There was no time to spare in New York. The party went straight to an obscure but remarkably comfortable hotel near Washington Square, which Hawke recommended, and here they found Sullivan waiting for them. He had come up from Washington upon receiving his telegram, without knowing definitely what the projected enterprise was to be.
Sullivan was apparently a trifle older than Hawke, and unusually good-looking. He was smooth-shaven, rather thin-faced, and he exhibited in a marked degree that mingling of icy self-possession and electrical alacrity that has come to be a sort of typical New York manner. He was very accurately dressed, and wore a gold pince-nez. He looked straight at you with a penetrating and impenetrable eye; he spoke with an unusually distinct articulation. He seemed to be perpetually regarding the world with a faint smile that was compounded of superiority, indifference, and cynicism. In reality, his mental attitude was far from either cynicism or indifference, but it took some time to find this out. His general appearance vaguely suggested that he might be a very rapidly rising young lawyer, and Elliott discovered later that he had, in fact, been trained for the bar.
“And now, what’s this new scheme you’re working me into?” he inquired.
“We’ll tell you about it after dinner,” said Henninger. “Did you make any progress in that Venezuela claim?”
It appeared that Sullivan had not even been able to get what he called “a look in” for his money, but it did not matter much, for in any event the claim would have been temporarily dropped. They dined that night at the Hotel Martin, and when the waiter had gone away and left them in their private room with coffee and liqueurs, Elliott told Bennett’s story for the second time. Sullivan listened, smoking continual cigarettes, but as the plot developed, the same predatory glimmer stole into his eyes that Elliott had seen on the faces of his other companions.
“It’s a big thing, certainly. It may prove a good thing,” he commented coolly, when Elliott had done. “It’s one of the sportiest things, too, that I ever heard of, but it strikes me that the odds are all on this mate you speak of. He knows where the wreck is, and we don’t.”
“Exactly; and he’s going to tell us. We’re bound to intercept him before he gets back to the island, and if we can get ourselves posted all along the East African coast before he arrives, the thing is almost safe. But, until then, a day’s delay may cost us the whole pile. We had a stroke of luck in Nashville, and another in getting berths on the first Atlantic steamer, and if the luck only holds—”
“When do we sail?”
“On theNew York, at noon to-morrow, for Southampton.”
The next morning was breathlessly full of affairs. There was money to be changed, infinite small purchases to be made, a thousand last arrangements, and they had just time to snatch a hasty mouthful at a quick-lunch counter, and get down to the dock as the first whistle blew. The great wharf-shed was crowded, swarming and bustling about the great black wall of the steamer’s side, which appeared to be actually in the shed. The lofty, resonant roof echoed with the voices and with the roll of incessant express-wagons bringing late baggage. The place was full of the harbour smell of rotting sea-water, and the noise, the movement, the excitement, increased as the last moments arrived and passed.
The decks were finally cleared of the non-passengers, and a dozen men tailed on the gangplank. A swarm of tugs were nosing about the monster’s bows. The last whistle coughed and roared, and the gap between the side and the wharf suddenly widened.
Elliott leaned over the rail with delight, as she swung out into the river, and presently began to move under her own steam. The sierra outline of New York developed into coherence, towering and prodigious, jetting swift breaths of smoke and steam into the dazzling sky. An irradiation of furious vitality surrounded it. This was the city of the treasure-finders, of the searchers of easy millions, of the buccaneers. It was the place above all others where the strong is most absolutely the master, and the weak most utterly the slave; where the struggle, not so much for existence as for luxury, reaches its most terrific phase, evolving a new and formidable human type. Elliott felt himself of a sudden strangely in harmony with this city which he was leaving. The spoils to the victors—and he was going to be victorious!
The ship was full, almost to her capacity, and the four gold-seekers were scattered about in different staterooms. Elliott’s room had two occupants already, and the sofa was made up for him at night. The saloon tables were crowded on the first day; then it turned cold, with a light, choppy sea and rain that lasted till the Grand Banks were passed, and half of the passengers became invisible. With the promise of fair weather they began to reappear, and on the third day the decks were lined with a double row of steamer-chairs.
During the first days of the voyage Elliott fell into greater intimacy with Henninger than with any of the others of the party. It did not take the older and more experienced man to learn all he desired to know about Elliott’s vicissitudes. Elliott told it without any hesitation, making a humourous tale of it, and, though Henninger offered no confidences in return, he told Elliott curious adventures, which, if they were true, argued an extraordinary experience of unusual and not always respectable courses of life.
Although he never became autobiographical, Elliott gathered by snatches that he must have been at one time, in some capacity, connected with the British army. Later he had certainly been an officer in the Peruvian army, but his manner of quitting either service did not appear. It was with South and Central America that he appeared to have had most to do. He had mentioned cargoes of munitions of war run ashore by night for revolutionary forces, fusilades of blindfolded men against church walls, and more peaceful quests for concessions of various sorts, involving a good deal of the peculiarly shady politics that distinguish Spanish America. Henninger drew no morals; he seemed to have taken life very much as he found it, and Elliott suspected that he had been no more scrupulous than his antagonists. At the same time he had a definite though singularly upside down morality of his own, which continually inspired Elliott with astonishment, sometimes with admiration, and occasionally with disgust.
There was a good deal of whist played in the smoking-room of an evening, and a little poker, but with low stakes. It was on the preceding passage of this very ship that a noble English lord had been robbed of four thousand pounds at the latter game, and the incident was remembered. Elliott was no expert at poker, and his friends showed no inclination for play, so that, though they were in the smoking-room every evening, it was seldom that any of them touched a card.
On the evening of the fifth day out Elliott was sitting quietly in a corner of the smoking-room with a novel and a cigar. It was nearly eleven o’clock, and the low, luxurious room was full of men, and growing very smoky in spite of the open ports. Sullivan had gone to his stateroom; Henninger and Hawke were somewhere about, but Elliott was paying no attention to anything that went on.
Suddenly he became aware of a lowering of the conversation at his end of the room. He glanced up; everybody was looking curiously in one direction. In the focus of gaze stood Henninger, engaged in what seemed a violent, but low-toned altercation with a short, fat, but extraordinarily dignified blond little man who had been prominent among the whist players. One of the ship’s officers stood by, looking annoyed and judicial. Henninger was white to the lips, and his black eyes snapped, though he was saying little in reply to the fat man’s energetic discourse. No one else approached the group, but every one observed it with interest.
