was shy on the subject of her father, whom Margaret
+had seen scarcely a dozen times since she could remember, but who was
+her constant ideal of heroism, energy, and virtue.
+
+“Of course not. But don’t you like newspaper work?”
+
+“I like it very much.”
+
+“And isn’t it a good profession?”
+
+“Very fair, if one works like a slave. That is, I might reach a salary
+of five thousand dollars a year. The best way is to buy out a small
+country daily and build it up as the town grows. There’s money in that
+sometimes.”
+
+“Why not do it, then? It’s not for the sake of the money. I hate
+money; I’ve never had any. But I don’t believe any one can be really
+happy after he’s twenty-five without a definite purpose and a kind of
+settled life. Some day you’ll want to marry—”
+
+“Don’t say that. I’ve been a free lance too long!” cried Elliott.
+
+“I’ve always been afraid of matrimony, too,” said Margaret, with a
+quick flush. “I want my own life, all my own.”
+
+“But what you say is right, dead right,” said Elliott, after a
+reflective pause that lasted for several minutes. “It’s just what my
+own conscience has been telling me.” He stopped to meditate again.
+
+“I’ll tell you what I think I’ll do,” he proceeded, at last. “I’ll go
+over to Omaha and look for a job on one of the dailies there. I expect
+I can get it, and it’ll give me time to think over my plans.
+
+“You’re not going East till fall, and I can run across here often, so
+that I’ll be able to see you. I may go East this fall myself. You’ve
+just crystallized what I’ve been thinking. I will do something to
+surprise you, and I’ll make a fortune with it. Will you shake hands on
+it?”
+
+She pulled off the riding-gauntlet and put out her hand, meeting his
+eyes squarely. The deep flush still lingered in her cheeks.
+
+“We _are_ good friends,” he exclaimed, feeling a desire to say
+something, he scarcely knew what.
+
+“The very best!” said Margaret, looking bright-eyed at him. “I hope we
+always will be. Come,” she cried, pulling her hand away. “The storm’s
+over. Let’s go back.”
+
+The rain had made the road very sticky, and they rode slowly side by
+side, while Margaret chattered vivaciously of her own future, of her
+music, of the coming winter in the East. She was full of plans, and
+Elliott sunk his own perplexities to share in her enthusiasm. He was
+himself imbued with the cheerfulness that comes of good resolutions,
+whose difficulties are yet untried.
+
+“When are you going to Omaha?” she asked him, as he left her at the
+gate.
+
+“In a couple of days. I’ll see you, of course, before I go.”
+
+He packed his two trunks that night. He did not see her again,
+however, for she happened to be out when he called to make his
+farewell. He was unreasonably annoyed at this disappointment, and
+thought of delaying his departure another day, but he was afraid that
+she would consider it weak. Anyhow, he expected to be back in Lincoln
+within a fortnight, and he left that night for Omaha.
+
+The next couple of days he spent in a round of visits to the offices
+of the various Omaha newspapers. He found every staff filled to its
+capacity. There was a prospect of a vacancy in about a month, but it
+was too long to wait, and, happening to hear that the St. Joseph
+_Post_ was looking for a new city editor, he went thither with a
+letter of introduction from the manager of the Omaha _Bee_.
+
+
+
+
+                      CHAPTER II. THE OPEN ROAD
+
+
+“That’s number eighteen, and the red,” said the croupier behind the
+roulette-table, raking in the checks that the player had scattered
+about the checkered layout. Round went the ball again with a whirr,
+though there were no fresh stakes placed.
+
+In fact, Elliott had no more to place. The stack of checks he had
+purchased was exhausted, and he had no mind to buy more. He slid down
+from the high stool and stepped back, and with the fever of the game
+still throbbing in his blood, he watched the little ivory ball as it
+spun. It slackened speed; in a moment it would jump; and Elliott
+suddenly felt—he _knew_—what the result would be. He thrust his hand
+into his pocket where a crumpled bill lingered, and it was on his lips
+to say “Five dollars on the single zero, straight,” when the ball
+tripped on a barrier and fell.
+
+“That’s the single zero,” said the croupier, and spun the ball again.
+
+Elliott turned away, shrugging his shoulders. “That’s enough for me
+to-night,” he remarked, with an affectation of unconcern. He had no
+luck; he could predict the combinations only when he did not stake.
+
+The sleepy negro on guard drew the bolt for him to pass out, and he
+went down the stairs to the precipitous St. Joseph streets, at that
+hour, silent and deserted. It was a mild spring night, and the air
+smelled sweet after the heavy atmosphere of the gaming-rooms. A full
+moon dimmed the electric lights, and his steps echoed along the empty
+street as he walked slowly toward the river-front, where the muddy
+Missouri rolled yellow in the sparkling moonlight.
+
+As the coolness quieted his nerves he was filled with sickening
+disgust at his own folly and weakness. “Why had he done it?” he asked
+himself. He had never been a gambler, in the usual sense of the word.
+His ventures had always been staked upon larger and more vital events
+than the turn of a card or of a wheel, but after finding that he had
+come to St. Joseph upon a fruitless quest, after all, he had gone to
+the gaming-rooms with one of the _Post’s_ reporters, who was showing
+him the town. In his depression and weariness and curiosity he had
+begun to stake small sums and to win. He remembered scarcely anything
+more. He had won largely; then the luck changed. He had sat down at
+the table with nearly seventy dollars. How much was left?
+
+He had reached the bottom of the street, and, crossing the railway
+tracks, he walked out upon the long pier that extends into the river
+and sat down upon a pile of planks. A freight-train outbound for St.
+Louis shattered the night as it banged over the noisy switches, and
+then silence fell again upon the yellow river. In the unsleeping
+railway-yards to the east there was an incessant flash and flicker of
+swinging lanterns.
+
+He turned out his pockets. There was the five-dollar bill that he had
+saved from the wheel, and a quantity of loose silver,—eighty-five
+cents. With a lively emotion of pleasure he discovered another folded
+five-dollar bill in his pocketbook which he had not suspected. Ten
+dollars and eighty-five cents was the total amount. It was all that
+was left of his former capital, or it was the nucleus of his new
+fortunes, as he should choose to consider it.
+
+At the memory of the promises he had made scarcely a hundred hours ago
+to Margaret Laurie, he shivered with shame and self-reproach, and in
+his remorse he realized more clearly than ever the truth of her words.
+He was wasting his life, his time, and his money; and already the
+endless chase of the rainbow’s end began to seem no longer desirable.
+In an access of gloom he foresaw years and years of such unprofitable
+existence as he had already spent, alternations of impermanent success
+and real disaster, of useless labour, of hardship that had lost its
+romance and come to be as sordid as poverty, and for the sum of it
+all, Failure. The fitful fever of such a life could have no place for
+the quiet and graceful pleasures that he had almost forgotten, but
+which seemed just then to lie at the basis of happiness and success;
+and suddenly in his mind there arose a vision of the old city on the
+Chesapeake Bay, its crooked and narrow streets named after long dead
+colonial princes, its shady gardens, the Southern indolence, the
+Southern quiet and perfume.
+
+That was where Margaret was going, and there perhaps he had left what
+he should have clung to; and, as he turned this matter over in his
+mind, he remembered another fact of present importance. One of the men
+with whom he had worked on the Baltimore _Mail_ had within the last
+year become its city editor. He had written offering Elliott a
+position should he want it, but Elliott had never seriously considered
+the proposition.
+
+Now, however, he jumped at it. “The West’s too young for me,” he
+reflected. “I’d better get out of the game.” He would write to Grange
+for the job that night, and he would be in Baltimore long before
+Margaret would arrive there. No, he would start for the East that
+night without writing,—and then he was chilled by the memory of his
+reduced circumstances. A ticket to Baltimore would cost thirty-five
+dollars at least.
+
+But the Westerner’s first lesson is to regard distance with contempt.
+Elliott had travelled without money before, but it was where he knew
+obliging freight conductors who would give him a lift in the caboose,
+while between the Mississippi and the Atlantic was new ground to him.
+Nevertheless he was unable to bring himself to regard the thousand odd
+miles as a real obstacle. He could walk to the Mississippi if he had
+to; it would be no novelty. Once on the river he could get a cheap
+deck passage to Pittsburg, or he might even work his passage.
+Probably, however, he could get a temporary job in St. Louis which
+would supply expenses for the journey. As for his baggage, it would go
+by express C. O. D., and he could draw enough advance salary in
+Baltimore to pay for it.
+
+As he walked back to his hotel, he felt as if he were already in
+Baltimore, regardless of the long and probably hard road that had
+first to be travelled. That part of it, indeed, struck him rather in
+the light of a joke. A few rough knocks were needed to seal his good
+resolutions firmly this time, and the tramp to the Mississippi would
+be a sort of penance, a pilgrimage.
+
+He debated whether to write to Margaret, and decided that he had
+better not. It would not be pleasant to confess; at least it would be
+preferable to wait until he was launched upon the new and industrious
+career which he had planned. He would write from Baltimore, not
+before.
+
+That night he laid out his roughest suit, and it was still early the
+next morning when he tramped out of St. Joseph. His baggage was in the
+hands of the express company, and he carried no load; despite his
+penury he preferred to buy things than to “pack” them. He followed the
+tracks of the Burlington Railroad with the idea that this would give
+him a better and straighter route than the highway, as well as a
+greater certainty of encountering villages at regular intervals. He
+was unencumbered, strong, and hopeful, and he rejoiced, smoking his
+pipe in the cool air, as he left the last streets behind, and saw the
+steel rails running out infinitely between the brown corn-fields and
+the orchards, straight into the shining West.
+
+For a long time Elliott remembered that day as one of the most
+enjoyable he ever spent. It was warm enough to be pleasant; the track,
+ballasted heavily with clay, made a delightfully elastic footpath; on
+either side were pleasant bits of woodland dividing the brown fields
+where the last year’s cornstalks were scattered, and farmhouses and
+orchards clustered on the rolling slopes. Where they lay beside the
+track the air was full of the hoarse “booing” of doves; and, after the
+rawness of the treeless plains, this seemed to Elliott a land of
+ancient comfort, of long-founded homesteads, and all manner of
+richness.
+
+He had intended to ask for dinner at one of the farmhouses, where they
+would charge him only a trifle, but he developed a nervous fear of
+being taken for a tramp. Again and again he selected a house in the
+distance where he resolved to make the essay; approached it
+resolutely—and weakly passed by, finding some excuse for his
+hesitation. It was too imposing, or too small; it looked as if dinner
+were not ready, or as if it were already over; and all the time hunger
+was growing more acute in his vitals. About one o’clock, however, he
+came to a little village, just as his appetite was growing
+uncontrollable. He cast economy to the dogs, went to the single hotel,
+washed off the dust at the pump, and fell upon the hot country dinner
+of coarse food supplied in unlimited quantity. It cost twenty-five
+cents, but it was worth it; and after it was all over he strolled
+slowly down the track, and finally sat down in the spring sun and
+smoked till he softly fell asleep.
+
+He was awakened by the roar of an express-train going eastward, and it
+occurred to him that his baggage must be aboard that train, travelling
+in ease while its owner plodded between the rails. It was after two
+o’clock; he had rested long enough, and he returned to the track and
+took up the trail again.
+
+At sunset he reached Hamilton, and his time-table folder indicated
+that he had travelled twenty-seven miles that day. At this rate he
+would reach the Mississippi in less than a week, and he felt only an
+ordinary sense of healthy fatigue and an extraordinary appetite.
+
+He was charged a quarter for supper that evening at a farmhouse, and
+before dark he had reached the next village. There was a bit of
+woodland near by where he imagined that he could encamp, and as it had
+been a warm day he thought a fire would be unnecessary. So in the
+twilight he scraped together a heap of last year’s leaves, and spread
+his coat blanket-wise over his shoulders. It reminded him of many
+camps in the mountains, and he went to sleep almost at once, for he
+was very tired.
+
+A sensation of extreme cold awoke him. It was dark; the stars were
+shining above the trees, and, looking at his watch by a match flare,
+he learned that it was a quarter to twelve. But the cold was
+unbearable; he lay and shivered miserably for half an hour, and then
+got up to look for wood for a fire. In the darkness he could find
+nothing, and, thoroughly awake by this time, he abandoned the camp and
+went back through the gloom to the railway station, where half a dozen
+empty box cars stood upon the siding. Clambering into one of these, it
+appeared comparatively warm; it reminded him of Margaret and of the
+hail upon Salt Lake,—things which already seemed very far away.
+
+His rest that night was shattered at frequent intervals by the crash
+of passing freight-trains. They stopped, backed, and shunted within
+six feet of him with a clatter of metal like a collapsing foundry, a
+noise of loud talking and swearing, and a swinging flash of lanterns.
+Drowsily Elliott fancied that his car was likely to be attached to
+some train and hauled away, perhaps to St. Louis, perhaps to St.
+Joseph, but in the stupefaction of sleep he did not care where he
+went; and, in fact, when he awoke he saw the little village still
+visible through the open side door, looking strange and unfamiliar in
+the gray dawn. Grass and fences were white with hoarfrost.
+
+At five o’clock that afternoon Elliott was twenty-two miles nearer the
+Mississippi. He had just passed a small station. His time-table told
+him that there was another eight miles away, and he decided to reach
+it and spend the night in one of its empty freight-cars, for he had
+learned that camping without a fire was not practicable.
+
+He reached the desired point just as it was growing dark. Point is the
+word, for it was nothing else. There was no depot there, no houses, no
+siding,—nothing whatever but a name painted on a mocking plank beside
+the track. It was a crossroads flag-station. Elliott had failed to
+notice the “f” opposite the name in the time-table.
+
+The sun had set in clouds and a fine cold rain was beginning. The sky
+looked black as iron. A camp in the rain was out of the question. The
+next village was five miles away, but he would have to reach it.
+
+It was a dark night, but it never grows entirely dark in the open air,
+as house-dwellers imagine, and as he went on he could make out looming
+masses of forest on either hand. The country seemed to be growing
+marshy; he came to several long trestles, which he crossed in fear of
+an inopportune train.
+
+Presently the track plunged into a sort of swamp, where the trees came
+close and black on both sides. The rain pattered in pools of water,
+and through the wet air darted great fireflies in streaks of bluish
+light. Their fading trails crossed among the rotting trees, and from
+the depths of the marsh sounded such a chorus of frog voices as he had
+never dreamed of, in piccolo, tenor, bass, screeching and thrumming.
+In the deepest recesses some weird reptile emitted at regular
+intervals a rattling Mephistophelean laugh. It impressed Elliott with
+a kind of horror,—the blue witch-fires flashing through the rain, the
+reptilian voices, and that ghastly laugh from the decaying woods; and
+he hastened to leave it behind.
+
+It proved a very long five miles to the next station, and he was wet
+through and stumbling with weariness when he reached it. The village
+was pitch-dark; not a light burned about the station except the steady
+switch-lamps; not a freight-car stood upon the siding. There was not
+even a roof over the platform, and, too tired to look for shelter,
+Elliott dropped upon a pile of lumber by the track, and went heavily
+to sleep in the rain.
+
+The hideous clangour of a passing express-train awoke him; he was
+growing accustomed to such awakenings. It was an hour from sunrise.
+Close to him stood the little red station and a great water-tank. The
+village was still asleep among the dripping trees. Not a smoke arose
+from any chimney.
+
+It had stopped raining, and the east was clearer. Elliott was wet
+through, cold and stiff, and he found his feet sore and swollen. He
+was not in training for so much pedestrian exercise, and he had
+overdone it.
+
+But the solitary hotel of the village awoke early, and Elliott did not
+have to wait long for breakfast. Shortly after sunrise, strengthened
+with hot coffee, he was renewing the march, finding every step
+exquisitely painful. The romance of this sort of vagabondage was fast
+evaporating, and the thought of the seventy dollars that he had wasted
+in St. Joseph infuriated him.
+
+When the sun rose high enough to dry his garments, he sat down,
+removed his coat, and steamed gently. After this respite the pain in
+his blistered soles was worse than ever, but he trudged stoically on.
+After an hour it grew dulled till he scarcely noticed it, and about
+noon he reached Redwood.
+
+Near the station there was a small lunchroom, where Elliott satisfied
+his appetite, and he returned to the railway, sat upon a pile of ties,
+lighted his pipe, and reflected. The endless line of shining rails
+running eternally eastward was loathsome to his eyes.
+
+“I’ve overdone it at the start. I ought to lie up and rest for a day
+or two,” he said to himself. But even walking appeared preferable to
+idling in the scraggly village, and he suddenly determined that he
+would neither idle nor yet walk, but nevertheless he would be in
+Hannibal in two days.
+
+He sat on the pile of ties for over an hour. A ponderous freight-train
+dragged up to the station, went upon the siding and waited till the
+fast express flashed past without stopping. Then the freight got
+clumsily under way again with a tremendous clank and clamour. At it
+rolled slowly past, Elliott saw a side door half-open. He ran after
+it, swung himself up by his elbows, and tumbled head first into the
+car.
+
+The train went on, gradually gaining speed. There were loose handfuls
+of corn scattered about the car from its last load. Elliott slid the
+door almost shut and sat down on the floor, wondering if the crew had
+seen him get aboard.
+
+The train was attaining a considerable speed and the car was flung
+over the rails with shattering jolts. Through the cranny of the door
+Elliott saw trees and fields sweep by, and he was considering
+pleasantly that he had already travelled an hour’s walk, when a heavy
+trampling of feet sounded on the roof of the pitching car.
+
+He listened with some uneasiness. The feet reached the end of the car;
+he heard them coming down the iron ladder, and then a face, a grimed
+but not unfriendly face, topped by a blue cap, appeared at the little
+slide in the end.
+
+“Hello!” called the brakeman, peering into the dark interior. “I know
+you’re there. I seen you get in. I kin see you now.”
+
+At this culminative address, Elliott came out of his dusky corner.
+
+“Where you goin’?” demanded the brakeman.
+
+“Why, I’d like to stay right with this train. It’s going my way,”
+replied Elliott. “You don’t mind, do you?”
+
+“Dunno as I do,—but you can’t ride this train free.”
+
+“Oh, that’s all right,” responded the trespasser. “I’m pretty short or
+else I’d be on the cushions instead of here, but I don’t mind putting
+up a quarter. Does that go?”
+
+“I reckon,” said the brakeman, unhesitatingly. “This train don’t go
+only to Brookfield; that’s the division point. Keep the door shet, an’
+don’t let nobody see you.”
+
+He went back to the top of the train. Elliott felt as if he had been
+swindled, for Brookfield was only twenty-five miles away. However, he
+hoped to catch another freight that afternoon and make as many more
+miles before sunset, and he settled himself as comfortably as possible
+on the jolting floor and lighted his pipe.
+
+He had time to smoke many pipes before reaching Brookfield, for it was
+nearly two hours before the heavy train rolled into the yards. Elliott
+climbed out upon the side-ladder and swung to the ground before the
+train stopped, to avoid a possible railway constable. Considerably to
+his surprise, he saw half a dozen rusty-looking vagrants hanging to
+the irons and jumping off at the same time. He had had more fellow
+passengers than he had suspected, and it struck him that
+freight-breaking must be rather a lucrative employment.
+
+All the rest of that afternoon Elliott watched the freight-yards, but,
+though some trains departed eastward, they appeared to contain no
+empty cars. After supper he returned to the railroad, and remained
+there till it grew dark. Trains came and went; there were engines
+hissing and panting without cease; all the dozen tracks were crowded
+with cars, and up and down the narrow alleys between them hastened men
+with lanterns, talking and swearing loudly. The crash and jar of
+coupling and shunting went on ceaselessly, and this activity did not
+lessen, and the night passed, for Brookfield was one of the “division
+points” on the main line of a great railroad.
+
+It was nearly midnight when Elliott observed that a train was being
+made up with the caboose on the western end. He walked its length; the
+switchmen paid no attention to him, and he discovered an empty box car
+about the middle of the train, and into it he climbed without delay.
+For another half-hour, however, the manipulation of the cars
+continued, with successive violent shocks as fresh cars were coupled
+on. The whole train seemed to be broken and shuffled in the darkness,
+and it was hauled up and down till Elliott began to doubt whether it
+were going ahead at all. But at last he heard the welcome two blasts
+from the locomotive ahead, and in another minute the long train was
+labouring out.
+
+This time he suffered no interference from any brakeman. The train was
+a fast freight; it made no stop for nearly two hours, and then
+continued after the briefest delay. The speed was high enough to make
+the springless car most uncomfortable, till the jolts seemed to shake
+the very bones loose in Elliott’s body. Every position he tried seemed
+more uncomfortable than the last, but he was determined to stay with
+the train as far as it went. After a few hours of being tossed about,
+he became somewhat stupefied, and even dozed a little, and between
+sleep and waking the night passed. In the first gray of morning the
+train pulled up at the great water-tank at Palmyra Junction, fifteen
+miles from Hannibal. He had travelled ninety miles that night.
+
+The train went no farther. After waiting an hour or two for another,
+Elliott decided to walk the rest of the way, and he left Palmyra at
+nine o’clock, arriving in Hannibal, very tired and dusty, at a little
+after three. At the bottom of the long street he caught a glimpse of
+the broad Mississippi rolling yellow between its banked levees. The
+first stage of the journey was accomplished; the next would be upon
+the river.
+
+
+
+
+                     CHAPTER III. THE ADVENTURER
+
+
+When he went down to the levee an hour or two later, Elliott found no
+boats preparing to sail, and a general lack of activity about the
+steamer wharves. Sitting upon a stack of cotton-bales, he perceived a
+young man of rather less than his own age, smoking with something of
+the air of a busy man who finds a moment for relaxation. He was very
+much tanned; he wore a flannel shirt and a black tie, and his clothes
+were soiled with axle-grease and coal-dust. By these tokens Elliott
+recognized that he had been for some time in contact with the
+railways, but he did not look like a railway man, and his face wore a
+bright alertness that distinguished it unmistakably from that of the
+joyless hobo. Elliott took him for an amateur vagrant like himself.
+
+“Seems to be nothing doing on the river. Do you know when there’s a
+boat for St. Louis?” he asked, pausing beside the cotton-bales.
+
+The lounger took stock of Elliott, keenly but with good nature.
+
+“There ought to be one leaving about six o’clock, but I don’t see any
+sign of her yet,” he responded. “Going down the river?”
+
+“I thought I’d try it. Do you reckon the mate would take me on, even
+if it was only to work my passage?”
+
+“What do you want to do that for?” queried the other, with a sort of
+astonished amusement.
+
+“Why, I wanted to get to St. Louis, and after that up to Pittsburg or
+Cincinnati.”
+
+“If you want to get there easy, and get there alive, I don’t see why
+you don’t swim,” remarked the stranger, dryly. “You don’t know much
+about these river boats, do you? Man, they’re floating hells. The crew
+is all niggers, and the toughest gang of pirates in America. They
+knife a man for a chew of tobacco. The officers themselves don’t
+hardly dare go down on the lower deck after dark,—but, Lord! they do
+take it out of the black devils when they tie up at a wharf and start
+to unload. If you can’t work for ten hours at a stretch toting a
+hundred-pound crate in each hand, live on corn bread, and kill a man
+every night, don’t try the boats. A white man wouldn’t last any longer
+in that crowd than an icicle in hell.”
+
+“The deuce!” said Elliott, disconcerted. “I’m very anxious to get to
+Cincinnati, anyway, and the fact is I’m sort of strapped. I thought
+I’d be all right when I got to the river.”
+
+“Tried freights?”
+
+“Yes, and they don’t suit me too well.”
+
+“I’m going to St. Louis,” said the stranger, after a pause. “I’m going
+to leave early in the morning, and I expect to get there in three
+hours, and I don’t intend that it shall cost me a cent. To tell the
+truth, I’m in something of the same fix as you are.”
+
+“How’ll you manage it?” Elliott inquired, with much curiosity.
+
+“Ride a passenger-train, on the top. I’ve just come from Seattle that
+way,” he continued, after a meditative pause. “There’s no great amount
+of fun in it, but I did it in six days.”
+
+“The deuce!” exclaimed Elliott again. “Do you mean to say that you
+came all the way from Seattle in six days, beating passenger-trains?”
+
+“Every inch of it. I was in a hurry, and I’m in a hurry yet. Mostly I
+rode the top, and sometimes the blind, and once I tried the trucks,
+but next time I’ll walk first. The beast of a conductor found that I
+was there, and poured ashes down between the cars.”
+
+“You’re a genius,” said Elliott, looking at the audacious traveller
+with admiration. “That’s beyond me.”
+
+“Not a bit of it. I don’t do this sort of thing professionally, nor
+you, either. Excuse me, I can see that you’re no more a bum than I am.
+But a man ought to be able to do anything,—beat the hobo at his own
+game if he’s driven to it. I simply had to get to Nashville, and I
+hadn’t the money for a ticket. I did it, or I’ve nearly done it, and
+you could have done it, too.
+
+“Of course you could,” he went on, as Elliott looked doubtful. “Come
+with me in the morning, if you’re game, and I’ll guarantee to land you
+in St. Louis by eight o’clock.”
+
+“Oh, I’m game all right,” cried Elliott, “if you’re sure I won’t be
+troubling you.”
+
+“Didn’t I say that I’m going, anyway. I mighty seldom let anybody
+trouble me. Now look here: the fast train from Omaha gets here a
+little before three, daylight. You meet me at the passenger depot at,
+say, three o’clock. Better get as much sleep as you can before that,
+for you sure won’t get any after it.”
+
+He glanced at Elliott with a smile that had the effect of a challenge.
+“Oh, I won’t back out,” Elliott assured him. “I’ll be there, sharp on
+time. So long, till morning.”
+
+Elliott went away a little puzzled by his new comrade, and not
+altogether satisfied. The young fellow—he did not know his
+name—evidently was in possession of an almost infernal degree of
+energy. Plainly he was no “bum,” as he had said; it was equally plain
+that he was, undeniably, not quite a gentleman; and, plainest of all,
+that he was a man of much experience of the world and ability to take
+care of himself in it. Elliott could not quite place him. He was a
+little like a professional gambler down on his luck. It was quite
+possible that he was a high-class crook escaping from the scene of his
+latest exploit, and it was this consideration that roused Elliott’s
+uneasiness. It was bad enough, he thought, to be obliged to dodge yard
+watchmen and railway detectives without risking arrest for another
+man’s safe-cracking.
+
+Still, the association would last only for a few hours, and he went to
+bed that night resolved to carry the agreement through. He was staying
+at a cheap hotel, and there were times when he would have regarded its
+appointments as impossible, but it struck him just now that he had
+never known before what luxury was. It was four nights since he had
+slept in a bed, and, as he stretched himself luxuriously between the
+sheets, the idea of getting up at three o’clock seemed a fantastic
+impossibility.
+
+A thundering at the door made it real, however. He had left orders at
+the desk to be called, and he pulled his watch from under the pillow.
+There was no mistake; it was three o’clock, and, shivering and still
+sleepy, he got up and lighted the gas.
+
+Near the waterfront he found an all-night lunchroom, and hot coffee
+and a sandwich effected a miraculous mental change. With increasing
+cheerfulness he went on toward the depot through the deserted streets.
+It was still dark and the stars were shining, but there was an
+aromatic freshness in the air, and low in the east a tinge of faintest
+pallor.
+
+He found his prospective fellow traveller lounging about the
+triangular walk that surrounds the depot, and saluted him with a
+flourish of his pipestem. An almost imperceptible grayness was
+beginning to fill the air, and sparrows chirped in the blackened trees
+about the station.
+
+“She’ll be along in a few minutes,” said the expert, referring to the
+train. “By the way, my name’s Bennett; what’ll I call you? Any old
+name’ll do.”
+
+“Call me Elliott. That happens to be my real name, anyway. But say,
+won’t it be a little too light soon for us to sit up in plain sight on
+the roof of that train?”
+
+“A little. But she doesn’t make any stop all the way to St. Louis, I
+believe, and of course the people on board can’t see us. It’s easier
+to climb up there by daylight, too, and—there she whistles.”
+
+The few early passengers hurried out upon the platform. In half a
+minute the train rolled into the station, its windows closely
+curtained and the headlight glaring through the gray dawn. The
+passengers went aboard; there was no demand for tickets at the car
+steps, and Bennett and Elliott went straight to the smoker, where they
+sat quietly till the train started again, after the briefest delay.
+
+“Now come along,” muttered Bennett, and Elliott followed him across
+the platforms and through the three day coaches full of dishevelled,
+dozing passengers. The Pullmans came next, and luckily the juncture
+was not vestibuled.
+
+Without the slightest hesitation Bennett climbed upon the horizontal
+brake-wheel, and put his hands on the roof of the sleeper. Then with a
+vigorous spring he went up, crept to a more level portion of the roof,
+and beckoned Elliott to follow him.
+
+The train was now running fast, and the violent oscillation of the
+cars made the feat look even more difficult and dangerous than it was.
+But the idea that the conductor might come through and find him there
+stimulated Elliott amazingly, and he clambered nervously upon the
+wheel, and got his hands upon the grimy roof that was heaving like a
+boat on a stormy sea. Securing a firm hold, he attempted to spring up,
+but a violent lurch at that moment flung him aside, and he was left
+dangling perilously till Bennett scrambled to his relief and by
+strenuous efforts hauled him up to more security.
+
+A furious blast of smoke and cinders struck his face. Before him
+writhed the dark, reptilian back of the train, ending in the
+locomotive, that was just then wreathed in a vivid glare from the
+opened firebox. From that view-point the engine seemed to leap and
+struggle like a frenzied horse, and all the cars plunged, rolling,
+till it appeared miraculous that they did not leave the rails. Even as
+he lay flat on the roof of the bucking car it was not easy to avoid
+being pitched sideways. The cinders came in suffocating blasts with
+the force of sleet, and presently, following Bennett’s example,
+Elliott turned about with his head to the rear and lay with his face
+buried in his arms. The roar of the air and of the train made speech
+out of the question.
+
+The position had its discomforts, but it seemed an excellent strategic
+one. An hour went by, and it was now quite light. The fast express
+continued to devour the miles with undiminished speed.
+
+Little sleeping villages flashed by, as Elliott saw occasionally when
+he ventured to raise his head Two hours; they were within forty miles
+of St. Louis, when the train unexpectedly slackened speed and came to
+a stop.
+
+Elliott jumped to the conclusion that it had stopped for the sole
+purpose of putting him off, but he observed immediately that it was to
+take water. He glanced at Bennett, who was looking about with an air
+of disgusted surprise.
+
+There were men about the little station, and the trespassers flattened
+themselves upon the car roof, hoping to escape notice, but some one
+must have seen them. A gold-laced brakeman presently thrust his head
+up from below, mounted upon the brake-wheel.
+
+“Come now, get down out of that!” he commanded.
+
+His conductor was looking on, and there was no possibility of coming
+to an arrangement with him. Elliott slid down to the platform, much
+crestfallen, followed by Bennett. Cinders fell in showers from their
+clothing as they moved, and a number of passengers watched them with
+unsympathetic curiosity as they walked away.
+
+“By thunder, I hate to be ditched like that!” muttered Bennett,
+glancing savagely about. “Let’s try the blind baggage, if there is
+one. We’ll beat this train yet.”
+
+Elliott doubted the wisdom of this second attempt, but they went
+forward, looking for the little platform, usually “blind,” or
+doorless, which is to be found at the front end of most baggage-cars.
+It was there; none of the crew appeared to be looking that way, and
+they scrambled aboard just as the train started.
+
+It was a much more comfortable position than the top, for there were
+iron rails to cling to and a platform to sit upon, while they were out
+of the way of smoke and cinders. Immediately before them rose the
+black iron hulk of the tender and it was not long before the fireman
+discovered them as he shovelled coal, but he made no hostile
+demonstration beyond playfully shaking his fist.
+
+“We’re safe for St. Louis now. There won’t be another stop, and nobody
+can see us or get at us while she’s moving,” remarked Bennett, with
+satisfaction. He glanced over his shoulder, turned and looked again,
+and his face suddenly fell. After a moment’s sober stare, he burst
+into a fit of laughter.
+
+“Done again! This ‘blind’ isn’t blind at all,” he cried, pointing to
+the car-end.
+
+It was hideously true. There was a narrow door which they had not
+observed in the end of the car. Just then it was closed fast enough,
+but there was no telling when it might be opened.
+
+“Anyhow,” said Elliott, plucking up courage, “we’re making nearly
+forty miles an hour, and every minute they leave us in peace means
+almost another mile gained.”
+
+“Yes, and there’s just a chance that nobody opens this door. I think
+that if we stop again we’d better give this train up.”
+
+They watched the door anxiously as the minutes and the miles went
+past, but it remained unopened. The little stations flew
+past—Clarksville, Annada, Winfield. It was not far to West Alton, and
+that was practically St. Louis.
+
+The end was almost in sight. But the door opened suddenly, and the
+brakeman they had before encountered came out.
+
+“I told you fellows to get off half an hour ago.”
+
+“Now, look here,” said Bennett, persuasively. “We’re not doing this
+train any harm at all. We’re not going inside; we’ll stay right here,
+and we’ll jump the minute she slows for Alton. We’re no hobos. We’re
+straight enough, only we’re playing in hard luck just now and we’ve
+simply got to stay on this train. Now you go away, and just fancy you
+never saw us, and you’ll be doing us a good turn.”
+
+The brakeman reflected a moment, looked at them with an expression
+more of sorrow than of anger, and returned to the car without saying
+anything.
+
+“He’s all right,” said Elliott.
+
+“And every minute means a mile,” Bennett added.
+
+But in less than a mile the brakeman returned, and the conductor came
+with him.
+
+“Come now, get off!” commanded the chief, crisply.
+
+“We’ll get off if we have to,” said Bennett. “You must slow up for us,
+though.”
+
+“Slow hell!” returned the conductor. “I’ve lost time enough with you
+bums. Hit the gravel, now!”
+
+Elliott glanced down. The gravel was sliding past with such rapidity
+that the roadway looked smooth as a slate.
+
+“Great heavens, man, you wouldn’t throw us off with the train going a
+mile a minute. It would be sure murder,” pleaded Bennett.
+
+“I’ve no time to talk. Jump, or I’ll throw you off.” The conductor
+advanced menacingly, with the brakeman at his shoulder.
+
+Bennett lifted his arm with a gesture that the conductor mistook for
+aggression. He whipped out his revolver and thrust it in Bennett’s
+face. The adventurer, startled, stepped quickly back, clean off the
+platform, and vanished.
+
+A wave of rage choked Elliott’s throat, and he barely restrained
+himself from flying at the throats of his uniformed tormentors.
+
+“Now you’ve done it,” he said, finding speech with difficulty. “You’ve
+killed the man.”
+
+The conductor, looking conscience-stricken and anxious, leaned far out
+and gazed back, and then pulled the bell-cord.
+
+“He needn’t have jumped. I wouldn’t have thrown him off; never did
+such a thing in my life,” he muttered.
+
+“He didn’t jump. You assaulted him, when all he wanted was to get off
+quietly. You pulled your gun on him, when neither of us was armed.
+It’s murder, and you’ll be shown what that means.”
+
+Elliott felt that he had the moral supremacy. The conductor made no
+reply, and the train came to a stop.
+
+“You’d better go back and look after your partner,” he said, in a
+subdued manner. “I’m mighty sorry. I’d never have hurt him if he’d
+stayed quiet. It’s only a couple of miles to Alton,” he added, as
+Elliott jumped down, “and you can take him into St. Louis all right,
+if he isn’t hurt bad. I’d wait and take you in myself if I wasn’t
+eighteen minutes late already.”
+
+The train was moving ahead again before Elliott had reached its rear.
+He ran as fast as he could, and while still a great way off he was
+relieved to see Bennett sitting up among the weeds near the fence
+where he had been pitched by the fall. He was leaning on his arms and
+spitting blood profusely.
+
+“Are you hurt much, old man? I thought you’d be killed!” cried
+Elliott, hurrying up.
+
+Bennett looked at him in a daze. His face was terribly cut and bruised
+with the gravel, and the blood had made a sort of paste with the
+smoke-dust on his cheeks. His clothes were rent into great tatters.
+
+“Don’t wait for me,” he muttered, thickly. “Go ahead. Don’t miss the
+train. I’m—all right.”
+
+But his head drooped helplessly, and he sank down. The ditch was full
+of running water, and Elliott brought his hat full and bathed the
+wounded man’s head and washed off the blood and grime. Bennett revived
+at this, and looked up more intelligently.
+
+Elliott examined him cursorily. His right arm was certainly broken,
+and something appeared wrong with the shoulder-joint; it looked as if
+it might be dislocated. There must be a rib broken as well, for
+Bennett complained of intense pain in his chest, and continued to spit
+blood.
+
+“That conductor certainly ditched us, didn’t he?” he murmured. “Did he
+throw you off too? I was a fool not to see that door.”
+
+None of the injuries appeared fatal, or even very serious, with proper
+medical care, and Elliott felt sure that the right thing was to get
+his comrade into St. Louis and the hospital at once. But Bennett was
+quite incapable of walking, and Elliott was not less unable to carry
+him. He became feverish and semidelirious again; he talked vaguely of
+war and shipwreck, but in his lucid moments he still adjured Elliott
+to leave him.
+
+Elliott remained beside him, though with increasing anxiety. After an
+hour or two, however, he was relieved by the appearance of a gang of
+section workers with their hand-car, to whom Elliott explained the
+situation without reserve. They were sympathetic, and carried both
+Elliott and Bennett into Alton on their car, where they waited for two
+hours for a train to St. Louis.
+
+Bennett was got into the smoker with some difficulty; he remained
+almost unconscious all the way, and at the Union Station in St. Louis
+there was more difficulty. Elliott was afraid to call a policeman and
+ask for the ambulance, lest admission should be refused on the ground
+that Bennett was an outsider. So, half-supporting and half-carrying
+the injured man, he got him out of the station and a few yards along
+the street. It was impossible to do more. A policeman came up, and
+Elliott briefly explained that this man was badly hurt and would have
+to go to the hospital at once. Then he hurried off, lest any questions
+should be asked.
+
+
+
+
+              CHAPTER IV. THE FATE OF THE TREASURE SHIP
+
+
+Elliott watched the arrival of the ambulance from a distance, for he
+felt certain that he looked a thorough tramp, with his rough dress and
+the clinging coal grime of the railroad. Yet he did not wish to leave
+the city without at least seeing Bennett again, and hearing the
+medical account of his condition; and he was surprised to find how
+much liking he felt for this light-hearted and resourceful vagabond
+whom he had known for less than twenty-four hours.
+
+Though his money was running dangerously short, he lodged himself at a
+not wholly respectable hotel on Market Street, and next morning he
+made what improvement he could in his appearance, and went to the
+hospital. Visitors, it turned out, were not admitted that day, but he
+was told that his friend was in a very bad way indeed. The young
+doctor in white duck evidently did not consider his shabby-looking
+inquirer as capable of comprehending technical details, and seemed
+himself incapable of furnishing any other, but Elliott gathered that
+Bennett had been found to have two or three ribs broken and his
+shoulder dislocated, besides a broken arm and more or less severe
+lacerations of the lungs. He was quite conscious, however, and the
+doctor said that, if he grew no worse, it was likely that Elliott
+would be permitted to see him on the next visiting day, which would be
+the morrow.
+
+At three o’clock the next afternoon, therefore, Elliott applied, and
+was admitted without objection. A wearied-looking nurse led him
+through the ward, where there seemed a visitor for every cot. Bennett,
+she said, appeared a little better. His temperature had gone down and
+he seemed to be recovering well from the shock, but Elliott was
+startled at the pallor of the face upon the pillow. The brown tan
+looked like yellow paint upon white paper, but Bennett greeted him
+cheerfully and seemed nervously anxious to talk.
+
+“Sit down here. This is mighty good of you,” he said. “I never got
+ditched like that before. Did that conductor throw you off, too?”
+
+“Oh, no. He stopped the train for me to get off. His conscience was
+hurting him, I think.”
+
+“Well, it’s going to cost the road something, I think. But you’ve
+stayed by me like a brother,” Bennett went on, deliberatively, “and
+I’ll make it up to you if I can, and I think I can. There’s something
+I want to tell you about. It’s no small thing, and it’ll take an hour
+or two, so you’ll have to come to-morrow afternoon, and bring a
+note-book. We can’t talk with all these visitors swarming around.
+They’ll let you in; I’ve fixed it up with the doctor. They said that
+it was liable to kill me, but I told them that it was a matter of life
+and death, and they gave in. It is a life and death business, too, for
+a couple of dozen men have been killed in it already, and there’s a
+round million, at least, in solid gold. What do you think of that?”
+
+Elliott thought that his comrade was becoming delirious again, but he
+did not say so. The nurse, who had been keeping an eye on him, came
+up.
+
+“I really think you’ve talked long enough,” she said, with a sweetness
+that had the force of a command.
+
+“All right,” said Elliott, getting up. “I’ll see you to-morrow, then.
+Good-bye.”
+
+“Will it really be all right, nurse, for me to have a long talk with
+him to-morrow?” he inquired, as soon as he was out of Bennett’s
+hearing.
+
+“No, it isn’t all right, but the house surgeon has given his consent.
+I think it’s decidedly dangerous, but your friend said it was an
+absolute matter of life and death, and it may do him good to get it
+off his mind. Come, since you’ve got permission; and if it seems to
+excite him too much, I’ll send you away.”
+
+Elliott felt a good deal of curiosity as to the secret which was to be
+confided to him, for which a couple of dozen men had died already.
+Probably it had something to do with Bennett’s rapid journey across
+the continent, and Elliott felt some apprehension that he might be
+about to be made the involuntary accessory to some large and unlawful
+exploit.
+
+His curiosity made him willing to take chances, however, and he waited
+impatiently for the next afternoon. When it came, he found Bennett
+propped up on three pillows and looking better. The nurse said that he
+really was better, that all would probably go well, but that it would
+be slow work, and this slowness seemed to irritate the patient most of
+all.
+
+“First,” he said, when the nurse was out of earshot, “I’ll tell you
+what you must do for me. You’ll have to go out of your way to do it,
+but, unless I’m mistaken, you’ll find it worth your while. I want you
+to go to Nashville, Tennessee, and I want you to go at once. It’s a
+case for hurry. I can’t write now, and I daren’t telegraph. Maybe the
+men I want aren’t there, but you can find where they’re gone. Will you
+go?”
+
+Elliott hesitated half a moment, wishing he knew what was coming next,
+but he promised—with a mental reservation.
+
+“That’s all right, then,” said Bennett, “because I know you’re
+square,”—a remark which touched Elliott’s conscience. “It’s quite a
+tale that I want you to carry to them, and I’ll have to cut it as
+short as I can, and you’d better make notes as I go along, for every
+detail is important.
+
+“I told you how I’d crossed the country from the Coast. I had come as
+straight as I could from South Africa. I wasn’t in any army there;
+that’s not in my line. It don’t matter what I was doing; I was just
+fishing around in the troubled waters.
+
+“Anyway, I had a big deal on that was going to make or break me, and
+it broke me. I was in Lorenzo Marques then, and it was the most
+God-awful spot I ever struck. It was full of all the scum of the war,
+every sort of ruffians and beats, Portuguese and Dutch and Boers and
+British deserters, and gamblers and mule-drivers from America, all
+rowing and knifing each other, and it was blazing hot and they had
+fever there, too.
+
+“I’ve seen a good many wicked places, but I never went against
+anything like that, and I wanted to get back to America. The American
+consul wouldn’t do anything for me at all, but I saw an American
+steamer out in the river,—the _Clara McClay_ of Philadelphia,—loading
+for the East Coast and then Antwerp. She was the rottenest sort of
+tramp, but she caught my eye because she was the only American ship I
+ever saw in those waters. So I went aboard and asked the mate to sign
+me on as a deck-hand to Antwerp, and he just kicked me over the side.
+
+“Anyway, I was determined to go on that ship, mate or no mate, for
+there wasn’t anything else going my way, and I expected to die of
+fever if I waited. So I went aboard again the night before she sailed,
+and they were getting in cargo by lantern light, and there was such a
+stir on the decks that nobody paid any attention to me. I got below,
+and dropped through the hatch into the forehold. They had pretty
+nearly finished loading by that time, and pretty soon they put the
+hatches on. It was as dark as Egypt then, and hotter than Henry, with
+an awful smell, but after awhile I went to sleep, and when I woke up
+she was at sea, and rolling heavily.
+
+“When I thought she must be good and clear of land, I started to go up
+and report myself, but when I’d stumbled around in the dark for
+awhile, I found that the bales and crates were piled up so that I
+couldn’t get near the hatch. So I sat down and thought it over. I had
+a quart bottle of water with me, but nothing to eat, and I began to be
+horribly hungry.
+
+“When I’d been there ten or twelve hours, I guess, I tried moving some
+of the crates to get to the hatchway, but they were too heavy. But
+while I was lighting matches to see where I was, I saw a lot of cases
+just alike, and all marked with the stencil of a Chicago brand of
+corned beef, and it looked like home. I thought it must be a
+providential interposition, for I was pretty near starving, and it
+struck me that I might rip one of the boards off, get out a can or
+two, and nail the case up again.
+
+“The cases were big and heavy, and they were all screwed up and banded
+with sheet iron, but I had regularly got it into my head that I was
+going to get into one of them, and at last I did burst a hole. When I
+stuck my hand in, it nearly broke my heart. There wasn’t anything
+there at all, so far as I could make out, but a lot of dry grass.
+
+“It occurred to me that this must be another commissary fraud, but
+when I tried to move the case it seemed heavy as lead. I poked my arm
+down into the grass and rummaged around. At last I struck something
+hard and square down near the middle, but it didn’t feel like a meat
+tin. I worked it out, and lit a match. It was a gold brick, and it
+must have weighed ten pounds.”
+
+“Solid, real gold?” cried Elliott, with a sudden memory of Salt Lake.
+
+“The real thing. It didn’t take me long to gut that box, and I dug out
+nineteen more bricks, nearly fifty thousand dollars’ worth, I
+reckoned. No wonder it was heavy. Then I looked over the rest of the
+cases, and they all looked just alike, and there were twenty-three of
+them, so I figured up that there must be considerably over a million
+in those boxes.”
+
+“Stolen from the Pretoria treasury!” Elliott exclaimed.
+
+“I believe it was, but what made you think of that?”
+
+“Never mind; I’ll tell you later. Go on.”
+
+“Well, I felt pretty certain that this gold came from the Rand, of
+course, but who it belonged to, or why he had shipped it on this old
+tramp steamer was what I couldn’t make out. Of course, if he _was_
+going to ship it on this boat, it was easy to understand that it might
+be safer to pass it as corned beef, but the whole thing looked queer
+and crooked to me.
+
+“At first I was fairly off my head at the find, but when I came to
+think it over, it looked like there wasn’t anything in it for me,
+after all. I couldn’t walk off with those bricks. They might be
+government stuff, and I didn’t want any trouble with Secret Service
+men. So after awhile I packed up the box again as well as I could and
+fixed the lid.
+
+“I thought I’d lie low for awhile, and I stayed in that black hole
+till I’d drunk all my bottle of water and was pretty near ready to eat
+my boots. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I raised a devil of a
+racket, yelling, and hammering on the deck overhead with a piece of
+plank, and I kept this up, off and on, for half a day before they
+hauled the hatch off and took me out. It was dark night, with a fresh
+wind, and the ship rolling, and I never smelt anything so good as that
+open air.
+
+“The first thing they did was to drag me before that same mate for
+judgment, and he cursed me till he was blue. He’d have murdered me if
+he’d recognized me, and he nearly did anyway, for he sent me down to
+the stoke-hold.
+
+“I couldn’t stand that. I’d had a touch of fever in Durban, and I was
+weak with hunger anyway, and the first thing I knew I was tumbling in
+a heap on the coal. Somebody threw a bucket of water over me, but it
+was no use. I couldn’t stagger, and they took me up and made a
+deck-hand of me.
+
+“This suited me all right, and the fresh air soon fixed me up. I
+wouldn’t have minded the job at all, but for the mate. The crew were
+afraid of him as death. His name was Burke, Jim Burke; he was a big
+Irishman, with a fist like a ham, and he made that ship a hell. He
+nearly killed a man the first night I was on deck, and I’ve got some
+of his marks on me yet. The captain wasn’t so bad, but I didn’t see so
+much of him. I was in the mate’s watch,—worse luck!
+
+“But all this time I didn’t forget that gold below, and I was trying
+to see through the mystery. But I couldn’t make any sense of it till I
+saw the passengers we had.
+
+“There were four of them that I saw. Three of them I spotted at once
+as from Pretoria. I’d seen the office-holding Boer often enough to
+recognize him, and they always talked among themselves in the Taal.
+Two of them were native Boers, I was sure, but the third looked like
+some sort of German. Besides these fellows, there was a middle-aged
+Englishman that looked like a missionary, and I heard something of
+another man who never showed himself, but I didn’t pay any attention
+to any one but the Boers.
