"Well, but at sea?" I said.

"You make me tired," retorted the captain. "What's the use--at sea?
Everything's got to come to bearings at some port, hasn't it? You can't
stop at sea for ever, can you?--No; the Flying Scud is rubbish; if it
meant anything, it would have to mean something so almighty intricate
that James G. Blaine hasn't got the brains to engineer it; and I vote
for more axeing, pioneering, and opening up the resources of this
phenomenal brig, and less general fuss," he added, arising. "The
dime-museum symptoms will drop in of themselves, I guess, to keep us
cheery."

But it appeared we were at the end of discoveries for the day; and we
left the brig about sundown, without being further puzzled or further
enlightened. The best of the cabin spoils--books, instruments, papers,
silks, and curiosities--we carried along with us in a blanket, however,
to divert the evening hours; and when supper was over, and the table
cleared, and Johnson set down to a dreary game of cribbage between his
right hand and his left, the captain and I turned out our blanket on the
floor, and sat side by side to examine and appraise the spoils.

The books were the first to engage our notice. These were rather
numerous (as Nares contemptuously put it) "for a lime-juicer." Scorn
of the British mercantile marine glows in the breast of every Yankee
merchant captain; as the scorn is not reciprocated, I can only suppose
it justified in fact; and certainly the old country mariner appears of a
less studious disposition. The more credit to the officers of the Flying
Scud, who had quite a library, both literary and professional. There
were Findlay's five directories of the world--all broken-backed, as is
usual with Findlay, and all marked and scribbled over with corrections
and additions--several books of navigation, a signal code, and an
Admiralty book of a sort of orange hue, called _Islands of the Eastern
Pacific Ocean, Vol. III._, which appeared from its imprint to be the
latest authority, and showed marks of frequent consultation in the
passages about the French Frigate Shoals, the Harman, Cure, Pearl, and
Hermes reefs, Lisiansky Island, Ocean Island, and the place where
we then lay--Brooks or Midway. A volume of Macaulay's _Essays_ and a
shilling Shakespeare led the van of the belles lettres; the rest were
novels: several Miss Braddons--of course, _Aurora Floyd_, which has
penetrated to every isle of the Pacific, a good many cheap detective
books, _Rob Roy_, Auerbach's _Auf der Hohe_ in the German, and a prize
temperance story, pillaged (to judge by the stamp) from an Anglo-Indian
circulating library.

"The Admiralty man gives a fine picture of our island," remarked Nares,
who had turned up Midway Island. "He draws the dreariness rather mild,
but you can make out he knows the place."

"Captain," I cried, "you've struck another point in this mad business.
See here," I went on eagerly, drawing from my pocket a crumpled fragment
of the _Daily Occidental_ which I had inherited from Jim: "'misled by
Hoyt's Pacific Directory'? Where's Hoyt?"

"Let's look into that," said Nares. "I got that book on purpose for this
cruise." Therewith he fetched it from the shelf in his berth, turned to
Midway Island, and read the account aloud. It stated with precision that
the Pacific Mail Company were about to form a depot there, in preference
to Honolulu, and that they had already a station on the island.

"I wonder who gives these Directory men their information," Nares
reflected. "Nobody can blame Trent after that. I never got in company
with squarer lying; it reminds a man of a presidential campaign."

"All very well," said I. "That's your Hoyt, and a fine, tall copy. But
what I want to know is, where is Trent's Hoyt?"

"Took it with him," chuckled Nares. "He had left everything else, bills
and money and all the rest; he was bound to take something, or it would
have aroused attention on the Tempest: 'Happy thought,' says he, 'let's
take Hoyt.'"

"And has it not occurred to you," I went on, "that all the Hoyts in
creation couldn't have misled Trent, since he had in his hand that red
admiralty book, an official publication, later in date, and particularly
full on Midway Island?"

"That's a fact!" cried Nares; "and I bet the first Hoyt he ever saw
was out of the mercantile library of San Francisco. Looks as if he had
brought her here on purpose, don't it? But then that's inconsistent with
the steam-crusher of the sale. That's the trouble with this brig racket;
any one can make half a dozen theories for sixty or seventy per cent
of it; but when they're made, there's always a fathom or two of slack
hanging out of the other end."

I believe our attention fell next on the papers, of which we had
altogether a considerable bulk. I had hoped to find among these matter
for a full-length character of Captain Trent; but here I was doomed, on
the whole, to disappointment. We could make out he was an orderly man,
for all his bills were docketed and preserved. That he was convivial,
and inclined to be frugal even in conviviality, several documents
proclaimed. Such letters as we found were, with one exception, arid
notes from tradesmen. The exception, signed Hannah Trent, was a somewhat
fervid appeal for a loan. "You know what misfortunes I have had to
bear," wrote Hannah, "and how much I am disappointed in George. The
landlady appeared a true friend when I first came here, and I thought
her a perfect lady. But she has come out since then in her true colours;
and if you will not be softened by this last appeal, I can't think what
is to become of your affectionate----" and then the signature. This
document was without place or date, and a voice told me that it had gone
likewise without answer. On the whole, there were few letters anywhere
in the ship; but we found one before we were finished, in a seaman's
chest, of which I must transcribe some sentences. It was dated from some
place on the Clyde. "My dearist son," it ran, "this is to tell you your
dearist father passed away, Jan twelft, in the peace of the Lord. He had
your photo and dear David's lade upon his bed, made me sit by him.
Let's be a' thegither, he said, and gave you all his blessing. O my dear
laddie, why were nae you and Davie here? He would have had a happier
passage. He spok of both of ye all night most beautiful, and how ye used
to stravaig on the Saturday afternoons, and of auld Kelvinside. Sooth
the tune to me, he said, though it was the Sabbath, and I had to sooth
him Kelvin Grove, and he looked at his fiddle, the dear man. I cannae
bear the sight of it, he'll never play it mair. O my lamb, come home to
me, I'm all by my lane now." The rest was in a religious vein and quite
conventional. I have never seen any one more put out than Nares, when I
handed him this letter; he had read but a few words, before he cast
it down; it was perhaps a minute ere he picked it up again, and the
performance was repeated the third time before he reached the end.