All at once, upon some remark of Henninger’s, the little man hit out with closed fist, but the officer caught his arm. Elliott glanced round and saw Hawke looking on with considerable coolness, but, conceiving it his duty to stand by his friend, he got up and approached the trio.
“Go away, Elliott. This is none of your affair!” said Henninger, sharply.
Elliott retreated, feeling that he had made a fool of himself publicly and gratuitously. But he was consumed with curiosity as well as anxiety, for it struck him that this might be in some way connected with the wrecked gold-ship.
Presently the three men left the cabin together and the buzz of talk broke out again. Elliott caught Hawke’s eye, and beckoned him over.
“What was it?” he said, in an undertone.
“I didn’t catch the first of it,” said Hawke. “I believe that little ass accused Henninger of being a notorious card-sharper, or something of the sort. The second mate happened to be there, and he heard their stories, and I expect they’ve gone to the captain now.”
The curious quality of Elliott’s regard for Henninger is sufficiently indicated by the fact that at this information he was filled simultaneously with indignant rage and wonder whether the thing were true. He put the question directly to Hawke, who shrugged his shoulders.
“Henninger is absolutely the best poker player I ever saw,” he replied. “He’s better even than Sullivan, and no man can be as good a player as that without being suspected of crookedness. Of course, I don’t know all Henninger’s adventures, but I’d stake anything that he’s as straight as a string. He’s too thoroughbred a sport.”
The little blond man presently returned to the smoking-room alone, but Henninger did not reappear. Elliott waited for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then went on deck.
The spaces were all deserted, and the electric lights shone on empty chairs. It was a clear night, and the big funnels loomed against the sky, rolling out volumes of black smoke. As he walked slowly aft, he saw a man leaning over the quarter, looking down at the boiling wake streaked with phosphorescence. It looked like Henninger; drawing nearer, he saw that he was not mistaken.
“How’d it come out, old man?” inquired Elliott, sympathetically. “Hawke and I would have backed you up if you had only let us. It’s an outrage—”
“Will you shut up your infernal mouth—and get away from here!” Henninger interrupted, in a voice of such savage and suppressed fury that Elliott was absolutely stupefied for a moment.
Startled and offended, he turned on his heel and walked forward nearly to the bows, and for a moment he was almost as angry as Henninger had been. He leaned over the rail and frowned at the creaming water. Perhaps he had been tactless,—but he could not forgive the ferocious rebuff that his sympathy had received. But as he stood there, the cool and calm of the mid-sea night began to work insensibly upon his temper, and he began to take a more lenient view of the offence. Glancing aft, he saw that Henninger had vanished. There was no one anywhere in sight but the officer on the bridge and a lookout on the forecastle-head; and no sound but the labouring beat of the propellers.
He remained there for some time, for he heard eight bells struck, and the changing of the watch. Presently a hand touched his shoulder lightly.
“Here, old chap, smoke this,” said Henninger, thrusting a large cigar wrapped in silver foil into his hand. “I was rude to you just now, but you came on me at a bad moment. Forgive me, won’t you?”
“I oughtn’t to have said anything. It wasn’t any of my business, anyway,” said Elliott, throwing away the remains of his resentment, for when Henninger chose to be ingratiating he was able to exercise a singular charm.
“I’m glad that little fool didn’t hit me,” went on Henninger, slowly. “There would have been trouble. He isn’t such a fool, either. His memory is excellent.”
“You don’t mean that—really—” began Elliott, and stopped.
“Elliott, I don’t know whether you’ve been in hard luck often enough and hard enough to get a correct light on what I’m going to tell you. No man knows anything about life, or human nature, or himself, till he’s been up against it,—banged up against it, knocked down and stepped on,—and the knowledge isn’t worth having at the price.
“This was two years ago. I had just come up from Tampico, and I’d been two weeks in a Mexican jail because I wouldn’t pay blackmail to the governor’s private secretary. I had just fifty-seven dollars, I remember, when I landed in New Orleans, but I had a good thing up my sleeve, and I went straight up to St. Louis to see some men I knew there and interest them in it. Two of them came back with me to New Orleans. I was to show them the workings of the thing—it doesn’t matter now what it was—and if they liked it, they were to put up the capital.
“We came down the river by boat. There’s a good deal of card-playing on those river boats yet, though nothing to what it used to be, of course, and we all three got into a game, along with a young sport from Memphis, who had been flashing a big roll all over the boat. Now I can play poker a little, and our limit was low, but I hadn’t any luck that day. I couldn’t get anything better than two pairs, and my pile kept going down till it reached pretty near nothing. All the money I had in the world was on that table, and my future, too, for I had to keep my end up with those capitalists. I was a fool to go into the game, but I couldn’t pull out. About that time I happened to feel a long, thin, loose splinter on the under side of the table. I don’t think that I’d have done it but for that, but I took to holding out an ace or two, sticking them under that splinter. I was beginning to get my money back, when—I don’t know how it happened—the fellow at my left suspected something, leaned over and reached under the table and pulled out the aces.
“They don’t shoot for that sort of thing on the river any more, but it was nearly as bad. I got off at the next landing. All the passengers were lined up to hoot the detected card-sharper. This fellow on board here was one of them.”
The brief, staccato sentences seemed to burn the speaker’s lips. Elliott could find nothing to say, and there was a strained silence. He could not see Henninger’s face in the dusk, but presently he gently touched his shoulder.
Henninger started nervously. “Let’s walk about a bit,” he proposed in a more natural voice. “It’s too pleasant to go below.”
They made the circumference of the decks two or three times at a vigorous pace, and without a word spoken.
“Oh, I don’t blame them—not a bit!” said Henninger, suddenly. “It’s all a part of the game. We fellows are against the world at large; we don’t give much mercy and we don’t expect any. Only—well, I don’t know, but when I go up against these people who’ve always had plenty of money, who’ve lived all their lives in a warmed house, all their fat, stuffy lives, afraid of everything they don’t understand, and understanding damned little, and getting no nearer to life than a cabbage,—when I have to listen to those people talking honour and morality, sometimes it sends me off my head. What do they know of it? They haven’t blood enough for anything worse than a little respectable cheating and lying, and they thank God they’ve always had strength to resist temptation. They don’t know what temptation is. Let ’em get out on the ragged edge of things, and get some of the knocks that shuffle a man’s moralities up like a pack of cards. Something that they never tried is to come into a strange town on a rough night, stony broke, and see the lights shining in the windows, and not know any more than a stray dog where you’re going to fill your belly or get out of the rain.
