Every trace of expression left Bukta's countenance. The idea

might have smitten him for the first time. "How can I say?" he

replied. "Perhaps it is on account of the name. A Bhil does not

love strange things. Give them orders, Sahib- two, three, four

words at a time such as they can carry away in their heads.

That is enough."

Chinn gave orders then, valiantly, not realising that a word

spoken in haste before mess became the dread unappealable law of

villages beyond the smoky hills was, in truth, no less than the

Law of Jan Chinn the First, who, so the whispered legend ran, had

come back to earth, to oversee the third generation, in the body

and bones of his grandson.

There could be no sort of doubt in this matter. All the Bhils

knew that Jan Chinn reincarnated had honoured Bukta's village

with his presence after slaying his first-in this life-tiger;

that he had eaten and drunk with the people, as he was used; and

- Bukta must have drugged Chinn's liquor very deeply-upon his

back and right shoulder all men had seen the same angry red

Flying Cloud that the high Gods had set on the flesh of Jan

Chinn the First when first he came to the Bhil. As concerned the

foolish white world which has no eyes, he was a slim and young

officer in the Wuddars; but his own people knew he was Jan Chinn,

who had made the Bhil a man; and, believing, they hastened to

carry his words, careful never to alter them on the way.

Because the savage and the child who plays lonely games have one

horror of being laughed at or questioned, the little folk kept

their convictions to themselves; and the Colonel, who thought he

knew his regiment, never guessed that each one of the six

hundred quick-footed, beady-eyed rank-and-file, to attention

beside their rifles, believed serenely and unshakenly that the

subaltern on the left flank of the line was a demi-god twice

born -tutelary deity of their land and people. The Earth-gods

themselves had stamped the incarnation, and who would dare to

doubt the handiwork of the Earth-gods?

Chinn, being practical above all things, saw that his family name

served him well in the lines and in camp. His men gave no

trouble-one does not commit regimental offences with a god in

the chair of justice-and he was sure of the best beaters in the

district when he needed them. They believed that the protection

of Jan Chinn the First cloaked them, and were bold in that belief

beyond the utmost daring of excited Bhils.

His quarters began to look like an amateur natural-history

museum, in spite of duplicate heads and horns and skulls that he

sent home to Devonshire. The people, very humanly, learned the

weak side of their god. It is true he was unbribable, but

bird-skins, butterflies, beetles, and, above all, news of big

game pleased him. In other respects, too, he lived up to the

Chinn tradition. He was fever-proof. A night's sitting out over

a tethered goat in a damp valley, that would have filled the

Major with a month's malaria, had no effect on him. He was, as

they said, "salted before he was born."

Now in the autumn of his second year's service an uneasy rumour

crept out of the earth and ran about among the Bhils. Chinn

heard nothing of it till a brother- Officer said across the

mess-table: "Your revered ancestor's on the rampage in the

Satpura country. You'd better look him up."

"I don't want to be disrespectful, but I'm a little sick of my

revered ancestor. Bukta talks of nothing else. What's the old

boy supposed to be doing now?"

"Riding cross-country by moonlight on his processional tiger.

That's the story. He's been seen by about two thousand Bhils,

skipping along the tops of the Satpuras, and scaring people to

death. They believe it devoutly, and all the Satpura chaps are

worshipping away at his shrine- tomb, I mean-like good uns. You

really ought to go down there. Must be a queer thing to see your

grandfather treated as a god."

"What makes you think there's any truth in the tale?" said

Chinn.

"Because all our men deny it. They say they've never heard of

Chinn's tiger. Now that's a manifest lie, because every Bhil

has."

"There's only one thing you've overlooked," said the Colonel,

thoughtfully. "When a local god reappears on earth, it's always

an excuse for trouble of some kind; and those Satpura Bhils are

about as wild as your grandfather left them, young un. It means

something."

"Meanin' they may go on the war-path?" said Chinn.

"'Can't say - as yet. 'Shouldn't be surprised a little bit."

"I haven't been told a syllable."

"'Proves it all the more. They are keeping something back."

"Bukta tells me everything, too, as a rule. Now, why didn't he

tell me that?"

Chinn put the question directly to the old man that night, and

the answer surprised him.

"Why should I tell what is well known? Yes, the Clouded Tiger is

out in the Satpura country."

"What do the wild Bhils think that it means?"

They do not know. They wait. Sahib, what is coming? Say only one

little word, and we will be content."

"We? What have tales from the south, where the jungly Bhils live,

to do with drilled men?" "When Jan Chinn wakes is no time for

any Bhil to be quiet."

"But he has not waked, Bukta."

"Sahib "-the old man's eyes were full of tender reproof-" if he

does not wish to be seen, why does he go abroad in the

moonlight? We know he is awake, but we do not know what he

desires. Is it a sign for all the Bhils, or one that concerns

the Satpura folk alone? Say one little word, Sahib, that I may

carry it to the lines, and send on to our villages. Why does Jan

Chinn ride out? Who has done wrong? Is it pestilence? Is it

murrain? Will our children die? Is it a sword? Remember, Sahib,

we are thy people and thy servants, and in this life I bore thee

in my arms-not knowing."

"Bukta has evidently looked on the cup this evening," Chinn

thought; "but if I can do anything to soothe the old chap I

must. It's like the Mutiny rumours on a small scale."

He dropped into a deep wicker chair, over which was thrown his

first tiger-skin, and his weight on the cushion flapped the

clawed paws over his shoulders. He laid hold of them

mechanically as he spoke, drawing the painted hide,

cloak-fashion, about him.

"Now will I tell the truth, Bukta," he said, leaning forward, the

dried muzzle on his shoulder, to invent a specious lie.

"I see that it is the truth," was the answer, in a shaking voice.

"Jan Chinn goes abroad among the Satpuras, riding on the Clouded

Tiger, ye say? Be it so. Therefore the sign of the wonder is for

the Satpura Bhils only, and does not touch the Bhils who plough

in the north and east, the Bhils of the Khandesh, or any

others, except the Satpura Bhils, who, as we know, are wild and

foolish."

"It is, then, a sign for them. Good or bad?"

"Beyond doubt, good. For why should Jan Chinn make evil to those

whom he has made men? The nights over yonder are hot; it is ill

to lie in one bed over-long without turning, and Jan Chinn would

look again upon his people. So he rises, whistles his Clouded

Tiger, and goes abroad a little to breathe the cool air. If the

Satpura Bhils kept to their villages, and did not wander after

dark, they would not see him. Indeed, Bukta, it is no more than

that he would see the light again in his own country. Send this

news south, and say that it is my word."

Bukta bowed to the floor. "Good Heavens!" thought Chinn, "and

this blinking pagan is a first-class officer, and as straight as

a die! I may as well round it off neatly." He went on:

"If the Satpura Bhils ask the meaning of the sign, tell them that

Jan Chinn would see how they kept their old promises of good

living. Perhaps they have plundered; perhaps they mean to

disobey the orders of the Government; perhaps there is a dead

man in the jungle; and so Jan Chinn has come to see."

"Is he, then, angry?"

"Bah! Am I ever angry with my Bhils? I say angry words, and

threaten many things. Thou knowest, Bukta. I have seen thee

smile behind the hand. I know, and thou knowest. The Bhils are

my children. I have said it many times."

"Ay. We be thy children," said Bukta.

"And no otherwise is it with Jan Chinn, my father's father. He

would see the land he loved and the people once again. It is a

good ghost, Bukta. I say it. Go and tell them. And I do hope

devoutly," he added, "that it will calm 'em down." Flinging back

the tiger-skin, he rose with a long, unguarded yawn that showed

his well-kept teeth.

Bukta fled, to be received in the lines by a knot of panting

inquirers.

"It is true," said Bukta. "He wrapped him-self in the skin, and

spoke from it. He would see his own country again. The sign is

not for us; and, indeed, he is a young man. How should he lie

idle of nights? He says his bed is too hot and the air is bad.

He goes to and fro for the love of night-running. He has said

it."

The grey-whiskered assembly shuddered.

"He says the Bhils are his children. Ye know he does not lie.

He has said it to me."