"It's touching, isn't it?" said I.

For all answer, Nares exploded in a brutal oath; and it was some half an
hour later that he vouchsafed an explanation. "I'll tell you what broke
me up about that letter," said he. "My old man played the fiddle, played
it all out of tune: one of the things he played was _Martyrdom,_ I
remember--it was all martyrdom to me. He was a pig of a father, and I
was a pig of a son; but it sort of came over me I would like to hear
that fiddle squeak again. Natural," he added; "I guess we're all
beasts."

"All sons are, I guess," said I. "I have the same trouble on my
conscience: we can shake hands on that." Which (oddly enough, perhaps)
we did.

Amongst the papers we found a considerable sprinkling of photographs;
for the most part either of very debonair-looking young ladies or old
women of the lodging-house persuasion. But one among them was the means
of our crowning discovery.

"They're not pretty, are they, Mr. Dodd?" said Nares, as he passed it
over.

"Who?" I asked, mechanically taking the card (it was a quarter-plate)
in hand, and smothering a yawn; for the hour was late, the day had been
laborious, and I was wearying for bed.

"Trent and Company," said he. "That's a historic picture of the gang."

I held it to the light, my curiosity at a low ebb: I had seen Captain
Trent once, and had no delight in viewing him again. It was a photograph
of the deck of the brig, taken from forward: all in apple-pie order; the
hands gathered in the waist, the officers on the poop. At the foot of
the card was written "Brig Flying Scud, Rangoon," and a date; and above
or below each individual figure the name had been carefully noted.

As I continued to gaze, a shock went through me; the dimness of sleep
and fatigue lifted from my eyes, as fog lifts in the channel; and I
beheld with startled clearness the photographic presentment of a crowd
of strangers. "J. Trent, Master" at the top of the card directed me to
a smallish, weazened man, with bushy eyebrows and full white beard,
dressed in a frock coat and white trousers; a flower stuck in his
button-hole, his bearded chin set forward, his mouth clenched with
habitual determination. There was not much of the sailor in his looks,
but plenty of the martinet: a dry, precise man, who might pass for a
preacher in some rigid sect; and whatever he was, not the Captain
Trent of San Francisco. The men, too, were all new to me: the cook, an
unmistakable Chinaman, in his characteristic dress, standing apart on
the poop steps. But perhaps I turned on the whole with the greatest
curiosity to the figure labelled "E. Goddedaal, 1st off." He whom I had
never seen, he might be the identical; he might be the clue and spring
of all this mystery; and I scanned his features with the eye of a
detective. He was of great stature, seemingly blonde as a viking,
his hair clustering round his head in frowsy curls, and two enormous
whiskers, like the tusks of some strange animal, jutting from his
cheeks. With these virile appendages and the defiant attitude in which
he stood, the expression of his face only imperfectly harmonised. It was
wild, heroic, and womanish looking; and I felt I was prepared to hear he
was a sentimentalist, and to see him weep.

For some while I digested my discovery in private, reflecting how best,
and how with most of drama, I might share it with the captain. Then my
sketch-book came in my head; and I fished it out from where it lay, with
other miscellaneous possessions, at the foot of my bunk and turned to
my sketch of Captain Trent and the survivors of the British brig Flying
Scud in the San Francisco bar-room.

"Nares," said I, "I've told you how I first saw Captain Trent in that
saloon in 'Frisco? how he came with his men, one of them a Kanaka with
a canary-bird in a cage? and how I saw him afterwards at the auction,
frightened to death, and as much surprised at how the figures skipped up
as anybody there? Well," said I, "there's the man I saw"--and I laid
the sketch before him--"there's Trent of 'Frisco and there are his three
hands. Find one of them in the photograph, and I'll be obliged."

Nares compared the two in silence. "Well," he said at last, "I call this
rather a relief: seems to clear the horizon. We might have guessed at
something of the kind from the double ration of chests that figured."

"Does it explain anything?" I asked.

"It would explain everything," Nares replied, "but for the
steam-crusher. It'll all tally as neat as a patent puzzle, if you leave
out the way these people bid the wreck up. And there we come to a stone
wall. But whatever it is, Mr. Dodd, it's on the crook."

"And looks like piracy," I added.

"Looks like blind hookey!" cried the captain. "No, don't you deceive
yourself; neither your head nor mine is big enough to put a name on this
business."




CHAPTER XV. THE CARGO OF THE "FLYING SCUD."


