However, if I had made a donkey of myself, it wasn't an altogether novel experience, and I was philosopher enough not to weep over it. So I crammed my fists into my pockets by way of ballast, and sauntered to the door for a trifle of property which the regulations had made me leave there.

Whilst I was picking my own particular weapon from amongst the armoury Haigh joined me, announcing that he also was cleaned out; and adding that he was not altogether sorry, as those flickering gas-jets bothered him.

The observation, if slightly illogical, was very explanatory; and so thinking that he'd be none the worse for being looked after, I said I'd stroll back up into the town with him. As we went up through the narrow streets he imparted a long detail of woe; but he maundered over it considerably, and whether the lady who was mostly in question was his own wife, or some one else's wife, or no wife at all, was a point still hidden from me when we sheered up in front of his hotel. Here he got more mournful still, and quitted the tale of his past ill-treatment for a more pressing question of the present.

"Yes, here we are, old chap, and I'm awfully sorry I can't ask you in to have something. But the fact is, I'm not in very good odour there just at present. My bill d'ye see's been galloping for the last three weeks, and at lunch to-day the proprietor fellow said he couldn't wait any longer for my remittances. He said that if they didn't come by evening he'd rather I went, leaving my baggage behind by way of souvenir. I'm afraid the two portmanteaus aren't worth very much, as I've—er—disposed of most of the contents, and supplied the weight by pieces of iron kentledge done up in one or other of the daily papers. I had a notion that I should have raised funds this evening, but circumstances intervened which—er—you understand, made me somewhat worse off than before. Of course if I went in there they might put me up again for to-night; but that proprietor fellow might be about, and I shouldn't care to meet him. He's such a nasty way of looking at a chap. So I think, on the whole, I shall just go down and sleep on my boat."

"Your boat?" I repeated in a dazed sort of way.

"Yes," said Haigh, blinking at me anxiously; "just a little cutter I've got down there in the harbour. But I say, dear chappie, you aren't taking it unkindly that I don't ask you in here, are you? 'Pon my honour, if I weren't dead stony broke I'd give you a drink either in this place or——"

"Damn your drinks, you lucky man. If your boat and my knowledge doesn't transmogrify us from a pair of stone-brokes into a couple of bloated millionaires, I'm a Dutchman. Come along, man. Come along now."



CHAPTER VI.

FORE AND AFT SEAMANSHIP.

It has been my fate to put to sea in some of the worst-found craft that ever scrambled into port again, but of the lot, that ugly little cutter of Haigh's stands pre-eminent.

She possessed no single good point in her favour. She had swung in harbour so long that everywhere above the water-line she was as staunch as a herring-net. Her standing rigging, being of wire, was merely rusted, but her running gear was something too appalling to think about. As for her bottom, if she had been turned up and dried for a day (so Haigh cheerfully averred), there would have been enough bushy cover on it to put down pheasants in. Fittings, even the barest necessaries, were painfully lacking, as the man had been living riotously on them for over a month and a half. A Chinese pirate could not have picked her much cleaner. What he was pleased to term the "superfluities of the main and after cabins" had gone first, fetching fair prices. Afterwards he had peddled his gear little by little, dining one day off a riding-light, going to a theatre the next on two marline spikes and a sister-block, and so on. His ground tackle, long saved up for a bonne bouche, had provided funds for that last night in the gambling hell, where we both got cleared out together; and the balance that was left didn't represent a mosquito's ransom.

Haigh told me all this as we walked back again down the narrow streets to the quay, and I suggested that although Mediterranean air was good, we couldn't exactly live on it during the passage across. But he pointed out that as his dinghy was very old and rotten, it would be quite a useless encumbrance on the cruise; and so, dropping me on board the cutter, he sculled off again to swap this old wreck for provisions.

I roused out a weather-thinned mainsail, black with mildew, and bent it; and by the time that was on the spars, he had completed his barter, and had been put on board again by a friend.

We had a dozen words of conversation, and then got small canvas hoisted and quietly slipped moorings. The night was very black, and thick with driving rain; and we slid out through the pier-heads unquestioned save by a passing launch which hailed, and was politely answered in gibberish.

There was a singular lack of formality about our departure which was much to be regretted. But there was some small trouble about big accumulations of harbour dues and such minor items, which would have had to be settled in return for a clearance en regle; and, remembering how history was galloping, we could not afford the time to deal with them. And so, after a narrow squeak of being cut down by a big steamer just outside, we found ourselves close-hauled under all plain sail, making a long leg with a short one to follow.

"Funds wouldn't run to the luxury of a chart," observed Haigh when I inquired about this trifle, "but I had a look at a big Mediterranean track chart at the place where I bartered the dinghy, and the course to Port Mahon is due south-west, as near as no matter."

"As near as no matter," groaned I in response.

"Why, my dear chap, we really can't indulge in the extreme niceties of navigation. We've got a compass, which is fairly accurate if you joggle it with your finger occasionally, and we can fix up a lead line when we get in soundings, and I dare say we can make a log. D'you mind having a spell at the pump now? I'm a bit out of condition."

The leaking decreased as the planking swelled to the wet, but other unpleasantnesses began to show themselves. One of the greatest, to my way of thinking, was the way we were victualled. To begin with, there were twenty-three bottles of vermouth, straw-jacketed, and carefully stowed. Then there was a bag of condemned sea-biscuits, which Haigh pleasantly alluded to as "perambulators." And the list of solids was completed by half a dozen four-pound tins of corned beef, and a hundred and fifty excellent cigars which had not paid duty. There was an iron tank full of rusty water which "had to do," as refilling it might have entailed awkward questions. And, lastly, there had been brought on board a very small and much-corroded kedge anchor, which, as it was the only implement of its kind that we possessed, gave much force to Haigh's comment that "it might come in handy."

To tell the truth, when the cold sea air blew away the glamour of plotting and planning, and I was able to tot up all these accessories with a practical mind, I was beginning very much to wish myself well off what seemed a certain road to Jones.

Haigh, on the other hand, seemed supremely contented and happy. Yachting as a general thing, he said, he found slow; but this cruise had an element of novelty which made it vastly entertaining. He had never heard of any one deliberately getting to sea quite under such circumstances before. He didn't uphold the wisdom of the proceeding in the least, for when I grunted something about the world not containing such another pair of thorough-paced fools, he agreed with me promptly. In fact, he was in far too jovial a humour to argue about anything, and by degrees I began to fall in with his vein. "Let's split a bottle of vermouth," said he, "and drink confusion to every one except our two selves." And we did it.

The breeze lulled at daybreak, and northed till we had it nearly fair.

"This is great business," said Haigh. "I'll bet you five hundred pounds that we make the islands in the next twenty-four hours. I.O.U.'s accepted." He slipped off the after-hatch, and dragged up from the counter a venerable relic of a spinnaker, which was one vivid mottle of mildew. The sail was duly mocked and set. The wind was freshening, and our pace increased. The cutter and her parasitical escort kicked up enough wake for a Cardiff ore-steamer.

"Who says a foul bottom matters now?" said Haigh. "Who will suggest that she isn't kicking past this scenery at nine knots? Bless the ugly lines of her, we mustn't forget her builder's health. Hand up another bottle of that vermouth and the dipper."

We lifted her through it all that morning at a splendid pace, the wake boiling up astern like a mill-tail. The two booms did certainly make occasional plunges which might have jarred timid nerves, but such a trifle did not disturb us.

"It's the best bit of racing I've ever done," said Haigh. "There's a pig of a following sea, and the wind's squally. Just her weather. If we'd only got another craft trying to beat us, the thing would be perfect. We should have some inducement to carry on then."

Whilst we were eating our mid-day meal (on deck, of course) that variegated spinnaker went "pop," splitting neatly from head-cringle to foot-rope. It was my trick at the tiller, and so I was tied aft. Haigh peered round at the ruin, and returned to his occupation of knocking weevils out of his biscuit. He didn't think it worth while to budge, and so we let the canvas blow into whatever shaped ribands it chose. If we couldn't carry the sail, we didn't want it.

The wind hardened down as the day went on, and every knot we went the sea got worse. The ugly cutter slid down one wet incline, drove up the next, and squattered through the hissing crest with a good deal of grumbling and plunging and rolling and complaining. But she had a good grip of the water, and with decently careful steering she showed but small inclination to broach-to or do anything else she wasn't wanted to. She might not be a beauty; she might be sluggish as a haystack in a light breeze; but, as Haigh said, this was just her day, and we were not too nervous to take advantage of it. Still, considering her small tonnage, and the fact that all her tackle was so infernally rotten, she took a tidy bit of looking after. You see, we might be reckless about our skins, but at the same time we were very keenly anxious to make the Balearic Islands.

