"Ay, ay, gen'ral!" I says and takes out my bosun's whistle, which I'd never turned in of a night without hangin' it 'round my neck, and which I now lifts from the breast of my gold-mounted coat, and pipes all hands to battle quarters. But the crew, except the one to the wheel, was under the rail, asleep, and so I had to enforce my pipin' with the flat of my sword. It'd been quicker to kick 'em, but, it bein' a hot day, I'd left off my shoes. And when they come awake I orders 'em to fly the battle-flag, which the gen'ral brings up from the bottom of his uniform chest, a fine large bright-blue thing, with stars and horned moons on it.

And then I makes ready a little old muzzle-loadin' gun, which was lashed in the waist, but pointin' over the port side, which happened to be the wrong side when we wanted to fire a shot across the enemy's bow. So we had to tack ship, which took about ten minutes, my crew not bein' A. B.'s. But when we did fire, the noise and the splash of water the ball threw up was war enough for the enemy. She was about a 100-ton tradin' schooner, and she came into the wind.

"Haul down your flag!" hollers the gen'ral in the Tangarine language, and one of their crew was goin' to haul it down, only for a stout little chap who came runnin' up out of her cabin and put his glasses on the gen'ral, and then rushes over and grabs the signal halyards from the man who was goin' to lower 'em, and hits him a clip in the neck at the same time—a scrappy chap he looked.

"He is there—it is heemself," says the gen'ral, excitedly. But to me, very courteous, he said: "Senor admiral, shall you manoeuvre the ship to approach the enemy, if you please?"

"Ay, ay, sir!" I says cheerily, and puts the brigantine alongside, and the pair of us, in our gorgeous uniforms, we leaps aboard.

"Surrender!" orders the gen'ral in a commandin' voice, but the scrappy little man he wouldn't. He yelled somethin' at his crew, and they got behind him. And there were four of them against me an' the gen'ral, for our brigantine started to drift away soon as we left her, and our spiggity crew couldn't get her alongside again.

There we were, us two heroes, marooned on the enemy's deck, in the most magnificent uniforms, but not another blessed thing to fight with except a couple o' gold-plated swords. But the little captain and his crew had only what loose things they could grab in a hurry—oars, deck-swabs, marlin-spikes, and one thing or another; but with them, without wastin' any flourishes, they came at me an' the gen'ral, and we draws our swords.

"What d' y' say, will we have at 'em, gen'ral?" I says.

"As you say, senor admiral, have at 'em!" answers the gen'ral, and we haves at 'em.

But I soon begin to see we wasn't havin' at 'em in any great shape. Our swords had two backs but no edge. It was like hittin' 'em with barrel-staves. Fine grand echoes, but the echoes wasn't knockin' 'em down. And the gold-mounted uniforms were in the way, too—in my way, anyway. My gold-mounted collar was gettin' so tight after I'd warmed up to the work that I 'most choked.

"Have at 'em!" the gen'ral cried again, "but have great care for the old gentleman."

I was just goin' to welt the little captain a good one when I heard that. "Not hurt him!" I says. "A hell of a battle this where we have to play fav'rites among th' enemy. And why won't I hurt him, senor gen'ral, an' him the best scrapper o'the lot?"

"You must not. No, no! He is the father of the lady."

"So that's it? And where's the fair lady?" I asks.

"I know not. I trust she is on this ship, but I know not. But have at 'em, as you say, senor admiral, once more, and possibly we shall discover."

"All right, but let's have at 'em right," I says, and down on the deck I throws my grand sword, and with it the very fine scabbard which I'd been holdin' with one hand to keep from givin' myself the leg. And I sheds the gold-embroidered coat on top of it. I kept wearin' the gold-mounted shappo because the sun was hot, but the rest of me was stripped to the waist. And I felt better, and then I says: "Come on, gen'ral, unhook that golden armor and be free an' easy in y'ur motions like me."

"No, no, senor admiral. I shall wear my uniform, even though it is to die in it," he answers back.

"All right, senor gen'ral," I says, "have your own way. It's the privilege of your rank, but for me a little looser motions and a heavier armament," and I picks up what looks like a baseball bat, but a little longer and a little thicker and a good deal heavier than any baseball bat. A capstan-bar it was. And if y'ever handled one you know what a great little persuader a capstan-bar is. I could tell you a hundred stories o' capstan-bars. Many a good fight used to be settled in th' old sailin'-ship days with a capstan-bar.

And with my capstan-bar I haves at 'em right. Soon I had two of the enemy backed up to the forehatch, and before their worryin' eyes I flourishes my capstan-bar. "Now then," I says, "it's go below for you two or a pair of cracked skulls—which?" And they went below, the pair of them together like divin' seals, into what I see, when I takes a peek, was mostly a cargo of pineapples and cocoanuts in bulk. I could hear 'em bouncin' around among 'em after they struck.

And now, being well warmed up to my work and my head bustin' with strategy, I takes the little captain in the rear and was about to lay him low, when the gen'ral hollers: "Senor admiral, you for-get—spare him!" So I spares him, but I whales the other last one a couple in a soft spot and chases him, till he took a high dive too into the forehold; and I could also hear him rattlin' and bouncin' around after he struck the cocoanuts or the pineapples, whichever it was. Then I goes for the little captain again, only now I picks him up and holds him while the gen'ral ties his arms, and then, first clampin' down the forehatches on the captured crew, we lowers him into the cabin whilst we take a look around.

It was me for loot, the gen'ral for the fair lady. But not a thing could I find, and him no fair lady. In the hold, topside, between decks, everywhere; but nothin' besides cocoanuts and other fruit and some hogsheads o' rum. The rum was an encouragin' item, but not what you'd call loot. So we came back to the cabin and untied the captain, who begins at once to go rollin' cigarettes and shootin' green eyes at the pair of us. The gen'ral takes a seat opposite him and argues beseechin'ly, but not one soft look from the little man.

The gen'ral, discouraged, turns to me. "Senor admiral, what do you say for him? Is it not a hard heart? I love his daughter, but he——"

"She no lofe you!" snaps the little man.

"Ah-h, but how can you say that truly?" says the gen'ral, and turns to me and says: "Is it not just, senor admiral, that I should have one opportuni-ty to see her?"

By this time I'd filled a little jug with some rum, and there was lemons and brown sugar and a little ice, and I thought 'twas kind o' rough on him, and so I says: "Yes, I think y'oughter, 'specially while you got that uniform on. But where is she?"

"Ah-h, that is it, where is she? On this ship I have thought, but evident-ly not so."

"Maybe she's here at that, hidden somewhere," I says, "and if she is, believe me, gen'ral, I'll find her," and leavin' a lemon swizzle to cool I begins to search the schooner again. And this time I takes a good look into the little captain's stateroom. I didn't find the fair lady, but packed cutely away under the old fellow's bunk was about a cord o' money! Nothing less than a thousand-dollar bill, but five and ten-thousand dollar bills mostly, and all new. Lord knows how much there was there, but I hauled a bushel or so of it out on the cabin floor by way of a sample. And the little man never stirred when he saw it; and as for the gen'ral, "Bah!" he said—"Red moneys!"

I was thinkin' I'd done a fine stroke, and that made me feel kind o' put out. "I'll find that girl if she's on the ship," I says then, and I steps over to a corner of the cabin where there'd been a fresh boarding-up of the bulkhead.

I gazes steady at it. And I could almost feel the little man's eyes borin' into my back! And I whirls around quick; there he was—paying no attention to the gen'ral, but starin' at me. And to myself I says: "If losin' all that money in his room don't jar him, it must be somethin' good behind that bulkhead for him to worry over." And with that in my mind I looks again at the old fellow, and now I know what it is, and the old man knew I knew, and into his eyes came such a look that I stopped dead. You mustn't forget that I was a big, loose, rangy 180-pounder, and standin' there—I can see it now; I didn't then—but me standin' there, with the heat of warm exercise and three West Indian rum swizzles oozing out of me on that tropic afternoon, I c'n see now I wasn't any winged angel to look at.

But I had no notion of that then, only that I was beginnin' to like the little captain; and with that new feelin' I spoke to the gen'ral. "Here," I says, "let's step on deck for a minute." And we went up, leaving the old fellow below with his hands tied while we were gone. And up on deck I says, quick and sharp: "Look here, mate, what's this about you and the old chap's daughter? Is it all straight?"

"Straight?" repeats the gen'ral, puzzled like. "Straight? Ah-h—listen, my friend," and he pours out on me what I wasn't huntin' for—his autobie-ography. It was her father who had kept them apart so. Her father, he did not love his—the gen'ral's—father. An old family quarrel, yes. Oh, for a long time back. Politics. He was of the Reds, her father, and his own father of the Blues. Her uncle he had been vice-president of the Red republic. It was true. But why should he and the beautiful daughter suffer for a quarrel which was so old, and the girl and himself all that were left of both families? Why? And I scratched my head and said I couldn't see why either.

And love her! Before he got through I could hear whole poems in the little wavelets lappin' under our run, and in the evenin' breeze which was kissin' my cheek. And the smell of oranges and pineapples and molasses and good West India rum coming up from the main hold—'twas the breath of roses—only I stopped to hope the captured crew in the forehold wasn't drinkin' up all the rum in their end of the ship—and to this side and that the lights of passin' ships were showin' and the voices of men and women floatin' over the water, darky voices mostly, and some were chorusin', chorusin' a shanty air which I'd last heard from a crowd of Georgia darkies loadin' a lumber schooner, a four-masted lumber schooner, through a great square hole in her bow from a railroad dock on the Savannah River—one time, that was, my ship put into Savannah and I got to know a girl lived in the Yamacraw there, and on Sunday afternoons we used to walk up and sit on the lumber piles on that same railroad wharf and watch the yellow river flowing by and dream o' things that never did happen an' never could—not for her and me. And now, aboard the little Caribbean trader, the moon was beginnin' to poke over our starboard rail and the first little white stars were peekin' out over the foretopsail, and the gen'ral was still talking. And when he'd done he laid his hand on my shoulder and said: "Straight, my brave American friend? As straight as a tall palm-tree. And all this"—he pulls on the end of a couple of cords on his gold-mounted coat—"I thought it would look well in her eyes." And he stops.