In my early days I was a man, the most wedded to his idols of my
generation. I was a dweller under roofs: the gull of that which we call
civilisation; a superstitious votary of the plastic arts; a cit; and
a prop of restaurants. I had a comrade in those days, somewhat of an
outsider, though he moved in the company of artists, and a man famous
in our small world for gallantry, knee breeches, and dry and pregnant
sayings. He, looking on the long meals and waxing bellies of the French,
whom I confess I somewhat imitated, branded me as "a cultivator of
restaurant fat." And I believe he had his finger on the dangerous spot;
I believe, if things had gone smooth with me, I should be now swollen
like a prize-ox in body, and fallen in mind to a thing perhaps as low
as many types of bourgeois--the implicit or exclusive artist. That was a
home word of Pinkerton's, deserving to be writ in letters of gold on the
portico of every school of art: "What I can't see is why you should want
to do nothing else." The dull man is made, not by the nature, but by the
degree of his immersion in a single business. And all the more if that
be sedentary, uneventful, and ingloriously safe. More than one half
of him will then remain unexercised and undeveloped; the rest will be
distended and deformed by over-nutrition, over-cerebration, and the heat
of rooms. And I have often marvelled at the impudence of gentlemen,
who describe and pass judgment on the life of man, in almost perfect
ignorance of all its necessary elements and natural careers. Those
who dwell in clubs and studios may paint excellent pictures or write
enchanting novels. There is one thing that they should not do: they
should pass no judgment on man's destiny, for it is a thing with which
they are unacquainted. Their own life is an excrescence of the moment,
doomed, in the vicissitude of history, to pass and disappear: the
eternal life of man, spent under sun and rain and in rude physical
effort, lies upon one side, scarce changed since the beginning.

I would I could have carried along with me to Midway Island all the
writers and the prating artists of my time. Day after day of hope
deferred, of heat, of unremitting toil; night after night of aching
limbs, bruised hands, and a mind obscured with the grateful vacancy of
physical fatigue: the scene, the nature of my employment; the rugged
speech and faces of my fellow-toilers, the glare of the day on deck, the
stinking twilight in the bilge, the shrill myriads of the ocean-fowl:
above all, the sense of our immitigable isolation from the world and
from the current epoch;--keeping another time, some eras old; the new
day heralded by no daily paper, only by the rising sun; and the State,
the churches, the peopled empires, war, and the rumours of war, and the
voices of the arts, all gone silent as in the days ere they were yet
invented. Such were the conditions of my new experience in life,
of which (if I had been able) I would have had all my confreres and
contemporaries to partake: forgetting, for that while, the orthodoxies
of the moment, and devoted to a single and material purpose under the
eye of heaven.

Of the nature of our task, I must continue to give some summary idea.
The forecastle was lumbered with ship's chandlery, the hold nigh full of
rice, the lazarette crowded with the teas and silks. These must all be
dug out; and that made but a fraction of our task. The hold was ceiled
throughout; a part, where perhaps some delicate cargo was once stored,
had been lined, in addition, with inch boards; and between every beam
there was a movable panel into the bilge. Any of these, the bulkheads of
the cabins, the very timbers of the hull itself, might be the place of
hiding. It was therefore necessary to demolish, as we proceeded, a
great part of the ship's inner skin and fittings, and to auscultate what
remained, like a doctor sounding for a lung disease. Upon the return,
from any beam or bulkhead, of a flat or doubtful sound, we must up axe
and hew into the timber: a violent and--from the amount of dry rot in
the wreck--a mortifying exercise. Every night saw a deeper inroad into
the bones of the Flying Scud--more beams tapped and hewn in splinters,
more planking peeled away and tossed aside--and every night saw us as
far as ever from the end and object of our arduous devastation. In this
perpetual disappointment, my courage did not fail me, but my spirits
dwindled; and Nares himself grew silent and morose. At night, when
supper was done, we passed an hour in the cabin, mostly without speech:
I, sometimes dozing over a book; Nares, sullenly but busily drilling
sea-shells with the instrument called a Yankee Fiddle. A stranger might
have supposed we were estranged; as a matter of fact, in this silent
comradeship of labour, our intimacy grew.

I had been struck, at the first beginning of our enterprise upon the
wreck, to find the men so ready at the captain's lightest word. I
dare not say they liked, but I can never deny that they admired him
thoroughly. A mild word from his mouth was more valued than flattery
and half a dollar from myself; if he relaxed at all from his habitual
attitude of censure, smiling alacrity surrounded him; and I was led to
think his theory of captainship, even if pushed to excess, reposed upon
some ground of reason. But even terror and admiration of the
captain failed us before the end. The men wearied of the hopeless,
unremunerative quest and the long strain of labour. They began to
shirk and grumble. Retribution fell on them at once, and retribution
multiplied the grumblings. With every day it took harder driving to keep
them to the daily drudge; and we, in our narrow boundaries, were kept
conscious every moment of the ill-will of our assistants.

In spite of the best care, the object of our search was perfectly well
known to all on board; and there had leaked out besides some knowledge
of those inconsistencies that had so greatly amazed the captain and
myself. I could overhear the men debate the character of Captain Trent,
and set forth competing theories of where the opium was stowed; and as
they seemed to have been eavesdropping on ourselves, I thought little
shame to prick up my ears when I had the return chance of spying upon
them, in this way. I could diagnose their temper and judge how far they
were informed upon the mystery of the Flying Scud. It was after having
thus overheard some almost mutinous speeches that a fortunate idea
crossed my mind. At night, I matured it in my bed, and the first thing
the next morning, broached it to the captain.

"Suppose I spirit up the hands a bit," I asked, "by the offer of a
reward?"

"If you think you're getting your month's wages out of them the way it
is, I don't," was his reply. "However, they are all the men you've got,
and you're the supercargo."