The thing that I mostly feared was that our old ruin of a mainsail would take leave of us. If once it started to split, the whole lot would go like a sheet of tissue-paper. However, whether we liked it or not, we had to run on now. The wind and sea were both far too heavy to dream of an attempt at rounding-to. And, indeed, even if we had succeeded in slewing her head to the wind without getting swamped in the process (the odds on which were about nine hundred to one against), it was distinctly doubtful as to whether she would deign to stay there. Small cutters are not great at staying hove-to in really dirty weather.

And so we topped the boom well up, hoisted the tack to prevent overrunning the seas, and let her drive; and whilst Haigh clung on to the tiller and its weather rope, I busied myself with a bent sail-needle at stitching up any places within reach on the mainsail where the seams seemed to be working loose.

Soon after dark that night—and I never saw much more inky blackness in my life—we came across a deep-laden brig which very nearly gave us a quietus. She was running sluggishly under lower fore-topsail, wallowing like a log-raft in a rapid, and doing less than a third of our knottage. We possessed neither side-lamps nor oil, and showed no light; and as she had not a lantern astern, we got no glimmer of warning till we were within a dozen fathoms of her taffrail. Haigh couldn't give the cutter much helm for fear of gibing her and carrying away everything, and consequently we did not clear that brig's low quarter by more than a short fathom. Had we passed her to starboard instead of to port, we should have fouled our main boom, and—well, we shouldn't have got any farther.

As we tore past, the white water squirming and hissing between the vessels' sides, a man leaned over the bulwark, with his face looking like a red devil's in the glare of the port light, and shook a fist and screamed a frightened venomous curse. Our only reply was a wild roar of laughter. As we drove off into the mist of scud ahead, I looked back and saw the man staring after us with dropped jaw and eyes fairly goggling. He must have thought us mad. Indeed, I believe we had taken leave of some of our senses then.

"Vermouth's cheapening," said Haigh. "Pass up another bottle. If we do happen to go to Jones, it 'ud be a thousand pities to take the liquor down with us undecanted."

Don't get the idea that we were drunk all through that wild cruise, because we were not. But one thing and another combined to make the excitement so vivid, that with the liquor handy it did not take much inducement to make us tipple pretty heavily. We were vilely fed, bitterly exposed, heavily overworked, unable even to smoke—and—the vermouth was very, very good.

As the seas swept her the ugly cutter's planking swelled, but before she became staunch a fearful amount of water had passed into her. Haigh, who was in no sort of condition, got utterly spun out by a five-minutes' spell at the pump, and consequently it had been my task to restore the incoming Mediterranean to its proper place again. It was a job that wearied every nerve in my body. The constant and monotonous heaving up and down of a pump-handle is probably the most exhausting work existent; and soon after passing that deeply-laden brig I pumped her dry for (what seemed) the ten thousandth time, and toppled on the deck dead beat.

"Look here," said Haigh, "you get below and turn in. I'm quite equal to keeping awake until further notice. I'm never much of a hand at sleeping at the best of times; and just now I'm well wound up for a week's watch on end. If you're wanted, I'll call you. Go."

I slipped down without argument, dropped into a bare and clammy bunk, and slept.

* * * * *

Haigh never roused me. I woke of my own accord, and found daylight struggling in through the dusty skylight in the after-cabin roof. After yawning there a minute or so, I conquered laziness and returned to the deck.

Those who think the Inland Sea is always calm ultramarine, under a sky to match, should have seen it then. The colouring was all of grays and whites, with here and there a slab of cold clear green, where a big wave heaved up sheer. It was awfully wild. The sea was running higher than ever, and the gale had not slackened one bit. The brine-smoke was hissing through our cross-trees in dense white clouds.

Haigh greeted me with a nod and a grin. His hat had gone, and the dank wisps of his hair were being fluttered about like black rags; his narrow slits of eyes were heavily bloodshot; his face was grimy and pale, his hands grimy and red; his clothing was a wreck. He looked very unpleasant, but he was undoubtedly very broad awake. He resigned the tiller and rope, and began gingerly to stretch his cramped limbs, talking the while.

"D'ye see that steamer, broadish on the weather-bow?"

I looked, and saw on the gray horizon a thin streak of a different gray.

"I rose her a quarter of an hour ago," he went on, "and bore away a couple of points so as to cut her off. I'm thinking it wouldn't be a bad idea to speak her if it could be managed, and find out where we are. As we haven't been able to rig a log-ship and line, and as the steering has been, to say the least of it, erratic, our dead reckoning has been some of the roughest. Personally, I wouldn't bet upon our whereabouts to quite a hundred miles. Ta-ta."

He went below to smoke, leaving me fully occupied with the steering. We rose the steamer pretty fast, and in half an hour could see her water-line when she lifted. She was a fine screw boat of three thousand tons, racing along at eighteen knots, and rolling with the beam sea up to her rails, in spite of the fore and aft canvas they had set to steady her.

Haigh came back to deck, blinking like an owl at the growing day. "Look at the gray-backs chivying her," said he. "Aren't the passengers just sorry for themselves now? And won't they have some fine yarns to pitch when they get ashore about the hardest gale the captain ever knew, and their own heroic efforts (down below), and all the rest of it? I've listened to those tales of desperate adventure by the hour together. Passengers by Dover-Calais packets are great at 'em."

All this while we were closing up. The steamer's decks were tenantless save for a couple of lookouts forward in oilskins, bright varnished by the spin-drift, and a couple of officers crouched behind the canvas dodgers of the bridge, and holding fast on to the stanchions. I was clearing my throat to hail these last, when Haigh turned and told me I might save my wind.

"Never mind," he said; "I know her well. She's the Eugene Perrier, a Transatlantique Company's boat, one of the quick line out of Algiers for Marseille. Look at your compass, and note the course she's steering—N.N.E. and by E. That's from Cape Bajoli straight for Marseille. They run both ways between Mallorca and Minorca without touching. Hooray! who says our luck isn't stupendous? Here we are, not having made enough southing, and heading so as to fetch Gibraltar without sighting the islands at all; and then in the nick of time up comes a dea ex machina in the guise of the Eugene Perrier to shove us on the course again. In main-sheet, and then, blow me if we won't have a bottle of that vermouth by way of celebrating the event in a way at once highly becoming and original."

We made a landfall that afternoon off some of the high ground in North-east Mallorca, and Haigh gave over champing his cold cigar-butt, and delivered himself of an idea.

"Isn't there another harbour in Minorca besides Port Mahon?"

I said I believed there were some half-dozen small ones.

"Any this west side?"

"Ciudadella, about in the middle."

"Know anything about it?"

"Nothing, except the fact of its existence; and as we have no vestige of chart, I don't exactly see how we are to learn anything more."

"Precisely. Then, my dear chap, to finish this cruise consistently, Ciudadella must now become our objective. It would take us another day to run round under the lee of the island to Port Mahon, and days are valuable. The cutter's only drawing five foot five, and with our luck at its present premium you'll see we'll worry in somehow without piling her up. Perhaps we may get some misguided person to come out and con us. Of course we'll take him if any one does offer, and owe him the pilotage; but I'd just as soon we navigated her on our own impudent hook. It's no use having a big credit on the Universal Luck Bank if you don't draw on it heavily. The concern may bust up any day."

Luckily for us the gale had eased, or we should never have been able to put the cutter on the wind. But as it was, with a four-reefed mainsail and a bit of a pocket-handkerchief jib, she lay the course like a Cowes-built racing forty; and if she did ship it green occasionally, there was no rail to hold the water in board. We didn't spare her an ounce. We kept her slap on her course, neither luffing up nor bearing away for anything. That was the sort of weather when the ugliness of the old cutter's lines was forgotten, and one saw only beauties in them. She might send the spindrift squirting through her cross-trees, but with the chap at the helm keeping her well a-going, she'd smoke through bad dirt like a steamer.

We rose the low cliffs of Eastern Minorca about half-way across; but rain came on directly afterwards, and in the thickness we lost them again. In that odd way in which things one has glanced through in a book recur to one when they are wanted, I had managed to recall something I had once conned over in a Sailing Directions about Ciudadella. The harbour entrance was narrow—scarcely a cable's length across—and it was marked by a lighthouse on the northern side, and a castle or tower or something of that kind on the other bank. The town behind, with its heavy walls and white houses, was plainly visible from seaward, and the spire of the principal church was somehow used as a leading mark. But whether one had to keep it on the lighthouse or the castle, I could not recollect. Neither could I call to mind whether there was a bar. In fact, I could not remember a single thing else about the place; and as Haigh remarked, what little I did recall (without being in any way certain about its accuracy) was of singularly little practical use. But this ignorance did not deter us from holding on towards the coast in the very least. We might pile up the cutter on some outlying reef, but we were both cocksure that our stupendous luck was going to set us safe ashore somehow. Et apres—the Recipe.