"But what of the Satpura Bhils? What means the sign for them?"

"Nothing. It is only night-running, as I have said. He rides to

see if they obey the Government, as he taught them to do in his

first life."

"And what if they do not?"

"He did not say."

The light went out in Chinn's quarters.

"Look," said Bukta. "Now he goes away. None the less it is a

good ghost, as he has said. How shall we fear Jan Chinn, who

made the Bhil a man? His protection is on us; and ye know Jan

Chinn never broke a protection spoken or written on paper.

When he is older and has found him a wife he will lie in his bed

till morning."

A commanding officer is generally aware of the regimental state

of mind a little before the men; and this is why the Colonel

said, a few days later, that some one had been putting the Fear

of God into the Wuddars. As he was the only person officially

entitled to do this, it distressed him to see such unanimous

virtue. "It's too good to last," he said. "I only wish I could

find out what the little chaps mean."

The explanation, as it seemed to him, came at the change of the

moon, when he received orders to hold himself in readiness to

"allay any possible excitement" among the Satpura Bhils, who

were, to put it mildly, uneasy because a paternal Government had

sent up against them a Mahratta State-educated vaccinator, with

lancets, lymph, and an officially registered calf. In the

language of State, they had "manifested a strong objection to

all prophylactic measures," had "forcibly detained the

vaccinator," and "were on the point of neglecting or evading

their tribal obligations."

"That means they are in a blue funk - same as they were at

census-time," said the Colonel; "and if we stampede them into

the hills we'll never catch 'em, in the first place, and, in the

second, they'll whoop off plundering till further orders.

'Wonder who the God-forsaken idiot is who is trying to vaccinate

a Bhil. I knew trouble was coming. One good thing is that

they'll only use local corps, and we can knock up something

we'll call a campaign, and let them down easy. Fancy us potting

our best beaters because they don't want to be vaccinated!

They're only crazy with fear."

"Don't you think, sir," said Chinn, the next day, "that perhaps

you could give me a fortnight's shooting-leave?"

"Desertion in the face of the enemy, by Jove!" The Colonel

laughed. "I might, but I'd have to antedate it a little, because

we're warned for service, as you might say. However, we'll assume

that you applied for leave three days ago, and are now well on

your way south."

"I'd like to take Bukta with me."

"Of course, yes. I think that will be the best plan. You've some

kind of hereditary influence with the little chaps, and they may

listen to you when a glimpse of our uniforms would drive them

wild. You've never been in that part of the world before, have

you? Take care they don't send you to your family vault in your

youth and innocence. I believe you'll be all right if you can get

'em to listen to you."

"I think so, sir; but if -- if they should accidentally put an

-- make asses of 'emselves -- they might, you know -- I hope

you'll represent that they were only frightened. There isn't an

ounce of real vice in 'em, and I should never forgive myself if

any one of -- of my name got them into trouble."

The Colonel nodded, but said nothing.

Chinn and Bukta departed at once. Bukta did not say that, ever

since the official vaccinator had been dragged into the hills by

indignant Bhils, runner after runner had skulked up to the

lines, entreating, with forehead in the dust, that Jan Chinn

should come and explain this unknown horror that hung over his

people.

The portent of the Clouded Tiger was now too clear. Let Jan

Chinn comfort his own, for vain was the help of mortal man.

Bukta toned down these beseechings to a simple request for

Chinn's presence. Nothing would have pleased the old man better

than a rough-and-tumble campaign against the Satpuras, whom he,

as an "unmixed" Bhil, despised; but he had a duty to all his

nation as Jan Chinn's interpreter; and he devoutly believed that

forty plagues would fall on his village if he tampered with that

obligation. Besides, Jan Chinn knew all things, and he rode the

Clouded Tiger.

They covered thirty miles a day on foot and pony, raising the

blue wall-like line of the Satpuras as swiftly as might be.

Bukta was very silent.

They began the steep climb a little after noon, but it was near

sunset ere they reached the stone platform clinging to the side

of a rifted, jungle-covered hill, where Jan Chinn the First was

laid, as he had desired, that he might overlook his people. All

India is full of neglected graves that date from the beginning of

the eighteenth century - tombs of forgotten colonels of corps

long since disbanded; mates of East India men who went on

shooting expeditions and never came back; factors, agents,

writers, and ensigns of the Honourable the East India Company by

hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands. English folk

forget quickly, but natives have long memories, and if a man has

done good in his life it is remembered after his death. The

weathered marble four-square tomb of Jan Chinn was hung about

with wild flowers and nuts, packets of wax and honey, bottles of

native spirits, and infamous cigars, with buffalo horns and

plumes of dried grass. At one end was a rude clay image of a

white man, in the old-fashioned top-hat, riding on a bloated

tiger.

Bukta salamed reverently as they approached. Chinn bared his head

and began to pick out the blurred inscription. So far as he

could read it ran thus - word for word, and letter for letter:

To the Memory of JOHN CHINN, Esq. Late Collector

of................ithout Bloodshed or...error of Authority

Employ.only..cans of Conciliat...and Confiden. Accomplished

the...tire Subjection... a Lawless and Predatory

Peop......taching them to...ish Government by a Conquest

over....Minds The most perma...and rational Mode of

Domini....Governor General and Counc...engal have ordered

lhi.....erected...arted this Life Aug. 19, 184..Ag...

On the other side of the grave were ancient verses, also very

worn. As much as Chinn could decipher said:

..the savage band. Forsook their Haunts and b.....is

Comman..mended..rals check a.st for spoil. And.. a..ing Hamlets

prove his gene....toil. Humanit...survey......ights restor.. A

Nation..ield..subdued without a Sword.Forsook their Haunts and b

. . . . is Command mended . . rals check a . . . st for spoil And

. s . ing Hamlets prove his gene . . . . toil Humanit . . .

survey

ights restore A Nation . . ield. . subdued without a Sword.

For some little time he leaned on the tomb thinking of this dead

man of his own blood, and of the house in Devonshire; then,

nodding to the plains: "Yes; it's a big work all of it even my

little share. He must have been worth knowing. . . . Bukta,

where are my people?"

"Not here, Sahib. No man comes here except in full sun. They

wait above. Let us climb and see."

But Chinn, remembering the first law of Oriental diplomacy, in an

even voice answered: "I have come this far only because the

Satpura folk are foolish, and dared not visit our lines. Now

bid them wait on me here. I am not a servant, but the master of

Bhils."

"I go -- I go," clucked the old man. Night was falling, and at

any moment Jan Chinn might whistle up his dreaded steed from the

darkening scrub.

Now for the first time in a long life Bukta disobeyed a lawful

command and deserted his leader; for he did not come back, but

pressed to the flat table-top of the hill, and called softly.

Men stirred all about him - little trembling men with bows and

arrows who had watched the two since noon.

"Where is he?" whispered one.

"At his own place. He bids you come," said Bukta.

"Now?"

"Now."

"Rather let him loose the Clouded Tiger upon us. We do not go."

"Nor I, though I bore him in my arms when he was a child in this

his life. Wait here till the day."

"But surely he will be angry."

"He will be very angry, for he has nothing to eat. But he has

said to me many times that the Bhils are his children. By

sunlight I believe this, but - by moonlight I am not so sure.

What folly have ye Satpura pigs compassed that ye should need

him at all?"

"One came to us in the name of the Government with little

ghost-knives and a magic calf, meaning to turn us into cattle by

the cutting off of our arms. We were greatly afraid, but we did

not kill the man. He is here, bound - a black man; and we think

he comes from the west. He said it was an order to cut us all

with knives - especially the women and the children. We did not

hear that it was an order, so we were afraid, and kept to our

hills. Some of our men have taken ponies and bullocks from the

plains, and others pots and cloths and ear-rings."

"Are any slain?"

"By our men? Not yet. But the young men are blown to and fro by

many rumours like flames upon a hill. I sent runners asking for

Jan Chinn lest worse should come to us. It was this fear that he

foretold by the sign of the Clouded Tiger.

He says it is otherwise," said Bukta; and he repeated, with

amplifications, all that young Chinn had told him at the

conference of the wicker chair.

"Think you," said the questioner, at last, "that the Government

will lay hands on us?"