+
+“Because when I saw them, I saw through the whole thing. The war was
+going well for the Boers just then, but there were plenty of them wise
+enough to see that they couldn’t fight England to a finish, and
+crooked enough to try to feather their nests while they had a chance.
+Pretoria was all disorganized with the war-fever; half the government
+was at the front, and I’d heard of the careless ways they handled the
+treasury at the best of times.”
+
+“You were right,” said Elliott. “I happen to know something about it.”
+And he imparted to Bennett the story of the official plundering which
+the mine superintendent in the Rand had written to him.
+
+“Well, I thought that must have been it,” went on Bennett. “I wondered
+if the officers of the steamer knew the gold was there, but I didn’t
+think so. I was sure they didn’t,—not if the Boer was as ‘slim’ as he
+ought to be. I wouldn’t have trusted a box of cigars to that crowd.
+
+“But all this detective work didn’t put me any forwarder, and the mate
+kept me from meditating too much. The boat was the worst old scow I
+ever saw. Twelve knots was about her best speed, and then we always
+expected the propeller to drop off, and she rolled like an empty
+barrel when there was the slightest sea. I’m no sailor, and that was
+the first time I’d ever bunked with the crew, but I could see easy
+enough that she was rotten.
+
+“For the first few days the weather was pretty fair, but on the fourth
+after I came on deck it turned rougher. There wasn’t very much wind,
+but a heavy swell, as if there was a big gale somewhere out in the
+Indian Ocean. It was the sixth day from port, and I reckoned that we
+must be getting pretty well through the Mozambique Channel.
+
+“It came on cloudy that evening, and when I came on deck it was dark
+as pitch and raining hard. There was a light, cool south wind with a
+tremendous black swell. The big oily rollers hoisted her so that the
+screw was racing half the time, and every little while she’d take it
+green, with an awful crash. Everybody was in oilskins but me, and I
+hadn’t any.
+
+“The mate was on the bridge, and it wasn’t long before we found out
+that he was drunk, and he must have had a bottle up there with him,
+for he kept getting drunker. Once in awhile he’d come down and raise
+Cain, and then go back and curse us from up there till everybody was
+in a blue fright. We didn’t know what he might do with the ship, and
+the watch below came on deck without being called.
+
+“Just a little before six bells struck, I heard a yell, and I found
+that he’d pitched the helmsman clear off the bridge, and taken the
+wheel himself. That part of the channel is full of reefs and islands,
+and we heard surf in about half an hour,—straight ahead the breakers
+sounded, and the mate appeared to be running her dead on them.
+
+“Three or four of the men made a rush for the bridge to take the wheel
+away from him, and some one went down to call the captain. But before
+the mutineers were half-way up the iron ladder, the mate had his
+pistol out, and shot the top man through the head, and he knocked down
+the rest as he fell. By this time we could see the surf, spouting tall
+and white like geysers, but it was too dark to see the land. The
+captain came on deck, half-dressed and looking wild, but he was hardly
+up when the mate gave a whoop, rang for full speed ahead, and ran her
+square on the reef.
+
+“She struck with a bang that seemed to smash everything on board. I
+was pitched half the length of the deck, it seemed to me, and next
+minute a big roller picked her up and lifted her over the reef and set
+her down hard, with another terrific bump.
+
+“When we’d picked ourselves up we couldn’t see anything at all, and
+the spray was flying over us in bucketfuls. The steam was blowing off,
+all the lights had gone out, and the old boat was lying almost on her
+port rails, shaking like a leaf at every big sea. Still there didn’t
+seem to be much danger of her breaking up right away, and we settled
+down after awhile to wait for daylight.
+
+“When the light came back we saw that we were up against a long,
+barren island, about half a mile across I should think, with one rocky
+hill, and no trees, no natives, nor anything. We were stuck on a bunch
+of reefs nearly a mile from shore, and we were half-full of water.
+When we looked her over, we found that she was cracking in two, so we
+got ready to launch the boats. Two of the men were missing, and we
+never saw any more of the captain; we supposed that they had been
+pitched overboard when she struck. The mate had been knocked off the
+bridge and appeared to be hurt. He was lying groaning against the
+deckhouse, but nobody paid any attention to him.
+
+“We got one of the starboard boats into the water with six men in it,
+and it was smashed and swamped against the side before it was fairly
+afloat. We threw lines and things, but only fished out one of the
+crew. I got into the second boat myself, and we managed to fend off
+from the ship, and got on pretty well till we came close to the shore.
+It was a bad landing-place when there was any sea running, but we
+tried it, and piled her all up in the surf. I got tossed on shore
+somehow,—I don’t know how,—but presently I found myself half in the
+water and half out, with a bleeding crack in my head, and most of the
+skin scraped off my arms and legs. I looked for the rest of the boat’s
+crew, but none of them came ashore—alive, that is.
+
+“In about half an hour I saw them put another boat overboard, but this
+one shared the fate of the first, and I don’t think anybody was saved.
+There was still too much sea running to launch boats.
+
+“I lay around on the shingle in a sort of silly state from the crack
+on my head, waiting for some one to come and find me, but nobody came.
+About noon, I guess, I saw another boat skimming round the corner of
+the island with a sail set, and four or five men in her. I tried to
+signal her, but she went out of sight, and that was the last I saw of
+any of the people of the _Clara McClay_.
+
+“Everybody seemed to be off the ship, and it looked like I was the
+only one to get to the island. That night the wind and sea got up
+tremendously; the spray flew clean over the island, and I got up on
+the hill to keep from being washed off. In the morning I saw that the
+ship had cracked right open and broken in two, with her stern sticking
+on the rocks and the bow part slipping forward into the lagoon. All
+sorts of things were cast ashore that day,—but, say, there isn’t
+anything in the Robinson Crusoe business. There was about fifty tons
+of wreckage and cargo scattered over the beach, but I couldn’t do
+anything with wood and hardware, and I had all I could do to find grub
+enough for a square meal. Later I found more.”
+
+“Did any of the gold cases come ashore?” asked Elliott.
+
+“Oh, no. They were too heavy. But in a day or so, when the weather had
+gone down, I rafted myself out to the wreck on some spars. But the
+forward half of the ship was sunk in about eight fathoms; it just
+showed above the surface, and I couldn’t get at the hold. The stern
+part was out of water and I rummaged around for something to eat, but
+everything was spoiled by the salt water.
+
+“Well, I was on that blessed island for ten days, living mostly on
+salt pork and London gin, for that was about all I could find that
+wasn’t spoiled by the sun or the water. It was furiously hot, and the
+only fresh water I had was a big pool of rainwater, that was drying up
+every day. Twice I saw steamer smokes to the northwest, and I knew
+that I was away out of the track of navigation, so at last I went to
+work and built a raft out of driftwood, and loaded all my gin and pork
+and fresh water on board. I rigged up a sail, and even if I wasn’t
+picked up I felt pretty sure that I could fetch the Madagascar coast,
+anyway.
+
+“But I drifted around for six days. There was a strong current and a
+breeze, sometimes both going the same way and sometimes not, and I
+don’t know exactly where they carried me, but eventually an English
+mail-steamer sighted me and picked me up. She was going to Sydney, so
+I must have floated away up to the northeast of Madagascar. I told
+them that the _Clara McClay_ had foundered at sea, gone down in deep
+water, so as to put her completely beyond investigation, and I thought
+I felt my fingers on those gold bricks.
+
+“When we got to Sydney, I shipped on a Pacific Mail boat for the
+United States, and, as I’ve told you, I struck out at once for
+Nashville to pick up the rest of my party, for I knew that they were
+there during the latter part of the winter, and should be there yet.
+
+“You see we always acted together, and, besides, this was too big a
+game for me to play alone. It would take a regular naval expedition
+and a lot of capital to fish up all that yellow stuff, but if I could
+locate the three men I was after I knew we could rustle the expenses
+somehow. We’ve been through some big deals together, mostly in Mexico
+and Honduras, where there’s always devilment and disturbances.
+Well—that’s all. I can’t go to Nashville now, but this thing can’t
+wait. Some one will be back after that gold if there was any one else
+saved from the _Clara McClay_.”
+
+“The question is, who does this gold belong to?” said Elliott.
+
+“It doesn’t belong to anybody. It was stolen, in the first place, from
+the Transvaal Republic. Well, there isn’t any Transvaal Republic any
+more. Besides, it’s treasure-trove—sunk on the high seas. Don’t worry
+about that, but listen to me. I don’t know where that island is, but I
+think I know more than any one else alive, and you can surely locate
+it from what I’ve told you. You’ll go to Nashville, and tell the boys
+just the story I’ve told you. They’ll take you in on it, of course,
+and they’ll do the square thing by me, same as if I was with them.”
+
+Bennett stopped, looking both exhausted and excited, and he fixed his
+unnaturally bright eyes upon Elliott with a penetrating gaze.
+
+“I’ll go,” said Elliott, “certainly. Who are your men, and where’ll I
+find them?”
+
+“Likely at the best hotel in Nashville. Inquire at the Arcadia saloon,
+or the Crackerjack. If they’re not in Nashville you can find out where
+they’re gone, and follow them up. Their names—better note them down:
+John Henninger (he’s an Englishman), C. W. Hawke, Will Sullivan. Hand
+me that writing-tablet.
+
+“What’s your first name?” continued Bennett, and he scrawled painfully
+with his left hand:
+
+    “Introducing Mr. Wingate Elliott. He’s all right.
+
+                                             L. R. Bennett.”
+
+“There’s a package of evidence under my pillow,” continued the wounded
+adventurer. “Pull it out.”
+
+Elliott extracted a crumpled envelope, bulging with a small, hard
+lump. This proved to be something wrapped in many folds of soft
+tissue-paper, and when unrolled Elliott saw a bright, pyramid-shaped
+bit of yellow metal, about the size of a beechnut.
+
+Elliott walked away from the hospital feeling a little giddy and
+light-headed at the sudden prospect of fortune. The enterprise was a
+legitimate one. The gold had belonged to the Transvaal Government, and
+that government was no longer in existence. Who was its owner? Was it
+Great Britain? But Elliott was a Democrat and a strong supporter of
+the independence of the South African Republics, and he could not
+acknowledge any claim of the Crown. At any rate, the finders of the
+treasure-ship would be entitled to a heavy salvage.
+
+But at the memory of Margaret he stopped short on the street in
+perplexity. What would she say? This was the very sort of adventure
+that he had promised to avoid. If she were there; if she knew all, and
+if she told him to drop it, he felt a conviction that he would drop it
+without hesitation. But yet—he walked on again—this was a legitimate
+salving enterprise, and he had never met one which offered so fair
+rewards.
+
+The gold was really no man’s. No one knew where it was; and with a
+chilling shock he recollected that he did not himself know where it
+was. But no matter; it could surely be located; and in default of any
+better method, they could visit every island in the Mozambique Channel
+till they found the bones of the unlucky _Clara McClay_.
+
+So he wrote to Margaret that night, saying that he was going to
+Nashville, on the prospect of a _legitimate_—he underlined legitimate;
+the word pleased him—enterprise which promised money.
+
+Naturally he said nothing about his finances; he promised to write
+again as soon as anything definite had happened, and hinted that he
+might meet her at the depot when she arrived in Baltimore. When the
+letter was posted he felt more at ease with himself. Almost penniless
+as he was, his imagination already rioted among millions, and with the
+yellow gleam flickering before his eyes he prepared to beat his way to
+Nashville.
+
+
+
+
+                    CHAPTER V. THE ACE OF DIAMONDS
+
+
+Elliott reached Nashville in two days, being lucky enough to catch a
+fast freight-train which carried him half the distance in a single
+night. For the last twenty miles he travelled on a passenger-train,
+paying his fare, to preclude the danger of arrest as he came into the
+great railway yards, and the consciousness of safety in the face of
+the police seemed to him almost an odd and unfamiliar sensation.
+
+It was early in the forenoon when he walked up the incline of the
+ill-paved street that reminded him of St. Joseph. He inquired for the
+Arcadia saloon; he found it on Cherry Street, and within the
+swing-doors it was cool and dusky, sparkling with glass and marble,
+and vibrating with electric fans. Two or three prosperous-looking
+Southerners were sipping through straws from glasses crowned with
+green leaves and crushed fruit, but Elliott contented himself with a
+glass of beer, and asked the bartender if he knew Mr. Henninger, or
+where he was to be found.
+
+“Sure,” said the mixer of drinks. “He’s been stoppin’ at the Hotel
+Orleans, and I reckon you’ll find him there now. If he ain’t there no
+more, ask for Mr. Hawke, and he’ll likely know something about him.”
+
+Hawke was one of the names Bennett had mentioned, and this small
+circumstance, or perhaps it was the beer, raised Elliott’s hopes. He
+finished his glass, and went straight to the Hotel Orleans, which was
+three blocks away.
+
+The great lobby was full of leather-covered sofas and easy-chairs, and
+floored with handsome mosaic, and perhaps a score of men were smoking
+or reading newspapers. It was clearly a good hotel, and Bennett had
+said that his friends would be at the best hotel in town. Elliott
+looked over the register, and, not immediately finding the names he
+sought, he spoke to the clerk, who did not take the trouble to conceal
+his contempt of Elliott’s disreputable appearance.
+
+“Yes,” he said, curtly. “That’s Mr. Henninger sitting by the window,
+in the gray suit.”
+
+Elliott walked over to the man indicated. He was young, probably not
+over thirty-five, dark-faced, strong-featured, with a suspicion of
+military severity and exactitude. His costume of hard gray tweed had
+evidently come from the hands of a first-rate tailor, and he was
+smoking a cigar which he never removed from his teeth, and looking
+through the great window with an air of reserved boredom. Elliott, as
+he approached, felt himself suddenly covered with a glance that was
+like the muzzle of a revolver.
+
+“Mr. Henninger?” he inquired, pausing.
+
+The man in gray looked him over for another instant, and then replied,
+frigidly:
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Elliott, who did not particularly care for this reception, handed him
+Bennett’s note without another word. Henninger took it, and as he
+opened it leisurely Elliott was struck by the shape of the hand that
+held it. It was the hand of a pianist, a hand that had never worked,
+white, long-fingered, thin, but looking all nerves and muscles, as if
+strung with steel wires.
+
+Henninger read the note, and examined it very closely. Then he glanced
+up at Elliott again with a slight smile, and held out his hand.
+
+“I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Elliott,” he said. “Sit down. What’s the
+matter with Bennett, and where is he?”
+
+“He’s in the hospital in St. Louis. He got rather badly hurt—by a
+train.” There were half a dozen men within earshot, and Elliott
+thought it best to avoid details. “He was coming here to see you when
+it happened. It seems there’s something doing.”
+
+He looked at Henninger, who returned the glance impenetrably.
+
+“I’ve a message from him, but it’ll take some time to tell it. He also
+wished Mr. Hawke and Mr. Sullivan to hear it.”
+
+Henninger turned to a man sitting close to him, who had been listening
+with all his ears, much to Elliott’s annoyance.
+
+“This is Mr. Hawke.”
+
+Hawke was a younger man than the Englishman, shorter, lighter, with a
+pleasant face and a light boyish moustache, like Elliott’s own. But
+there were the same hard lines about the mouth and nostrils, and the
+same level, aggressive gaze that Henninger possessed, so that at
+moments the unlike faces took on a curious similarity.
+
+“Sullivan isn’t in the city,” said Henninger, “but we know where he
+is. It’s all the same thing. But if we’re going to talk we’d better go
+up to my room.”
+
+It was a good room, at the front on the second floor, and as Elliott
+surveyed its luxurious appointments he felt sure that the party must
+be in funds, after all. A bell-boy presently came in with a tray, a
+bottle, a siphon of seltzer, and a box of cigars.
+
+In the midst of this unexpected luxury, and feeling conscious of his
+own shabbiness, Elliott told the story of the wreck of the _Clara
+McClay_, making reference to his notes, and at the end producing the
+little prism of gold that Bennett had cut from the brick. At the first
+mention of the treasure Elliott caught an involuntary glance flashed
+between Henninger and Hawke that was like the discharge of an electric
+spark, but neither made any comment till the tale was finished.
+
+Then Henninger poured out a spoonful of whiskey, brimmed up the
+tumbler from the fizzing siphon, and sipped it slowly, meditatively.
+
+“Confound it, what do you think?” burst out Hawke, who was wriggling
+with excitement.
+
+“I think we’d better telegraph to Sullivan,” replied Henninger,
+putting down the glass. “And I’ll wire Bennett, too—without any
+reflection upon your veracity, Elliott. Now, look here,” he went on,
+with increasing animation, “as it looks now, there may be a good thing
+in this, but first of all we don’t know anything. We don’t know where
+that wreck is. Seems to me that Bennett might have taken some kind of
+bearings. Now some one who knows more than we do may get there first.”
+
+“It looks to me as if that mate was up to something,” said Hawke.
+
+“Very much so. The question is, whether he got away. Bennett said he
+was hurt. If he did escape, you can bet he’ll come back, and there’s
+been a lot of time lost already.”
+
+“Well, now,” Elliott interrupted, “if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave
+you. I’m afraid I’m embarrassing your councils, and I’ve got a long
+road to Baltimore.”
+
+“But, hold on!” ejaculated Hawke. “You’re in this. Ain’t he,
+Henninger?”
+
+Henninger looked at Elliott again, with the same acutely penetrative
+scrutiny as at first, a manner not unfriendly, but coldly analytical.
+
+“Yes, he’s in it, if he cares to come in,” he answered, finally. “But
+you must understand, Elliott, what sort of a game this is. Everything
+may be all right, or not. It looks to me now as if those meat-cases
+didn’t belong much to anybody, but that much gold never goes
+unclaimed, and somebody is liable to turn up and want them. We may
+have to fight for it; they may bring in international law, though
+we’ve a right to salvage, anyway. There’s a risk of imprisonment;
+there’s risk of sudden death. We’re not men that deal in the crooked;
+straight work, with big profits and big chances, is our line, but
+we’re not men to stick at little things either, when there’s a heavy
+stake up.”
+
+“It seems to me that you are trying to frighten me,” said Elliott.
+
+“I am trying to frighten you. If I can do it, we don’t want you in
+this at all, or you’ll queer the whole thing. But if you’re game, if
+you understand what it is, and still want to come in—why, come along,
+and we’ll be glad to have you.”
+
+“Thanks,” replied Elliott. “I was just waiting to be formally invited.
+I’ve figured up all the risks already, and in my present financial
+state I’d take bigger risks for less money. And that reminds me that I
+must tell you that I can’t put any capital in this scheme. I’m down to
+my last dollar, and I’ve broken that.”
+
+Hawke began to laugh. “We’re all in the same boat, then. There’s my
+pile,” pulling out two or three bills, and a little silver. “I’ll bet
+it all that Henninger can’t match it.”
+
+“But,” Elliott exclaimed, “this room!—and those cigars were perfectos!
+Do you find Southern hospitality go that length?”
+
+“Not at all; it’s pure business. Universal credit is what has made the
+prosperity of this great country. We came; we looked respectable, and
+we stayed; and as long as we keep up appearances, and spend a little
+over the bar, they’re shy about presenting any bills too forcibly. It
+cuts both ways, though, for we’d have been glad to get away from here
+a long time ago, if we could. But we can’t take away our baggage, and
+without our trunks we couldn’t keep up appearances anywhere; without
+our appearances, we might as well be hoboes, or honest workmen. A man
+is no better than his coat. I’m not hitting at you,” he added,
+quickly.
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind,” Elliott assured him. “I’ve got a trunk full of
+respectable raiment in Baltimore. I’ll send for it.” He laughed too,
+as the piquancy of the situation struck him. “I don’t know how I’ll
+get them out of the express office, though. What dazes me is how you
+fellows expect to chase this million with the capital we have. We
+need, goodness knows how many hundreds, or thousands. How will you
+raise it—borrow it? Work for it?”
+
+“Hardly. Play for it,” replied Hawke, without hesitation.
+
+It was consistent. As Elliott looked at him, he was struck by the fact
+that these men never did anything but gamble, staking their fortunes
+or their lives with equal alacrity, generally with the odds against
+them, and generally with the dice loaded against them also. He had
+done the same thing himself, and he had promised Margaret to do it no
+more. But—
+
+“We’d been thinking of something of the sort before you came,” Hawke
+was saying, “so as to finish things one way or the other, and this
+decides it. We’ll need a lot of money—oh, a devil of a lot. We’ll have
+to fit out a regular expedition, hire a small ship of some sort, get
+diving apparatus, and all sorts of things. Five thousand dollars is
+the very minimum. Let’s see how much we can raise.”
+
+He emptied his pockets on the table; there was a little more than
+fifteen dollars. Henninger, after much rummaging, produced eleven.
+
+“I’ve got ninety-five cents,” said Elliott. “Let it go into the pot,
+too.”
+
+“Good,” said Hawke. “Total, twenty-seven dollars. Now, that’s a sum
+that’s of no use to any man, much less to three men. Just on general
+principles we might as well get rid of it, and get the agony over. But
+see what we can do with it; we’ll just go over to Nolan’s place, at
+the Crackerjack, and put up our little twenty-seven on the wheel, till
+we make or break. Why, I knew a man in Louisville who started with a
+dollar and broke the game. I didn’t see it myself.”
+
+“None of us ever saw those things done,” remarked Henninger, who was
+listening with a dry smile. “But you’re right, I believe. It’s the
+only chance I see, for Sullivan can’t possibly do anything for us in
+time. Who’s to do the playing? Who’s got the luck?”
+
+“I haven’t,” said Elliott, with conviction. “I tried it in St. Joe.”
+
+Henninger opened a small grip and took out an elaborate morocco case.
+There were rows of ivory poker chips in it, and a dainty, gilt-edged
+pack of playing-cards.
+
+“A few poker hands will show who’s in the vein,” he remarked, and
+began to deal the cards.
+
+From the first Hawke was by far the most fortunate, and when, upon the
+last deal, he held a spade flush without drawing it was apparent to
+all three that he was unconsciously in the enjoyment of a special vein
+of luck. With a pleasing degree of confidence in this act of
+divination, they handed over to him the entire capital of the
+syndicate. Hawke looked a little overwhelmed at the responsibility.
+
+“We’ll go up with you, but we’ll leave you absolutely to yourself,”
+said Henninger. “Play just as the fancy takes you, but play high and
+fast. Hit the luck before it turns; that’s the only chance of making
+anything.”
+
+The Crackerjack’s first floor was occupied by a marble and silver
+saloon, and above this was the gambling establishment,—an immense,
+cool, heavily curtained room, with shaded electric lamps above the
+tables that glittered with their devices in red and black and green
+and nickel. Overhead a dozen electric fans vibrated noiselessly.
+
+Eight or ten players were standing in a semicircle at the big “crap”
+table. Each man, as he rolled the dice, snapped his fingers violently
+in the air and emitted an explosive “Hah!” which is supposed to aid in
+turning the winning number. Behind the table stood the suave employees
+of the game. They did not snap their fingers; they made no
+ejaculations—but they won.
+
+The roulette-table was deserted; it is not a favourite game in the
+South, and the croupier was lazily spinning the ball to keep up an
+appearance of activity. Hawke bought twenty-seven dollars’ worth of
+white checks and settled himself on a stool, while Henninger and
+Elliott walked over to the crap-table and stood looking on, to leave
+him entirely open to the promptings of his “vein.”
+
+They heard the sharp, diminuendo whirr of the ball begin, but they did
+not look around. “Whirr-rr! click!”
+
+“That’s the four of hearts and the second twelve,” said the croupier.
+
+Elliott was astonished to hear a card thus called instead of a number,
+but Henninger explained in an undertone that, to evade the laws of
+Tennessee, all the roulette-wheels in the State are marked with the
+spots of the four suits of cards, up to the nines, instead of the
+usual thirty-six numbers. This naïve accommodation is supposed to
+satisfy at once the demands of justice and of sport, though it does
+not always save a gaming-house from being raided by the police.
+
+They did not know whether Hawke had lost or won, and they did not
+look, but they heard the rattle of checks, and the whirr recommence.
+For a time that seemed endless—perhaps it was half an hour—this went
+on. Henninger and Elliott tried to interest themselves in the fortunes
+of the crap game. They glanced over the newspapers. They walked
+restlessly about, smoked, peeped through the curtains at the street,
+tried to talk, and fell silent at every sound from the table where
+destiny was being spun out for them at the gay roulette.
+
+Evidently Hawke was not yet wiped out. Was he winning? They did not
+know; they dared not look, listening to the whiz and click of the
+wheel, and dreading to see the player return suddenly empty-handed.
+
+Finally the strain became unendurable, and Henninger turned and walked
+straight to the roulette-table. Elliott followed him, and bit off a
+half-uttered ejaculation as he caught sight of the board.
+
+Hawke was sitting behind a rampart of stacked checks. He had trebled
+and quadrupled his capital already; his stakes were scattered all over
+the board, and just as they came up he won again with a heavy play on
+the second dozen numbers. There was a high flush on his cheeks; he had
+laid down his cigar and forgotten it, but his face was full of the
+bright certainty of the gambler who is playing in luck and knows it;
+and he placed his stakes about the layout as unhesitatingly as a
+system-player.
+
+Henninger and Elliott carefully avoided meeting his eye, and watched
+the spinning wheel. Click.
+
+“The five of spades,” announced the croupier.
+
+The number had been “hit all round.” There were checks on it full, and
+more on its corners, and Hawke built another tier of his rampart with
+the proceeds of the coup.
+
+The atmosphere of the gaming-room is telepathic. The “crap-shooters”
+becoming aware that a “killing” was in progress, abandoned their game
+and came to look on in silence, some of them following Hawke’s
+ventures with small stakes.
+
+And still the player won. He cleared the rack of white checks and
+bought blue ones. With the change he was met by a reverse, and lost
+heavily for some minutes, but the luck returned, and he seemed in a
+fair way to empty the rack again.
+
+Again and again the numbers were squarely hit. When he lost he boldly
+doubled his stake; he plunged recklessly on the most improbable
+combinations, and the ivory ball, as if he had magnetized it, spun
+unerringly to the chosen number. Round the table no one spoke but the
+croupier; no one looked at anything but the board and the gaudy wheel.
+Even those spectators who had no stake in the game were as breathless
+as the rest. It was the sort of luck by which games are broken, and
+presently the proprietor, Nolan himself, came up and watched the
+struggle, silent and grave, with a slightly worried expression.
+
+There was another ten minutes of ill-fortune which sadly reduced
+Hawke’s store. Henninger, anxiously following the play, wondered if
+the run of luck were not exhausted—whether it would not be better to
+leave off. But as yet scarcely four hundred dollars had been won. Win
+or lose, the game must go on.
+
+Whiz—whirr-r-r—click! “It’s the ace of diamonds,” said the croupier,
+leaning over the wheel. There was a dollar check upon the winning
+square, and the croupier paid out the due thirty-five upon it. These
+Hawke nonchalantly allowed to remain upon the number that had just
+come up.
+
+Round spun the ball for endless seconds. Click!
+
+“The ace of diamonds repeats,” declared the croupier. The big stake
+had won. The croupier was working for a salary, and the result made no
+difference to him, but even he was affected by the pervading
+excitement, and he showed it as he set himself to count out the stacks
+of red checks necessary to pay the heavy winning—a little less than
+thirteen hundred dollars.
+
+With hands that trembled a little Hawke raked the checks together into
+a solid mass upon the same number once more, and the ball recommenced
+its swift circling. It was the highest play that the Crackerjack had
+ever seen. Nolan put out his hand as if to refuse the stake, and then
+withdrew it again, but his eyes puckered under his hat-brim. The
+spectators gathered closer round; a third appearance of the ace of
+diamonds would win almost fifty thousand dollars, and would
+undoubtedly break the bank, if not bankrupt the proprietor.
+
+“Great heavens! he’s pyramiding on the ace of diamonds again!” gasped
+Elliott, in a fright, as soon as he understood; and Henninger turned a
+savage face upon him for silence. But Hawke had caught the whisper. He
+glanced up irresolutely, and, before the ball had slackened speed, he
+swept three-fourths of the checks across the table and upon the simple
+red. The rest, about three hundred dollars’ worth, remained upon the
+lucky ace of diamonds.
+
+But he had changed his play, and every gambler at the table mentally
+predicted disaster from the ill-omened act. A man who had been about
+to follow his stake with a five-dollar bill, thrust it back into his
+pocket.
+
+Round spun the ball, circling the slow-moving wheel. Every eye was
+fixed upon the little ivory sphere that rolled and rolled as if it
+would never stop—then gradually lost momentum, gravitated toward the
+bottom, and tripped on a barrier. The iron-nerved Henninger bit his
+cigar in two, and it dropped unnoticed from his lips. The ball jumped,
+rolled across an arc of the wheel, and dropped into a compartment with
+a click.
+
+“By God, he hits it!” ejaculated a looker-on, irrepressibly.
+
+“You win, sir. It’s the ace of diamonds for the third time!” said the
+croupier, with a nervous smile, glancing at Nolan. “I’m afraid you’ll
+have to cash in some of those checks. I haven’t enough left to pay the
+bet.”
+
+Hawke nodded, but Henninger leaned forward.
+
+“No more,” he said, in an undertone to Hawke. “We’re through. We’ve
+got what we needed, and more. We’re a syndicate, Charley,” he
+explained to the croupier, “and Mr. Hawke was playing for us all.”
+
+“Shut up!” said Hawke, in a feverish whisper. “This is the chance of
+our lives. It’s the chance of our lives, I tell you. I’m going to
+wreck this game before I get up.”
+
+“No, you’re not. You’re going to stop right now,” responded Henninger.
+“Pull yourself together, man; you’re drunk. Tell him you want to cash
+in.”
+
+The two men glared at each other for a moment, the one flushed, the
+other deadly pale, and Hawke slowly came to himself.
+
+“I guess you’re right, old man,” with a nervous giggle. “How much have
+I won? Charley, I reckon I’ll cash in.”
+
+On this last and greatest coup a thousand dollars had been won on the
+colour, and a trifle over ten thousand on the number, and besides
+this, Hawke had several hundred dollars’ worth of checks from his
+previous winnings. Nolan himself counted the checks, stacking them
+back in place. The total amount was eleven thousand, seven hundred and
+thirty-eight dollars.
+
+Nolan took the loss like a veteran book-maker. “I’ll have to send out
+to the bank, gentlemen,” he said. “While you’re waiting, give the boy
+your orders.”
+
+“No, this is on us,” said Henninger. “Everybody take something on our
+luck. Nothing but Pommery’ll moisten it.”
+
+Nolan submitted gracefully. “I won’t deny that you do owe me a drink.
+I’ve been in this business, here and on the turf, about all my life,
+but I never did see anything like that run. I was glad when Mr. Hawke
+cashed in—and that’s no lie.”
+
+Hawke was growing as pale as he had been red, and the champagne glass
+trembled in his fingers. The two who had not played, suffering no
+reaction, were scarcely able to subdue their spirits to a
+sportsmanlike decorum. The money came, and Nolan counted it out in a
+thick green package—the weapon that was to win the drowned million as
+the twenty-seven dollars had won this. And yet, as Elliott looked at
+the hundred-dollar bills he felt a sudden shock of belated terror. It
+was only then that he realized what loss would have meant,—and it had
+been such a near thing!
+
+
+
+
+                 CHAPTER VI. THE MYSTERY OF THE MATE
+
+
+Elliott awoke next morning with an uneasy head and a feverish taste in
+his mouth, and looked vaguely around the unfamiliar hotel chamber
+without being able to recall how he had come there. It was only
+yesterday that he had been riding surreptitiously in box cars. But as
+his brain cleared he remembered the splendid and joyous dinner that
+had closed the day before, a misty glitter of glass and silver and
+delicious wines and cigars. That recalled his new friends and his
+message to them, and then the whole transformation of his fortunes
+flashed back upon him—the miraculous winning at roulette, the treasure
+trail; and, wide awake instantly, he jumped out of bed in a flush of
+excitement.
+
+He found a new suit of clothes on a chair, which he now recollected
+having bought ready-made on the previous afternoon. They were very
+good clothes and fitted well, and in the trousers pocket he found a
+thick wad of bills. Each of the partners had taken a hundred dollars,
+and the rest of the money was in a sealed package in the hotel safe.
+
+In the dining-room he found Henninger and Hawke finishing breakfast,
+though it was nearly eleven o’clock. Hawke looked wearied and nervous,
+with the rags of yesterday’s excitement still clinging about him, but
+Henninger was as fresh, as neat, and as unmoved as ever. A few other
+late breakfasters at the other end of the room looked at the trio with
+curiosity, for the report of their coup, greatly magnified in the
+telling, had gone abroad; and the negro waiter served them with
+exaggerated respect.
+
+In the lobby Elliott bought himself the best cigar he had ever smoked,
+luxuriating in the novel sense of riches, which was like a sudden
+relief from pain. He had never felt so wealthy in his life. The money
+had come with such incredible ease; the sum looked almost
+inexhaustible; and beyond it was the great treasure to be fished up
+from the African seas.
+
+There were too many people in the lobby for private conversation, and
+they returned to Henninger’s room.
+
+“First of all, I vote we send Bennett a hundred dollars. I kept it out
+for him when I sealed the money last night,” said Henninger. “I’ll
+wire him what we’ve done, and then I’ll wire Sullivan. I don’t know
+that we told you, Elliott, where Sullivan is. He’s in Washington,
+attending to a case for us. We were all in South America last winter,
+and we’ve got a claim against the Venezuelan government for damages
+and confiscation of property, and so forth, for two millions.”
+
+“Two what?” exclaimed Elliott.
+
+“Two millions. We thought we might get a few thousands out of it.
+Anyway, Sullivan has been trying to get our case taken up at
+Washington, but we’ll drop all that and tell him to meet us in New
+York.”
+
+“I’d like very much to look up that Madagascar channel on the largest
+map there is,” Hawke broke in, “and see what we can make of it.”
+
+He voiced a common desire. Every one wanted to look at it, and they
+went down to the Public Library and obtained a gigantic atlas. They
+propped it up on a table and put their heads together over the map of
+East Africa. The steamer route from Delagoa Bay to Zanzibar and Suez
+was marked in red, and at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel
+it passed through a tangle of little islands and reefs.
+
+“Comoro, Mohilla, Mayotta, St. Lazarus Bank,” read Hawke, under his
+breath. “It must be one of these.”
+
+They all gazed at the archipelago, two thumbs’ width on the paper that
+represented a hundred sea leagues. Somewhere among these islands lay
+the treasure that had cost the lives of a ship’s company already, and
+as he stared at the brown and yellow spots, Elliott saw in excited
+imagination the barren islands on the sunny tropical ocean, and the
+spray spouting high over the reefs where the sea-birds wheeled about
+the iron skeleton of the _Clara McClay_. There was the end of the
+rainbow; there was the golden magnet that had already stirred the
+passions of men on the other side of the world; and as he looked at
+the lettered surface of the map, he felt a sudden cold prescience of
+tragedy.
+
+“Glorioso, Farquahar!” murmured Hawke. “They surely couldn’t have run
+so far out of their course as that. St. Lazarus is my choice, and, if
+I’m right, we’ll make it St. Dives.”
+
+“We don’t know enough yet to make this any use,” said Henninger,
+suddenly. “Let’s get out.”
+
+The sight of the map and its hundreds of miles of islands and seas did
+in fact bring the problem into concrete reality, and forcibly
+emphasized the difficulties. They all felt somewhat downcast and
+vaguely disappointed, but, as they were going down the steps, Elliott
+had an inspiration.
+
+“It occurs to me,” he said, “that if anybody escaped in the boats,
+they must have been picked up somewhere at sea. In that case, the fact
+is likely to be reported in some newspaper, isn’t it?”
+
+“What have we been thinking of?” exclaimed Henninger. “You’re right,
+of course. The New York _Herald_ should have it, as she was an
+American ship. We’ll go back and look through the files of the
+_Herald_, if they have them, for the last few months.”
+
+The papers were bound up by months, and each man took a volume and sat
+down to run through the shipping news. Elliott finished his without
+finding anything, and obtained another file. He was half through this
+when Hawke tiptoed over to him.
+
+“Here’s where Bennett appears,” he whispered.
+
+It was a four-line telegram from Sydney, stating that a seaman named
+Bennett had been picked up from a raft in the Indian Ocean, reporting
+that the American steamer _Clara McClay_ had foundered with all hands
+in the Mozambique Channel.
+
+There was nothing new in this, but it seemed somehow encouraging, and
+while Elliott was reading it, Henninger came over to them. His eyes
+were sparkling, and he looked as if holding some strong emotion in
+check. He laid down his file before them, and put his finger on a
+paragraph, dated more than a fortnight earlier than the despatch from
+Sydney.
+
+                                          “Bombay, March 19.
+
+    “The Italian steamer _Andrea Sforzia_, arriving yesterday
+    from Cape Town and Durban, reports having picked up on the
+    10th about one hundred miles N. E. of Cape Amber, a boat
+    containing First Mate Burke, of the steamer _Clara
+    McClay_, of Philadelphia. He stated that his ship
+    foundered in deep water in the Mozambique Channel by
+    reason of heavy weather and shifting of cargo, and
+    believes himself to be the only survivor. He was almost
+    unconscious, and nearly dead of thirst when rescued.
+
+    “The _Clara McClay_ was an iron steamer of 2,500 tons,
+    built at Greenock in 1869, and has been for some years
+    engaged in the East and West African coast trade. She was
+    owned by S. Jacobs and Son, of Philadelphia, and commanded
+    by Captain Elihu Cox.”
+
+The two men read this item, and Elliott, glancing up, saw his
+mystification reflected on Hawke’s face. What new development did it
+indicate that Bennett and the mate should have told the same falsehood
+about the sinking of the _Clara McClay_, and certainly without
+collusion? Henninger meanwhile was carefully copying the paragraph
+into a note-book, and when he had finished, he gathered up the papers,
+returned them to the librarian’s desk, and led the way out of the
+building.
+
+“We’ve got a line on it at last,” he said, when they were in the open
+air, and there was a keen eagerness in his usually impassive voice.
+
+“It’s clear that the mate was saved, but it don’t help us to find the
+island, so far as I can see,” Hawke objected.
+
+“Oh, the island—confound it!” as they came into the crowds of Church
+Street. “Let’s go somewhere where we can talk.” And he shut his mouth
+and did not open it again till they were placed comfortably in a small
+German café, which happened to be almost empty.
+
+“You don’t seem to understand,” he then resumed. “The mate lied,—said
+the ship sunk in deep water, didn’t he? He told the same story as
+Bennett. Why? For the same reason. He must have known the bullion was
+there, after all. He took chances on being the only survivor of the
+wreck, and he wanted to choke off any inquiry. There’s never any
+search for a wreck that goes down in a hundred fathoms.”
+
+“But there were other survivors,” said Elliott. “There were others in
+that boat with him when Bennett saw them sailing away. That must have
+been the mate’s boat, and what became of the others?”
+
+“Ah, yes,—what?” replied Henninger, grimly. “He was alone when he was
+picked up.”
+
+There was a moment’s silence at this sudden apparition of the crimson
+thread in the tangle.
+
+“This is the way I see the story,” said Henninger. “That mate—what’s
+his name—Burke?—knew the gold was on board. How he found out, I don’t
+know. Whether he accidentally ran the steamer out of her course that
+night, or whether he piled her up intentionally, I don’t know, either.
+He may have done it by reason of his jag, or he may have tanked up to
+give himself courage to carry it through. I suspect it was the latter.
+Anyhow, when she was smashed, he saw his chance, for he reckoned that
+his was the only boat to get away safe. He had several men with him,
+but they seem to pass out of the story. He was picked up, carried to
+Bombay; he lied about the wreck.
+
+“What does he do next? Why, of course he gets ready to go back to
+Zanzibar or some such port and hire a craft to go to look for his
+wreck. If he thinks he’s safe, he may lie low for awhile; or, if he
+hasn’t the capital for the thing, he will have to hunt up some
+ruffians to finance him. But if he thinks that he’s in any danger of
+being forestalled, he’ll make haste. If by bad luck he reads of
+Bennett’s being picked up, it’ll galvanize him; and as like as not
+he’s sailing up the channel this minute, while we’re sitting here
+drinking lager, doing nothing—because we don’t know anything!”
+
+“Yes, but how are we going to find out anything,—where the wreck is,
+for example?” demanded Elliott.
+
+“Why, from this same mate, Burke, if we can catch him. He’s the source
+of knowledge. He knows very well where it is; if he didn’t, he
+wouldn’t have taken the trouble to lie about it. First of all, we’ve
+got to catch that mate, and when we’ve got him, we’ll induce him to
+tell us what he knows. Do you remember how Casal used to interrogate
+prisoners in Venezuela, Hawke? We’ve got to get on his trail right
+away, and meanwhile see that he doesn’t collar the cash before we know
+it.”
+
+“It’ll be a long, wide trail,” Hawke remarked.
+
+“No. There’s only one hemisphere for Burke, and only one spot in it,
+and that’s somewhere between Madagascar and the African coast. He
+won’t go far from that if he can help it, and wherever he goes he’s
+bound to come back. And he’ll have to come in his own ship, for there
+aren’t any steamers plying to his island. He’ll have to hire or buy a
+small craft on the East African coast, and there are only three ports
+that will serve.”
+
+Henninger sipped his beer, and meditated in silence for a little.
+
+“My idea would be something like this. Three of us will go to South
+Africa at once; we pick up Sullivan in New York, of course. One of us
+will post himself in each of those three ports,—Lorenzo Marques,
+Mozambique, and Zanzibar, watching every boat that comes in, every
+stranger that lands, and everything that goes on along the waterfront.
+If Burke turns up, our man will have to use his own judgment as to how
+to get hold of him,—bribe him or kidnap him, or anything, but keep him
+there at any cost till the rest of us can come. Meanwhile the fourth
+one of us will go to Bombay, and try to find out where Burke went and
+what he did. He might possibly be there yet; anyway, he must have left
+some trace at the consulate or the shipping-offices.”
+
+“At any rate,” said Elliott, “it appears fairly certain that no one
+knows anything about this ton of yellow metal but ourselves and the
+mate, Burke. Then there’s no danger of outside interference.”
+
+“It’s a fair race to Madagascar!” Hawke exclaimed.
+
+“It’s a race,” said Henninger, shrugging his shoulders, “but I don’t
+know about its fairness. We’re heavily handicapped at the start. Why
+we’re wasting time here, I don’t know.” He stood up suddenly,
+frowning, impatient.
+
+“Sit down and finish your cigar,” Hawke advised him. “There’s no train
+for New York till nine o’clock to-night.”
+
+“Yes, and there’s no fast steamer for South African ports at all.
+We’ll do best to sail for England, I fancy. Then the man who is going
+to India can take the P. and O., and the rest of us will go by the
+Union Castle Line to the Cape.”
+
+“But which of us is going to India?” Elliott inquired.
+
+“I don’t know.” Henninger glanced calculatingly at his companions.
+“I’d like to go to Zanzibar myself, if you don’t mind, because I
+suspect that it’s the dangerous point; and Sullivan should take
+Lorenzo Marques, because he was there once, and he knows something of
+the place. The shadowing lies between you two, as far as I can see.”
+
+“I’ll match you for it,” proposed Hawke.
+
+Elliott pulled out a quarter and spun it on the table, turning up
+tail. Hawke followed, and lost.
+
+“I’m to be the tracker, then,” said Elliott. “I’m afraid I’ll make a
+poor sleuth. I wish Bennett had given us a description of the mate,
+for he has probably changed his name.”
+
+“So do I. I’d like to have time to run up to St. Louis and talk it
+over with Bennett. I’d like a lot of things that we haven’t time for.
+Bennett can’t write with a broken arm, so there’s no use in writing to
+him for more details. But, as a matter of fact, I don’t really expect
+that you’ll come up with this man Burke at all. What I do hope is that
+you’ll find out where he went when he left Bombay, and if by chance he
+hired any kind of vessel anywhere, and in general what he was doing.
+We’ve got to get our information from him, there’s no doubt of that.”
+
+“And what about Bennett?” Elliott inquired, after a pause. “How is he
+to come into the game?”
+
+“The chances are that the game will be played before his arm’s
+mended,” said Henninger. “We’ll send him a hundred, as I suggested,—or
+let’s make it three hundred,—and of course he’ll share and share alike
+with the rest of us. I think I’d better write him to go to San
+Francisco as soon as he’s able to travel, if he hasn’t heard from us
+in the meantime, and hold himself in readiness there to join us.
+Frisco’ll be the most convenient port, and he can cable us his address
+as soon as he gets there.”
+
+“And I reckon we’d better telegraph to New York for staterooms,” Hawke
+suggested. “The east-bound steamers are always crowded at this time of
+year.”
+
+They sent the despatch at once to Cook’s agency, asking simply to get
+to Liverpool or Southampton at the earliest date possible, expense
+being no consideration. At the same time Henninger both telegraphed
+and wrote to Bennett; and Elliott wired to the express company in
+Baltimore to have his trunk placed in storage for him till his return.
+
+He had gone too far now upon the treasure trail to turn back, and
+indeed he would not have turned back if he could. It was really the
+romance of the adventure that fascinated him, though he did not think
+so. He told himself that it was a legitimate enterprise—he clung to
+the phrase—with a reasonable expectation of large profits. But in no
+manner could he see his way to write a complete explanation of his
+plans to Margaret; if he could have talked to her, he thought, it
+would be easy. He composed a letter to her that afternoon, however, in
+which he remarked negligently that he was going to India on a
+commission for other parties, with all expenses paid, and would
+probably not be back to America before autumn. At the end of the
+letter, forgetting his precaution, he hinted of a vast fortune which
+was scarcely out of reach,—an imprudence which he afterward regretted.
+
+The party left Nashville that night, and, as the train rolled out of
+range of the last electric lights, Hawke drew a long breath.
+
+“I did begin to think we were never going to get away from that town,”
+he sighed. “It looked like we were in pawn to the Hotel Orleans for
+the rest of our lives.”
+
+Henninger smiled queerly. “Since we are fairly away, I don’t mind
+telling you,” he said, “that the manager and I discussed the matter
+last week. I explained that we were waiting for a large remittance
+that was overdue, but it would certainly be here in a day or two; we
+expected it by every mail. He gave it four days to arrive,—then we’d
+leave or be thrown out. Elliott turned up on the last day.”
+
+
+
+
+              CHAPTER VII. THE INDISCRETION OF HENNINGER
+
+
+There was no time to spare in New York. The party went straight to an
+obscure but remarkably comfortable hotel near Washington Square, which
+Hawke recommended, and here they found Sullivan waiting for them. He
+had come up from Washington upon receiving his telegram, without
+knowing definitely what the projected enterprise was to be.
+
+Sullivan was apparently a trifle older than Hawke, and unusually
+good-looking. He was smooth-shaven, rather thin-faced, and he
+exhibited in a marked degree that mingling of icy self-possession and
+electrical alacrity that has come to be a sort of typical New York
+manner. He was very accurately dressed, and wore a gold pince-nez. He
+looked straight at you with a penetrating and impenetrable eye; he
+spoke with an unusually distinct articulation. He seemed to be
+perpetually regarding the world with a faint smile that was compounded
+of superiority, indifference, and cynicism. In reality, his mental
+attitude was far from either cynicism or indifference, but it took
+some time to find this out. His general appearance vaguely suggested
+that he might be a very rapidly rising young lawyer, and Elliott
+discovered later that he had, in fact, been trained for the bar.
+
+“And now, what’s this new scheme you’re working me into?” he inquired.
+
+“We’ll tell you about it after dinner,” said Henninger. “Did you make
+any progress in that Venezuela claim?”
+
+It appeared that Sullivan had not even been able to get what he called
+“a look in” for his money, but it did not matter much, for in any
+event the claim would have been temporarily dropped. They dined that
+night at the Hotel Martin, and when the waiter had gone away and left
+them in their private room with coffee and liqueurs, Elliott told
+Bennett’s story for the second time. Sullivan listened, smoking
+continual cigarettes, but as the plot developed, the same predatory
+glimmer stole into his eyes that Elliott had seen on the faces of his
+other companions.
+
+“It’s a big thing, certainly. It may prove a good thing,” he commented
+coolly, when Elliott had done. “It’s one of the sportiest things, too,
+that I ever heard of, but it strikes me that the odds are all on this
+mate you speak of. He knows where the wreck is, and we don’t.”
+
+“Exactly; and he’s going to tell us. We’re bound to intercept him
+before he gets back to the island, and if we can get ourselves posted
+all along the East African coast before he arrives, the thing is
+almost safe. But, until then, a day’s delay may cost us the whole
+pile. We had a stroke of luck in Nashville, and another in getting
+berths on the first Atlantic steamer, and if the luck only holds—”
+
+“When do we sail?”
