Mrs. Falchion, Volume 1.

heroot, with the remark: "My pater gave them to me last voyage home. Have kept 'em in tea.

that the solidity of his character and his worth will appear even through the crust of free-and

Hungerford?" I asked

w that in any real danger this swagger craft would be filled with foolishness. There isn't more than one good boat's crew on board-sailors, lascars, stewards, and all. As for the officers, if the surgeon would leave the lovely ladies to themselves, he'd find cases worth treating, and duties worth doing. He should keep himself fit for shocks. And he can take my word for it-for I've been at sea since I was a kid, worse luck!-that a man with anything to do on a

," I said, "to wh

canvas boats. They won't work; you can't get them together. You couldn't launch one in an hour. And as for the use of the others, the lascars wo

ow come, Marmion, to the real reason why I brought you here. . . . Number 116 Intermediate is under the weather; I found him fainting in the passage. I helped him into his cabin. He said he'd been to you to get medicine, and you'd given him some. Now, the strange part

f water nor three square meals in the caboose. But that was life for men and not Miss Nancys. If they weren't saints, they were sailors, afraid of nothing but God Almighty-and they do respect Him, even when they curse the winds and the sea. Well, one day we were lying in the open sea, about two hundred and fifty miles from Port Darwin. There wasn't a breath of air. The sea was like glass; the sun was drawing turpentine out of every inch of the 'Danc

out of us.' The dingey lay there on the glassy surface, not a sign of life about her. Yet I had, as I said, seen something waved. The water didn't even lap its sides. It was ghostly, I can tell you. Our oars licked the water; they didn't attack it. Now, I'm going to tell you something, Marmion, that'll make you laugh. I don't think I've got any poetry in me, but just then I t

e dead in the

has left

over their h

d four wind

er a ripple u

ver a word

aste the white

the souls of

's Sea is a

te is a bu

eath it a gr

h that nev

any that c

n its movel

g water shal

a place

and they got more courage. I stood up in the boat, but could see nothing in the dingey. I gave a sign to go on, and soon we were alongside. In the bottom of the dingey lay a man, apparently dead, wearing the clothes of a convict. One of the crew gav

y back to the ship. I had unbuttoned his shirt, and I saw on his breast a little ivory portrait of a woman. I didn't let the crew see it; for the fell

n's face like, Hun

y that she had the face o

id it resemble any on

ly used the money while more of his own was on the way to him, the Company insisted on prosecuting him. For two reasons: because it was itself in bad odour, and hoped by this trial to divert public attention from its own dirty position; and because he had against him not only his personal enemy, but those who wanted to hit the Company through him. He'd filched to be able to meet the large expenses of his wife's establishment. Into this he didn't enter minutely, and he didn't blame her for having so big a menage; he only said he was sorry that he hadn't been able to support it without having to come, even for a day, to the stupidity of stealing. After two years he escaped. He asked me to write a letter to his wife, which he'd dictate. Marmion, you or I couldn't have dictated that letter if we'd taken a year to do it. There was no religion in it, no poppy-cock, but straightforward talk, full of sorrow for

to him before we landed. We made him up a purse of fifty pounds,- for the crew got to like him,-and left him at Port Darwin, sailing away again in a few days to another pearl-field farther east. What happened to him at Port Darwin and elsewhere, I don't know; but one day I found him on a fashionable steamer in the Indian Ocean, looking almost as near to Kingdom Com

kept all these years? Knowledge of that man's crime was

everything else of the kind on board. I like the poor devil, but anyhow I'm not in a position to be going around with ginger-tea in a spoon, or Ecclesiastes under my arm,-very good things. Your profession has more or less to do with the

"Look here, Marmion, we understand each other in this,

ear. I knew he had told all he thought I ought to know, and that he wished me to question him no more,

And he began to repeat one of them, keeping time to the wave-like metre with his cher

er a ripple u

ver a brea

aste the white

he souls of t

et, said it was time to take his turn on the bridge, and prepared to go

es after nervous exhaustion. I had a good chance to study him as he lay there. The face was sensitive and well fashioned, but no