"Not I," Bukta rejoined. "Jan Chinn will give an order, and ye

will obey. The rest is between the Government and Jan Chinn. I

myself know something of the ghost-knives and the scratching. It

is a charm against the Small-pox. But how it is done I cannot

tell. Nor need that concern you."

"If he stands by us and before the anger of the Government we

will most strictly obey Jan Chinn, except - except we do not go

down to that place to-night."

They could hear young Chinn below them shouting for Bukta; but

they cowered and sat still, expecting the Clouded Tiger. The

tomb had been holy ground for nearly half a century. If Jan

Chinn chose to sleep there, who had better right? But they would

not come within eyeshot of the place till broad day.

At first Chinn was exceedingly angry, till it occurred to him

that Bukta most probably had a reason (which, indeed, he had),

and his own dignity might suffer if he yelled without answer.

He propped himself against the foot of the grave, and,

alternately dozing and smoking, came through the warm night proud

that he was a lawful, legitimate, fever-proof Chinn.

He prepared his plan of action much as his grandfather would have

done; and when Bukta appeared in the morning with a most liberal

supply of food, said nothing of the overnight desertion. Bukta

would have been relieved by an outburst of human anger; but Chinn

finished his victual leisurely, and a cheroot, ere he made any

sign.

They are very much afraid," said Bukta, who was not too bold

himself "It remains only to give orders. They said they will

obey if thou wilt only stand between them and the Government."

"That I know," said Chinn, strolling slowly to the table-land. A

few of the elder men stood in an irregular semicircle in an open

glade; but the ruck of people - women and children were hidden

in the thicket. They had no desire to face the first anger of Jan

Chinn the First.

Seating himself on a fragment of split rock, he smoked his

cheroot to the butt, hearing men breathe hard all about him.

Then he cried, so suddenly that they jumped:

"Bring the man that was bound!"

A scuffle and a cry were followed by the appearance of a Hindoo

vaccinator, quaking with fear, bound hand and foot, as the Bhils

of old were accustomed to bind their human sacrifices. He was

pushed cautiously before the presence; but young Chinn did not

look at him.

"I said - the man that was bound. Is it a jest to bring me one

tied like a buffalo? Since when could the Bhil bind folk at his

pleasure? Cut!"

Half a dozen hasty knives cut away the thongs, and the man

crawled to Chinn, who pocketed his case of lancets and tubes of

lymph. Then, sweeping the semicircle with one comprehensive

forefinger, and in the voice of compliment, he said, clearly and

distinctly: " Pigs!

"Ai!" whispered Bukta. "Now he speaks. Woe to foolish people!"

"I have come on foot from my house" (the assembly shuddered) "to

make clear a matter which any other Satpura Bhil would have seen

with both eyes from a distance. Ye know the Small-pox who pits

and scars your children so that like wasp-combs. It is an order

of the Government that whoso is scratched on the arm with these

little knives which I hold up is charmed against her. All Sahibs

are thus charmed, and very many Hindoos. This is the mark of the

charm. Look!"

He rolled back his sleeve to the armpit and showed the white

scars of the vaccination-mark on his white skin. "Come, all, and

look."

A few daring spirits came up, and nodded their heads wisely.

There was certainly a mark, and they knew well what other dread

marks were hidden by the shirt. Merciful was Jan Chinn, that

then and there proclaimed his godhead!

"Now all these things the man whom ye bound told you."

I did - a hundred times; but they answered with blows," groaned

the operator, chafing his wrists and ankles.

"But, being pigs, ye did not believe; and so came I here to save

you, first from Small-pox, next from a great folly of fear, and

lastly, it may be,from the rope and the jail. It is no gain to

me; it is no pleasure to me: but for the sake of that one who is

yonder, who made the Bhil a man" - he pointed down the hill --"

I, who am of his blood, the son of his son, come to turn your

people. And I speak the truth, as did Jan Chinn."

The crowd murmured reverently, and men stole out of the thicket

by twos and threes to join it. There was no anger in their god's

face.

"These are my orders. (Heaven send they'll take 'em, but I seem

to have impressed 'em so far!) I myself will stay among you

while this man scratches your arms with the knives, after the

order of the Government. In three, or it may be five or seven,

days, your arms will swell and itch and burn. That is the power

of Small-pox fighting in your base blood against the orders of

the Government I will therefore stay among you till I see that

Small-pox is conquered, and I will not go away till the men and

the women and the little children show me upon their arms such

marks as I have even now showed you. I bring with me two very

good guns, and a man whose name is known among beasts and men.

We will hunt together, I and he and your young men, and the

others shall eat and lie still. This is my order."

There was a long pause while victory hung in the balance. A

white-haired old sinner, standing on one uneasy leg, piped up:

"There are ponies and some few bullocks and other things for

which we need a kowl [protection]. They were not taken in the

way of trade."

The battle was won, and John Chinn drew a breath of relief. The

young Bhils had been raiding, but if taken swiftly all could be

put straight.

"I will write a kowl so soon as the ponies, the bullocks, and the

other things are counted before me and sent back whence they

came. But first we will put the Government mark on such as have

not been visited by Small-pox." In an undertone, to the

vaccinator: "If you show you are afraid you'll never see Poona

again, my friend."

"There is not sufficient ample supply of vaccination for all this

population," said the man. "They destroyed the offeecial calf."

They won't know the difference. Scrape 'em and give me a couple

of lancets; I'll attend to the elders."

The aged diplomat who had demanded protection was the first

victim. He fell to Chinn's hand and dared not cry out. As soon

as he was freed he dragged up a companion, and held him fast,

and the crisis became, as it were, a child's sport; for the

vaccinated chased the unvaccinated to treatment, vowing that all

the tribe must suffer equally. The women shrieked, and the

children ran howling; but Chinn laughed, and waved the

pink-tipped lancet.

"It is an honour," he cried. "Tell them, Bukta, how great an

honour it is that I myself mark them. Nay, I cannot mark every

one - the Hindoo must also do his work - but I will touch all

marks that he makes, so there will be an equal virtue in them.

Thus do the Rajputs stick pigs. Ho, brother with one eye! Catch

that girl and bring her to me. She need not run away yet, for

she is not married, and I do not seek her in marriage. She will

not come? Then she shall be shamed by her little brother, a fat

boy, a bold boy. He puts out his arm like a soldier. Look! He

does not flinch at the blood. Some day he shall be in my

regiment. And now, mother of many, we will lightly touch thee,

for Smallpox has been before us here. It is a true thing,

indeed, that this charm breaks the power of Mata. There will be

no more pitted faces among the Satpuras, and so ye can ask many

cows for each maid to be wed."

And so on and so on - quick-poured showman's patter, sauced in

the Bhil hunting-proverbs and tales of their own brand of coarse

humour till the lancets were blunted and both operators worn out.

But, nature being the same the world over, the unvaccinated grew

jealous of their marked comrades, and came near to blows about

it. Then Chinn declared himself a court of justice, no longer a

medical board, and made formal inquiry into the late robberies.

"We are the thieves of Mahadeo," said the Bhils, simply. "It is

our fate, and we were frightened. When we are frightened we

always steal."

Simply and directly as children, they gave in the tale of the

plunder, all but two bullocks and some spirits that had gone

amissing (these Chinn promised to make good out of his own

pocket), and ten ringleaders were despatched to the lowlands

with a wonderful document, written on the leaf of a note-book,

and addressed to an Assistant District Superintendent of Police.

There was warm calamity in that note, as Jan Chinn warned them,

but anything was better than loss of liberty.

Armed with this protection, the repentant raiders went down-hill.

They had no desire whatever to meet Mr. Dundas Fawne of the

Police, aged twenty-two, and of a cheerful countenance, nor did

they wish to revisit the scene of their robberies. Steering a

middle course, they ran into the camp of the one Government

chaplain allowed to the various irregular corps through a

district of some fifteen thousand square miles, and stood before

him in a cloud of dust. He was by way of being a priest, they

knew, and, what was more to the point, a good sportsman who paid

his beaters generously.