"But you are of the North," he says after a little while; "you think that foolish, possibly?"

"We do," I says. "We unanimously do," and as I said it I got to thinkin' of how when I was a boy I used to walk on my hands, and stand on my head, and throw flip-flaps, or stop to knock the head off some passin' kid—if I was able—anythin' so a red-ginghamed, pop-eyed little girl sittin' on the door-step across the street would take notice. "We do those things when we are boys," says I aloud.

"Ah-h! So you think—" says the gen'ral. "Ver-ry good," and starts to throw off his uniform.

"No, no," I says. "Keep that on. It becomes you. And, besides, I don't know's I'm so sure we ought all to grow up. And come below—come!" I thought I heard the old fellow's voice below and I jumped down, and there he was, the little captain, hurryin' away from the bulkhead.

And now I examines the bulkhead carefully, and I goes up on deck and resumes my full admiral's coat and buckles on the fine gold-mounted belt and sword and sets my shappo just a little to one side. I was wishin' I had my shoes, but they were on the brigantine and she was a quarter-mile away and still driftin'. And back in the cabin again, I picks up the hammer and draws from the bulkhead plankin' half a dozen nails, and in two minutes it's done, and out under the lights o' the cabin lamp steps—O, the prettiest, slimmest little dark-eyed girl, just a match for the gen'ral. But the first thing she sees is me, Killorin. "Ah-h—" she says, in a long sigh with her mouth a little open, and I tosses the hammer and nails into a corner and straightens up and takes a full breath; and let me tell you, son, in those days the worst-lookin' flatfoot ever climbed over a gunboat's side wasn't me, Killorin, bosun's mate, second-class—or was I first-class then? No matter; I was in a full-dress admiral's uniform then, and from me cocked hat to me bare toes I was some class. I knew I was—even without my shoes. And when again she looks at me and when again she sighs, "Ah-h—" with her little red lips apart, I says to myself: "Killorin, son, you're makin' one big hit." And just then her eyes looked past me and again she said, "Ah-h—" and down among my lower ribs somewhere dropped my quick-firm' heart, and "Killorin," I whispers to myself, "she loves you—not." For that last ah-h—and sigh-h for the gen'ral was seven times deeper and longer than the one she hove up at sight of me.

And while they were gazin' rapturous at each other the little captain's eyes met mine. And with a memory o' the last time I'd been up before a summary court-martial, I takes charge of the case. And "Sir," I says, "it appears to me like I'd have to be judge here. You, sir, are a prisoner o' war. And, to be more explicit, all aboard here are prisoners o' war. But no gentleman, and I say gentleman advisedly, is goin' to include a woman in the loot without her own consent, even if her father did hide her away and deny the same, which is against all articles o' war, besides bein' most disrespectful of service regulations. But in consideration of your previous good conduct we will not mention that now."

I turns to the gen'ral. "You, senor gen'ral, do you believe me an honest man?" And without even lookin' at me he says, "Pff—a foolish queschee-own, senor admiral. I have known you are honest from the mo-ment I have seen you spendin' your money foolishly at the hotel. And brave—as all American sailormen are brave."

"Tis well," I says. "And you"—I turned to the little captain—"you, I fear me, sir, will have to take my honesty for granted. Now I'll be the judge. Do you"—I faces the gen'ral again—"agree? 'Cause if you don't you an' me'll have to hop up on deck and fight it out."

The gen'ral was still lookin' up at the little captain's daughter. "Silence gives consent," I says. "And now," I says, "it's the young lady will say the word. Attend me, senorita. This young man here, but two moments agone, up on deck declared to me, while below the blue Caribbean the sun like a fine ripe orange was sinkin', and likewise the Southern Cross was shinin', lopsided, like a blessin' in the southwest over toward where the hills o' South America would 'a' been if we could 'a' seen 'em—to me, on this occasion, this young man declared he loved you. This young man—attend me, and not him, fair lady, please—and a gallant young man he is—I never knew a gallanter on such short notice—this young man on the occasion aforementioned declared to me that he loves you and wants you to wife. What have you to say to this charge? Do you love him or do you not? Take your time in answerin'."

And I stood to one side. She was still lookin' at the gen'ral and him at her. Just once she looked at her father and once at me—and I winked by way of encouragement—and she looked at her gen'ral again, and looked and looked, till all at once the gen'ral just nachally stepped across the cabin floor and took her in his arms.

"Look here, boy," I says, stern-like, "ain't that kind o' rushin' things? Have you a steady job—outside o' privateerin'?"

"I do not work. I have money," he says over her shoulder.

"Real money? Or this kind?" and I points to the bales of new bills in the little captain's room.

"I have gold in the bank and much sugar plantations."

"Then, orer pro nobis, she is yours," I says, and waves my arms beneficent-like over the pair of them. "And you and me," I says to the old man, "as I don't see how we c'n help it, what d'ye say if we two call the war off and have a few lemon swizzles with ice in 'em?"

And I draws a jug o' Santiago rum, and there was lemons an' sugar and a little ice, and we foregathers like a couple of old shipmates after a foreign cruise. And when, in the mornin', from out of the smooth Caribbean Sea the rosy sun came swimmin' we was right there, joyous as a liberty party on pay-day, to greet it. And the gen'ral and the senorita also saluted the goddess o' the mornin', and after breakfast we all went ashore, and that night I danced a taranteller at the weddin'. And, believe me, there's class to a good taranteller dancer.

And likewise that night, with the silver moon risin' like a goddess o' wisdom above the smooth Caribbean, and me and the little captain mixin' lemon swizzles on the veranda of the gen'ral's plantation hacienda, the little captain says to me: "I love you as one son. You shall be captain of my ship." And as a sort of weddin' legacy he bequeathes to me all the money was in the schooner when the gen'ral and me captured her.

And next mornin' I took up my quarters on the schooner, with the crews of the schooner and the brigantine for body-servants. And I had one good time. There was a basket there—a basket about the size of a good-sized wash-basket—and every mornin' I'd shovel a lot of money into that. Oh, I don' know how much, maybe two or three or four or five or six hundred thousand dollars, and I'd say to the cook, or maybe one of the deck force: "Here you, Fernando, go on up now an' hurry back." And they weren't bad traders at all. In a couple of hours they'd come hustling back with the full o' the basket o' chickens, eggs, butter, cheese, bologny, and fruit—everything a man 'd want for breakfast—in place o' the money. Fifty thousand dollars a day apiece I paid the crew, and good and plenty for them—a lot o' lazy loafers. It used to take three of 'em to buckle me into my uniform of a hot morning.

I never knew how much money was in that pile, but three or four, or maybe five or six hundred million dollars. And maybe I didn't live on the fat o' the land with it, for eight weeks! It would 'a' lasted longer only it was the divil tryin' to be thrifty with my admiral's uniform on, and then one mornin' the Hiawatha came to port, and with what I had left—forty or fifty million, or whatever it was—I gave a farewell party that night at the hotel where the banana grove was in the yard. I wore my admiral's uniform for the last time that night, and maybe that made 'em charge me a little more, but no matter that. In the mornin' I didn't have hardly enough to tip the waiters, three or four hundred thousand dollars, maybe, but—whatever it was, I tips 'em with it, and goes down to the beach to where the little, old, homely Hiawatha was laying to anchor, and 'twas eight o'clock and the bugler was sounding colors and it made me feel homesick, and I waves my hand back to the town, and "Fare thee well, O Tangarine-a," I says, "Tangarine-a, fare thee well." Secretary o' the navy I could 'a' been, I know, but back aboard the old Hiawatha I goes. And damn glad, you betcher, I was to be there.

But an admiral of the Blue I was once, with a hogshead of nothin' less than thousand-dollar bills; and I helped to make two young people happy. And no one c'n take that from me. And so I say when people say there's no good in revolutions you refer 'em to me, Killorin, bosun's mate, U.S.N.-I'll tell 'em.



THE BATTLE-CRUISE OF THE "SVEND FOYN"

At this time I had drifted down South America way, and was master of a combination whaling and sealing steamer sailing out of Punta 'renas for the firm of Amundsen & Co.

Punta Arenas, if you don't happen to know, is at the tip end of Patagonia, in the Magellan Straits. It is now a highly respectable place under the Chilean flag, but there was a time it wasn't. All kinds of human wreckage used to drift onto the west coast of South America in those days, and when the Chilean Government couldn't take care of them any other way they would ship them down through the straits to Punta 'renas. At the time I was there most of the bad ones had been run out, but every now and then a few of the old crew would pop up and worry people into thinking Punta 'renas must still be a hard place, which it wasn't.

Mr. Amundsen lived in a big house up on the plaza where the bandstand was, with a fine open-air veranda in front and a glassed-in conservatory on the side, and aft of the house a garden with a waterfall modelled after something he had left behind him in Norway. He designed the waterfall himself, and over the grandpiano in the front room looking out on the plaza was an oil-painting of it—a whale of a painting, done by a stranded Scandinavian who told Mr. Amundsen he'd seen that identical waterfall in Norway many a time, which perhaps he had.

We didn't like Mr. Amundsen any the less because of his collection of old sagas which he used to spin out for hours on end. Whoppers, some of them were, but we, his whaling and sealing captains, we'd sit there and never let on, eating thin Norwegian bread and goats' cheese and dried chips of ptarmigan, with Trondhjem beer, and none of us but would have sat longer any time, so that after he got through there was a chance to hear his daughter Hilda play the grandpiano—and sing, maybe, while she played. And I tell you, the thought of that fine old Norwegian and Hilda after months of banging around to the west'ard of Cape Horn in a little whaling steamer—it was surely like coming home to be home-bound then.