“There are worse things than that, too, for when a man gets down to rock-bottom, he doesn’t have to keep up appearances, and he can drop his dignity temporarily and wait for better days. But when it comes to being broke in a town where you’re known, where you’re trying to put through some business, sleeping at ten-cent hotels and trying to make a square meal out of a banana, and sitting round good hotels for respectability’s sake, and cleaning your collar with a piece of bread,—that’s about as near hell as a man gets in this world, and he comes to feel that he wouldn’t stick at anything to get out of it.”
“I know,” said Elliott, retrospectively.
“Of course, that’s all part of the game, too. If we stuck to the beaten track, there wouldn’t be any of this trouble. But, great heavens! could I settle down at a desk in an office and hope for a raise of ten dollars a month if I was industrious and obliging! Or if I went home,—but I’d suffocate in about ten days. I’ve got caught in this sporting life, and it’s too late to get out of it, and I couldn’t live without it, anyway. But there’s nothing in it—nothing at all. You’ve got a good profession, Elliott, and I give it to you straight, you’ll be wise to go back and work at it, and let this chasing easy money alone. Hawke’s another case. It makes me sorry to see him. He’s bright; he’s got as cold a nerve as I ever saw, and he’s young enough to amount to something yet, but he’s fooling away his life. I expect he made some kind of a smash at home; I don’t know; he’s as dumb as a clam about his affairs,—and so am I generally. As for Sullivan, I don’t care; he’s a fellow that’ll never let anything carry him where he don’t want to go. But if it was any good talking to you and Hawke, I’d tell you to take a fool’s advice and let grafting alone.”
Elliott was at first amazed by this outburst, and then profoundly moved. It was the last thing to be expected from Henninger, but his equilibrium had been completely upset by the scene in the smoking-room, and he had not yet regained it.
“You’re forgetting theClara McClay. You don’t propose that we give that up, do you?” Elliott remarked.
“I had forgotten it for a moment,” admitted Henninger. “No, we won’t give that up; and I’ll tell you plainly, Elliott, that we’re going to have that bullion if we have to cut throats for it. If this mate gets there first I’ll run him down alone, but I’ll have it. This thing seems like a sort of last chance. I’ve been playing in hard luck for a long time, and I’ve had about as much as I can stand, and this will be cash enough to retire on, if we can get it. Elliott, don’t you see,”—gripping his arm,—“that we’ve simplygotto get to that wreck first?”
“We’re all just as keen as you are,” said Elliott. “You won’t find us hanging back.”
“Yes, I know. But you’re younger, and it don’t seem to matter so much as it does to me,” Henninger responded in a tone of some depression, and they made several more rounds of the deck without speaking. At last Henninger approached the companion stairs.
“I think I’ll go down to my bunk,” he said. “It strikes me that I’ve been talking a lot of gallery melodrama to-night, but that affair in the smoking-room rather got on my nerves. Don’t repeat any of all this to the other boys. I’ve given you a lot of better advice than I was ever able to use myself. Good night.”
He disappeared with a smile, and Elliott went back to the rail to smoke another cigar, filled with a painful mingling of affection and pity for this unrestful spirit. He foresaw what he himself might be like in ten years. Thus far, his memory held nothing worse than misfortune, nothing of dishonour; but dishonour is apt to be the second stage of misfortune. “Go back to work, and let this chasing easy money alone,” Henninger had said, and he was right. It was the advice that Margaret had given him, and that he had vowed to take. But there was still the gold-ship, and Elliott thrilled anew with the irrepressible sense of adventure and romance.
Next morning Henninger had regained his customary equipoise, and Elliott could hardly believe his recollection of last night’s conversation. Henninger gave an account of the accusation and of his defence very briefly to his friends. The captain, acting as arbiter, had ordered that Henninger should refrain from playing cards for stakes while on board, under penalty of being posted as a sharper. On the other hand, the accuser was warned not to make his story public, as there was no corroborative evidence of its truth.
In spite of this caution, some word of the affair spread through the ship, and the rest of the voyage was not pleasant. Henninger found himself an object of suspicion; passengers were shy of speaking to him; no one was openly rude, but the atmosphere was hostile. His three friends stood by him, incurring thereby a share of the popular animosity, and Henninger came and went in saloon and smoking-room, to all appearances as undisturbed and indifferent as possible. Perhaps no one but Elliott knew how much wrath and contempt was hidden under that iron exterior, but every one of the four was glad when the hawsers were looped on the Southampton docks.
It would be two days before the first Castle liner would sail for Cape Town, and they went over to London, where the last arrangements were completed. Elliott was to make for Bombay with all speed, and he drew two hundred pounds above the price of his ticket for expenses. He was to report by cable to Henninger at Zanzibar whether he discovered anything or not. Elliott would also be notified in case of developments at the other end, though it was very possible that it might be necessary for the rest to take sudden action without waiting him to rejoin them, and in such event the plunder was to be shared alike.
Twenty-four hours later Elliott saw his friends aboard the big steamer at Southampton, amid a crowd of army officers, correspondents, weeping female relatives, Jews, and speculators, who were bound for the seat of the still smouldering war. Elliott himself returned to London, crossed to Paris, took the Orient Express, and was hurried across Europe and the length of Italy to Brindisi, where he caught the mail-steamer touching there on her way to Bombay.
Elliott found the atmosphere on the big Peninsular and Oriental liner different from anything he had ever encountered before. The ship was full of Anglo-Indian people, army officers, civil servants, and merchants returning to the East, and whose conversation was composed of English slang and exotic phrases of a foreign tongue. The crew were mostly Lascars of intolerable filthiness, and there were innumerable Indian maids—ayahs, Elliott supposed them to be—whom he met continually about the ship on mysterious errands of comfort to their mistresses. There were queer dishes at dinner, where Elliott made himself disagreeably conspicuous on the first evening by wearing a sack coat; and the talk ran upon subjects which he had previously encountered only in the works of Mr. Kipling.
Most of these passengers had come on board at Southampton and had settled so comfortably together that Elliott felt himself an intruder. He was distinctly an “outsider;” and he found it hard to scrape acquaintance with these healthy, well-set-up and apparently simple-minded young Englishmen, who seemed too candid to be natural. It was even more impossible to know how to approach the peppery veterans, who nevertheless were seen to converse jovially enough with folk of their own sort. He was distinctly lonely; he was almost homesick. His mind was perplexed with the object of his voyage, of which he felt the responsibility to a painful degree, so there were few things in his life which he ever enjoyed less than the passage from Brindisi to Alexandria.