We held on sturdily, lifting slant-wise over the heavy green rollers till we were within half a mile of the land, and could see the surf creaming to the heads of the low cliffs, and could hear the moaning and booming as it broke on rocky outliers; and then easing off sheets again, we put up helm and ran down parallel with the coast. Being blissfully ignorant of anything beyond a general idea of Minorca's outlines, we had to keep a very wary lookout; for a heavy rain had started to drive down with the gale, and looking to windward was like peering through a dirty cambric pocket-handkerchief. Indeed, we made two several attempts at knocking the island out of the water, each sufficiently distinct to have made any ordinary sailorman in his sane senses get snugly to sea without further humbugging. And the afternoon wore on without our seeing either the lighthouse, the castle, or the town we were looking for; and just upon dusk the coast turned sharply off to the eastward.

"That looks like a bay," said Haigh, squinting at the land that was rising and falling over our weather quarter. "If we hold on as we are going, we ought to pick up the other horn of it." So we stuck to the course for three hours, and then came to the conclusion that the point we had seen must have been the extremity of the island, and that we were at present heading for a continent named Africa, then distant some two hundred nautical miles.

The discovery cast a gloom over the ship's company. Our nerves were in a condition then for taking strong impressions. For myself, all lightheartedness flitted away. The ugly cutter's good deeds were forgotten, and she appeared nothing more nor less than an ill-formed cockle-shell. The gale was terrific. I was bone-weary; also the most particularly damned fool on the globe's surface.

What Haigh's personal conclusions were I do not know. He said nothing, but stood propped against the weather runner, mumbling over an unlit cigar and peering into the mist.

After a while he turned. "Here, give me the helm, Cospatric, and do you get your strong fists on the main-sheet. We'll put her on the wind again, as close-hauled as she'll look at it. It's no use ratching up to windward again hunting for Ciudadella, as ten to one we'd miss it a second time. We'll just run along the lee coast here for Port Mahon. There, now she's heading up for it like a steamer."

There was silence for a while, and we listened to the swish of the seas and the rattle of the wind through the rigging. Then Haigh delivered himself of further wisdom.

"It's a queer gamble this, take it through and back, and it's remarkably like roulette in being a game where a system doesn't pay. As long as we worked haphazard we did wonders. As soon as we tried to do a rational thing, and make that harbour at Ciudadella, we got euchred. Well, I dare say we both know how to take a whipping without howling over it. So for the present let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we may drown. Knock me a biscuit out of the weevils, old chappie, and give me likewise vermouth and corned horse."

Had the wind remained in its old quarter, we could have made one board of it all up the southern flank of the island; but, as if to accentuate the fact that we had already drawn more than our share of good fortune, the gale veered round to the east, and settled down to blow again in real hard earnest, bringing up with it a heavy sea. It was tack and tack all through the night, and we were always hard put to it to keep the ugly cutter afloat. Indeed, when some of the heavier squalls snorted down on to us, we simply had to heave-to. It was just a choice between that and being blown bodily under water.

The dawn was gray and wretched, but from the moment we sighted the last point the weather began to improve. The air cleared up, the gale began to ease, and when we ran in under Fort Isabelle just as the sunrise gun was fired, we saw that the day was going to turn out a fine one.

The long snug harbour of Mahon, which was in the days of canvas wings almost always filled with craft refuging, is now in this era of steam usually tenantless. So it was a bit of a surprise to us to find the English Channel Fleet lying there at anchor. The big war steamers were getting their matutinal scrub, and were alive with blue-and-white-clothed men. They looked very strong, very trim, very seaworthy, and the bitter contrast between them and our tattered selves made me curse them with sailor's point and fluency. Not so Haigh. He didn't mind a bit; rather enjoyed the rencontre, in fact; and producing a frayed Royal I—— blue ensign, ran it up to the peak and dipped it in salute. If I remember right it was the Immortalite we met first, and down went the St. George's flag from her poop staff three times in answering salutation, whilst every pair of eyes on her decks was glued on the ugly cutter, their owners wondering where she had popped up from. And so we passed her particularly Britannic Majesty's ships Anson, Rodney, Camperdown, Curlew, and Howe, and dropped our kedge overboard (at the end of the main halliards) close inside the torpedo-catcher Speedwell.

The strain was over. We staggered below and dropped into a dead sleep. Had there been a ton of diamonds waiting on the cliff road beside us, with half Mahon rushing to loot them, we could not have been induced to budge.



CHAPTER VII.

A DIPLOMATIC REMOVAL.

Individually the Minorcan is very amiably disposed towards the inhabitants of those other islands, Great Britain and Ireland. It is a matter of Spanish history that Minorca for many years groaned under English rule; and as prosperity has steadily decayed since the native article has been substituted for this reign of tyranny, it is not wonderful that the average Minorcan has a hankering to groan again. Indeed, he says as much with a candour that would be refreshing to haters of Victoria R et I's expansive raj. But the Carabinero who guards the public morals holds (in the bulk) different opinions. He has no wish to be, like Othello, the possessor of a gone occupation; and by way of marking this distaste, he is apt on occasion to be uppish with the chance foreigner.

By force of circumstances, Haigh and I were in the way of finding ourselves in no slight difficulties. The Briton in his own insular ports is a very slipshod person with regard to the papers of small craft—especially pleasure craft. He looks upon those last with a favourable eye, and watches their going and coming with small concern. The peoples of the Mediterranean are constructed in different fashion. At the larger ports they are suspicious; but at the less frequented spots, firmly disbelieving that men can ever yacht for mere pleasure, they always take it for granted that any small craft is laden with explosives and conspiracy, until it has been most clearly and exhaustively demonstrated that such is not the case. Of course the orthodox papers and clearances from one's port of departure form the initial proof of innocence and harmlessness; and equally, of course, the lack of formality which had signalized our departure from Genoa prevented the display of these. And in addition, other matters combined to make our characters look still more shady.

We must have been boarded by the authorities soon after bringing up to our anchor, and I was dimly conscious of a stooping person in uniform staring in at us through the cabin door. But I was far too weary to wake or take any notice. However, the sight must have worked a dream into my sleep, for I remember imagining that official's feelings when he gazed at the mildewed desolation of the ugly cutter's interior, when he contrasted her size with the infernal gale she must have been sailing through to make the harbour, and when he noted that her entire crew consisted of two persons very much out of ordinary yachtsmen's uniform. And then I had visions of further inquiries; the official glee with which more unsatisfactory items were arrived at; the head-shakes of the British Vice-Consul; and—and then after that a deluge of lurid complexion.

These maundering cogitations must have spread themselves over a considerable time, for when Haigh roused me up, he said that I had slept very nearly round the clock. I pulled myself together and stared at him. He was looking distinctly excited; and this, seeing that he was usually a very calm sort of fish, was remarkable.

"Never say our luck has broken," said he. "I've just performed a regular four-cornered miracle. That port-authority person called again about two hours back, and it began to dawn upon me that we were done for. He fairly bristled with suspicion. I could see it even in the set of his clothes. If I'd told him that as soon as our fleet was gone you and I were going to take possession of the island in the name of the king of Ireland, he'd have believed it. But I temporized, having no yarn ready, and luck came down in a tornado. Not one Spaniard in a thousand has a soul above a single miserable liqueur—glass; but this one was the exception. He supped down that vermouth, pannikin after pannikin; and as he got more drunk, so did I get more eloquent. I believe at my strongest then I could have blarneyed Old Nick into giving me a draughty corner."

"But what in the plague did you say to the man? How could you get over the fact of having no clearance papers, and all the rest of it?"

"Simplest thing in the world, my dear chap, when once I'd grasped the idea. The cutter put out of Savona some two months ago—this being a fact, as I put documentary evidence under his nose to prove. Then she sailed to Corsica, and lay in a tiny coaster's harbour where there was no Captain of the Port or any one else who could scribble on stamped paper. There we stayed all the time till the crew deserted, and we ourselves were evilly entreated, the yacht being gutted by unprincipled natives. Apres, you and I brought her across here alone, knowing this to be the abode of bliss. Of course, in his sober senses he'd never have believed a word of it; but, thanks to that lovely vermouth, he swallowed the whole yarn, lock, stock, and barrel, and wrote me out the wherewithal, and then tumbled off to sleep, swearing by three local saints that he wanted to go to the same heaven I landed at."

"But," said I, "when he's sober, he'll be down on us like a thousand of bricks."

"Not a bit of it, my dear boy. Don't you know that all Spaniards can look upon a murder without emotion, but no Spaniard can see a drunken man without being filled with loathing? Our beauty on the locker there will be the last to give himself away. But never mind raging about this now. I woke you up for something else. Come on deck. There, do you see that steamer just opening out from the Hospital island? That's the Antiguo Mahones, the mail-boat from Barcelona. Unless he's broken down somewhere, your man Weems should be on board."

"I'm afraid not. According to the book of Steamer Sailings I looked at in Genoa, he ought to have left Barcelona three days ago."