+
+“On the _New York_, at noon to-morrow, for Southampton.”
+
+The next morning was breathlessly full of affairs. There was money to
+be changed, infinite small purchases to be made, a thousand last
+arrangements, and they had just time to snatch a hasty mouthful at a
+quick-lunch counter, and get down to the dock as the first whistle
+blew. The great wharf-shed was crowded, swarming and bustling about
+the great black wall of the steamer’s side, which appeared to be
+actually in the shed. The lofty, resonant roof echoed with the voices
+and with the roll of incessant express-wagons bringing late baggage.
+The place was full of the harbour smell of rotting sea-water, and the
+noise, the movement, the excitement, increased as the last moments
+arrived and passed.
+
+The decks were finally cleared of the non-passengers, and a dozen men
+tailed on the gangplank. A swarm of tugs were nosing about the
+monster’s bows. The last whistle coughed and roared, and the gap
+between the side and the wharf suddenly widened.
+
+Elliott leaned over the rail with delight, as she swung out into the
+river, and presently began to move under her own steam. The sierra
+outline of New York developed into coherence, towering and prodigious,
+jetting swift breaths of smoke and steam into the dazzling sky. An
+irradiation of furious vitality surrounded it. This was the city of
+the treasure-finders, of the searchers of easy millions, of the
+buccaneers. It was the place above all others where the strong is most
+absolutely the master, and the weak most utterly the slave; where the
+struggle, not so much for existence as for luxury, reaches its most
+terrific phase, evolving a new and formidable human type. Elliott felt
+himself of a sudden strangely in harmony with this city which he was
+leaving. The spoils to the victors—and he was going to be victorious!
+
+The ship was full, almost to her capacity, and the four gold-seekers
+were scattered about in different staterooms. Elliott’s room had two
+occupants already, and the sofa was made up for him at night. The
+saloon tables were crowded on the first day; then it turned cold, with
+a light, choppy sea and rain that lasted till the Grand Banks were
+passed, and half of the passengers became invisible. With the promise
+of fair weather they began to reappear, and on the third day the decks
+were lined with a double row of steamer-chairs.
+
+During the first days of the voyage Elliott fell into greater intimacy
+with Henninger than with any of the others of the party. It did not
+take the older and more experienced man to learn all he desired to
+know about Elliott’s vicissitudes. Elliott told it without any
+hesitation, making a humourous tale of it, and, though Henninger
+offered no confidences in return, he told Elliott curious adventures,
+which, if they were true, argued an extraordinary experience of
+unusual and not always respectable courses of life.
+
+Although he never became autobiographical, Elliott gathered by
+snatches that he must have been at one time, in some capacity,
+connected with the British army. Later he had certainly been an
+officer in the Peruvian army, but his manner of quitting either
+service did not appear. It was with South and Central America that he
+appeared to have had most to do. He had mentioned cargoes of munitions
+of war run ashore by night for revolutionary forces, fusilades of
+blindfolded men against church walls, and more peaceful quests for
+concessions of various sorts, involving a good deal of the peculiarly
+shady politics that distinguish Spanish America. Henninger drew no
+morals; he seemed to have taken life very much as he found it, and
+Elliott suspected that he had been no more scrupulous than his
+antagonists. At the same time he had a definite though singularly
+upside down morality of his own, which continually inspired Elliott
+with astonishment, sometimes with admiration, and occasionally with
+disgust.
+
+There was a good deal of whist played in the smoking-room of an
+evening, and a little poker, but with low stakes. It was on the
+preceding passage of this very ship that a noble English lord had been
+robbed of four thousand pounds at the latter game, and the incident
+was remembered. Elliott was no expert at poker, and his friends showed
+no inclination for play, so that, though they were in the smoking-room
+every evening, it was seldom that any of them touched a card.
+
+On the evening of the fifth day out Elliott was sitting quietly in a
+corner of the smoking-room with a novel and a cigar. It was nearly
+eleven o’clock, and the low, luxurious room was full of men, and
+growing very smoky in spite of the open ports. Sullivan had gone to
+his stateroom; Henninger and Hawke were somewhere about, but Elliott
+was paying no attention to anything that went on.
+
+Suddenly he became aware of a lowering of the conversation at his end
+of the room. He glanced up; everybody was looking curiously in one
+direction. In the focus of gaze stood Henninger, engaged in what
+seemed a violent, but low-toned altercation with a short, fat, but
+extraordinarily dignified blond little man who had been prominent
+among the whist players. One of the ship’s officers stood by, looking
+annoyed and judicial. Henninger was white to the lips, and his black
+eyes snapped, though he was saying little in reply to the fat man’s
+energetic discourse. No one else approached the group, but every one
+observed it with interest.
+
+All at once, upon some remark of Henninger’s, the little man hit out
+with closed fist, but the officer caught his arm. Elliott glanced
+round and saw Hawke looking on with considerable coolness, but,
+conceiving it his duty to stand by his friend, he got up and
+approached the trio.
+
+“Go away, Elliott. This is none of your affair!” said Henninger,
+sharply.
+
+Elliott retreated, feeling that he had made a fool of himself publicly
+and gratuitously. But he was consumed with curiosity as well as
+anxiety, for it struck him that this might be in some way connected
+with the wrecked gold-ship.
+
+Presently the three men left the cabin together and the buzz of talk
+broke out again. Elliott caught Hawke’s eye, and beckoned him over.
+
+“What was it?” he said, in an undertone.
+
+“I didn’t catch the first of it,” said Hawke. “I believe that little
+ass accused Henninger of being a notorious card-sharper, or something
+of the sort. The second mate happened to be there, and he heard their
+stories, and I expect they’ve gone to the captain now.”
+
+The curious quality of Elliott’s regard for Henninger is sufficiently
+indicated by the fact that at this information he was filled
+simultaneously with indignant rage and wonder whether the thing were
+true. He put the question directly to Hawke, who shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+“Henninger is absolutely the best poker player I ever saw,” he
+replied. “He’s better even than Sullivan, and no man can be as good a
+player as that without being suspected of crookedness. Of course, I
+don’t know all Henninger’s adventures, but I’d stake anything that
+he’s as straight as a string. He’s too thoroughbred a sport.”
+
+The little blond man presently returned to the smoking-room alone, but
+Henninger did not reappear. Elliott waited for fifteen or twenty
+minutes, and then went on deck.
+
+The spaces were all deserted, and the electric lights shone on empty
+chairs. It was a clear night, and the big funnels loomed against the
+sky, rolling out volumes of black smoke. As he walked slowly aft, he
+saw a man leaning over the quarter, looking down at the boiling wake
+streaked with phosphorescence. It looked like Henninger; drawing
+nearer, he saw that he was not mistaken.
+
+“How’d it come out, old man?” inquired Elliott, sympathetically.
+“Hawke and I would have backed you up if you had only let us. It’s an
+outrage—”
+
+“Will you shut up your infernal mouth—and get away from here!”
+Henninger interrupted, in a voice of such savage and suppressed fury
+that Elliott was absolutely stupefied for a moment.
+
+Startled and offended, he turned on his heel and walked forward nearly
+to the bows, and for a moment he was almost as angry as Henninger had
+been. He leaned over the rail and frowned at the creaming water.
+Perhaps he had been tactless,—but he could not forgive the ferocious
+rebuff that his sympathy had received. But as he stood there, the cool
+and calm of the mid-sea night began to work insensibly upon his
+temper, and he began to take a more lenient view of the offence.
+Glancing aft, he saw that Henninger had vanished. There was no one
+anywhere in sight but the officer on the bridge and a lookout on the
+forecastle-head; and no sound but the labouring beat of the
+propellers.
+
+He remained there for some time, for he heard eight bells struck, and
+the changing of the watch. Presently a hand touched his shoulder
+lightly.
+
+“Here, old chap, smoke this,” said Henninger, thrusting a large cigar
+wrapped in silver foil into his hand. “I was rude to you just now, but
+you came on me at a bad moment. Forgive me, won’t you?”
+
+“I oughtn’t to have said anything. It wasn’t any of my business,
+anyway,” said Elliott, throwing away the remains of his resentment,
+for when Henninger chose to be ingratiating he was able to exercise a
+singular charm.
+
+“I’m glad that little fool didn’t hit me,” went on Henninger, slowly.
+“There would have been trouble. He isn’t such a fool, either. His
+memory is excellent.”
+
+“You don’t mean that—really—” began Elliott, and stopped.
+
+“Elliott, I don’t know whether you’ve been in hard luck often enough
+and hard enough to get a correct light on what I’m going to tell you.
+No man knows anything about life, or human nature, or himself, till
+he’s been up against it,—banged up against it, knocked down and
+stepped on,—and the knowledge isn’t worth having at the price.
+
+“This was two years ago. I had just come up from Tampico, and I’d been
+two weeks in a Mexican jail because I wouldn’t pay blackmail to the
+governor’s private secretary. I had just fifty-seven dollars, I
+remember, when I landed in New Orleans, but I had a good thing up my
+sleeve, and I went straight up to St. Louis to see some men I knew
+there and interest them in it. Two of them came back with me to New
+Orleans. I was to show them the workings of the thing—it doesn’t
+matter now what it was—and if they liked it, they were to put up the
+capital.
+
+“We came down the river by boat. There’s a good deal of card-playing
+on those river boats yet, though nothing to what it used to be, of
+course, and we all three got into a game, along with a young sport
+from Memphis, who had been flashing a big roll all over the boat. Now
+I can play poker a little, and our limit was low, but I hadn’t any
+luck that day. I couldn’t get anything better than two pairs, and my
+pile kept going down till it reached pretty near nothing. All the
+money I had in the world was on that table, and my future, too, for I
+had to keep my end up with those capitalists. I was a fool to go into
+the game, but I couldn’t pull out. About that time I happened to feel
+a long, thin, loose splinter on the under side of the table. I don’t
+think that I’d have done it but for that, but I took to holding out an
+ace or two, sticking them under that splinter. I was beginning to get
+my money back, when—I don’t know how it happened—the fellow at my left
+suspected something, leaned over and reached under the table and
+pulled out the aces.
+
+“They don’t shoot for that sort of thing on the river any more, but it
+was nearly as bad. I got off at the next landing. All the passengers
+were lined up to hoot the detected card-sharper. This fellow on board
+here was one of them.”
+
+The brief, staccato sentences seemed to burn the speaker’s lips.
+Elliott could find nothing to say, and there was a strained silence.
+He could not see Henninger’s face in the dusk, but presently he gently
+touched his shoulder.
+
+Henninger started nervously. “Let’s walk about a bit,” he proposed in
+a more natural voice. “It’s too pleasant to go below.”
+
+They made the circumference of the decks two or three times at a
+vigorous pace, and without a word spoken.
+
+“Oh, I don’t blame them—not a bit!” said Henninger, suddenly. “It’s
+all a part of the game. We fellows are against the world at large; we
+don’t give much mercy and we don’t expect any. Only—well, I don’t
+know, but when I go up against these people who’ve always had plenty
+of money, who’ve lived all their lives in a warmed house, all their
+fat, stuffy lives, afraid of everything they don’t understand, and
+understanding damned little, and getting no nearer to life than a
+cabbage,—when I have to listen to those people talking honour and
+morality, sometimes it sends me off my head. What do they know of it?
+They haven’t blood enough for anything worse than a little respectable
+cheating and lying, and they thank God they’ve always had strength to
+resist temptation. They don’t know what temptation is. Let ’em get out
+on the ragged edge of things, and get some of the knocks that shuffle
+a man’s moralities up like a pack of cards. Something that they never
+tried is to come into a strange town on a rough night, stony broke,
+and see the lights shining in the windows, and not know any more than
+a stray dog where you’re going to fill your belly or get out of the
+rain.
+
+“There are worse things than that, too, for when a man gets down to
+rock-bottom, he doesn’t have to keep up appearances, and he can drop
+his dignity temporarily and wait for better days. But when it comes to
+being broke in a town where you’re known, where you’re trying to put
+through some business, sleeping at ten-cent hotels and trying to make
+a square meal out of a banana, and sitting round good hotels for
+respectability’s sake, and cleaning your collar with a piece of
+bread,—that’s about as near hell as a man gets in this world, and he
+comes to feel that he wouldn’t stick at anything to get out of it.”
+
+“I know,” said Elliott, retrospectively.
+
+“Of course, that’s all part of the game, too. If we stuck to the
+beaten track, there wouldn’t be any of this trouble. But, great
+heavens! could I settle down at a desk in an office and hope for a
+raise of ten dollars a month if I was industrious and obliging! Or if
+I went home,—but I’d suffocate in about ten days. I’ve got caught in
+this sporting life, and it’s too late to get out of it, and I couldn’t
+live without it, anyway. But there’s nothing in it—nothing at all.
+You’ve got a good profession, Elliott, and I give it to you straight,
+you’ll be wise to go back and work at it, and let this chasing easy
+money alone. Hawke’s another case. It makes me sorry to see him. He’s
+bright; he’s got as cold a nerve as I ever saw, and he’s young enough
+to amount to something yet, but he’s fooling away his life. I expect
+he made some kind of a smash at home; I don’t know; he’s as dumb as a
+clam about his affairs,—and so am I generally. As for Sullivan, I
+don’t care; he’s a fellow that’ll never let anything carry him where
+he don’t want to go. But if it was any good talking to you and Hawke,
+I’d tell you to take a fool’s advice and let grafting alone.”
+
+Elliott was at first amazed by this outburst, and then profoundly
+moved. It was the last thing to be expected from Henninger, but his
+equilibrium had been completely upset by the scene in the
+smoking-room, and he had not yet regained it.
+
+“You’re forgetting the _Clara McClay_. You don’t propose that we give
+that up, do you?” Elliott remarked.
+
+“I had forgotten it for a moment,” admitted Henninger. “No, we won’t
+give that up; and I’ll tell you plainly, Elliott, that we’re going to
+have that bullion if we have to cut throats for it. If this mate gets
+there first I’ll run him down alone, but I’ll have it. This thing
+seems like a sort of last chance. I’ve been playing in hard luck for a
+long time, and I’ve had about as much as I can stand, and this will be
+cash enough to retire on, if we can get it. Elliott, don’t you
+see,”—gripping his arm,—“that we’ve simply _got_ to get to that wreck
+first?”
+
+“We’re all just as keen as you are,” said Elliott. “You won’t find us
+hanging back.”
+
+“Yes, I know. But you’re younger, and it don’t seem to matter so much
+as it does to me,” Henninger responded in a tone of some depression,
+and they made several more rounds of the deck without speaking. At
+last Henninger approached the companion stairs.
+
+“I think I’ll go down to my bunk,” he said. “It strikes me that I’ve
+been talking a lot of gallery melodrama to-night, but that affair in
+the smoking-room rather got on my nerves. Don’t repeat any of all this
+to the other boys. I’ve given you a lot of better advice than I was
+ever able to use myself. Good night.”
+
+He disappeared with a smile, and Elliott went back to the rail to
+smoke another cigar, filled with a painful mingling of affection and
+pity for this unrestful spirit. He foresaw what he himself might be
+like in ten years. Thus far, his memory held nothing worse than
+misfortune, nothing of dishonour; but dishonour is apt to be the
+second stage of misfortune. “Go back to work, and let this chasing
+easy money alone,” Henninger had said, and he was right. It was the
+advice that Margaret had given him, and that he had vowed to take. But
+there was still the gold-ship, and Elliott thrilled anew with the
+irrepressible sense of adventure and romance.
+
+Next morning Henninger had regained his customary equipoise, and
+Elliott could hardly believe his recollection of last night’s
+conversation. Henninger gave an account of the accusation and of his
+defence very briefly to his friends. The captain, acting as arbiter,
+had ordered that Henninger should refrain from playing cards for
+stakes while on board, under penalty of being posted as a sharper. On
+the other hand, the accuser was warned not to make his story public,
+as there was no corroborative evidence of its truth.
+
+In spite of this caution, some word of the affair spread through the
+ship, and the rest of the voyage was not pleasant. Henninger found
+himself an object of suspicion; passengers were shy of speaking to
+him; no one was openly rude, but the atmosphere was hostile. His three
+friends stood by him, incurring thereby a share of the popular
+animosity, and Henninger came and went in saloon and smoking-room, to
+all appearances as undisturbed and indifferent as possible. Perhaps no
+one but Elliott knew how much wrath and contempt was hidden under that
+iron exterior, but every one of the four was glad when the hawsers
+were looped on the Southampton docks.
+
+It would be two days before the first Castle liner would sail for Cape
+Town, and they went over to London, where the last arrangements were
+completed. Elliott was to make for Bombay with all speed, and he drew
+two hundred pounds above the price of his ticket for expenses. He was
+to report by cable to Henninger at Zanzibar whether he discovered
+anything or not. Elliott would also be notified in case of
+developments at the other end, though it was very possible that it
+might be necessary for the rest to take sudden action without waiting
+him to rejoin them, and in such event the plunder was to be shared
+alike.
+
+Twenty-four hours later Elliott saw his friends aboard the big steamer
+at Southampton, amid a crowd of army officers, correspondents, weeping
+female relatives, Jews, and speculators, who were bound for the seat
+of the still smouldering war. Elliott himself returned to London,
+crossed to Paris, took the Orient Express, and was hurried across
+Europe and the length of Italy to Brindisi, where he caught the
+mail-steamer touching there on her way to Bombay.
+
+
+
+
+                  CHAPTER VIII. THE MAN FROM ALABAMA
+
+
+Elliott found the atmosphere on the big Peninsular and Oriental liner
+different from anything he had ever encountered before. The ship was
+full of Anglo-Indian people, army officers, civil servants, and
+merchants returning to the East, and whose conversation was composed
+of English slang and exotic phrases of a foreign tongue. The crew were
+mostly Lascars of intolerable filthiness, and there were innumerable
+Indian maids—ayahs, Elliott supposed them to be—whom he met
+continually about the ship on mysterious errands of comfort to their
+mistresses. There were queer dishes at dinner, where Elliott made
+himself disagreeably conspicuous on the first evening by wearing a
+sack coat; and the talk ran upon subjects which he had previously
+encountered only in the works of Mr. Kipling.
+
+Most of these passengers had come on board at Southampton and had
+settled so comfortably together that Elliott felt himself an intruder.
+He was distinctly an “outsider;” and he found it hard to scrape
+acquaintance with these healthy, well-set-up and apparently
+simple-minded young Englishmen, who seemed too candid to be natural.
+It was even more impossible to know how to approach the peppery
+veterans, who nevertheless were seen to converse jovially enough with
+folk of their own sort. He was distinctly lonely; he was almost
+homesick. His mind was perplexed with the object of his voyage, of
+which he felt the responsibility to a painful degree, so there were
+few things in his life which he ever enjoyed less than the passage
+from Brindisi to Alexandria.
+
+At Port Said another half-dozen passengers came on board. Elliott took
+them all to be English, apparently of the tourist class, travelling
+around the world on circular tickets. One of them was sent to share
+Elliott’s stateroom, much to his annoyance, but the man proved to be
+entirely inoffensive, a dull, respectable green-grocer with the strict
+principles of his London suburb, who was taking his daughter on a long
+southern sea voyage by medical advice. His sole desire was to return
+to his early radishes, and he spent almost all his waking hours in
+sitting dumbly beside his daughter on the after deck, a slight, pale
+girl of twenty, whose incessant cough sounded as if sea air had been
+prescribed too late.
+
+It was very hot as the steamer pushed at a snail’s pace through the
+canal. The illimitable reaches of honey-coloured sand seemed to gather
+up the fierce sun-rays and focus them on the ship. The awnings from
+stem to stern afforded little relief, and the frilled punkahs sweeping
+the saloon tables only stirred the heated air. At night the ship threw
+a portentous glare ahead from the gigantic search-light furnished by
+the Canal Company, and in the close staterooms it was impossible to
+sleep. Many of the men walked the deck or dozed in long chairs, and at
+daybreak there was an undress parade when the imperturbable Lascars
+turned the hose on a couple of dozen passengers lined against the
+rail. Then there was a little coolness and it was possible to think of
+breakfast, before the African sun became again a flaming menace.
+
+It was scarcely better when they reached the Red Sea, where, however,
+they were able to move at better speed. They had nearly completed this
+Biblical transit, when a mirage of white-capped mountains floating
+aerially upside down appeared over the red desert in the south, and
+all the passengers crowded to the starboard rail to look at it.
+Elliott had moved to the bow, and was staring idly at the strangely
+coloured low coast, red and pink and orange, spotted with crags of
+basalt as black as iron.
+
+“It would remind a man of Arizona, wouldn’t it?” a voice drawled
+languidly at his elbow.
+
+Elliott wheeled, a little startled. Leaning on the rail beside him was
+a young man whom he remembered as having come aboard at Port Said with
+the globe-trotters. He was attired in white flannels and wore a peaked
+cap, but the voice was unmistakably American, and Elliott felt certain
+that it had been developed south of the Ohio River.
+
+“I never was in Arizona, but I’ve seen the same kind of thing in New
+Mexico,” he answered. “How did you know that I had been in the
+Southwest?”
+
+“There’s nothing but the Bad Lands that’ll give a man that far-away
+pucker about the eyes,” said the other. “And anybody could pick you
+out for an American among all these Britishers. We’re the only Yankees
+on board, I reckon. I don’t mind calling myself a Yankee here, but I
+wouldn’t at home. I’m from Alabama, sir.”
+
+“I thought you were from the South. I’m a Marylander myself,” replied
+Elliott.
+
+“Is that so? I’m mighty glad to hear it. We’ll have to moisten
+that—two Southerners so far from home. My name is Sevier.”
+
+Elliott gave his name in return, and permitted himself to be led aft.
+He looked more closely at his new acquaintance as they sat down at a
+table in the stuffy cubby-hole that passes for a smoking-room on the
+Indian mail-steamers. Sevier was a boyish-looking fellow of perhaps
+thirty, short, slight, and dark, with a small dark moustache, and a
+manner that was inexpressibly candid and ingratiating. In time it
+might come to seem smooth to the point of nausea; at present it
+appeared offhand enough, and yet courteous—a manner of which the South
+alone has preserved the secret—and Elliott in his growing loneliness
+was delighted to find so agreeable a fellow traveller.
+
+The talk naturally fell upon Southern matters, drifted to the West and
+South again to Mexico and the Gulf. Sevier seemed to display an
+unusual knowledge of these localities, though Elliott was unable to
+check his statements, and he explained that he had been a newspaper
+correspondent in Central America for a New Orleans daily, the _Globe_.
+
+“The _Globe_?” exclaimed Elliott, recollecting almost forgotten names.
+“Then you must know Jackson, the night editor. I used to work with him
+in Denver.”
+
+“I’ve met him. But, you see, I was hardly ever in the office, nor in
+the city, either. I always worked on the outside.”
+
+“The _Globe_ had a man in San Salvador last year, named Wilcox, I
+think,” Elliott continued, recalling another fact.
+
+“Yes. I reckon he was before me. San Salvador—I sunk a heap of money
+there!”
+
+“Mining?”
+
+“Yes—or not exactly actually mining. I got a concession for a sulphur
+mine, and I was going to sell it in New York. It was a mighty good
+mine, too. There would have been dollars in it, and it cost me five
+thousand to get it. You know how concessions are got down there, I
+expect?”
+
+“How did it pan out?”
+
+“It never panned out at all, sir. There was a revolution next month,
+and the new government annulled everything the old one had done. I
+hadn’t the money to go through the business over again, but I did make
+something out of the revolution, after all.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Selling rifles to the revolutionists. I didn’t think at the time that
+I was helping to beat my own game. There’s money in revolutionizing,
+too. Down there a man can’t keep clear of graft, you know; it’s in the
+air.”
+
+In spite of the apologetic tone of the last sentence, Elliott
+recognized the mental attitude of the adventurer, which was becoming
+very familiar to him. He had heard a good deal from Henninger of the
+business of supplying a revolution with war material, in which
+Henninger had participated more than once. As often as not, it is done
+by buying up the officers of a ragged government regiment, and
+transferring, sometimes not only the rifles and cartridges but also
+the officers and men as well, to the equally ragged force in
+opposition.
+
+But if Sevier were an adventurer he was certainly the smoothest
+specimen of the fraternity that Elliott had yet encountered. And why
+should such a man be going to India, surely a most unpromising field
+for the industrious chevalier. As if in answer to the mental inquiry,
+Sevier announced that he was going to obtain material for a series of
+magazine articles upon the East, as well as for a number of newspaper
+letters which he proposed to “syndicate” to half a dozen dailies as
+special correspondence.
+
+“And I’ll have to spend the next six months mixing up with this sort
+of fellows,” he lamented, waving his hand toward a group of
+Anglo-Indians with seasoned complexions who were deep in “bridge” at a
+neighbouring table. “I’m too American, or too Southern, or something,
+to know how to get on with those chaps. I reckon it’s the fault of my
+education. I can’t drink their drinks, and I never learned to play
+whist right, and I’ve told them my best stories, and they took about
+as well as the Declaration of Independence. I expect I’ll be right
+glad when I get back where I can see a game of baseball and play
+poker. Do you play poker at all?”
+
+“Not on shipboard. I find it’s liable to make me seasick,” replied
+Elliott, a trifle grimly.
+
+The last apparently careless question had, he thought, given him the
+clue to the secret of his companion’s presence on board, though
+professional gamblers seldom operate upon the Eastern steamship lines.
+
+“I’ll give you a bit of advice, too,” he added. “Don’t start any
+little game on board, unless it’s a very little one, indeed. These
+boats aren’t as sporty as the Atlantic liners.”
+
+Sevier stared a moment, and then burst out laughing.
+
+“Oh, I’m no card crook,” he said, without showing any offence. “I
+didn’t want to skin you. I’m the worst poker player you ever saw, but
+I felt somehow like opening jackpots. I’ll play penny-ante with you
+all the evenin’, and donate the proceeds to a Seaman’s Home, if you
+like.”
+
+Elliott declined this invitation to charity, but he sat chatting for a
+long time with the young Alabaman. His suspicions were by no means
+lulled, but, after all, as he reflected, he would be neither Sevier’s
+victim nor his confederate, and, though he did not know it, he was
+acquiring something of the adventurer’s lax notions of morality.
+
+But it was pleasant to talk again on American matters, and to hear the
+familiar Southern opinions, couched in the familiar Southern drawl. It
+would, besides, have been difficult to find anywhere a more pleasant
+fellow traveller than Sevier. He possessed a fund of reminiscence and
+anecdote of an experience that seemed, in spite of his youth, to have
+been almost universal, and of a world in which he appeared to have
+played many parts. Newspaper work was his latest part, and he spoke
+little of it. Indeed, he was anything but autobiographical, and his
+tales were almost wholly of the adventures of other men, whose
+irregularities he viewed with the purely objective and unmoral
+interest of the man of the world who is at once a cynic and an
+optimist. Above all, he seemed to have an eye for opportunities of
+easy money which was more like a down-easter than a man from the Gulf
+Coast, though he confessed frankly that he was just then in hard luck.
+
+“I’ve made fortunes,” he said. “If I had half the money that I’ve
+blown in like a fool, I wouldn’t be a penny-a-liner now.”
+
+This remark forcibly appealed to Elliott; he had said the same thing
+many times to himself.
+
+It became a trifle cooler after the steamer passed the dessicated
+headland of Aden and put out upon the broad Indian Ocean. The weather
+remained fine, and there was every prospect of a quick passage to
+Bombay. With the lowering of the temperature, the irrepressible
+British instinct for games reappeared, and there were deck quoits,
+deck cricket, blindfold races, and a violent sort of tournament in
+which the combatants aimed to knock one another with pillows from a
+spar which they sat astride. Under the humanizing influence of these
+diversions Elliott found his fellow passengers less unapproachable
+than they had seemed, but he still spent many hours with Sevier, for
+whom he had conceived a genuine liking. The two Americans were further
+bound together by a common conviction of the absurdity of violent
+exertion with the thermometer in the eighties.
+
+On the third day after leaving the Red Sea, Elliott happened to pass
+down the main stairway as the third officer was putting up the daily
+chart of the ship’s progress. He paused to look at it. The steamer was
+then, it occurred to him, close to the point where the Italian ship
+had picked up the mate of the _Clara McClay_.
+
+He took from his pocket a map which he had made, and consulted it.
+This map showed the hypothetical course of the wrecked gold-ship in a
+red line, with dotted lines indicating the probable course of the
+driftings of both the mate’s boat and Bennett’s raft. As nearly as he
+could judge, the liner must indeed be at that moment almost upon the
+spot where the secret of the position of the wrecked treasure was
+saved, in the person of the Irishman.
+
+He was still looking at the map when Sevier came quietly down the
+stairs, paused on the step above him, and glanced over his shoulder.
+Elliott dropped the map to his side, and then, ashamed of this
+childish attempt at concealment, raised it again boldly.
+
+“Layin’ off a chart of your voyages?” inquired Sevier. “Ever been down
+there?” putting his finger on the Mozambique Channel.
+
+“No, I never was,” answered Elliott, somewhat startled at the
+question.
+
+“Neither was I. I’ve been told that there’s no more dangerous water in
+the world. They say the currents run like a mill-race through that
+channel, in different directions, according to the tides. The coast’s
+covered with wreckage. I thought you might have sailed along that red
+line you’ve marked.”
+
+“No, I don’t know anything about the place,” Elliott denied again,
+putting the map in his pocket.
+
+“Thinking of going there?”
+
+“Not at present.”
+
+“I wish I could find out something definite about the islands in that
+channel. Nobody knows anything about them at all except the Arab coast
+pirates, and they keep all the pickings there are to themselves.”
+
+“You’ll find better pickings in India, you vulture,” cried Elliott,
+with an easy laugh.
+
+He was far from feeling easy, however, and for a time he was sharply
+suspicious of the Alabaman. Yet it was highly improbable that any one
+else knew the secret of the _Clara McClay’s_ cargo and of her end; and
+it was practically impossible that any one knew more of the wreck than
+he did himself. Certainly Sevier could have no more definite
+information, or he would be sailing to the Madagascar coast instead of
+to India. Elliott persuaded himself that the young Alabaman’s
+questions had been prompted by mere curiosity, and that their
+startling appositeness was the result of coincidence. Still, the
+incident revived his sense of the need for haste, and renewed his
+eagerness to discover the traces of Burke, the brutal mate, the one
+man living who knew the whole secret of the drowned millions.
+
+Rapidly as the good ship rolled off the knots, her slowness irritated
+him. He counted the hours, almost the minutes, and it was hard to
+contain his impatience till they came at last in sight of the low,
+green-brown Indian shore.
+
+Bombay came in sight on the port bow that evening, a strange sky-line
+of domes and squares. Heat lightning flickered low on the landward
+horizon, casting the city into sharp silhouette against the sky, and
+from some festival ashore the clash and boom of cymbals and the
+terrific blare of conches rolled softened across the water.
+
+For hours after the steamer had anchored, the English civil and
+military servants stayed on deck to look at the field of their coming
+labours, and all night long the ship resounded with the clacking roar
+of the derricks clearing the baggage hold.
+
+“Poor devils!” murmured Sevier, looking at the English clustered along
+the rail. “I wonder how many of the passengers on this boat will ever
+see England again—or America, either.”
+
+And Elliott, thinking of his perilous mission, wondered also.
+
+
+
+
+                       CHAPTER IX. ON THE TRAIL
+
+
+Elliott had expected to find an Oriental city; he had looked for a
+sort of maze of black alleys, ivory lattices, temples, minarets, and a
+medley of splendour and squalor; but in his surprise at the reality he
+said that Bombay was almost like an American city. There was squalor
+and splendour enough, but they were not as he had imagined them; and
+at the first sight of the wide, straight, busy streets he felt a great
+relief, realizing that his detective work would not have to be pursued
+under such “Arabian Night” conditions as he had anticipated.
+
+At the landing-stage he surrendered himself to a white-robed and
+barefoot native runner, who claimed to represent Ward’s Anglo-Indian
+Hotel, and this functionary at once bundled him into a ricksha which
+started off at a trot. So unfamiliar a mode of locomotion revived some
+of Elliott’s primal expectations of the East, and the crowds that
+filled the street from house-front to house-front helped to strengthen
+them. The populace, as Elliott observed with surprise, were nearly as
+black as the negroes at home, clad in every variety and colour of
+costume, brilliant as a garden of tulips, and through the dense mass
+his ricksha man forced a passage by screaming unintelligible abuse at
+the top of his voice. Occasionally a black victoria clove its slow way
+past him, bearing a white-clad Englishman, who gazed unseeingly over
+the swarming mass; and Elliott for the first time breathed the smell
+of the East, that compound of heat and dust and rancid butter and
+perspiring humanity that somehow strangely suggests the yellow
+marigold flowers that hang in limp clusters in the marketplaces of all
+Bengal.
+
+At the hotel, a gigantic and imposing structure, he was received by a
+Eurasian in a frock coat and no shoes, who assigned him to a vast
+bedroom, cool and darkened and almost large enough to play tennis in.
+Elliott examined the unfamiliar appurtenances with some curiosity, and
+then took a delicious dip in the bathroom that opened from his
+chamber. He then changed his clothes and went down-stairs, determined
+to lose no time in visiting the United States Consulate.
+
+The mate of the _Clara McClay_, as the only surviving officer, was
+required to report the circumstances of the loss of his ship to the
+American consul; and self-interest, as much as law, should equally
+have impelled him to do so. For by reporting the foundering of the
+steamer in deep water he would clear himself of responsibility, and at
+the same time close the case and check any possible investigation into
+the whereabouts of the wreck.
+
+But Elliott learned at once that the white man in India is not
+supposed to exert himself. The manager of the house, to whom he
+applied for information, placed him in a long cane chair while a
+ricksha was being called, and then installed him in the baby-carriage
+conveyance, giving elaborate instructions in the vernacular to the
+native motor. And again the vivid panorama of the streets unrolled
+before Elliott’s eyes under the blinding sun-blaze,—the closely packed
+crowd of white head-dresses, the nude torsos, bronze and black, the
+gorgeous silks, and violent-hued cottons rolling slowly over the
+earthen pavement that was packed hard by millions of bare feet.
+
+The gridiron shield with the eagle looked home-like to Elliott when he
+set eyes on it, but he found the official representative of the United
+States to be a brass-coloured Eurasian, who seemed to have some
+recollection of the _Clara McClay_ or her mate, but was either unable
+or unwilling to impart any information. He was the consular secretary;
+the consul was out at the moment, but he returned just as Elliot was
+turning away in disappointment. He was a rubicund gentleman of middle
+age, from Ohio, as Elliott presently learned, and proud of the fact.
+He wore a broad straw hat of American design—Heaven knows how he had
+procured it in that land—and, to Elliott’s unbounded amazement, he was
+accompanied by his own steamer acquaintance, the Alabaman Sevier.
+
+Elliott nodded to Sevier, trying to conceal his consternation, and was
+for going away immediately, but the secretary was, after all, only too
+anxious to give assistance.
+
+“Be pleased to wait a moment, sir. This is the consul. Mr. Guiger,
+this gentleman is asking if we know anything of the position of the
+mate of the wrecked American steamer, called the _Clara McClay_.”
+
+“His position? By Jupiter, I wish I knew it!” ejaculated the consul,
+mopping his face, but showing a more than physical warmth. “This other
+gentleman here has just been asking me the same thing, and I’ve had a
+dozen wires from the owners in Philadelphia.”
+
+Elliott was thunderstruck at this revelation of Sevier’s interest in
+the matter, but it was too late to draw back.
+
+“I was asked to make inquiries by relatives of one of the crew,” he
+said, mendaciously. “Has the mate showed up here at all?”
+
+“Showed up? Of course he did. He had to, by Jupiter! But it was his
+business to keep in touch with me till the case was gone into and
+settled. He gave me an address on Malabar Hill,—too swell a locality
+for a sailorman, thinks I,—and, sure enough, when I sent there for
+him, they had never heard of him. I’ve not set eyes on him since.
+He’ll lose his ticket, that’s all.”
+
+“What sort of a report did he make?”
+
+“Why, nothing. Said the ship was rotten, and her cargo shifted in a
+gale and some of her rivets must have drawn, and she foundered. Every
+one went down but himself,—all drunk, I suppose. But he didn’t even
+make a sworn statement. Said he’d come back next day, and I was in a
+hurry myself, and I let him go, like a fool.”
+
+“You don’t know whether he’s still in the city?”
+
+“I don’t know anything. I’ve set the police to look for him, but these
+black-and-tan cops don’t amount to anything. He may be half-way to
+Australia by this time. Like as not he is.”
+
+“Where did he say his ship foundered?” asked Sevier, speaking for the
+first time.
+
+“Somewhere in the Mozambique Channel, in deep water. He didn’t know
+exactly. Along about latitude twelve, south, he said. Went down like a
+lump of lead.”
+
+Elliott thought of her weighty cargo, and, glancing up, he met
+Sevier’s eye fixed keenly on him.
+
+“Well, if the man can’t be found, I suppose that’s the end of it,” he
+said, carelessly, and turned away again.
+
+“Sorry I can’t help you, gentlemen,” responded the consul. “If I get
+any news, I’ll let you know. You don’t happen to have brought out any
+American newspapers, do you—Chicago ones, for choice?”
+
+Elliott was devoid of these luxuries, and Sevier followed him out to
+the street, where the ricksha was still waiting.
+
+“Is that your perambulator?” inquired the Alabaman. “Let’s walk a
+little. The streets aren’t so crowded here.”
+
+“It’s undignified for a white man to walk in this country, but I’ll
+make my ricksha man follow me,” said Elliott. “Besides, I couldn’t
+find my way back to the hotel without him.”
+
+They walked for several minutes in silence down the side of the street
+that was shaded by tall buildings of European architecture.
+
+“Were you ever at a New Orleans Mardi Gras? Hanged if this town
+doesn’t remind me of it!” Sevier suddenly broke silence. “By the way,
+I didn’t know that you were interested in the _Clara McClay_.”
+
+“I’m not,” said Elliott, on the defensive. “I was simply making
+inquiries on behalf of other people, to get some details about her
+loss. You seem to have more interest than that in her yourself.”
+
+“Oh, my interest is a purely business one,” replied Sevier, lightly.
+“I know her owners pretty well, and they wired me from Philadelphia to
+find out something about her. I found the cablegram waiting for me
+when I got here. Funny thing that the mate should disappear that way.
+Something crooked, eh?”
+
+“Possibly. Queer things happen on the high seas. It looks as if he
+were afraid of something.”
+
+“Or after something. I’ve heard of ships being run ashore for
+insurance.”
+
+“But the _Clara McClay_ didn’t run ashore,” Elliott reminded him. “She
+foundered in deep water, you know.”
+
+“Oh, yes, she foundered in deep water,” drawled Sevier. “Have you got
+the spot marked on your map?”
+
+This attack was so sudden and so unexpected that Elliott floundered.
+
+“That map you have in your pocket, with her course marked in red,”
+Sevier pursued, relentlessly.
+
+“That map you saw on the steamer? That wasn’t a chart of the _Clara
+McClay’s_ course. Or, at least,” Elliott went on, recovering his wind,
+“I don’t suppose it is, accurately. I drew it to see if I could make
+out where she must have sunk, by a sort of dead reckoning. You see, I
+felt a certain interest in her on account of the inquiries I was
+commissioned to make. Nobody knows exactly what her course was.”
+
+“Nobody but the mate, and he’s skipped the country. Well, I hope you
+find him, for the sake of the bereaved kinfolk.”
+
+He turned a humourous and incredulous glance at Elliott, and its
+invitation to frankness was unmistakable. Had Elliott been alone in
+the affair he might have responded, and taken his companion as a
+partner. But he had not the right to do that; there were men enough to
+share the plunder already; but he was possessed with curiosity to
+learn what Sevier knew, and, above all, what he wanted. Sevier had
+learned nothing from Bennett; he could have learned nothing from the
+mate, else he would not be in pursuit of him. How then could he know
+what cargo the _Clara McClay_ had carried?
+
+They walked a little further, talking of the features of interest like
+a pair of Cook’s tourists, while the ricksha man marched stolidly
+behind.
+
+“Queer that Burke didn’t know where she went down!” said Sevier, as if
+to himself.
+
+“Who’s Burke?” asked Elliott, on the alert this time.
+
+“The mate of the _Clara McClay_. Didn’t you know his name? I got it
+from the owners. They’re wild about him; swear they’ll have his
+certificate taken from him. It seems he hasn’t reported a word to
+them, and all they know is a newspaper item saying that he was picked
+up from the wreck.”
+
+“Was all that in your cablegram?” demanded Elliott, with malice.
+
+“They told me that in Philadelphia, before I left,” Sevier replied,
+imperturbably.
+
+This was just possible, but, after a rapid mental calculation of
+dates, Elliott decided that it was unlikely. Besides, why should the
+owners have cabled, if they had seen their messenger just before he
+sailed? But he had already arrived at the conviction that Sevier’s
+explanation of his interest in the treasure-ship was as fictitious as
+his own.
+
+“Isn’t it likely,” he said, easily, “that the mate was drunk and
+navigated her out of her course, and ran her ashore? He knows that
+he’s responsible for her loss, and he’s afraid to face a court of
+inquiry.”
+
+“He’ll sure lose his certificate anyway, if he doesn’t show up.
+Besides, he didn’t run her ashore. She went down in deep water.”
+
+“Sure enough, she went down in deep water,” Elliott acquiesced. A
+strong sense of the futility of this fencing stole over him, and he
+turned abruptly and beckoned to his ricksha.
+
+“It’s too hot to walk. I’m going back to my hotel—the Anglo-Indian.
+Come around and look me up. Are you going to search for your lost
+mate?”
+
+“Oh, dear, no! I’m not paid for doing that. Besides, I’m going up the
+country in a day or so to get stuff for my articles.”
+
+He watched Elliott into his ricksha, and walked off, Elliott wondered
+vainly where.
+
+He wondered also whether he ought not to keep close to this
+smooth-spoken pseudo-journalist, who, he felt sure, was also on the
+track of the treasure-ship. But this would hamper him fatally in his
+quest for the elusive mate Burke, and this quest was to be Elliott’s
+next affair.
+
+But he had next to no idea just where or how he would look. He was an
+inlander; he knew little of the ways of seafaring men ashore, and
+nothing at all of this particular city. He plunged boldly into the
+search, however, and, as a preliminary, he spent a day in roaming
+about the waterfront of Mazagon Bay, entering into conversation with
+such white seamen as he came across. But he was acutely conscious that
+he made a bungle of this. These men were too far outside his
+experience for him to enter into easy relations with them. His
+immaculate white flannels were also against him; he received either
+too much deference or too little, and he suspected that he was taken
+for a detective or a customs officer. He decided that he would have to
+assume a less respectable appearance.
+
+But every one he met professed total ignorance of the _Clara McClay_
+and her mate. Most of the men were transient; they had been in Bombay
+for only a few days or weeks, and the arrival of a single man, even
+the survivor of a wreck, is too slight an episode to leave any mark
+upon such a port as Bombay, where the shipping of a whole world is
+gathered. But a vessel is a different thing, and Elliott learned—it
+was the whole result of his day’s work—that the Italian steamer
+_Andrea Sforzia_, which had picked up Burke’s boat, had sailed a month
+ago for Cape Town.
+
+Had Burke gone with her? No one knew. Elliott thought it most
+probable; and in that case the rich grave of the gold-ship must be
+rifled already. A feeling of sick failure spread through Elliott’s
+system as he realized that the whole quest might have been in vain,
+even before they left America. But he cabled to Henninger at Zanzibar:
+
+“Steamer _Andrea Sforzia_ sailed Cape Town about April 10th, likely
+with Burke.”
+
+Still it might be that the mate had not sailed with the Italian
+steamer, after all, and, while awaiting a reply from Zanzibar, Elliott
+resumed his detective work. It was good to pass the anxious time, if
+it led to no other result. He hired a room in a cheap sailors’ hotel
+in Mazagon, where he went every morning to change his white clothes
+for a dirty, bluish dungaree slop-suit, which he bought at a low
+clothing store, and, thus suitably attired, he was able to pursue his
+explorations among the tortuous ways of the old Portuguese settlement
+and attract no attention so long as he kept his mouth shut. These
+wanderings he often carried far into the night, returning finally to
+his dirty room to resume the garb of respectability.
+
+He saw many strange things in these explorations among the groggeries,
+dives, and sailors’ boarding-houses, where the seamen of every
+maritime race on earth herded together in their stifling quarter. He
+sat in earthen-floored drinking-shops, where Lascars, Norse, Yankees,
+Englishmen, and Italians gulped down poisonous native liquors like
+water, and quarrelled in a babel of tongues; he leaned over fan-tan
+tables in huge, filthy rooms that had been the palaces of merchant
+princes; and nightly he saw the tired dancing-girls from the Hills
+posture obscenely before an audience of white, yellow, and brown sea
+scum, ferociously drunk or stupid with opium. More than once he saw
+knives drawn and used, and the blood spurt dark in the candle-light;
+and once he had to run for it to avoid being gathered in by the police
+along with his companions. But nowhere could he hear anything of what
+he sought, and he could find no one who would admit having seen the
+mate of the _Clara McClay_.
+
+He had received no reply from Henninger, and this, perhaps,
+illogically reassured him. After a week he had ceased to expect any,
+but by this time he had well ceased to believe that Burke was still in
+Bombay. If he were there, Elliott did not believe that he could be
+found, and he regretted anew that he had not obtained a detailed
+description of the man from Bennett. He visited the American consul
+again, but that official had no further news, and was able to describe
+the mate only as “a big fellow, with a big beard turning gray,” which
+was indefinite enough.
+
+After all, Elliott reflected, the man would be likely to change his
+name and to keep apart from other seamen. Surely, if he had been going
+to fit out a wrecking expedition, he would have done it long since,
+but such an enterprise would certainly have left memories upon the
+waterfront. Elliott could not learn that anything of the sort had been
+done. Possibly Burke had gone elsewhere to launch his expedition; very
+likely he had no money, and had gone elsewhere to obtain it.
+
+Elliott grew very weary with turning over all these possibilities, and
+almost disheartened, but he persisted in his perambulations about the
+sailors’ quarter. He was beginning to feel the deadly lassitude which
+stealthily grows upon the unacclimated white man in the tropics, and
+he would probably have given up the quest in another week, but for a
+lucky chance.
+
+The crush of the crowd had elbowed him into a corner beside a tiny
+second-hand clothes-stall near the landing-place of the coasting
+steamers, and he gazed idly at the foul-looking seamen’s
+clothing—caps, oilskins, sea boots, cotton trousers—that almost filled
+the recess in the wall that served for a shop. In the centre lounged
+the shopman, apparently half Eurasian and half English Jew, who looked
+as if he clothed himself from his own stock in trade.
+
+As Elliott was trying to disengage himself from the crowd, he knocked
+down a suit of oilskins, and stooped to pick it up. It was an
+excellent suit, though considerably worn, and as he rescued the heavy
+sou’wester hat, his eye was caught by rude black lettering on the
+under side of the peak. It had been done in India ink, and read “J.
+Burke, S. S. _Clara McClay_.”
+
+Elliott stared at the initials, dazzled by his good luck. They must be
+the oilskins of the missing mate, who had sold them there. Who else
+could have brought clothing from the wreck to Bombay? The shopman,
+scenting trade, had crept forward, and was sidling and fawning at
+Elliott’s shoulder.
+
+“Want nice oilskins, Sahib? Ver’ scheap. You shall haf dem for ten
+rupee.”
+
+“I’ll give you five,” said Elliott, carelessly, hanging up the cap.
+
+“Fif rupee? Blood of Buddha! I pay eight, s’help me Gawd!”
+
+“Look here,” said Elliott. “I don’t want the oilskins, but I think
+they used to belong to a friend of mine, and I’ll give you eight
+rupees if you’ll tell me where you got them.”
+
+The merchant wrinkled his brows, undoubtedly pondering whether he was
+in danger of compromising any thief of his acquaintance.
+
+“I remember,” he presently announced. “You gif me ten rupee?”
+
+“Ten it is.”
+
+“I buy dem more than two weeks ago from your friend’s kitmatgar,
+Hurris Chunder.”
+
+Elliott’s heart sank again. “My friend’s a sailorman, and wouldn’t
+have a servant.”
+
+“Hurris Chunder say his master gif dem to him,” insisted the Jew.
+
+“Can you find Hurris Chunder?”
+
+“Maybe,” with an avid grin.
+
+“Here’s your ten rupees,” said Elliott. “I’ll give you ten more if
+you’ll manage to have Hurris Chunder here to-night, and he shall have
+another ten for telling me what he knows. Does it go?”
+
+“Yes,” responded the trader, with lightning comprehension of Western
+slang. “The Sahib will find Hurris Chunder here to-night. At ten
+o’clock.”