When he read Chinn's note he laughed, which they deemed a lucky

omen, till he called up policemen, who tethered the ponies and

the bullocks by the piled house-gear, and laid stern hands upon

three of that smiling band of the thieves of Mahadeo. The

chaplain himself addressed them magisterially with a

riding-whip. That was painful, but Jan Chinn had prophesied it.

They submitted, but would not give up the written protection,

fearing the jail. On their way back they met Mr. D. Fawne, who

had heard about the robberies, and was not pleased.

"Certainly," said the eldest of the gang, when the second

interview was at an end, "certainly Jan Chinn's protection has

saved us our liberty, but it is as though there were many

beatings in one small piece of paper. Put it away."

One climbed into a tree, and stuck the letter into a cleft forty

feet from the ground, where it could do no harm. Warmed, sore,

but happy, the ten returned to Jan Chinn next day, where he sat

among uneasy Bhils, all looking at their right arms, and all

bound under terror of their god's disfavour not to scratch.

"It was a good kowl," said the leader. "First the chaplain, who

laughed, took away our plunder, and beat three of us, as was

promised. Next, we meet Fawne Sahib, who frowned, and asked for

the plunder. We spoke the truth, and so he beat us all, one

after another, and called us chosen names. He then gave us these

two bundles "-they set down a bottle of whisky and a box of

cheroots--" and we came away. The kowl is left in a tree,

because its virtue is that so soon as we show it to a Sahib we

are beaten."

"But for that kowl" said Jan Chinn, sternly, "ye would all have

been marching to jail with a policeman on either side. Ye come

now to serve as beaters for me. These people are unhappy, and

we will go hunting till they are well. To-night we will make a

feast."

It is written in the chronicles of the Satpura Bhils, together

with many other matters not fit for print, that through five

days, after the day that he had put his mark upon them, Jan

Chinn the First hunted for his people; and on the five nights of

those days the tribe was gloriously and entirely drunk. Jan

Chinn bought country spirits of an awful strength, and slew wild

pig and deer beyond counting, so that if any fell sick they might

have two good reasons.

Between head- and stomach-aches they found no time to think of

their arms, but followed Jan Chinn obediently through the

jungles, and with each day's returning confidence men, women,

and children stole away to their villages as the little army

passed by. They carried news that it was good and right to be

scratched with ghost-knives; that Jan Chinn was indeed

reincarnated as a god of free food and drink, and that of all

nations the Satpura Bhils stood first in his favour, if they

would only refrain from scratching. Henceforward that kindly

demi-god would be connected in their minds with great gorgings

and the vaccine and lancets of a paternal Government.

"And to-morrow I go back to my home," said Jan Chinn to his

faithful few, whom neither spirits, overeating, nor swollen

glands could conquer. It is hard for children and savages to

behave reverently at all times to the idols of their

make-belief; and they had frolicked excessively with Jan Chinn.

But the reference to his home cast a gloom on the people.

"And the Sahib will not come again?" said he who had been

vaccinated first.

"That is to be seen," answered Chinn, warily.

"Nay, but come as a white man -- come as a young man whom we know

and love; for, as thou alone knowest, we are a weak people. If

we again saw thy -- thy horse -" They were picking up their

courage.

"I have no horse. I came on foot with Bukta, yonder. What is

this?""Thou knowest - the thing that thou hast chosen for a

night-horse." The little men squirmed in fear and awe.

"Night-horses? Bukta, what is this last tale of children?"

Bukta had been a silent leader in Chinn's presence since the

night of his desertion, and was grateful for a chance-flung

question.

They know, Sahib," he whispered. "It is the Clouded Tiger. That

that comes from the place where thou didst once sleep. It is thy

horse - as it has been these three generations."

"My horse! That was a dream of the Bhils."

"It is no dream. Do dreams leave the tracks of broad pugs on

earth? Why make two faces before thy people? They know of the

night-ridings, and they - and they - "

"Are afraid, and would have them cease."

Bukta nodded. "If thou hast no further need of him. He is thy

horse."

"The thing leaves a trail, then?" said Chinn.

"We have seen it. It is like a village road under the tomb."

"Can ye find and follow it for me?"

"By daylight - if one comes with us, and, above all, stands near

by."

"I will stand close, and we will see to it that Jan Chinn does

not ride any more."

The Bhils shouted the last words again and again.

>From Chinn's point of view the stalk was nothing more than an

ordinary one - down-hill, through split and crannied rocks,

unsafe, perhaps, if a man did not keep his wits by him, but no

worse than twenty others he had undertaken. Yet his men - they

refused absolutely to beat, and would only trail - dripped sweat

at every move. They showed the marks of enormous pugs that ran,

always down-hill, to a few hundred feet below Jan Chinn's tomb,

and disappeared in a narrow-mouthed cave. It was an insolently

open road, a domestic highway, beaten without thought of

concealment.

"The beggar might be paying rent and taxes," Chinn muttered ere

he asked whether his friend's taste ran to cattle or man.

"Cattle," was the answer. "Two heifers a week. We drive them for

him at the foot of the hill. It is his custom. If we did not, he

might seek us."

"Blackmail and piracy," said Chinn. "I can't say I fancy going

into the cave after him. What's to be done?"

The Bhils fell back as Chinn lodged himself behind a rock with

his rifle ready. Tigers, he knew, were shy beasts, but one who

had been long cattle-fed in this sumptuous style might prove

overbold.

"He speaks!" some one whispered from the rear. "He knows, too."

"Well, of all the infernal cheek!" said Chinn. There was an angry

growl from the cave - a direct challenge.

"Come out, then," Chinn shouted. "Come out of that. Let's have a

look at you."The brute knew well enough that there was some

connection between brown nude Bhils and his weekly allowance;

but the white helmet in the sunlight annoyed him, and he did not

approve of the voice that broke his rest. Lazily as a gorged

snake, he dragged himself out of the cave, and stood yawning and

blinking at the entrance. The sunlight fell upon his flat right

side, and Chinn wondered. Never had he seen a tiger marked

after this fashion. Except for his head, which was staringly

barred, he was dappled - not striped, but dappled like a child's

rocking-horse in rich shades of smoky black on red gold. That

portion of his belly and throat which should have been white was

orange, and his tail and paws were black.

He looked leisurely for some ten seconds, and then deliberately

lowered his head, his chin dropped and drawn in, staring

intently at the man. The effect of this was to throw forward the

round arch of his skull, with two broad bands across it, while

below the bands glared the unwinking eyes; so that, head on, as

he stood, he showed something like a diabolically scowling

pantomime-mask. It was a piece of natural mesmerism that he had

practised many times on his quarry, and though Chinn was by no

means a terrified heifer, he stood for a while, held by the

extraordinary oddity of the attack. The head - the body seemed to

have been packed away behind it - the ferocious, skull-like head,

crept nearer to the switching of an angry tail-tip in the grass.

Left and right the Bhils had scattered to let John Chinn subdue

his own horse."My word!" he thought. "He's trying to frighten

me!" and fired between the saucer-like eyes, leaping aside upon

the shot.

A big coughing mass, reeking of carrion, bounded past him up the

hill, and he followed discreetly. The tiger made no attempt to

turn into the jungle; he was hunting for sight and breath - nose

up, mouth open, the tremendous fore-legs scattering the gravel in

spurts.

Scuppered!" said John Chinn, watching the flight. "Now if he was

a partridge he'd tower. Lungs must be full of blood."

The brute had jerked himself over a boulder and fallen out of

sight the other side. John Chinn looked over with a ready

barrel. But the red trail led straight as an arrow even to his

grandfather's tomb, and there, among the smashed spirit-bottles

and the fragments of the mud image, the life left, with a flurry

and a grunt.

"If my worthy ancestor could see that," said John Chinn, "he'd

have been proud of me. Eyes, lower jaw, and lungs. A very nice

shot." He whistled for Bukta as he drew the tape over the

stiffening bulk.

"Ten - six - eight - by Jove! It's nearly eleven - call it

eleven. Fore-arm, twenty-four -five - seven and a half. A short

tail, too: three feet one. But what a skin! Oh, Bukta! Bukta! The

men with the knives swiftly."