"Precisely; but, old chappie, you don't know the Antiguo Mahones. Now I do. She was built on the Clyde in the early 'sixties, and has seen much service under the Red Duster. When she grew old and outclassed, she followed the way of all steamers, and was bought by a Mediterranean firm who quite understand her infirmities and nurse her accordingly. Her skipper is far too sensible a person to put to sea in anything approaching blowy weather, even though he does carry his most Catholic Majesty's mails; and the passengers are quite the class of people to appreciate his caution. Manana, if you will remember, is the motto of the nation."

"Well, if that's the case," I broke in, "it seems to me our best plan will be to get ashore now, and go for our pickings in Talaiti de Talt without further delay. Weems is always seasick, so he told me, from the moment he leaves shore. He said it was a sign of a highly-organized mind, hinting that it was only coarse-fibred people who could keep their victuals under hatches in a roll. And so, as the Antiguo Mahones has been getting kicked about in big swell ever since she left Barcelona inner harbour, it's pretty safe to bet that Master Weems has had the business part of his little soul churned completely out of him, and that he'll go and lie up at Bustamente's Hotel for a day or two to recruit. He'll never guess we're here, and consequently will see no cause for hurry. And besides, these Fleet sailormen will make an additional argument towards lying low for a bit. He'll see how they wander about in batches into all sorts of unexpected places, and he will be very chary about rootling up the cache whilst they are in the neighbourhood and likely to disturb him."

"There's a good deal in that," commented Haigh, blinking at the shabby black steamer thoughtfully. "You'd better pop down below in case he has ventured his little self on deck, and should happen to twig you. But still it's best to be on the safe side." He chose a cigar, lighted it and puffed for a minute, and then took it out of his mouth and grinned at the glowing end. "Look here. The fellow doesn't know me from Adam. I'll slip ashore, and see if I can't find snug quarters for him where he'll be out of the way of doing mischief."

"What piece of devilry are you up to now?" I inquired a bit anxiously; for Haigh's vagaries, from what I had seen and heard of them, ranged between wild and mad, and having got so near the Recipe, I didn't want to get in any mess that would baulk us at the finish. "You aren't going to shoot the man, are you?"

"Haven't got anything to shoot him with. No, I'm not going to lay hands on him at all. But I think I can get some one else to do it for me. It's no use asking my scheme, because I haven't got one. It's only a vague idea that has occurred to me, but there's no harm in giving it a trial. Only I must be off now, or the passengers will be landed before I get to the quay."

He took my hat and went on deck. I heard him hail some one in a passing boat, and presently he was taken off the cutter. I stood up and looked cautiously through the main skylight, so as not to be viewed by any chance from without. The steamer was being brought up alongside the quay with true Spanish caution and slowness, warps being sent in all directions, boats flying about, a couple of anchors down, windlass and steam-winches thundering. An English launch was lying-to close by, her crew highly amused at the display. And the quay was black with people enjoying their bi-weekly sensation.

Slowly the Antiguo Mahones swung parallel to the quay wall, and then a derrick chain was hauled out and I heard the scrape of the big gangway as it drew along the gravel, and the thud of its iron-shod heel as it fell on deck and bridged the intervening two fathoms of water. But the black hull of the steamer blotted out all view of the people beyond it, and on the cutter I could learn nothing more of what was going on till Haigh came back.

The last glow of sunset had died away. The white walls and red roofs of the town up there on the cliff were already beginning to be hazed out by darkness, and the soft yellow splashes of lamplight were growing in number.

I sat down, and cut up a cigar for my pipe.

The situation did not please me at all. The more I thought it over, the more I remembered how uncertain Haigh was, and how likely he was to bring about some fiasco out of sheer devilry. If I'd had a boat I should have cut ashore there and then, and made off to Talaiti de Talt without delaying a single moment. And as it was, with no boat, I more than once got to my legs with the intention of swimming, but could never quite screw up my mind as to whether it was really advisable to do so.

I kept cursing myself for this womanish indecision; but even that didn't improve matters. I could not figure out what to do for the best. And consequently I stayed where I was, and mumbled and mowed in black fury.

Haigh was in all about an hour and a half gone, and returned very much cock-a-hoop with himself. He was brought on board by a smart boat rowed by four men; and telling them to wait, he came down below.

"Hullo, Cospatric! you're looking as black as a Soudanese stoker with the stomach-ache. Did ye think I'd been tampering with the interests of the firm? Not a bit of it, man. Thanks to his own natural cussedness, I've just fixed your schoolmaster beautifully. The stars in their courses are backing up our stupendous luck. Some gentlemen of the anarchist persuasion have been blowing up men and women and marble seats in the Plaza Real at Barcelona. Indiscriminate shooting on the part of the troops followed, and cables were sent to all parts to watch for escaping assassins. The affair happened after the Antiguo Mahones sailed, so far as I can make out; but, of course, to the Spanish official mind that is a mere matter of detail. In these cases Spain expects that every man this day will exceed his duty. Weems being the only foreigner on board, and having the looks of a man who would not steal a potato, was naturally spotted at once, and a sub-officer of Carabineros demanded his passport. Weems, not knowing a word of Catalan, looked helpless. An interested mob collected, and stared and made suggestions. None of them could speak a word of English. Weems got pale, and offered the Carabinero half a peseta. Had the bribe been a big one and tendered privately, it might have carried weight; but as it was, the offer was an insult.

"At this point I pushed through the crowd, and offered my services as an interpreter. I can imagine the little worm was never so humbly grateful in his life; but when I told him that his passport was wanted, he was the cocksure schoolmaster ape in a moment. Such a thing was not requisite for travelling in Spain; it was utterly superfluous; I might be ignorant of the fact, as so many people were, but he could assure me it was so. A clerk at a tourist agency (in some provincial town at home) had told him all about the matter. And so he had got no passport. Would I explain these matters to the person in uniform, and inform him that he would be pilloried in the Times if he did not take great care of what he was about.

"As this couldn't well be improved upon, I put it into Spanish, verbatim, and the Carabinero's suspicion grew to certainty. 'Did I know the senor?' 'No, never clapped eyes on him before.' 'But he was a countryman of mine?' With a suggestive shrug of the shoulders, 'I devoutly hoped not.' 'Then it was his duty to make the senor his prisoner.'

"I imparted this information to Weems, who sweated. 'Can't you do anything for me, sir?' he implored. I was afraid I could not, and though I felt pretty sure that he'd be let out of durance vile in about half an hour, I didn't tell him so. However, as he and his escort were going off, another thought dawned upon me. 'Are you a Mason?' I asked. 'Yes,' said he. 'Then take the tip and make yourself known. I'm not one myself, but I know the fraternity is pretty thick here. Ta-ta.' Now the Freemasons of Mahon are the Halt, the Shoemaker, and the Discontented, and they are banded together solely because they are 'agin the Government;' and so, with our luck at its present premium, if they don't assist to keep Weems laid by the heels longer than otherwise would be the case, I'm a Deutcheman."

"Poor devil," said I. "What a state of mind he'll be in!"

"'Twon't kill anybody, and it'll do him good. Besides, he thoroughly deserved twice as much as he's got."

"That's a fact; and I must say you've paid the score cutely."

Haigh grinned. "I've Irish blood in me, old chappie," said he, "and that means a natural taste for amateur conspiracy and general devilment. But don't let's stay jawing here any longer. We're both due for a good jaunt ashore, and there's a bran-new tick here to guarantee us every mortal thing (bar one) which we want. And for that one, which is almost always a ready-money commodity, it will do us good to wait till we've tapped the late blessed Raymond's bank."



CHAPTER VIII.

TWO EVENINGS.

For a rapid, short-lived acquaintanceship, above all other animals upon this terrestrial sphere, commend me to the Continental drummer. To commence, he is always easy to chum with quickly, and always ready to make the first advances. He is a salted traveller. He knows what is the best of everything, how to get it, and, moreover, how to get it cheaply. He never plagues you with "shop," or secondhand guide-book extracts, or sentiment about scenery and sunsets. Cheeriness and bons mots are part of his stock-in-trade; brazen good-fellowship is his strong specialty.

Haigh and I went up to our hotel, asked for a bedroom, and in Spanish style got a suite of apartments. We were just in time for dinner, and, having arrived en prince in our own vessel, were going to be billeted amongst the habitues of the place—garrison soldiers, petty "proprietors," and priests—who sat round the superior table in the big room. There we should have been in company that was vastly respectable and prodigiously slow. But nearer the street entrance was another smaller room, occupied chiefly by the commercial fraternity, and thither we went, the landlord fully comprehending our taste. "Gentlemen do like to have a bit of a fling to rub away the salt, don't they, senores?" said he.