+
+Elliott had already learned the indefinite notions of the East
+regarding time, and he did not care to show the impatience he felt, so
+he did not arrive at his appointment till nearly eleven o’clock. The
+yellow Jew led him to the rear of the tiny shop and introduced him
+through an unsuspected door into a small chamber littered with rags,
+old clothes, rubbish of copper and brass, and dirty-looking apparatus.
+It was here that the merchant ate and slept, and in the middle of the
+floor a white-clad figure was squatting, smoking a brass pipe.
+
+“This is Hurris Chunder, Sahib,” said the Jew, eagerly.
+
+The native, a golden-complexioned young man, with a somewhat sleepy
+Buddha-like face, put down his pipe, and bowed without getting up.
+
+“Very good,” said Elliott. “Here’s your ten rupees, Israel. Now, get
+out. I want to have a little private talk with our friend.”
+
+The half-caste scuttled into the outer shop and closed the door.
+
+“Now, then, Hurris, tell me the truth. Where did you steal those
+oilskins?”
+
+Hurris Chunder made a deprecating gesture. “May the Presence pardon
+me,” he said, in soft and excellent English. “I did not steal them. My
+master, Baker Sahib, gave them to me.”
+
+“Baker Sahib, indeed!” Elliott murmured. “Where is your master? What
+did he look like?”
+
+“He was a tall, lean, strong sahib, and when he first came he had a
+great gray beard. He lived for many days at the Planters’ Hotel, and I
+was unworthily his kitmatgar.”
+
+This was another surprise, for the Planters’ was an excellent, quiet,
+and rather high-priced hotel, and the mate was presumably short of
+funds.
+
+“He had money, then?”
+
+“He had much money, English money. He was a very generous Sahib.”
+
+“Well, you’ll find me a generous Sahib, too, if you act on the level.
+Here’s your ten rupees. Baker Sahib is at the Planters’, then?”
+
+“No, Sahib, he went away. He gave me the oilskins when he went. He
+sailed on a ship, a great black steamer. He went to England.”
+
+“To England? Are you sure it wasn’t Africa?”
+
+“Yes, Sahib, to Africa.”
+
+“What port was she bound for?”
+
+“Sahib, before God, I do not know. I think London.”
+
+“London? You said Africa. Wasn’t it America?”
+
+“The Sahib is right.”
+
+“Or Australia?”
+
+“If the Sahib pleases, it is so,” was the submissive response.
+
+“You old fraud!” said Elliott. “You don’t know where he went. Are you
+sure he went away at all?”
+
+“Yes, Sahib. He cut off his great beard, and I took his luggage to the
+ship for him,—a great black steamer, full of English. I do not know
+the name of the ship.”
+
+“Cut off his beard, eh? And you don’t know what ship it was, or where
+she went? Well, never mind, I can find that out myself. Your knowledge
+is distinctly limited, Hurris, but you’re a good boy, and I believe
+you’ve given me the key to the situation. It’s worth another rupee or
+two. Good-bye.”
+
+He tossed the native three more rupees, and went to change his
+clothes, bursting with excited impatience. To-morrow he would know the
+mate’s destination.
+
+As early as possible the next morning, he sought the Planters’ Hotel,
+and found that Baker Sahib had indeed been there since the 18th of
+March. This was the day after the arrival of the _Andrea Sforzia_ at
+Bombay, and the coincidence of the dates was corroborative evidence.
+He had left on the 27th of March, and his destination was unknown at
+the hotel.
+
+An examination of the shipping-lists, however, showed that on March
+27th three passenger steamers had sailed from Bombay,—the _Punjaub_,
+for London; the _Imperadora_, for Southampton, and the _Prince of
+Burmah_ for Hongkong. Elliott hastened to the city passenger offices
+of these lines, and begged permission to inspect the passenger-lists
+of their ships sailing on that day. The sheets of the _Punjaub_ and of
+the _Imperadora_ proved devoid of interest, but half-way down the list
+of the _Prince of Burmah’s_ saloon passengers he came upon the name of
+Henry Baker. He was booked through to Hongkong.
+
+The amazing improbability of this almost staggered Elliott. If the
+mate knew the secret of the treasure, why should he fly thus to the
+very antipodes; and if he knew no guilty secrets, why should he have
+secreted himself in Bombay, and cut off his beard for purposes of
+disguise?
+
+Were Baker and Burke identical, after all? But the American consul’s
+brief description of the man tallied with that of Hurris Chunder, and
+Baker had arrived at the Planters’ Hotel the day after Burke had
+arrived in Bombay. Baker had brought with him oilskins from the
+wrecked ship, from which he alone had been picked up at that time.
+
+It must be the mate, Elliott thought. In any case, Baker must know
+things of importance to the gold hunters, and Elliott cabled again to
+Zanzibar:
+
+“Mate sailed Hongkong. Am following.”
+
+Three days later he sailed for Hongkong himself. Up to the very moment
+of clearing port he was tormented with apprehensions that Sevier would
+appear on board. But, whatever were the researches of the Alabaman,
+they were evidently being conducted in a different quarter, and the
+weight gradually lifted from Elliott’s mind as the steamer ploughed
+slowly down the bay, past the white moored monitors and the little
+rocky islets of the peninsula. The treasure hunt had turned out a man
+hunt, but he hoped that he was upon the last stage of the long stern
+chase.
+
+
+
+
+                        CHAPTER X. A LOST CLUE
+
+
+Victoria City on Hongkong Island was almost invisible in hot mist and
+rain as the steamer crawled up the roads and anchored off the
+sea-wall. The gray harbour water appeared to steam, slopping
+sluggishly against her iron sides, and the rain steamed as it fell, so
+that the heavy air was a sort of stew of wet and heat and strange
+smells of the sea and land. The Lascar and coolie deck-hands were
+hurrying out the side-ladder, the water streaming from their faces and
+their coarse black hair; but, above the rattle and bustle of
+disembarkation, Elliott was aware of the movement of a mighty life
+clustered invisibly around him. The hum and roar of an immense city
+pierced the fog to landward; on the other side he was conscious of the
+presence of innumerable shipping. The noises came hollowly through the
+hot air, echoed from the sides of giant vessels; he caught hazy
+glimpses of towering forests of yards, and of wet, black funnels. The
+air was acrid with the smoke of coal, and the water splashed
+incessantly upon the sea-wall from the swift passage of throbbing
+steam launches. Away in the mist there was a rapid fusilade of
+fire-crackers, and somewhere, apparently from the clouds above the
+city, a gun was fired, reverberating through the mist. A ship’s bell
+was struck near by, and, before the strokes had ceased, it was taken
+up by another vessel, and another, and the sound spread through the
+haze, near and far, tinkling in every key:
+
+“Ting, ting; ting, ting; ting!” It was half-past five o’clock in the
+afternoon.
+
+The rain slackened, and a fresh breeze split the mist. To landward
+Elliott beheld a wet, white city climbing irregularly up the sides of
+a long serrated mountain. The waterfront along the sea-wall swarmed
+with traffic, with rickshaws, sedan-chairs, carts, trucks, gay
+umbrellas, coolies, Lascars, Chinese, Indians, Japanese. The port was
+crowded with shipping, from war-steamers to high-sterned junks, as
+motley as the throng ashore, and it was shot through incessantly with
+darting tugs and launches, so that in its activity it reminded him
+more of New York bay than of any other roadstead he had ever seen.
+
+During the voyage from Bombay he had perforce picked up a smattering
+of that queer “pidgin-English” so apparently loose and so really
+organized a language, and when he stepped upon the Praya he beckoned
+authoritatively to a passing palanquin.
+
+“Boy! You savvy number one good hotel?”
+
+“Yes, master. Gleat Eastel’ Hotel b’long number one good.”
+
+“Great Eastern Hotel, then—chop-chop,” Elliott acquiesced, getting
+into the chair, and the coolies set off as he had directed, chop-chop,
+that is, with speed. They scurried across the Praya, up a narrow cross
+street, and came out upon Queen’s Road. They passed the Club and the
+post-office and finally set him down at the hotel, which, in spite of
+its great size and elaborate cooling devices, he found intolerably hot
+and damp. It rained all that evening, till his clothing hung limply
+upon him even in the billiard-room of the hotel, and when he went to
+his chamber he found the sheets apparently sodden, and damp stood
+shining on the walls. Even in the steamy passage through the Malay
+Archipelago Elliott had spent no such uncomfortable night as that
+first one in Victoria at the commencement of the rainy season.
+
+A torrential rain was pouring down when he awoke, after having spent
+most of the night in listening to the scampering of the cockroaches
+about his room. It was a hot rain, and there was no morning freshness
+in the air. The room was as damp as if the roof had been leaking, but
+he began to realize that this was to be expected and endured in
+Victoria for the next three months, and, shuddering damply, he
+resolved that he would hunt down his man within a week, if “Baker”
+were still upon the island.
+
+By the time he had finished a very English breakfast, for which he had
+no appetite, the rain had ceased, leaving the air even hotter than
+before. The sun shone dimly from a watery sky. Elliott felt oppressed
+with an aching languor, but he was deeply anxious to finish his work
+and get away, so he went out upon the hot streets.
+
+This time he would not repeat the mistakes of Bombay, and he wasted no
+time in adventures about the harbour. He called a sedan-chair and,
+having ascertained the names of the leading hotels of the city, he
+proceeded to investigate them one by one.
+
+This search resulted in nothing but disappointment. There was no
+record of the man he sought at any hotel, neither at the expensive
+ones nor at the second and third class houses to which he presently
+descended. The mate might indeed have changed his name again on
+landing, though Elliott could think of no reason why he should do so.
+At the Eastern Navigation Company’s offices he ascertained that
+“Baker” had indeed landed at Victoria from the _Prince of Burmah_, but
+nothing was known of his present whereabouts.
+
+Finally Elliott called upon the American consul, who could give him no
+help. He had never heard of the _Clara McClay_ or her mate, but he
+turned out to be a Marylander, and he took Elliott to dinner with him,
+and made him free of the magnificent Hongkong Club, which is the envy
+of all the foreign settlements on the Eastern seas.
+
+Under the sweeping punkahs in the vast, dusky rooms of the Club a
+temperature was maintained more approaching to coolness than Elliott
+had yet found in Victoria, and he lounged there for most of the
+evening, observing that a great part of the male white population of
+the city seemed to do likewise. It had come on to rain again, and the
+shuffle of bare feet in the streets mingled with the dismal swish of
+the downpour. He had been in Victoria for twenty-four hours, but he
+found himself bitterly weary already and oppressed with a certainty of
+failure.
+
+Failure was indeed his lot during the next two weeks, though by an
+examination of the shipping-lists he assured himself that Baker had
+not sailed from Hongkong in the last two months, at least, not by any
+of the regular passenger steamers. It was out of all probability that
+he should have gone into the interior of China, and beyond possibility
+that he should have organized his wrecking expedition at so distant a
+port. Yet it was almost equally beyond the limits of likelihood that
+he should have come to Hongkong at all; and it was so beyond the
+bounds of sanity that he should voluntarily stay there during the
+rains that Elliott was forced to recognize that reason afforded no
+clue to the man’s movements.
+
+To search for a stray straw in a haystack is trying to the temper,
+especially when the search must be conducted under the conditions of a
+vapour bath. But Elliott sweltered and toiled with a determination
+that certainly deserved more success than he attained. He acquired
+much knowledge that was new to him in that fortnight. He learned the
+names and flavours of many strange and cooling drinks; he learned to
+call a chair or a rickshaw when he had to go twenty yards; to hang his
+clothes in an airtight safe overnight to save them from the
+cockroaches; to scrape the nocturnal accumulation of mould from his
+shoes in the morning, and to look inside them for centipedes before he
+put them on. He learned to keep matches and writing-paper in glass
+jars, to forget that there was such a thing as stiff linen, and to
+call it a dry day if the rain occasionally slackened. But he learned
+nothing of what he was most anxious to discover. He could find no
+trace of either Baker or Burke at the hotels, at the consulates, at
+the Club, or along the waterfront, and no man in Victoria admitted to
+having ever heard of the _Clara McClay_.
+
+From time to time he went up to the Peak, behind the city, to gain
+refreshment in that social and physical altitude. A house there cost
+fifty guineas a month, but every one had it who pretended to comfort
+or distinction. It was damp even on the Peak, but it was cool;
+Hongkong Bay and Victoria lay almost perpendicularly below, veiled by
+a steamy haze, but on the summit fresh breezes played among the China
+pines, and Elliott always took the tramcar down the zigzag road again
+with fresh courage for an adventure that was daily growing more
+intolerably unadventurous.
+
+The same desire for coolness at any cost led him to take the
+coasting-boat for Macao on the second Saturday of his stay. He had
+heard much already of the dead Portuguese colony, the Monte Carlo of
+the China coast, maintaining its wretched life by the lottery, the
+fan-tan houses, and the perpetual issue of new series of postage
+stamps for the beguilement of collectors. But Macao is cooler than
+Hongkong, and those who cannot afford to live on the Peak find it a
+convenient place for the weekend, much to the benefit of the
+gaming-tables.
+
+This being a Saturday, the boat was crowded with Victoria business
+men, who looked forward to a relief from the heat and the strain of
+the week in the groves and the fan-tan saloons of Macao. The relief
+began almost as soon as the roadstead was cleared, and a fresher
+breeze blew from a clearer sky, a cool east wind that came from green
+Japan. Elliott inhaled it with delight; it was almost as good as the
+Peak.
+
+The verdant crescent of Macao Bay came in sight after a couple of
+hours’ steaming. At either tip of the curve stood a tiny and
+dilapidated block-house flying the Portuguese banner, and between
+them, along the water’s edge, ran a magnificent boulevard shaded by
+stately banyan-trees. The whole town appeared embowered in foliage;
+the white houses glimmered from among green boughs, and behind the
+town rose deeply wooded hills. Scarcely an idler sauntered on the
+Praya; a couple of junks slept at the decaying wharves, and deep
+silence brooded over the whole shore.
+
+“Beautiful!” ejaculated Elliott, unconsciously, overjoyed at the sight
+of a place that looked as if it knew neither business nor rain nor
+heat.
+
+“Beautiful enough—but dead and accursed,” replied a man who had been
+reading in a deck-chair beside him.
+
+“It looks dead, I must say,” Elliott admitted, glancing again at the
+deserted wharves.
+
+The other man stood up, slipping a magazine into his pocket. He was
+gray-haired, tall, and very thin, with a face of reposeful benignity.
+The magazine, Elliott observed, was the _Religious Outlook_, of San
+Francisco.
+
+“An American missionary,” he thought; and his heart warmed at the
+sight of a fellow countryman.
+
+“I suppose it is pretty bad,” he said, aloud. “The more reason for men
+of your cloth to come over here.”
+
+The old man looked puzzled for a moment, and then gently shook his
+head with a smile.
+
+“I’m not a missionary, as you seem to think. At least, I ain’t any
+more of a missionary than I reckon every man ought to be who tries to
+live as he should. I’m just a tired-out Hongkong bookkeeper.”
+
+“You’re an American, anyway.”
+
+“You are too, ain’t you?”
+
+“Certainly I am,” Elliott proclaimed. “And you—”
+
+The little steamer rammed the wharf with a thump that set everything
+jingling on board. The gangplank was run out; the old man dived into
+the cabin in evident search for something or some one, and Elliott
+lost sight of him, and went ashore.
+
+Macao slumbered in profound serenity. As soon as the excursionists had
+scattered, the Praya Grande was deserted. The great white houses
+seemed asleep or dead behind their close green shutters and wrought
+iron lattices that reminded Elliott of the Mexican southwest. But the
+air was clear and fresh, and it was possible to walk about without
+being drenched with perspiration. Elliott strolled, lounged on the
+benches in the deserted park, visited the monument to Camoens above
+the bay, and finally ate a supper at the only decent hotel in the
+place, and enjoyed it thoroughly because it contained neither English
+nor Chinese dishes.
+
+In the evening there was a little more animation. There were strollers
+about the streets like himself; the band played in the park, and
+through the iron-barred windows he caught occasional mysterious
+glimpses of dark and seductive eyes under shadowy lashes. As he
+sauntered past the blank front of a great stone house that in the days
+of Macao’s greatness had possibly been the home of a prince, he was
+stopped by a silk-clad coolie who lounged beside the wide, arched
+entrance.
+
+“Chin-chin master. You wantchee makee one piecey fan-tan pidgin?”
+
+Elliott had no idea of playing, but he had no objection to watching a
+little “fan-tan pidgin,” and he allowed the Celestial “capper” to
+introduce him through the iron gate that barred the archway. The arch
+was as long as a tunnel, leading to the square _patio_ at the heart of
+the house, and here the scene was sufficiently curious.
+
+Here the fan-tan tables were set, completely hidden from Elliott’s
+view by the packed mass of men that stood above them. Over each table
+burned a ring of gas-jets; far above them the stars shone clear in the
+blue sky beyond the roofless court. Round the _patio_ ran a wide
+balcony, dimly lighted, where men were drinking at little tables or
+leaning over to look down at the game, and there was a scurrying to
+and fro of deft, white-robed Chinese waiters. Round the games there
+was absolute silence, except for the click of the counters, the rattle
+of the coin, and the impassive voice of the dealer as he announced,
+“Number one side!”
+
+Elliott pushed into the nearest group till he could see the table.
+Opposite to him sat the dealer, a yellow Portuguese half-caste, his
+hands full of small gilded counters; and beside him the croupier
+leaned over shallow boxes of gold, silver, and bills. The centre of
+the table was covered with a large square piece of sheet lead, with
+each side numbered, and coins scattered about the sides and corners.
+The dealer filled both his slim, dirty hands with the gilded counters
+and counted them out in little piles of four each. There were two
+counters left over.
+
+“Number two side!” he announced, wearily.
+
+Those who had staked their money upon the second side of the leaden
+square were at once paid three times their stake by the croupier;
+those who had placed their bets at the corner of the first and second,
+or the second and third were paid even money. The dealer again plunged
+his hands into the great heap of shining counters.
+
+Round the table men of all conditions, nationalities, and colours hung
+upon the dropping of the bits of gilded metal. There were coolies
+staking their small silver coins, Hongkong merchants, white and
+Chinese, putting down sovereigns and Bank of England notes, half a
+dozen English men-of-war’s men gambling away their pay, and a few
+tourists playing nothing at all. There were Japanese there, Sikhs from
+Hongkong, and a couple of wild Malays. The desertion of the streets
+was explained. The whole moribund life of the colony throbbed in these
+fierce ulcers.
+
+Elliott had seen the game often enough already to understand it, and
+he was determined not to play. The money Henninger had given him was
+going fast enough as it was. He watched the game, however, with
+considerable interest, and began to predict the numbers mentally.
+There was a run on the even numbers. Four came up three times in
+succession, then two, then four again, then three, one, and again back
+to the even numbers. Elliott watched the handful of gilded discs that
+the dealer was counting out, and long before the end was reached he
+felt certain of what the remainder would be, and usually he was right.
+If he had only played his predictions, he calculated that he would
+then have won three or four hundred dollars. He might as well have had
+it as not; he remembered the wonderful winning at roulette in
+Nashville, and the money in his pocket almost stirred of itself. He
+had a couple of sovereigns in his hand before he knew how they came
+there, but it was too late to play them on that deal.
+
+He waited, therefore, and elbowed himself through the crowd to be
+nearer the table. This change in position brought him close behind the
+shoulder of a tall man with gray hair, who was leaning anxiously
+across the table as the gilded counters slipped through the dealer’s
+delicate fingers. Elliott glanced abstractedly aside at the man’s
+face, and the shock of surprise made him forget the game.
+
+It was certainly his clerical-looking friend of the steamer, though
+his face no longer wore its expression of sweetness and repose. He was
+desperately intent on the game, that was evident. As the counters were
+cast out his lips moved counting “one, two, three, four!” He had his
+hand full of gold coins, and three sovereigns lay before him on number
+two.
+
+“Number four side!” the dealer proclaimed.
+
+The old man groaned audibly. The croupier swept in the losing stakes
+and paid out the winning ones with incredible celerity. There was a
+pause, while fresh bets were made. The old man looked from one side of
+the square to another with agonized perplexity, fingering his coin.
+Finally he put down three sovereigns on the fourth side, and almost
+immediately changed his mind and shoved them across to the third.
+
+Elliott did not play. The surprise of this encounter had brought him
+to himself, and he watched the man, wondering. It was plain that the
+old man was no gambler; he did not even make a pretence at assuming
+the imperturbable air of the sporting man. He was childishly agitated;
+he looked as if he might cry if his bad luck continued. Elliott called
+him a fool, and yet he was sorry for him.
+
+“Joss-pidgin man,” he heard a coolie whisper to another, indicating
+the inexpert player with contempt.
+
+Number four side won, and the old man lost again upon the next deal.
+His handful of gold was diminishing, but he staked six sovereigns upon
+the second side of the square. “Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord, help me!” Elliott
+caught the murmur from his moving lips. Elliott was disgusted, sick
+and sorry at the pitiful sight, and yet it was none of his business.
+The man turned once and looked him full in the face with absent eyes
+that saw nothing, faded blue eyes that were full of weak tears.
+
+“Number one side!” called the dealer, and the six sovereigns were
+raked in by the bank. The old man now had six coins left, and he
+staked three of them without hesitation on the second side as before.
+Squeezed against his side, Elliott could feel his thin old arms
+trembling with painful excitement.
+
+“Number one side!”
+
+A kind of explosive sob burst from the player’s lips. He followed his
+money with hungry eyes as it was gathered up, and then his glance
+wandered about the circle of white and brown faces with a pitiful
+appeal. His eye met Elliott’s; it was full of a hurt, bewildered
+disappointment. The old man put out his hand to stake his last pieces.
+
+Elliott grasped his arm, on a sudden impulse.
+
+“Don’t play any more,” he said, in a low tone. “You’ve got no luck
+to-night.”
+
+The player looked blankly at him, and tried to pull away his arm.
+
+“Stop it, I say,” reiterated Elliott. “You’d better come away with me.
+You don’t know anything about this game.”
+
+“Who are you? I don’t know you. You’re trying to rob me, but I’ll get
+my money back in spite of you.”
+
+“You old fool, I’m the best friend you’ve got in this house. You come
+right along with me,” said Elliott, energetically, trying to drag the
+gambler away from the table.
+
+He resisted with a sort of limp determination, but Elliott hauled him
+through the circle of players that immediately closed up behind them.
+No one troubled to look around; the game went on, and the dealer
+announced, “Number four side!”
+
+“Now put your money in your pocket. We’ll go out,” Elliott ordered,
+wondering at himself for taking so much trouble. For aught he knew,
+the man might have been able to afford a loss of thousands. The
+unlucky player fumbled tremulously with his sovereigns, and Elliott
+was finally obliged to tuck them away for him.
+
+The guard at the gate let them out, and Elliott resolved to take
+precautions against his protégé’s returning to the game.
+
+“You see this Sahib?” he said to the coolie. “Him have lost allee
+cash. You no pay him go inside no more, savvy? No more cash, him makee
+plenty bobbery. You savvy?”
+
+“Savvy plenty, master,” replied the coolie, with a knowing grin.
+
+“You’ll thank me for this to-morrow, if you don’t now,” said Elliott.
+“Where do you intend to go?”
+
+The old man made no immediate answer, but he leaned limply on
+Elliott’s arm, apparently in a state of nervous collapse. Unexpectedly
+he turned away, hid his face in his hands against the white wall of
+the house, and began to sob.
+
+“Oh, here! This won’t do. Confound it, man, brace up! Don’t break down
+before a Chinaman,” cried Elliott, irritated and sorry.
+
+“I have fallen again!” moaned the gambler, hysterically. “I am
+vile—yes, steeped in sin. Forty-seven pounds gone in an hour! And my
+one hope was to live a life that would tell for the Cross in this
+pagan land. I am weak, weak as water, and I have taken my child’s
+bread and cast it unto the dogs. They robbed me. My God, why hast thou
+forsaken me? I hoped to win ten times my money—I needed it so!”
+
+Elliott seized him by the arm and dragged him down the street in the
+ivory moonlight. The old man’s face was ivory-white, and great tears
+trickled from the faded blue eyes.
+
+“Don’t touch me,—I am not fit for you to touch me! I never gambled
+before. If I only had it back again—forty-seven pounds—two months’
+savings. I will get it back. Let me go. I will win this time!”
+
+“You’ll get a knife in your back if you go there again. I’ve left word
+to keep you out. For heaven’s sake, keep cool!” implored Elliott, in
+great distress. He had never seen an old man break down before. It
+wrung his heart, and he made a clumsy attempt at consolation.
+
+“Cheer up, now. You’re not broke, are you? I can lend you a pound or
+so, if you need it. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
+
+They reached a little park at the angle of two streets, and the
+gamester threw himself upon a bench. He had ceased to weep, but he
+looked at Elliott with a tragic face.
+
+“You know little,” he said, sombrely. “You are young and strong, but
+Satan stands at your back as surely as he does at mine. Pray,
+therefore, lest you also fall into temptation.”
+
+Elliott could think of nothing to say in reply to this.
+
+“As for me, it is too late. And yet,” throwing his hands up
+despairingly, “thou knowest, O Lord, if I have not served
+thee—laboured for thee in pagan lands with all my strength. Wasted,
+wasted! What was I to strive against the Adversary? I thought that I
+had begun a new life where all my errors would be forgotten, and now
+it is crushed—gone—and my child will starve among strangers.”
+
+“Tell me all about it. It’ll make you feel better, and maybe I can
+help you,” Elliott adjured him, afraid that he would grow hysterical
+again. “First of all, what’s your name? You said you were a
+bookkeeper, or something, didn’t you?”
+
+The victim of chance seemed to cast about in his memory. “My name is
+Eaton,” he announced at last, and stopped.
+
+“Well, and what about your new life and your child? You haven’t
+gambled them away, have you? Is your family in Hongkong?”
+
+Eaton transferred his gaze blankly to Elliott’s face, and allowed it
+to remain there for some seconds.
+
+“You seem to be a good man,” he said, finally.
+
+“Not particularly, but I’d like to help you if I can,” replied the
+adventurer.
+
+“My little girl is coming to Hongkong. I sent for her—from the States.
+She will arrive to-morrow, and I have no money.”
+
+“You sent for her? You sent for an American child to come to Hongkong
+in the rainy season? You ought to be shot!” Elliott ejaculated.
+
+“She was all I had, and I am an old man. I was going to begin a new
+life, with her help, and now I have lost the money I had saved for her
+coming.”
+
+“What in the world made you go up against that cursed game, then?”
+cried Elliott, wrathfully.
+
+“I wanted money—more money. I had a chance to make a fortune. I dare
+say you have never known what it is to feel ready to turn to anything
+to make a little money—anything, even to evil. And yet this was for a
+good purpose. But now I have nothing. Tell me what to do.”
+
+“I can lend you twenty pounds,” said Elliott, after cogitating for a
+little. “That ought to tide you over your present difficulty, and
+you’ve still got your job, I suppose. Yes, I’ll put twenty pounds in
+your daughter’s hands when she arrives, on the condition that she
+doesn’t give you a cent of it.”
+
+“You will lend me twenty pounds—you—a stranger?” cried Eaton, with a
+stare. “You—I can’t thank you, but I will pray—no, I can’t even pray!”
+He put his head on the back of the bench and sobbed. “You must forgive
+me,” he said, raising his head again. “I have never found so much
+kindness in the world. You are right; do not trust me with a cent. I
+am not fit to be trusted.”
+
+“Oh, yes, you are. I shouldn’t have said that,” encouraged Elliott,
+feeling horribly embarrassed. “And now, when is your daughter coming?”
+
+“On the Southern Mail steamer. It touched at Yokohama eight days ago,
+and it’s due to arrive here to-morrow afternoon.”
+
+“Very good. We’ll go back to Victoria in the morning, and we’ll both
+meet the steamer. But what possessed you to send for her at this time
+of year? Hongkong is bad enough for strong men.”
+
+“My girl is all I have in the world, and I haven’t seen her for so
+long,” replied Eaton, visibly brightening. “Maybe it was a father’s
+selfishness, but I reckon she needs my care.”
+
+“Your care!” said Elliott, brutally. “Where are you going to sleep
+to-night? Come with me to my hotel.”
+
+“I had planned such a happy home,” Eaton went on, as they walked
+through the moonlit streets. “I have had a hard life, but I had hoped
+to settle here in comfort with my little girl. We can do it, can’t
+we?”
+
+“I suppose so,” replied Elliott. “Though it seems to me that Hongkong
+is a mighty poor place for a happy home.”
+
+“It isn’t the place; it’s the love and peace,” the gambler prattled
+on, cheerfully. He appeared quite happy and restored in having thrown
+his cares upon Elliott’s shoulders. “I have fallen into sin more than
+once already, but the Lord knows how sorely I have repented, and His
+grace is abounding. Don’t you think they must have cheated me in that
+place?”
+
+“Oh, no. You were just out of luck. You should never play when you are
+out of luck,” said Elliott, sagely.
+
+“It seems to me that I ought to have won. I suppose you have gambled
+sometimes. Did you ever win?”
+
+“Occasionally.”
+
+“Well, luck or not, I shall never stake money again. I have been
+treated with more mercy than I deserve. I just begin to realize the
+horrible pit that I barely escaped. What would have become of me? I
+hardly dare to think of it. You have saved me, perhaps soul as well as
+body.”
+
+“Oh, stop it!” Elliott exclaimed.
+
+“I don’t think of myself so much as of my little girl. I shall tell
+her the whole story, and she will know how to thank you better than I
+can.”
+
+“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” cried Elliott, angrily. “She’ll have
+troubles enough in this pestilential place without that.”
+
+During the night Elliott more than once repented of his bargain, which
+seemed likely to involve his having the Eaton family slung round his
+neck to the end of his stay in the East. The old man was
+well-intentioned enough; he bristled with high resolutions; but he was
+clearly as unfit for responsibility as a child. Elliott deeply pitied
+the unfortunate daughter, but he could not feel himself bound to
+assume the position of guardian to the pair. He determined to meet the
+steamer as he had promised, hand over the promised twenty pounds, and
+henceforward avoid the neighbourhood of both father and daughter.
+
+The returning boat left Macao at ten o’clock the next morning, and
+they reëntered the steam and rain of Hongkong harbour. At three
+o’clock the big Southern Mail steamer loomed slowly in sight through
+the haze, surrounded by a fleet of small junks and shore boats. Eaton
+and Elliott boarded her before any one had landed. Her decks were
+crowded with passengers, hurrying aimlessly about, staring over the
+rail or standing guard upon piles of luggage.
+
+Elliott was making his way through the throng when some one touched
+his arm.
+
+“Mr. Elliott! Is it possible you are here? What are you doing? I
+thought you were in India. I was so frightened—oh!”
+
+“Margaret—Miss Laurie! Don’t faint!” gasped Elliott, shocked into
+utter bewilderment, and scarcely believing his eyes or ears.
+
+“I’m not going to faint. I never faint,” said Margaret, weakly. “But I
+was so startled and frightened. Did you know my father was here?”
+
+“Maggie!” cried Eaton, pushing past him, and in a moment the old man,
+whose face beamed like the sun, had his daughter in his arms.
+
+
+
+
+                       CHAPTER XI. ILLUMINATION
+
+
+The life of the Reverend Titus E. Laurie contained two active
+principles. The first of these was a tireless enthusiasm for the
+propagation of the principles of Methodist Christianity, and this had
+moved him ever since he could remember. The second was solicitude for
+his daughter Margaret, which, necessarily, had been operative for only
+the last twenty years. During these twenty years he had been absent
+from America almost all the time; the total number of weeks he had
+spent with Margaret would scarcely have aggregated a year; so that his
+affection was obliged to take the form of voluminous letters from
+out-of-the-way places in Asia and Polynesia, and of remittances of
+more money than he could afford.
+
+But his religious work took always first place in his mind. There
+never was, one might suppose, a man more clearly “called to the work”
+than Titus E. Laurie. He cared little for theology. He had never had
+any doubts of anything; if he had had them, they would not have
+troubled him. His temper was purely practical, and the ideal which
+filled his soul was the redemption of the world from its state of sin
+and death by the forces of the gospel as systematized by John Wesley.
+He was tolerant of other Protestant churches, but not of Roman
+Catholicism. He had preached when he was fifteen; at eighteen he was a
+“local preacher,” and at twenty he was in full charge of a church of
+his own in South Rock, New York.
+
+He was shifted about on that “circuit” according to the will of the
+Conference till the opening of the war, when he went to the front as
+an army nurse. In three months, however, he came back, vaguely in
+disgrace. It appeared that he had been unable to resist the entreaties
+of his patients, and had supplied them surreptitiously with tabooed
+chewing tobacco and liquor. But this was an error of kindness and
+inexperience; it was easily condoned by his supporters, and he resumed
+his more regular pastoral work. In 1866 he was much in demand as a
+revivalist.
+
+Mr. Laurie had charge of the funds of his church as well as of its
+souls. It was hard for a non-producer to live in the period of high
+prices succeeding the war. Just what he did with the money in his
+custody was never definitely ascertained; probably he could not have
+said himself; but he was unable to restore it when the time came. He
+did not face his parishioners; he left in the night for Mexico,
+leaving behind a letter of agonized remorse and promises of amendment.
+
+In Mexico he worked for two years in the mines and on a coffee
+plantation, and sent home the whole amount of his embezzlement in
+monthly instalments. At the same time he undertook to conduct
+Methodist prayer-meetings among the mine labourers, who were chiefly
+Indians and half-castes. This brought him into collision with his
+employer, the local priest, and his prospective converts. He was
+threatened, stoned, ducked, and menaced with murder, but he persisted
+and actually succeeded in establishing a tiny Methodist community,
+which survived for six months after he left it.
+
+Laurie was forgiven by his church, and returned to the North, but not
+to resume pastoral work. He became a bookkeeper in New York; but the
+evangelist’s instinct was too strong for him, and he took to mission
+work on the lower East Side. After a year of this, he succeeded in
+getting himself sent to the Sandwich Islands as a missionary, from
+which post he returned in five years, in disgrace once more. There
+were rumours of a shady transaction in smuggled opium, in which he had
+been involved, though not to his own pecuniary benefit.
+
+He remained in America this time for three or four years, and married
+a lady much older than himself. These domestic arrangements were
+broken up, however, by his leaving once more for the South Seas,
+having been able to secure another appointment for the mission field.
+He never saw his wife again. She died a year later in giving birth to
+a daughter, who was taken in charge by an aunt living in the West.
+
+Since that time his labours had extended over much of Polynesia, with
+digressions into Africa and China. He had sailed the first missionary
+schooner, the _Olive Branch_, among the Islands, and he had preached
+on the beach to brown warriors armed to the teeth, who had never
+before seen a white man. But the Reverend Titus E. Laurie escaped with
+his life. He thrived on danger, from the Fiji spears to the typhoons
+that came near to swamping his wretchedly found vessel on every
+voyage.
+
+And yet he did not escape scathless. It was rumoured that the
+fascinations of certain of his female converts in Tahiti had proved
+too much for him; a scandal was averted by his leaving the station. He
+was accused of pearling in forbidden waters; and in the end he had to
+resign his command of the _Olive Branch_, as it was conclusively
+proved that the missionary schooner had run opium in her hold with the
+connivance of her chief. The Rev. Titus E. Laurie, in fact, was
+granite against hostility when in the regular line of his work. He was
+made of the stuff of martyrs, but responsibilities found him weak, and
+he could no more make head against a sudden strong temptation than he
+could deliberately plan a crime.
+
+Elliott gleaned these details of Mr. Laurie’s career by scraps in the
+course of the next three weeks, but just how the missionary had come
+to change his name and settle in Victoria was a mystery to him. At any
+rate, Laurie, or Eaton, as he persisted in calling himself, had
+secured a position as accountant in the godown of one of the largest
+English importing firms, and seemed to propose to spend the remainder
+of his life in that station. He had now been there for over two
+months, and Elliott presently discovered that he was already in the
+habit of visiting the mission settlement at Kowloon and taking part in
+the meetings held there. The missionaries on duty found him a valuable
+assistant, and, as Elliott discovered, had made proposals to him to
+join them; but these Eaton had refused.
+
+Accustomed to the tropics, the heat did not affect him much, but
+Elliott at once insisted that a house must be rented upon the Peak for
+Miss Margaret. Coming directly from the sparkling air of the American
+plains, the girl could never have lived in the hot steam of the lower
+town. Laurie demurred a little on the score of expense,—not that he
+grudged the money, but because he did not have it. Elliott said
+nothing, but began to look about, and was lucky enough to obtain the
+lease of a cottage upon the mountain-top at a nominal figure,
+considering the locality. It had been taken by a retired naval officer
+who was unexpectedly obliged to return to England and was glad to
+dispose of the lease, so that Elliott bound himself to pay only eighty
+dollars a month for the remainder of the summer.
+
+He had the lease transferred to Laurie’s new name. “If you say a word
+to your daughter about this,” he warned him when he handed over the
+document, “I’ll tell her about your sporting life in Macao.”
+
+The missionary smiled uneasily, and then looked grave. “I can never
+begin to thank you, much less repay you. I am not much good
+now,—nothing but a weak old man, but my prayers—”
+
+“Oh, cut it out!” said Elliott, impatiently.
+
+Laurie flushed.
+
+“I beg your pardon; I didn’t mean that, of course. Only, you know,
+your daughter and I are old friends, and you mustn’t talk of gratitude
+for any little thing I do.”
+
+“But there is one thing I wish,” replied the old man, after an
+embarrassed moment. “I insist that you share the cottage with us.”
+
+Elliott hesitated, wondering whether it would be judicious, and
+yielded.
+
+“Certainly I will,” he said, “and glad to have the chance.”
+
+Margaret was delighted at the appearance of the cottage, a tiny
+bungalow, deep-verandahed, standing amid a grove of China pines that
+rustled perpetually with a cooling murmur. The highway leading to it
+was more like a conservatory than a street.
+
+“You dear old papa!” she exclaimed, sitting down rapturously upon the
+steps, after having rushed through the building from front to rear,
+startling the dignified and spotless Chinese cook which they had
+inherited from the former tenants.
+
+“How good you are to get all this for me! It must have cost such a
+lot, too. Mr. Elliott says that houses up here cost two hundred
+dollars a month. You didn’t pay all that, did you? Now we must be very
+economical, and we’ll all work. I’m going to discharge that Chinaman.”
+
+“You can’t work. You’d scandalize the Peak,” said Elliott.
+
+“I don’t care anything for the Peak. I’m going to fire that Chinee
+first of all. I’m afraid of him, he looks so mysteriously solemn, as
+if he knew all sorts of Oriental poisons, and I never can learn
+pidgin-English. No, I’m going to cook, and I’ll make you doughnuts and
+fried chicken and mashed potatoes and real American coffee and all the
+good old United States things that you haven’t tasted for so long.”
+
+“But you can’t do anything like that. No white woman works in this
+country,” Elliott expostulated.
+
+“But I shall,” she retorted, firmly.
+
+And she did,—or, rather, she tried hard to do it. But it turned out to
+be difficult, and often impossible, to procure the ingredients for the
+preparation of the promised American dishes, and she was by increasing
+degrees forced back upon the fare of the country, which she did not
+quite know how to deal with. It did not matter,—not even when it came
+to living chiefly upon canned goods, which usually were American
+enough to satisfy the most ardent patriot. The three had come to
+regard the affair in the light of a prolonged picnic, and they agreed
+that it was too hot to eat doughnuts and fried chicken, anyway.
+
+Laurie still went down the mountain to the sweltering lower city every
+morning and did not return till sunset. Elliott and Margaret usually
+spent the day together, for he had temporarily abandoned the search
+for the mate. An unconquerable horror of the town had filled him, and
+he silenced an uneasy conscience by telling himself that he would
+learn nothing new if he did go there.
+
+Sometimes he helped Margaret to wash the breakfast things, and then he
+sat lazily in a long chair on the wide veranda, smoking an excellent
+Manila cheroot and reading the _China Daily Mail_. He could hear
+Margaret softly moving about inside the house; she dropped casual
+remarks to him through the open window, and usually she ended by
+coming out and sitting with him, reading or sewing with an industry
+that even the climate could not tame. Below them the steamy
+rain-clouds drifted and wavered over the city; Hongkong Roads ran like
+a zigzag strip of gray steel out to the ocean, but it was cool, if
+damp, upon the Peak, and the two had reached such a degree of intimacy
+that sometimes for an hour they did not say a word.
+
+To Elliott this period bore an inexpressible charm. For many years his
+associates had been almost altogether men, the rough and strong men of
+action of the West; and the graceful domesticity that a womanly woman
+instinctively gathers about her was new to him, or so old that it was
+almost forgotten. They were alone together, for the ex-missionary
+scarcely counted, and they knew no one else on the Island. It was
+almost as if the Island had been a desert one, and they wrecked upon
+it. They were isolated in the midst of this great, torrid, bustling
+half-Chinese colony, and in that most improbable spot he found a
+little corner of perfume with such quiet and peace as he had scarcely
+imagined. He did not quite understand its charm, and he was not much
+given to analyzing his sensations. It was enough for him that he was
+happy as he had never been before in his life, and he thanked the
+treasure trail for leading him to this, and tried to forget that the
+trail was not yet ended.
+
+But he was astonished to find that Margaret made no reference to her
+father’s change of name, and seemed to accept it with as little
+surprise as if she supposed an alias to be a regular Anglo-Chinese
+custom. Elliott was afraid to speak of the matter, but his amazement
+grew till he could no longer restrain his curiosity, and he asked her
+one morning, pointblank.
+
+“Miss Margaret, do you know why your father has changed his name?”
+
+“Yes, I know,” she replied, looking slightly troubled. “I can’t tell
+you the reason, though. But it was for nothing disgraceful,—though I
+don’t need to tell you that. He had to do it; I can’t say any more.”
+
+“I beg your pardon—I merely wondered—of course I knew there was some
+good reason. It was none of my business, anyway,” Elliott blundered,
+privately wondering what fiction Laurie had dished up for his
+daughter’s consumption.
+
+“There is the best of reasons. My father is one of the noblest men in
+the world. You don’t know him yet, but he knows you. He is very keen,
+and he has been studying you; he told me so.”
+
+“Oh!” said Elliott.
+
+“Yes. And he has the very highest opinion of you, I may tell you, if
+your modesty will stand it. He says you have helped him a great deal.
+Have you?”
+
+“Not so far as I know.”
+
+“Well, he thinks you have, which comes to the same thing. Some day he
+may be able to do something for you—something really great.”
+
+“He has done it already in bringing you out here,” said Elliott, and
+was sorry directly he had said it.
+
+“I don’t like speeches like that,” said Miss Margaret. “Now, you’ve
+never told me why you are here yourself.”
+
+“Didn’t I tell you that I came on business?”
+
+“Yes, but what sort of business? Another hunt for easy fortunes, I
+suppose, such as you promised to give up. How much do you stand to win
+this time?”
+
+“What would you say if I said millions?”
+
+“I’d say that you didn’t appear to be looking for them very hard.”
+
+Elliott squirmed in the long chair and moaned plaintively.
+
+“I haven’t seen you looking for them at all, in fact. Since we moved
+to the Peak, you’ve done nothing but sit in that long chair.”
+
+“Yes, hang it, you’re right,” Elliott exclaimed, sitting up. “It’s
+true. I’ve been wasting my time for two weeks, spending my partners’
+money and not doing the work I’m paid to do.”
+
+“You must do it, then. Tell me, what is it?”
+
+“No, I can’t tell it, not even to you. It’s not my own secret. I’ve
+got three partners in it, and my particular task is to hunt down a man
+whom I never set eyes on. I’ve chased him a matter of ten thousand
+miles, and he’s supposed to be somewhere in this city,” looking down
+at the wet smoke that hung over the bustling port.
+
+Somewhere under that haze was the clue to the drowned million, and he
+felt the shame of his idleness. He had been philandering away his
+time, and at this juncture when every day was priceless. He turned
+back to the girl.
+
+“Thank you for waking me up. Your advice always comes at the
+psychological moment,” he said. “My holiday’s over. To-morrow I start
+work again.”
+
+He went down to the city that afternoon, in fact, but the old
+perplexity returned upon him when he tried to think how and where he
+was to begin his search. He went the rounds of the steamer offices and
+scrutinized the outgoing passenger-lists for the past three weeks.
+There was no name that he recognized. He tried the consulates again
+without any result. He could think of no new move, and he was
+irritated at his own lack of resource.
+
+Yet the Hongkong Club was the centre of all the foreign life of the
+colony; it was visited daily by almost every white man on the island,
+and if Burke, or Baker, were in the city, he would be certain to
+gravitate there sooner or later. So Elliott took to spending days in
+that institution, eagerly scrutinizing every big-boned elderly man of
+seafaring appearance who entered. But, as he often reflected, he might
+rub elbows with his man daily and not know it; and he regretted more
+than ever that he had not obtained a full description of the mate.
+
+After a week of this sedentary sort of man-hunting, he became imbued
+with a deep sense of the futility of the thing. It was only by the
+merest chance that he could hope to learn anything. It was chance that
+had assisted the affair up to the present; the whole scheme was one
+gigantic gamble, discovered, financed, and operated by sheer good
+luck, and the run seemed exhausted. Anyhow, he thought fatalistically,
+good fortune was as likely to strike him on the Peak as in the city,
+and he took to spending his days on the veranda once more. He cabled
+again to Henninger:
+
+“Track totally lost. What shall do?”
+
+Still, he did not totally abandon the search, but rather he made it a
+pretext for little exploring expeditions round the city and suburbs
+with Margaret, accompanied by her father when he could get away from
+business. They prowled about Kowloon, and they all visited Macao
+together, where Laurie exhibited the blandest oblivion of his recent
+lapse, and lectured his companions most edifyingly upon the curse of
+gambling, the degeneracy of the Portuguese race, and the corruption of
+the Church of Rome.
+
+They visited the shipyards opposite Hongkong, saw the naval
+headquarters and the missionary station, and, a week later, all three
+of them crossed to Formosa on Saturday and returned on Sunday, merely
+for the refreshing effect of the open sea breezes.
+
+The heavy Chinese smell came off the coast as they returned into
+Hongkong Roads late on Sunday night. Elliott sickened at the thought
+of resuming the search that had become hateful to him, in a city that,
+but for one thing, had become intolerable.
+
+Margaret was leaning over the bows with him, watching the prow rise
+and fall in splashes of orange and gold phosphorescence. The
+missionary was dozing in a chair somewhere astern. A score of coolies
+were gambling and talking loudly between decks.
+
+“This is all so wonderful to me!” said Margaret, suddenly. “Only a
+month or two ago I was in Nebraska, but it seems years. I had never
+seen anything; I had no idea what a great and wonderful place the
+world was. I think of it all, and I sometimes wonder if I am the same
+girl. But do you know what it makes me think most?
+
+“It makes me feel,” she went on, as Elliott did not reply, “how great
+and noble my father must be to have given his life to help this great,
+swarming heathen world. I never knew there were so many heathens; I
+thought they were mostly Methodists and Episcopalians. Don’t you think
+he really is the best man in the world?”
+
+“I never saw a man so full of high ideals,” Elliott answered.
+
+He had answered at random, scarcely listening to what she said. But
+the sound of her voice through the darkness had brought illumination
+to him, and he realized why he had shrunk from returning to the
+gold-hunt. He had found a higher ideal himself, and as he thought of
+his years and years of ineffectual, topsyturvy scrambling after a
+fortune which he would not have known how to keep if he had found,
+they seemed to him inexpressibly futile and childish. He had missed
+what was most worth while in life—but it was not too late. He hoped,
+and doubted, and his heart beat suddenly with an almost painful
+thrilling.
+
+Her white muslin sleeve almost touched his shoulder, but her face was
+turned from him, looking wide-eyed toward the dark China coast. He
+knew that she was meditating upon the virtues of her evangelistic
+father. He did not speak, but she turned her head quickly and looked
+at him, with a puzzled, almost frightened glance.
+
+“What’s the matter?” he said, almost in a whisper.
+
+“I don’t know,” Margaret murmured, and her eyes dropped. For a moment
+she stood silent; she seemed to palpitate; then she roused herself
+with a little shrug.
+
+“I am nervous to-night. For a moment I had a shudder—I felt as if
+something had happened, or was happening—I don’t know what. Come,
+let’s go back and find father. We’re nearly in.” She thrust her arm
+under his with a return to her usual frank confidence.
+
+“I’m so glad you’re here, too,” she said, impulsively.
+
+This was not what Elliott wanted, not what he had seen revealed
+suddenly between the blaze of the stars and the flame of the sea. But
+he would not tell her so—not yet. Not for anything would he shatter
+their open comradeship.
+
+
+
+
+                        CHAPTER XII. OPEN WAR
+
+
+The day after he returned from Formosa, Elliott received a reply to
+his cablegram, which said, simply:
+
+    “Find it. Buck up!
+
+                                                “Henninger.”