Norwegian songs were they, and I, American-born, and only half Scandinavian by blood, was probably the one man coming to Amundsen's who didn't know every word of them by heart. But not much of the sentiment of them I missed at that, because in other days I'd cruised off Norway, too, and knew the places the songs told about—the high-running fjords and the little white lighthouses; the fish drying on the rocks and the night sun floating just above the edge of the gray sea; and, again, the long black night of winter and the dead piled up to wait till they could be buried when the snow went in the spring.

But shore time in Punta 'renas was holiday time. Wet days, hard days at sea have their time, too; and Mr. Amundsen and Hilda and Punta 'renas were a long way behind me. I was whaling and sealing in the South Pacific, and had been doing pretty well, but nothing record-breaking till one day I picked up a lot of ambergris.

Now I could have stocked a million dollars in a regular way and nobody pay any great attention; but the tale of that find went through half the South Pacific. A dozen whaling and sealing masters boarded me in one month to see if it was so, and after I'd told them the story of it about forty-five times, I began to see myself telling it to old Amundsen and Hilda in the big front room looking out on the plaza, her father and I having a late supper of flat bread and the goats' cheese and the dried ptarmigan chips, with Trondhjem beer, and Hilda playing softly on the piano with an eye and an ear maybe sidewise now and again to me.

And now we were truly homeward bound in old Magellan Straits, with the hills back of Punta 'renas in sight from our masthead, when we spied a Norwegian bark with a deckload of lumber ashore on the spit of Pouvenir Bay, which is on the southerly—the Terra del Fuego—shore of the straits. Her ensign was upside down in her rigging, and I headed in to see if we could help her out. I thought it was queer no one showed up aboard her to answer when I hailed, but no matter—I moored my steamer just inside the spit and put off with half a dozen men in a boat and went aboard.

Nobody on her deck, nobody in her below for-'ard. I went aft and dropped into her cabin, my men behind me, and we were peeking here and there to see what it was could be wrong, when slap! on goes the cabin hatch over our heads. Then we hear the padlock slipped on and the lock sprung. We are prisoners, without even a peek at who it was did it.

We heard them going off. Without waiting any longer, I began slashing away with my pocket-knife, the only knife among us, and by and by I had cut our way through the cabin door; but that took a lot of time. From the bark's deck, when we were clear, there was nothing in sight except our own steamer to anchor in the bay beyond the spit. The boat we had come in was gone.

Well, we weren't worrying about the boat, only we had to take the time to lash together twenty or thirty pine planks and some scantling from the bark's deckload of lumber and raft ourselves around the spit and into the little bay to get to our steamer. Everything about her looked all right, except that none of the crew were in sight when we paddled alongside. I hurried over the rail to see what was the matter. It didn't take long to see. The hatches were off her hold and our sealskins and our ambergris gone from below. A fortune it was, gone—s-st!—like that.

Looking further, we found the rest of the crew nicely locked up in the fo'c's'le. They didn't know what happened, except that some men had come rowing in from the direction of the lumber bark in our boat, and one of them had sung out in English and another in Norwegian that they were the crew of the bark, with a message from me.

My crew, of course, said: "Come aboard." But no sooner aboard than the strangers out with revolvers, back my men into the fo'c's'le, and lock them in. That was all they knew about that, except they heard the noise of the hurrying of our cargo out of the hold, and then the sound of a steamer making fast alongside and of shifting our cargo to her deck and of her moving away. And then all quiet till we came back.

Well, whoever did it must have had us timed pretty well. They must have had a gang hid in the lumber bark and a steamer hid somewhere in the straits near by waiting for us. It looked as if there was nothing for us to do but take our loss and keep on for Punta 'renas, but first I went to the masthead and had a look out.

Opposite Pouvenir Bay the Straits of Magellan are at their widest. From the crow's-nest there was a good stretch of sea to look at. To the west'ard was a touch of smoke, which might be the steamer which looted us; surely she didn't go to the east'ard, for there it was open water with nothing in sight. To the northward, toward Patagonia, of course, she would not go, because Punta 'renas was there. But I had a look that way, and as I looked I could see what looked like an open boat heading our way; and I wondered who she would be and what she would be after in a place like Terra del Fuego.

They came skipping on at a great clip for an open boat. They were running her to a long main-sheet, but keeping a tight hand on the sheet.



As they drew nearer I see she was white-painted, and pretty soon I see she was too big to be anything but a navy sailing cutter, and soon again I made out that they were a crew of American naval officers and bluejackets.

They went out of their way some to sweep under the stern of the bark, and I noticed they all took a look up at her and back at her, wondering, as I thought, how she came to go ashore. They held on for the inside of the bay and ran straight up onto a little reach of pebbly beach; and no sooner grounded than most of them went tearing across the spit with rifles and shotguns. I see what they were now—it was a hunting party.

Without wasting a second they began to blaze away at the wild ducks as they came swooping down from the west. In that country the wild game don't know what a man looks like, and as it was late in the afternoon, with the ducks coming back for the night from the west'ard, the shooting was good. Swooping along the shore they came, across the mouth of the bay, flock after flock so close-set and low-lying that they didn't need guns. They could have sat on the beach and hove up stones or drift-wood and killed 'em as they went kiting by, sixty miles or more an hour to the east'ard.

After twenty minutes or so they must have thought that kind of shooting was too easy, for part of them went off into the brush and the others came back to the spit of beach and, with some kindlings from their boat and some drift-wood and brush, started a fire. It was a north wind, and I could smell the ducks cooking and the coffee making, and I couldn't hold off any longer. I rowed myself over in our second boat. The senior line officer of the party, a lieutenant, invited me to join them, which I did, and pretty soon I was eating broiled duck and drinking real American coffee, with bacon and eggs, and forgetting my troubles.

After supper we sat around and talked, and they told me what had happened to the lumber bark. She had been lured inshore by false lights the night before and boarded by a gang under Red Dick, who had cleaned her out of stores and what money they had, and had driven the crew off in the morning after beating up most of them by way of diverting himself. Then the bark's captain and his crew rowed across the Straits of Punta Arenas in their quarter-boat, looking for satisfaction. Nobody there could do anything for them, because nothing less than a war-ship could have overcome Red Dick, and there was no Chilean war-ship nearer than Valparaiso, and that was six days' steaming away.

"But how did that lumber captain know it was Red Dick?" I asked at this point.

"He didn't know," answered the officer who'd been talking. "But when he described him everybody in Punta Arenas said it was Red Dick. But aren't you an American?"

I said I was and told them my experience, and they all said what a pity my ship wasn't under the American flag so they could put it up to their captain and be sure he would send a party after Red Dick. And they would all like nothing better than to join that party, and an easy matter all 'round, as their ship was to be hanging around the straits for another week.

By this time the others of the party, who'd gone into the brush for wild geese, were coming back. They didn't get any geese, because geese, wild geese, anyway, aren't near so foolish as a lot of people think. They were hungry and sat right down to supper.

Among them, as I looked, was one I knew for Peter Lawson, an old shipmate. A warrant officer I saw he was now, but when I knew him he was a chief carpenter's mate on the old Missalama. We kept eying each other, and by and by he remembered, and we stood up and shook hands across the fire. In half a minute we were talking of old days in the navy.

By this time it was late day, with the sun going down below the hills on the other side of Pouvenir Bay. I remember it went down red as the heart of the fire we were sitting by. Through the little thin whiffs of the smoke of the fire it looked like that—all hot color and no flame. Nothing to that, of course, only pictures like that do start your brain to going. The little bay was there at our feet and the wide straits off to our elbow, and the water of that bay was smooth green where it shoaled on the pebbly spit; but the straits, as far as we could see them, were one long roll of tossing ridges and scooping hollows, and they were all black except where the williwaws, cutting across the tide, would whip the ridges to a marble white.

I saw the sun set red through the thin blue smoke of the fire, and almost in line with the sun and the smoke was the stranded bark with her deckload of lumber. A little farther off was my own little Svend Foyn. It was coming on dark by then and I could see them making ready the anchor light on the Svend Foyn. And it was coming colder, too, for the broad, warm north wind had changed to a thin little icy wind from the south.

And now the fiery-red reflection of the sun was gone from above the hills across the bay, and when that went all warmth went with it. Everybody drew nearer to the fire except the two apprentice boys, who were cleaning up the mess gear in water made hot at a little fire of their own. One of them was singing to himself little jiggly, ragtime songs while he wiped the dishes:

"Oh-h, ahm gwine down to Macon town Ter buy mah 'Liza Jane a gown— Ah feel so happy 'n' ah don' know why, Mah bai-bie, mah hon-ie!"

Every time he stacked up a few plates he would stop to roll a few more cake-walk steps.

"I wish I was feeling as good as you!" I said to myself while I watched him.

And, watching him, I got to thinking of Hilda in the big front room in what was home for me—and of having to tell her what a failure my cruise had been. It did set me to thinking.

All at once it came to me, and "I've got it!" I said, not knowing I said it out loud until I saw that everybody around the fire was looking at me; and at last Peter said, "What's it you got?"

And I told them what I had in mind, and they all thought it was a great scheme—if I could carry it out. And the lieutenant in charge of the party said: "And we'll help you; but not to-night—the first thing in the morning after a good night's sleep."

We had a good sleep that night, sleeping till sunrise on the pebbly beach with the mainsail of the sailing cutter for a tent over us. And in the morning the first thing after breakfast I pulled the lumber bark off the beach and moored her in the bay. That was so she wouldn't break up and go to pieces the first gale of wind came along; and, as after that service I figured her owners wouldn't call it stealing, I helped myself to a few thousand feet of lumber off her deck, and we all set to work to make the Svend Foyn over into what her builder back in Norway certainly never intended her for.

First, we built up her topsides to make a superstructure, and then added the other things a first-class battle-ship ought to have. The Svend Foyn had two masts and one smoke-stack. The two masts were all right. We had only to set fighting-tops around them, but she would be a poor class of a battle-ship with only one smoke-stack. So we gave her two more. We painted her lower sides white and her topsides yellow-brown, and for turrets we had one to each end with what was intended for 12-inch gun muzzles sticking out of them. And we allowed the ends of what looked like twelve 7-inch black boys to peek through the sides of what we called her gun-deck. Two of those 7-inch muzzles were real muzzles, that is, black-tarred wood like the others, but they were hollow so we could train a bomb-lance whaling-gun through them, one to each side. When we got that far they said I would have to name her, and I called her the Cape Horn, and there being no flag that any of us had ever heard of for Terra del Fuego, we made one for her out of three pieces of green, red, and purple cloth, and broke it out to her main-peak.