There is no shyness about the drummer. Before we had eaten our preliminary olive, the fat man at the end of the table had struck up conversation with Haigh; and before the sopa was out of the room, my next-door neighbour, a dapper Marseillais in the ready-made clothing line, was calling me amigo. Whilst he helped himself from amongst the red sausages and beans and beef and pork and other trifles on the dish which held the next course, the fat Cuban sketched out a plan for the evening; and as he doused his salad with full-flavoured oil, my little Frenchman endorsed the proposal of the flaxen-haired timber agent opposite that they should stand treat. And while we munched our burnt almonds for dessert, some one ordered in a bottle of bad sherry (which, being imported, is naturally thought more of than the good country wine), and we agreed that we were all dear friends, and had known one another intimately for a matter of ten years. And then we rerolled fresh cigarettes, got our hats, and went to a cafe, six of us, where we crammed our petits verres with sugar-knobs and lighted them, meanwhile drinking bitter black coffee till the blue demon of the brandy should have flickered away. You know the style; it's the usual way of beginning.

After some half-hour's stay in the cafe we seperated—Haigh and the Cuban going off to a dance, whilst the little Frenchman carried me off elsewhere. He had not defined our destination very clearly, and I had not made inquiries, caring little where I went; but I was a little put out at finding myself, after passing a guard of soldiers who stared curiously, and going down many flights of steps, in an anarchist's club.

Perhaps the government of his most Catholic Majesty Alfonzo XIII. can hardly be termed paternal; but that was nothing to me. Politics I abhor, and anarchistic politics I particularly loathe. But as beating an abrupt retreat would have been rude, and as unnecessary rudeness is not one of my characteristics, I made the best of it, and stayed and looked about me.

One room of the place had been fitted up as a kind of chapel, with ecclesiastical candles and other properties on a table at the farther end, with portraits of Mazzini, Gambetta, Prim, and other worthies of the Red Kidney on the walls, and with orderly pews on either side of the central aisle. In this cellar temple a preacher was just winding up a fervid discourse on the comparative merits of melinite and blasting gelatine as we came up, and a minute later I was being introduced to him. I think he was the leanest man I ever came across. He stood good six feet high, and couldn't have weighed more than seven stone. You could almost see the bone of his face through the thin covering of skin; and if one might judge from the fact that his smart black frockcoat fitted like a stocking, it was fair to surmise that he was actually proud of his leanness. One got the idea that all the nourishment of his body had gone out into his long white beard.

We went out of the general hall into a smaller room, where we sat and smoked.

Taltavull, my new acquaintance, was simply charming. Till that night I had thought that an anarchist could only attain to his peculiar creed through the most comprehensive ignorance; but this man had arrived at the result through the diametrically opposite path. He spoke almost all European languages with fluency, and knew Lingua Franca, Arabic, and Sanscrit. I never met any one so widely read; nor was his reading superficial; and he possessed a memory that refused nothing. He could quote verbatim page after page of such writers as Schopenhauer, Voltaire, Mazzini. And far better than this, he had studied men of every grade in the living flesh. What his nationality was I couldn't say, though I should guess him as either a Pole or an Italian; but it is certain that he had had the constant entree to places where a man of his opinions would presumably be looked upon with round-eyed horror. And yet he owned to never concealing his views from any man. "The sublime importance of our end, Monsieur Cospatric," said he, "justifies any means taken to attain it. We are associated with dynamite? Justly. Dynamite is a deplorable necessity."

If Taltavull had merely kept on in this strain, I should have put him down as one of those human paradoxes a man is bound to meet if he vagabondizes much, and should have forgotten him and his gruesome schemes and ideals by the next day. But he touched upon a theme which, in view of the purpose which had brought us to Minorca, made me cock my ears with a new interest.

"It is this dynamite," he said, "that is at once our strongest weakness and our greatest weapon. Were it not for terrorism, the official upholders of old regimes would crush us out of existence as venomous reptiles. For instance, you noticed a guard of soldiers at the door as you came in? At the least disturbance down here those men would fire mum-chance amongst the throng, and be delighted at the chance of doing so. You see our school of thought is recognized, and though hated it is respected. They, thanks to their dread of certain reprisals, recognize the truce so long as we are not engaged in active and open war against society. This is a great advance, monsieur, is it not?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"You are not in sympathy with us?"

"Not in the very least," I told him frankly. "Your principles are far too explosive for my taste."

Taltavull waved a bony hand deprecatingly. "The universal complaint, monsieur. It is the one great drawback to our Cause that we have as yet discovered no means of propagating it save only by the theory of devastation. It is only strong men and, I regret to say it, desperate men who can accept the gospel of dynamite. There are teeming millions of others ready enough to blow up society as it is at present constituted, but who shrink from the only means we have to propose."

"Then in your heart of hearts," said I, "you must know that you can never succeed."

The man smiled. "If even dynamite were taken away from us, I should not despair of success, monsieur. With it I am confident; the end is only a question of time. But I hope to hasten the consummation. There is another method, which if attained and properly applied, could, I most strongly believe, reduce society to one dead and happy level. And, monsieur, I believe the Fates have chosen me to be the prime instrument in this matter. I shall invent or refind the talisman, and then it will be in my own hands to sweep out the grades from all the people of the earth, and tear down all their laws. Think of it!"

"By Jove, senor," said I, "universal anarchy! That's a strong order."

"It is possible, though, and I believe probable. With my talisman it can be done. I have thought over every tittle of the means through patient years of waiting, and I am confident that I, and I alone, can uproot all existing institutions when once I have this trivial lever."

Taltavull was stalking up and down the room like a long black spectre. He had forgotten my presence. His fanatical schemes enwrapped his mind completely. There was a minute's silence, and then I said half jokingly,—

"They'd make you king of the anarchists."

I must have repeated his thoughts, for he replied instantly in a half-whisper, "They must;" but perhaps remembering that the admission was a damaging one, he stopped in his walk and addressed me with folded arms and lowered brow.

"I beg of you to spare me such jest, Monsieur Cospatric. This is the one subject I have at heart; it has occupied my life-work; to it I have surrendered fortune, station, everything. Whether or no I look for a recompense cannot interest you."

"Oh, all right," said I; "sorry I spoke. A comprehensive ignorance of all brands of politics must be my excuse."

He stared at me thoughtfully for a minute, and then: "I fear you think me a visionary, monsieur, or even worse, a trifler with men's lives. If you are illiberal, you may deem me no better than a common murderer. Our need is misunderstood, misrepresented. But I will not attempt to defend it with you now—some other time perhaps. Let me tell you of my great hope, and then you will understand how little it has to do with the bloody holocausts we are so unfortunately associated with." And then this strange creature began to unfold a scheme of policy which seemed to me the maddest my ears had ever listened to, and yet with cogent method in its madness. Briefly, he wanted to produce diamonds in huge quantities, and sow them broadcast over the globe. As gems they would then be no longer valuable. Castes would cease to exist. And then governments could be stamped out.

Viewed in the light of after recollection, the whole thing seems absurd, even paltry. But as I heard it then, declaimed with hot, earnest fluency by an enthusiast who had spent long, clever years over his case, it appeared to prove itself up to the hilt. Of course his arguments must have been warped, and his premises utterly false; but so cleverly were they compiled that I could not detect the flaws, and in spite of the outcry of common sense, which shouted "Wrong, wrong, wrong " at the close of each period, I felt myself agreeing implicitly to every clause. And when at length he stopped, exhausted with his own enthusiasm and vehemence, I nodded a tacit agreement, and questioned nothing.

"You must wonder," he went on, after a little pause, "what brings me to use this world-forgotten spot as a workplace; why I come to a town where there are eight women to one man, to an island whose whole energy is not equal to that of the smallest city on the Continent. Have you heard of Raymond Lully? Yes? Then you may remember that he was born at Miramar in Mallorca, and lived much of his life in these Balearic Islands. It was an old journal of his which I found in Rome that first gave me the embryo of my idea. I went round to Barcelona, and crossed to Palma. In the Conde de M——'s library I found in other manuscripts mention of the same thing. Beyond doubt that queer mixture of a man—missionary, fanatic, quack, what you will—had made diamonds as far back as the year 1280. He owned to having stumbled across the Recipe accidentally. Like other alchemists of his time, the transmutation of metals was his aim, and the crystallization of part of his graphite crucible was quite a matter of chance; but it occurred most surely; and he analyzed the why and wherefore, and wrote down the method of working in a place where he says it would last for all time unless he chose to divulge it."

"Great heavens!" said I, jumping up, "then you've got it?"

The anarchist smiled sadly. "I have searched and searched and searched, and have had others on the quest for me. But so far our efforts have been all unsuccessful. I can understand your excitement"—("Thank my several stars you can't," thought I, settling back into my chair)—"You think my great regeneration is already in commencement? You may even have had trivial qualms about your own relatives' trinkets? No, Monsieur Cospatric, the time has unfortunately not yet come."

"You cannot expect me to condole with you."

"You say you are a non-combatant, and that is better than I could have expected. You English as a rule are singularly averse to our propaganda. But wait and see how affairs order themselves."

"It will be a long time to wait. I'm afraid you'll never find the Recipe."