+
+It was easy to give the order, Elliott thought. But during the next
+few days the heat was terrible, even for Hongkong. On the Peak, men
+sweltered; in the lower city, they died. It rained, without cease, a
+rain that seemed to steam up from the hot earth as fast as it fell,
+and, to add terror to discomfort, half a dozen cases of cholera were
+discovered in the Chinese city, and an epidemic was feared. Most of
+the offices employing white clerks closed daily at noon, and there was
+a great exodus of the foreign population to Yokohama.
+
+On Sunday it cooled slightly, however, and the rain ceased. To gain
+what advantage they could of the respite, Margaret and Elliott walked
+out to the edge of the mountain-top, a quarter of a mile away, and
+spent the forenoon there. The missionary dozed at home; he slept a
+great deal during the hot weather.
+
+They were returning for lunch, which Margaret persistently refused to
+call “tiffin,” and had almost reached the bungalow, when a man stepped
+down from the veranda and came toward them along the deeply shaded
+street. At the first glance Elliott thought he recognized the
+graceful, alert figure, and he was right. It was Sevier, who had just
+left the house.
+
+The Alabaman stopped short when he met them, and lifted his hat,
+without, however, betraying any particular surprise.
+
+“Good mo’nin’, Elliott. So you’re in Hongkong?”
+
+“As you see,” replied Elliott, a trifle stiffly. “Were you looking for
+me?”
+
+“Not particularly. I was looking for another man.”
+
+“How long have you been here?”
+
+“Oh, about a couple of weeks.”
+
+There was a pause, which Elliott felt to be a nervous one.
+
+“How are the bereaved relatives of your wreck’s crew?” Sevier went on.
+
+“I don’t know. Have you found the man you were looking for?”
+
+“Not exactly. Have you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+There was another pause. Margaret was looking puzzled and impatient.
+
+“I beg your pardon, I’m delaying you,” said Sevier, with a slight bow
+toward the girl. “I wish you’d dine with me at the Club to-night at
+seven o’clock. Can you? I have an idea that I can tell you something
+that you’d be glad to know.”
+
+Elliott reflected for a moment, with some suspicion. “Thank you, I
+shall be delighted,” he accepted, formally, at last.
+
+“At seven o’clock,” repeated Sevier, bowing once more, and passing on.
+
+“Who was that man? I never saw him before. What were you talking
+about?” demanded Margaret, when they were out of earshot.
+
+“To tell you the truth, I don’t exactly know,” Elliott replied, in a
+sort of abstracted excitement.
+
+Margaret went to her own room to take off her hat, and Elliott turned
+into the big, darkened sitting-room, where he was confronted with the
+spectacle of the missionary seated beside the table with his head
+buried in his arms.
+
+“What did that man want here?” Elliott demanded, hastily. “Why, what’s
+the matter with you?”
+
+Laurie raised a face that was covered with perspiration, and haggard
+with some emotion. His mouth trembled, and he looked half-dazed.
+
+“That man!” he moaned, vaguely. “Oh, that man!”
+
+“Yes. What did he want?”
+
+“What did he want?” repeated Laurie, clearly incapable of coherent
+thought. “Oh, heavens! what did he not want?”
+
+Elliott mixed an iced glass of water and lime juice, for the
+missionary would never touch spirits.
+
+“Here, drink this, and try to brace up,” he said.
+
+Laurie drank it like a docile child, and looked up with frightened
+eyes.
+
+“I have done wrong,” he said, pathetically. “I have sinned often. I
+have fallen times past counting.”
+
+“I know it,” said Elliott. “What have you been doing now?”
+
+“The question is, what am I going to do?” replied the old man, with a
+flash of animation. “It has all been for her—whatever errors I have
+made. No one can say that I have ever profited by a dollar that was
+not honestly my own.”
+
+“Well—all right. But for goodness’ sake try to tell me what Sevier was
+asking about.”
+
+Laurie hesitated for a long time.
+
+“It was about the ship—the _Clara McClay_” he produced, at last.
+
+Elliott stared, speechless for a moment, shocked into utter
+bewilderment.
+
+“The _Clara McClay_?” he babbled. “The—” he was going to say the
+“gold-ship.”
+
+“What do you know about her? Where did you hear of her?”
+
+“I was on her. I was wrecked with her.”
+
+“The devil you were!”
+
+“Yes, wrecked, and saved only by the Lord’s wonderful mercy. I floated
+about for days in an open boat.”
+
+“Look here,” said Elliott. “I rather fancy that you’re running more
+risk now than you were in that open boat. You don’t know what deep
+waters you’re sailing. Sevier’s a dangerous man. If you want me to
+help you, you’ll have to tell me the whole story.”
+
+The missionary acquiesced with the alacrity which he always showed in
+casting his mundane responsibilities upon stronger shoulders.
+
+“I am ashamed to tell you the story,” he said. “And yet it was not my
+fault. At least, I had no intention of doing any wrong whatever. I was
+in the work at Durban under the British Mission Board. I had been
+there for two years, and I may say that my efforts had been abundantly
+blessed,” he added, with humble pride.
+
+“But I was tempted, and I was weak. I had a large sum of money in my
+hands—nearly five hundred dollars—which the Board had supplied for the
+building of a new chapel. I did not covet it for myself, but my salary
+was long overdue, and it was past my time to send a remittance to my
+daughter. The fund would not be needed for months, and I would have
+paid back every cent of it.”
+
+“So you took it,” Elliott interrupted.
+
+“I sent the remittance. About two weeks later an officer of the
+Mission Society came through South Africa, and I was called upon for
+an account of the fund. I was disgraced. I could have escaped, but I
+would not do that. I started to England in charge of the officer to be
+tried for embezzlement. There was an American steamer sailing from
+Durban, and we embarked on her. The name of the steamer was the _Clara
+McClay_.
+
+“I stayed in my cabin all the time, so I do not know anything of the
+voyage. I believe we called at Delagoa Bay for cargo and passengers.
+We had been out over a week when the ship struck. It was very dark,
+with a high sea running, and she seemed to be breaking up. They
+launched several boats, but all were sunk before they left the ship’s
+side.
+
+“The Society’s officer went in one of them and tried to induce me to
+go with him, but I have been many years at sea, and I knew the risk of
+trying to launch boats in that position. He was drowned, with most of
+the ship’s company. At daylight there were only five of us left,—the
+mate, three Boers who had been passengers, and myself. The sea was
+quieter then, and we managed to get the last of the boats overboard
+and to get clear.
+
+“The mate had been severely injured about the head by falling from the
+bridge when she struck, and I felt sure that he could not live unless
+we were picked up soon. There was no use in landing on the desert reef
+where we had struck, so we sailed north with a fair wind, for there
+was fortunately a sail in the boat. We hoped to get into the track of
+India-bound vessels,—or at least I hoped for it, for the Boers knew
+nothing of navigation, and the mate was growing to be either delirious
+or unconscious most of the time.
+
+“It was a week before we were picked up. I won’t tell you of its
+horrors. The water ran out, under the sun of the equator. The Boers
+drank sea-water, in spite of everything I could say, and all three
+went mad and threw themselves overboard. I just managed to keep alive
+and to keep the mate alive by dipping myself frequently in the sea and
+drenching his clothes with the bailer. But he died about the fourth
+day. He was conscious for a few hours before he died, and I did what I
+could to prepare his mind.
+
+“I had to throw his body overboard. I could not have kept it in the
+boat—in that heat. But I kept his oilskin clothes and his uniform cap,
+thinking they might be needful. He had nearly a hundred pounds in
+sovereigns in a belt, also, which he told me to take, as he had no
+relatives, and I took them.
+
+“It rained the night after he died, and that saved me. Two days later
+I was picked up by an Italian steamer, called the _Andrea Sforzia_.”
+
+Elliott emitted an ejaculation.
+
+“Yes, it was providential,” went on the missionary, patiently. “And
+then I saw an opportunity of burying my past. I trust it was not
+dishonourable. The Italian officers of the steamer could speak very
+little English, and as I was wearing the mate’s uniform cap they took
+me to be an officer of the wrecked ship. I would not have told them a
+falsehood, but I did not undeceive them. They took me to Bombay, and
+they made me go to the American consul, but I escaped as soon as I
+could, and concealed myself in the city for a couple of weeks. Then I
+came on to Hongkong, where I hoped—”
+
+“Do you know just where the _Clara McClay_ was wrecked?” Elliott
+demanded, trying to keep cool in the face of this revelation.
+
+“That is what that man asked me. It must have been off the northwest
+coast of Madagascar.”
+
+“But don’t you know the exact spot?”
+
+“How could I? I was never out of my cabin till the night she struck.”
+
+Elliott burst into a bitter and uncontrollable roar of laughter. This,
+then, was the end of the trail he had followed from the centre of the
+United States at such expense and with such hopes. It ended in a man
+with whom he had unsuspectingly lived for a month, an aged
+ex-missionary of infirm moral habits.
+
+“That man who was here asked me the same thing,” repeated Laurie,
+plaintively. “Why did he want to know where she struck—or why do you
+want to know? My God! I had almost forgotten it!” he cried,
+shuddering. “What shall I do? How can I save myself?”
+
+“What on earth do you mean?” cried Elliott.
+
+“He threatened me with disgrace—and arrest, unless I would tell him
+where the ship went down. He said he would expose me to the British
+Mission Board—and he would put all the proofs of—of more than that, of
+other things, in the hands of my daughter. I deserve to be punished. I
+can face even disgrace for myself—but not for her—not for my little
+girl.”
+
+“No, she mustn’t hear of anything of the sort,” said Elliott. He
+considered the situation for several minutes, walking to and fro. “Why
+did you tell everybody that the ship went down in deep water?” he
+asked.
+
+The missionary started. “How did you know that I did? It was a sudden
+temptation. The consul in Bombay asked me if she foundered at sea, and
+I said she did. It made no difference to any one, and it seemed safer.
+You must remember the state I was in, after a week in an open boat
+without water.”
+
+“Well, don’t worry,” said Elliott. “I dare say you didn’t mean any
+harm, but that little remark of yours has cost a good deal of trouble
+and a good many thousand dollars. But I’ll see that Sevier doesn’t
+trouble you. I know him pretty well. I’m going to dine with him
+to-night, in fact, and I’ll explain things to him.”
+
+Laurie brightened wonderfully at this assurance. During the past month
+he had come to have an almost childlike trust in Elliott’s powers of
+saving him from troubles, and at lunch he had almost recovered his
+customary serene benignity. But Elliott was far from that placid state
+of mind. The whole campaign would have to be altered. There was now no
+hope of learning the location of the wreck from any of her survivors.
+So far as he could see, there was only the chance of searching all
+that portion of the channel till her bones were discovered, and it was
+ten to one that the Arab coasters would have been before them. But at
+any rate he could now meet Sevier without fear; he had no longer any
+plan to conceal.
+
+He spent that afternoon in anxious thought, and finally wrote a long
+letter to Henninger, detailing his adventures on the man-hunt that had
+ended in a mare’s nest. As the letter might take over a month to reach
+Zanzibar, he stopped at the cable office on his way to the Club, and
+sent the following message:
+
+“Mate dead, taking secret with him. Shall I join you? Letter follows.”
+
+Sevier was waiting for him when he arrived at the Club’s massive
+façade, and a table was already reserved in the farthest corner of the
+dining-room. The air was heavy under the swinging punkahs, for it had
+come on to rain again, and the drip and splash of the streets came
+through the open windows.
+
+They discussed the soup in silence, and with the introduction of a
+violently flavoured entrée they talked of the rain.
+
+“The weather’s no fit subject for conversation in this country,”
+Sevier broke off all at once. “Look here, Elliott, you’re up against
+it, aren’t you?”
+
+“I don’t know that I am, particularly,” answered the treasure-hunter,
+coolly. “You’re in something of a blind alley yourself, I fancy.”
+
+“I don’t mind admitting that I am, for the moment. What do you know
+about the _Clara McClay_?”
+
+“Nothing—except that she was wrecked.”
+
+“But you know what her cargo was?”
+
+“Yes, I do. Do you know where that cargo is now?”
+
+“No, I don’t. But she never sunk in deep water—I know that. She’s
+ashore somewhere in the Mozambique Channel. Now I propose to you,
+Elliott, that we join forces. You’re playing a lone hand, I reckon,
+and it takes money to play a game like this. I have a partner with me,
+and we’ve got $25,000 to spend. What do you say?”
+
+“I’d like to hear a little more,” said Elliott.
+
+“Well, I’ll play my cards face up. Look here. That gold was stolen
+from the treasury at Pretoria by a gang of crooked Dutchmen. You may
+know that. My partner, Carlton, was in Pretoria at the time, and he
+got wind of it, and found out what ship it was going to be sent on. Do
+you know what we did? We squared the ship’s mate, Burke, to pile the
+old hooker up on the Afu Bata reef, off Mozambique. It cost us five
+thousand cash to make the deal with him, and we had to promise him a
+share of the plunder. Now do you see why we’re interested?”
+
+Elliott saw, and he saw furthermore that the affair was revealing
+mazes of complexity that he had not suspected.
+
+“Yes,” he said, trying not to look surprised. “Then you must know
+where she was wrecked, after all.”
+
+“No, because the mate threw us down—the thief! He took our money and
+did us dirt. We hung around the Afu Bata reef in a dhow for three
+weeks, off and on, and the _Clara McClay_ never showed up. At last we
+put into Zanzibar, and found that she hadn’t been sighted anywhere
+since she left Lorenzo Marques. A little later we heard that she had
+been wrecked, and that the mate had been picked up, and that he had
+said that she was sunk in deep water.”
+
+“But that wasn’t the mate at all,” Elliott remarked.
+
+“Yes, I know. I heard the story from that sanctimonious old hypocrite
+on the Peak. But it was the mate that sunk her. It was Burke that ran
+her ashore somewhere and figured to have all the plunder himself. It
+wasn’t his fault that he got drowned or whatever happened to him. The
+question now is—where is that wreck?”
+
+Elliott laughed. “Good Lord, that’s the question I’ve been trying to
+solve for three months.”
+
+“There is one man that knows.”
+
+“Who is it?”
+
+“Your old sky-pilot”
+
+“You’re all wrong,” said Elliott. “Old Laurie, or Eaton, knows nothing
+at all about the thing. And I should like to know how in the world you
+came to take up his trail.”
+
+“The same as you did, I expect,” replied Sevier, winking. “We went
+from Zanzibar up to Port Said, and waited there till we heard about
+the mate being picked up and going to Bombay. I went there too, as you
+know, having the honour to be your fellow passenger, but I never
+suspected you of being interested in the wreck—not at first.
+
+“In Bombay I lost the trail, same as you did. But when I heard the
+American consul describe his man I made sure it couldn’t be the real
+mate. It was some fakir, and why should anybody fake the thing unless
+he was up to some game. It made me keener than ever. Lord! I worked
+like a slave in that accursed city. I searched every consulate, and
+the hotels and the boarding-houses. I found that a man answering my
+description had come to the Planters’ Hotel about the time the
+counterfeit mate turned up. I found that he had gone—sailed for
+Hongkong under a different name. I cabled Carlton, my partner, and we
+came here.
+
+“It was you who helped us here. I spotted you on the street a week
+ago, had you followed to the Peak, and there you were, living hand in
+glove with my fakir. I went up there this morning, after learning that
+you had gone out, and I put the question straight to the white-headed
+old hypocrite. He went all to pieces, just as I expected, but he
+wouldn’t tell me anything. However, we have a way to force him.”
+
+“Lost labour,” remarked Elliott, coolly. “He didn’t know even that the
+_Clara McClay_ was loaded with gold.”
+
+“Don’t you believe it!” said Sevier, leaning impressively across the
+table. “Elliott, that old parson is the slipperiest beggar between
+Africa and Oregon. I know all about his doings in the past. As like as
+not he murdered the mate himself—”
+
+Elliott gave an exclamation of derision.
+
+“Anyhow, I’m sure that he made up a plant with Burke to turn the trick
+on us. He knows where that gold is now; you can bank on that! And if
+you’ve been living with him for a month and don’t know too, you’re not
+the clever man I take you to be.”
+
+“I think you’re just a little too clever yourself,” Elliott replied.
+“I’ll play my cards face up, too. I know just as much as you do about
+the location of that wreck, and that old missionary doesn’t know half
+as much. You’ve sized up his character wrong. He’s merely a simple,
+kind-hearted, unworldly old gentleman with no moral backbone. If he
+knew where all that gold was, I don’t believe he’d go after it. He
+might steal a hundred dollars if he saw it lying handy and happened to
+need it, but he wouldn’t take any interest in a million that he
+couldn’t see. As for his conspiring with Burke, much less killing him,
+that’s sheer bosh. He doesn’t know where the _Clara McClay_ is, and I
+don’t either.”
+
+“You’re too secretive for me,” said Sevier, looking downcast. “You
+won’t mind if I say candidly that I think you’re bluffing. Don’t tell
+me that you haven’t found out anything from that fellow Laurie, or
+Eaton, as he calls himself. Something is preventing you from sailing
+back to Africa and fishing up that million. I think we can supply what
+is lacking to you. We need you; you need us. Then join us, and we’ll
+work together.”
+
+“You are right,” Elliott agreed. “There is something that prevents me
+from going there, and that is the fact that I don’t know where to go.
+But I don’t mind admitting that I’m going to try to find out. I have
+partners with me, too, and we have a little money to throw away.”
+
+“How many partners have you?” Sevier inquired.
+
+“Three.”
+
+“Well, bring them all in. We’ll share and share alike.”
+
+Elliott seriously considered this proposition for a couple of minutes.
+But he knew that Henninger would accept no such arrangement.
+
+“I couldn’t make such a deal without consulting the other men,” he
+said. “And I know that the chief of our gang would never stand for it.
+He’s rather a whole hog or nothing man, and I’m a little that way
+myself. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to work separately.”
+
+“Is that your final word?”
+
+“Absolutely.”
+
+“Well, I’m sorry. Excuse me a moment,” said Sevier, getting up
+hastily. He went out of the dining-room, but returned almost
+immediately. “I just then caught sight of a man I wanted to speak to,”
+he explained. “Then I can’t induce you to go shares with us?”
+
+“I’m afraid not, thank you,” replied Elliott
+
+“It’s a fair race for a million, then, and let the best man win! But
+it seems a fool business for us to cut one another’s throats. We’ve
+made you the best proposals we can, but we feel that we have prior
+rights on that cargo, and we’ll fight for it if necessary.”
+
+“We’ll try to meet you half-way,” said Elliott carelessly. “And isn’t
+it absurd to talk of prior rights when the whole thing is little
+better than a steal?”
+
+“A steal? Not a bit of it. The ship is sunk outside the three-mile
+limit in neutral seas. It’s treasure-trove.”
+
+“I’ve been trying to look at it that way myself,” replied Elliott.
+“But I fancy some government or other would claim it if they heard of
+it It’s war, then, is it?”
+
+“That’ll come soon enough. Let’s have peace while we can,” Sevier
+responded, poking at the roast beef, which lay a tepid and soggy mass
+on his plate. “I must apologize to my guest. I’ve spoiled your dinner
+for you. It’s stone cold—or as near it as anything ever gets in this
+country. Let me order some more.”
+
+“No—don’t!” said Elliott, sickening at the thought of food in that
+reeking atmosphere. “It’s too hot and wet to eat. This climate is
+getting too much for me.”
+
+“Thinking of trying Africa? Look here, you come around to my place,
+and I’ll mix you a cold drink, anyway. I found a plant the other day
+that tastes like mint, and I’ll give you as close an imitation of a
+Baltimore julep as can be had in China.”
+
+There were half a dozen palanquins waiting about the front of the Club
+as usual, and Sevier gave the coolies an address which Elliott did not
+catch. The bearers left Queen’s Road and turned up a street leading to
+the mountain, which they ascended for several minutes, and finally
+they stopped in the rain, which was now falling heavily. It was one of
+the beautiful and shaded streets half-way up the slope, and they were
+opposite a small bungalow that showed a glimmer of light through drawn
+rattan shutters.
+
+“This is where Carlton and I have lived for the last fortnight,” said
+Sevier, getting out. “We can’t afford residences on the Peak, like
+you—and, Lord! how we have sizzled here!”
+
+He led the way to the door, which he opened with a latch-key, and
+turned into a large sitting-room, lighted with an oil-lamp. The floor
+was bare; the room was almost devoid of furniture, containing only a
+couple of long chairs, a camp-chair, and a plain wooden table. On the
+table was the remnants of a meal, with a couple of empty ale-bottles.
+The windows were shut and closely covered with the blinds, and the air
+of the room was intolerably hot and close.
+
+“Carlton’s been dining by himself to-night,” said Sevier, without
+appearing to observe the heat. “He’ll be back in a few minutes, and
+meanwhile we’ll have our drink.”
+
+He produced a bottle from an ice-box, and was crushing some ice, when
+the door clicked open and shut again. A heavily built man appeared,
+his white duck clothing hanging limply upon him.
+
+“How are you, old man!” said Sevier, glancing up. “Elliott, this is my
+friend, Mr. Carlton. He knows all about you.”
+
+Carlton acknowledged the introduction by a nod and a searching glance.
+He was a dark and heavy-faced man of perhaps forty, with a thick brown
+moustache over lips that were small and close, and a small cold gray
+eye.
+
+“Glad to meet you, Mr. Elliott. Yes, I’ve heard of you,” he remarked,
+briefly. He sat down in the vacant cane chair and began to fill a
+curved briar pipe, which he smoked with much apparent satisfaction.
+
+Sevier presently handed around three glasses crowned with the Chinese
+herb that tasted like mint. The whole concoction did not taste much
+like a Southern julep, but it was cooling. “Here’s luck for all of
+us!” said Sevier, and they drank.
+
+There was a silence for a time, while the heat grew more and more
+unbearable.
+
+“Why not have a window open?” Elliott inquired, at last. “Don’t you
+find it hot here?”
+
+“No. Leave them closed,” said Carlton, brusquely.
+
+There was another long silence, while Carlton smoked imperturbably.
+Elliott began to feel slightly nervous; he scarcely knew why. Every
+one in the room seemed to be waiting for something.
+
+“Damn the rain!” Sevier suddenly ejaculated with irritation, and
+Carlton rolled an admonishing eye upon him without speaking. Elliott
+set down his empty glass and arose.
+
+“Have another drink,” urged Sevier. “Sit down.”
+
+“No, thank you. I must go,” Elliott began.
+
+“No. Sit down!” Carlton gruffly interrupted.
+
+Taken by surprise, Elliott sat down. The rain splashed on the veranda
+in the silence.
+
+“But I really must go. I have to get to the Peak,” he said again, once
+more getting up; but Sevier held up a warning hand. Outside was heard
+the rhythmical grunt of sedan-coolies. There were steps on the
+veranda. Sevier hurried to the door and opened it, and, to Elliott’s
+amazement, the missionary appeared in the lamplight, his face
+streaming with rain and perspiration, while he surveyed the group with
+an air of apprehension which he endeavoured to cover with dignity.
+
+
+
+
+                      CHAPTER XIII. FIRST BLOOD
+
+
+“You sent for me, I think,—gentlemen—” hesitated Laurie, still
+standing near the doorway.
+
+Sevier bustled forward, led him in and closed the door. “Yes, yes,
+certainly. It was mighty good of you to come. Your friend is here
+already, you see.”
+
+“I didn’t send for you. What did you come here for?” demanded Elliott,
+his mind becoming clouded with suspicions.
+
+“It was this gentleman,” said the missionary, indicating Carlton with
+evident distrust. “He ordered me to come here—in terms that I could
+not well refuse. What do you want me to do?”
+
+“Very little, and nothing hard,” Sevier answered, brightly. He brought
+another chair from an adjoining room, and placed it beside the table.
+“Sit down. Will you have a drink? No? Well, we merely want you to tell
+us what you know of the wreck of the _Clara McClay_.”
+
+Laurie was trembling visibly. “I told you this morning what I know. Do
+you want me to go over it again?”
+
+“Oh, no. Not that. We want to know where the wreck lies.”
+
+“I told you that I know no more about it than you do,” protested the
+missionary. “How could I, when I was always in my cabin till she
+struck, and then adrift in an open boat for a week?”
+
+“That won’t do!” broke in Carlton, stonily. “Out with it!”
+
+“My dear sir, don’t be unreasonable,” Laurie pleaded. “How can I tell
+you things I know nothing of?”
+
+Carlton looked at him for a moment, and then turned with a nod to
+Sevier. The young Alabaman produced a long, heavy strap from under the
+table, and with a movement of incredible celerity he dropped the loop
+over Laurie’s head and shoulders. In another second he was buckled
+fast to the back of his chair, before he had comprehended that
+anything was happening. He gave a shrill cry of alarm as the strap
+drew tight, however, and Elliott jumped to his feet.
+
+“What do you mean?” he cried. “This is an outrage! Set that man loose
+instantly.”
+
+He stepped forward to release the strap himself, but Carlton met him.
+“Don’t be a fool, Elliott,” advised the big man. “Ah! there now, you
+will have it!”
+
+Elliott had tried to strike, but Carlton gripped him by the wrists
+like a vise. There was a brief tussle, while the missionary wriggled
+in the chair, but he could not free himself from that steel grasp.
+
+“See if he’s armed, Sevier,” advised Carlton, coolly, and the Alabaman
+ran his hands over Elliott’s captive person. There were no weapons.
+
+“We don’t want to hurt you, Elliott,” said Sevier, “but I’m afraid
+we’ll have to strap you up likewise to keep you from hurting yourself.
+Don’t be frightened. There isn’t going to be any bloodshed, but we’ve
+got to get the story out of that old fakir by hook or crook.”
+
+Another noose dropped over Elliott’s head, pinioning his arms to his
+sides. He kicked Carlton on the shins, and fell with the recoil, and
+before he could regain his feet Carlton was sitting on his chest and
+Sevier was binding his ankles together. They placed him in a sitting
+posture against the wall, helpless as a sack.
+
+“It’s so hot that it would be cruel to gag you,” added Sevier,
+considerately, “but if you yell we’ll have to stuff a handkerchief
+into your mouth.”
+
+“Yes, keep your mouth shut,” advised Carlton. “Get the battery,
+Sevier.”
+
+Sevier went into the next room and returned with a box of polished
+wood, about a foot in diameter, which he placed upon the table. In
+three more journeys he brought out the six large glass cells of an
+electric battery, and proceeded to twist their wires together,
+connecting the terminals with the wooden box.
+
+Elliott, breathless with rage, struggling, and heat, watched these
+preparations from where he sat, and understood them. The missionary
+was to be tortured with the current from a strong induction coil.
+There was some relief in this knowledge, for, he thought, the effects
+of the current might be unpleasant, but certainly would not be
+dangerous, not even exactly painful.
+
+Laurie struggled violently when they came to tie his elbows to the
+arms of the chair, but he was easily overpowered. The ends of the
+insulated wires terminated in brass strips, and they bound these upon
+the under side of his wrists.
+
+“All right,” said Carlton, calmly. “Turn it on.”
+
+A rapid buzzing arose from the box, and the missionary’s body was
+agitated by a strong spasm. His shoulders heaved stiffly, and his
+whole body strained tensely against the strap across his chest till
+the leather creaked. But he kept his teeth tight shut.
+
+If the induction coil had been known to the judicial torturers of the
+middle ages it would certainly have been the favourite method of
+applying “the question.” Its peculiarity is that without injuring the
+tissues to the slightest degree, it racks the nerves, breaks down the
+will, and lacerates the soul itself. But still Laurie remained silent.
+Under this direct attack he had evidently summoned up the courage that
+had made him one of the most intrepid of the pioneers of the Cross in
+heathendom. Sevier shut off the current.
+
+“Are you ready to tell us now?” demanded the adventurer.
+
+“No,” said the missionary, between his teeth.
+
+Elliott admired the old man’s determination, and wondered. He realized
+that he had not yet seen all the sides of Laurie’s peculiar
+personality. He tried hard to free himself without being observed, and
+lacerated his wrists, but could not get a shade of purchase on his
+bonds.
+
+“A peg stronger this time,” advised Carlton, relighting his pipe.
+
+The contact-breaker buzzed again, and Laurie strained against the
+strap. His face became livid; the perspiration streamed down his
+cheeks, and his blue eyes were set in an anguished glare. His whole
+body twitched frightfully under his bonds, and his heels drummed upon
+the floor. Elliott looked on in impotent horror.
+
+“Oh, here! I can’t stand this!” said Sevier, averting his eyes.
+
+“Shut off. Now will you talk?” said Carlton.
+
+Laurie made no answer, but lay heavily back, his muscles still
+twitching. They waited; he gasped spasmodically, but did not speak.
+
+“Again—and a little more current,” commanded Carlton, and Sevier
+obeyed with a look of disgust. Laurie’s form was torn by a terrible
+convulsion. His mouth opened and shut, and an inarticulate cry came
+from his lips. The coil buzzed for almost two minutes.
+
+“Give him a moment,” Carlton said, without emotion. “Now will you tell
+us? Very well; turn it on again, Sevier.”
+
+“No! no!” gasped the missionary. “I will—tell—you—”
+
+“Good. Speak up.”
+
+Laurie lay back and breathed heavily, and with great gulps. He
+trembled violently in every muscle, but came slowly back to
+self-control.
+
+“Are you going to tell us?” Carlton repeated.
+
+“No! Not a word!” the missionary exclaimed, with nervous violence.
+
+Carlton frowned. “Give him the full strength,” he said, curtly.
+
+The full strength was applied, and Laurie’s body stiffened
+convulsively under its force. To Elliott it seemed that the torture
+lasted for hours, listening to the vicious buzz of the coil and
+watching the writhing, white-clad form lashed in the long chair. He
+struggled in vain to get loose; he shut his eyes, but he could hear
+the creaking of the strap as Laurie’s body strained against it; and at
+last he heard the missionary utter a stifled, choking sob—“Ah—ah—ah!”
+
+The noise of the instrument ceased. “Now will you be sensible?”
+Carlton inquired.
+
+“Yes! yes! No more, for God’s sake!” Laurie moaned, and began to cry
+with profuse tears.
+
+“Here, have a drink,” said Sevier.
+
+He held a full glass to the old man’s lips, and he drank half a pint
+of whiskey and water eagerly.
+
+“Where is it, then? What’s the latitude and longitude?” Carlton
+insisted, eagerly. But Laurie had sunk back and closed his eyes.
+
+“Give him time. He’s worn out with your devilish machine. Cut him
+loose if you want him to talk,” advised Elliott from the floor.
+
+“Hello, I’d forgotten you, old man,” said Sevier. “Keep cool. It’s all
+over, and we’ll turn you loose, too, in a minute.”
+
+He took Elliott’s advice, however, and removed the strap. Then he
+stirred the missionary gently, without effect.
+
+“Why, the man’s asleep!” he exclaimed, bending over him in
+astonishment.
+
+Laurie had, in fact, fallen instantly into a deep stupor. Carlton
+soaked a handkerchief in ice-water and applied it to his neck, and the
+old man revived.
+
+“Give us the address, or you’ll get another dose of the juice,” he
+commanded.
+
+The missionary winked, and seemed to gather himself together. He stood
+up shakily, his muscles still quivering.
+
+“It’s Ibo Island, south of the Lazarus Bank,” he said. “It’s latitude
+south twelve, forty, thirty-seven; longitude thirty-one, eleven,
+twenty.”
+
+Sevier noted the figures on a scrap of paper. Elliott was amazed at
+the statement. Had Laurie really known all along? Or was it simply an
+imaginary address given to save himself from further torture?
+
+“We’ll go there at once,” said Carlton, “and we’ll take you with us.
+If the stuff’s there, well and good, and we’ll do the handsome thing
+by you. If it’s not there, we’ve got proof of crooked work against you
+enough to send you down for ten years’ hard labour, and we’ll hand you
+over to the English police. Be sure of your figures, if you don’t want
+to die in prison and have your daughter disgraced.”
+
+Laurie swayed back as if he had received a blow in the face. He stared
+for one instant at the dark, merciless countenance of the speaker, and
+suddenly caught up one of the empty beer-bottles from the table and
+hurled it. Carlton would have been brained if he had not ducked
+actively, and the missile smashed on the opposite wall.
+
+Laurie instantly seized the other bottle, and charged with a bellow of
+animal fury, brandishing it as a club. The attack was so astoundingly
+unexpected that Sevier stood stone-still.
+
+“Keep off!” cried Carlton, dodging round the table. He picked up a
+long carving-knife from among the supper cutlery, and presented the
+point like a bayonet. “Keep off!” he commanded again. “You fool! I’ll
+kill you!”
+
+But Laurie lurched blindly forward, paying no heed. He seemed to
+thrust himself upon the blade. The breast of his white clothes
+reddened vividly. He dropped the bottle, stood trembling and rocking
+for an instant, and fell with a crash upon his back. The knife stood
+half-buried between his ribs. He quivered a little and lay still.
+
+There was an appalled silence. Every man held his breath, gazing at
+the prostrate white figure. No one had been prepared for this.
+
+“I never meant to do it!” murmured Carlton, in an awestruck whisper.
+“He ran on the blade.”
+
+“See if he’s dead,” said Elliott, feeling very sick. Sevier knelt
+beside the body and lifted a wrist.
+
+“He’s done for, I’m afraid,” he said, turning a pale face back to
+them.
+
+“Here, let me up,” Elliott demanded. “Let me see him.”
+
+They cut him loose, and Elliott examined the body. The missionary’s
+work was done. He was dead; the knife must have touched the heart.
+
+“This is a bad business for us all,” muttered Sevier. “What’ll we do
+with him?”
+
+“Whatever possessed him to break out like that? It was self-defence.
+He ran right on the point,” Carlton said, still half under his breath.
+
+“Yes; but how’ll we prove it?” Sevier rejoined.
+
+Elliott said nothing. He looked at the dead man, at the crimson stain
+that was spreading over the whole coat-front, and tried to avoid
+thinking of Margaret. How could he tell her? Of what could he tell
+her—for he would have to tell her something.
+
+Sevier poured out half a glass of whiskey and drank it neat. He stood
+apparently pondering for a few minutes, while all three men stood
+gazing with strange fascination at the corpse, which regarded the
+ceiling imperturbably.
+
+“You look sick, Elliott. Take some whiskey,” he suddenly remarked.
+“Wait, I’ll get another glass.”
+
+He went into the adjoining room for it, and Elliott swallowed the
+liquor without seeing it, almost without tasting it. He had hardly
+drunk it when he felt a violent sickness, and sat down. The room
+seemed to swim and grow faint before his eyes.
+
+“She mustn’t know,” he heard himself murmuring. “I can’t tell her.”
+
+A numb paralysis was creeping over him. He dropped his head on the
+table beside the battery, and gold, love, and murder faded into
+blackness.
+
+Years of oblivion seemed to pass over his head. He awoke at intervals
+to a sense of violent struggles, nightmares of blood and death, and a
+pervading, terrible nausea. Then new cycles of darkness swept down,
+interrupted by new dreams of agony.
+
+He came to himself slowly, aching and sick. He was in bed, and he was
+being rocked gently to and fro. The room was small, with the ceiling
+close above his head. Light came in through a small round window, and
+a perpetual vibration jarred the whole place.
+
+As his head slowly cleared, he comprehended that he must be in the
+stateroom of a steamer, and he imagined indistinctly that he was at
+sea, and on his way to Hongkong in pursuit of the mate. But there was
+a dull sense of catastrophe at the back of his head, and all at once
+he remembered. He had been at Hongkong; he had found Margaret—and the
+missionary, and the whole tragedy came back to him. What had happened
+after that? He could remember nothing, and he threw himself out of the
+lower berth in which he was reposing, and looked through the port
+light. There was nothing but ocean to be seen.
+
+His hand went instinctively to his waist. Thank heaven! his money-belt
+was still there, buckled next his body, and he could feel the hard,
+round sovereigns through the buckskin. His clothes lay on the sofa. He
+hurried into them, omitting the collar, tie, and shoes, and rushed
+from the room, with his hair wildly dishevelled.
+
+His room was close to the foot of the stairway, and he dashed up. He
+found himself on the deck of a great steamship, among dozens of
+well-dressed passengers who stared at him strangely. A fresh wind was
+blowing from a cloudy sky; the decks were wet; the ship rolled freely.
+Far astern there was a dark haze on the horizon, but elsewhere nothing
+but open water.
+
+“For God’s sake, where am I? What ship’s this?” demanded Elliott
+distractedly from the nearest passenger.
+
+“What’s the matter? Been seasick?” answered the man, who was lounging
+against the rail and smoking a pipe. He looked Elliott over with
+evident amusement.
+
+But Elliott at that moment caught sight of a life buoy lashed upon the
+deckhouse. It answered his question; it bore the black lettering:
+
+                     “S. S. PERU. SAN FRANCISCO.”
+
+He tried to collect his still scattered wits, and wondered if he had
+boarded that ship while delirious.
+
+“I have been very sick,” he said to his interlocutor. “I was sick
+before I came aboard, and I’d even forgotten where I was. What time
+did we sail?”
+
+“At daylight this morning.”
+
+“For San Francisco?”
+
+“Of course. You must have been pretty bad. Has the ship’s doctor seen
+you?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Elliott, weakly; and he was all at once seized
+with another fit of sickness and leaned over the rail, vomiting. When
+he had recovered a little he clung limply to a stanchion. He must get
+off this ship in some way; he must get back at once to Hongkong, where
+Margaret was left helpless.
+
+“Have we dropped the pilot yet?” he asked of the passenger, who was
+looking on with the amused sympathy which is the best that seasickness
+can elicit.
+
+“Dropped him three hours ago.”
+
+There was not a minute to lose. Elliott hurried down-stairs again in
+search of the purser’s office, and burst in unceremoniously.
+
+“What’s this?” he exclaimed. “How do I come on this ship? I didn’t
+take passage on her. I’ve got no ticket. I must go back to Hongkong.”
+
+“What the devil did you come aboard for, then?” inquired the purser,
+not unnaturally.
+
+“I don’t know how I got aboard. I woke up just now sick in my berth.”
+
+“You couldn’t have got a berth without a ticket. Say, you’ve been
+seasick, haven’t you? Hasn’t it knocked out your memory a little? See
+if you haven’t got a ticket about you somewhere. They haven’t been
+taken up yet.”
+
+“Certainly I haven’t!” Elliott protested, but he felt through his
+pockets. In the breast of his coat he came upon a large folded yellow
+document which, to his utter amazement, proved really to be a ticket
+from Victoria to San Francisco, in the name of Wingate Elliott.
+
+“I never bought this. I never saw it before!” he cried.
+
+“Let’s see it,” said the purser. “Second cabin. It seems all correct.”
+He rang a bell. “Ask the chief steward to come here a moment,” he said
+to the Chinese boy who responded.
+
+“Anyhow,” Elliott insisted, “I’ve got to get off this ship and back to
+Hongkong, as quick as I can. Don’t you call at Yokohama?”
+
+“We don’t stop anywhere this side of San Francisco.”
+
+The chief steward came in at this moment, and looked at Elliott with a
+smile of recognition. “Good morning. Feel better, sir?” he inquired.
+
+“This gentleman doesn’t know how he got on board,” said the purser.
+“His ticket’s all right. Did you see him when he came on?”
+
+“Sure I did,” responded the steward, cheerfully. “I helped to get him
+to his stateroom. He came aboard last night about eleven o’clock, with
+a couple of his friends holding him up. You sure had been having a
+swell time, sir,—no offence. They’d been giving you a little send-off
+dinner at the Hongkong Club, don’t you remember? The gentlemanly dark
+young fellow explained it to me, and asked me to have the doctor look
+in on you when you woke up. How do you feel, sir?”
+
+“Can you tell me when this ticket was bought?” Elliott asked.
+
+The purser looked at it again. “Bought last night. It must have been
+the last ticket sold for this ship. You were lucky to get passage so
+late.”
+
+“Shanghaied, by God!” cried Elliott. “Drugged and kidnapped! I’ve got
+to see the captain. Somebody’ll settle with me for this!”
+
+“You’d better take time to put on a collar and shoes,” the purser
+advised. “A minute more won’t matter. The captain can’t help you, I’m
+afraid.”
+
+So it appeared. The commander of the _Peru_ listened sympathetically
+to what Elliott thought advisable to tell him, but offered no prospect
+of assistance.
+
+“I don’t see what we can do for you, Mr.—er—Ellis. We don’t stop
+anywhere, and you can’t expect me to put back to Hongkong.”
+
+“Couldn’t you transfer me to a west-bound ship if we should meet one?”
+
+“I’m afraid not. We carry the mails, and we’re under contract not to
+slow down for anything but to save life. I take it that this isn’t a
+question of saving life.”
+
+“No, but it’s a question of millions. Good heavens! I stand to lose
+enough to buy this ship three times over.”
+
+“That may be, but I’m afraid I can’t act on it. Cheer up. Things will
+turn out better than you think. You’ll find the _Peru_ a pleasant
+place for a vacation.”
+
+“Is there any way for me to send a message back to Victoria?”
+
+“Not that I know. Or, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If we run close
+enough to anything bound for Hongkong to signal her, I’ll give you a
+chance to throw a bottle overboard with a letter in it. That’s the
+best I can do for you, and I can’t slow down to do that.”
+
+Elliott chafed with wrath as he left the cabin of the captain, who
+regarded him with an interest that was obviously unmixed with much
+credulity. And yet he was obliged to admit that his story was
+incredible on the face of it, and not helped out by his own haggard
+and incoherent manner.
+
+He sat down beside the rail, still feeling weak and ill, and yet too
+angry to care how he felt. Carlton and Sevier had played him a clever
+trick, almost a stroke of genius. They had put him comfortably out of
+the way for three weeks, to be landed on the other side of the world,
+while they sailed away to recover the wrecked treasure, and to escape
+the investigation when the missionary’s murder should be discovered.
+With a start of from three weeks to a month they could reasonably hope
+to have time to plunder the _Clara McClay_ without interruption.
+
+Still, as Elliott grew cooler, he could not attach much importance to
+the directions given by Laurie. He still felt convinced that the
+missionary had known no more than himself. He had made a false
+confession under the strain of the torture, and his desperation at the
+prospect of going to the Mozambique Channel clearly indicated its
+falsity.
+
+But it was of Margaret that he thought, and his heart was wrung. He
+pictured her waiting all night for her father’s return and for
+himself. Perhaps she was waiting still, in such an agony of alarm as
+he dared not imagine, while the body of the missionary was probably
+floating in the harbour at the foot of the Chinese city. She had no
+money. She knew no one in Victoria.
+
+Elliott jumped up and paced the deck feverishly. Surely something
+could be done. China was almost out of sight in the southwest, and he
+would have given his left hand to have been able to reach that bluish
+line that was falling away at fifteen knots an hour. And yet, what
+could he do? He was at sea for almost three weeks.
+
+There was the hope that he might be able to send a message back to
+Victoria, and he went to the saloon at once to write it, in case an
+opportunity should present itself. But it was hard to decide what to
+say. He did not know whether she had learned of her father’s death,
+but judged it unlikely. Carlton and Sevier must have disposed of the
+body so that it would not be found for some time. But above all
+things, Margaret must leave Victoria at once.
+
+    “Your father is seriously ill,” he wrote at last. “He is
+    with me. We got aboard this ship by a mistake which I will
+    explain when I see you, and we are bound for San
+    Francisco. You must follow us at once. Take the next
+    steamer. If you will call on the American consul and give
+    him the enclosure, he will arrange for your passage. Don’t
+    delay a day.
+
+                                           “Wingate Elliott.
+
+    “On board S. S. _Peru_.”
+
+With the letter he enclosed a note to the American consul begging him
+to furnish Miss Laurie with such money as she might require, and
+enclosing a promissory note for a hundred dollars. He then obtained an
+empty beer-bottle from the smoking-room steward and corked up this
+correspondence tightly, along with a sovereign to reward the finders.
+
+The opportunity came late that afternoon. The _Peru_ passed a British
+three-master booming down a fair wind toward the China coast, and the
+captain was as good as his word. After an exchange of signals, the
+Britisher lowered a boat, and the _Peru_ even deviated a little from
+her course to approach it. Elliott cut a life-buoy from the rigging,
+tied his bottle fast to it and cast it overboard.
+
+The big liner tore past the boat like a locomotive, tossing it high on
+the wash of her passage. Elliott had not before realized her speed. He
+ran to the stern, and saw the boatmen fish the precious float from the
+water.
+
+“You’ll have to pay for that life-belt, you know,” said the second
+officer, at his shoulder. “You wouldn’t have got it if I’d seen you in
+time.”
+
+Elliott had to pay for more than the life-belt. He had nothing with
+him but the clothes he stood in, and he was obliged to purchase a
+clean shirt, fresh collars, handkerchiefs,—a dozen small
+articles,—from the stewards, paying sea prices, which differ from land
+prices according to the needs of the purchaser. Elliott’s need was
+great, and he felt almost grateful to his kidnappers for having left
+him his money-belt. He felt certain that it was to Sevier that he owed
+that.
+
+He was seasick most of the time during the first four days of the
+voyage, for the first time in his life—the result, he supposed, of the
+potent drug that Sevier had administered. After that, he rallied, and
+began to be conscious of the bracing effect of the cool ocean breezes
+after hot Hongkong. But never did a voyage pass so slowly. He had been
+impatient in going to Bombay; he had fretted between Bombay and
+Hongkong, but now he walked the deck almost incessantly, and was
+always the first to look at the daily record of the ship’s run posted
+at noon in the saloon. He had never sailed the Pacific before, nor
+imagined that it was so wide.
+
+
+
+
+                     CHAPTER XIV. THE CLUE FOUND
+
+
+But twenty days cannot stretch to infinity, even at sea. The _Peru_
+entered the Golden Gate early in the forenoon on the 9th of August,
+and Elliott, having no baggage to worry him, hurried at once to the
+offices of the Eastern Mail Steamship Company.
+
+He waited anxiously while a youthful clerk flipped over the letters
+and telegrams in the rack, but English honesty was vindicated. There
+were two brown cable messages for him, and he ripped them open
+nervously. The first was from Henninger. It had been forwarded from
+Hongkong, and read:
+
+“Will search. Come Zanzibar immediately.”
+
+This was not what he wanted, but the second proved to be from
+Margaret, saying:
+
+“Sailing twenty-eighth, steamer _Imperial_.”
+
+Elliott felt as if a mighty weight had been heaved off his breast.
+Margaret must be then at sea, but her passage would be longer than his
+own. The ships of the Imperial line called at Yokohama and Honolulu,
+and on investigation he learned that the steamer _Imperial_ was not
+due at San Francisco until the last day of August. He had nearly three
+weeks to wait, but of course he would wait for her. The treasure was a
+secondary issue just then, and then the question arose of how he was
+to meet her with the word of her father’s death.
+
+For the actual fact he could feel but little regret. Laurie was not a
+man for this world; he was too high, or too low, as one pleased to
+regard it; and as a guardian for his daughter he was totally
+worthless. Sooner or later open disgrace was certain, and the grief
+would have been worse to Margaret than her father’s death. It was
+better that he had died when he did, with his halo untarnished—to his
+daughter’s eyes at least.
+
+Elliott spent the next days in feverish unrest. He had nothing to do,
+and could not have done it if he had, and he half-longed for
+Margaret’s coming and half-dreaded it. He would have to tell her the
+whole story of the treasure and of the murder. How would she receive
+it? And would it, or would it not be taking an unfair advantage of her
+helplessness to tell her that he loved her and wished nothing so much
+as to protect her for the rest of her life?
+
+He was rapidly becoming worn out by these plans, doubts, and problems,
+and half-poisoned with the number of secrets and difficulties which he
+had to keep locked up in his own breast, when a sudden recollection
+came to him with relief. Bennett was in the city.
+
+Or, at least, he should be here. According to the arrangement he was
+to go to San Francisco as soon as he could leave the hospital in St.
+Louis, and surely his broken bones must have mended long ago. He was
+to have wired his address to Henninger, and probably he had done so,
+but Henninger was far away, and the fact would not help Elliott to
+find his former travelling companion.
+
+He dropped a note to Bennett, however, in the city general delivery,
+and also wrote to him in care of the hospital, on the chance that the
+letter would be forwarded. Two days passed; it was evident that the
+former letter had not reached him, and it would be necessary to wait
+till an answer could arrive from St. Louis.
+
+Elliott waited, feeling that he had merely added another uncertainty
+to his already plentiful store of them. He waited for ten days, and
+then as he entered the lobby of his hotel he saw a man leaning over
+the desk to speak to the clerk, and his back looked somehow familiar.
+
+Elliott stepped up to the man, and touched his shoulder.
+
+“Bennett! Is this you?”
+
+The man turned with a start. It was indeed the adventurer, but dressed
+in a style indicating almost unrecognizable prosperity. He stared at
+Elliott for a moment, and then gripped him with both hands, emitting
+an explosively inarticulate ejaculation.