And when that little round-bowed, fat-sterned whaler waddled out of Pouvenir Bay that afternoon there wasn't a thing that one lieutenant, one ensign, one doctor, a warrant carpenter, and sixteen enlisted men of the United States Navy could see she was shy of, except a wireless outfit, and we soon fixed that by stringing a stretch of old wire between her masts, with half a dozen old barrel hoops for a wireless plant, and for fear there was anybody of Red Dick's party who knew battle-ships only from pictures, I had the stokers keep feeding her fires with whale-oil. After that, with the clouds of smoke belching out of her, I felt sure nobody could doubt us—especially at a distance.

We gave three whistles and dipped the ensign to our navy friends, and for the rest of that day and night, and all next day and night, we steamed through the straits toward the Pacific. And on the second morning we turned north and ran in among the islands off the Chilean coast; and pretty soon we ran into the place I was bound for—a bottle-shaped passage with a narrow inlet to each end and the shadow of the Andes Mountains darkening all. And, laying to moorings there, was a cargo steamer of perhaps fifteen hundred tons. Even if she wasn't too big a steamer to be loafing there, I knew her of old. Red Dick was handy. I took a look around to the north'ard, and at the other end of the passage and jam in to the high rocks was a whaling steamer about our own tonnage. I also knew her of old.

I might as well say now that Red Dick and I weren't strangers. We used to be sort of friends, but not since the day we walked up the long timber pier in Punta 'renas together and met Hilda with her father. She was straight from school in Norway then, and 'twas the first time we'd seen her. We looked out together on the wonderful straits, and 'twas me she walked home with.

But that was a year back, and it was other business now. I had now to make an impression, and right away, to back up our battle-ship looks. So we cut loose and gave them, port and starboard, one after the other, twenty-one whaling bombs in good, regulation style. They made a terrible racket against the Andes Mountains, which come down here to the water's edge.



And Red Dick's gang must have thought we were some awful power, for there was soon great doings on the deck of the whaling steamer. Smoke began to come out of her, and pretty soon she began to move; but when we bore down, with a great white wave ahead of us and rolls of smoke over us, they quit. Two boats dropped over her side and headed for a bit of beach, and twenty men scurried off and lost themselves in holes between the rocks. We shot a few bombs over their heads just to let them know we were a rich nation with ammunition to spare. The echoes coming back sounded like a battle-fleet saluting port in foreign waters.

We boarded Red Dick's steamer, and there were our sealskins and ambergris. There were also four or five thousand other fine sealskins which weren't ours, but which we took along, knowing they weren't Red Dick's. And with Red Dick's steamer in charge of six of my crew behind us, we started back the way we came. In steaming past the cargo steamer we counted four long glasses levelled at us.

The first likely place we came to we hauled to and shifted Red Dick's cargo to the Svend Foyn. By this time, with the ambergris back and five thousand extra sealskins below, all hands were willing to take a moderate chance on almost anything. We swung away for the straits, but not making great headway. The little old Svend Foyn was never any wonder for steaming. At her best she could do perhaps ten miles an hour. Now, with all her battle-ship topgear and with the wind ahead, she was doing perhaps six.

It began to breeze up, but nothing for us to worry over until we saw a steamer's smoke coming up astern. We were then clear of the coast islands and into the straits, with wind and sea fighting each other.

I had another good look at the steamer coming up astern, and took my prize crew off Red Dick's whaler and turned her adrift. I hated to. Not alone the prize money, but to see a good ship go to loss any time is bad. I did it in hopes that the cargo steamer coming upon us would stop to get her, and while they were getting her—what with the gale and the dark coming—we would be able to slip away. But they didn't stop. Perhaps the little whaler was too close in to the cliffs for the big steamer to have a chance in the tide that was running. They let her pile up against the cliffs, and came on and ranged up abreast of us. Red Dick was on her bridge. She came so close to us that I could almost have jumped aboard. It was blowing pretty hard at the time, but she was making easy weather of it—a good sea-boat. We weren't. The williwaws, which are what they call the hard squalls off the high hills down there, were having a great time with out battle-ship topsides. She was something of a roller on her own account at any time, the Svend Foyn, but now she rolled her wooden turrets under and every once in a while her bridge.

Red Dick leaned over the bridge rail and laughed. He looked the Svend Foyn's top gear over and laughed again. "Blank shells and wooden guns!" he called out. "Fine! Any more left?"

"Oh," I said, "not all blanks and not all wooden, and a few left—yes."

"So?" he says, and gives an order. A man pulls a tarpaulin off a long needle-gun amidships. "Got anything like that in your battery?" he calls out.

I looked it over as if I was interested. At the same time I made a sign to my mate behind me. I'd long before this loaded my two whaling bomb-lance guns, but this time I put in them the lances, which were of steel, weighed eighty pounds, and were four and a half feet long—not a bad little projectile at all.

"What's it for?" I called out, pointing to his needle-gun.

"What's it for?" he mimics. "What d'y' think it's for?"

I shake my head. "I could never guess."

"Well, you will soon. You know me?"

"I do. And you know me?"

"I know you, and I'll take no chances with you. I'm going to heave you a line and take you in tow."

"I don't remember flying any signals for a tow."

"No? Well, I think you'd be better off for a tow. Take my line."

"We don't want your line."

"Take my line or I'll blow a few holes in you, and while you're on your way to the bottom of the straits—all hands of you—I'll ram you to make sure."

"You're foolish to sink us," I says, "till you take off the ambergris and the sealskins."

He began to get mad. "Take my line or take a shell from this gun. Which is it?" he yells.

His gun was trained on our midship topsides. I couldn't see where he was going to sink us, leastwise not with one shot, so, "Come aboard with your shell!" I called out, and he did. I didn't look to see what damage the shell did in passing, but it went clear through our pine topsides one side and out the other.

I'd already passed the word to my mate, and wh-r-oo! went the four-and-a-half-foot bomb-lance from the inside of one of our make-believe seven-inch rifles. The lance tore through just above the water-line of Red Dick's steamer. The bomb exploded inside her hull. Through the hold the sea rushed, and from her deck below came whoops of surprise.

I rolled the little fat Svend Foyn around. She near capsized in turning, especially as Red Dick let me have two more from his needle-gun while we were coming around. One of them burst inside, but didn't kill anybody. Around came the Svend Foyn.

"Her water-line!" I yelled, and we let her have it. And again we gave it to her. They both went home.

Red Dick quit laughing. He ran down from the bridge and out of sight below. Pretty soon, through her sides, as we hear him and his gang yelling, came the ends of blankets and mattresses, to keep the sea out of the holes we'd made.

And while they are at that we give them another. And that settled it. Five minutes before, I had an idea we might have to go to the bottom—s-sst! like that. And now Red Dick and his cargo steamer were belting through the tide rips toward the Terra del Fuego shore, to find a bay, I suppose, and a bit of a beach to haul up and patch things. And I couldn't help thinking as he went that he'd lost a desperate reputation about as easy as any ever I heard of; but I might as well also say now that I'd been shipmates with Red Dick, and I always did believe he was a good deal of a bluff. But my crew didn't think that. There was great rejoicing among them, and I let them rejoice so long as they didn't stop setting things to rights.

We were shook up some—our bridge loosened up, our wireless hoops hanging droopy, our two fake smoke-stacks lying over on their sides, and the for'ard turret with some dents in it; but bow first, and in peace and quiet, we steamed on. And we were still steaming in peace and quiet when we made Punta Arenas.

And, steaming in, I thought I might as well do it in style. Here we were, a victorious battle-ship entering a foreign port, and so I hoisted our international code—spelling it out that we were the Cape Horn of the Terra del Fuegan navy, and asking permission to anchor. The captain of the American battle-ship was standing on his bridge as we steamed down the line, with a man in our chains heaving the lead, my mate on the fore-bridge and myself on the after-bridge, a quartermaster to the wheel, and the second mate spying, busy as could be, through a long glass; and not alone the captain, but the nine hundred and odd officers and men of the American battle-ship roared in review of us. The other ships in port didn't know what to make of it no way.

We came around and dropped our young anchor, splash! and saluted the port—twenty-one guns from our bomb-lance things.

Our lieutenant of the hunting party seemed to be officer of the deck on the real battle-ship. "How'd you come out?" he hails.

"We met the enemy and their loot is ours," I answers.

"Captain Fenton presents his compliments and would like to have you come aboard," he hails.

And I went aboard, sitting in the stern-sheets of my second boat, with the red, green, and purple flag trailing astern and eight men to the oars. And they gave me two bosun's pipes with four side-boys and two long ruffles from the drums as I came over the side, and in the captain's cabin I told him what the officers of the hunting party couldn't tell him already. And he thought it the best story he'd heard in a long time.

I thought it was a pretty good story myself, and told it again to Mr. Amundsen on the same long pier where I had first met him with Hilda, and he said the blood of the old vikings must be in my veins, and uncorked four solid hours of the old sagas, finishing up in the big front room with fiat bread and goats' cheese and dried ptarmigan chips and Trondhjem beer.

By and by I got a chance to tell it to Hilda—that and a little more while I was telling it. The band, a fine band, too, was playing their Sunday-night concert out in the plaza. I remember how the music made pictures in my brain while I talked, though I never could remember what they played.

However, that's no matter. Hilda says I told the story right that night. And I've told it many a time since—to her and the children when I'm home from sea. They are good children, who believe everything that is told them—even the sagas of their grandfather.



THE LAST PASSENGER

Meade was having his coffee in the smoking-room. Major Crupp came in and took a seat beside him.

A watchful steward hurried over. "Coffee, sir?"

"Please."

"Cigarette, Major?" asked Meade.

"I will—thanks."