At Port Said another half-dozen passengers came on board. Elliott took them all to be English, apparently of the tourist class, travelling around the world on circular tickets. One of them was sent to share Elliott’s stateroom, much to his annoyance, but the man proved to be entirely inoffensive, a dull, respectable green-grocer with the strict principles of his London suburb, who was taking his daughter on a long southern sea voyage by medical advice. His sole desire was to return to his early radishes, and he spent almost all his waking hours in sitting dumbly beside his daughter on the after deck, a slight, pale girl of twenty, whose incessant cough sounded as if sea air had been prescribed too late.
It was very hot as the steamer pushed at a snail’s pace through the canal. The illimitable reaches of honey-coloured sand seemed to gather up the fierce sun-rays and focus them on the ship. The awnings from stem to stern afforded little relief, and the frilled punkahs sweeping the saloon tables only stirred the heated air. At night the ship threw a portentous glare ahead from the gigantic search-light furnished by the Canal Company, and in the close staterooms it was impossible to sleep. Many of the men walked the deck or dozed in long chairs, and at daybreak there was an undress parade when the imperturbable Lascars turned the hose on a couple of dozen passengers lined against the rail. Then there was a little coolness and it was possible to think of breakfast, before the African sun became again a flaming menace.
It was scarcely better when they reached the Red Sea, where, however, they were able to move at better speed. They had nearly completed this Biblical transit, when a mirage of white-capped mountains floating aerially upside down appeared over the red desert in the south, and all the passengers crowded to the starboard rail to look at it. Elliott had moved to the bow, and was staring idly at the strangely coloured low coast, red and pink and orange, spotted with crags of basalt as black as iron.
“It would remind a man of Arizona, wouldn’t it?” a voice drawled languidly at his elbow.
Elliott wheeled, a little startled. Leaning on the rail beside him was a young man whom he remembered as having come aboard at Port Said with the globe-trotters. He was attired in white flannels and wore a peaked cap, but the voice was unmistakably American, and Elliott felt certain that it had been developed south of the Ohio River.
“I never was in Arizona, but I’ve seen the same kind of thing in New Mexico,” he answered. “How did you know that I had been in the Southwest?”
“There’s nothing but the Bad Lands that’ll give a man that far-away pucker about the eyes,” said the other. “And anybody could pick you out for an American among all these Britishers. We’re the only Yankees on board, I reckon. I don’t mind calling myself a Yankee here, but I wouldn’t at home. I’m from Alabama, sir.”
“I thought you were from the South. I’m a Marylander myself,” replied Elliott.
“Is that so? I’m mighty glad to hear it. We’ll have to moisten that—two Southerners so far from home. My name is Sevier.”
Elliott gave his name in return, and permitted himself to be led aft. He looked more closely at his new acquaintance as they sat down at a table in the stuffy cubby-hole that passes for a smoking-room on the Indian mail-steamers. Sevier was a boyish-looking fellow of perhaps thirty, short, slight, and dark, with a small dark moustache, and a manner that was inexpressibly candid and ingratiating. In time it might come to seem smooth to the point of nausea; at present it appeared offhand enough, and yet courteous—a manner of which the South alone has preserved the secret—and Elliott in his growing loneliness was delighted to find so agreeable a fellow traveller.
The talk naturally fell upon Southern matters, drifted to the West and South again to Mexico and the Gulf. Sevier seemed to display an unusual knowledge of these localities, though Elliott was unable to check his statements, and he explained that he had been a newspaper correspondent in Central America for a New Orleans daily, theGlobe.
“TheGlobe?” exclaimed Elliott, recollecting almost forgotten names. “Then you must know Jackson, the night editor. I used to work with him in Denver.”
“I’ve met him. But, you see, I was hardly ever in the office, nor in the city, either. I always worked on the outside.”
“TheGlobehad a man in San Salvador last year, named Wilcox, I think,” Elliott continued, recalling another fact.
“Yes. I reckon he was before me. San Salvador—I sunk a heap of money there!”
“Mining?”
“Yes—or not exactly actually mining. I got a concession for a sulphur mine, and I was going to sell it in New York. It was a mighty good mine, too. There would have been dollars in it, and it cost me five thousand to get it. You know how concessions are got down there, I expect?”
“How did it pan out?”
“It never panned out at all, sir. There was a revolution next month, and the new government annulled everything the old one had done. I hadn’t the money to go through the business over again, but I did make something out of the revolution, after all.”
“How?”
“Selling rifles to the revolutionists. I didn’t think at the time that I was helping to beat my own game. There’s money in revolutionizing, too. Down there a man can’t keep clear of graft, you know; it’s in the air.”
In spite of the apologetic tone of the last sentence, Elliott recognized the mental attitude of the adventurer, which was becoming very familiar to him. He had heard a good deal from Henninger of the business of supplying a revolution with war material, in which Henninger had participated more than once. As often as not, it is done by buying up the officers of a ragged government regiment, and transferring, sometimes not only the rifles and cartridges but also the officers and men as well, to the equally ragged force in opposition.
But if Sevier were an adventurer he was certainly the smoothest specimen of the fraternity that Elliott had yet encountered. And why should such a man be going to India, surely a most unpromising field for the industrious chevalier. As if in answer to the mental inquiry, Sevier announced that he was going to obtain material for a series of magazine articles upon the East, as well as for a number of newspaper letters which he proposed to “syndicate” to half a dozen dailies as special correspondence.
“And I’ll have to spend the next six months mixing up with this sort of fellows,” he lamented, waving his hand toward a group of Anglo-Indians with seasoned complexions who were deep in “bridge” at a neighbouring table. “I’m too American, or too Southern, or something, to know how to get on with those chaps. I reckon it’s the fault of my education. I can’t drink their drinks, and I never learned to play whist right, and I’ve told them my best stories, and they took about as well as the Declaration of Independence. I expect I’ll be right glad when I get back where I can see a game of baseball and play poker. Do you play poker at all?”
“Not on shipboard. I find it’s liable to make me seasick,” replied Elliott, a trifle grimly.
The last apparently careless question had, he thought, given him the clue to the secret of his companion’s presence on board, though professional gamblers seldom operate upon the Eastern steamship lines.
“I’ll give you a bit of advice, too,” he added. “Don’t start any little game on board, unless it’s a very little one, indeed. These boats aren’t as sporty as the Atlantic liners.”
Sevier stared a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“Oh, I’m no card crook,” he said, without showing any offence. “I didn’t want to skin you. I’m the worst poker player you ever saw, but I felt somehow like opening jackpots. I’ll play penny-ante with you all the evenin’, and donate the proceeds to a Seaman’s Home, if you like.”