+
+“By thunder!” he cried. “I couldn’t place you. I never saw you in a
+boiled shirt before. Let’s get out of this. I never was so glad to see
+a man in my life.”
+
+He stepped out of the line and they left the hotel. As soon as they
+were in the street he clutched Elliott’s arm.
+
+“Have you got it?” he demanded, under his breath.
+
+Elliott laughed a little wearily. “No, we haven’t got it. I’ve given
+up thinking that we ever will, though Henninger has just wired me that
+he’s going to search the whole Mozambique Channel.”
+
+“Isn’t Henninger with you?”
+
+“No, he’s in Zanzibar, and the other fellows are strung out all along
+the East Africa coast. It’s a long story, and there’s not much comfort
+in it, but let’s go over to the park and I’ll tell you.”
+
+“Start it as we walk along. Man, I’ve been hungering and thirsting for
+some news from that job.”
+
+So on the street Elliott began the story, of the great game in
+Nashville that had financed the expedition, of the voyages of the
+party, and of his own adventures on the train in Bombay and Hongkong.
+He finished it on a park bench, with the killing of the missionary,
+and the high-class form of “shanghaing,” of which he had himself been
+the victim. Of Margaret he judged it best to say nothing.
+
+Bennett listened feverishly, interrupting the story with impatient
+questions. When Elliott had finished he sat in meditation for a couple
+of minutes.
+
+“Henninger is right,” he pronounced at last. “The only thing now is to
+search the channel. Are you sure the address your old missionary gave
+was a fake?”
+
+“I can’t believe it was anything else. Why else would he have risked
+killing rather than have it tested?”
+
+“It looks so. His directions must have been somewhere near the right
+spot, though; I’ve been looking at maps. Anyhow, I’ll know the island
+again when I see it.”
+
+“The wreck will mark it, won’t it?”
+
+“The wreck has probably broken up and sunk out of sight by this time.
+That’s a point in our favour, for the worst danger is from the coast
+traders and Arab riffraff. Let’s start right away for Zanzibar, by the
+next steamer.”
+
+“I can’t leave for a week or so,” Elliott confessed, and he explained
+his reasons for delay.
+
+“I don’t like any women in this thing. This is strictly a man’s game,”
+commented Bennett.
+
+“Oh, Miss Laurie won’t be in it. But I wired her to come here, and
+I’ve got to meet her. Why, she thinks her father is alive and here
+with me.”
+
+“Yes, I suppose you’ve got to wait,” said Bennett, and was silent for
+several seconds. “But, damn it! this is awful!” he exploded, suddenly.
+“Every minute counts. Henninger’ll be waiting for us. That other gang
+must be half-way there by now, and when they don’t find the wreck on
+Ibo Island they’ll look somewhere else. They’ve got three weeks’ start
+of us, with ten thousand miles less to go.”
+
+“They won’t find anything,” Elliott attempted, soothingly.
+
+“How do you know they won’t? They’ve got as good a chance as we,
+haven’t they? Better, by thunder! Besides, there are all sorts of Arab
+and Berber craft sailing up and down the channel. It seems to me
+you’ve done nothing all through but waste time.”
+
+“If you’re not satisfied with my ways, you’d better go and join
+Henninger by yourself,” said Elliott, growing irritated. “You can
+count me out of it. I’m staying here for the present.”
+
+Bennett looked for a moment as if inclined to take Elliott at his
+word, and then his face relaxed and he began to laugh.
+
+“Don’t be an idiot, you old jay!” he exclaimed, finally. “Of course
+I’ll wait for you. You waited for me in St. Louis, didn’t you?
+Only—well, I’ve been waiting now for four months, and it’s getting on
+my nerves.”
+
+“Have you been here all that time?”
+
+“Oh, no. The first month I spent in the hospital, where you had the
+pleasure of seeing me wrapped in splints. But as soon as I got out I
+made a bee-line for the Pacific coast. I left a forwarding address at
+the hospital, and I expected to have you fellows wire me. I’ve written
+to every point I could think of to catch some of you.”
+
+“Got any money?”
+
+“You bet I have. I got—what do you think?—eight hundred dollars out of
+the railroad for my wounds and bruises. I asked for two thousand and
+got eight hundred. I had to give half of it to my lawyer, though,” he
+added, regretfully. “Then, a couple of weeks ago, a fellow put me on
+to a good thing at the race-track out here. It was at five to one. I
+plunged a hundred on it, and she staggered home by a nose. He’s going
+to give me another good tip on Saturday—get-away day, you know, and a
+long shot.”
+
+“Don’t you touch it,” said Elliott. “We’ll need all your spare cash.
+I’ve got none too much myself, and we’ve got a long way to go.”
+
+The prospect of all the weary miles of sea and land that he must still
+travel on the treasure hunt, in fact, had come to oppress him. He had
+already all but encircled the globe, and he sickened at the thought of
+another month-long voyage. He was tired, mortally tired, of stewards,
+and saloon tables, and smoking-rooms, and he told himself that if he
+ever found himself once more in some silent, sunshiny American village
+he would contentedly vegetate there like a plant for the rest of his
+days.
+
+But before that he would have to think of how to meet Margaret, who
+would be there in a week, and of some words to prepare her for the
+final explanation. This week passed as swiftly as the two first had
+slowly. He spent it in lounging about uneasily, and in long
+conferences with Bennett, and on the afternoon of the twenty-ninth he
+heard that the _Imperial_ had been sighted. She was, in fact, then
+entering the harbour.
+
+But he was still without a speech prepared when the gangplank was
+opened, and the flood of passengers began to pour down. He saw
+Margaret, and waved his hand, but even from a distance he was shocked
+at her pallor, and startled by the fact that she was wearing complete
+black. He waited for her outside the customs enclosure.
+
+“You see I’ve come. I hoped you would meet me,” she said.
+
+“Of course I would meet you,” he protested, unsteadily, dreading the
+expected inquiry for her father. On a nearer view her face was even
+more drawn and haggard than he had thought; she looked as if she had
+not slept for a week, but she had met him with a brave smile.
+
+“I know all about it,” she added.
+
+“All? What?” stammered Elliott.
+
+“Everything. They found my father’s body the day after I got your
+letter. It was in an empty house. I saw him buried in Happy Valley.”
+
+“Margaret, I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t dare—”
+
+“Oh, yes, I know; it was kind of you. And oh! I was so glad to get
+away from that awful city. But for your letter I think I should have
+died. I thought at first that you had deserted us, and I was all
+alone. That night of waiting—can I ever forget it! The consul and his
+wife were very kind—but I was all alone.” Her voice was choking, and
+she was trying hard to keep the sobs down.
+
+“Don’t cry, for heaven’s sake,—dear,” said Elliott, in deep trouble.
+“The worst is over now. I’ll see that everything is right. Just depend
+on me.”
+
+“I suppose the worst is over,” she said, drying her eyes. “But I feel
+as if it were only beginning. How can I live? My whole life feels at
+an end, somehow. But I will try to be strong. I was brave in Hongkong,
+when I had everything to do—but now. Never mind, I will be brave
+again, as my poor father was, and as he would want me to be.”
+
+“That’s right. Here’s your hotel. There’s a good room engaged for you,
+and you’ll find they’ll make you very comfortable. Ask for everything
+you want,” said Elliott.
+
+“You must tell me first all you know about father’s death.”
+
+Elliott shuddered. “Not to-day. You’re tired out; you must be. I’ll
+tell you to-morrow.”
+
+“No. Now—at once,” she said, impatiently. “I can’t sleep till I know
+it all. Then I’ll never ask you to speak of it again.”
+
+Elliott, thus cornered, told her somewhat baldly the story of how the
+missionary had been decoyed to the house on the slope of the mountain,
+and how he had met his death. He touched lightly on the torture, and
+said nothing of the treasure. The latter was too long a story.
+
+“They stabbed him because he would not tell them something that they
+believed he knew. In reality he knew nothing of it. I think it was
+really by accident that he was wounded. I do not believe that they
+intended to do more than frighten him.”
+
+“And you saw it all?”
+
+“I was lying tied hand and foot on the floor. They drugged me
+afterward and put me on a ship for San Francisco.”
+
+“What was it that they wanted him to tell them?”
+
+“It was a business matter,” Elliott said, hastily. “Something that he
+knew nothing about, but they thought he did. I don’t quite understand
+the details of it myself.”
+
+He had feared a terrible scene, but Margaret took the story
+courageously.
+
+“What became of the—the murderers?” she asked, after a silence.
+
+“I have no idea. Did you hear of any one being arrested?”
+
+“No. There was an inquest—but no one arrested, at least before I
+left.” She was twisting her handkerchief into shreds between her
+fingers. “Thank you,” she said, suddenly, trying to smile again. “It
+was kind of you to tell me. You have been so good to me! Now—now,
+please go!”
+
+Elliott fled from the hotel, immeasurably relieved that it was over.
+The next day, he said to himself, he would send her back to her aunt
+in Nebraska, where she would probably wish to go, and he himself would
+sail with Bennett for Africa. When he returned it would be with his
+share of the great treasure. He felt the need of it now; he wanted it
+more than ever—not for his own sake, but for Margaret’s.
+
+Next morning, when he called on Margaret, she made no reference to her
+father. She was very pale and evidently dispirited, and he took her
+out driving. She attempted to talk on casual topics, but with
+indifferent success, and she did not speak of leaving San Francisco.
+
+It was the same on the next day, and the next. Margaret no longer
+cared either to drive or to walk. She received Elliott in her
+sitting-room at the hotel when he came to see her. She was listless,
+languid, paler than ever. As she was, in a manner, his guest, he could
+not well suggest to her that she return to Lincoln, but he saw clearly
+that she would be ill unless she were given a change of scene, and
+something to divert her mind. San Francisco still was too suggestive
+of Hongkong, and he noticed that she shrunk painfully from the sight
+of a Chinaman. She must leave the city, he thought; but perhaps she
+did not have even enough money for her ticket to Lincoln.
+
+After long pondering, he broached the matter on the fourth day.
+
+“If you’d like to go back to your aunt at Lincoln, Margaret,” he said,
+“I know a fellow here in the Union Pacific office, and I can get you
+transportation without its costing you a cent.”
+
+“Don’t you know?” she answered. “My aunt is dead. She died shortly
+after you left Lincoln. She was caught out in that storm that found us
+at Salt Lake—do you remember it?—and took cold, and died of pneumonia.
+I have no one in the world now. That was the chief reason why I went
+to Hongkong.”
+
+“No, you never told me that,” said Elliott, startled, and worried. He
+would have liked to say what he felt that, under the circumstances, he
+had no right to say; he had trouble to restrain it; he wanted to
+relieve her at once from all her material troubles.
+
+“And this brings me to what I should have said long ago,” she went on.
+“I am—it’s humiliating to confess it—but I have no money. All I had I
+spent in Hongkong. I want to get work here. I’m strong; I can do
+anything. Have you any idea where I could try?”
+
+Elliott started with horror; the confession wrenched his heart. But it
+occurred to him that he could subsidize some one to take music lessons
+from her.
+
+“Why, yes,” he said. “I’m glad you spoke of it. I know one girl here,
+at least, who wants music lessons. She’ll pay well for them, too—four
+or five dollars an hour.”
+
+“Oh!” gasped Margaret. “Do they pay such prices in California? But
+they will want something extraordinary.”
+
+“No, you’ll do splendidly,” Elliott assured her. “Then I have to go
+away myself,—on that hunt for the easy millions I spoke of in
+Hongkong.”
+
+“And you never told me just what it was,” said Margaret. “But, before
+you go, I want you to tell me just what it was that those men wanted
+my father to tell them.”
+
+Elliott reflected. “Yes, I might as well tell you,” he said, slowly.
+“It is mixed up with my own venture, too. I cut the story short the
+other day, for fear of hurting you too much.” And for the third time
+Elliott told the story of the wrecked gold-ship, and of his own
+efforts in the chase.
+
+“They killed him because he would not tell where the wreck was?” she
+soliloquized, when he had finished.
+
+“He could not tell them what he knew nothing of.”
+
+“But my father did know where that ship was wrecked,” she said,
+looking him full in the face.
+
+“What? Impossible!” cried Elliott, staggered.
+
+“He knew where it was wrecked. That man who was in the boat with
+him—the mate—told him before he died, and gave him the exact position,
+with the latitude and longitude. My father told me of it. He had
+planned to go there sometime and see if anything could be recovered
+from the wreck. I found the map, with the place marked, among his
+papers. But he thought that no one else knew of it.”
+
+Elliott, still half-dazed, reflected that the missionary had not
+ceased to astonish him, even after death.
+
+“He intended to give you a share of it. Do you remember that I once
+said that he might be able to do something great for you?”
+
+“Well, in that case,” said Elliott, trying to focus this new aspect of
+events, “did he tell those fellows the right place? If he did, it’s
+too late to look.”
+
+“Did he tell them anything?”
+
+“He said the wreck was on Ibo Island, latitude and longitude
+something. I supposed that he said it merely to save himself—the first
+place he could think of. Do you remember where the exact spot was?”
+
+“No. But I have the map in my trunk.”
+
+“Would you mind getting it? Of course,” he added, “you’ll have an
+equal share in whatever we get out of it. But if you really know the
+right spot there isn’t a minute to lose.”
+
+She sat without moving, however. “Come and see me this afternoon,” she
+said, finally. “I want to think it over.”
+
+Elliott was astonished at this request. Surely she could not distrust
+him, though unquestionably it was her secret. He reflected dubiously
+that there is never any knowing what a woman will decide to do with a
+delicate case.
+
+“You said that one of your friends—one of your partners—was in the
+city,” she said, as he left. “Please bring him with you this
+afternoon. I think it would be right.”
+
+More bewildered than ever, Elliott went away to find Bennett, who was
+able to throw no light on his perplexity. But they returned together
+to the hotel at three o’clock, where Margaret received them with a
+manner which was more animated than in the forenoon.
+
+“This is the map,” she said, holding up a folded piece of paper,
+spotted and stained. “I have just been looking at it again. What place
+did you say my father told them?”
+
+“Ibo Island, latitude south twelve, forty something. I forget the
+longitude,” replied Elliott. “Do you think that’s it?”
+
+She consulted the map again.
+
+“No. It isn’t Ibo Island, and it isn’t latitude twelve, forty, at all.
+It’s nearly a hundred miles south of that, I should think. It must be
+nearly two hundred miles from Ibo Island.”
+
+“I thought he wasn’t telling the truth,” said Elliott, tactlessly.
+
+“No,” the girl flashed back. “He died with an untruth on his lips for
+my sake. He thought I might still profit by this gold. Tell me,” she
+went on, after a nervous pause, “have those other men any right to
+it?”
+
+“No more than we have.”
+
+“Does the treasure belong to any one? I mean, will it be defrauding
+any one if we take it?”
+
+“Apparently not. It’s treasure-trove. But where is it?”
+
+She folded the map and stowed it inside her blouse. “I’ll take you to
+it,” she said.
+
+“You?” exclaimed Elliott. “You couldn’t.”
+
+“You can’t find it without my help, it seems. I will give you this map
+when our boat is out of sight of land—the boat in which we go to find
+the wreck. You will have to take me with you.”
+
+Bennett looked closely at the girl, and smiled quietly.
+
+“But, great heavens! you don’t know what you’re asking,” cried
+Elliott. “You don’t know what sort of a rough crew we’ll ship. It may
+come to fighting.”
+
+“I’m not afraid. And you know I can shoot.”
+
+“It’s simply out of the question,” Elliott said, decisively. “You must
+stay here or go back to Lincoln. You’ll give us the map, and we’ll
+bring back your share for you. You can trust us, I hope?”
+
+“It isn’t that I’m afraid. But I have no friends now nor money. No one
+knows anything of me; what does it matter what I do? And I can’t stay
+here. I think I should die if I had to stay in San Francisco. I must
+do something—I don’t care what. Oh, set it down as a girl’s foolish
+freak—anything you like!” she exclaimed, passionately. “But I go with
+your expedition, or it goes without the map.”
+
+Elliott looked helplessly at Bennett, who said nothing. Then a new
+idea struck him.
+
+“But we’re too late anyhow. Those other fellows have a month’s start,
+and they will certainly search all the islands within two or three
+hundred miles.”
+
+“I was thinking of that,” said Bennett. “I don’t see why Miss Laurie
+shouldn’t go with us if she’s determined to do it. But the time? Let’s
+figure it out.”
+
+“I’m afraid it’s hopeless,” said Elliott. “It’s three weeks from here
+to Hongkong.”
+
+“Well, let’s see. Suppose they sailed within a day or two after you
+did. It’s about two weeks to Bombay. They’ll have trouble in getting a
+steamer for the East African coast, because there isn’t any regular
+service. They’re certain to be delayed there for ten days or two
+weeks, and when they do sail it will be on a slow ship, because there
+isn’t anything else in those waters. It’ll take them over a month to
+get to Zanzibar.”
+
+“They may be there by this time, then,” remarked Elliott.
+
+“Well, suppose they are. It’ll take them nearly a month to fit out
+their expedition, hire a vessel, get a crew, divers and diving-suits,
+and they’ll be three or four days in sailing to Ibo Island. They’ll
+spend a day or two there, and then they’ll begin to look elsewhere. If
+the right place is over two hundred miles away, it’ll take them two or
+three weeks to get to it. They can’t reasonably get to the _Clara
+McClay_ in less than six to seven weeks from to-day.”
+
+“But it will take us the same six or seven weeks to get there, not
+speaking of the distance from here to Hongkong,” Elliott objected.
+
+“Yes, if we go that way. But rail travel is quicker than land, and
+we’re only five days from New York.”
+
+“By Jove! I see,” cried Elliott, catching the idea.
+
+“New York to London is seven days, if we make the right connections.
+London to Durban is about seventeen days, isn’t it? It’ll take a few
+more days to get to Delagoa Bay, and say another week to sail up the
+channel to the wreck. Total about five weeks. It gives us a margin of
+about one week. We’ll wire Henninger at once to get his outfit ready
+at Delagoa Bay, and we’ll sail the moment we get there.”
+
+“There’s just a chance, I do believe,” exclaimed Elliott. “But why not
+start our expedition from Zanzibar? It’s nearer.”
+
+“So it is, and that’s why Sevier will choose it. We don’t want to meet
+him there or anywhere else.”
+
+“Suppose we meet his gang at the wreck?”
+
+“We must beat them off.”
+
+“Yes, there’s a chance—a fighting chance, after all,” said Elliott,
+getting up and beginning to walk about restlessly. “That is, if Miss
+Laurie will be reasonable,” looking at her imploringly.
+
+“I am perfectly reasonable.”
+
+“You’ll give us the steering directions, then?”
+
+“Not till we are on board, at Delagoa Bay. Come, we’ll argue the
+question as we go. There’s no time to lose now. Can we get a train
+to-night?”
+
+“The Overland leaves at seven o’clock,” said Bennett. “It’s as she
+says. There’s no time to talk. We’ve got just the narrowest margin
+now, and our only chance is in knowing exactly where to go when we
+sail from Africa.”
+
+“I’ll be ready at six,” said Margaret, decisively. “We’ll talk it all
+over on the train.”
+
+
+
+
+              CHAPTER XV. THE OTHER WAY ROUND THE WORLD
+
+
+Before the train left Elliott cabled again to Henninger, this time
+using the usual code for abbreviation’s sake:
+
+“Found what we wanted. Am coming with Bennett. Have expedition ready
+at Delagoa Bay, not Zanzibar. Buy arms. Wire American Line, New York.”
+
+He also telegraphed to New York for berths on the Southampton steamer
+sailing on the eighth day from that time. He reserved three berths,
+though he was resolved that only two should be used. “She may as well
+come on to Chicago,” he reflected, “or even to New York. The East is a
+better place than the West to leave her.” But somewhere on the
+cross-continent journey he intended to convince her of the folly of
+her resolution.
+
+But somehow he did not feel equal to the endeavour at present, so he
+established Margaret comfortably in a chair-car, and went to smoke
+with Bennett.
+
+“This is a nice state of things,” he said, biting a cigar irritably in
+two. “Why didn’t you back me up? I thought you were against having
+women in a man’s game.”
+
+“So I am,” replied Bennett, who did not appear dissatisfied. “But I
+never argue with a woman when she’s made up her mind. Give her time
+and she’ll change it herself. Miss Laurie will give us the map all
+right, and if she won’t—”
+
+“Then she’ll have to go with us.”
+
+“No. We can take it”
+
+“Take it? Do you mean by force?”
+
+“Yes, if necessary. Of course we’ll give her a square divvy.”
+
+“By heavens, Bennett!” said Elliott, “if you ever try to lay a hand on
+that girl I’ll shoot you. Yes, I will. So there’s your plan of robbing
+her, and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. That map’s her
+own, and I’m here to see that she does as she likes with it.”
+
+“All right; have it your own way,” said Bennett, easily. “I don’t care
+a twopenny hang if she does sail with us. She seems to be a sensible
+sort of girl who wouldn’t bother. It was you who kicked about it.”
+
+“I know it was, and you’ll see that I’ll convince her yet,” replied
+Elliott, gloomily. After a long pause, “What do you think of her?” he
+demanded, almost uncontrollably.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know,” responded Bennett, between puffs. “Regular Western
+type, isn’t she? Sensible, nice girl, I guess. I didn’t see much in
+her.”
+
+Elliott stared in amazement at such lack of penetration, threw down
+his cigar, and went back to the car where Margaret was settled with a
+heap of magazines, which she was not reading. Bennett meanwhile smiled
+thoughtfully at the approaching foot-hills with the air of a man for
+whom life has no more surprises.
+
+There was plenty of time now to argue the question of Margaret’s
+accompanying the expedition, and Elliott argued it. The girl did
+little more than listen, sometimes smiling at the floods of polemic
+that were poured upon her all the way across the foot-hills, through
+the gorges and tunnels and trestles of the mountains, and down the
+slope to the desert. She would listen, but she would not discuss. She
+would talk of any other subject but that one. It seemed to Elliott’s
+watchful eye, however, that she was becoming a little more cheerful,
+that she was beginning to recuperate a little from the terrible strain
+of her experiences, and he said, mentally, that it was perhaps a good
+thing, after all, that she should go as far as New York.
+
+Bennett absolutely refused to assist him, and remained for the most
+part in the smoking-car while the train skated down the eastern slope
+and roared out upon the great desert. At Ogden Elliott noted with
+satisfaction that they were maintaining schedule time. At Denver they
+were only an hour late. The country was becoming level, so that there
+were no topographical obstacles to speed.
+
+“This is my country!” exclaimed Margaret. She was watching the
+gray-green rolling plain slowly revolve upon the middle distance. A
+couple of horsemen in wide hats and chaparejos were loping across it
+half a mile away. “How I should like to get off, get a horse, and just
+tear across those plains!”
+
+“Do it, for goodness’ sake,” said Elliott. “We’ll be in Kansas City
+to-morrow, and you can wait there or in Lincoln till we come back with
+your share of the plunder.”
+
+“No, I’ve something else to think of. Are we going to catch the
+steamer, do you think?”
+
+“You are not,” Elliott retorted.
+
+She smiled rather wearily, trying to see the cow-punchers, who were
+out of sight.
+
+“How on earth can I convince you of your foolishness? You seem to have
+no idea of the rough sort of a trip it will be, nor the gang of
+cutthroats we may ship for a crew. Why, you don’t even know what sort
+of men my partners are.”
+
+“I suppose they’re like you and Mr. Bennett. I’m not afraid of them,
+nor of anything else.”
+
+“But can’t you trust us—can’t you trust me?—to look after your
+interests?”
+
+“You know it isn’t that,” cried Margaret. “It’s unkind of you to put
+it that way. Oh, don’t harass me!” she appealed. “I am wretched enough
+as it is. Don’t you see that I have to do something to keep myself
+from thinking?”
+
+Against such an argument a man is always defenceless, and Elliott
+abandoned the attack, baffled again. But he was not the less
+determined that she should not leave America, and he reserved himself
+for a final struggle at New York.
+
+They arrived at Omaha on Thursday night, and on the following morning
+they were in Chicago. They had just thirty-five minutes for a hurried
+breakfast and a brief walk up and down the vast, smoky platform before
+they left for Buffalo. It was almost the last stage of the land
+journey.
+
+“We’ll make it without a hitch,” said Bennett, cheerfully. “This is
+better than the way I raced across the continent before on this job.
+Do you remember that?”
+
+But they missed connections at Buffalo for the first time on the
+transcontinental journey, and were obliged to wait for several hours
+for the New York express. But Buffalo was left behind that night, and
+on the next morning they arrived at Jersey City, and crossed the
+ferry. New York harbour, sparkling in the mild September sunshine,
+seemed to congratulate them. It was Sunday morning, and there was
+plenty of time, for the _St. Paul_ did not sail till Monday noon.
+
+Margaret went to a quiet, but expensive hotel, which Elliott selected
+for her, while he lodged himself with Bennett at the same house where
+the party had made rendezvous with Sullivan four months ago. The place
+looked the same as ever, and it was hard to realize that he had
+circled the globe since that time, and it was not pleasant to remember
+that he did not seem to be appreciably nearer the lost treasure.
+However, they had a definite clue at last,—or, rather, Margaret had
+one. It was now only a question of time, and of obtaining this clue
+from its possessor, who must go no further eastward.
+
+At the offices of the American Line, Elliott found a cablegram from
+Henninger awaiting him. It read:
+
+“Wire directions. Dangerous to wait.”
+
+Elliott showed this message to Margaret. “This settles it, you see,”
+he said. “Henninger probably has his expedition all ready to sail, and
+we’ll all have to stay here till the work is done.”
+
+“Are you going to stay, too?” she interrogated.
+
+“Well,” Elliott hesitated, having no such intention. “I guess Bennett
+and I will go on, though I don’t expect we can get there in time to
+join the boys before they sail. But you’ll stay here, of course. Would
+you rather stay in New York, or go into the country?”
+
+“I’m going to South Africa,” remarked Margaret, looking out the
+window.
+
+“You’ve gone just as far as you are going.”
+
+“I haven’t. You need me. Now, don’t rehearse all your arguments to me;
+I’ve heard them all, and they’re all sound. But I know the one you are
+thinking of, but daren’t mention—that it would be unladylike and not
+respectable for me to go.”
+
+Elliott laughed. “I must confess that that argument hadn’t entered my
+mind.”
+
+“Then I’m not going to give up what I want to do, just because I
+happen to be a girl. I expect I’d be as useful as any one of your
+party. I’m strong; and I can outride you and outshoot you, as you know
+very well. Do you think I care what any one will say? Nobody in the
+world takes interest in me enough to say anything. Do you want me to
+remind myself again that I have no money? I’ve been living on you; I
+know it. But I can endure that because I shall soon be able to pay
+back every cent, but I’m not going to sit here and wait till you come
+back from your adventures and give me what you think my secret is
+worth. I’m going to share in it all, whatever comes—fortune or
+fighting. There’s nobody in the world now who cares whether I live or
+die, or—what’s more important, I suppose—whether I’m ladylike or not.”
+
+“How about me?” said Elliott. He hesitated, and then plunged
+desperately ahead. “Margaret, you’ve said that before, and I can’t
+stand your feeling like that. Look here, I may as well tell you now:
+all that gold is nothing to me in comparison with your unhappiness or
+danger. Let me look after you and think of you; you’ll find me better
+than nobody. I’m asking you to marry me, Margaret.”
+
+He felt at once conscious of having blundered, but it was too late.
+
+“Oh, how dare you!” she flashed. She jumped up, and stood vibrating in
+every nerve. “Do you think that I would marry you because you pity me?
+Perhaps you thought that I was trying to work on your feelings, so
+that you had to say that to me! Don’t be afraid; I’m not going to
+accept you. I’m not going to South Africa merely to be in your
+society. I suppose you thought that! How dared you?”
+
+She sank down on the sofa again and burst into passionate sobbing,
+with her face buried in the cushions.
+
+“Margaret—” ventured Elliott, approaching her.
+
+“Go away!” she cried, lifting a face in which the eyes still blazed
+behind the tears. “I will go with you—I will—now more than ever—but
+I’ll never speak to you!”
+
+Elliott went away as he was ordered, sore and angry at Margaret, at
+himself. He could not understand how she could so have misconceived
+him. He felt almost disposed to let her go her own way and take her
+own chances; and yet he felt that he must be always at her side to see
+that she suffered nothing. He walked over to Broadway, inwardly
+fuming, and stopped at a cable agency, where he sent another message
+to Henninger:
+
+“Can’t wire clue. Am bringing it. Be ready at Delagoa.”
+
+He had considerable trepidation in calling for Margaret the next
+morning, but he found her cold and calm. Her pallor had returned, and
+she looked as if she had not slept.
+
+“Are you still determined to go?” he asked.
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“It’s time to go, then. The ship sails at noon. There’s a cab
+down-stairs for you.”
+
+Her valise was already packed and strapped; so was her small steamer
+trunk, and she had nothing to do but put on her hat. She had been
+expecting him, and in half an hour they were on board the great liner,
+and had been shown their staterooms. Bennett was waiting for them at
+the wharf, and the big ship swung majestically from her moorings and
+moved down the bay, past the rugged sierra skyline of brick and
+granite that had stimulated Elliott’s fancy when he last sailed from
+this port on the apparently endless trail of gold.
+
+During the first half of the voyage he did not find Margaret
+conversational; she appeared to endure his presence with bare
+patience. She had plenty of other society on board, but neither did
+she seem to care much for the men who tried to scrape acquaintance
+with her with the relaxed etiquette of travel. She appeared to take a
+fancy for Bennett, however, and spent hours in long talks with him
+when she was not reading or gazing meditatively from her deck-chair
+across the dark, unstable sea.
+
+Elliott perceived that he had done wrong, but he did not see how to
+remedy it. He had indeed been tactless and brutal; he had, or it
+looked as if he had, tried to force himself upon her while she was
+virtually his guest. Still, he thought that she might have
+misunderstood him less violently; and, while he admitted that he had
+been served rightfully, he felt aggrieved that he had not been served
+more mercifully. However, since she appeared to have no taste for his
+conversation, he was prepared, for the present, to dispose of it
+elsewhere.
+
+But she called him to her that afternoon on deck, and pointed to an
+unoccupied chair beside her own. He sat down and looked at her with an
+expression that he tried to make severe, but which failed in the face
+of her smile.
+
+“Don’t you think it’s very absurd for fellow passengers not to be
+friends?” she asked.
+
+“Very,” he replied, a little stiffly.
+
+“Come, you see I’m making the advances. You were rude and unkind to
+me, and you haven’t apologized as you should. Are you sorry?”
+
+“In one way—yes.”
+
+She made a little face. “That’s not good enough. But I’ll let you off.
+I’ll forget what you said, on condition that you make no more
+objection to my going where I please. Is it a bargain?”
+
+“I suppose so—for my objections have no effect anyway.”
+
+“Not a bit. They only spoil everything. Don’t you understand,” she
+went on, earnestly, “that I had to do this? If I had stayed at home,
+or wherever I tried to make a home, I would have died; I would have
+gone mad with loneliness and trouble. You don’t know what I have
+suffered. Perhaps you think I am forgetting it, but it follows me
+night and day. I daren’t think of it, or speak of it. I have to do
+something—anything. Don’t you understand?”
+
+“Perhaps not altogether. But you shall go where you like, without let
+or hindrance,” said Elliott, gravely.
+
+“We’re friends again, then?”
+
+“I think so.”
+
+“Ah, but you must be sure,” she insisted.
+
+“Well, then, I am sure,” he said, laughingly; though in his heart he
+felt no such certainty. But he saw clearly that friendship would have
+to do till the treasure-hunt were finished. On that expedition they
+were comrades and fellow adventurers, and nothing more.
+
+During the remainder of the passage he therefore endeavoured to return
+as far as possible to the easy spirit of the Hongkong days, though
+Hongkong was a place of which neither cared to speak. Margaret
+appeared to welcome this regained camaraderie, and her spirits seemed
+to grow brighter than at her landing in America. They talked of many
+things, but they avoided the subject of the treasure-ship; that was
+dangerous to touch; it was too near their hearts. Yet in the intervals
+of silence there was an image upon Elliott’s inward eye, an image that
+came to be almost permanent, of another steamer, this one ploughing
+through the heated blue of the Indian Ocean, and of two men leaning
+over her bow, with their faces and thoughts running forward to the
+same spot as his own. The same sort of vision must have presented
+itself to Margaret, for she once, though only once, exclaimed:
+
+“Do you think we’ll be in time?”
+
+“I don’t know. It would have been safer if you had let us cable the
+directions. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve somehow felt that the
+game was up,” responded Elliott.
+
+“It’s not!” she cried. “I know it. We will be in time. We must.”
+
+“Well, we’re doing all we can,” said Elliott. “We’re due to reach
+Southampton to-morrow at ten in the forenoon, and the Cape Town
+steamer sails the next day at noon. We’re cutting it pretty fine.”
+
+The _St. Paul_ arrived punctually at her dock, and her passengers
+scattered, most of them taking the steamer special train for London.
+Elliott saw Margaret established in a comfortable hotel for the day
+and night, and went down to the steamer offices with Bennett to see if
+by chance there was any telegram. There was one, and Elliott ripped it
+open:
+
+    “For God’s sake,” it read, “wire clue immediately. Other
+    party at Zanzibar. Can’t wait.
+
+                                                “Henninger.”
+
+Bennett read the message, and whistled low. The two men looked at each
+other.
+
+“Can’t you persuade her to tell us?” Bennett asked.
+
+“No. She’s determined to go.”
+
+“Well, she’ll make us lose the whole thing.” He reflected a moment.
+“We’ll have to take it from her.”
+
+“I told you what I would do if you tried that,” said Elliott, in an
+even voice. “I’ll do it; you can count on me. I’m just as keen on
+getting that stuff as you are, but by fair play. After all, Sevier and
+Carlton can’t be so much ahead of us, and they don’t know where to
+look.”
+
+“I expect I’m as quick as you are, if it came to shooting,” said
+Bennett. “But a row would spoil everything, bring in the police and
+all sorts of nastiness. But look there—that’s what I’ve been looking
+at.” He indicated a large placard bearing the sailing dates of the
+ships of the Union Castle Line for South Africa. “Didn’t you say that
+our ship sailed Tuesday noon? That card says Monday noon, and that’s
+to-day, and it’s eleven-forty now.”
+
+“By Jove, that’s so!” said Elliott, looking hard at the card. “The
+agent in New York certainly said Tuesday. Here,” he called to a clerk.
+“Is that sailing list right? Does the _Avon Castle_ sail to-day?”
+
+“Sails at noon sharp, sir,” the clerk assured him.
+
+Elliott exploded an ejaculation and shot out of the office. Luckily
+there was a cab within a few yards; luckily again, it was a
+four-wheeler.
+
+“Hotel Surry, quick as you know how!” shouted Bennett, and the driver
+whipped up his horses. There was just eighteen minutes, and to miss
+the steamer would entail a delay of three or four days, when every
+hour was worth red gold.
+
+“Won’t you hear reason?” said Bennett. “Won’t you help me to make her
+give up that map? Everything may depend on this minute.”
+
+“No, I won’t,” countered Elliott, flatly.
+
+“You’re as bad as she is. If I had Henninger here, we’d coerce you;
+and by Jove, you’d better think what you’ll say to the boys when they
+hear that you’ve queered the whole game.”
+
+“I’ll take the blame,” said Elliott; though in his heart he disliked
+the situation almost as much as his companion did.
+
+Fortunately Margaret had not yet unpacked anything, and Elliott
+brought her down the stairs with a rush, and hurried her into the cab.
+It was only a few hundred yards to the dock, but as they neared it
+they heard the gruff warning whistle of the liner.
+
+“Oh, is it too late?” gasped Margaret, who was very pale.
+
+The gangplank was being cleared as the party rushed down the platform;
+the plank was drawn ashore almost before they had reached the deck.
+There was another hoarse blast from the great whistle; a shout of “All
+clear aft!” and then the space between the wharf and the ship’s side
+began to widen.
+
+“Safe!” said Bennett. “It’s an omen.”
+
+But Elliott pulled the crumpled telegram from his pocket where he had
+crammed it, and showed it to Margaret.
+
+“I don’t care,” said she, still breathing hard from the race. “We will
+be there before them. I feel it.”
+
+“Heaven send you’re right. You’re taking a big responsibility,”
+replied Elliott, gravely.
+
+“That reminds me that we didn’t have time to answer that cable,”
+Bennett put in. “Never mind. Henninger will be wild, but we had
+nothing to say.”
+
+It is a long way from Southampton to Cape Town, even when one is not
+in a hurry. But when life and death, or money, which in modern life is
+the same thing, hangs upon the ship’s speed, the length of the passage
+is doubled and tripled, for the ordinary pastimes of sea life become
+impossible. Shuffleboard is frivolous; books are impertinent, and
+there is no interest in passing ships or monsters of the deep. The
+three adventurers hung together, talking little, but mutely sharing
+the strain of uncertainty. Late one night in the second week, Elliott
+suddenly proposed poker to Bennett.
+
+“Big stakes,” he said, “payable from our profits later? It’ll kill the
+cursed time.”
+
+But Bennett shook his head. “I’ve just sense enough left to keep away
+from gambling now. If we started we wouldn’t stop till we’d won or
+lost every cent we’ll ever have.”
+
+Elliott acquiesced moodily. The strain was wearing on his nerves, and
+he went out of the smoking-room and walked along the deserted deck. It
+was a brilliant blue night; the stars overhead blazed like torches,
+and the dark line of the foremast plunged through the Southern Cross
+as the bows rose and fell. The steamer shook with the pulsations of
+the screws, and the water foamed and thundered back upon her sides,
+but to Elliott she seemed barely to crawl. It occurred to him that the
+treasure must be then almost directly east of him, on the other side
+of Africa.
+
+The _Avon Castle_ ran into a gale off Cape Frio which kept most of the
+passengers below decks for a day or two. Thence the weather was fresh
+to the latitude of the Cape, where it became equinoctially blustering.
+It was not sufficiently rough to affect the speed materially, however,
+and at last the cloud swathed head of Table Mountain loomed in sight
+above the long-desired harbour. It seemed as if the long trail was
+almost done, for success or failure.
+
+Cape Town was swarming with uniforms and campaign khaki, and animated
+with just renewed peace and the business of peace, but they stayed
+there only six hours before they caught the boat for Durban.
+
+Here was a check. There was no railroad to Lorenzo Marques, unless
+they took the long détour through Pretoria, over a line choked with
+military service, and there was no regular steamer plying. After the
+two men had spent a fevered day of searching the harbour, however,
+Bennett discovered a decayed freighter which would sail the next day,
+and he promptly engaged three passages at an exorbitant figure.
+
+Then there was a day to wait, and two days more at sea, and these
+proved the most trying days of all. It was so near the goal,—a goal
+which, perhaps, they would never reach! The sun blazed down hotly on
+the unshaded decks as the rusty steamer wallowed along at the speed of
+a horse-car, while they all three leaned over the bows, watching for
+the first glimpse of the Portuguese harbour.
+
+They reached it just before sunset. A white British gunboat was lying
+in the English River, and there was little shipping in the bay except
+native craft. A flock of shore-boats swarmed about the steamer as she
+dropped anchor, the customs launch having already come aboard.
+
+“See that! By thunder, that’s Henninger!” cried Bennett, pointing to a
+good-sized and very dirty Arab dhow lying some fifteen fathoms away.
+She was the nearest craft in the harbour, and there were a dozen or
+more men moving about her decks. Standing in the stern with a glass to
+his eye, which was turned on the steamer, was a white man who looked
+familiar to Elliott as well.
+
+“I believe you’re right. That’ll be his ship. Yes, I caught a flash of
+eye-glasses on another fellow—that’ll be Sullivan,” exclaimed Elliott,
+excitedly, and Bennett sent a long hail over the water.
+
+“Ahoy! The dhow! Hen-ning-er! How-oop!”
+
+The man with the glass waved his hat, and two other men hurried up to
+the dhow’s stern.
+
+“Come along. Let’s go aboard her now,” Bennett exclaimed, on fire with
+impatience.
+
+Elliott looked sharply at Margaret. She was flushed with excitement,
+as he could see in the quick tropic twilight, and her lips were set in
+a determined line. Her baggage was hurried on deck and sent down into
+a shore-boat at the end of a line, and in another minute they were
+being ferried to the dhow.
+
+
+
+
+                  CHAPTER XVI. THE END OF THE TRAIL
+
+
+“Elliott! Thank heaven!—is that you at last?” exclaimed Henninger,
+hurrying up to the rail as the boat hooked on the dhow’s side. “Why in
+the name of everything didn’t you cable as I told you?”
+
+Henninger’s voice had the same imperious ring, though he was dressed
+in a very dirty flannel shirt and a pair of duck trousers that had
+long ago been white, supported by a leather belt. His sleeves were
+rolled up to the elbows, and arms and face were burned to a deep
+reddish brown. Hawke and Sullivan were dressed as unconventionally as
+the chief in costumes to which Sullivan’s gold eye-glasses and urban
+countenance lent the last touch of eccentricity. In the bow was a
+cluster of half-nude Arabs.
+
+“I didn’t cable because I couldn’t,” Elliott replied. “I don’t know
+myself where the spot is.”
+
+“What did you mean, then, by saying you had found it? How are you,
+Bennett?—glad to see you! What—who’s this?” as his eye fell upon Miss
+Margaret, who had just clambered over the rail. “We don’t want any
+women aboard here.”
+
+“This is Miss Margaret Laurie, Henninger,” explained Elliott. “She
+knows where the place is. She has a map of it, and she’s going with us
+to show us.”
+
+Henninger bowed in acknowledgment of the introduction.
+
+“No, she’s not going with us,” he said, decisively. “This is no
+picnic—no place for women. I’ll have to ask you to give us that map,
+Miss Laurie, at once. We have to sail immediately. We’ve been waiting
+here, on the raw edge, for over a week.”
+
+“I shall not give you the map,” Margaret returned, firmly. “I am going
+to sail with you.”
+
+“Then I’m sorry, but I’ll have to take it,” said Henninger, and
+stepped quickly forward.
+
+“None of that, Henninger,” exclaimed Elliott, but before he could
+interfere further, the girl had whipped a black, serviceable revolver
+from the dress, the same weapon which Elliott had seen her use in
+Lincoln.
+
+“Stop,” she said, directing its muzzle at Henninger’s chest. “I’ll
+show you my map when we’re out of sight of land.”
+
+Henninger stopped short, looked at her queerly, and finally broke into
+a small, amused chuckle.
+
+“Put away your little gun, Miss Laurie,” he said. “I fancy I made a
+mistake. I reckon you can come with us if you want to, if the other
+boys don’t object. Oh, come, don’t break down, after that gun-play.”
+
+“I’m not—not breaking down,” said Margaret, faintly, but still firmly.
+“But I think I’d like to sit down.”
+
+Henninger handed her an empty keg, which seemed to be the nearest
+thing to a chair on board, and she collapsed. The twilight had
+deepened to almost total darkness.
+
+“Bring a lantern aft, you!” shouted Henninger, and one of the men in
+the bow made a light and brought it to the stern. His brown Arab face
+shone in the circle of illumination, an aquiline, predatory profile,
+and his eyes flashed upon the group of white men around the girl.
+
+Sullivan brought her a tin cup of tepid water into which he poured a
+little whiskey, and she drank it with a wry face. She glanced around
+at the circle of roughly dressed men, at the litter of miscellaneous
+articles that encumbered the deck of the rough native boat, and
+shuddered. A moist, unhealthy smell came off shore, there was a sound
+of loud and violent altercation in Dutch from the deck of a
+neighbouring barque, and a couple of pistol-shots cracked from
+somewhere along the wharves.
+
+Elliott moved closer to her and laid his hand upon her arm.
+
+“I didn’t know it would be like this,” she murmured.
+
+“Don’t be frightened,” said Elliott. “There’s no one here to be afraid
+of. But don’t you think you had better go ashore, after all? The
+American consul will make you comfortable till we get back, you know.”
+
+“No—anything rather than that city! I’m not afraid, only tired out.
+I’ve come all the way from China,” she said to Henninger, “almost
+without stopping, and here I thought I’d be among friends.”
+
+“So you are,” the Englishman assured her. “Only just look at this
+boat. We’ve got no accommodation for ladies. You’ll just have to rough
+it like the rest of us. And there’s some danger; there may be a fight
+before we’re through. And our own crew would cut our throats if we
+didn’t keep them cowed. I still think you’d better go ashore and stay
+there. But if you are willing to take your chances, you’re welcome.”
+
+“I’ll take the risks, of course, and I don’t want any favours because
+I’m a girl. I’ll just be one of your party. When can we get started?”
+
+“The tide’s on the ebb now, and everything is shipped,” Hawke
+remarked.
+
+“Yes, no use waiting,” said Henninger. “I’ll speak to the reis.
+Halloo, Abdullah! Come aft a moment.”
+
+“Who’s the reis?” Bennett inquired.
+
+“He’s the captain, that is, the sailing-master under our orders,”
+Sullivan explained. “You see, none of us knew anything about
+navigation. He’s a fine old fellow, on the dead square, and hand and
+glove with us. We’re paying him a small fortune for the run, and he’s
+the only man aboard, except ourselves, who knows anything of what
+we’re after.”
+
+The reis came aft deliberately, a finely athletic Arab past middle
+age, with an aristocratic coffee-coloured face and a short grizzled
+beard. He was dressed in spotless white, and wore a short sword and
+dagger in his sash. Henninger conferred aside with him for a few
+minutes.
+
+“All right,” said the Englishman, returning. “The anchor will be up
+directly and we’ll be off. High time, too. Meanwhile, I’d like to hear
+what you’ve been doing, Elliott. I got your letter from Hongkong.”
+
+Elliott thereupon briefly narrated the surprising developments of the
+past month.
+
+“I see. You were a bold woman to try to hold us up, Miss Laurie,” said
+Henninger, grimly. “Other people have tried it, but not often twice.”
+
+“There’s a good chance that we’ll be in time, after all,” said
+Sullivan.
+
+“Of course we will!” Margaret cried. “What’s that?”
+
+It was the rattle as the crew manned the windlass. The chain cable
+came in grating harshly, and the dhow glided forward and swung round
+as she was hove short. A couple of Arabs hauled around the big lateen
+mainsail, and then came aft to perform the same office for the smaller
+mizzen-sail, while the reis himself took the helm, which was a heavy
+beam projecting fully ten feet inboard over the stern. The anchor was
+broken out and came up ponderously against the bows.
+
+“We’re off!” exclaimed Hawke, boyishly.
+
+The dhow began to move slowly down the river under the ebb-tide, and
+gradually gathered way in the slight breeze from the land,—the dark
+land of Africa that gloomed behind them. The treasure hunt was really
+begun.
+
+Upon the dhow’s after-deck no one spoke for several minutes. Every one
+of the adventurers was doubtless busy with his own reflection, and
+there was an impressive touch about this silent putting forth into the
+darkness—a darkness not so deep as their own ignorance of the end of
+that voyage. And every one felt instinctively that much would be lost
+as well as won before that cargo should be raised that had cost the
+lives of so many men already.
+
+A sudden recollection shook the spell of silence from Elliott.
+
+“That other party at Zanzibar—what about them?” he asked.
+
+“They got there over two weeks ago, just before I left,” Henninger
+answered. “There were two men. They must have been your friends Sevier
+and Carlton, by your description, and they were trying to hire some
+sort of craft and crew. Ships happened luckily to be scarce at
+Zanzibar just then, and they hadn’t made any headway when I came here
+to superintend things. Sullivan had chartered this boat already, and I
+picked up Hawke at Mozambique as I came down. They can’t have much the
+start of us at the most.”
+
+“And what then?” demanded Bennett.
+
+“Why, we outfitted this dhow, and no joke it was. We were lucky in
+picking up a full diving outfit. It’s badly battered, but we got it
+cheap, and it’ll serve. We hired a Berber Arab with it, who used to
+work on the sponge boats in the Levant and understands it. Then we had
+to rig a rough derrick apparatus to hoist heavy weights aboard by
+man-power. We had to get a crew, and provisions and arms—no end of
+things. It was like stocking a shop. We finished the job five days
+ago, and we’ve been waiting ever since for a message from you.”
+
+“We’d have murdered you if we could have caught you. We were about
+ready to go off our heads,” Hawke supplemented.
+
+The dhow was clearing the river mouth, and the Arab skipper hauled her
+course to the northward. The breeze was fresher outside, and she
+rapidly increased her speed, rolling heavily under the seas, for she
+was in light ballast.
+
+“We’ve arranged to take turns standing watches,” said Henninger. “One
+of us must always be on guard till we get back. I’ll take the first
+watch, from nine o’clock till midnight, and then Hawke and then
+Sullivan, three hours apiece. Elliott and Bennett will take their
+turns the next night, and this arrangement gives two men a full sleep
+every night.”