Lavis came in. Both men passed the greetings of the evening with him, and then Meade, at least, forgot that he existed. Only interesting people were of value to Meade, and he had early in the passage appraised Lavis—one of those negligible persons whose habit was to hover near some group of notables and look at them or listen to them, and, if encouraged, join in the conversation, or, if invited, take a hand in a game of cards.

"Seen Cadogan since dinner, Major?" asked Meade.

"He's patrolling the deck right now."

"With the beautiful lady?"

"Nope—alone."

"Thank God! And where is she?"

"Oh, she's nicely enthroned, thank you, in an angle of the loungeroom with that sixty-millionaire coal baron, Drissler."

"It's bath-tubs, and he's only got twenty millions."

"The poor beggar! Well, Meade, if ever she gets within shelling distance of his little twenty millions they'll melt like a dobey house in the rain."

"No doubt of that, I guess. And yet—and yet up to late this afternoon, at least, she appeared to be delighting in the presence of Cadogan."

"She surely did. But"—Major Crupp eyed Meade quizzically—"what are you worrying about?"

"I'm afraid she hasn't really shook him. I know too much about her. The twenty millions would be nice to draw upon, but her one unquenchable passion is man, and in build, looks, age, and temperament Cadogan is just one rich prize. But how do you account for Cadogan? He's certainly bright enough in other matters."

Crupp projected three smoke rings across the table at Meade. "I was stationed in the wilds of the Philippines one time. The native women where I was were unwashed, bow-legged, black creatures about four feet high. After three years of it I returned home in a government transport. I landed in San Francisco. At first I thought it was a dream."

"Thought what was a dream, Major?"

"The women going by. I posted myself on the corner of two streets, and there I stood transfixed, except every ten minutes or so, when I'd run into the hotel bar behind me and have another drink. And I'd come out again, and I'd take another look at those big, beautiful, upstanding creatures floating by, hosts and hosts of 'em, and I'd whisper to myself: 'Cruppie, you're dead. You've been boloed on outpost and gone to heaven, and you don't know it.' And googoo-eyed I kept staring at 'em, investing every last one of 'em with a double halo, till a long, splayfooted, thin-necked hombre in a policeman's uniform came along and says: 'Here, you, I've been pipin' you off for about four hours now. About time you moved on, ain't it?' Lord, and not one of 'em that couldn't have married me on the spot, I held 'em in such respect."

"Thick, wasn't he?"

"I thought so—then. But I wonder if Caddie would think we were thick, too, if we told him to move on? He's just back, remember, from two years in the jungle, and her eyes haven't changed color and her hair still shines like a new gold shoulder-knot at dress parade. She is still beautiful—and clever."

"Clever? She's surely that; but he's only a boy, Major."

"M-m—twenty-six!"

"What's twenty-six? He's still a dreaming boy. I'd like to say what I really thought of her."

"Don't. They'd be having a squad of stewards in here to police the place after you got through."

"Why don't you give him a hint?"

"Huh! No, no, Mister Meade—I'm still young and fair. You break it to him. Who knows, your age may save you from being projected through the nearest embrasure!" Crupp crushed the smoking end of his cigarette against the ash-tray. "I'll have to run along now."

"Back soon?"

"After I've said good night to two or three dear old ladies in the loungeroom before they go below."

"And two or three dear young ladies who won't be going below."

"Don't be saucy, Meade. You look out of uniform when you try to be saucy. Exactness as to fact and luminosity of language—that's you, if you please."

"Bring Vogel on your way back."

"If I can detach him from his beloved maps. Forty millions in railroads he's got now. And colored maps of 'em he's got. He gloats over 'em—- gloats, every night before he turns in."

"Hurry him up, anyway. And drive Cadogan in. I'll get him going on a few adventures, and make him forget his beautiful lady."

* * * * *

Lavis had been sitting on the transom. He always seemed to be sitting on the transom—a long, lean, huddled-up figure in the corner, looking out with half-closed eyes on the life of the smoking-room.

Cadogan came in. Meade revolved the chair next to him at the table, so that Cadogan had only to fall into it. Cadogan abstractedly nodded his thanks. Catching sight of Lavis, he nodded and smiled.

With eyes staring absently into space Cadogan was drumming on the table with his fingers.

"Sounds like some tom-tom march you're trying to play," interrupted Meade, and proffered a cigar. Cadogan shook his head.

"No?" Meade dropped his cigar placidly back into its case. "But listen here, Cadogan. As a writer and newspaper man, my main business in life is to discover people who know more than other people about some particular thing, and then get it out of them. What about this ocean-liner travelling of to-day—is it perfectly safe?"

"The safest mode of travel ever devised—or should be."

"But lives are lost?"

"Surely. And probably will be. But they should not be—not on the high sea—except in a collision, and then probably one ship or the other is to blame. Even inshore, if they keep their lead and foghorn going, and steam up to kick her off, nothing will happen either, unless"—he shrugged his shoulders—"they've gone foolish or something else on the bridge."

Meade questioned further. And Cadogan answered briefly, abstractedly, until—Meade growing more cunning and subtle—he was led into citing one experience after another from out of his own life in proof of this or that side of an argument.

Cadogan had begun in short, snappy sentences, and in a tense, rather high-keyed voice; but once warmed up he swung along in rounded, almost classic periods; and his voice deepened and softened and, as he became yet more absorbed in his subject, grew rhythmical, musical almost, the while his words took on added color and glow.

Once in full swing it was not difficult for Meade to get him to run on; and he ran on for an hour, and would have gone on indefinitely only, suddenly coming to himself and looking around, he discovered that half the room had gathered in a semicircle behind his chair. He flushed, cut his story short, and said no more. The crowd dispersed to their various seats.

Presently Meade observed: "How did you ever find time in your young life for the half of it? And how you do suggest things—possibilities that try a man's spirit even to contemplate!"

Cadogan did not respond; but from Lavis, the man on the transom, came: "And now you are suggesting the really great adventuring!"

Meade turned in surprise. "What is that?"

"Isn't it in the spirit we have the really great adventures?"

Meade studied him curiously. "You mean that the most thrilling adventures are those we only dream about, but which never happen?"

"I didn't mean exactly that, for they do happen. What I meant was that to try your body was nothing, but to try your soul—try it to the utmost—there would be something."

"To risk it or try it?" asked Meade.

"Oh, to try it only. To risk it, would not that be sinful?"

Cadogan's instinctive liking for Lavis had led him from the beginning of the voyage to take a keen interest in whatever he might do or say; but until to-night he had found him a most unobtrusive and taciturn man. He had a feeling that this man, who before to-night had barely said more than good morning and good night to him, understood him much better than did Meade, the professional observer, who was forever questioning him. The answer to Meade's last question stirred him particularly, because he felt that it was meant, not for Meade, but for himself.

Thinking of Meade, who was a famous author and journalist, Cadogan said hesitatingly and shyly: "I've often thought I'd like to be a writer." He meant that for Lavis, but it was Meade who took it to himself to ask him why.

"If I were a writer, I'd have hope right now of taking part in one of the greatest adventures that could befall a man."

"Where, Cadogan?"

"Right aboard this ship. How? Here we are tearing through the iceberg country trying to make a record. If ever we piled up head on to one of those icebergs, where would we be?"

"But it is a clear night. And the lookouts."

"Never mind the clear night—or the lookouts if they are not looking out."

"But this ship can't sink."

"No? But suppose she can sink, and that she is sinking. There are four thousand people aboard—and down she goes. Wouldn't that be an experience?"

With meditative eyes directed down to the ashes at the end of his cigar, Meade mulled over the question. "A great adventure it surely would be," he at length emitted from behind a puff of smoke. "The right man, a great writer, for instance, if he could live through that, would make a world's epic of it."

Cadogan wondered what the man on the transom was thinking of. He put his next question directly to him. "There would be some great deaths in such an event, don't you think, sir?" His own eyes were glowing.

"Some great deaths, surely—and some horrible ones, doubtless, too."

"Oh, but men would die like gods at such a time!"

"No doubt—and like dogs also."

Meade did not relish losing control of the conversation to an undistinguished outsider. "Look here, Cadogan," he interjected; "could a man live through that—go down with the ship and survive?"

"He could survive the sinking—yes; but he would not live long—not in water near icebergs. The numbness soon creeps up to your heart, and then——"

"But how could a man do it and live?"

"Why, sir, do you insist that he should live?" It was Lavis who had spoken.

Meade's eyebrows rose above the tops of his horn glasses. "Eh!" Cadogan, too, stared at Lavis.

"To live after it would be only to half complete the adventure. We began by speaking of an adventure in the spirit. To make a real, a great adventure of it, should not the man die?"

Meade now smiled with obvious tolerance. "But a man dead and buried in the depths of the sea!"

"That would only be his body, and we were speaking of an adventure of the spirit—of the soul. The man should experience every physical dread, every nervous fear, every emotional horror of those last few minutes, share the bitterness of the disillusionment inevitable when three or four thousand ordinary, every-day human beings are dying in despair, because, as they would judge it, dying so needlessly. To get the full measure of it, and to share also in the sweetness and resignation of great souls in the hour of death, would not his mortal body have to meet death, even as the others?"

Meade readjusted his horned spectacles. He would have to revise his notes of the man, that was plain. Forty, or forty-five possibly, he was. Tall and large-framed, but spare, thin-cheeked, and hollow-templed, with white streaks among the close-clipped, very black, and very thick hair which showed from under his cap. A worn-looking man, a student. M-m—he had him now—a teacher of the classics in some college, possibly a young women's college.

"To get back to our steamer and your extraordinary proposition," suggested Meade; "you say that the man should actually die?"

"Surely die. And he should face death even as our highly vitalized young friend here faces life. Mr. Cadogan, coming back to us from perilous experiences, makes us share with him in every tremor, every dread, every thought he himself felt in his adventure. And how does he manage to do that? Isn't it because in the perilous moment his soul remains tranquil? If death comes, well and good—it cannot be helped; if not, then a glorious adventure. He meets danger with every faculty keyed up to the highest. Now, if a man would meet his death, as this steamer went down, in the same mood, would he not march into the shadows with a soul ennobled?"