"Is he beyond question dead?" said an awe-stricken voice behind a

rock.

"That was not the way I killed my first tiger," said Chinn. "I

did not think that Bukta would run. I had no second gun."

"It - it is the Clouded Tiger," said Bukta, un-heeding the taunt.

"He is dead."

Whether all the Bhils, vaccinated and unvaccinated, of the

Satpuras had lain by to see the kill, Chinn could not say; but

the whole hill's flank rustled with little men, shouting,

singing, and stamping. And yet, till he had made the first cut

in the splendid skin, not a man would take a knife; and, when the

shadows fell, they ran from the red-stained tomb, and no

persuasion would bring them back till dawn. So Chinn spent a

second night in the open, guarding the carcass from jackals, and

thinking about his ancestor.

He returned to the lowlands to the triumphal chant of an

escorting army three hundred strong, the Mahratta vaccinator

close at his elbow, and the rudely dried skin a trophy before

him. When that army suddenly and noiselessly disappeared, as

quail in high corn, he argued he was near civilisation, and a

turn in the road brought him upon the camp of a wing of his own

corps. He left the skin on a cart-tail for the world to see, and

sought the Colonel.

"They're perfectly right," he explained earnestly. "There isn't

an ounce of vice in 'em. They were only frightened. I've

vaccinated the whole boiling, and they like it awfully. What are

- what are we doing here, sir?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out," said the Colonel. "I don't

know yet whether we're a piece of a brigade or a police force.

However, I think we'll call ourselves a police force. How did

you manage to get a Bhil vaccinated?"

"Well, sir," said Chinn, " I've been thinking it over, and, as

far as I can make out, I've got a sort of hereditary influence

over 'em."

"So I know, or I wouldn't have sent you; but what, exactly?"

"It's rather rummy. It seems, from what I can make out, that I'm

my own grandfather reincarnated, and I've been disturbing the

peace of the country by riding a pad-tiger of nights. If I

hadn't done that, I don't think they'd have objected to the

vaccination; but the two together were more than they could

stand. And so, sir, I've vaccinated 'em, and shot my tiger-horse

as a sort o' proof of good faith. You never saw such a skin in

your life."

The Colonel tugged his moustache thought-fully. "Now, how the

deuce," said he, "am I to include that in my report?"

Indeed, the official version of the Bhils' anti-vaccination

stampede said nothing about Lieutenant John Chinn, his godship.

But Bukta knew, and the corps knew, and every Bhil in the

Satpura hills knew.

And now Bukta is zealous that John Chinn shall swiftly be wedded

and impart his powers to a son; for if the Chinn succession

fails, and the little Bhils are left to their own imaginings,

there will be fresh trouble in the Satpuras.

End of, "THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS"

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

All supplies very bad and dear, and there are no facilities for

even the smallest repairs. - Sailing Directions.

Her nationality was British, but you will not find her house-flag

in the list of our mercantile marine. She was a

nine-hundred-ton, iron, schooner-rigged, screw cargo-boat,

differing externally in no way from any other tramp of the sea.

But it is with steamers as it is with men. There are those who

will for a consideration sail extremely close to the wind; and,

in the present state of a fallen world, such people and such

steamers have their use. From the hour that the Aglaia first

entered the Clyde -- new, shiny, and innocent, with a quart of

cheap champagne trickling down her cut-water -- Fate and her

owner, who was also her captain, decreed that she should deal

with embarrassed crowned heads, fleeing Presidents, financiers

of over-extended ability, women to whom change of air was

imperative, and the lesser law-breaking Powers. Her career led

her sometimes into the Admiralty Courts, where the sworn

statements of her skipper filled his brethren with envy. The

mariner cannot tell or act a lie in the face of the sea, or

mis-lead a tempest; but, as lawyers have discovered, he makes up

for chances withheld when he returns to shore, an affidavit in

either hand.

The Aglaia figured with distinction in the great Mackinaw

salvage-case. It was her first slip from virtue, and she learned

how to change her name, but not her heart, and to run across the

sea. As the Guiding Light she was very badly wanted in a South

American port for the little matter of entering harbour at full

speed, colliding with a coal-hulk and the State's only

man-of-war, just as that man-of-war was going to coal. She put

to sea without explanations, though three forts fired at her for

half an hour. As the Julia M'Gregor she had been concerned in

picking up from a raft certain gentlemen who should have stayed

in Noumea, but who preferred making themselves vastly unpleasant

to authority in quite another quarter of the world; and as the

Shah-in-Shah she had been overtaken on the high seas, indecently

full of munitions of war, by the cruiser of an agitated Power at

issue with its neighbour. That time she was very nearly sunk, and

her riddled hull gave eminent lawyers of two countries great

profit. After a season she reappeared as the Martin Hunt painted

a dull slate-colour, with pure saffron funnel, and boats of

robin's-egg blue, engaging in the Odessa trade till she was

invited (and the invitation could not well be disregarded) to

keep away from Black Sea ports altogether.

She had ridden through many waves of depression. Freights might

drop out of sight, Seamen's Unions throw spanners and nuts at

certificated masters, or stevedores combine till cargo perished

on the dock-head; but the boat of many names came and went,

busy, alert, and inconspicuous always. Her skipper made no

complaint of hard times, and port officers observed that her

crew signed and signed again with the regularity of Atlantic

liner boatswains. Her name she changed as occasion called; her

well-paid crew never; and a large percentage of the profits of

her voyages was spent with an open hand on her engine-room. She

never troubled the underwriters, and very seldom stopped to talk

with a signal-station, for her business was urgent and private.

But an end came to her tradings, and she perished in this manner.

Deep peace brooded over Europe, Asia, Africa, America,

Australasia, and Polynesia. The Powers dealt together more or

less honestly; banks paid their depositors to the hour; diamonds

of price came safely to the hands of their owners; Republics

rested content with their Dictators; diplomats found no one whose

presence in the least incommoded them; monarchs lived openly with

their lawfully wedded wives. It was as though the whole earth

had put on its best Sunday bib and tucker; and business was very

bad for the Martin Hunt. The great, virtuous calm engulfed her,

slate sides, yellow funnel, and all, but cast up in another

hemisphere the steam whaler Haliotis, black and rusty, with a

manure-coloured funnel, a litter of dingy white boats, and an

enormous stove, or furnace, for boiling blubber on her forward

well-deck. There could be no doubt that her trip was successful,

for she lay at several ports not too well known, and the smoke of

her trying-out insulted the beaches.

Anon she departed, at the speed of the average London

four-wheeler, and entered a semi-inland sea, warm, still, and

blue, which is, perhaps, the most strictly preserved water in

the world. There she stayed for a certain time, and the great

stars of those mild skies beheld her playing puss-in-the-corner

among islands where whales are never found. All that while she

smelt abominably, and the smell, though fishy, was not

whalesome. One evening calamity descended upon her from the

island of Pygang-Watai, and she fled, while her crew jeered at a

fat black-and-brown gunboat puffing far behind. They knew to the

last revolution the capacity of every boat, on those seas, that

they were anxious to avoid. A British ship with a good

conscience does not, as a rule, flee from the man-of-war of a

foreign Power, and it is also considered a breach of etiquette

to stop and search British ships at sea. These things the

skipper of the Haliotis did not pause to prove, but held on at an

inspiriting eleven knots an hour till nightfall. One thing only

he overlooked.

The Power that kept an expensive steam-patrol moving up and down

those waters (they had dodged the two regular ships of the

station with an ease that bred contempt) had newly brought up a

third and a fourteen-knot boat with a clean bottom to help the

work; and that was why the Haliotis, driving hard from the east

to the west, found herself at daylight in such a position that

she could not help seeing an arrangement of four flags, a mile

and a half behind, which read: "Heave to, or take the

consequences!"

She had her choice, and she took it. The end came when,

presuming on her lighter draught, she tried to draw away

northward over a friendly shoal. The shell that arrived by way

of the Chief Engineer's cabin was some five inches in diameter,

with a practice, not a bursting, charge. It had been intended to

cross her bows, and that was why it knocked the framed portrait

of the Chief Engineer's wife - and she was a very pretty girl -

on to the floor, splintered his wash-hand stand, crossed the

alleyway into the engine-room, and striking on a grating, dropped

directly in front of the forward engine, where it burst, neatly

fracturing both the bolts that held the connecting-rod to the

forward crank.