I had risen to my legs to say good-bye. Taltavull gripped my hand in his bony fingers. "You don't know me, Monsieur Cospatric. We anarchists never give in. I shall not cease searching for this Recipe till I find it, or until I learn for certain that it has been destroyed. Buenas noches."

"Good-night," said I, and went out into the moonlight. My little Frenchman had gone long ago, and so I strolled alone down the steep cobbled street, conning over many things. Verily this life is full of strange coincidences.

Haigh was at the hotel. I met him coming out of the room vis-a-vis to ours across the passage. We went in to our quarters, and sat in wicker-lined rocking-chairs (relic of the time when the Yankee had Port Mahon for a rendezvous), and he told me many things. "But," he concluded, "it was the music that drove me out. Those dark-eyed factory girls were just fine, and la marguerita as a dance perfection. But the orchestra was an addition I couldn't stand at any price. It was something too ghastly for words. All the brass sharp and the strings screechy. So I just skipped, came back here, and forgathered with a lone, lorn Englishman on his first trans-Channel trip. He was a splendid find. Needless to say, he's going to write a book about his travels, and as he seemed eager for information, I gave him a lot. Honestly, he's the most stupendous Juggins it's ever been my fate to meet; and that's putting the matter strongly, for since I've been—er—on the wander, I've come across most brands of fool."

"What manner of man is he to look at?"

"Oh, middle height, tweeds and cap all to match and new for the trip, big brown eyes that look at you dreamily, and a rather Jewish face. Not a bad-looking chap by any means, but oh, such a particularly verdant sort of greenhorn. The only one point on which he showed a single grain of sense was in refusing to play poker with me. He didn't want to offend me; he hoped most sincerely that I should take no offence, but a friend had extracted a promise from him before he left home to play no card games with strangers. The fact was, he was really so unskilful with cards. I wasn't offended, was I? His candour was so refreshing that I could truthfully say I was not."

I tried to talk about my evening, but Haigh would not listen. Said he: "I'm not interested in that particular kind of nonsense. If you haven't embraced the glorious principles of anarchy, old chappie, that's enough to tell. You've met a wise man who's a damned fool, and I've met a fool who, in points, is a wise man; and I prefer my own find. If you'd heard him talking about his book that is to be, you'd have stood good chance of choking with suppressed emotion. It's going to turn out a great success. He will spend quite three weeks here and in Mallorca, so as to 'do' both islands thoroughly. And then he would like to go to Ivica, but didn't know whether it was advisable to risk it. Could I advise him? Were the people there very savage? Oh, my Juggins, my Juggins, you were something too delicious for words when you got on that tack, evidently wanting authentic adventures to be enlarged upon for the great work, and obviously fearing most tremendously to encounter the same. You won't go to Ivica, I can see that; but I'd bet all I'm worth that the chapter on 'My Adventure with the Brigands' will appear with full detail. I've a bit of imagination myself, and I guess I gave you enough subject-matter to fudge it from most thrillingly."

"Hard lines to stuff the poor wretch too much."

"Not a bit of it, dear boy. The great stay-at-home B.P. will swallow the yarn chapter and verse, and know for certain that poor harmless Ivica is a den of robbers; Juggins will believe it all, smoke, flash, and report, after he has retailed it twice, and will pose as a hero; and I, I've had my amusement. You should hear him talk about the illustrations, too. He can't draw or paint; hasn't a notion of either. And he's never taken a photograph. But a friend advised him to get a hand camera of the 'Absolutely Simple' pattern, and he's been exposing plates right and left. A pro.'s to develop them when he gets home if he can succeed in passing them through the Customs, and if he doesn't get the thing confiscated for getting pictures of fortresses, both of which (he informs me) are mighty and great dangers. And, by the way, that reminds me. He got spilt off a donkey this afternoon, and damaged his nose and jolted up the camera. Being blissfully ignorant of the picture-machine's mechanisms he doesn't like to meddle with it, but 'I'm afraid something's gone inside, Mr. Haigh, because it rattles when I shake it.' So thinking I owed the chap something for the fun I'd had out of him, I said I'd get you to fix it up for him. You've been bottle-washer to a photographer for a bit, haven't you?"

"Something in that line, but I've no tackle here."

"Oh, that's all right. Here's his dark-room lamp, and the shutters to this room are solid. They'll keep out the moonlight."

We swung-to the coverings over the windows, and put a lighted candle behind the cherry-glass shade, and then I took the little camera out of its leather case. It was a cheap quarter-plate, and the jar had started up two of the angles.

"The rest of the illustrations for that book will have to wait till this is coopered up," said I.

"Are the plate-things inside spoiled?" Haigh asked.

"No, they're all right so far as exposure to light goes. However, I'll look. Phew! what a mess! Every blessed one smashed except the last couple. Your man will have to go over his ground again to replace these."

"What's that contrivance?" asked Haigh, who was peering over my shoulder.

"A spare dark-slide to use instead of the big plate-holder. Empty. Look, I'll put the two sound plates in there, and you can tell the Juggins that he can put those in his pocket and take the camera to a photographer man to get mended. Not that I expect that any one can do it here. But he can try."

"All right, thanks. It'll be rather a blow to him, but I must break it gently. Well, ta-ta, good-night. I think you'll own I've picked up most amusement for this evening?"



CHAPTER IX.

TALAITI DE TALT.

I woke with daylight, and roused Haigh. "We should get away at once," I said to him. "We've dawdled woefully. If we'd possessed a grain of sense between us we should have started the moment we stepped ashore. Weems may be cooped up still, but that's only guess-work on our parts. It's quite possible he cleared himself directly after you left, and went to the Talayot straight away."

Haigh blinked at me sleepily. "You're in the deuce of a flurry, old man. Been having evil dreams? That's the rancid oil they cook with here. It always has that effect at first. But you'll get used to it soon and like it, and think ordinary oil insipid."

"Oh, confound you, dry up. Look here, we must start at once."

"How?"

"Tramp it. Funds won't run to a vehicle."

"My dear chappie, you don't know the extent of my feebleness. I couldn't walk two miles to save my life. Nature may have intended me for a pirate or a highwayman, because on shipboard or horse-back I can do tolerable service. But the good dame never built me to be a footpad. So if this old pyramid place is to be looted, you must go and do it yourself."

"But, my good fellow, think what there is at stake. Dash it all, man, how do you know I shan't collar the thing and make a clean bolt with it?"

Haigh grinned. "I'll take my chance of that."

"You'd better not. I've never set up for being obtrusively honest."

"Oh, go to Aden."

"But really, I'd take it as a favour if you would come."

"Well, if you make a point of it, I suppose I must, though I fail to see the necessity for a pair of us making ourselves uncomfortable. Look out of window. The sky's Prussian blue, and there isn't a breath of wind. It's going to be a broiling day. However, dear boy, at your behest I'll make a martyr of myself; and if transport is to be procured on tick, I'll overhaul you. Only understand clearly that neither for you nor any one else can I do a physical impossibility. It is absolutely out of the question for me to walk."

That was all I could get out of him, and so I set off, very uncertain as to whether or no he would follow.

I walked out through the clean uneven streets just as the townspeople were beginning to stir, passed under the massive towered gateway in the old walls, and got on to the level road which reaches half-way across the island. The waking hour was earlier here. The hawks and eagles were patrolling the morning air with diligent sweeps. The country-folk were bringing in loads of farm-produce on big brown donkeys and little gray donkeys. These last all gave a courteous "Bon di tenga,"[1] and I noticed that most of them stared at me somewhat curiously. It was not my dress that they looked at—it was my face that drew their stares; and after a mile or so's pacing it was borne in upon me that anxious thoughts had caused my forehead to knit and my mouth to pucker. I made the discovery with some contempt. Haigh had told me more than once that I should never make a gambler, and he was right. In principle I accepted the theory that "what was written was written," but in practice I couldn't help imagining that a ready-penned Fate might be partly erased by much rubbing.

[1] The common salutation throughout the Balearic Islands is Bon di tenga from an inferior to a superior, to which the reply would be Bon di. Frequently, however, the first of these is clipped down to the last word, which is pronounced "Tāīn-gă." After dark it becomes Bon nit, or Bon nit tenga, according to social standing.

I refilled my pipe and looked around me. Old Lully had shown some nous in choosing a country to carry his secret. There is small fear of Minorca's population ever growing excessive. Not even Connemara can show such stone heaps. The walls which divide up the tiny fields are often ten feet thick; there are rubble cairns on all the many outcrops of rock; there are boulder-girdles round the trees; and yet, despite these collections, the corn and the beans and the grass grow more in stone than soil. One almost wonders that the Minorcan does not build up stone circles round the cows' legs whilst they are grazing. Perhaps the Doctor Illuminatus might have hesitated if his prophetic eye had seen an invasion of British; for the Briton is a destructive animal with pig-like instincts of rootling up everything. But the foreigner's tenure of the soil (and stones) was not a long one, and I fancy that the country's face, save for some of the better roads that seam it, is much the same as it was in the year of our Lord thirteen hundred and nothing.