This, from a person of the captain's character, might be regarded as
complete adhesion; and the crew were accordingly called aft. Never had
the captain worn a front more menacing. It was supposed by all that some
misdeed had been discovered, and some surprising punishment was to be
announced.

"See here, you!" he threw at them over his shoulder as he walked the
deck, "Mr. Dodd here is going to offer a reward to the first man who
strikes the opium in that wreck. There's two ways of making a donkey go;
both good, I guess: the one's kicks and the other's carrots. Mr. Dodd's
going to try the carrots. Well, my sons,"--and here he faced the men for
the first time with his hands behind him--"if that opium's not found in
five days, you can come to me for the kicks."

He nodded to the present narrator, who took up the tale. "Here is what
I propose, men," said I: "I put up one hundred and fifty dollars. If
any man can lay hands on the stuff right away, and off his own club,
he shall have the hundred and fifty down. If any one can put us on the
scent of where to look, he shall have a hundred and twenty-five, and the
balance shall be for the lucky one who actually picks it up. We'll call
it the Pinkerton Stakes, captain," I added, with a smile.

"Call it the Grand Combination Sweep, then," cries he. "For I go you
better.--Look here, men, I make up this jack-pot to two hundred and
fifty dollars, American gold coin."

"Thank you, Captain Nares," said I; "that was handsomely done."

"It was kindly meant," he returned.

The offer was not made in vain; the hands had scarce yet realised the
magnitude of the reward, they had scarce begun to buzz aloud in the
extremity of hope and wonder, ere the Chinese cook stepped forward with
gracious gestures and explanatory smiles.

"Captain," he began, "I serv-um two year Melican navy; serv-um six year
mail-boat steward. Savvy plenty."

"Oho!" cried Nares, "you savvy plenty, do you? (Beggar's seen this trick
in the mail-boats, I guess.) Well, why you no savvy a little sooner,
sonny?"

"I think bimeby make-um reward," replied the cook, with smiling dignity.

"Well, you can't say fairer than that," the captain admitted, "and now
the reward's offered, you'll talk? Speak up, then. Suppose you speak
true, you get reward. See?"

"I think long time," replied the Chinaman. "See plenty litty mat lice;
too-muchy plenty litty mat lice; sixty ton, litty mat lice. I think
all-e-time: perhaps plenty opium plenty litty mat lice."

"Well, Mr. Dodd, how does that strike you?" asked the captain. "He may
be right, he may be wrong. He's likely to be right: for if he isn't,
where can the stuff be? On the other hand, if he's wrong, we destroy
a hundred and fifty tons of good rice for nothing. It's a point to be
considered."

"I don't hesitate," said I. "Let's get to the bottom of the thing. The
rice is nothing; the rice will neither make nor break us."

"That's how I expected you to see it," returned Nares.

And we called the boat away and set forth on our new quest.

The hold was now almost entirely emptied; the mats (of which there went
forty to the short ton) had been stacked on deck, and now crowded the
ship's waist and forecastle. It was our task to disembowel and explore
six thousand individual mats, and incidentally to destroy a hundred and
fifty tons of valuable food. Nor were the circumstances of the day's
business less strange than its essential nature. Each man of us, armed
with a great knife, attacked the pile from his own quarter, slashed into
the nearest mat, burrowed in it with his hands, and shed forth the rice
upon the deck, where it heaped up, overflowed, and was trodden down,
poured at last into the scuppers, and occasionally spouted from the
vents. About the wreck, thus transformed into an overflowing granary,
the sea-fowl swarmed in myriads and with surprising insolence. The sight
of so much food confounded them; they deafened us with their shrill
tongues, swooped in our midst, dashed in our faces, and snatched the
grain from between our fingers. The men--their hands bleeding from these
assaults--turned savagely on the offensive, drove their knives into the
birds, drew them out crimsoned, and turned again to dig among the rice,
unmindful of the gawking creatures that struggled and died among their
feet. We made a singular picture: the hovering and diving birds; the
bodies of the dead discolouring the rice with blood; the scuppers
vomiting breadstuff; the men, frenzied by the gold hunt, toiling,
slaying, and shouting aloud: over all, the lofty intricacy of rigging
and the radiant heaven of the Pacific. Every man there toiled in the
immediate hope of fifty dollars; and I, of fifty thousand. Small wonder
if we waded callously in blood and food.

It was perhaps about ten in the forenoon when the scene was interrupted.
Nares, who had just ripped open a fresh mat, drew forth, and slung at
his feet, among the rice, a papered tin box.

"How's that?" he shouted.

A cry broke from all hands: the next moment, forgetting their own
disappointment, in that contagious sentiment of success, they gave three
cheers that scared the sea-birds; and the next, they had crowded round
the captain, and were jostling together and groping with emulous hands
in the new-opened mat. Box after box rewarded them, six in all; wrapped,
as I have said, in a paper envelope, and the paper printed on, in
Chinese characters.

Nares turned to me and shook my hand. "I began to think we should never
see this day," said he. "I congratulate you, Mr. Dodd, on having pulled
it through."

The captain's tones affected me profoundly; and when Johnson and the
men pressed round me in turn with congratulations, the tears came in my
eyes.

"These are five-tael boxes, more than two pounds," said Nares, weighing
one in his hand. "Say two hundred and fifty dollars to the mat. Lay into
it, boys! We'll make Mr. Dodd a millionnaire before dark."

