Poison Island

ourn in tutelage of Mr. Stimcoe a brie

" at Winchester (and afterwards as a "servitor" at Pembroke College, Oxford), habitually employed and taught us to employ the esoteric slang-or "notions," as he called it-of that great public school; so that in "preces," "morning lines," "book-chambers," and wha

opening accounts, and something more than genius for keeping her creditors at bay. She never wheedled nor begged them for time; she never compromised nor parleyed, nor condescended to yield an inch

ve thanked us for it. But we had this amount of excuse: that she fed us liberally when she could browbeat the butcher; and if at times we went short, she shared our privation. Also, there must have been some good in the woman, to stand so unflinchingly by Stimcoe. Stimcoe's books had gone into storage at the pawnbroke

neral upon a very small pension, and with a sword of honour subscribed for by the merchants of the City of London, whose mails he had gallantly saved. These resources being barely sufficient to maintain him, still less to permit his helping a widowed sister whom he had partly maintained during his days of service, he eked them out by school mastering; and a dreadful trade he must have found it. In p

a brave man. Such mathematics as we needed he taught capably enough and very patiently. The "navigation," so far as we were concerned, was a m

when Stimcoe was merely drunk and incapable. He ever treated Mrs. Stimcoe with the f

h time-he walked up to the door, resolutely handed Mrs. Stimcoe a letter, and as resolutely walked away again. Stimcoe had been maudlin drunk for a week and could not appear. His w

dmiral's country seat in Roscommon, and an account of a ball given by him to celebrate Mrs. Stimcoe's arrival at a marriageable age, with a list of the

arents down upon us en masse. Great is schoolboy honour- great, and more than a trifle quaint. In any case, the parents must have been singula

porarily incapacitated by chicken-pox-and possessed ourselves, after a gallant fight, of Rogerses' football. Superior numbers drove us back

bout our own back yard, Mrs. Stimcoe sought me out with a l

alley in which the captain's lodgings lay. The alley was dark, but a little within the entrance my

he light of which dazzled me for a moment. On the walls hung the captain's sword of honour (above the mantelpiece), a couple of bookshelves, well stored, and a panel with a ship upon it-a brig in full sa

om its weight and the feel of it-five shillings, as I judged, or perhaps seven-and-sixpence. As his hand weighed

laid Mrs. Stimcoe's letter close under the lamp while he searched for his gold-rimmed spectacles. (There was a tradition at Stimcoe's, by the way, that the London merchants, f

igh on his forehead while he gazed at me, "I want to ask you a questio

awned Stim-Mr. Stimcoe's Cicero this morning, the six volumes

r a plate and an apple. He took up the apple, and was about to offer it to me, but set it back slowly on the plate, and locked the cupboar

stared at him, and I, too, stared, waiting

for the third time. "And it's Saturd

ooden staircase, which led straight from a corner of the ro

in, turning his eyes upon me and

em out on the paper of figures before him,

what I'm doing?

N

ds. "He can do it; hundreds o' men-thick-headed men in the ord'nary way-can do it; take a vessel out o' Falmouth here, as you might say, and hold her 'crost the Atlantic, as you might put it; whip her along for thirty days, we'll say; an' then, 'To-morrow, if the wind holds, an' about six in the mornin',' they'll say, 't

t of paper on which he had been scribbling f

at d'you m

iled off into mere illegibility. In the left-hand bottom corner I saw a 3 set under a 10, and beneath it the result-17-unde

tively, "there's hundreds c

the elbow; and again his brandy-laden

r me? You could, you know. And ther

m, and with an indescribable air of sly

ou an' me up for life." His fingers fumbled with the string for two or three seconds, but presently faltered. "You come to me to-morrow," he went on, with another mysterious wink, "and I'

passes, and made transparent pretence to be occupied in measuring

tep outside with him into the alley, where he pressed an envelope into my hand. By

t I will come on Monday morni

s,

ne glimpse of it by the lamplight within, and knew what had detained him upstairs. Hon

the Army. Is he, by chance, the same Major Brooks-Major James Brooks, of the

ave been my

ve one. I am glad to

two of my father's hea

" I remembered afterwards that h

outh. He cut me short hurriedly, and remarked, with a nervous laugh,

rong of me, boy?"

ng,

l never learn anything. By the way, Brooks, I h

and perhaps the lie was pardonable, since by it I