What follows is worth consideration. The forward engine had no

more work to do. Its released piston-rod, therefore, drove up

fiercely, with nothing to check it, and started most of the nuts

of the cylinder-cover. It came down again, the full weight of

the steam behind it, and the foot of the disconnected

connecting-rod, useless as the leg of a man with a sprained

ankle, flung out to the right and struck the starboard, or

right-hand, cast-iron supporting-column of the forward engine,

cracking it clean through about six inches above the base, and

wedging the upper portion outwards three inches towards the

ship's side. There the connecting-rod jammed. Meantime, the

after-engine, being as yet unembarrassed, went on with its work,

and in so doing brought round at its next revolution the crank of

the forward engine, which smote the already jammed

connecting-rod, bending it and therewith the piston-rod

cross-head- the big cross-piece that slides up and down so

smoothly.

The cross-head jammed sideways in the guides, and, in addition to

putting further pressure on the already broken starboard

supporting-column, cracked the port, or left-hand,

supporting-column in two or three places. There being nothing

more that could be made to move, the engines brought up, all

standing, with a hiccup that seemed to lift the Haliotis a foot

out of the water; and the engine-room staff, opening every steam

outlet that they could find in the confusion, arrived on deck

somewhat scalded, but calm. There was a sound below of things

happening - a rushing, clicking, purring, grunting, rattling

noise that did not last for more than a minute. It was the

machinery adjusting itself, on the spur of the moment, to a

hundred altered conditions. Mr. Wardrop, one foot on the upper

grating, inclined his ear sideways, and groaned. You cannot

stop engines working at twelve knots an hour in three seconds

without disorganising them. The Haliotis slid forward in a

cloud of steam, shrieking like a wounded horse. There was

nothing more to do. The five-inch shell with a reduced charge

had settled the situation. And when you are full, all three

holds, of strictly preserved pearls; when you have cleaned out

the Tanna Bank, the Sea-Horse Bank, and four other banks from

one end to the other of the Amanala Sea -when you have ripped

out the very heart of a rich Government monopoly so that five

years will not repair your wrong-doings - you must smile and

take what is in store. But the skipper reflected, as a launch

put out from the man-of-war, that he had been bombarded on the

high seas, with the British flag - several of them -

picturesquely disposed above him, and tried to find comfort from

the thought.

Where," said the stolid naval lieutenant hoisting himself aboard,

"where are those dam' pearls?"

They were there beyond evasion. No affidavit could do away with

the fearful smell of decayed oysters, the diving-dresses, and

the shell-littered hatches. They were there to the value of

seventy thousand pounds, more or less; and every pound poached.

The man-of-war was annoyed; for she had used up many tons of

coal, she had strained her tubes, and, worse than all, her

officers and crew had been hurried. Every one on the Haliotis

was arrested and rearrested several times, as each officer came

aboard; then they were told by what they esteemed to be the

equivalent of a midshipman that they were to consider themselves

prisoners, and finally were put under arrest.

It's not the least good," said the skipper, suavely. "You'd much

better send us a tow - "

"Be still - you are arrest!" was the reply.

"Where the devil do you expect we are going to escape to?" We're

helpless. You've got to tow us into somewhere, and explain why

you fired on us. Mr. Wardrop, we're helpless, aren't we?"

"Ruined from end to end," said the man of machinery. "If she

rolls, the forward cylinder will come down and go through her

bottom. Both columns are clean cut through. There's nothing to

hold anything up."

The council of war clanked off to see if Mr. Wardrop's words were

true. He warned them that it was as much as a man's life was

worth to enter the engine-room, and they contented themselves

with a distant inspection through the thinning steam. The

Haliotis lifted to the long, easy swell, and the starboard

supporting-column ground a trifle, as a man grits his teeth

under the knife. The forward cylinder was depending on that

unknown force men call the pertinacity of materials, which now

and then balances that other heartbreaking power, the perversity

of inanimate things.

"You see!" said Mr. Wardrop, hurrying them away. "The engines

aren't worth their price as old iron."

"We tow," was the answer. "Afterwards we shall confiscate."

The man-of-war was short-handed, and did not see the necessity

for putting a prize-crew aboard the Haliotis. So she sent one

sublieutenant, whom the skipper kept very drunk, for he did not

wish to make the tow too easy, and, moreover, he had an

inconspicuous little rope hanging from the stem of his ship.

Then they began to tow at an average speed of four knots an hour.

The Haliotis was very hard to move, and the gunnery-lieutenant,

who had fired the five-inch shell, had leisure to think upon

consequences. Mr. Wardrop was the busy man. He borrowed all the

crew to shore up the cylinders with spars and blocks from the

bottom and sides of the ship. It was a day's risky work; but

anything was better than drowning at the end of a tow-rope; and

if the forward cylinder had fallen,it would have made its way to

the sea-bed, and taken the Haliotis after.

"Where are we going to, and how long will they tow us?" he asked

of the skipper.

"God knows! and this prize-lieutenant's drunk. What do you think

you can do?"

"There's just the bare chance," Mr. Wardrop whispered, though no

one was within hearing -"there's just the bare chance o'

repairin' her, if a man knew how. They've twisted the very guts

out of her, bringing her up with that jerk; but I'm saying that,

with time and patience, there's just the chance o' making steam

yet. We could do it."

The skipper's eye brightened. "Do you mean," he began, "that she

is any good?"

"Oh, no," said Mr. Wardrop. "She'll need three thousand pounds in

repairs, at the lowest, if she's to take the sea again, an' that

apart from any injury to her structure. She's like a man fallen

down five pair o' stairs. We can't tell for months what has

happened; but we know she'll never be good again without a new

inside. Ye should see the condenser-tubes an' the steam

connections to the donkey, for two things only. I'm not afraid

of them repairin' her. I'm afraid of them stealin' things."

"They've fired on us. They'll have to explain that."

"Our reputation's not good enough to ask for explanations. Let's

take what we have and be thankful. Ye would not have consuls

remembern' the Guidin' Light, an' the Shah-in-Shah, an' the

Aglaia, at this most alarmin' crisis. We've been no better than

pirates these ten years. Under Providence we're no worse than

thieves now. We've much to be thankful for - if we e'er get back

to her."

"Make it your own way, then," said the skipper. "If there's the

least chance - "

"I'll leave none," said Mr. Wardrop - "none that they'll dare to

take. Keep her heavy on the tow, for we need time."

The skipper never interfered with the affairs of the engine-room,

and Mr. Wardrop - an artist in his profession - turned to and

composed a work terrible and forbidding. His background was the

dark-grained sides of the engine-room; his material the metals

of power and strength, helped out with spars, baulks, and ropes.

The man-of-war towed sullenly and viciously. The Haliotis behind

her hummed like a hive before swarming. With extra and totally

unneeded spars her crew blocked up the space round the forward

engine till it resembled a statue in its scaffolding, and the

butts of the shores interfered with every view that a

dispassionate eye might wish to take. And that the dispassionate

mind might be swiftly shaken out of its calm, the well-sunk

bolts of the shores were wrapped round untidily with loose ends

of ropes, giving a studied effect of most dangerous insecurity.

Next, Mr. Wardrop took up a collection from the after-engine,

which, as you will remember, had not been affected in the general

wreck. The cylinder escape-valve he abolished with a

flogging-hammer. It is difficult in far-off ports to come by

such valves, unless, like Mr. Wardrop, you keep duplicates in

store. At the same time men took off the nuts of two of the

great holding-down bolts that serve to keep the engines in place

on their solid bed. An engine violently arrested in mid-career

may easily jerk off the nut of a holding-down bolt, and this

accident looked very natural.