"And then what?"

"Then? If we are heirs in spirit even as in body will God ever allow a great spirit to become extinct?"

Meade abandoned his young-ladies'-teacher supposition. He speared the man with another glance. "Pardon me, you are not a scientist?"

Lavis smiled—for the first time. "Do I talk like one?"

"You do not believe, then, in present-day scientific methods?"

"I believe in any constructive method, but"—he betrayed a shadow of impatience—"why limit our beliefs to what can be proved with a surgeon's knife?"

Meade thought he remembered that Roman Catholic priests were on special occasions allowed to travel without the outer garb of their calling; but would a priest talk so freely to a stranger? And yet—"You must have had a religious training at some time in your life?"

Lavis smiled again, but more slowly. "You are persistent, Mr. Meade."

"I beg your pardon. It is the journalist's interviewing habit. And I thought I recalled, also——"

Lavis seemed to be waiting for Meade to finish, but Meade, who suddenly realized to what he was leading, did not finish; and Lavis turned his head so as to look squarely at Cadogan. Through the half-closed, wistful eyes Cadogan caught a gleam that he again felt was an answer to Meade's unfinished question, and yet was again meant, not for Meade, but for himself.

"But to return," persisted Meade; "how is the world to benefit by your theory that God does not allow a great spirit to die?"

"Well, call it theory. After the mortal death of a man whose dying was a tremendous experience, there will be born again a great soul. And if the being in whom that soul is enshrined is but true to the best in himself, he will attain to the utterance of a great message, compel the world to listen to his message; and the world, having listened, will be for all time the better."

"I suppose"—Meade was by now not wholly free of self-consciousness—"a man should have had a training as a writer to best fit him for such an experience?"

"Writer, sculptor, painter, musician, lawgiver—anything, so that he possesses the germ, the potential power to make others see, hear, or feel things as he does."

"But who aboard this ship possesses such a gift?"

Lavis turned to Cadogan. "Here is the man."

"Who!" Cadogan bounded in his seat; and then, smiling at himself: "That's a good one—I took it seriously."

"Take it seriously, please."

Cadogan instantly sobered. "But I'm not aching to die. And the Lord never intended me for a martyr."

"Are you sure you know what the Lord intended you for? You have done great deeds in one way. You could do great deeds in another way. A great deed is never more than a great thought in action. You need but the great thought to give the great deed birth."

"But I never originated a great thought in my life."

"What man ever did? The seeds of great thoughts are born in us, which means that they come from God. But great deeds are man's. And if it should come to pass in your adventurous life that you go to a calamitous death, it may not be altogether a pity. If your heart remains pure as now, it surely would not be. You have every qualification, if you could but be born again."

"Why wouldn't you yourself be the man for such a thing?" It was Meade, eying the man from under contracted eyebrows, who put this question.

"Thanks!" Lavis's smile was almost perceptible.

"I did not mean——"

"No harm. It would require the creative genius. I am no longer creative."

"But you have an intellect."

"Meaning that I have a well-developed muscle in the brain? The man who lifts heavy weights in the circus has also a well-developed muscle in his arm, or back, or legs, but what does he teach us that is for the betterment of the race? But Mr. Cadogan here has the flaming soul. And the last passenger on this ship should be such as he, a strong man with the innocence of the child." He turned from the older to the younger man. "You are creative in thought, powerful, direct, tireless in action, Mr. Cadogan. Every new experience still comes to you with the dew of the morning on it. You should die hard, with your eyes open to the last. Nothing would escape you. And you would know what dying was, because for you to give up life would be a great renunciation."

Cadogan shook his head. "Even if all the rest of it were true, I have nothing in life to renounce."

"How can you know that? You would be renouncing a limitless capacity for enjoyment, if nothing more." Lavis rose to his feet. "I hope I haven't bored you too much? I think I will go out and get some fresh air." He bowed and smiled to Meade, smiled more warmly on Cadogan, wrapped his top-coat over his evening clothes, and went out on deck.

Meade saw that Cadogan was gazing thoughtfully on the seat which Lavis had vacated. "What do you make of him, Cadogan?"

Cadogan's face, when he swung his chair around, was flushed, his dark-blue eyes more glowing than usual. "I don't know, except that he had me thinking. He made me feel that he was reading my mind, and before he left I was saying to myself, 'When I grow older I'll be something like him,' only, of course, with less brains than he's got."

"You'll have brains enough, don't fear. He made me think of the head of a religious order who went wrong some years ago. But that was before I knew much of the inside of Continental affairs. A woman, as I recall it. However, he's gone—he made my head ache trying to follow him, and—but there is the major and Vogel passing the port-hole. I'll call them in and we'll have our little rubber."

* * * * *

They sat in to their little rubber, and while they played a passenger of importance was auctioning off the pool on the ship's run for the next day.

He stood on a table to see and be seen, a short, fat, bearded man who sometimes had to pause for breath. "Here she is, gentlemen, the largest ship of all time making marine history. What d'y' say, gentlemen? We all know what we did up to noon to-day. We did even better, impossible though it may seem, this afternoon. Now, what am I offered for the high field? Come now, gentlemen. By Tuesday morning, at ten o'clock, are we to be abreast of Sandy Hook or not? It will be a record run if we make it, but whether we are a few minutes late or early, every indication points to a grand day's run for to-morrow. Come, gentlemen, bid up!"

"What of the rumors of icebergs?" asked a voice.

"Pray do not joke, gentlemen. I beg of you, do not joke. Has any person here observed any notice of icebergs posted on the ship's board? I fancy not. To-day I myself put the question to the man whose word is law on this ship. Do I have to name him, gentlemen? No need, is there? No. 'Are we going to slow down?' was my question. 'On the contrary, we are going to go faster,' was the reply."

There was a laugh. "Seventy pounds!" was called.

"That's the spirit, gentlemen. Seventy pounds for the high field. The gentleman who shall be fortunate enough to win this pool will have something to brag about in future days. Come, now, how much for the high field? Seventy-five? Good! Gentlemen, I am offered——"

"What's the high field worth, Cadogan?" asked Vogel.

"All you want to bid, if nothing goes wrong. But with ship's officers spending more time with distinguished passengers than on the bridge, I wouldn't give a nickel for it."

"I won't bid, then."

The voice of the man on the table was increasing in volume. "Eighty-five pounds I am offered for the high field. It is not enough, not enough by far, gentlemen—eh! Eh, I say."

The ship heaved, not violently; gently rather, under them. There was an easy, slight roll to port, a dull, almost noiseless bumping, a slow, heavy resistance, as of a heavy object being forced over a stubbornly yielding surface.

To either side of him and in the mirrors Cadogan could see a dozen men peer inquiringly up over cards or books or glasses. Meade stared around the room. "What the devil's that?" he asked, and held a card high, with eyes directed to the nearest deck door.

There was a recoil of the ship, which slowly and gently, but surely and almost comically, to Cadogan's way of thinking, urged the stout waist of Meade against the edge of the table.

Cadogan waited his last turn to play, laid down his card, and scooped in the trick. "Forty on points, eight on honors, Major," he said, and set it down. "If nobody minds, I'll step out on deck and see what stopped her."

"Stopped! Is she stopped?" exclaimed Vogel.

"She is." Cadogan strolled out of the smoking-room. Three or four had preceded him; half a dozen, who had nothing else to do, strolled out after him.

In a few minutes those who had gone out were beginning to return. "Well, what do you know about that?" whooped the first one. "Hit a lump of ice! Lucky for the ice we didn't hit it fair, with this forty-five-thousand-tonner going along at twenty-five or six knots an hour like she is!"

Several laughed at that, and Major Crupp, who was patiently riffling the cards, called out to the last speaker: "Did you see Mr. Cadogan out there?"

"I saw him going toward the bow of the ship, Major," was the answer.

"Investigating, I suppose. Well, suppose we play dummy—what do you-all say?—till Caddie comes back. He's possessed of a demon for finding out things. Your deal, Mr. Vogel."

A steward stepped in from the deck. "Major Crupp, sir?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Cadogan told me to say not to wait till he came back, sir, but to go on with the game, sir."

Vogel picked up his cards. "How long will we be delayed, steward?"

"Oh, not more than an hour or two, they say, sir."

"H-m-m"—Vogel stared reflectively at the table—"I'll have to buy Cadogan a good smoke when he comes back. He saved me ninety or a hundred pounds on that high field."

They resumed play.

II

Lavis was pacing the wide promenade deck and sniffing the air as he paced. It was as if a breath of the north were on them, and yet—having reached the uncovered part of the deck astern he looked up to observe the steamer's smoke—the wind was not from the north.

Such passengers as were still making their rounds were doing so determinedly, in sweaters or top-coats. Without halting in their rapid walking they, too, at times drew short, sharp breaths through high-held nostrils. It surely was growing colder. But why? A group held up an officer who was smoking his pipe in the lee of the canvas forward to ask him why. He at once set them right about it. Why, surely it should be cool—on the North Atlantic, in April, and well on in the evening!

A couple that Lavis knew for bride and groom turned out to lean over the rail. He was pointing down by the ship's side. "Hardly a ripple on it—see!" he exclaimed. "Only for the bubbling up from underneath, none at all. Like an endless belt sliding by so smoothly, isn't it? And above—see, sweetheart—a clear sky."

"Ah-h, a beautiful night!" she murmured. "On such a night—" Lavis, as he turned the corner of the house, saw him snatch her close and kiss her.

In lounge and smoking rooms all was cosey, cheerful, lively company. Lavis in passing had only to glance into air-ports to be sure of that. It was card-playing and easy gossip in the one, and not infrequent drinks being brought to impatient men by alert, deferential, many-buttoned servants in the other. In the grill those who must have a special little bite before turning in were having it; and, this being a chilly sort of a night, there were those who were also having a warming drink, with the bite or without it.