It was strange to see with what a fury we fell to. The men had now
nothing to expect; the mere idea of great sums inspired them with
disinterested ardour. Mats were slashed and disembowelled, the rice
flowed to our knees in the ship's waist, the sweat ran in our eyes and
blinded us, our arms ached to agony; and yet our fire abated not. Dinner
came; we were too weary to eat, too hoarse for conversation; and yet
dinner was scarce done, before we were afoot again and delving in the
rice. Before nightfall not a mat was unexplored, and we were face to
face with the astonishing result.

For of all the inexplicable things in the story of the Flying Scud, here
was the most inexplicable. Out of the six thousand mats, only twenty
were found to have been sugared; in each we found the same amount, about
twelve pounds of drug; making a grand total of two hundred and forty
pounds. By the last San Francisco quotation, opium was selling for a
fraction over twenty dollars a pound; but it had been known not long
before to bring as much as forty in Honolulu, where it was contraband.

Taking, then, this high Honolulu figure, the value of the opium on board
the Flying Scud fell considerably short of ten thousand dollars, while
at the San Francisco rate it lacked a trifle of five thousand. And fifty
thousand was the price that Jim and I had paid for it. And Bellairs had
been eager to go higher! There is no language to express the stupor with
which I contemplated this result.

It may be argued we were not yet sure; there might be yet another cache;
and you may be certain in that hour of my distress the argument was not
forgotten. There was never a ship more ardently perquested; no stone
was left unturned, and no expedient untried; day after day of growing
despair, we punched and dug in the brig's vitals, exciting the men with
promises and presents; evening after evening Nares and I sat face
to face in the narrow cabin, racking our minds for some neglected
possibility of search. I could stake my salvation on the certainty of
the result: in all that ship there was nothing left of value but the
timber and the copper nails. So that our case was lamentably plain; we
had paid fifty thousand dollars, borne the charges of the schooner, and
paid fancy interest on money; and if things went well with us, we
might realise fifteen per cent of the first outlay. We were not merely
bankrupt, we were comic bankrupts: a fair butt for jeering in the
streets. I hope I bore the blow with a good countenance; indeed, my mind
had long been quite made up, and since the day we found the opium I had
known the result. But the thought of Jim and Mamie ached in me like a
physical pain, and I shrank from speech and companionship.

I was in this frame of mind when the captain proposed that we should
land upon the island. I saw he had something to say, and only feared
it might be consolation; for I could just bear my grief, not bungling
sympathy; and yet I had no choice but to accede to his proposal.

We walked awhile along the beach in silence. The sun overhead
reverberated rays of heat; the staring sand, the glaring lagoon,
tortured our eyes; and the birds and the boom of the far-away breakers
made a savage symphony.

"I don't require to tell you the game's up?" Nares asked.

"No," said I.

"I was thinking of getting to sea to-morrow," he pursued.

"The best thing you can do," said I.

"Shall we say Honolulu?" he inquired.


"O, yes; let's stick to the programme," I cried. "Honolulu be it!"

There was another silence, and then Nares cleared his throat.

"We've been pretty good friends, you and me, Mr. Dodd," he resumed.
"We've been going through the kind of thing that tries a man. We've had
the hardest kind of work, we've been badly backed, and now we're badly
beaten. And we've fetched through without a word of disagreement. I
don't say this to praise myself: it's my trade; it's what I'm paid for,
and trained for, and brought up to. But it was another thing for you; it
was all new to you; and it did me good to see you stand right up to it
and swing right into it, day in, day out. And then see how you've taken
this disappointment, when everybody knows you must have been tautened
up to shying-point! I wish you'd let me tell you, Mr. Dodd, that you've
stood out mighty manly and handsomely in all this business, and made
every one like you and admire you. And I wish you'd let me tell you,
besides, that I've taken this wreck business as much to heart as you
have; something kind of rises in my throat when I think we're beaten;
and if I thought waiting would do it, I would stick on this reef until
we starved."

I tried in vain to thank him for these generous words, but he was
beforehand with me in a moment.

"I didn't bring you ashore to sound my praises," he interrupted. "We
understand one another now, that's all; and I guess you can trust me.
What I wished to speak about is more important, and it's got to be
faced. What are we to do about the Flying Scud and the dime novel?"

"I really have thought nothing about that," I replied. "But I expect I
mean to get at the bottom of it; and if the bogus Captain Trent is to be
found on the earth's surface, I guess I mean to find him."

"All you've got to do is talk," said Nares; "you can make the biggest
kind of boom; it isn't often the reporters have a chance at such a yarn
as this; and I can tell you how it will go. It will go by telegraph, Mr.
Dodd; it'll be telegraphed by the column, and head-lined, and frothed
up, and denied by authority, and it'll hit bogus Captain Trent in a
Mexican bar-room, and knock over bogus Goddedaal in a slum somewhere up
the Baltic, and bowl down Hardy and Brown in sailors' music halls round
Greenock. O, there's no doubt you can have a regular domestic Judgment
Day. The only point is whether you deliberately want to."

"Well," said I, "I deliberately don't want one thing: I deliberately
don't want to make a public exhibition of myself and Pinkerton: so
moral--smuggling opium; such damned fools--paying fifty thousand for a
'dead horse'!"

"No doubt it might damage you in a business sense," the captain agreed.
"And I'm pleased you take that view; for I've turned kind of soft upon
the job. There's been some crookedness about, no doubt of it; but, Law
bless you! if we dropped upon the troupe, all the premier artists would
slip right out with the boodle in their grip-sacks, and you'd only
collar a lot of old mutton-headed shell-backs that didn't know the back
of the business from the front. I don't take much stock in Mercantile
Jack, you know that; but, poor devil, he's got to go where he's told;
and if you make trouble, ten to one it'll make you sick to see the
innocents who have to stand the racket. It would be different if we
understood the operation; but we don't, you see: there's a lot of queer
corners in life; and my vote is to let the blame' thing lie."