Elliott declined this invitation to charity, but he sat chatting for a long time with the young Alabaman. His suspicions were by no means lulled, but, after all, as he reflected, he would be neither Sevier’s victim nor his confederate, and, though he did not know it, he was acquiring something of the adventurer’s lax notions of morality.
But it was pleasant to talk again on American matters, and to hear the familiar Southern opinions, couched in the familiar Southern drawl. It would, besides, have been difficult to find anywhere a more pleasant fellow traveller than Sevier. He possessed a fund of reminiscence and anecdote of an experience that seemed, in spite of his youth, to have been almost universal, and of a world in which he appeared to have played many parts. Newspaper work was his latest part, and he spoke little of it. Indeed, he was anything but autobiographical, and his tales were almost wholly of the adventures of other men, whose irregularities he viewed with the purely objective and unmoral interest of the man of the world who is at once a cynic and an optimist. Above all, he seemed to have an eye for opportunities of easy money which was more like a down-easter than a man from the Gulf Coast, though he confessed frankly that he was just then in hard luck.
“I’ve made fortunes,” he said. “If I had half the money that I’ve blown in like a fool, I wouldn’t be a penny-a-liner now.”
This remark forcibly appealed to Elliott; he had said the same thing many times to himself.
It became a trifle cooler after the steamer passed the dessicated headland of Aden and put out upon the broad Indian Ocean. The weather remained fine, and there was every prospect of a quick passage to Bombay. With the lowering of the temperature, the irrepressible British instinct for games reappeared, and there were deck quoits, deck cricket, blindfold races, and a violent sort of tournament in which the combatants aimed to knock one another with pillows from a spar which they sat astride. Under the humanizing influence of these diversions Elliott found his fellow passengers less unapproachable than they had seemed, but he still spent many hours with Sevier, for whom he had conceived a genuine liking. The two Americans were further bound together by a common conviction of the absurdity of violent exertion with the thermometer in the eighties.
On the third day after leaving the Red Sea, Elliott happened to pass down the main stairway as the third officer was putting up the daily chart of the ship’s progress. He paused to look at it. The steamer was then, it occurred to him, close to the point where the Italian ship had picked up the mate of theClara McClay.
He took from his pocket a map which he had made, and consulted it. This map showed the hypothetical course of the wrecked gold-ship in a red line, with dotted lines indicating the probable course of the driftings of both the mate’s boat and Bennett’s raft. As nearly as he could judge, the liner must indeed be at that moment almost upon the spot where the secret of the position of the wrecked treasure was saved, in the person of the Irishman.
He was still looking at the map when Sevier came quietly down the stairs, paused on the step above him, and glanced over his shoulder. Elliott dropped the map to his side, and then, ashamed of this childish attempt at concealment, raised it again boldly.
“Layin’ off a chart of your voyages?” inquired Sevier. “Ever been down there?” putting his finger on the Mozambique Channel.
“No, I never was,” answered Elliott, somewhat startled at the question.
“Neither was I. I’ve been told that there’s no more dangerous water in the world. They say the currents run like a mill-race through that channel, in different directions, according to the tides. The coast’s covered with wreckage. I thought you might have sailed along that red line you’ve marked.”
“No, I don’t know anything about the place,” Elliott denied again, putting the map in his pocket.
“Thinking of going there?”
“Not at present.”
“I wish I could find out something definite about the islands in that channel. Nobody knows anything about them at all except the Arab coast pirates, and they keep all the pickings there are to themselves.”
“You’ll find better pickings in India, you vulture,” cried Elliott, with an easy laugh.
He was far from feeling easy, however, and for a time he was sharply suspicious of the Alabaman. Yet it was highly improbable that any one else knew the secret of theClara McClay’scargo and of her end; and it was practically impossible that any one knew more of the wreck than he did himself. Certainly Sevier could have no more definite information, or he would be sailing to the Madagascar coast instead of to India. Elliott persuaded himself that the young Alabaman’s questions had been prompted by mere curiosity, and that their startling appositeness was the result of coincidence. Still, the incident revived his sense of the need for haste, and renewed his eagerness to discover the traces of Burke, the brutal mate, the one man living who knew the whole secret of the drowned millions.
Rapidly as the good ship rolled off the knots, her slowness irritated him. He counted the hours, almost the minutes, and it was hard to contain his impatience till they came at last in sight of the low, green-brown Indian shore.
Bombay came in sight on the port bow that evening, a strange sky-line of domes and squares. Heat lightning flickered low on the landward horizon, casting the city into sharp silhouette against the sky, and from some festival ashore the clash and boom of cymbals and the terrific blare of conches rolled softened across the water.
For hours after the steamer had anchored, the English civil and military servants stayed on deck to look at the field of their coming labours, and all night long the ship resounded with the clacking roar of the derricks clearing the baggage hold.
“Poor devils!” murmured Sevier, looking at the English clustered along the rail. “I wonder how many of the passengers on this boat will ever see England again—or America, either.”
And Elliott, thinking of his perilous mission, wondered also.
Elliott had expected to find an Oriental city; he had looked for a sort of maze of black alleys, ivory lattices, temples, minarets, and a medley of splendour and squalor; but in his surprise at the reality he said that Bombay was almost like an American city. There was squalor and splendour enough, but they were not as he had imagined them; and at the first sight of the wide, straight, busy streets he felt a great relief, realizing that his detective work would not have to be pursued under such “Arabian Night” conditions as he had anticipated.
At the landing-stage he surrendered himself to a white-robed and barefoot native runner, who claimed to represent Ward’s Anglo-Indian Hotel, and this functionary at once bundled him into a ricksha which started off at a trot. So unfamiliar a mode of locomotion revived some of Elliott’s primal expectations of the East, and the crowds that filled the street from house-front to house-front helped to strengthen them. The populace, as Elliott observed with surprise, were nearly as black as the negroes at home, clad in every variety and colour of costume, brilliant as a garden of tulips, and through the dense mass his ricksha man forced a passage by screaming unintelligible abuse at the top of his voice. Occasionally a black victoria clove its slow way past him, bearing a white-clad Englishman, who gazed unseeingly over the swarming mass; and Elliott for the first time breathed the smell of the East, that compound of heat and dust and rancid butter and perspiring humanity that somehow strangely suggests the yellow marigold flowers that hang in limp clusters in the marketplaces of all Bengal.