It was growing late. The deck was now almost deserted. Lavis took a last look over the rail, a last gulp of the cooling air, and went into the loungeroom. Here he got from the steward paper and envelopes, sat down and wrote:

Now see that you make no attempt to lure him back.

There was no address, no signature. He sealed the envelope and went below to where, at the end of a passageway, he found a stewardess on watch. "Miss Huttle hasn't come down yet, Hannah?"

"No, sir, Mr. Lavis."

"No? Well, there is a party in Mr. Drissler's suite."

"Mr. Drissler, sir?"

"The wealthy man in the royal suite."

"Oh, yes, sir."

"Miss Huttle is there. You take this note to her there, and let me know that it has been delivered, please."

Lavis went to his room, got out a long, loose linen duster from his wardrobe, removed his top-coat, pulled the duster over his evening clothes, found an old cloth cap, and waited for the return of the stewardess.

She came presently. "I gave it to Miss Huttle, Mr. Lavis. Into her own hand, sir."

"Thank you, Hannah."

* * * * *

Lavis left his room and descended deep down into the ship, to where a man in dungarees, but with an officer's cap of authority, was perched on a horizontal grating poring over the speed register. Over his shoulder Lavis watched the numerals shift—seven, eight, nine, thirty. One, two—eight, nine, forty. Click, click, click, click—he watched them until the officer turned and saw him.

"Ho, I was beginning to think you'd given me the go-by for to-night." They shook hands.

"Isn't it the most beautiful mechanism ever made by the hand of man!" exclaimed the officer. "A watch is nothing to it. And what you see here cost more than twenty thousand watches—twenty thousand of 'em, and every danged watch in a gold case."

He drew out his own gun-metal stop-watch. "I'll time her now for a hundred revolutions."

He caught the time, set it down in a little notebook, and from it slowly but surely reckoned her speed. "Grand, grand!" he said softly. "Will you come along? Good!"

They descended and ascended many narrow iron ladders and made their way through many narrow, grimy passageways. Oilers, stokers, coal-passers, water-tenders straightened up to give them a greeting as they passed. In one boiler-room a stoker was scooping a dipper through the water-pail at his feet as they entered.

"Are we holding our own this watch, Mr. Linnell?" He held the dipper respectfully in suspense for the answer.

"Holding it? Yes, and more."

"Hi, hi! an' that gang went off watch before us, Mr. Linnell—an' I fancy they rate themselves a competent watch—among themselves, sir—they threw it at us as how we'd do mighty well to hold our own." By this time his chief had passed on, but Lavis, lingering, saw the stoker gulp a mouthful of water, hold it a moment, and squirt it, s-s-t! contemptuously into a heap of hot ashes.

Linnell continued his rounds, sparing a nod here; a nod there, almost a full smile at times, and at times, too, a sharp snap of criticism. Lavis in his rear caught the pursuing comment. He was the kind, was the chief, to soon let you know where you stood. And right he was. And no one would begrudge him what he could make of the passage, if so be he could make a bit more of reputation out of it, for surely his heart was in his work. Never one to loaf, by all reports, but this time!—not a single watch without his full rounds below.

Lavis followed the engineer up a narrow iron ladder, and thence up a wide iron ladder, to where, from a heavily grated brass-railed platform, Linnell surveyed his engines.

He laid a hand on Lavis's shoulder and extended an eloquent arm. "Worth looking at, aren't they? The largest engines ever went into a ship, those engines you are looking at now, Mr. Lavis. It is something to have charge of the likes of them. Wait till I see some of my old mates!" His was a low, chuckling laugh. "I'll be having a word to say, they better believe, of ship's engines! Talking of their ten and twenty thousand tonners—ferry-boats, river ferry-boats, that's what I'll tell 'em they have alongside o' this one. And everything working beautifully"—he hesitated a moment—"leastwise in my division. An' why shouldn't it, Mr. Lavis, after four days and three nights now of never closing an eye for more than two hours together? But two nights and another day now, an' 'twill be all behind us. And something to put behind a man, that—a record-breakin' maiden passage of the greatest ship ever built. And—but I'm gassin' again. We'll be moving on."

Lavis followed Linnell to where a man in grimy blue dungarees was standing silent watch. Before him was a row of levers and beside him a dial on which were words in very black letters: FULL SPEED, HALF SPEED, and so on. To one side was a disk around which two colored arrows, one red and one green, were racing. A gong was at the man's ear. At his feet was a pit into which a great mass of highly polished steel was driving in and out, in and out, up and down ceaselessly.

Linnell studied the colored arrows as they sped around the disk. "Port engine a bit the best of it?" He had to speak into the man's ear to make himself heard.

The man in dungarees nodded. "A wee bit, sir."

"How's all else?"

"Couldn't be better, sir." He had to yell to make himself heard. "Are we holding our own, sir?"

"A full revolution better than any watch since we left port."

The man nodded as if he had been expecting it, but presently chuckled and swung one foot playfully toward the glittering gray cross-head as it went driving down into the pit. "A full revolution!" he echoed—"t-t-t"—and spat with obvious significance into the pit.

"T-t-t—" mimicked Linnell, and slapped him lightly on the shoulder before he turned to Lavis.

"Will you go farther or wait here?"

"I'll wait here, if you don't mind, and stand part of the watch with Andie."

"Very good! I'll pick you up later."

Lavis, standing beside Andie and gazing into the pit, pointed to the great cross-head driving by. "If that were to fly out and go through the bottom of the ship, Andie, would it sink her?"

Andie projected his lower lip. "It might sink her, sir, though it don't seem possible-like. But if it did sink her, 'twould be about the only way to sink her, sir."

Lavis let his eyes roam above and about him. Andie observed the direction of his gaze. "A wonderful sight, aren't it?" he commented. "What wi' so many polished rods an' shafts all whity-gray, an' all them many beams an' bars so beautiful green an' red-painted!"

Lavis, still interested in the wonderful machinery, felt the deck lifted the least bit under him. It was as if the ship had risen to a rolling head sea. He laid hold of a handy stanchion to steady himself, but he saw Andie, unsupported, go sliding easily, gently, irresistibly to the bulkhead behind them. Lavis saw Andie brace his legs, and then, remindful and resentful, bound back to his station and set a hand to each of two levers. The iron deck beneath them was still rolling easily; from beneath the deck came a chafing noise, a slow, heavy grinding.

Lavis saw that with hands to levers, eyes on indicator, and ears to gong, the man in dungarees had become oblivious to all but the expected order from the bridge. It came after a time—the warning clang and the needle pointing to ASTERN SLOW.

Andie shifted his levers. Rods and shafts reversed. Andie, eyes set on the bridge dial, waited.

Lavis could hear Linnell's voice sharply hailing somebody in the boiler-room passage. Presently he saw him running by the bulkhead door; and then, from the far end of the passage, his voice cracking out like a whip: "Back, I say! Back, you dogs, back to your stations! I'll tell you when you're to go."

He came bounding in and past Lavis and Andie, up the narrow iron ladder, up the wider one above it. Again Lavis heard him: "You thought to forelay me, eh—and breed panic above? You misbegotten spawn, I'd kill you as I'd kill a cockroach—and every last one of you, if you force me. You dogs—go back!"

Cries and oaths, then the thud of a heavy weapon on bone and flesh, the falling of stumbling bodies on the iron grating above. A silence, and then Linnell's voice again, now more controlled: "You there, Wallace? Well, stay there. An' let not a single one of 'em pass without my orders. Shoot 'em down if you have to, but keep 'em below."

The ship was still backing. Wh-r-r-i-ng! went the gong. Stop! commanded the indicator. Andie shifted the levers. The tremendous machinery hung motionless.

All was quiet. Not a quiver from out of the great compartment. Through the grating over his head Lavis saw the figure of the chief hurriedly descending. He saw him turn, pause a moment at the head of the narrow ladder, and then come sliding down.

"Doing our best, some of 'em will get up above," he said quietly. "But we've enough left for a watch." He stepped to Andie's side, all the while with his eyes roaming over the machinery. "She answered her bells promptly, Andie?"

"To the stroke, sir."

"Good! Stay by her. Pass the word to me if aught goes wrong."

He was through the bulkhead door and into the passageway before he had completed the order.

Lavis saw Andie pout his lower lip, and with a "T-t-t—" shift his gaze to the pit. "The blind bats!" burst from him, and he spat into the pit. "See there, sir!" he called out to Lavis.

Lavis nodded. He had already noticed it. There was a foot or so of water in the pit.

"How the devil came it there?" Andie stooped and scooped a handful of it, tasted it, and held it up for Lavis to view. "Salt! And cold. T-t-t—" Andie let his breath whistle softly through his parted teeth.

The water was rising. By and by it was over the top of the pit and crawling across the shiny deck. Andie looked about for relief.

"I'll tell him," volunteered Lavis.

"Thank you, sir. An' you might say, sir, there must be somethin' wrong wi' the bulkhead doors. They aren't closed yet."

Lavis met Linnell returning in the passageway. "Buttons in place of eyes in their heads aloft!" he was muttering. "An' for all o' forty mechanics brought specially to set things right, they can't close the doors below."

Together they waded in to where Andie was now to his knees in water. "Let be your levers, Andie, an' take a spell o' rest for yourself," commanded Linnell.

Andie slowly relaxed his fingers, pulled a bunch of waste from his hip pocket, and wiped his hands.

"She's hard hit," said Linnell to Lavis, "though there's few know it yet. And won't in a hurry."

"Then I'd better be going above?"

"That's right, do. Will you be back this way again?"

Lavis let his hand rest lightly on Andie's head. "I'm not sure." He extended his hand to Linnell. "If I don't see you again, good-by."

"Good-by, Mr. Lavis." The engineer stepped closer and whispered: "If any honest chance offers to leave the ship, leave her."

* * * * *

Lavis found his way through the crew's quarters to the lowest sleeping deck of steerage. Here a few old people and some children, too discouraged, too indifferent, or too helpless, were clinging to their bunks. On the next deck he found a gathering in the open space surrounding a freight hatch. One whom he knew for a Polish woman, with her baby at her breast, was on the edge of the crowd, and, like most of the others, glancing up to see what was doing on the higher decks. The Polish woman was too concerned with her baby to see exactly what they were doing on that high deck where all the boats were, but another woman was telling her how it was.