"You speak as if we had that in our power," I objected.

"And so we have," said he.

"What about the men?" I asked. "They know too much by half; and you
can't keep them from talking."

"Can't I?" returned Nares. "I bet a boarding-master can! They can be all
half-seas-over, when they get ashore, blind drunk by dark, and cruising
out of the Golden Gate in different deep-sea ships by the next morning.
Can't keep them from talking, can't I? Well, I can make 'em talk
separate, leastways. If a whole crew came talking, parties would listen;
but if it's only one lone old shell-back, it's the usual yarn. And at
least, they needn't talk before six months, or--if we have luck, and
there's a whaler handy--three years. And by that time, Mr. Dodd, it's
ancient history."

"That's what they call Shanghaiing, isn't it?" I asked. "I thought it
belonged to the dime novel."

"O, dime novels are right enough," returned the captain. "Nothing wrong
with the dime novel, only that things happen thicker than they do in
life, and the practical seamanship is off-colour."

"So we can keep the business to ourselves," I mused.

"There's one other person that might blab," said the captain. "Though I
don't believe she has anything left to tell."

"And who is SHE?" I asked.

"The old girl there," he answered, pointing to the wreck. "I know
there's nothing in her; but somehow I'm afraid of some one else--it's
the last thing you'd expect, so it's just the first that'll happen--some
one dropping into this God-forgotten island where nobody drops in,
waltzing into that wreck that we've grown old with searching, stooping
straight down, and picking right up the very thing that tells the story.
What's that to me? you may ask, and why am I gone Soft Tommy on this
Museum of Crooks? They've smashed up you and Mr. Pinkerton; they've
turned my hair grey with conundrums; they've been up to larks, no doubt;
and that's all I know of them--you say. Well, and that's just where it
is. I don't know enough; I don't know what's uppermost; it's just such
a lot of miscellaneous eventualities as I don't care to go stirring
up; and I ask you to let me deal with the old girl after a patent of my
own."

"Certainly--what you please," said I, scarce with attention, for a new
thought now occupied my brain. "Captain," I broke out, "you are wrong:
we cannot hush this up. There is one thing you have forgotten."

"What is that?" he asked.

"A bogus Captain Trent, a bogus Goddedaal, a whole bogus crew, have all
started home," said I. "If we are right, not one of them will reach his
journey's end. And do you mean to say that such a circumstance as that
can pass without remark?"

"Sailors," said the captain, "only sailors! If they were all bound for
one place, in a body, I don't say so; but they're all going separate--to
Hull, to Sweden, to the Clyde, to the Thames. Well, at each place,
what is it? Nothing new. Only one sailor man missing: got drunk, or got
drowned, or got left: the proper sailor's end."


Something bitter in the thought and in the speaker's tones struck me
hard. "Here is one that has got left!" I cried, getting sharply to my
feet; for we had been some time seated. "I wish it were the other. I
don't--don't relish going home to Jim with this!"

"See here," said Nares, with ready tact, "I must be getting aboard.
Johnson's in the brig annexing chandlery and canvas, and there's some
things in the Norah that want fixing against we go to sea. Would you
like to be left here in the chicken-ranch? I'll send for you to supper."

I embraced the proposal with delight. Solitude, in my frame of mind, was
not too dearly purchased at the risk of sunstroke or sand-blindness; and
soon I was alone on the ill-omened islet. I should find it hard to tell
of what I thought--of Jim, of Mamie, of our lost fortune, of my lost
hopes, of the doom before me: to turn to at some mechanical occupation
in some subaltern rank, and to toil there, unremarked and unamused,
until the hour of the last deliverance. I was, at least, so sunk in
sadness that I scarce remarked where I was going; and chance (or some
finer sense that lives in us, and only guides us when the mind is in
abeyance) conducted my steps into a quarter of the island where the
birds were few. By some devious route, which I was unable to retrace
for my return, I was thus able to mount, without interruption, to the
highest point of land. And here I was recalled to consciousness by a
last discovery.

The spot on which I stood was level, and commanded a wide view of the
lagoon, the bounding reef, the round horizon. Nearer hand I saw the
sister islet, the wreck, the Norah Creina, and the Norah's boat already
moving shoreward. For the sun was now low, flaming on the sea's verge;
and the galley chimney smoked on board the schooner.

It thus befell that though my discovery was both affecting and
suggestive, I had no leisure to examine further. What I saw was the
blackened embers of fire of wreck. By all the signs, it must have blazed
to a good height and burned for days; from the scantling of a spar that
lay upon the margin only half consumed, it must have been the work of
more than one; and I received at once the image of a forlorn troop of
castaways, houseless in that lost corner of the earth, and feeding there
their fire of signal. The next moment a hail reached me from the boat;
and bursting through the bushes and the rising sea-fowl, I said farewell
(I trust for ever) to that desert isle.