At the hotel, a gigantic and imposing structure, he was received by a Eurasian in a frock coat and no shoes, who assigned him to a vast bedroom, cool and darkened and almost large enough to play tennis in. Elliott examined the unfamiliar appurtenances with some curiosity, and then took a delicious dip in the bathroom that opened from his chamber. He then changed his clothes and went down-stairs, determined to lose no time in visiting the United States Consulate.
The mate of theClara McClay, as the only surviving officer, was required to report the circumstances of the loss of his ship to the American consul; and self-interest, as much as law, should equally have impelled him to do so. For by reporting the foundering of the steamer in deep water he would clear himself of responsibility, and at the same time close the case and check any possible investigation into the whereabouts of the wreck.
But Elliott learned at once that the white man in India is not supposed to exert himself. The manager of the house, to whom he applied for information, placed him in a long cane chair while a ricksha was being called, and then installed him in the baby-carriage conveyance, giving elaborate instructions in the vernacular to the native motor. And again the vivid panorama of the streets unrolled before Elliott’s eyes under the blinding sun-blaze,—the closely packed crowd of white head-dresses, the nude torsos, bronze and black, the gorgeous silks, and violent-hued cottons rolling slowly over the earthen pavement that was packed hard by millions of bare feet.
The gridiron shield with the eagle looked home-like to Elliott when he set eyes on it, but he found the official representative of the United States to be a brass-coloured Eurasian, who seemed to have some recollection of theClara McClayor her mate, but was either unable or unwilling to impart any information. He was the consular secretary; the consul was out at the moment, but he returned just as Elliot was turning away in disappointment. He was a rubicund gentleman of middle age, from Ohio, as Elliott presently learned, and proud of the fact. He wore a broad straw hat of American design—Heaven knows how he had procured it in that land—and, to Elliott’s unbounded amazement, he was accompanied by his own steamer acquaintance, the Alabaman Sevier.
Elliott nodded to Sevier, trying to conceal his consternation, and was for going away immediately, but the secretary was, after all, only too anxious to give assistance.
“Be pleased to wait a moment, sir. This is the consul. Mr. Guiger, this gentleman is asking if we know anything of the position of the mate of the wrecked American steamer, called theClara McClay.”
“His position? By Jupiter, I wish I knew it!” ejaculated the consul, mopping his face, but showing a more than physical warmth. “This other gentleman here has just been asking me the same thing, and I’ve had a dozen wires from the owners in Philadelphia.”
Elliott was thunderstruck at this revelation of Sevier’s interest in the matter, but it was too late to draw back.
“I was asked to make inquiries by relatives of one of the crew,” he said, mendaciously. “Has the mate showed up here at all?”
“Showed up? Of course he did. He had to, by Jupiter! But it was his business to keep in touch with me till the case was gone into and settled. He gave me an address on Malabar Hill,—too swell a locality for a sailorman, thinks I,—and, sure enough, when I sent there for him, they had never heard of him. I’ve not set eyes on him since. He’ll lose his ticket, that’s all.”
“What sort of a report did he make?”
“Why, nothing. Said the ship was rotten, and her cargo shifted in a gale and some of her rivets must have drawn, and she foundered. Every one went down but himself,—all drunk, I suppose. But he didn’t even make a sworn statement. Said he’d come back next day, and I was in a hurry myself, and I let him go, like a fool.”
“You don’t know whether he’s still in the city?”
“I don’t know anything. I’ve set the police to look for him, but these black-and-tan cops don’t amount to anything. He may be half-way to Australia by this time. Like as not he is.”
“Where did he say his ship foundered?” asked Sevier, speaking for the first time.
“Somewhere in the Mozambique Channel, in deep water. He didn’t know exactly. Along about latitude twelve, south, he said. Went down like a lump of lead.”
Elliott thought of her weighty cargo, and, glancing up, he met Sevier’s eye fixed keenly on him.
“Well, if the man can’t be found, I suppose that’s the end of it,” he said, carelessly, and turned away again.
“Sorry I can’t help you, gentlemen,” responded the consul. “If I get any news, I’ll let you know. You don’t happen to have brought out any American newspapers, do you—Chicago ones, for choice?”
Elliott was devoid of these luxuries, and Sevier followed him out to the street, where the ricksha was still waiting.
“Is that your perambulator?” inquired the Alabaman. “Let’s walk a little. The streets aren’t so crowded here.”
“It’s undignified for a white man to walk in this country, but I’ll make my ricksha man follow me,” said Elliott. “Besides, I couldn’t find my way back to the hotel without him.”
They walked for several minutes in silence down the side of the street that was shaded by tall buildings of European architecture.
“Were you ever at a New Orleans Mardi Gras? Hanged if this town doesn’t remind me of it!” Sevier suddenly broke silence. “By the way, I didn’t know that you were interested in theClara McClay.”
“I’m not,” said Elliott, on the defensive. “I was simply making inquiries on behalf of other people, to get some details about her loss. You seem to have more interest than that in her yourself.”
“Oh, my interest is a purely business one,” replied Sevier, lightly. “I know her owners pretty well, and they wired me from Philadelphia to find out something about her. I found the cablegram waiting for me when I got here. Funny thing that the mate should disappear that way. Something crooked, eh?”
“Possibly. Queer things happen on the high seas. It looks as if he were afraid of something.”
“Or after something. I’ve heard of ships being run ashore for insurance.”
“But theClara McClaydidn’t run ashore,” Elliott reminded him. “She foundered in deep water, you know.”
“Oh, yes, she foundered in deep water,” drawled Sevier. “Have you got the spot marked on your map?”
This attack was so sudden and so unexpected that Elliott floundered.
“That map you have in your pocket, with her course marked in red,” Sevier pursued, relentlessly.
“That map you saw on the steamer? That wasn’t a chart of theClara McClay’scourse. Or, at least,” Elliott went on, recovering his wind, “I don’t suppose it is, accurately. I drew it to see if I could make out where she must have sunk, by a sort of dead reckoning. You see, I felt a certain interest in her on account of the inquiries I was commissioned to make. Nobody knows exactly what her course was.”
“Nobody but the mate, and he’s skipped the country. Well, I hope you find him, for the sake of the bereaved kinfolk.”
He turned a humourous and incredulous glance at Elliott, and its invitation to frankness was unmistakable. Had Elliott been alone in the affair he might have responded, and taken his companion as a partner. But he had not the right to do that; there were men enough to share the plunder already; but he was possessed with curiosity to learn what Sevier knew, and, above all, what he wanted. Sevier had learned nothing from Bennett; he could have learned nothing from the mate, else he would not be in pursuit of him. How then could he know what cargo theClara McClayhad carried?