+
+“I’ll take my turn,” interposed Margaret.
+
+“No,” said Henninger, in a tone that closed the question. “The rest of
+us sleep on blankets spread on the deck because it’s so hot, Miss
+Laurie, but you can have the cabin, or we’ll swing you a hammock
+amidships. But you’d suffocate in the cabin, I’m afraid. You said you
+didn’t want any favours, and we can’t give you any.”
+
+Margaret chose the hammock, which an Arab seaman was ordered to sling
+for her. But no one turned in for two more hours; there was too much
+excitement in the actual, long-delayed start. But the cool sea-wind
+brought quiet, and excitement gave place at last to intense weariness.
+
+Elliott spread his blanket beside the rail only a couple of yards from
+Margaret’s hammock.
+
+“If anything should frighten you in the night, just speak to me and
+I’ll hear you instantly,” he remarked, as he lay down.
+
+“All right,” she replied; but he felt more than certain that whatever
+the alarm, she would sooner have bitten off the end of her tongue than
+have appealed to him for help.
+
+Elliott awoke several times during the night. The dhow was rushing
+forward at, it seemed to him, tremendous speed, and he was spattered
+occasionally by smart splashes of foam from over-side. Margaret’s
+hammock was swaying heavily in the roll, but she appeared to be
+asleep, and all was quiet on deck. At the stern he could see the white
+figure of the steersman leaning hard against the tiller, and there was
+a dark form beside the rail, undoubtedly one of his friends on the
+watch.
+
+At last he awoke again with a start, to find it broad day. The dhow’s
+decks were wet; there was a cloudy sky, and a fresh wet wind blowing
+from the southeast. No land was anywhere in sight; the sea, gray as
+iron, was covered with racing whitecaps. Looking at his watch, he
+found that it was half-past five, and he arose and walked aft, feeling
+a trifle cramped and stiff, to where Sullivan was lounging out the
+last hour of his duty. Margaret still slept profoundly in her hammock.
+
+“What do you think of our clipper? I picked her out,” said Sullivan,
+walking forward to meet him.
+
+Elliott was now able for the first time to get a clear view of the
+craft upon which he had embarked. The dhow was about ninety feet long
+and rather broad in the beam, with two masts stepped with an
+extravagant rake forward, each bearing a great lateen sail. There was
+a long, knifelike sheer to her cutwater, and a great overhang to her
+stern, and she was decked completely over, with forward and aft
+companion ladders leading below.
+
+“She seems to be able to sail,” replied Elliott, glancing at the
+racing water alongside.
+
+“That’s no lie. The skipper says she can do fourteen knots with the
+right kind of a wind. Her name’s the _Omeyyah_, or words to that
+effect. She’d make a sensation in the New York Yacht Club, wouldn’t
+she?”
+
+“What’s your crew like? Are they really the tough gang that Henninger
+said?”
+
+“Oh, I fancy he was piling it on to frighten that girl. She’s dead
+game, isn’t she? No, the men are all coast Arabs—pretty peaceable lot,
+I reckon. You see, they’re all of the same tribe as the reis, and he’s
+guaranteed good behaviour from them. Besides, we’re well armed.
+There’s a big revolver apiece and a dozen Mauser rifles down below,
+with a thousand cartridges. Second-hand military rifles can be bought
+at bargain prices in Lorenzo Marques just now.”
+
+Henninger came aft at that moment, looked earnestly at sea and sky,
+and drew a bucket of water from over the side for his ablutions.
+Elliott and Sullivan followed his example; and when Margaret appeared
+a few minutes later from behind the mizzen-sail, she, too, was served
+with a bucket of salt water and a towel.
+
+“I’m going to braid my hair as I used when I was at school,” she
+exclaimed, laughing, after an unsuccessful attempt to reduce the curls
+to order. Her eyes shone; her cheeks glowed after the salt water, and
+her voice had a gay ring. For the first time an unwilling conviction
+began to invade Elliott that perhaps after all this expedition was
+better for her than to remain in America, brooding and waiting.
+
+“We’ll have the cabin fixed up a little for you, with a wash-stand and
+a bit of a mirror,” said Henninger. “You can sleep in that hammock, if
+you like, but you’ll want some corner of your own. No one else will
+want to go into the cabin; it’s too hot. We live on deck.”
+
+“What else do we live on?” demanded Elliott “Isn’t it nearly time for
+breakfast?”
+
+“Not for half an hour. And while we’re waiting, perhaps Miss Laurie
+will—”
+
+Margaret understood, and she silently produced from inside her blouse
+the folded paper which Elliott had seen at San Francisco.
+
+“This is the map my father made,” she said, opening it and handing it
+to the chief.
+
+Every one crowded round to look. It was a carefully drawn sketch map
+of a portion of the Mozambique Channel and the Zanzibar coast, and
+there was a small island marked with a cross and with its latitude and
+longitude—S. 13, 25, 8, and E. 33, 39, 18.
+
+Henninger produced a large chart of the East Coast and compared the
+two. “The place must be just a little south of Mohilla Island,” he
+said. “It’s two or three hundred miles from Ibo Island, where they’ll
+look first.”
+
+“How far from here?” asked Hawke, who had come aft while they were
+talking.
+
+“I don’t know exactly where we are now, but I should think it must be
+a good eight or nine hundred miles.”
+
+“Good heavens!” Bennett cried in dismay.
+
+“But then it’s five hundred miles or so from Zanzibar, and we may have
+got started before them. We can run the distance in five or six days,
+or maybe in less, if this wind holds,” looking up at the gray-streaked
+southern sky.
+
+“It’ll hold,” said Hawke. “The reis told me last night that the
+southeast wind blows all the time at this season. It’s a trade-wind, I
+fancy.”
+
+“And I think,” remarked Henninger, “that there’s a strong current
+setting north through the channel that will help us two or three knots
+an hour.”
+
+This important bit of oceanography was indeed corroborated by the
+chart, and it put the whole party in excellent spirits, not even to be
+spoiled by the execrable breakfast that was presently brought on deck.
+Ice, milk, or butter were impossibilities on the _Omeyyah_, and the
+provisioning consisted chiefly of American canned goods which did not
+require cooking, and of mutton and rice which the Moslem in the galley
+did his usually successful best to spoil. Only in one thing was he an
+artist; the superb coffee made amends for all the rest.
+
+All that day the log-line was kept running, and showed an average
+speed of nearly eleven knots, with an increase toward evening as the
+wind freshened. The adventurers lounged about the decks, with no books
+to read, with nothing to do, but feeling an exhilaration from the
+rapid movement of the small craft which a steamer could never give at
+double the speed. Away to port the coast of Africa showed occasionally
+as a bluish darkening of the sea-line, and faded again. Two or three
+dhows like their own passed them beating down the channel, and once a
+long smear of smoke on the sky indicated a steamer hull down under the
+eastward horizon.
+
+The second day passed much like the first, but the sun set cloudily,
+and it rained during the night. At daybreak the wind was much fresher,
+and it strengthened during the forenoon, veering more to the east. At
+noon the dhow was heeling over heavily, and an hour later the skipper
+ordered a reef taken in the mainsail. The good wind continued to
+smarten until by the middle of the afternoon it was difficult to
+maintain footing on the sloping and slippery deck. The sky was a flat,
+windy gray; the sea had not a tinge of blue, and was covered with
+sweeping white-crested rollers, through which the _Omeyyah_ ploughed
+nobly. Occasionally she took one over the bows with a bursting smash,
+sending a drenching cascade over the decks clear to the stern. It took
+two men to hold the kicking tiller-head, and the adventurers clung to
+the rigging upon the windward side, disregarding a ducking that could
+not be avoided, for it seemed that oilskins was the one item of
+equipment that had been forgotten.
+
+“How fast are we going?” Margaret cried to Elliott, trying to keep her
+wet hair out of her eyes. The rattle and creak of the straining
+rigging and blocks almost drowned her voice.
+
+“Thirteen knots, last time the log was taken,” Elliott shouted back.
+
+She made a gesture of triumph; at that rate they would surely win.
+Henninger came up unsteadily, holding to the rail, with his wet linen
+clothes clinging to him like a bathing-suit.
+
+“The reis wants to run for shelter somewhere on the coast,” he
+shouted. “He’s afraid we’re running right into a monsoon or
+something.”
+
+“Tell him to go to the deuce!” cried Elliott. “This is just what we
+want, and more of the same sort.”
+
+“That’s what I think,” said Henninger, and he retraced his difficult
+way to the stern, where the Arab skipper himself stood beside the
+helmsmen. Abdullah seemed to object to the recklessness of his
+employer, and apparently a violent altercation ensued, but drowned at
+a distance of ten feet by wind and water. It must have ended in the
+submission of the reis, for the dhow continued to drive ahead, half
+under water and half above it.
+
+Meals were only a pretence that day. The hatches had been battened
+down, and no one left the deck, but Elliott brought a quantity of
+biscuits and canned salmon from the galley, which every one ate where
+he stood. It rained furiously that night, and with the rain the wind
+seemed to moderate, in spite of the fears of the skipper. During the
+next forenoon it remained intermittently fresh, but remained powerful
+enough to drive the dhow at an average speed of ten knots all day. By
+sunset, Henninger calculated that they must have run nearly nine
+hundred miles, and should sight Mohilla Island the next day, supposing
+they were neither too far east nor west. It had been impossible to
+take an observation for the last two days, so that his estimate could
+not be verified.
+
+It rained again early the next morning, but cleared brilliantly in an
+hour or two, and the decks steamed. Sullivan, who had learned to take
+an observation, brought up a second-hand sextant and a chronometer of
+doubtful accuracy, and these instruments indicated at noon that the
+expedition was about forty miles south-southwest of the desired point.
+Allowing for errors, they should sight the wreck before sunset.
+
+The breeze had been gradually failing all day, but it had served its
+purpose, and it would certainly last till dark. The course was hauled
+more to the northwest, and Henninger himself ascended into the
+main-rigging with a good glass, while the rest of the party clustered
+at the bows. As the dhow glided easily over the shimmering sea, every
+eye was strained, not so much in search of the island as for sail or
+steam that would tell them that they had been anticipated at the
+wreck. About three o’clock Sullivan disappeared from the deck, and
+Elliott, who had occasion to go below, found him unpacking the rifles
+and putting clips of cartridges into the magazines.
+
+“It’s time we were getting these things ready,” he remarked, with a
+grimmer expression than Elliott had ever seen his imperturbable
+countenance assume.
+
+“Do you think we’ll be in time?” Margaret asked him very anxiously,
+when he returned to the deck.
+
+“I’m sure I don’t know any more than you do,” replied Elliott.
+
+“If we’re too late, or if the wreck isn’t there—I’ll never forgive
+myself!” she breathed, desperately.
+
+“You begin to appreciate what you’ve done?” said Elliott, trying to
+look at her sternly, but his glance softened; he wanted to comfort
+her, to tell her that it didn’t matter after all whether they found
+the treasure or not, since there was something better in life than
+gold. For a moment it seemed to him that she almost expected it, but
+before the moment was passed Henninger hailed the deck.
+
+“I think I’ve sighted it. There’s something, anyway.”
+
+Hawke burst out into a joyous whoop of excitement. “What direction?”
+called Bennett. “Any other ship in sight?”
+
+“A little more to port.”
+
+The course was hauled a little more. “No sign of any other vessel
+anywhere,” Henninger added, after carefully sweeping the horizon with
+his binoculars.
+
+“Hurrah!” cried Margaret. “I knew we would win!”
+
+“We haven’t won yet. They may have come and gone,” Hawke interposed;
+and at this reminder every one became nervously silent, gazing ahead.
+After twenty minutes a whiter spot began to appear upon the blue
+sea-line.
+
+As the island was gradually lifted, it appeared, as Bennett had
+described it, to be a good-sized and absolutely barren patch of sand
+and shingle. It seemed about half a mile long, and a couple of hundred
+yards wide at the widest point, with a single eminence rising to a
+height of perhaps a hundred feet near the eastward end. All around it
+to windward a line of foam and spray marked the dangerous reefs, and a
+cloud of sea-birds wheeled flashing in the sun overhead. But the gaze
+of the adventurers was not fixed upon the island, but upon a great
+heterogeneous mass that stood up among the breakers, white with the
+droppings of the birds, but still showing the red of rusty iron, a
+battered skeleton, having no longer any resemblance to a ship, but
+nevertheless all that was left of the unlucky _Clara McClay_.
+
+
+
+
+                      CHAPTER XVII. THE TREASURE
+
+
+The gold-seekers gazed eagerly, and, as regards Elliott at least, with
+strange emotions of excitement, at the ruins of the vessel they had
+come so far to see, whose name had been familiar so long, but which
+none but Bennett had ever seen. But it was not all of the
+treasure-ship that lay staked upon the reef. She had evidently broken
+in two, and the forward and larger portion had been swept into the
+lagoon-like space beyond the rocks, where it could just be made out as
+a shapeless bulge of iron scarce showing above the surface. In reply
+to a question from Henninger, Bennett stated that the gold-chests had
+been in the forehold, and must be, consequently, submerged. Even if
+they had been in the after portion they must surely have been shaken
+out of the wretched tangle of plates and rods that formed the relics
+of that half of the vessel.
+
+The dhow was brought up cautiously, with the lead constantly going,
+and in eight fathoms the reis gave the order to anchor by Henninger’s
+direction.
+
+“We’ll find a better anchorage on the lee side of the island,”
+remarked the chief, “but it’ll be dark in an hour and we’d better lie
+here for the present”
+
+“Why, aren’t you going to look over the wreck right away?” demanded
+Hawke, in surprise.
+
+“What’s the use? We can’t do anything to-night.”
+
+“Then I’ll row over there alone. Hanged if I can stay here all night
+with maybe a fortune within a couple of hundred yards and not go to
+see if it’s there,” said Hawke.
+
+This speech found an answer in the hearts of all, and Henninger,
+outvoted, ordered the dhow’s small boat over the side. Margaret’s
+desire to visit the wreck was overruled, and Sullivan preferred also
+to remain behind, but the rest of the adventurers rowed themselves
+toward the reef.
+
+The tide was rising and they were able to bring the boat alongside the
+wreck, by careful steering. The fragment of the steamer was lying
+almost upon her beam-ends, so that it was possible to grasp her rail
+by standing up in the boat. The deck was too sharply inclined to stand
+on it, however, and was besides deeply covered with the droppings of
+sea-birds. The deck-houses were quite gone, great cracks yawned in the
+deck-plates, the hatches and companionways were vast gaping holes,
+while on the other side the deck seemed to have broken entirely clear
+from the side plates.
+
+“No use in going aboard,” said Bennett, but Hawke scrambled on hands
+and knees to the companionway hole, and the rest followed him through
+the filth. The stairs were gone, but they slid easily to the deck
+below, where, in the low light that entered freely through a score of
+yawning gaps in her side, they viewed a scene of ruin even more
+depressing than that upon the deck. Not a trace of man’s occupancy was
+left. Everything wooden or movable had been swept out by the wind and
+sea that had raged through and over the wreck, and they could hear the
+water washing hollowly in the hold below.
+
+There was nothing to tell whether the ship had been visited before
+them, and there seemed little possibility of settling this great
+question that night “We might as well go back,” said Elliott, after
+they had stared at the desolation for a few minutes.
+
+“No, I’m going to have a look into the hold before I sleep,” Hawke
+insisted, and he began to clamber down the cavernous gulf that led to
+the interior of the ship.
+
+Henninger, Elliott, and Bennett meanwhile went back to the deck and
+perched precariously upon the broken rail while they waited for their
+comrade’s return. Hawke was gone for a long time, however, and at last
+a sudden outburst of wild shrieks arose from the bowels of the ship.
+
+“He must have got caught somewhere and can’t get back,” exclaimed
+Elliott, and they returned below hurriedly. They had scarcely reached
+the lower deck, however, when Hawke reappeared, dripping wet, with his
+face distorted with some emotion.
+
+“It’s there! It’s there—tons of it!” he cried, and his voice broke on
+the words. “Come along! I’ll show you!”
+
+They tumbled after him at the risk of breaking their necks, for the
+iron plates hung in torn flaps, and the ladders were broken or gone.
+But at last they peered down the hatch. The light was faint, coming
+principally through the great fissures, but they could dimly make out
+a heap of miscellaneous freight, cases and hogsheads and crated
+machinery that had tumbled against the ship’s side when she heeled,
+and now lay in several feet of water. Some of it had actually fallen
+through the holes in the bottom that had enlarged with pounding on the
+rocks, but the upper articles of the mass showed above water. Hawke
+sprang recklessly down upon the pile, and splashed in to his knees.
+
+“Be careful. You’ll break a leg if you slip on those crates,”
+Henninger warned him.
+
+But Hawke paid no attention. “This is it!” he shouted, his voice
+resounding hollowly in the hold. He struck his hand upon a wooden box
+about three feet in diameter. “It’s stencilled with that corned beef
+mark, and it’s heavy as lead. You can’t stir it. See!” He strained at
+the case, which refused to move.
+
+“Bennett, please row back to the dhow and bring an axe and a lantern,”
+Henninger ordered, coolly. “We’ll see what’s in that box. And don’t
+say anything to them aboard. We don’t want to raise their
+expectations.”
+
+Bennett must have rowed at racing speed, though the fifteen minutes of
+his absence seemed an hour to those who awaited him. All four men then
+descended upon the pile of unsteady freight, where the lantern light
+showed that the case in question was indeed marked with a stencil that
+Bennett remembered. But this time the box might really contain corned
+beef.
+
+The steel would show, and Hawke attacked the case with the axe. It was
+strongly made and bound with iron, while its water-soaked condition
+made it the more difficult to cut, but he presently succeeded in
+wrenching off a couple of boards. The interior was stuffed with hay.
+
+Hawke thrust his arm into the wet packing, and burrowed furiously
+about. Presently he withdrew it—and hesitated before he exposed his
+discovery to the light of the lantern. He held an oblong block of
+yellow metal.
+
+“God!” said Bennett.
+
+They all stared as if hypnotized by the small shining brick that shone
+dully in the unsteady light. Then Bennett flung himself upon the case
+and began to rip out the hay in armfuls, swearing savagely when it
+resisted.
+
+“Here, stop that! Stop it, I say!” cried Henninger. “We don’t want
+that case gutted—not now.”
+
+He put a powerful hand on Bennett’s shoulder, and dragged him back.
+Bennett wheeled with a furious glare, that slowly cooled as it met
+Henninger’s steady gaze. Elliott was reminded of the end of the
+roulette game at Nashville.
+
+“We must leave it packed,” the chief continued. “We don’t want to go
+back to the dhow with a lot of loose gold bricks for all the crew to
+see. We’ll have to trans-ship the cases whole. Is this the only corned
+beef box?”
+
+They found another heavy case bearing the same stencil and half-buried
+among the freight under a foot of water. There were no more in sight,
+though others might have been invisible among the débris. Apparently
+only a small portion of the treasure had been shipped in the
+after-hold, but the discovery of any of it proved conclusively that no
+man had visited the wreck before them. As they rowed back to the dhow
+they were strangely silent, and Elliott, feeling slightly dazed and
+drunken, understood their taciturnity.
+
+“Congratulations, Miss Laurie,” said Henninger, as he climbed over the
+rail. “You’ll be an heiress to-morrow.”
+
+“Was it there?” faltered Margaret; and Henninger handed her the golden
+brick, after a cautious glance around the deck. She came near dropping
+it when she took it in her hands.
+
+“How heavy it is!” she exclaimed. “How much is it worth?”
+
+“Two or three thousand dollars,” replied Henninger.
+
+Margaret gave a little gasp. “Here, take it.” She thrust it back to
+Henninger. “I’m almost afraid of it. I never had so much money in my
+life at once. I can’t imagine that it’s really true. I hoped,
+but—please don’t look. I believe I’m going to cry!”
+
+She turned aside and did cry quietly for a couple of minutes, with her
+head on the rail, while the men preserved an embarrassed silence.
+
+“I’m better now,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m ashamed to be so
+silly, but it was the excitement, and the waiting, and the success,
+and—everything. What are we going to do now?”
+
+“We can’t do anything more to-night,” returned Henninger. “We must
+have light to locate the rest of the stuff, for it’s mostly in the
+lagoon, you know. At least, we suppose so, for we only found two cases
+on the wreck. Bennett says he counted twenty-three cases in the
+forehold, and that will all have to be got by diving. We might get out
+our diving apparatus to-night and rig the derrick.”
+
+There was not much sleep on the _Omeyyah_ that night. The diving
+armour was brought up from the hold, cleaned and oiled, and the
+air-tubes tested. They mounted the air-pump between decks with its big
+driving-wheels, adjusted the manometer, coiled the life-line, and made
+everything ready for the descent. The impromptu derrick was also set
+up, consisting of a strong spar forty feet long hinged in an iron
+socket at the foot of the mizzen-mast, with a block and tackle at the
+extremity and a geared crank at the base. As it was not likely that
+the cases of hay and gold would weigh over two or three hundred
+pounds, this rude apparatus would be sufficient to hoist them aboard.
+Henninger meanwhile cleared out the room that had been prepared below
+for the reception of the treasure. This was a corner of the
+after-cabin, partitioned off by three-inch planks, totally dark, and
+entered only by a low and narrow door fastened with four heavy iron
+bars, each locked into its socket with a Yale lock. The after part of
+the dhow had been bulkheaded off from the forward portion with heavy
+planks, so that no man could gain access to the cabin except by the
+cabin ladder on the quarter-deck.
+
+These preparations were finished by two o’clock in the morning,
+however, and there was nothing then to do but wait for daylight. A
+cool air breathed on the sea, though scarce a breeze stirred; the
+stars were white fire in the velvet sky, with the hill on the island
+rising dark against them. The adventurers lounged about the deck,
+talking in low tones, with their eyes ever fixed upon the indistinct
+shape of the wreck that lay amid the wash on the surf. But weariness
+brought sleep after all, and silence gradually fell upon the deck.
+
+Elliott was awakened from violent dreams by some one shaking him. He
+opened his eyes to find daylight on the sea, though the sun had not
+yet risen.
+
+“Get up,” said Hawke. “We’ve got to make a long day of it.”
+
+Elliott sprang up, broad awake instantly. The rest of the party were
+already astir, and in a few minutes the cook brought them coffee,
+canned salmon, corned beef, and biscuits.
+
+“The first thing is to try to locate the cases that are sunk,” said
+Henninger, as they breakfasted hastily. “While we’re at it, we must
+see if we can’t find a way to get the dhow into the lagoon. If we
+can’t do that, we can’t fish up the chests bodily. We’d have to break
+them and bring up the bricks one by one, and I’d rather take almost
+any chances than that.”
+
+“But there must be plenty of water inside the reef,” Hawke remarked.
+“The wreck’s sunk almost out of sight, and the dhow only draws four or
+five feet, doesn’t she?”
+
+“That’s so,” said Henninger, gulping down his coffee. “We’ll try it.
+And, above all things, don’t any of you say the word ‘gold’ above your
+breaths. That’s a word that’s understood in all languages.”
+
+The meal did not last five minutes, and Henninger, Bennett, and
+Elliott descended into the boat and pulled toward the line of reefs in
+search of a gap into the lagoon. They rowed nearly half a mile, and
+rounded the island to the west, in fact, before they found any opening
+in the barrier. Here, however, they came upon a gap quite wide enough
+to permit the passage of the dhow, and in the lagoon there was, as
+Hawke had estimated, a depth of from one to three and in one spot of
+five fathoms.
+
+They rowed eastward again toward the wreck. The sunken part of the
+_Clara McClay_ lay in about twenty feet of water, and had been swept
+round till it rested almost at right angles to the other half. It had,
+like the stern, toppled abeam, so that the decks lay almost
+perpendicular, and about three feet of the side rose above the water.
+The funnel was broken off, as well as the masts, and on looking down
+through the clear water it appeared that the engines had burst loose
+and smashed through the side of the steamer. A medley of wheels, rods,
+and cranks were visible, and the bottom was scattered thick with coal.
+Otherwise, probably owing to the protection afforded by the water,
+this portion of the steamer did not appear to have suffered so
+severely as the after half.
+
+They rowed all around the sunken mass of iron that revealed nothing of
+what it might contain.
+
+“There’s the hatch where I went down,” said Bennett. The hatch was
+still closed, and was some eight feet under water.
+
+“Diving will be the only way to go down there again,” Elliott
+remarked.
+
+“Yes,” said Henninger. “No use looking at it from here. Let’s get the
+dhow up alongside.”
+
+They regained the dhow as the sun rose, and the reis got the _Omeyyah_
+under sail. There was just wind enough to move her, and the boat led
+the way and conned her in, through the gap in the reef and across the
+lagoon till alongside the rusty bones of the wreck. Here the anchor
+dropped with a short cable to keep her from drifting, and as a further
+precaution the boat carried a second cable with a kedge anchor, and
+fixed it among the rocks of the reef.
+
+“Now,” said Henninger, when they had returned aboard, “where’s the
+diving-suit? I’m going down.”
+
+“I thought you said you had an Arab expert for the diving,” said
+Elliott, in surprise.
+
+“So we have, but I’m afraid to send him down till I’ve had a look
+first. The gold cases may have burst, and you don’t know what sights
+he’d see. I don’t trust this crew, so I’m going below myself this
+time.”
+
+“By thunder, I wouldn’t crawl into that wreck in a rubber jacket, not
+for a ship-load of gold,” said Bennett, earnestly. “We don’t know
+whether the diving-machine works right. Better try it on the dog.”
+
+Henninger appeared struck by this consideration, but after a little
+hesitation he persisted in his purpose. Hawke brought the suit on
+deck, the rubber and canvas jacket, the weighted shoes and the copper
+helmet, and Henninger accoutred himself under the directions of the
+Berber expert. Before the helmet was screwed on, the air-pumps were
+tested again, and appeared to be efficient. A couple of Arabs were
+stationed in the waist to turn the big wheels that drove the pumps,
+and Henninger’s head disappeared inside the helmet with its great
+goggle eyes.
+
+He puffed out remarkably as the air was pumped into the suit, and
+Elliott and Hawke assisted him to stagger along the deck, and over the
+dhow’s rail. Thence he stepped down upon the uncovered part of the
+steamer, and slid down the sloping deck till he was entirely
+submerged. A string of bubbles began to arise.
+
+Every one on board, except the men at the pumps, lined the rail and
+watched him eagerly. He checked himself at the hatch, looked up and
+waved his hand. Then he attacked the hatch with a small axe, and after
+a few minutes’ chopping and levering it gave way, and he wrenched the
+cover off. It sunk slowly, being water-logged. There was a square,
+black hole, and after peering into it for a few seconds Henninger
+slipped inside and vanished.
+
+The life-line and the air-tube slowly paid out, and the bubbles
+sparkled up intermittently from the hatch. Henninger remained in the
+hold for about ten minutes, when his grotesque form emerged like a
+strange sea-monster, and he crawled up the slanted deck again, and
+came above the water. Sitting on the broken rail of the steamer, he
+shouted to them, but his voice came inarticulately through the helmet,
+and, seeing his failure, he gesticulated at the derrick.
+
+“He wants us to lower the grapples,” exclaimed Elliott. He ran to the
+crank and touched it, looking at Henninger, and the helmet nodded
+affirmatively.
+
+With the assistance of a couple of the crew, the beam was swung round
+over the wreck, and the grappling-hooks lowered. Henninger caught them
+as soon as they were within reach, and he descended once more into the
+hold, carrying the irons with him. He was out of sight for a longer
+period this time, but he reappeared at last, and clambered with
+difficulty aboard the dhow.
+
+“Hoist away,” he said, as soon as the helmet was unscrewed. “I’ve got
+one hooked.” His face was much flushed, and he rubbed his eyes
+dizzily.
+
+“What did you find?” queried Hawke, with excitement.
+
+“All the freight is piled in a heap, higgledy-piggledy, and it’s
+pretty dark down there. I made out the cases we want, though, or at
+least some of them. I had forgotten that it’s so easy to lift weights
+under water. I heaved those crates and hogsheads around like a dime
+museum strong man. The irons are hooked on one of them. Let’s get it
+up.”
+
+At the word the Arabs at the crank began to revolve the handles. The
+long spar rose, and an iron-bound, wooden packing-case, about three
+feet in diameter, appeared at the hatch, and swung dripping out of the
+water. The dhow heeled slightly at its weight.
+
+“Inboard,” commanded Henninger, and the reis translated the order. The
+beam was swung around till the case hung directly over the after
+hatchway of the dhow, and, being lowered, it descended accurately out
+of sight.
+
+Every one rushed down the ladder to look at it as it lay in the centre
+of a widening pool on the planking, with the grapples still fast. But
+there was nothing to see; the markings on the box had been almost
+obliterated by water, though the false stencil could still be made
+out. On the other side letters had been painted with a black brush,
+presumably the forwarding directions, but nothing could be made of
+them. Hawke went out and returned with an axe, but Henninger checked
+him.
+
+“Why, aren’t you going to open it?” said Hawke, staring.
+
+“Better not. We know well enough what’s in it. We’ve got to hurry,
+work day and night, and get away from here as quick as ever we can.”
+
+“Oh, confound it! We’ll have to open one of them, anyway. We may have
+made a mistake. Aren’t we going to see any of the plunder?” exclaimed
+Elliott and Hawke, and Margaret added her entreaty.
+
+“All right, go ahead,” Henninger gave in. “Open it carefully, though,
+for we’ll want to close the box again. Sullivan, please keep an eye on
+the hatch to see that nobody looks down.”
+
+Hawke released the grapples, and they dragged the case into the cabin,
+where, with some difficulty, one of the boards of the cover was pried
+off. A mass of wet, foul-smelling hay appeared below, and Hawke began
+to drag this out upon the floor, where it made a great pool of
+sea-water.
+
+The hay was packed very tightly, but in a few seconds Hawke
+encountered something solid, and brought it to light. It was a dead
+yellow brick of gold, exactly similar to the one already acquired.
+
+Hawke continued the disembowelling of the case until the floor was
+swimming with water and heaped with sodden hay, and the pile of yellow
+blocks grew upon the floor. At last the box was empty.
+
+“Twenty-five,” remarked Henninger, who had been counting them as they
+came out. “We might as well weigh them. There are small scales in the
+storeroom,”—which Elliott at once fetched.
+
+The scales, which were not strictly accurate, indicated the weight of
+the first brick at a trifle under eight pounds, and the others all
+gave the same result. Evidently they had been run in the same mould.
+
+“The latest quotation for pure gold, as I suppose this is, was
+twenty-five dollars an ounce, or thereabouts. At that rate, how much
+is each of these bricks worth? Remember, these scales weigh sixteen
+ounces to the pound.”
+
+“Three thousand, two hundred dollars,” replied Hawke, after making the
+calculation. “The whole case will total up—let me see—eighty thousand
+dollars!”
+
+“I counted twenty-three cases in the forehold, and there are two at
+least in the after-hold,” said Bennett.
+
+“Two millions,” said Hawke.
+
+“Two millions!” whispered Margaret, and at her awed tone Hawke burst
+into a high-pitched roar of laughter. Bennett caught the contagion,
+and then Elliott, and they laughed and laughed, a shrill nervous peal,
+till they could not leave off.
+
+“Stop it!” shouted Henninger.
+
+“We’ll never have a chance to laugh like this again,” Hawke managed to
+ejaculate, and there was a renewed outburst.
+
+“Brace up. You’re all hysterical!” said Henninger, sharply, and they
+gradually regained self-control. “Come,” he continued, “we’ve got to
+get the rest of that stuff aboard. Hawke, you and Miss Laurie will
+repack that box again just as it was before. Make a memorandum of the
+number of bricks in it, and, Miss Laurie, you will keep a tally of the
+boxes as they come down.”
+
+This time, Elliott volunteered to go below, and he donned the
+diving-dress, and lumbered over the side. It was easy enough to slide
+down the steep slope of the steamer’s deck; in fact, he scarcely knew
+when he became submerged, but it required a summoning of all his
+courage to jump into the black gulf of the hold.
+
+He floated down through the water as lightly as a falling leaf,
+however, and landed without a jar upon a miscellaneous mass of tumbled
+freight. There was a faint green-gold light in the place, and at first
+it was hard to distinguish anything, but as his eyes grew more
+accustomed to the strange gloom he made out the articles of cargo
+distinctly. There were boxes and cases of every size and shape, with
+barrels and bales and shapeless things in crates—very much the same
+heterogeneous mixture, in fact, as he had seen in the after-hold.
+
+The air began to buzz in his ears, and according to directions he
+knocked his head against the valve in the back of the helmet and
+released the pressure. The coolness penetrated through his armour;
+and, but for the rubbery taste of the air he breathed, he found the
+situation decidedly pleasant, for the depth was too slight to cause
+any feeling of oppression.
+
+He examined the cases, bending his helmet close over them, for it was
+not easy to make out their almost erased markings. He found that he
+had been standing on one of the gold chests, and he hitched the
+tackles to it, astonished to find that he could move its heavy weight
+with considerable ease. He signalled through the life-line, and the
+case was hoisted up, and disappeared out of his sight.
+
+By the time the grappling-hooks returned empty upon him he had found
+another of the treasure-cases, which he at once sent aloft. He secured
+four cases in this way, and sent them up in about twenty minutes; and
+then, beginning to feel a slight nausea from the hot, rubber-flavoured
+air, he climbed out and made his way aboard the dhow.
+
+Henninger took his place, and sent up two more cases, making seven
+that were stored in the dhow’s cabin. The first one had already been
+repacked, and Hawke and Bennett were busy stacking the chests in the
+strong-room, lashing each one strongly to ring-bolts to prevent
+shifting when the dhow rolled. They opened two more just enough to see
+that there was certainly gold in each, and closed them again. The
+heavy weight of the cases was evidence of the amount.
+
+All day long the work went on, under the full blaze of an equatorial
+sun. The dhow’s decks ran with water from the dripping chests, and
+down below the cabin was flooded, for the boxes were like sponges.
+With the exception of Margaret, the adventurers were drenched to the
+skin, and the work grew increasingly difficult when it became
+necessary to shift the cargo about in the steamer to find the gold
+cases. When at last it seemed that all had been taken out, the tally
+showed only fifteen in the strong-room, while Bennett had counted
+twenty-three in the hold. The missing ones would have to be
+discovered, and Henninger went down again to search for them.
+
+“I wonder what the crew are thinking of all this,” Margaret remarked
+to Elliott. He had paused at the entrance to the strong-room where she
+was keeping tally in a note-book as the precious cases came aboard.
+
+“I don’t know what they think. I know what the reis told them,”
+returned Elliott. “He told them that we’re wrecking the steamer and
+taking out a lot of cases of cartridges for the sake of the brass and
+lead. He knows all about it, of course, but the crew would never dream
+of so much gold being in her.”
+
+Margaret shivered a little. “Things have gone almost too smoothly
+since we sailed. I felt certain that we would get here in time, and I
+was right. But now I feel, I hardly know how, as if something was
+going wrong. I wish we could leave the rest of the gold and go away.
+We have more than we need now.”
+
+“Oh, no,” Elliott expostulated. “And there are two more cases in the
+after-hold, which won’t be easy to get out.”
+
+“I have been nearly happy,” she broke out, after a silence, “happier
+than I ever expected to be again in my life. I feel almost ashamed of
+it, after all that I suffered such a little while ago. I see now that
+it was a dreadful thing for me to come on this expedition; I am
+surprised that you let me do it. But everybody has been so nice to me.
+If I had been the sister of all these men they couldn’t have treated
+me with more respect and real kindness. Aren’t you almost glad I came,
+after all?”
+
+“Yes,” said Elliott. He hesitated. “Do you know why I wanted all this
+money?” he went on, bending toward her. “It wasn’t for myself.”
+
+“What, then?” said Margaret, faintly. “No, don’t tell me,” she
+exclaimed, “not yet. Let’s be comrades the same as ever, and we
+haven’t got the gold yet, anyway.”
+
+“Then I’ll tell you when we do get it,” Elliott answered; and at that
+moment another case came down the hatch, and Bennett followed it,
+breaking off the conversation. But the girl’s “not yet” left a glow of
+excitement and exultation in Elliott’s heart for the rest of the day.
+
+Two more of the missing chests were located at last and sent up. A
+fourth had been burst; it might have been the very one which Bennett
+had opened while imprisoned in the hold, and the contents were
+scattered. After some consultation, Elliott went down again and sent
+the bricks up in a canvas sack, three at a time, packed in hay to
+disguise the weight. By the time this was accomplished, it was near
+sunset, and already growing too dark to see in the hold. Henninger
+fumed impatiently, but without electric lights it was impossible to
+work under water after sunset. Besides, the boxes in the after-hold
+could not by any possibility be reached that night.
+
+Elliott struggled that night between sleepy exhaustion and excited
+wakefulness, and the rest of the party were in a similar state. All
+night long he could hear frequent movements; a dozen times he started
+up anxiously at some sound, only to find that it was the armed guard
+over the hatchway, but toward morning he slept heavily for a couple of
+hours.
+
+Work was resumed as soon as a diver could see in the steamer’s hold.
+After looking through all the mass of freight, and turning over much
+of it with a lever, the missing cases were at last discovered, and one
+by one hoisted aboard.
+
+“Now for the other half of the ship,” said Henninger, turning his eyes
+toward the wreck on the reef. “I rather fancy we’ll have to dynamite a
+hole in her side—good God!”
+
+They followed his pointing finger and stood stupefied. Off the
+eastward end of the island a small steamer was lying, a faint haze of
+smoke drifting from her funnel, and the red British ensign flying at
+her peak.
+
+
+
+
+               CHAPTER XVIII. THE BATTLE ON THE LAGOON
+
+
+“How did that ship get so close without our seeing her?” cried
+Henninger, fiercely. “Who was on the lookout?”
+
+It appeared that every one aboard the dhow had been too deeply
+interested in the salvage operations, and that nobody had been on the
+lookout at all. The chief snatched up a glass and stared long at the
+strange vessel, which lay absolutely motionless and perhaps a mile
+away.
+
+“We’d better clear out. She’s a Britisher—as like as not a gunboat,”
+Hawke muttered, nervously.
+
+“Clear out!” snorted Henninger. “She’d overtake us in an hour, with
+her engines. She’s got no guns, that I can see. Ten to one it’s our
+friends from Zanzibar.” He continued to gaze through the binoculars.
+
+“By Jove, she’s getting ready to lower a boat!” he exclaimed, after a
+minute or two. “Sullivan, please bring up those rifles and open a case
+of ammunition. Bring up a case of revolver cartridges, too. Elliott,
+tell the skipper to get those anchors up, and bring her around.”
+
+The strange steamer was indeed lowering a boat which was full of men,
+and as it left her side half a dozen dull flashes, as of blued steel,
+glimmered in the sun. Sullivan darted below and came up with his arms
+full of Mausers, which he stacked against the after-rail. The Arabs
+were set to work at the capstan, and the forward anchor was broken
+out, but the kedge attached to the reef was allowed to remain for the
+present. Without it, the dhow would have drifted upon the island, for
+the bright morning was turning cloudy, with a rising breeze from the
+southeast.
+
+There was hurry and excitement upon her decks as she lay head to the
+freshening weather, straining at her single cable. The Arabs were
+clustered at the bow, talking violently among themselves, and
+gesticulating at the mysterious steamer. Henninger watched them with
+an air of suspicion, and proceeded to load his revolver, and put a
+handful of cartridges in his pocket. Every one followed his example,
+and Margaret produced her own pistol, which she had not shown since
+the night of her coming aboard.
+
+“Oh, is there going to be a fight?” she breathed in a tremulous voice,
+which her bright eyes attributed to excitement rather than to fright.
+
+“No. At least, I hope not,” said Henninger. “If there should be,
+you’ll go below and stay there, Miss Laurie. You understand?”
+
+“Look,” she cried, in answer. “They’re waving a white flag.”
+
+The boat, which had almost reached the barrier reef, had stopped, and
+a strip of white cloth was being flourished from her stern.
+
+“That settles it,” Elliott remarked. “It must be Carlton and Sevier’s
+gang. They want to talk to us.”
+
+“We’ll talk to them, but they mustn’t come alongside us,” responded
+Henninger. “We’ll go ashore to meet them. Elliott, will you come with
+me? The rest of you had better stand by with the rifles while the
+peace conference is going on.”
+
+Elliott and Henninger accordingly descended into the dhow’s
+shore-boat, which swung by its painter, carrying no weapons but their
+revolvers. Elliott took the oars, and while he rowed Henninger stood
+up and flourished his handkerchief. The other boat resumed its course
+at this signal, but was obliged to sheer westward for a quarter of a
+mile to find an entrance through the ring of reefs. Elliott and
+Henninger had been ashore for ten minutes when the steamer’s party
+landed at a point a hundred yards eastward upon the beach.
+
+The strangers disembarked, nine of them, and seemed to consult
+together for a few moments. Two were in Arab dress, but the rest
+appeared to be white men of the lowest order, the white riffraff that
+gathers in the East African ports, a genuinely piratical crew, and
+every man carried his rifle. Finally, two men came forward with the
+flag of truce.
+
+“That’s Sevier all right,” said Elliott, “and Carlton with him.”
+
+So it proved, and the Alabaman saluted them with a suave flourish, and
+without any symptom of surprise.
+
+“Good mo’nin’, Elliott,” he said. “Ah, I always knew you knew where
+this place was. We never ought to have let you go, but we were all
+rattled that night, as you’ll remember. I hope you enjoyed your trip
+to San Francisco?”
+
+“Very much, thanks,” said Elliott. “Have you been to Ibo Island?”
+
+“Yes, we’ve been at Ibo Island. Your slippery old sky-pilot played us
+a neat trick on that deal. Only for that, we’d have been here two
+weeks ago. Have you all fished up the stuff?”
+
+“Yes, we’ve got it all aboard,” said Elliott, forgetting the two cases
+in the stern on the wreck.
+
+“But we’ve no time for chat,” Henninger broke in. “My name’s
+Henninger, and I’m in a way the leader of this party. What do you want
+with us, gentlemen?”
+
+“I think I met you once at Panama, Henninger,” said Carlton, as
+gruffly as ever.
+
+“Very likely,” returned Henninger. “There are all sorts at Panama.
+What do you want now?”
+
+“We want am even divvy of the stuff.”
+
+“We could take it all, you know,” put in Sevier, sweetly.
+
+“I think not. We won’t divide it,” Henninger answered, without
+hesitation.
+
+“What’ll you offer, then?”
+
+This time Henninger reflected. “I suppose you know as well as we do
+how much there is,” he said, slowly, at last. “If my partners agree to
+it, I don’t mind offering you two cases, holding about seventy-five
+thousand dollars apiece. That will recoup you for your expenses in
+coming here.”
+
+“It won’t do,” said Carlton, firmly. “Is that your best bid?”
+
+“It’s our only one. Take it or leave it,” replied Henninger, with
+great unconcern.
+
+“We’ve got twenty well-armed men—fellows hired to fight,” hinted
+Sevier, “but we don’t want to start trouble.”
+
+“Your twenty men will certainly cut your throats on the way back, if
+you have an ounce of gold,” Henninger remarked.
+
+“They might, if we hadn’t put the terror into them coming down.
+Carlton shot one last week.”
+
+“You shouldn’t let them get so much out of hand as that. But if you
+accept our offer we’ll expect you to put to sea as soon as you have
+the stuff. In any case, we can’t allow you to land on the island. You
+must keep your distance.”
+
+“Think it over,” urged Sevier. “We’ll take one-third, and let you go
+away with the rest.”
+
+“No,” said Henninger.
+
+“Then we’ll take it all,” Carlton abruptly declared, and walked away.
+Sevier remained for a moment, looking at Henninger with an expression
+of regret, and then turned after his companion.
+
+“Quick! Into the boat!” hissed Henninger.
+
+As they pushed off they saw Sevier and Carlton running toward the
+landing party, who had dropped out of sight behind the scattered rocks
+on the shore. A confused yell of warning came over the lagoon from the
+dhow, and, the next instant, half a dozen irregular rifle-shots
+banged. Elliott ducked low over the oar-handles. His pith helmet
+jumped from his head and fell into the boat with a round hole through
+the top; there was a rapid tingling like that of telegraph wires in
+the air.
+
+Instantly the Mausers upon the dhow began to rattle. Henninger ripped
+out a curse, and opened an ineffectual fire with his revolver. But the
+rifle shots from the dhow were straighter. As he tugged at the oars,
+shaking with wrath and excitement, Elliott saw Sevier go down as he
+ran, rolling over and over. He was up instantly, but there was a red
+blotch on the shoulder of his white jacket, and in a few seconds more
+he was under cover with the rest of his party.
+
+The boat tore through the water, against the wind and waves that were
+rising upon the lagoon. The enemy had turned their fire principally
+upon the dhow, but still the bullets seemed to Elliott to follow one
+another in unbroken succession. He had never been under fire before,
+and a wild confusion of thoughts rushed through his mind. The boat, he
+thought, was making scarcely any headway, though Henninger had sat
+down opposite him and was pushing with all his weight upon the oars.
+The missiles zipped past or cut hissing into the water. Twice the
+gunwale was perforated, and then, all at once, they were in the
+shelter of the dhow’s hull.
+
+“What are you doing on deck, Miss Laurie? Go below at once,” cried
+Henninger, angrily, as he climbed on board.
+
+The dhow’s company were lying flat on the deck and firing across the
+rail, which offered concealment rather than shelter. The crew had
+taken refuge in the forecastle, with the exception of the reis, who
+had squatted imperturbably on the deck. Margaret was sitting on the
+planking behind the mast, with her pistol in her lap.
+
+“I did go below,” she answered. “But a bullet came right in through
+the side of the ship. It’s just as safe here. Wingate!” she exclaimed,
+as Elliott came over the rail, “you’re not hurt, are you?”
+
+“No, of course not. Lie down on the deck,” said Elliott, irritably,
+“and put that gun away. You’re liable to hurt some one.” He felt
+unaccountably bad-tempered, nervous, excited, and scared.
+
+“If those fellows get on the top of the hill,” Henninger snapped,
+“they’ll be able to keep us off the deck. We’d better—”
+
+“Can’t we let the dhow drift to the island and capture the whole
+bunch?” suggested Bennett.
+
+“We’d certainly lose a couple of men in doing it,” said Henninger,
+more collectedly. “I wouldn’t risk it. What are they doing on the
+steamer, Hawke? You’ve got the glasses.”
+
+“They’re lowering another boat!” Hawke cried. “Four—six—seven men in
+her,” he continued, peering through the binoculars.
+
+“By thunder, they’ll smother us out!” exclaimed Bennett, and the
+adventurers looked at one another for a moment in silence.
+
+“That boat mustn’t land,” said Henninger. “Set your sights for five
+hundred yards, and don’t fire until I give the word; then pump it in
+as fast as you can. Be sure to hit the boat, if nothing else.”
+
+The second boat had left the steamer and was being rowed toward the
+island at a racing pace, veering to the west, to make the same
+landing-place as the other. Henninger, struck by a sudden thought,
+turned to the skipper.
+
+“Abdullah, can any of your men shoot? Bring up three of the best of
+them and give them rifles. Take one yourself. We must put that boat
+out of business before she touches the shore.”
+
+The reis went below and brought up three Arabs, who grinned as they
+received the rifles, evidently delighted at the honour. The boat was
+drawing nearer, still pulling to the west, and the party ashore began
+to fire more rapidly to cover the landing.
+
+“Never mind them,” said Henninger. “Aim at the boat. Now!”
+
+The six Mausers went off like a single shot, and the Arabs poured in
+their fire a second later. There was instant confusion in the boat,
+which was just passing through the reef; an oar went up in the air,
+and a white streak showed on her bow. As fast as the rifles could be
+discharged the dhow’s company fired, thrusting fresh clips into the
+magazines when they were empty. The cartridge-cases rattled out upon
+the deck, and the rank smelling gas from the smokeless powder drifted
+back chokingly.
+
+“Allah! Allah!” screamed the excited Arabs, as they manipulated their
+weapons, shooting wildly in the direction of the enemy. But the
+bullets were coming fast from the shore. Elliott again heard strange
+sharp sounds whispering past his face. A great splinter flew up from
+the rail, and suddenly Sullivan stood up jerkily on the deck.
+
+“Lie down!” Henninger howled at him, and the adventurer collapsed. The
+front of his shirt was covered with bright red blood. Elliott sprang
+to his side, dropping his rifle.
+
+“Sullivan’s hit!” he shouted.
+
+“Never mind him!” roared Henninger. “Let him alone, you fool. Keep up
+the fire.”
+
+The boat was floating crazily about, with oars dipping in
+contradictory directions. Her crew were standing up or lying down, and
+firing a few wild shots.
+
+“I’ll look after him. Go back to your place,” said Margaret, creeping
+up beside the fallen man.