Lavis stepped closer and listened. She was telling, the tall one, how there were many men running about excitedly—ship's men with only shirts above their trousers some, and others with coats buttoned up. And they were pulling and hauling and knocking away blocks. Such a clear night one could see them—see their forms—and hear, too, their blows and shouts. The woman with the baby nodded. Without looking up she could hear the blows. And now the electric light had come, resumed the tall one; she could see that many women had gathered there, and some were pushing forward and others pushing back, and now women—yes, and a man—were being put into a boat.

"And now the boat is lowered," resumed the tall one.

"I can hear them," said the young mother. "And now it is rowing away from the ship in the dark."

"And there is another," informed the tall one by and by.

"I can hear that, too, rowing away in the dark. And from the water—do you hear it, too, baby—such a lonesome cry in the darkness?"

At that moment Lavis spoke to her in her own language. The young mother greeted him warmly. "Ah-h, baby," she said, "here is the good gentleman who lives in the country where your father is waiting." She turned from the baby to ply Lavis with rapid questions in Polish.

What did that mean—the boats leaving the great ship? Surely it must be true what the men had said, the ship's men—that there was no danger? Surely it must be true that such a monster of a ship, it could not sink? Surely it could not! And yet why were all the rich ladies being sent away and the gates to the upper decks closed, so that the poor people in the steerage could not get out? Was it really true there was no danger? Surely those officers would not deceive poor, friendless people! And yet here the oily men, the greasy ones who worked deep down in the ship, rushing every moment from below! And saying nothing but low-spoken words to each other, and into their rooms and out again in no time, but with more and heavier clothes upon them! Did men dress more warmly to work where the engines and hot fires were?

"Wait. I will return," said Lavis to her, and stepped over to where two stewards were on guard over a gate. One, observing him, turned to the other and remarked, with vast negligence: "A silly lot, steerage, ain't they? Always airin' a growl about something or other, as if ship's rulin's was a-goin' to be changed for the likes o' them!"

"I would like to get to the upper deck," interrupted Lavis.

"You would like to get to the upper deck, would you? And who, may I ask, do you take yourself for, a-trying to speak like a toff?" The man turned his back to Lavis. "Swine!" he repeated to his mate.

Lavis glanced down at himself. He had overlooked the effect of the old linen duster and the old cap.

"When he gets to 'arbor, of course there will be tugboat visitors and customs officers arskin' for 'im, won't they?"

The other cast half an eye on Lavis. "When the clarss will look down on the tops o' their heads and remark: 'What a mob of 'em there! How many of 'em did you cart along this time, Captain?' I fancy he'll have only to cock his ear up to hear 'em."

"Bloody foreigners, most of 'em."

Lavis returned to the Polish mother. "Come," he said. "There is another way out of here."

"Please, sir, the big, jolly Irisher—what is she saying?"

Lavis listened to the big, jolly Irish girl, who, however, was not now so jolly. Lavis had seen a thousand like her gathering kelp on the west Irish coast—tall, deep-bosomed, barefooted girls with black hair to the waist, and glorious dark eyes. She was standing on the covered hatch, and pointing at the moment to one of the ship's men who had passed.

"Wet to his knees. Where is it he should be getting wet to his knees? And another one. And where is it they are going? And is it we that has to stay here till that kind"—she pointed to the two stewards on guard at the steerage gate—"are pleased to let us out? Haven't we as much right to our lives as them that lives higher up? Five hundred of us here, women and childther, and which of them above cares whether we live or die?"

She pointed to a woman with her brood clinging to her hands and skirts. "Look at that poor woman with her five childther. And that poor little thing"—she indicated the Polish woman—"that has a husband waiting for herself and her baby in New York. And that other one, and that one, and that one. God in heaven, mothers with their children to their breasts, and not to be given a chance to live at all! If 'tis a mother I was, and a child to my breast, it's not images of men in uniforms would hinder me from saving my baby this night! And myself with my baby, if my baby was in need of me, an' I could."

The two ship's men on guard were gazing, not at the steerage, but up at the higher decks, when a dozen or more of the steerage women swept across the deck. "Grand work for strong men," the Irish girl cried, "preventin' poor women and childther from looking out for themselves. It's not even shadows of men ye are!" and with that bowled the near one over; and her companions, sweeping up behind her, bowled the other one over. The two stewards had a look up and a look down, and then, with an outraged look at each other, they flew after the disappearing steerage women.

"Come, now." Lavis took the Polish mother's hand.

"Sh-h!" she warned. "He is sleeping."

Lavis, nodding that he saw, helped her carefully to her feet, and led her through the now unguarded gate, and by way of several ladders, to that high deck where the boats were.

A boat was all but ready for lowering. The last woman had been crowded into it. The Polish woman removed her shawl and wrapped it around her baby. "Baby!" Lavis could hear her saying over and over again in Polish. "Oh, my baby! my baby boy!" but softly, so as not to waken him. She stepped into the circle of light which surrounded the boat and the ship's people. "Sa-ave beb-by," she said in English, and held shawl and baby up at the end of her outstretched arms.

A rough hand gripped her by the shoulder.

"Stand back! Stand back, you! You've no right here! Saloon goes first, don't y' understand?"

She stepped back in discouragement.

The men, busy at the falls, had swung the boat clear and were about to lower away. "Now!" said Lavis sharply in her ear, and pointed to the boat.

"Ah-h," she murmured, and darted under the arms of the ship's men and thrust her baby into the bosom of the nearest woman in the life-boat. "Save beb-by!" she breathed, and darted back into the crowd.

"I meant yourself also," said Lavis reproachfully.

"No, no, no—they would take baby, but me—no." Her eyes followed the lowered boat.

III

When Cadogan went forward he wished to see something other than the loom of the low-lying, misty, white berg against the sky. He peered down over the bow. He bent low his ear to catch the purr of eddying waters.

He turned sharply on his heel, and went below—deep below.

* * * * *

When he reappeared he went straight to his stateroom. Here, in the cabin sleeping quarters below the promenade deck, nothing disturbing had happened. When such passengers as were about to turn in became aware of that slow lurch and easy stoppage, they had stepped out into the passageways, and asked each other what was the matter; which question was answered almost immediately by ship's people who came hurrying among them with reassuring words. "It's nothing, ladies and gentlemen. If you will go back to your rooms, ladies and gentlemen—it's nothing." And they had gone back to their rooms.

Cadogan turned on the light in his room, and hauled out his suit-case. He found a pad of paper, found also a fountain pen, shook the pen to make sure there was ink in it, let down the covering of the wash-basin for a desk, laid thereon a small photograph of a beautiful face and head en profile, and began to write. He set down "Dear," and paused. He smiled faintly, wrote "Helen" after it, and went unhesitatingly on:

This afternoon, over our tea, as I concluded one of my almost endless monologues, you may remember you said, "You'd better watch out or some day you will be having your last adventure." Well, I have had it. Not with this ship—no, no. My last adventure was a dream of you. I was on the dock, about to board a steamer for South America, when I saw you step out of your cab. And so I came aboard here. I am glad I came.

You brushed me in passing, as I stood beside the gangplank trying not to stare at you; but you did not know that—did you?—although for an instant I thought you did. It was the conceit of youth, that thought.

Cadogan held up his pen. The sound of hurrying feet from the passageway, the noise of fists pounding on doors, of high-pitched voices asking and answering questions, broke on his ears. He listened, stared at the air-port for a moment, and resumed his writing:

About this time a steward is pounding on your door and hinforming you that you are to go on deck and be ready to go into the boats. Nothing serious, he is probably saying. The poor man who tells you so, I am sure, does not suspect, but whoever told him to carry that message knew better. Perhaps it is just as well he does not suspect.

When the steamer stopped that time, it was because she struck on the submerged shelf of an iceberg. In three hours—or less—she will go down, and all who happen to be on board will go with her. They should be able to stow a thousand women and children in the boats, and these should be picked up soon after daylight, if the sea stays smooth and the weather clear. To-night's indications were clear weather and a calm sea for at least another day, so that will be all right.

You will be in one of the boats, and—safe. It would be like you not to want to go. If I hear that you do not, then some one will see that you do go. But I shall not be by you when you leave the ship, for I do not want you to read in my face that I know I am not to see you again—nor to bother you in any way. I shall be looking on as you leave, and what you said to-night will not then matter. As you go over the side my prayer will go with you.

There came a sharp knock on the door.

"Come!" he called. It was his own steward, who thrust his head past the door's edge. "Saloon passengers are to go on deck, Mr. Cadogan."

"Why?"

"I 'ave no idea, sir. Orders, sir. I was to hinform the saloon passengers as how they were to go on deck, and women and children into boats."

"All right. Thank you. And, Hames."

"Yes, sir?"

"You hunt up Miss Huttle's maid, and have her tell Miss Huttle to be sure to wrap up warm. Be sure she gets that right—to wrap up warm. Two sets of everything all round. Got that right?"

"Two sets—yes, sir."

"That's all, Hames."

"'K you, sir."

He resumed writing:

And so it has come to write the adieu which I would dread to have to speak. Four days only have I known you, but a man may build his life anew in four days, and this last adventure of mine has been such as in my visionary boyhood days I used to mark out for myself in rosy dreams.

I have the little snapshot you gave me yesterday. I will have it with me to the end, and your face in it will be the last thing I kiss this side of eternity. And so good-by, dear heart, and don't worry for me. Who lives by the sword, et cetera. It had to come to some such ending, I suppose, though rather a joke, isn't it, to be lost on an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic in these days?

To-day with you I saw the sun go down 'twixt purple bars, and what is the little matter of dying to that? And it is a consolation to know you will not mourn me. Good night, dear heart, and may God have ever a tender eye on you.

He sealed the envelope, and very carefully addressed it: "Miss Helen Huttle," placed it in his inside coat-pocket, kissed the little photograph, and placed that also in his inside coat-pocket.