They walked a little further, talking of the features of interest like a pair of Cook’s tourists, while the ricksha man marched stolidly behind.
“Queer that Burke didn’t know where she went down!” said Sevier, as if to himself.
“Who’s Burke?” asked Elliott, on the alert this time.
“The mate of theClara McClay. Didn’t you know his name? I got it from the owners. They’re wild about him; swear they’ll have his certificate taken from him. It seems he hasn’t reported a word to them, and all they know is a newspaper item saying that he was picked up from the wreck.”
“Was all that in your cablegram?” demanded Elliott, with malice.
“They told me that in Philadelphia, before I left,” Sevier replied, imperturbably.
This was just possible, but, after a rapid mental calculation of dates, Elliott decided that it was unlikely. Besides, why should the owners have cabled, if they had seen their messenger just before he sailed? But he had already arrived at the conviction that Sevier’s explanation of his interest in the treasure-ship was as fictitious as his own.
“Isn’t it likely,” he said, easily, “that the mate was drunk and navigated her out of her course, and ran her ashore? He knows that he’s responsible for her loss, and he’s afraid to face a court of inquiry.”
“He’ll sure lose his certificate anyway, if he doesn’t show up. Besides, he didn’t run her ashore. She went down in deep water.”
“Sure enough, she went down in deep water,” Elliott acquiesced. A strong sense of the futility of this fencing stole over him, and he turned abruptly and beckoned to his ricksha.
“It’s too hot to walk. I’m going back to my hotel—the Anglo-Indian. Come around and look me up. Are you going to search for your lost mate?”
“Oh, dear, no! I’m not paid for doing that. Besides, I’m going up the country in a day or so to get stuff for my articles.”
He watched Elliott into his ricksha, and walked off, Elliott wondered vainly where.
He wondered also whether he ought not to keep close to this smooth-spoken pseudo-journalist, who, he felt sure, was also on the track of the treasure-ship. But this would hamper him fatally in his quest for the elusive mate Burke, and this quest was to be Elliott’s next affair.
But he had next to no idea just where or how he would look. He was an inlander; he knew little of the ways of seafaring men ashore, and nothing at all of this particular city. He plunged boldly into the search, however, and, as a preliminary, he spent a day in roaming about the waterfront of Mazagon Bay, entering into conversation with such white seamen as he came across. But he was acutely conscious that he made a bungle of this. These men were too far outside his experience for him to enter into easy relations with them. His immaculate white flannels were also against him; he received either too much deference or too little, and he suspected that he was taken for a detective or a customs officer. He decided that he would have to assume a less respectable appearance.
But every one he met professed total ignorance of theClara McClayand her mate. Most of the men were transient; they had been in Bombay for only a few days or weeks, and the arrival of a single man, even the survivor of a wreck, is too slight an episode to leave any mark upon such a port as Bombay, where the shipping of a whole world is gathered. But a vessel is a different thing, and Elliott learned—it was the whole result of his day’s work—that the Italian steamerAndrea Sforzia, which had picked up Burke’s boat, had sailed a month ago for Cape Town.
Had Burke gone with her? No one knew. Elliott thought it most probable; and in that case the rich grave of the gold-ship must be rifled already. A feeling of sick failure spread through Elliott’s system as he realized that the whole quest might have been in vain, even before they left America. But he cabled to Henninger at Zanzibar:
“SteamerAndrea Sforziasailed Cape Town about April 10th, likely with Burke.”
Still it might be that the mate had not sailed with the Italian steamer, after all, and, while awaiting a reply from Zanzibar, Elliott resumed his detective work. It was good to pass the anxious time, if it led to no other result. He hired a room in a cheap sailors’ hotel in Mazagon, where he went every morning to change his white clothes for a dirty, bluish dungaree slop-suit, which he bought at a low clothing store, and, thus suitably attired, he was able to pursue his explorations among the tortuous ways of the old Portuguese settlement and attract no attention so long as he kept his mouth shut. These wanderings he often carried far into the night, returning finally to his dirty room to resume the garb of respectability.
He saw many strange things in these explorations among the groggeries, dives, and sailors’ boarding-houses, where the seamen of every maritime race on earth herded together in their stifling quarter. He sat in earthen-floored drinking-shops, where Lascars, Norse, Yankees, Englishmen, and Italians gulped down poisonous native liquors like water, and quarrelled in a babel of tongues; he leaned over fan-tan tables in huge, filthy rooms that had been the palaces of merchant princes; and nightly he saw the tired dancing-girls from the Hills posture obscenely before an audience of white, yellow, and brown sea scum, ferociously drunk or stupid with opium. More than once he saw knives drawn and used, and the blood spurt dark in the candle-light; and once he had to run for it to avoid being gathered in by the police along with his companions. But nowhere could he hear anything of what he sought, and he could find no one who would admit having seen the mate of theClara McClay.
He had received no reply from Henninger, and this, perhaps, illogically reassured him. After a week he had ceased to expect any, but by this time he had well ceased to believe that Burke was still in Bombay. If he were there, Elliott did not believe that he could be found, and he regretted anew that he had not obtained a detailed description of the man from Bennett. He visited the American consul again, but that official had no further news, and was able to describe the mate only as “a big fellow, with a big beard turning gray,” which was indefinite enough.
After all, Elliott reflected, the man would be likely to change his name and to keep apart from other seamen. Surely, if he had been going to fit out a wrecking expedition, he would have done it long since, but such an enterprise would certainly have left memories upon the waterfront. Elliott could not learn that anything of the sort had been done. Possibly Burke had gone elsewhere to launch his expedition; very likely he had no money, and had gone elsewhere to obtain it.
Elliott grew very weary with turning over all these possibilities, and almost disheartened, but he persisted in his perambulations about the sailors’ quarter. He was beginning to feel the deadly lassitude which stealthily grows upon the unacclimated white man in the tropics, and he would probably have given up the quest in another week, but for a lucky chance.
The crush of the crowd had elbowed him into a corner beside a tiny second-hand clothes-stall near the landing-place of the coasting steamers, and he gazed idly at the foul-looking seamen’s clothing—caps, oilskins, sea boots, cotton trousers—that almost filled the recess in the wall that served for a shop. In the centre lounged the shopman, apparently half Eurasian and half English Jew, who looked as if he clothed himself from his own stock in trade.