Passing along the tunnel, he removed several shaft coupling-bolts

and -nuts, scattering other and ancient pieces of iron

underfoot. Cylinder-bolts he cut off to the number of six from

the after-engine cylinder, so that it might match its neighbour,

and stuffed the bilge - and feed-pumps with cotton-waste. Then

he made up a neat bundle of the various odds and ends that he had

gathered from the engines - little things like nuts and

valve-spindles, all carefully tallowed - and retired with them

under the floor of the engine-room, where he sighed, being fat,

as he passed from manhole to manhole of the double bottom, and in

a fairly dry submarine compartment hid them. Any engineer,

particularly in an unfriendly port, has a right to keep his spare

stores where he chooses; and the foot of one of the cylinder

shores blocked all entrance into the regular store-room, even if

that had not been already closed with steel wedges. In

conclusion, he disconnected the after-engine, laid piston and

connecting-rod, carefully tallowed, where it would be most

inconvenient to the casual visitor, took out three of the eight

collars of the thrust-block, hid them where only he could find

them again, filled the boilers by hand, wedged the sliding doors

of the coal-bunkers, and rested from his labours. The

engine-room was a cemetery, and it did not need the contents of

the ash-lift through the skylight to make it any worse.

He invited the skipper to look at the completed work.

Saw ye ever such a forsaken wreck as that ?" said he, proudly.

"It almost frights me to go under those shores. Now, what d' you

think they'll do to us?"

"Wait till we see," said the skipper. " It'll be bad enough when

it comes."

He was not wrong. The pleasant days of towing ended all too soon,

though the Haliotis trailed behind her a heavily weighted jib

stayed out into the shape of a pocket; and Mr. Wardrop was no

longer an artist of imagination, but one of seven-and-twenty

prisoners in a prison full of insects. The man-of-war had towed

them to the nearest port, not to the headquarters of the colony,

and when Mr. Wardrop saw the dismal little harbour, with its

ragged line of Chinese junks, its one crazy tug, and the

boat-building shed that, under the charge of a philosophical

Malay, represented a dockyard, he sighed and shook his head.

"I did well," he said. "This is the habitation o' wreckers an'

thieves. We're at the uttermost ends of the earth. Think you

they'll ever know in England?"

"Doesn't look like it," said the skipper.

They were marched ashore with what they stood up in, under a

generous escort, and were judged according to the customs of the

country, which, though excellent, are a little out of date.

There were the pearls; there were the poachers; and there sat a

small but hot Governor. He consulted for a while, and then

things began to move with speed, for he did not wish to keep a

hungry crew at large on the beach, and the man-of-war had gone

up the coast. With a wave of his hand - a stroke of the pen was

not necessary - he consigned them to the black gang-tana, the

back-country, and the hand of the Law removed them from his

sight and the knowledge of men. They were marched into the

palms, and the back-country swallowed them up - all the crew of

the Haliotis.

Deep peace continued to brood over Europe, Asia, Africa, America,

Australasia, and Polynesia.

It was the firing that did it. They should have kept their

counsel; but when a few thousand foreigners are bursting with

joy over the fact that a ship under the British flag has been

fired at on the high seas, news travels quickly; and when it

came out that the pearl-stealing crew had not been allowed access

to their consul (there was no consul within a few hundred miles

of that lonely port) even the friendliest of Powers has a right

to ask questions. The great heart of the British public was

beating furiously on account of the performance of a notorious

race-horse, and had not a throb to waste on distant accidents;

but somewhere deep in the hull of the ship of State there is

machinery which more or less accurately takes charge of foreign

affairs. That machinery began to revolve, and who so shocked and

surprised as the Power that had captured the Haliotis? It

explained that colonial governors and far-away men-of-war were

difficult to control, and promised that it would most certainly

make an example both of the Governor and the vessel. As for the

crew reported to be pressed into military service in tropical

climes, it would produce them as soon as possible, and it would

apologise, if necessary. Now, no apologies were needed. When

one nation apologises to an-other, millions of amateurs who have

no earthly concern with the difficulty hurl themselves into the

strife and embarrass the trained specialist. It was requested

that the crew be found, if they were still alive - they had been

eight months beyond knowledge - and it was promised that all

would be forgotten.

The little Governor of the little port was pleased with himself.

Seven-and-twenty white men made a very compact force to throw

away on a war that had neither beginning nor end - a jungle and

stockade fight that flickered and smouldered through the wet hot

years in the hills a hundred miles away, and was the heritage of

every wearied official. He had, he thought, deserved well of his

country; and if only some one would buy the unhappy Haliotis,

moored in the harbour below his verandah, his cup would be full.

He looked at the neatly silvered lamps that he had taken from her

cabins, and thought of much that might be turned to account. But

his countrymen in that moist climate had no spirit. They would

peep into the silent engine-room, and shake their heads. Even

the men-of-war would not tow her further up the coast, where the

Governor believed that she could be repaired. She was a bad

bargain; but her cabin carpets were undeniably beautiful, and his

wife approved of her mirrors.

Three hours later cables were bursting round him like shells,

for, though he knew it not, he was being offered as a sacrifice

by the nether to the upper millstone, and his superiors had no

regard for his feelings. He had, said the cables, grossly

exceeded his power, and failed to report on events. He would,

therefore - at this he cast himself back in his hammock -

produce the crew of the Haliotis. He would send for them, and,

if that failed, he would put his dignity on a pony and fetch

them himself. He had no conceivable right to make pearl-poachers

serve in any war. He would be held responsible.

Next morning the cables wished to know whether he had found the

crew of the Haliotis. They were to be found, freed and fed - he

was to feed them - till such time as they could be sent to the

nearest English port in a man-of-war. If you abuse a man long

enough in great words flashed over the sea-beds, things happen.

The Governor sent inland swiftly for his prisoners, who were

also soldiers; and never was a militia regiment more anxious to

reduce its strength. No power short of death could make these

mad men wear the uniform of their service. They would not

fight, except with their fellows, and it was for that reason the

regiment had not gone to war, but stayed in a stockade,

reasoning with the new troops. The autumn campaign had been a

fiasco, but here were the Englishmen. All the regiment marched

back to guard them, and the hairy enemy, armed with blow-pipes,

rejoiced in the forest. Five of the crew had died, but there

lined up on the Governor's verandah two-and-twenty men marked

about the legs with the scars of leech-bites. A few of them

wore fringes that had once been trousers; the others used

loin-cloths of gay patterns; and they existed beautifully but

simply in the Governor's verandah, and when he came out they

sang at him. When you have lost seventy thousand pounds' worth

of pearls, your pay, your ship, and all your clothes, and have

lived in bondage for five months beyond the faintest pretences

of civilisation, you know what true independence means, for you

become the happiest of created things - natural man.

The Governor told the crew that they were evil, and they asked

for food. When he saw how they ate, and when he remembered that

none of the pearl patrol-boats were expected for two months, he

sighed. But the crew of the Haliotis lay down in the verandah,

and said that they were pensioners of the Governor's bounty. A

grey-bearded man, fat and bald-headed, his one garment a

green-and-yellow loin-cloth, saw the Haliotis in the harbour,

and bellowed for joy. The men crowded to the verandah-rail,

kicking aside the long cane chairs. They pointed, gesticulated,

and argued freely, without shame. The militia regiment sat down

in the Governor's garden. The Governor retired to his hammock -

it was as easy to be killed lying as standing-and his women

squeaked from the shuttered rooms.

"She sold?" said the grey~bearded man, pointing to the Haliotis.

He was Mr. Wardrop.

"No good," said the Governor, shaking his head. "No one come

buy."

"He's taken my lamps, though," said the skipper. He wore one leg

of a pair of trousers, and his eye wandered along the verandah.

The Governor quailed. There were cuddy camp-stools and the

skipper's writing-table in plain sight.

"They've cleaned her out, o' course," said Mr. Wardrop. "They

would. We'll go aboard and take an inventory. See!" He waved his

hands over the harbour. "We - live - there - now. Sorry?"

The Governor smiled a smile of relief.

"He's glad of that," said one of the crew, reflectively. "I

shouldn't wonder."

They flocked down to the harbour-front, the militia regiment

clattering behind, and embarked themselves in what they found -

it happened to be the Governor's boat. Then they disappeared

over the bulwarks of the Haliotis, and the Governor prayed that

they might find occupation inside.