CHAPTER XVI. IN WHICH I TURN SMUGGLER, AND THE CAPTAIN CASUIST


The last night at Midway, I had little sleep; the next morning, after
the sun was risen, and the clatter of departure had begun to reign on
deck, I lay a long while dozing; and when at last I stepped from the
companion, the schooner was already leaping through the pass into the
open sea. Close on her board, the huge scroll of a breaker unfurled
itself along the reef with a prodigious clamour; and behind I saw the
wreck vomiting into the morning air a coil of smoke. The wreaths already
blew out far to leeward, flames already glittered in the cabin skylight;
and the sea-fowl were scattered in surprise as wide as the lagoon. As
we drew farther off, the conflagration of the Flying Scud flamed higher;
and long after we had dropped all signs of Midway Island, the smoke
still hung in the horizon like that of a distant steamer. With the
fading out of that last vestige, the Norah Creina, passed again into the
empty world of cloud and water by which she had approached; and the next
features that appeared, eleven days later, to break the line of sky,
were the arid mountains of Oahu.

It has often since been a comfortable thought to me that we had thus
destroyed the tell-tale remnants of the Flying Scud; and often a strange
one that my last sight and reminiscence of that fatal ship should be
a pillar of smoke on the horizon. To so many others besides myself
the same appearance had played a part in the various stages of that
business: luring some to what they little imagined, filling some with
unimaginable terrors. But ours was the last smoke raised in the story;
and with its dying away the secret of the Flying Scud became a private
property.

It was by the first light of dawn that we saw, close on board, the
metropolitan island of Hawaii. We held along the coast, as near as
we could venture, with a fresh breeze and under an unclouded heaven;
beholding, as we went, the arid mountain sides and scrubby cocoa-palms
of that somewhat melancholy archipelago. About four of the afternoon
we turned Waimanolo Point, the westerly headland of the great bight of
Honolulu; showed ourselves for twenty minutes in full view; and then
fell again to leeward, and put in the rest of daylight, plying under
shortened sail under the lee of Waimanolo.

A little after dark we beat once more about the point, and crept
cautiously toward the mouth of the Pearl Lochs, where Jim and I had
arranged I was to meet the smugglers. The night was happily obscure, the
water smooth. We showed, according to instructions, no light on deck:
only a red lantern dropped from either cathead to within a couple of
feet of the water. A lookout was stationed on the bowsprit end, another
in the crosstrees; and the whole ship's company crowded forward,
scouting for enemies or friends. It was now the crucial moment of our
enterprise; we were now risking liberty and credit; and that for a sum
so small to a man in my bankrupt situation, that I could have laughed
aloud in bitterness. But the piece had been arranged, and we must play
it to the finish.

For some while, we saw nothing but the dark mountain outline of the
island, the torches of native fishermen glittering here and there along
the foreshore, and right in the midst that cluster of brave lights with
which the town of Honolulu advertises itself to the seaward. Presently
a ruddy star appeared inshore of us, and seemed to draw near unsteadily.
This was the anticipated signal; and we made haste to show the
countersign, lowering a white light from the quarter, extinguishing
the two others, and laying the schooner incontinently to. The star
approached slowly; the sounds of oars and of men's speech came to us
across the water; and then a voice hailed us.

"Is that Mr. Dodd?"

"Yes," I returned. "Is Jim Pinkerton there?"

"No, sir," replied the voice. "But there's one of his crowd here; name
of Speedy."

"I'm here, Mr. Dodd," added Speedy himself. "I have letters for you."

"All right," I replied. "Come aboard, gentlemen, and let me see my
mail."

A whaleboat accordingly ranged alongside, and three men boarded us: my
old San Francisco friend, the stock-gambler Speedy, a little wizened
person of the name of Sharpe, and a big, flourishing, dissipated-looking
man called Fowler. The two last (I learned afterward) were frequent
partners; Sharpe supplied the capital, and Fowler, who was quite a
character in the islands and occupied a considerable station, brought
activity, daring, and a private influence, highly necessary in the case.
Both seemed to approach the business with a keen sense of romance; and I
believe this was the chief attraction, at least with Fowler--for whom
I early conceived a sentiment of liking. But in that first moment I
had something else to think of than to judge my new acquaintances;
and before Speedy had fished out the letters, the full extent of our
misfortune was revealed.

"We've rather bad news for you, Mr. Dodd," said Fowler. "Your firm's
gone up."

"Already!" I exclaimed.

"Well, it was thought rather a wonder Pinkerton held on as long as he
did," was the reply. "The wreck deal was too big for your credit; you
were doing a big business, no doubt, but you were doing it on precious
little capital; and when the strain came, you were bound to go.
Pinkerton's through all right: seven cents dividend; some remarks
made, but nothing to hurt; the press let you down easy--I guess Jim had
relations there. The only trouble is, that all this Flying Scud affair
got in the papers with the rest; everybody's wide awake in Honolulu, and
the sooner we get the stuff in and the dollars out, the better for all
concerned."

"Gentlemen," said I, "you must excuse me. My friend, the captain here,
will drink a glass of champagne with you to give you patience; but as
for myself, I am unfit even for ordinary conversation till I have read
these letters."

They demurred a little: and indeed the danger of delay seemed obvious;
but the sight of my distress, which I was unable entirely to control,
appealed strongly to their good-nature; and I was suffered at last to
get by myself on deck, where, by the light of a lantern smuggled under
shelter of the low rail, I read the following wretched correspondence.

"My dear Loudon," ran the first, "this will be handed you by your friend
Speedy of the Catamount. His sterling character and loyal devotion
to yourself pointed him out as the best man for our purposes in
Honolulu--the parties on the spot being difficult to manipulate. A man
called Billy Fowler (you must have heard of Billy) is the boss; he is in
politics some, and squares the officers. I have hard times before me
in the city, but I feel as bright as a dollar and as strong as John L.
Sullivan. What with Mamie here, and my partner speeding over the seas,
and the bonanza in the wreck, I feel like I could juggle with the
Pyramids of Egypt, same as conjurers do with aluminium balls. My
earnest prayers follow you, Loudon, that you may feel the way I do--just
inspired! My feet don't touch the ground; I kind of swim. Mamie is like
Moses and Aaron that held up the other individual's arms. She carries me
along like a horse and buggy. I am beating the record.