Now, the Minorcan is not possessed of the slenderest reverence for the prehistoric monuments that spot his island, and if he wanted them for domestic purposes, he would not hesitate to take the top from a duolithic stone altar, or the roofing flags from a subterranean gallery. And he would quarry from the pyramids to find the wherewithal for his pig-yard gateposts without the smallest flush of shame, for vandalism is a word that has no Minorquin equivalent. But the abundance of stone elsewhere has saved the fashioned stone that those dead races piled up when this world was young, and the gray Talayots squat upon their old sites in undiminished numbers. Indeed, in a way, one might say that there are more of them now than there were in the venerable alchemist's time, for spurious Talayots may be seen in every direction. These latter-day edifices have one advantage over the hoary prototypes. Their purpose is clearly defined. We know that they were not intended for the burial-places of kings, or for temples to conceal sacerdotal rights, or for observatories, or even for granaries. They were simply run up by men who wanted to build shelters for cattle or pigs or sheep on some plan which would expend a maximum of material on a minimum of basement. They simply represent an incident in the perpetual war against the stones, and show the way in which crude minds attain their ends. If Minorca had been peopled by Americans (as once, indeed, nearly happened), light tramways would be laid down in every direction, and the stones carted to the edges of the island, and there tipped into the sea; and then the ground would be free, the farmer rich and unhappy. But as matters are ordered at present, these things are beyond the man of the soil's grasp; and so he remains poor and hard-working and contented.

The broad road led on past whitewashed farm-houses and pink-flowered almond gardens, past peasants and mule-teams scratching up the rocky soil with primitive one-handled ploughs, past patches of brown vine-stumps and gnarled olive-trees squirming out from among the boulders; and close on either hand ran the low wooded hills, with their burden of ilexes still filmy with the morning mists. The road was a road a London suburb might have felt pride in, so smart was the engineering that made cuttings and embankments to reduce the gradients, and culverts to carry off the side-water, and dressed freestone bridges to cross the many streamlets. But at the eighth kilometre post (I think it was the eighth) this road showed itself worthy of the sunny government of Spain by ending abruptly in a fence of wheelbarrows and gang-planks. The continuation was to be gone on with, manana; meanwhile young wheat had sprouted eight green inches in the track.

At this point the diligence course to Ciudadella branches off to the northward, turning again after a while due west on to General Stanhope's road. But that was nothing to me then. Turning my back upon it, I took another path, in woeful disrepair, which led me down by many windings between high stone walls and straggling clumps of prickly pear. There were few houses to stop the view—only some two or three farm buildings. Cottages can scarcely be said to exist. The labourer either lives in the towns, or else he lodges under his master's roof. But the high walls and the hummocks shut one in, and I was perpetually having to climb one or the other to make sure of my whereabouts, for my sailing directions to the Talayot had been rather vague ones.

The air was still and close, and already the sun had crept high and was burning fiercely. It was blazing hot, but in spite of that, and the ruggedness of the track, I was walking my fastest. Talaiti de Talt was somewhere close ahead, and the knowledge made me tingle from ear to toe. Forced stoicism wouldn't act.

At last, getting on a rise of the road where I could see over the winding walls ahead, I made out a Talayot sprouting gray from amid its green jacketing, barely half a kilometre away; and from the description given at Mahon, that must be the very one I had worked so hard to reach.

The limit of self-containment was passed. Excitement bubbled over. I picked up my feet and ran for all I was worth.

Just past the bottom of the slope was a small farmhouse, lying a little way back from the road. The Talayot was close beyond. A thought struck me, and I pulled up, panting and, in spite of myself, laughing. A new complication seemed to crop up. From the moment of reading old Lully's journal in the Genovese caffe, it had never occurred to me till then that the Talayot belonged less to me than to anybody else. Now, seeing the whitewashed farm buildings close beside this old pyramid I had come to loot, the idea that the modern owner might raise objections came upon me in a flash; and although the matter was serious enough, as Heaven knows, still its grimly humorous side cropped uppermost, and for the life of me I could not help being tickled.

Of course any one will see that I might have waited till dark, and have done my searching when all the world of provincial Minorca was snugly slumbering. But that idea did not occur to me then, and if it had done, I should not have listened to it. I was far too keen on going ahead without further stoppages. The grasping fingers of Weems loomed always in the near distance.

If I had only possessed a spare dollar or two, the thing would have been simple; but not owning a peseta, I had tremors. Still there was no help for it, and so following the en avant principle, I swung the gate, and walked up between the orange-bushes to the little farmhouse. Two dogs sprang out from somewhere, barking furiously; but I like dogs, and never feared one yet, and that pair were soon reduced to oppressive civility. A small girl appeared, drawn by the uproar; but the sight of a stranger made her bolt mutely within doors. And then a woman came—a fat, tall, slatternly woman, whose husband was dead (she said), and who owned the farm which circled Talaiti de Talt.

She was garrulous to a degree, and her voice—as is usual with the voices of cats and women out there—was harsh and grating. But I did not dam the flood of her eloquence (outwardly, at any rate), and so she went on till she was tired. Then I thanked her, and blarneyed her as well as I was able, although that wasn't much, as I never have been much of a hand with women. But the outcome of it all was that I might most certainly overhaul the old stone heap (which was her irreverent name for the historical pyramid) as much as ever I chose. And when she had given the permission, it struck me that I could have got it just as easily without having spent an hour and a half in the baking sun-blaze beating about the bush. But then, you see, I was so confoundedly nervous, and didn't guess that beforehand.

However, as I was turning off down the orange grove again, the bulky senora seemed to think that something might be made out of it after all, for she called out to know whether I wouldn't like Isabelita to accompany me—Isabelita being the small girl, then engaged at unravelling a bamboo for a whitewash brush under the shade of the family date-palm. Or was there nothing else she could do for me? Everything of her poor stock was entirely at my disposition. My thanks were profuse—most profuse—but I would not rob her of anything, not even of the hermosita's time. It would be my great pleasure to make that little angel some trifling present as I came back that way toward Mahon; at which time I might also wish to buy an orange or two. So until then.

"'Tenga," said the woman, with a large fat smile.

"Bon di, senora," said I, with a sweep of the hat, and turned off down the path and into the road again. Gad! wasn't I feeling jubilant then?

I felt that the woman was following me with her eyes, and didn't dare to hurry; for it seemed to me, so worked up was I, that if I had broken into a run she would have seen at once what I had come for, and would have contrived to get this great thing for herself. The mere fact of my displaying any interest at all in such a useless cumbersome hulk as a Talayot must have filled her with suspicion. But then I had thought of this, and had corrected her when she guessed me for French, telling her my true nationality, knowing that the Continental reputation of the Englishman stands good for any unexplainable eccentricity. And so I clogged my feet with an effort, and walked on, soberly looking ahead of me.

So great was the maze of walls that it was difficult to tell where the road ran for more than a score or so of yards ahead. But at last I traced its sweep close by where a great single-slab altar stood on its massive pillar, with a sacred stone-circle jutting out of the bushes around it. On the other side was the pyramid, sorely broken by man and the weather, but still showing dressed gray stone courses in patches amongst the rank scrub which bristled over it. Even from there I could make out that the general contour of its base was circular, and not square as I had somehow or other expected, and I began to see trouble in finding that side "nearest the sea" where Lully had dug into the entrance-way.

As I drew nearer, the tumbled nature of the stone-work disclosed itself further, and I began to have fears lest the central chamber should have caved in and hidden the Recipe effectually and for always by crumbling its lettering into dust. But then I called to mind other Talayots I had seen before near Mahon and Alayor and Mercadal and Ciudadella, where the entering passage led from aboveground by a rapid incline, and where the cavity, when it existed, had doubtless been near the apex; and from this I took heart, thinking that whether or no there had been a chamber in the upper part of the building, and whether or no it existed still, didn't particularly matter to me. The Diary had certainly pointed to a room stowed away beneath the very keel of the edifice; and as long as that stood firm, the rest might telescope to any extent for all I cared.

By this time my leisurely pace had brought me up alongside the Talayot, which loomed big and squat at the other side of the wall. I turned and looked behind me. The fat woman at the farm was out of sight. Then I climbed the wall, and from the top glanced down the road which led from Alayor, and saw a sight which made me curse like a kicked arriero. Walking briskly up the stony track was a little man in unmistakably British tweeds. "An infernal prying tourist," thought I, "by all the powers of evil. Bear-led by a native, and coming to see Talaiti de Talt for a thousand. If he sees me he'll spot me at once and want to chum, and then he'll get inquisitive and won't go away."

Down I dropped into cover.



CHAPTER X.

WITH A THREE-ANGLED HOE.