+
+“Get under cover yourself!” cried Elliott, furiously. “You can’t do
+anything. Why aren’t you below?”
+
+But the concentrated, rapid fire had already done its work. The boat
+had drifted upon a reef, perforated undoubtedly in a dozen places. She
+capsized with a sudden lunge upon the rocks, and her crew went into
+the water, where a few swimming heads presently reappeared.
+
+“Don’t fire at them,” said Henninger, grimly contemplating the
+swimmers. “They can’t hurt us; they’ve lost their rifles. How’s
+Sullivan?”
+
+Margaret turned up a pale, frightened face, with eyes that were full
+of tears. “I—don’t know,” she faltered.
+
+Sullivan’s eyes were open, but his face was already pale, and he lay
+perfectly motionless on the deck. Henninger ripped open his shirt,
+wiped the blood from the wound in the chest, and felt his wrist.
+
+“Shot through the heart,” he said, laying the arm down very gently. No
+one spoke; they all gazed silently at the whitening face. A bullet,
+fired from the island, ripped through the sail and plunged viciously
+into the bulwark.
+
+“Elliott, you and Bennett carry him below,” commanded Henninger,
+harshly. “No time for mourning now. Miss Laurie, you go below and stay
+there. Don’t bunch together like that, the rest of you. We can’t
+afford to lose any more men.”
+
+But for a few minutes the men ashore ceased their fire. When Elliott
+came on deck again the smoke had blown clear. The steamer lay immobile
+in the offing, heaving upon the roughening sea, and the wrecked boat
+was bobbing up and down in the surf, bottom upward. There were no
+signs of the fight but the scattered cartridge-cases on the deck, a
+few splintered holes in the woodwork and a red smear on the planking.
+
+Henninger took the glass and carefully scrutinized the steamer, and
+then turned his gaze upon the island.
+
+“I don’t know what they’re up to,” he said, with dissatisfaction. “I
+can’t see a hair of them. Either they’re lying mighty close, or else
+they’ve slipped around the hill and are climbing to the top. I can see
+another boat on the steamer, but I don’t think it’ll try to come
+ashore—not till dark, anyway.”
+
+“But they’ve got nothing but some kind of sporting rifles, burning
+black powder,” said Hawke. “Good rifles, but they haven’t near the
+range of our Mausers. We could lie off and pepper them, if we could
+get to sea.”
+
+“Yes, we must get out of this lagoon. It’s a regular trap,” said
+Henninger.
+
+“And they’ve got no water on the island,” Bennett remarked.
+
+At this remark Elliott realized that his throat was parching. He
+brought a bucket of water aft, and they all drank enormously. It was
+very hot, though the sun was veiled in gray clouds and the sea was
+rising under the rising southeast wind, the prevailing wind on the
+east coast at that season.
+
+“There was a rainwater pool on the island when I was there,” Bennett
+went on. “I found it very useful. But it may be dry now, and anyhow
+it’s at the other end of the island, and they can’t get to it.”
+
+“Hang it all, why can’t we put to sea and let the rest of the treasure
+go?” ejaculated Elliott, sickening at the thought of what the gold had
+already cost.
+
+“Because with that steamer they’d follow us, wear us out, and maybe
+run us down,” said Henninger. “But we must get out of the lagoon and
+have sea-room as soon as possible.”
+
+Thud! Something cut through the upper portion of the mizzen-sail and
+plunged into the deck. Whiz-z-ip! Another missile hit the barrel of
+Bennett’s rifle and glanced away, screaming harshly. Bennett dropped
+the gun from his tingling fingers. A third bullet lodged in the mast,
+and another ploughed a deep furrow in the rail, and glanced again.
+
+“Where did that come from?” yelled Hawke; and “Look!” shouted Elliott
+at the same moment, pointing shoreward.
+
+The top of the hill upon the island was crowned with white smoke, and
+as they looked three or four fresh puffs of vapour bloomed out and
+blew down the wind, with a distant popping report. Zip! Thud! the
+bullets sang down and plunged into the planking.
+
+“They’ve got to the hill. Scatter! Scatter! Lie down!” cried
+Henninger, flinging himself flat on the deck. But on the hill not a
+man was to be seen. The invaders had stowed themselves so snugly
+behind the irregular boulders that not so much as a rifle muzzle
+showed, and a plunging fire beat down upon the dhow’s exposed
+after-deck.
+
+“Gee! this is hot!” exclaimed Hawke, as a bullet ploughed the deck not
+six inches from his shoulder.
+
+“Too hot!” said Henninger. “We can’t stay up here.” He jumped up and
+dived for the hatch, and the others followed him, crouching low. They
+tumbled down the ladder almost in a heap, and found Margaret sitting
+on a locker in the cabin beside the door of the strong-room. Six feet
+away Sullivan’s body lay, a rigid outline, under a blanket.
+
+“We’re trapped sure enough!” exclaimed Hawke, breathing heavily. He
+went to the stern port-light and looked out cautiously. The window
+gave a view of the island, where the concealed marksmen had ceased to
+fire, but the steamer could not be seen.
+
+“The tables are turned. They can starve us out now,” Hawke went on
+nervously.
+
+“Surely not. We can get to sea, can’t we, Henninger?” said Elliott.
+
+“I don’t know,” replied Henninger, abstractedly. He was looking
+through the port, and he finally thrust his head out to look at the
+steamer. “Look out!” he cried, dodging inside again with agility.
+
+He had drawn another volley from the watchful rifles on the hill, but
+the stern timbers of the dhow were thick enough to keep out the lead,
+and no bullet entered the port. Two or three shots came crashing down
+through the deck, splintering the under side of the planking, but
+doing no further damage.
+
+“They’re determined to keep us smothered,” said Hawke.
+
+For perhaps fifteen minutes there was a lull, and then a man stood up
+on the hill waving a white streamer, and began to descend. He reached
+the shore, boarded the boat, and began to row out with some
+difficulty, but apparent fearlessness. He was easily recognizable
+through the glass, and when he was within a hundred yards Henninger
+hailed him.
+
+“Don’t come any nearer, Carlton. What do you want?”
+
+“We’ll give you one-third and let you go,” shouted Carlton, standing
+up in the plunging boat.
+
+“You’ll get all of it, or none,” answered Henninger, and without
+another word Carlton rowed himself back to shore.
+
+“Serve him right to take a shot at him,” muttered Hawke, handling his
+rifle.
+
+“No, don’t do that,” said Elliott. “Let’s fight fair, if we are in a
+close corner.”
+
+But the fighting was delayed. For hours deep peace brooded over the
+island, while the whitecaps grew, crashing upon the reef, and the dhow
+strained at her single cable. The steamer was invisible, owing to her
+position, but she blew her whistle several times in a curious fashion,
+to which answer was made by the wigwagging of a white cloth just
+visible above the crest of the hill.
+
+“They’re plotting something. I wish I knew what it was,” Henninger
+said, anxiously, searching the hill with the glass.
+
+“The reis thinks the cable won’t hold if the weather freshens much
+more,” said Bennett, who had been conversing with the skipper. “If it
+breaks we’ll drift on the island, and they’ll sure have us.”
+
+“Don’t borrow trouble,” said Elliott.
+
+
+
+
+                    CHAPTER XIX. THE SECOND WRECK
+
+
+But the kedge cable held nobly, while the long afternoon passed slowly
+away, though its straining could be felt in every part of the vessel,
+and it twanged and hummed taut as a violin string. There were no
+provisions of any sort in the cabin, and, toward evening, Elliott
+undertook to go forward along the deck to obtain something from the
+galley. There had been no firing for hours, but the garrison of the
+hilltop then demonstrated their vigilance. Before Elliott’s body was
+out of the hatch the distant rifles were snapping, and so sharp a
+fusilade was opened that he had to go back. Finally, Henninger cut a
+hole in the bulkhead with an axe, through which food was passed by the
+crew. The Mussulmans in the forecastle were quietly smoking or
+sleeping away the hours, apparently totally unperturbed by the fight.
+They had nothing to do; it was none of their affair, and they were in
+safe cover.
+
+Late in the afternoon it had rained heavily for half an hour, and the
+sun went down in a bank of clouds. It was perfectly dark in fifteen
+minutes, and there was every prospect of a rough night. The surf
+crashed upon the reef, sending showers of spray over the _Clara
+McClay’s_ wreck, and occasionally deluging the dhow. The rigging
+hummed and tingled like the cable, but the breeze appeared to be
+shifting to the east, for the dhow was drifting to westward, and
+across the gap in the barrier reef.
+
+In the safety of the darkness the whole party returned to the deck to
+escape the stifling air of the cabin. The sky was clouded inky black,
+and intermittent dashes of rain mingled with the spatter of the spray.
+In the darkness to the eastward gleamed the red starboard light of the
+steamer, with a white riding-light at her masthead. Complete darkness
+covered the island and the hill; it was impossible to ascertain
+whether the landing party were still there or whether they had
+returned aboard their ship.
+
+Hawke fired an experimental shot at the island, but there was no
+reply. The night seemed full of mystery and invisible danger, and it
+was hot and oppressive, in spite of rain and wind. The dhow plunged
+and quivered as she tugged at her restraining cable, that seemed as if
+it must break at every lurch. But it held firmly for a whole anxious
+hour, when a heavier downpour of rain sent the adventurers below again
+for shelter.
+
+The possibility of getting to sea was debated, but it seemed too
+dangerous an attempt in the face of the foul weather and the southeast
+wind. But the enforced truce and suspense was more harassing to the
+nerves than any actual conflict could have been. The lamp swinging
+wildly from the ceiling lit up the cabin with a smoky yellow light; on
+one side lay Sullivan’s corpse under the gray blanket, seeming,
+Elliott fancied, to chill the room with its presence; on the other
+side was the locked and iron-barred door to the gold for which the
+adventurer had died. The rifles stood stacked in a corner, and the men
+gathered near the port-hole for the sake of air, and discussed the
+situation till their ideas were exhausted. After an hour or so, in
+sheer nervous despair, Henninger and Bennett took to playing seven-up
+on the floor, and Elliott presently took a hand in the game. He played
+mechanically, paying no attention to the score, hardly knowing what he
+did, and seeing the faces of the cards with eyes that scarcely
+recognized them. Margaret sat on the locker and seemed to doze a
+little; while Hawke prowled restlessly about, now looking over the
+shoulders of the card-players, now peering through the port, and now
+climbing half-way up the ladder to the deck.
+
+“It’s stopped raining,” he reported, after one of these ascents.
+“Looks as if it might clear up.” A few minutes later he went up again.
+They heard his feet on the planking overhead, and then a startled
+shout.
+
+“The steamer!”
+
+Henninger dropped his cards, and dashed up the ladder, with Elliott
+and Bennett at his heels. “What about the steamer?” he cried.
+
+“Where is she? What’s become of her?”
+
+That part of the night where the steamer’s lights had shone was blank.
+Henninger whistled, and then swore.
+
+“She was there ten minutes ago,” Hawke protested.
+
+“Maybe the wind has blown out her lights. She can’t have cleared out,
+can she?” said Elliott.
+
+“Cleared out? Not a bit of it,” said Henninger. “They’ve doused the
+lights themselves. Can’t you see what they’re trying to do? Here,
+Abdullah! Can we get to sea at once?”
+
+The reis glanced gravely at the darkness where the sea roared through
+the gap in the reef, and then gravely back to his employer.
+
+“It is as Allah wills,” he said. “But it cannot be done by men.”
+
+“But Allah does will it!” cried Henninger, violently. “Call your men
+up. We must be outside the lagoon in half an hour.”
+
+“Great heavens, Henninger! you aren’t going to try to take the dhow
+out through the gap in this pitch-dark?” Bennett exclaimed.
+
+“Yes, I am. We’ve got to do it. Don’t you understand that the first
+thing in the morning we’ll be riddled from both sides? Those fellows
+are bringing up the steamer in the dark, to lie close off our
+position. But I reckon we can do something in the dark, too.”
+
+“You’ll smash us, sure,” Elliott protested.
+
+“I know something about sailing, and I’ve seen the Arabs do neater
+tricks than that at Zanzibar. We can do it. There’s a chance, anyhow,
+and I’d rather see the gold sunk again than have to surrender it in
+the morning. Confound it, reis, when are we going to start?”
+
+The Arab cast another gloomy glance at the reef, shrugged his
+shoulders with racial fatalism, and went forward to call up the men.
+Henninger dashed below, came up with an axe, and started toward the
+bow.
+
+“Stop! You’re not going to cut that cable. Don’t you know that the
+bight’ll fly up and kill you?” shouted Bennett, intercepting him.
+
+“That’s so. I forgot,” admitted Henninger, pausing.
+
+“But the whole scheme is mad—suicidal,” Bennett added, angrily.
+
+“No, let’s get away at any risk!” exclaimed Margaret, who had come on
+deck.
+
+“Halloo, you must go below again,” said Elliott. “Or, wait a moment.”
+He cut loose a life-belt and buckled it round her. “Perhaps you had
+better stay on deck after all, for as like as not we’re going to the
+bottom. Hang on to the dhow if we strike, and don’t let yourself get
+carried against the rocks. I’ll look after you.”
+
+The Arab seamen were stationing themselves about the deck without a
+protest of word or gesture against the dangerous manœuvre that was to
+be attempted, and Elliott’s courage rose at the sight of their
+coolness. The danger of the attempt lay almost wholly in the thick
+darkness. The gap was nearly thirty yards wide, and the weather had
+shifted so far to the east that the dhow could run out with a wind
+abeam, provided that she could hit the gap. But there were no lights,
+no steering guides, but the indistinct break in the whiteness of the
+surf, and the vague difference in the tone of the breakers where the
+reef interposed no barrier.
+
+The reis took the tiller, and a seaman went forward, picked up the axe
+which Henninger had dropped, and scanned the cable narrowly.
+Dextrously, carefully, he struck three light blows with the steel,
+cutting it partly through, and skipped back out of danger. The dhow
+heaved; a sensation of rending ran from the bows throughout her
+timbers; and suddenly, with a bang like a gunshot, the cable parted,
+and the dhow began to drift rapidly, stern first.
+
+The reis shouted in guttural Arabic, and sheet and tiller brought her
+round. She began to run diagonally toward the island, heading almost
+straight for the hill, with the wind abeam. In the bows a seaman cast
+a short lead-line incessantly, calling the depth with a weird cry. The
+sky was clearing slightly, as Hawke had said, and Henninger had
+observed it with a worried expression. The dhow’s spread of white
+canvas would be visible in the night where the black hull of the
+steamer would remain unseen, and their only chance lay in making open
+water and running below the horizon before they were sighted by the
+speedier craft.
+
+After a short tack the dhow went about, and headed back as she had
+come. The crucial moment was at hand. The reis stared ahead, stooping
+slightly to get a clear view under the sails, though to Elliott’s eyes
+the darkness was impenetrable.
+
+“Those Arabs can see in the dark like cats,” muttered Henninger, at
+his elbow.
+
+The helmsman brought her up a little more into the wind, and shouted
+another order. There was a rush of barefooted Moslems across the
+heeling deck, and the dhow darted forward, straight for a roaring line
+of invisible rocks.
+
+“What’s that?” called Bennett, sharply.
+
+Away in the darkness to the east Elliott too had seen a faint glow in
+the air and a momentary puff of red sparks blown off and instantly
+extinguished. It could be nothing but a flash from the funnel of the
+steamer; she must be coming up, and at full speed. But in another
+half-minute the dhow would be either in the open sea or at the bottom,
+and he gripped the rail with a thrill of such intense excitement as he
+had never known in his life.
+
+For a moment he thought they were going to the bottom. The reef
+thundered right under the bows. He had no idea where the gap lay, and
+he started instinctively to go to Margaret, bracing himself for the
+shock of the smash. A deluge of spray roared over her prow; he
+imagined he felt her keel actually scrape, and she came up a little
+more into the wind. He caught a glimpse of the ghostly outline of the
+rock-staked wreck, whitened with its filth—then there was a wild
+plunge, a tumult of waters all round them, and then the shock of the
+encounter with heavier breakers, the big rollers outside. Drenched,
+dizzy, and half-blinded, Elliott became aware that the dhow was
+running more freely to the southwest, and that the surf was booming on
+the starboard bow.
+
+“We’re out!” yelled Henninger. “By Jove, I’ll give the reis an extra
+thousand for this!”
+
+“Look there!” called Hawke, pointing astern. A gust of bright sparks,
+such as Elliott had seen before, was driving down the wind, followed
+by another, and another. There was a streak of faint glowing haze in
+the gloom.
+
+“They’re after us. They’ve sighted our white canvas!” exclaimed
+Henninger.
+
+“Maybe not. They may be only taking a position off the gap,” said
+Elliott.
+
+No one replied to this suggestion. The adventurers strained their eyes
+toward the intermittent flashes of sparks and illuminated smoke from
+the still invisible steamer. She must be half a mile away, but the
+sparks indicated that she was running at high speed, and she could
+readily overhaul them, if indeed their escape had been detected.
+
+“She’s passed the gap. She’s after us!” said Henninger, after a couple
+of anxious minutes. “Bring up the rifles. It’ll come to shooting
+again.”
+
+There was a rush down the ladder to the cabin where the weapons had
+been left. When they returned to the deck it was almost certain that
+the steamer was really in pursuit. The gusts of flying sparks were
+growing continuous; she was forcing her speed, and it seemed to
+Elliott that he could almost distinguish her black, plunging hull, and
+hear the vibration of her engines above the charge and crash of the
+white-topped rollers.
+
+“Haul in as close to the reef as you can,” commanded Henninger to the
+skipper. “We can sail in water where she daren’t go.”
+
+The leadsman was set to work again, and the dhow steered in close,
+perilously close, to the white line of surf. She was rounding the
+western end of the island now, running with a three-quarter wind, but
+the steamer was cutting down her lead with great strides. The ships
+were only a quarter of a mile apart; they were less than that; and now
+Elliott could see the volumes of black smoke rolling furiously across
+the clearing sky, and now he made out, vaguely but certainly, the dark
+bulk of the pursuer. She was following them, running recklessly into
+the shoaling water. The jumping throb of her screw beat across the
+sea, but she remained dark as midnight, except for the showers of red
+cinders flying from her draught.
+
+Suddenly a dozen lanterns blazed up on board the steamer. She was
+scarcely two hundred yards astern, and she seemed to loom like a
+mountain above the dhow. Two shadowy figures stood on her bridge, with
+tense excitement in every line of the pose as they clutched the iron
+railing. In the wheel-house the faint outline of another man showed,
+grasping the spokes, illumined by the dim glow of the binnacle lamp.
+They heard the crash of the seas on her iron side as she tore ahead;
+and, startlingly, a brilliant light was flashed on the dhow from a
+strong reflector, and a gigantic voice bellowed at them through a
+megaphone.
+
+“Ahoy! Ahoy! the dhow!” it roared. “Henninger, Henninger, heave to
+instantly, or, by God, we will run you down!”
+
+It was Carlton’s voice that shouted, and Henninger in answer heaved up
+his Mauser. “Fire at the wheel-house!” he cried, and all of his party
+caught the chance. “Crack! Cr-rack!” the rifles spluttered. Elliott
+thought he heard a sharp cry. A couple of wild shots flashed in reply
+from the towering deck. The blinding light went out, and in the glow
+of the wheel-house Elliott saw the steersman fall, reeling aside,
+still clinging to the spokes.
+
+The steamer sheered violently to starboard. A man leaped from the
+bridge to the wheel, but it was too late; she was running too fast,
+and was already too close to the reefs. A wild yell rang over the sea,
+drowned by a mighty crash and rattle. The steamer had plunged, bows
+on, sheer upon the rocks, and lay there under a shower of whitening
+spray.
+
+Elliott had shouted, too, in uncontrollable excitement, but when he
+realized the wreck he turned quickly to Henninger. “We must stand by
+them,” he cried. “They may go to pieces.”
+
+The Englishman was leaning on the rail, and looking coolly at the
+second victim of the reef.
+
+“Bring her round, Abdullah,” he ordered, at last. “We’ll see what kind
+of a mess they’re in, anyhow.”
+
+The dhow went about, stood to the south, and came back on the other
+tack to the island. The steamer was lying with her bows much higher
+than her stern, but she did not seem to pound as she lay. Her steam
+was blowing off shriekingly in white clouds in the dark, and a dozen
+lanterns were flittering about her decks.
+
+“Hello—the steamer!” hailed Henninger. “Do you want any help?”
+
+The hurrying lanterns stood still for a moment, and presently Sevier’s
+voice replied, angrily, “No!”
+
+But in a few seconds he cried again, “Stand by till daylight, will
+you? We don’t know how badly she’s smashed.”
+
+“The worse the better,” Henninger commented. “We ought to run straight
+for Cape Town, and let them fry in their own fix.”
+
+“Good gracious, you wouldn’t do that?” exclaimed Hawke, and Henninger
+rather grudgingly assented. The dhow stood off and on all night, while
+the sky cleared and the breeze died away toward the approach of dawn.
+Daylight revealed the steamer lying with her nose pushed several feet
+upon the rough barrier, and her stern afloat.
+
+“She seems to lie easy enough,” said Henninger, examining her through
+the glasses. “I fancy she happened to hit a soft spot, and they’ll
+very likely be able to float her off at high tide. It was almost low
+water when she struck, wasn’t it?”
+
+Men were hurrying about her decks, looking over the side, and they
+already had a boatswain’s chair slung almost to the surface of the
+water, from which a man was examining the position of the bow. As the
+dhow approached, a white signal was waved from the bridge, and the
+megaphone roared hoarsely again.
+
+“We want to talk to you. Will you let me come aboard you?”
+
+“That’s Sevier,” said Elliott.
+
+“Yes, if you come alone,” Henninger shouted back, and in a few minutes
+a boat was got overboard from the steamer, with a red-capped seaman at
+the oars, and a man in white clothing in the stern.
+
+This was indeed Sevier, but scarcely recognizable as the smooth and
+well-dressed Southerner as he climbed with difficulty over the dhow’s
+rail. His white duck garments were torn, blackened, wet, and muddy.
+His face was grimed with powder, unshaven, and reddened with the sun,
+and his right arm had the sleeve cut from it and was suspended in
+crimson-stained bandages. He had lost his characteristic suavity, and
+he glanced savagely about as he stepped upon the deck.
+
+“This has been a bad business all round,” he said, as Henninger came
+forward to meet him. “I’ve come to see what terms you’ll make.”
+
+“We won’t make any,” replied Henninger.
+
+“Then we’ll fight it out.”
+
+Henninger laughed rather harshly. “You can go back and begin as soon
+as you like. You make me tired,” he added. “You’ve lost half your men,
+you’re fast on the reef, you’re wounded, and yet you try to bluff us.
+Don’t you know any better than that? Our weapons have twice the range
+of yours. We could take your whole outfit if we thought it was worth
+while, and maroon you here—and you want us to make terms to be allowed
+to go away in peace. Fight it out, if it suits you. We’ll leave you
+here to fight as long as you please.”
+
+“We’re not so bad as that,” said Sevier. “Our ship’ll float at the
+next tide. And there are ten men aboard with rifles, and at this range
+they’d clear off your decks in about ten seconds.”
+
+Henninger glanced quickly at the steamer.
+
+“Let them fire away then,” he said, tranquilly.
+
+Sevier turned to his boat, hesitated, and then came back.
+
+“Will you give us a share of the stuff? Say fifty thousand—twenty
+thousand?”
+
+“Not a hundred. Not one cent.”
+
+“Look here!” cried Sevier, with sudden passion. “Don’t you drive a
+desperate man too far. I won’t try to bluff you. Our men won’t fight
+any more, I’ll admit; they’re a lot of dogs. And Carlton’s dead—”
+
+“Carlton killed?” exclaimed Henninger, taken by surprise.
+
+“He was shot last night on the bridge, just before she went ashore. He
+died in an hour. It don’t matter; he was never more than a brute. But
+we can float the steamer in a day or two and make Zanzibar easy, and
+I’m ruined, clean, stony broke, and there isn’t anything that I’ll
+stick at. I’ll inform the British resident there, and you’ll be
+arrested at the first port you touch. You’ll find the Crown’ll claim
+that gold pretty quick.”
+
+“You daren’t do it,” said Henninger, coolly. “You’ve got a record
+yourself, and you’ve tried to commit piracy.”
+
+“I don’t care. For that matter, I can just as easy prove piracy
+against you. I’ll see your crowd done up anyhow, and I’d as soon be
+jailed as broke.”
+
+Henninger appeared to reflect, and took a turn up and down the deck.
+“I’ll tell you,” he said, finally. “There are two chests of about
+seventy or eighty thousand dollars apiece still in the after-hold of
+the wreck. We’ve got all the rest, and they were the ones I meant to
+give you when I made our first offer. We’ll leave them for you, after
+all, and that’ll stake you again.”
+
+“I’d never get a cent of it,” answered Sevier, sullenly. “We’ve got a
+rough crew aboard, and they’re out of all control.”
+
+“Then—we’ll give you one gold brick, just one. That’ll help you to
+some sort of boat, and you can come back again for the rest.”
+
+“Will you express it to me at Cairo from the first port you touch?”
+enquired Sevier, eagerly.
+
+“Yes, we’ll do that, too. But understand, this isn’t a share, nor yet
+blackmail. It’s simply charity—it’s alms.”
+
+“Confound it, don’t bully him, Henninger,” muttered Elliott, as the
+Alabaman flushed darkly.
+
+“Oh, I can stand it,” said Sevier, containing himself with an obvious
+effort. “I’ll take the alms, and say thank you. I’ll look for it at
+Cairo.”
+
+He bowed with an exaggerated flourish, purple with rage and
+humiliation, and descended into his boat without another word. The
+boat put back toward the steamer, but before it reached her the dhow
+was a mile to the southward, on a wide tack toward her home port.
+
+
+
+
+                     CHAPTER XX. THE RAINBOW ROAD
+
+
+“What’s your plan for getting home with all this gold, Henninger?”
+asked Elliott “I hardly dared to think of that till we’d got away from
+the island.”
+
+It was almost eleven o’clock at night, and the moonlight broke
+intermittently from a cloudy sky. The dhow was beating in long tacks
+down the Mozambique Channel, with a fresh, warm wind blowing from the
+southeast. Elliott was on guard duty at the after-hatch, sitting on an
+inverted bucket with a Mauser across his knees; Henninger and Bennett
+were lingering about the quarter-deck before turning in, and Hawke
+stood sentinel over the door of the strong-room and talked up the
+companionway. Day and night two men were always on duty over the
+treasure; it had been so ever since the gold had come aboard, and the
+system would not be relaxed while the voyage lasted. This would not be
+much longer, however, for they were already six days from the latitude
+of the battle and wreck, where Sullivan lay in deep water, with three
+firebars sewn up in his canvas coffin.
+
+“We can’t sail this craft to England, let alone to America,” Bennett
+remarked.
+
+In spite of success, a certain depression seemed to have settled upon
+them all. Perhaps it was due to the oppressive heat; perhaps it was
+the inevitable reaction from excitement and victory. In the faint rays
+of the deck lantern Elliott could scarcely see his comrades’ faces,
+but by daylight they looked ten years older.
+
+“This is the plan I had thought of,” replied Henninger, “though I
+hardly dared to mention it, as you say, till we had really won out.
+We’ll run into Durban and divide the gold on board. Some of it we will
+deposit in the banks there; some we’ll deposit in Cape Town, a little
+at a time, so as not to attract attention. We can express some of it
+to New York, and one or two of us can sail for England on the
+mail-steamer and take some of it along. The important thing is to
+scatter it, and I think we can get off quite unnoticed, if we are
+careful.”
+
+“Just how much did we make of it?” asked Hawke, from the bottom of the
+companion-ladder.
+
+“One million, seven hundred thousand, and odd,” replied Henninger, in
+an uninterested tone. “Nearly three hundred and fifty thousand apiece.
+Of course, if we can find anything of any of Sullivan’s relatives
+we’ll fix them up with his share.”
+
+“What are you going to do with your share of it?” Bennett inquired,
+curiously.
+
+Henninger gave a short laugh. “How do I know? Blow it in, I suppose,
+in some fool way, and go out looking for more. What I imagine I’m
+going to do is to live on it for the rest of my life, but I know
+myself better than that. It means an income of say fourteen thousand a
+year, doesn’t it? I’ve seen that much put on the turn of a card.”
+
+“Don’t go and be a fool,” said Elliott “I’ve lived for most of my
+years on about one-tenth of fourteen thousand.”
+
+“And I’ve lived for months on nothing at all. No, it’s no use handing
+out nice, sensible motherly advice, for there’s only one kind of life
+for me. I’ve got the fever in me, and I’ll be looking for the road to
+the end of the rainbow as long as I live, I fancy. Do you remember our
+conversation on the Atlantic liner, Elliott? I never said so much for
+myself before or since, and I won’t do it now, thanks. Talk to Hawke
+and Bennett; they haven’t been on the rainbow road so long.”
+
+“You said that night that you wanted to win this game so as to get out
+of grafting,” Elliott retorted.
+
+“Well, so I do—only I know I won’t,” said Henninger.
+
+“Do you know what I’m going to do?” remarked Hawke. “You’ll laugh, but
+I’m going to buy a half-interest in a big bee ranch in California.
+It’s an ideal life. The bees do all the work, and all you have to do
+is to lie in the shade and collect profits once in awhile. You can run
+a fruit farm on the side, and there’s big money in it.”
+
+“That’s what I should like above all things,” said Margaret, who came
+aft at that moment.
+
+“What will you do, Elliott?” queried Henninger, half-ironically.
+
+“I don’t know,” said Elliott, vaguely, glancing up at the girl, who
+leaned against the rail, balancing herself easily as the dhow rolled.
+“The first thing is to make sure of getting away with the stuff.
+Henninger thinks we had better put in at Durban, Miss Laurie, and
+divide the gold and scatter it as much as possible.”
+
+“What for? Will any one rob us?” asked Margaret, quickly.
+
+“Yes—the government police,” said Bennett.
+
+“But I thought—Haven’t we a right to the gold? Isn’t it ours?”
+
+“Heaven knows it ought to be, after all we’ve gone through,” remarked
+Elliott.
+
+“But isn’t it?” Margaret insisted.
+
+“You’re not sophisticated enough, Miss Laurie,” said Henninger.
+“There’s always a claimant for as much money as this. The gold seems
+to have been stolen from the Transvaal government, and it’s certain
+that the English government will claim it—if they hear that it’s been
+recovered. But we don’t intend that they shall hear.”
+
+“Then this gold belongs to the English government?”
+
+“I thought you understood the situation. Legally, perhaps, it does,
+but—”
+
+“Then I shall not take an atom of it,” said Margaret.
+
+“But you must!” exclaimed Elliott. “We’re injuring no one—”
+
+“I’m not a thief,” Margaret interrupted again, and walked forward.
+
+The adventurers looked at one another, disconcerted, and Hawke climbed
+up the ladder to look with an alarmed countenance over the deck.
+
+“She’s got to take it,” said Bennett.
+
+“Yes, of course she must take her share,” agreed Henninger. “Gad,
+she’s the pluckiest woman I ever saw. She’s been a regular brick all
+through this thing.”
+
+“She’ll take it or not, as she pleases,” said Elliott, in an unusually
+aggressive tone, and failing to grasp the humour of the situation.
+
+“Maybe you won’t take any of it yourself,” Hawke satirized.
+
+“There’ll be all the more for the rest of you if I don’t,” returned
+Elliott.
+
+“The fact is, we’re all getting nervous and morbid,” Henninger
+remarked. “A good sleep is the best antidote, and I’m going to turn
+in.”
+
+Bennett also swathed himself in his blanket and sought a soft plank by
+the lee rail, with the prospect of being rolled across the deck when
+the dhow should go upon the other tack. Hawke retired out of sight
+below, and Elliott was left to silence.
+
+Under the stiffly drawn sails he could see Margaret still leaning over
+the bow. Behind him an Arab bore heavily upon the tiller-head, holding
+her steady, and it occurred to Elliott that the man could stab him in
+the back with the greatest ease. It would not be an unfitting
+conclusion for the adventure that was stained with so much blood
+already; and he imagined the sudden rising of the Moslem crew, the
+brief melée, the flash of pistols and knives, the massacre on the
+reeling deck. But he continued to sit on the keg, with his back to the
+helmsman, and did not trouble to turn around.
+
+A yard beneath his feet were nearly two million dollars in hard gold;
+the treasure that had spun so much intrigue and mystery over three
+continents was in his power at last. But the price had been paid;
+there had been blood enough spilled to redden every sovereign or louis
+or double-eagle that might ever be minted from the metal. Elliott
+fancied he heard the crash of the _Clara McClay_ on the reefs when all
+but two of her company had perished. He remembered the revolver drawn
+on the platform of the St. Louis train, and the bleeding figure of
+Bennett beside the rails. He saw vividly the gambling-rooms; he saw
+the missionary reeling back from the red knife; he saw Sullivan with
+the widening scarlet stain on his breast, and he heard again the
+fierce hail from Sevier’s steamer, and heard the crash as she rammed
+the rocks where the _Clara McClay_ had perished months before. And, as
+he brooded there in the dark, there arose in him a loathing and a
+horror of the gold that had worked like a potent poison in the heart
+of every man who had known of it.
+
+In the whole adventure there was but one period that had left no
+bitter taste. He remembered the interlude from the treasure hunt at
+Hongkong, and the bungalow on the Peak, where for a month there was
+neither the bewilderment of tangled mysteries nor the feverish
+excitement of greed. The heat, the rain, the miseries that had
+tortured him, he had already forgotten, or he remembered them only
+dimly as the discomforts that emphasized more keenly the graceful and
+domestic charm of such a home as he had never known before.
+
+The Arab steersman droned softly to himself as he leaned on the
+creaking tiller behind. Margaret had not yet gone to her hammock. He
+could see her still at the bow, looking forward over the sweeping seas
+in the cloudy moonlight. She thought him a thief; she had as good as
+said so; and he watched her, feeling strangely as if everything
+depended upon her staying there till he was released from duty.
+
+Bennett came up at midnight to relieve him, and Elliott went forward
+at once. But he could think of nothing in the manner of what he wanted
+to say, and after a few commonplaces he fell silent, and they leaned
+over the prow together, listening to the sucking gurgle and the
+hissing crash as the cutwater split the seas.
+
+“I want you to see clearly just why I insisted on coming with you,”
+said Margaret, breaking the silence at last. “I didn’t understand it
+at all, then. My father had spoken of recovering this gold—he couldn’t
+have known that it was government money—and I supposed that it was
+right to do it. In fact, I felt almost as if he had left it to me.
+Then I had no money—nothing. I knew that I was dependent on you for
+everything. It was even your money that brought me from China; I know
+it was, though the consul said he advanced it to me. It nearly
+maddened me with shame, and—I didn’t know what to do. Only I knew that
+I couldn’t take anything more from you. I thought I had a right to a
+share of this gold, but I couldn’t even let you go and do the work for
+me. I had to help, and do my part—and so I did it.
+
+“But now it’s all over. I understand it all as I didn’t before, and
+you see that I can’t take a cent of this money. I should feel myself a
+criminal as long as I lived. But I don’t blame you for taking it, if
+you feel that you can.”
+
+“I’m not going to take any of it, either,” Elliott interrupted.
+
+She was silent for nearly a minute, and then said, in a curious,
+almost harsh, voice, “Why not?”
+
+“Because there are other things I value more—your good opinion, for
+instance,” said Elliott, with difficulty, feeling all the painful joys
+of renunciation. He wanted to say more; he struggled vainly for words,
+but after an ineffectual effort he fell back upon a practical
+question.
+
+“What will you do, then?”
+
+“I’ve been thinking of that,” she said. “I shall try to get something
+to do at the Cape. I can always make a living. I can do almost
+anything.”
+
+“Oh, heavens! You mustn’t do that. You sha’n’t!” groaned Elliott.
+
+“Why not?” she said, with a smile. “Do you know, it is almost a relief
+to have the weight of that terrible treasure taken away. It has been a
+sort of curse to every one, I think. But it seems a pity, doesn’t it,
+that we should get nothing at all for having worked so hard and
+travelled so far and risked so much. The government ought to refund
+our expenses, anyway.”
+
+“Salvage! I should think so!” cried Elliott, smiting his hand on the
+rail. “Why didn’t I think of it before? Of course we have a claim for
+our trouble and expense, and we can collect it, too, if we turn in our
+share of the stuff to the Crown.”
+
+“But I suppose they would allow us only a trifle, after all,” said
+Margaret.
+
+“Not a bit of it. Twenty to fifty per cent. of the value is always
+paid for salvaging a cargo. Your share now is nearly three hundred and
+fifty thousand dollars, and at least a hundred thousand of that will
+be honestly, lawfully yours. Any court will award it to you.”
+
+“But will Mr. Henninger—”
+
+“Henninger and the others will never give up a cent of their share; I
+know that. We mustn’t spoil their plans, I suppose, so we will give
+them time to get safely clear. Then we will surrender our part of it,
+and present our bill for expenses, and say nothing about any more
+having been recovered. The Crown will be glad enough to get any of it
+back.”
+
+“This is the best news of all!” said Margaret, with a long breath. “A
+hundred thousand dollars! That will be fabulous wealth to me! I can
+have all the things, and see all the things, and do all the things
+that I dreamed of all my life and never expected to realize. Now I
+believe I’m really glad to be rich again. Aren’t you?”
+
+“I don’t know,” Elliott muttered.
+
+“I think we ought to try to use this money so as to justify having
+it,” Margaret went on. “It has cost so much misery and so many lives,
+and I want to spend it so as to make it clean again. I want to make
+others happy with it, as well as be happy myself. What are you going
+to do with it?”
+
+“I don’t know,” Elliott burst out. “I don’t value this money, whether
+it’s a hundred thousand or a million, not a straw. I’d throw it away;
+I’d blow it in, like Henninger—God knows what I’ll do with it. There’s
+only one thing that I really want I told you what it was at that hotel
+in New York, and you ordered me never to speak of it again. If I can’t
+have that I don’t care much what becomes of the money, or of anything
+else.”
+
+“Don’t say that. Don’t speak of that—not now!” murmured Margaret; and
+as he hesitated she turned quickly away and slipped toward the stern
+companionway. “You won’t lose by waiting,” was what she left in a
+semi-audible whisper as she vanished, and Elliott had this to ponder
+on as he stood watching the heavy swell rolling blackly toward Africa,
+toward Durban, where the dhow was due in another day.
+
+But it was really two days before she glided up the port and anchored
+innocently in the bay, looking anything but the treasure-ship she was.
+And now the most harassing, the most anxious and delicate part of the
+whole adventure was begun.
+
+Margaret went on to Cape Town at once, with instructions to secure a
+maid in that city as a travelling companion and to sail direct for
+London. And in her absence the gold was taken ashore piece-meal, in
+pockets and travelling-bags and hat-boxes, and little by little
+exchanged for clean Bank of England notes and shiny sovereigns. Over
+$150,000 was sold in Durban, and then the party proceeded to Cape
+Town, where, following the same procedure, nearly twice as much was
+passed over to the banks for specie.
+
+The rest, Henninger decided, could best be disposed of in America, and
+he was, besides, anxious to get out of British territory as soon as
+possible. Accordingly the dhow was dismantled, the crew paid off, the
+reis given a present of two hundred sovereigns above his salary, and
+Henninger, Hawke, and Bennett sailed for New York direct, with a
+mountain of trunks, each containing a few gold blocks packed among
+unnecessary clothing. And two days afterward Elliott took passage for
+England with six hundred and forty thousand dollars, being his own and
+Margaret’s share of the cargo of the _Clara McClay_.
+
+Margaret was prepared for his coming, and between them the treasure
+was safely deposited in the bank, at which Elliott felt an incubus
+lifted from his mind. The next step was to secure an experienced
+marine lawyer to forward their salvage claims.
+
+This gentleman, after passing through a stage of stupefaction at their
+unexampled scrupulosity, advised that a claim of forty per cent. of
+the value be made, in consideration of the circumstances of the case.
+They made it, and then there was long to wait. Red tape, Treasury
+tape, Admiralty tape, civil tape was unrolled to a disheartening
+length, and the new Transvaal Crown Colony even put in its claim, as
+the original owner of the bullion. In the midst of the delay Elliott
+received a message from Henninger:
+
+“We have disposed of all our goods,” he wrote. “Go ahead and make the
+best terms you can. Hawke has gone to California to start his bee
+farm, but he thinks he will look into a few mining deals in Nevada
+before he gets there. Bennett is playing the races on a system. I am
+saving my money at present, but I see a chance to double my money in
+Venezuela. The treasure trail is a long trail, and we’re not at the
+end of the rainbow yet.”
+
+And in England Elliott and Margaret were finding the latter stages of
+the treasure trail long indeed. The salvage case took a great deal of
+deciding; the courts appeared to be convinced that some occult
+dishonesty must be concealed beneath the offer to restore any part of
+the lost treasure, and haggled over the percentage in a manner, it
+appeared to Elliott, highly unworthy of the traditions of a mighty
+nation. Ultimately, however, a compromise was arrived at. The
+government would pay thirty-three per cent.; and Elliott surrendered
+the bullion and received back two hundred and twelve thousand dollars,
+which he divided equally with Margaret. Six days later they were at
+sea, bound out of Southampton for New York.
+
+Surely, Elliott thought, this was the last of the long trail, as he
+listened to the regular “swish—crash!” on her bows that had become so
+odiously familiar; and he determined that all should be settled before
+he sighted American land.
+
+“If I ever get ashore again,” he remarked to Margaret, “I’m going to
+the quietest, sleepiest country town I can find, and never set eyes on
+a steamer or a railway train again as long as I live.”
+
+They were looking over the stern, where night had fallen on the
+heaving swell. It had rained hard, but was clearing; an obscured moon
+faintly lit the sea.
+
+“And do some sort of good work,” said Margaret. “You’ve got ability,
+money, and every chance of a happy life.”
+
+“It’s in your hands,” Elliott declared, feeling his opportunity.
+
+“It’s not!” she cried, vehemently. “It’s in your own. You’re too
+strong to depend on any one else for your life’s success. I don’t like
+to hear that!”
+
+“Listen,” said Elliott. “You wouldn’t let me say this when you were
+poor; perhaps you’ll hear it now when you are rich. I was going to
+give up every cent of my share of the gold to try to please you—to do
+what you thought was square. I’d have given up the whole ship-load—no,
+that’s absurdly small, for there simply isn’t anything in the world,
+past, present, or future, that I wouldn’t give up and call it a good
+bargain if it would make you care for me a little. The best time I
+ever had was when I was luckily able to help you, and now I could
+almost find it in my heart to be sorry that you have all you need, and
+don’t need me any more.”
+
+She touched his arm ever so gently, and he turned and looked squarely
+at her.
+
+“Not need you!—you!” was all she said.
+
+The sudden throb of his heart made him gasp. The deck was full of
+people, but he put his hand hard down upon hers as it lay on the rail,
+and he felt her fingers curl up into his palm.
+
+“Be careful,” said she, with a new, subtle thrill in her voice. “Oh,
+look!”
+
+From the clearing sky astern the moon was now pouring a full, glorious
+flood upon the heaving Atlantic, where the heavy swell ran in
+ivory-crested combers. In the pure white light the foam glittered with
+prismatic colours, wave after wave, like a long broken rainbow fallen
+upon the sea, and sparkling with the streaks of phosphorescence of the
+steamer’s wake.
+
+“The rainbow road,” as Henninger calls it; “the treasure trail,” said
+Elliott. “The trail’s ended.”
+
+But Margaret shook her head. “No,” she said. “The rainbow road has
+just begun.”
+
+
+                               THE END.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TREASURE TRAIL ***
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diff --git "a/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.PNG" "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.PNG"
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f2fd812c2
Binary files /dev/null and "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.PNG" differ
diff --git "a/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping01-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.PNG" "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping01-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.PNG"
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..9a47b242e
Binary files /dev/null and "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping01-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.PNG" differ
diff --git "a/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping04-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.py" "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping04-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.py"
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..b05ab1f22
--- /dev/null
+++ "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping04-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.py"
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+import requests
+import bs4
+res = requests.get('https://www.sanignacio.pr/sobre-csi/historia-del-colegio')
+res.raise_for_status()
+SanIgnaciopr = bs4.BeautifulSoup(res.content, 'html.parser')
+elems =  SanIgnaciopr.select('p')
+type(SanIgnaciopr)
+print(len(elems))
+print(elems[2].getText())
+print(elems[3].getText())
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git "a/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping05-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.PNG" "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping05-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.PNG"
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..6853fe371
Binary files /dev/null and "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping05-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.PNG" differ
diff --git "a/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping05-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.py" "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/Web-Scraping05-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.py"
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..e69de29bb
diff --git "a/Projects/Web-Scraping/WebScraping03-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.py" "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/WebScraping03-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.py"
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..4775de9e3
--- /dev/null
+++ "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/WebScraping03-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.py"
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+import bs4
+exampleFile = open("example.html")
+exampleSoup = bs4.BeautifulSoup(exampleFile.read(), "html.parser")
+elems = exampleSoup.select("#author")
+type(elems)
+print(len(elems))
+type(elems[0])
+str(elems[0])
+print(elems[0].getText())
diff --git "a/Projects/Web-Scraping/Webscraping02-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.py" "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/Webscraping02-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.py"
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..dc75d8c59
--- /dev/null
+++ "b/Projects/Web-Scraping/Webscraping02-Daniel-Cintr\303\263n.py"
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+import requests
+res = requests.get("https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/67627/pg67627.txt")
+res.raise_for_status()
+playFile = open("The Treasure Trail", "wb")
+for chunk in res.iter_content(5000):
+    playFile.write(chunk)
+playFile.close()
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Projects/Web-Scraping/import bs4.py b/Projects/Web-Scraping/import bs4.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..fd8ece1de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Projects/Web-Scraping/import bs4.py	
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+import requests
+import bs4
+
+website = requests.get("https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=35.241460000000075&lon=-85.07328999999999#.Yks0hS3MLIU")
+forecast = bs4.BeautifulSoup(website.content,"html.parser")
+sevenDay =  forecast.find(id="seven-day-forecast")
+forecast_items = sevenDay.find_all(class_="tombstone-container")
+tonight = forecast_items[1]
+#print(tonight.prettify())
+period =tonight.find(class_="period-name").get_text()
+print(period)
+Short_desc =tonight.find(class_="short-desc").get_text()
+print(Short_desc)
+temp =tonight.find(class_="temp temp-low").get_text()
+print(temp)
+
diff --git a/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-Jump.PNG b/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-Jump.PNG
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..9cc6b4957
Binary files /dev/null and b/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-Jump.PNG differ
diff --git a/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-Jump.py b/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-Jump.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..1b7ba34fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-Jump.py	
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+planets = ["Mercury","Venus", "Earth", "Mars", "Jupiter", "Saturn", "Uranus", "Neptune"]
+rel_gravity = [2.65, 1.11, 1, 2.64, 0.40, 0.94, 1.13, 0.88]
+
+print("Jumping on other planets")
+
+myJump = int(input("What is your jumps length in (inches)? "))
+myPlanet = input(f"Select a planet from the list: {planets}")
+
+def  calculateJump(planet, myJump):
+    print(f"\nEarth gravity in inches is: {myJump}")
+
+    meters = myJump * 0.0254
+    print(f"Length in meters: {meters}")
+
+    
+
+    planet_index = planets.index(planet)
+
+    print(f"Your jump in {planets[planet_index]} is {meters * rel_gravity[planet_index]} m ")
+
+calculateJump(myPlanet, myJump)
diff --git a/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-space.PNG b/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-space.PNG
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..d8e42a08c
Binary files /dev/null and b/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-space.PNG differ
diff --git a/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-space.py b/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-space.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..aa166f866
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Projects/Your weight in space/Daniel-Cintron-space.py	
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+planets = ["Mercury", "Venus","Earth","Mars","Jupiter","Saturn","Uranus","Neptune"]
+g_ms2 = [3.7, 8.87, 9.81, 3.711, 24.79, 10.44, 8.69, 11.15]
+
+print("Calculate your weight in a different planet")
+
+myWeight = int(input("What is your weight (pounds)? "))
+myPlanet = input(f"Select a planet from the list: {planets}")
+
+def  calculateWeight(planet, mass):
+    print(f"\nEarth mass in pounds is: {mass}")
+
+    w_kg = mass / 2.2046
+    print(f"Mass in kg: {w_kg}")
+
+    n_lb = 4.45
+
+    planet_index = planets.index(planet)
+
+    print(f"Weight in {planets[planet_index]} is{(w_kg * g_ms2[planet_index]) / n_lb} lb ")
+
+calculateWeight(myPlanet, myWeight)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Projects/Web-Scraping/example.html b/example.html
similarity index 100%
rename from Projects/Web-Scraping/example.html
rename to example.html