"Your true partner,

"J. PINKERTON."

Number two was in a different style:--

"My dearest Loudon, how am I to prepare you for this dire intelligence?
O dear me, it will strike you to the earth. The Fiat has gone forth; our
firm went bust at a quarter before twelve. It was a bill of Bradley's
(for $200) that brought these vast operations to a close, and evolved
liabilities of upwards of two hundred and fifty thousand. O, the shame
and pity of it! and you but three weeks gone! Loudon, don't blame your
partner: if human hands and brains could have sufficed, I would have
held the thing together. But it just slowly crumbled; Bradley was the
last kick, but the blamed business just MELTED. I give the liabilities;
it's supposed they're all in; for the cowards were waiting, and the
claims were filed like taking tickets to hear Patti. I don't quite have
the hang of the assets yet, our interests were so extended; but I am at
it day and night, and I guess will make a creditable dividend. If the
wreck pans out only half the way it ought, we'll turn the laugh still. I
am as full of grit and work as ever, and just tower above our troubles.
Mamie is a host in herself. Somehow I feel like it was only me that had
gone bust, and you and she soared clear of it. Hurry up. That's all you
have to do.

"Yours ever,

"J. PINKERTON."

The third was yet more altered:--

"My poor Loudon," it began, "I labour far into the night getting our
affairs in order; you could not believe their vastness and complexity.
Douglas B. Longhurst said humorously that the receiver's work would
be cut out for him. I cannot deny that some of them have a speculative
look. God forbid a sensitive, refined spirit like yours should ever come
face to face with a Commissioner in Bankruptcy; these men get all the
sweetness knocked right out of them. But I could bear up better if it
weren't for press comments. Often and often, Loudon, I recall to mind
your most legitimate critiques of the press system. They published an
interview with me, not the least like what I said, and with JEERING
comments; it would make your blood boil, it was literally INHUMANE; I
wouldn't have written it about a yellow dog that was in trouble like
what I am. Mamie just winced, the first time she has turned a hair right
through the whole catastrophe. How wonderfully true was what you said
long ago in Paris, about touching on people's personal appearance! The
fellow said--" And then these words had been scored through; and my
distressed friend turned to another subject. "I cannot bear to dwell
upon our assets. They simply don't show up. Even Thirteen Star, as sound
a line as can be produced upon this coast, goes begging. The wreck has
thrown a blight on all we ever touched. And where's the use? God never
made a wreck big enough to fill our deficit. I am haunted by the thought
that you may blame me; I know how I despised your remonstrances. O,
Loudon, don't be hard on your miserable partner. The funny-dog business
is what kills. I fear your stern rectitude of mind like the eye of God.
I cannot think but what some of my books seem mixed up; otherwise, I
don't seem to see my way as plain as I could wish to. Or else my brain
is gone soft. Loudon, if there should be any unpleasantness, you can
trust me to do the right thing and keep you clear. I've been telling
them already, how you had no business grip and never saw the books. O, I
trust I have done right in this! I knew it was a liberty; I know you may
justly complain; but it was some things that were said. And mind you,
all legitimate business! Not even your shrinking sensitiveness could
find fault with the first look of one of them, if they had panned out
right. And you know, the Flying Scud was the biggest gamble of the
crowd, and that was your own idea. Mamie says she never could bear
to look you in the face, if that idea had been mine, she is SO
conscientious!

"Your broken-hearted

"JIM."

The last began without formality:--

"This is the end of me commercially. I give up; my nerve is gone. I
suppose I ought to be glad; for we're through the court. I don't know
as ever I knew how, and I'm sure I don't remember. If it pans out--the
wreck, I mean--we'll go to Europe, and live on the interest of our
money. No more work for me. I shake when people speak to me. I have gone
on, hoping and hoping, and working and working, and the lead has pinched
right out. I want to lie on my back in a garden and read Shakespeare and
E. P. Roe. Don't suppose it's cowardice, Loudon. I'm a sick man. Rest is
what I must have. I've worked hard all my life; I never spared myself;
every dollar I ever made, I've coined my brains for it. I've never done
a mean thing; I've lived respectable, and given to the poor. Who has a
better right to a holiday than I have? And I mean to have a year of it
straight out; and if I don't, I shall lie right down here in my tracks,
and die of worry and brain trouble. Don't mistake. That's so. If there
are any pickings at all, TRUST SPEEDY; don't let the creditors get wind
of what there is. I helped you when you were down; help me now. Don't
deceive yourself; you've got to help me right now, or never. I am
clerking, and NOT FIT TO CYPHER. Mamie's typewriting at the Phoenix
Guano Exchange, down town. The light is right out of my life. I know
you'll not like to do what I propose. Think only of this; that it's life
or death for

"JIM PINKERTON.

"P.S. Our figure was seven per cent. O, what a fall was there! Well,
well, it's past mending; I don't want to whine. But, Loudon, I do want
to live. No more ambition; all I ask is life. I have so much to make
it sweet to me! I am clerking, and USELESS AT THAT. I know I would have
fired such a clerk inside of forty minutes, in MY time. But my time's
over. I can only cling on to you. Don't fail