As Elliott was trying to disengage himself from the crowd, he knocked down a suit of oilskins, and stooped to pick it up. It was an excellent suit, though considerably worn, and as he rescued the heavy sou’wester hat, his eye was caught by rude black lettering on the under side of the peak. It had been done in India ink, and read “J. Burke, S. S.Clara McClay.”
Elliott stared at the initials, dazzled by his good luck. They must be the oilskins of the missing mate, who had sold them there. Who else could have brought clothing from the wreck to Bombay? The shopman, scenting trade, had crept forward, and was sidling and fawning at Elliott’s shoulder.
“Want nice oilskins, Sahib? Ver’ scheap. You shall haf dem for ten rupee.”
“I’ll give you five,” said Elliott, carelessly, hanging up the cap.
“Fif rupee? Blood of Buddha! I pay eight, s’help me Gawd!”
“Look here,” said Elliott. “I don’t want the oilskins, but I think they used to belong to a friend of mine, and I’ll give you eight rupees if you’ll tell me where you got them.”
The merchant wrinkled his brows, undoubtedly pondering whether he was in danger of compromising any thief of his acquaintance.
“I remember,” he presently announced. “You gif me ten rupee?”
“Ten it is.”
“I buy dem more than two weeks ago from your friend’s kitmatgar, Hurris Chunder.”
Elliott’s heart sank again. “My friend’s a sailorman, and wouldn’t have a servant.”
“Hurris Chunder say his master gif dem to him,” insisted the Jew.
“Can you find Hurris Chunder?”
“Maybe,” with an avid grin.
“Here’s your ten rupees,” said Elliott. “I’ll give you ten more if you’ll manage to have Hurris Chunder here to-night, and he shall have another ten for telling me what he knows. Does it go?”
“Yes,” responded the trader, with lightning comprehension of Western slang. “The Sahib will find Hurris Chunder here to-night. At ten o’clock.”
Elliott had already learned the indefinite notions of the East regarding time, and he did not care to show the impatience he felt, so he did not arrive at his appointment till nearly eleven o’clock. The yellow Jew led him to the rear of the tiny shop and introduced him through an unsuspected door into a small chamber littered with rags, old clothes, rubbish of copper and brass, and dirty-looking apparatus. It was here that the merchant ate and slept, and in the middle of the floor a white-clad figure was squatting, smoking a brass pipe.
“This is Hurris Chunder, Sahib,” said the Jew, eagerly.
The native, a golden-complexioned young man, with a somewhat sleepy Buddha-like face, put down his pipe, and bowed without getting up.
“Very good,” said Elliott. “Here’s your ten rupees, Israel. Now, get out. I want to have a little private talk with our friend.”
The half-caste scuttled into the outer shop and closed the door.
“Now, then, Hurris, tell me the truth. Where did you steal those oilskins?”
Hurris Chunder made a deprecating gesture. “May the Presence pardon me,” he said, in soft and excellent English. “I did not steal them. My master, Baker Sahib, gave them to me.”
“Baker Sahib, indeed!” Elliott murmured. “Where is your master? What did he look like?”
“He was a tall, lean, strong sahib, and when he first came he had a great gray beard. He lived for many days at the Planters’ Hotel, and I was unworthily his kitmatgar.”
This was another surprise, for the Planters’ was an excellent, quiet, and rather high-priced hotel, and the mate was presumably short of funds.
“He had money, then?”
“He had much money, English money. He was a very generous Sahib.”
“Well, you’ll find me a generous Sahib, too, if you act on the level. Here’s your ten rupees. Baker Sahib is at the Planters’, then?”
“No, Sahib, he went away. He gave me the oilskins when he went. He sailed on a ship, a great black steamer. He went to England.”
“To England? Are you sure it wasn’t Africa?”
“Yes, Sahib, to Africa.”
“What port was she bound for?”
“Sahib, before God, I do not know. I think London.”
“London? You said Africa. Wasn’t it America?”
“The Sahib is right.”
“Or Australia?”
“If the Sahib pleases, it is so,” was the submissive response.
“You old fraud!” said Elliott. “You don’t know where he went. Are you sure he went away at all?”
“Yes, Sahib. He cut off his great beard, and I took his luggage to the ship for him,—a great black steamer, full of English. I do not know the name of the ship.”
“Cut off his beard, eh? And you don’t know what ship it was, or where she went? Well, never mind, I can find that out myself. Your knowledge is distinctly limited, Hurris, but you’re a good boy, and I believe you’ve given me the key to the situation. It’s worth another rupee or two. Good-bye.”
He tossed the native three more rupees, and went to change his clothes, bursting with excited impatience. To-morrow he would know the mate’s destination.
As early as possible the next morning, he sought the Planters’ Hotel, and found that Baker Sahib had indeed been there since the 18th of March. This was the day after the arrival of theAndrea Sforziaat Bombay, and the coincidence of the dates was corroborative evidence. He had left on the 27th of March, and his destination was unknown at the hotel.
An examination of the shipping-lists, however, showed that on March 27th three passenger steamers had sailed from Bombay,—thePunjaub, for London; theImperadora, for Southampton, and thePrince of Burmahfor Hongkong. Elliott hastened to the city passenger offices of these lines, and begged permission to inspect the passenger-lists of their ships sailing on that day. The sheets of thePunjauband of theImperadoraproved devoid of interest, but half-way down the list of thePrince of Burmah’ssaloon passengers he came upon the name of Henry Baker. He was booked through to Hongkong.
The amazing improbability of this almost staggered Elliott. If the mate knew the secret of the treasure, why should he fly thus to the very antipodes; and if he knew no guilty secrets, why should he have secreted himself in Bombay, and cut off his beard for purposes of disguise?
Were Baker and Burke identical, after all? But the American consul’s brief description of the man tallied with that of Hurris Chunder, and Baker had arrived at the Planters’ Hotel the day after Burke had arrived in Bombay. Baker had brought with him oilskins from the wrecked ship, from which he alone had been picked up at that time.
It must be the mate, Elliott thought. In any case, Baker must know things of importance to the gold hunters, and Elliott cabled again to Zanzibar:
“Mate sailed Hongkong. Am following.”
Three days later he sailed for Hongkong himself. Up to the very moment of clearing port he was tormented with apprehensions that Sevier would appear on board. But, whatever were the researches of the Alabaman, they were evidently being conducted in a different quarter, and the weight gradually lifted from Elliott’s mind as the steamer ploughed slowly down the bay, past the white moored monitors and the little rocky islets of the peninsula. The treasure hunt had turned out a man hunt, but he hoped that he was upon the last stage of the long stern chase.