It is curious how no two people can speak the same words with identical intonation. Perhaps this is noticeable to some men more than to others. I know some folks never forget a face, others a walk; but for myself, though these things may pass from memory, a voice once heard never escapes me. I suppose it is because I have been at much pains to distinguish between sounds. I'm rather musical, you know.

And so as I lay squatted there beneath a sloe-bush, and the tones of a voice grating as those of the corncrake came to me through the chinks in the wall, I knew that Weems was at large once more, and pressing on with his errand.

I might have expected him, and yet his arrival was a bit of a surprise; and on the spur of the moment I could not for the life of me think what was best to do. One couldn't nobble the man, and still I didn't intend that he should read that Recipe. So, being unable to make up my mind to any other course of proceeding, I just cowered quietly where I was and awaited developments. As it turned out, these were not very long in coming. Weems had lifted up his voice to get rid of his guide, and the guide, in eloquent Minorquin, was refusing to understand. At last the schoolmaster, in desperation, translating his arguments into silver, called to mind a word from some American novel, and commanded his attendant to "vamose." Then the native poured out thanks, pocketed the cash after a great show of refusing it, and went; and Weems, waiting till he was out of sight, climbed the wall. He was a bit chary of stepping down amongst the prickly scrub on the inner side, and so as he was taking his time about it, I stood up and watched him. He did not see me till he was firm on his feet again; but when he did slew round, he stepped back with a gasp as though some one had rammed a sail-needle into him.

However, he pulled himself together quickly enough—I give him credit for that—and slipped a hand into his coat pocket, which I noted was bulging with some heavy weight—presumably a pistol. Then he resorted to what I suppose he considered diplomacy, and remarked that it was a lovely country.

"Damn you," said I, "you didn't come here to talk to me about scenery, did you? Because if that's the case, I'd rather you'd quit for a while. I've got some business on hand here that I want to work out alone. So git, you mean little brute."

"And I also have a trifling piece of research to make, for which I desire complete privacy. And this, Mr. Cospatric, is a point upon which I am prepared to insist."

Hereupon out came the revolver, a cheap pin-fire tool, brilliantly nickel-plated. Weems fingered it with unholy awe, and his face began to bleach. He wasn't used to the situation.

"Did you get that thing in Marseille?" I asked.

"No, sir. I procured it from an acquaintance in Mahon this morning. And acting upon his advice, I shall not hesitate to use it if you press me."

The little man's manner as he struggled between dignity, greediness, and common funk was so irresistibly funny that I roared.

"You need not fear my failing to be as good as my word," he snapped out. "They don't hang people in Spain."

"You fool, of course they don't. They garrote. And as the inhabitants of these islands, take them as a whole, are as mild and peaceable a lot as one could find on the face of the globe, a bit of murder would strike them as being in such bad taste that you'd wear the iron collar as sure as you'd earned it. But that's not the point. You're not going to shoot me——"

"Then you will go away."

"I shall do nothing of the kind. You are not going to shoot me, simply because you can't. Man alive, I've been racketing about the evil places of this world ever since I left Cambridge, and this isn't the first time I've looked down the small end of a pistol. If you'd seen as much shooting as I have, you'd just jump with astonishment at the awful big percentage of men who get missed even by good shots, and at short rise. And you! You, you small swab, I can see by the way you're holding it that you've never had a revolver in your fist before this day, much less fired one at a 'live mark. Put the thing back in your pocket, and behave like a rational being."

"I shall do nothing of the kind," said Weems, sticking up his left arm, and sighting the pistol over the elbow-joint.

By this time he had got into such a pitiable funk that I was afraid lest out of sheer nervousness his finger might press home the trigger any minute. The chances were big against his hitting me, but I knew that the report would bring spectators, and those I most particularly didn't want. Still, I could not see any means of getting the weapon into my own hands without its going off. It was impossible to "rush" him. The dozen yards which separated us was one solid tangle of scrub-bushes interwoven with brambles. It would have taken at least forty seconds to tear through them, and in that time he could most assuredly snap off all six chambers, however big a duffer he might be. This would bring up some of the country people without fail; and besides, out of the six, he might fluke one shot into me. About that last possibility I didn't trouble my head much, as it was remote; but the other was a fatal objection. A good satisfactory row with the natives would effectually upset the apple-cart for both of us.

So I put it to him squarely that, come what might, I didn't intend to go and leave the coast clear for him; and that if he fired a shot, whether or not he jugged me and tasted el garrote into the bargain, he would most assuredly not get hold of the Recipe.

These points seemed to strike him as strong ones; and as, being unused to such strong emotions, he was by this time in very nearly a fainting condition, he saw fit to ease the strain from his nerves by beginning to treat for terms. How much would I go for? He had bills in his pockets for francs and pesetas, which amounted in all to eighteen pounds four shillings and some odd pence English. That was the absolute sum-total of all he possessed out of England. If he handed it over, would I promise to depart forthwith?

I think it caused him no real surprise to learn that I would do nothing of the kind.

"Look here," he went on, "I'll tell you what I'll do as well. I'll send you a ten-pound note from England when I get back there, if you'll give me your address."

"Oh, go to the devil!" said I, beginning to get in a fury with him. "If you're on for bargaining, I'll give you my bill for five hundred at two months to clear out."

"You can't expect it, Mr. Cospatric——"

"Of course I can't expect you to sell your chances for a mess of pottage; still less need you have thought me idiot enough to do such a thing. Now look here, you are new at the scrapping game, whereas I am not by any means. So in case of a tussle the odds are big that you'll finish underside. And, besides, if you have a bit of a whip-hand over me, I'd have you remember that until I've got my terms, you are standing under a Damocles arrangement which may tumble on your hat at any moment. And it doesn't take much of a wizard to tell that your nerves aren't good to stand that strain for over-long."

"The heat——"

"Oh yes, the heat's making you sweat streams, and sending your face chalky-green, and setting your knees to play castanetas in cachucha time. We'll call it the heat. Anyway, it's exposure to an atmosphere that you aren't accustomed to, and it doesn't suit you. You'd better try a change, or else you'll topple off in a faint—perhaps you'll die. Now look here: it's just foolery to let this Dog-in-the-Manger Company hold the stage any longer. Let's recast it, and play 'The Partners.' Come, what do you say? It's only a three-part piece, and there's a thumping good treasury to draw upon."

"Three parts!" shrieked Weems, lifting up his pistol on to his elbow again, where it gleamed like a dancing mirror in the hot sunshine. Then as another thought struck him, he lowered the weapon to his side once more, and broke out into the ghost of a smile. "Oh, I see. Yes, of course. Two for me, Mr. Cospatric, and one for you. That's much more right and proper."

I chuckled, and mentioned that one Haigh and myself were going shares over this matter, and that I didn't intend to see Haigh defrauded; and then the battle of words began over again.

By this time I was so thoroughly sick of the brute's meanness that I made up my mind stubbornly not to give way a single peg. He argued, he prayed, he commanded, he threatened; he appealed to all my better feelings individually and then collectively; but it was no good. All that he could get out of me was an assurance that he might feel himself very lucky if he fingered the proffered third, and a threat that if he didn't accept it quickly he'd find himself empty-fingered altogether—and probably minus a sound vertebral column into the bargain. And in the end he sobbed out an agreement to the terms, and then flopped down amongst the bushes, deadly sick.

This last development I was not altogether unprepared for, and, had it seemed good to me to do so, I might have taken advantage of his plight to grab the nickel-plated weapon and repudiate the treaty—as he most assuredly would have done by me had the positions been reversed. But over-reaching that kind—euphemistically termed "keen business instinct" by some—has never been among my catalogue of acquirements (more's the pity), and so I just hung round till he had disburdened his stomach and recollected his wits a bit, forbearing to interfere either by word or deed.

"It's the heat," he explained at last.

"We'll log it down as such," said I, to prevent argument, "and for God's sake don't let us squabble any more. If you're right again, we may as well turn-to and get at the cache without further dawdling. You have a spade, I suppose?"

"A spade! Oh dear, oh dear! what an oversight. If you'll believe me, Mr. Cospatric, I never remembered that digging implements would be required till this moment. The excitement of the last few days——But don't let us speak of that now. We must use your spade in turn."

I laughed. "It strikes me we're a pair of first-class fools. I haven't got one either. We both put out from Mahon in such a flaming hurry that accessories never got a thought. Well, we must get one here if we can, though that's doubtful, seeing that the native hoe, which is pick and shovel combined, is the popular instrument hereabouts. However, I'll go and see if something can't be got. Give me a couple of pesetas, will you?"

"What for?"

"Why, to hire the thing, or buy it if needs must."

"But why should I pay——"

"Damnation man, because I don't own a brown cent. Go scout for a tool yourself if you care to. I'm not keen on the job. Only you don't speak the language, and I thought you'd prefer to sit still and recruit a bit more before beginning to bustle about again."