Mr. Wardrop's first bound took him to the engine-room; and when

the others were patting the well-remembered decks, they heard

him giving God thanks that things were as he had left them. The

wrecked engines stood over his head untouched; no inexpert hand

had meddled with his shores; the steel wedges of the store-room

were rusted home; and, best of all, the hundred and sixty tons of

good Australian coal in the bunkers had not diminished.

"I don't understand it," said Mr. Wardrop. "Any Malay knows the

use o' copper. They ought to have cut away the pipes. And with

Chinese junks coming here, too. It's a special interposition o'

Providence."

"You think so," said the skipper, from above. "There's only been

one thief here, and he's cleaned her out of all my things,

anyhow."

Here the skipper spoke less than the truth, for under the

planking of his cabin, only to be reached by a chisel, lay a

little money which never drew any interest - his sheet-anchor to

windward. It was all in clean sovereigns that pass current the

world over, and might have amounted to more than a hundred

pounds.

"He's left me alone. Let's thank God," repeated Mr. Wardrop.

"He's taken everything else; look!"

The Haliotis, except as to her engine-room, had been

systematically and scientifically gutted from one end to the

other, and there was strong evidence that an unclean guard had

camped in the skipper's cabin to regulate that plunder. She

lacked glass, plate, crockery, cutlery, mattresses, cuddy carpets

and chairs, all boats, and her copper ventilators. These things

had been removed, with her sails and as much of the wire rigging

as would not imperil the safety of the masts.

"He must have sold those," said the skipper. "The other things

are in his house, I suppose."

Every fitting that could be pried or screwed out was gone. Port,

starboard, and masthead lights; teak gratings; sliding sashes of

the deckhouse; the captain's chest of drawers, with charts and

chart-table; photographs, brackets, and looking-glasses; cabin

doors; rubber cuddy mats; hatch-irons; half the funnel-stays;

cork fenders; carpenter's grindstone and tool-chest; holystones,

swabs, squeegees; all cabin and pantry lamps; galley-fittings en

bloc; flags and flag-locker; clocks, chronometers; the forward

compass and the ship's bell and belfry, were among the missing.

There were great scarred marks on the deck-planking over which

the cargo-derricks had been hauled. One must have fallen by the

way, for the bulwark-rails were smashed and bent and the

side-plates bruised.

"It's the Governor," said the skipper "He's been selling her on

the instalment plan."

"Let's go up with spanners and shovels, and kill 'em all,"

shouted the crew. "Let's drown him, and keep the woman!"

"Then we'll be shot by that black-and-tan regiment - our

regiment. What's the trouble ashore ~ They've camped our

regiment on the beach."

"We're cut off; that's all. Go and see what they want," said Mr.

Wardrop. "You've the trousers."

In his simple way the Governor was a strategist. He did not

desire that the crew of the Haliotis should come ashore again,

either singly or in detachments, and he proposed to turn their

steamer into a convict-hulk. They would wait - he explained this

from the quay to the skipper in the barge - and they would

continue to wait till the man-of-war came along, exactly where

they were. If one of them set foot ashore, the entire regiment

would open fire, and he would not scruple to use the two cannon

of the town. Meantime food would be sent daily in a boat under

an armed escort. The skipper, bare to the waist, and rowing,

could only grind his teeth; and the Governor improved the

occasion, and revenged himself for the bitter words in the

cables, by saying what he thought of the morals and manners of

the crew. The barge returned to the Haliotis in silence, and the

skipper climbed aboard, white on the cheek-bones and blue about

the nostrils.

"I knew it," said Mr. Wardrop; "and they won't give us good food,

either. We shall have bananas morning, noon, and night, an' a man

can't work on fruit. We know that."

Then the skipper cursed Mr. Wardrop for importing frivolous

side-issues into the conversation; and the crew cursed one

another, and the Haliotis, the voyage, and all that they knew or

could bring to mind. They sat down in silence on the empty

decks, and their eyes burned in their heads. The green harbour

water chuckled at them overside. They looked at the palm-fringed

hills inland, at the white houses above the harbour road, at the

single tier of native craft by the quay, at the stolid soldiery

sitting round the two cannon, and, last of all, at the blue bar

of the horizon. Mr. War-drop was buried in thought, and scratched

imaginary lines with his untrimmed finger-nails on the planking.

"I make no promise," he said, at last, "for I can't say what may

or may not have happened to them. But here's the ship, and

here's us."

There was a little scornful laughter at this, and Mr. Wardrop

knitted his brows. He recalled that in the days when be wore

trousers he had been Chief Engineer of the Haliotis.

"Harland, Mackesy, Noble, Hay, Naughton, Fink, O'Hara, Trumbull."

"Here, sir!" The instinct of obedience waked to answer the

roll-call of the engine-room.

"Below!"

They rose and went.

"Captain, I'll trouble you for the rest of the men as I want

them. We'll get my stores out, and clear away the shores we

don't need, and then we'll patch her up. My men will remember

that they're in the Haliotis, - under me."

He went into the engine-room, and the others stared. They were

used to the accidents of the sea, but this was beyond their

experience. None who had seen the engine-room believed that

anything short of new engines from end to end could stir the

Haliotis from her moorings.

The engine-room stores were unearthed, and Mr. Wardrop's face,

red with the filth of the bilges and the exertion of travelling

on his stomach, lit with joy. The spare gear of the Haliotis had

been unusually complete, and two-and-twenty men, armed with

screw-jacks, differential blocks, tackle, vices, and a forge or

so, can look Kismet between the eyes without winking. The crew

were ordered to replace the holding-down and shaft-bearing

bolts, and return the collars of the thrust-block. When they had

finished, Mr. Wardrop delivered a lecture on repairing compound

engines without the aid of the shops, and the men sat about on

the cold machinery. The cross-head jammed in the guides leered

at them drunkenly, but offered no help. They ran their fingers

hopelessly into the cracks of the starboard supporting-column,

and picked at the ends of the ropes round the shores, while Mr.

Wardrop's voice rose and fell echoing, till the quick tropic

night closed down over the engine-room skylight.

Next morning the work of reconstruction began. It has been

explained that the foot of the connecting-rod was forced against

the foot of the starboard supporting-column, which it had cracked

through and driven outward towards the ship's skin. To all

appearance the job was more than hopeless, for rod and column

seemed to have been welded into one. But herein Providence

smiled on them for one moment to hearten them through the weary

weeks ahead. The second engineer -more reckless than resourceful

- struck at random with a cold chisel into the cast-iron of the

column, and a greasy, grey flake of metal flew from under the

imprisoned foot of the connecting-rod, while the rod itself fell

away slowly, and brought up with a thunderous clang somewhere in

the dark of the crank-pit. The guides-plates above were still

jammed fast in the guides, but the first blow had been struck.

They spent the rest of the day grooming the donkey-engine, which

stood immediately forward of the engine-room hatch. Its

tarpaulin, of course, had been stolen, and eight warm months had

not improved the working parts. Further, the last dying hiccup of

the Haliotis seemed - or it might have been the Malay from the

boat-house - to have lifted the thing bodily on its bolts, and

set it down inaccurately as regarded its steam connections.

"If we only had one single cargo-derrick!" Mr. Wardrop sighed.

"We can take the cylinder-cover off by hand, if we sweat; but to

get the rod out o' the piston's not possible unless we use

steam. Well, there'll be steam the morn, if there's nothing

else. She'll fizzle!"

Next morning men from the shore saw the Haliotis through a cloud,

for it was as though the deck smoked. Her crew were chasing

steam through the shaken and leaky pipes to its work in the

forward donkey-engine; and where oakum failed to plug a crack,

they stripped off their loin-cloths for lapping, and swore,

half-boiled and mother-naked. The donkey-engine worked - at a

price - the price of constant attention and furious stoking-

worked long enough to allow a wire-rope (it was made up of a

funnel and a foremast-stay) to be led into the engine-room and

made fast on the cylinder-cover of the forward engine. That rose

easily enough, and was hauled through the skylight and on to the

deck, many hands assisting the doubtful steam. Then came the tug

of war, for it was necessary to get to the piston and the jammed

piston-rod. They removed two of the piston junk-ring studs,

screwed in two strong iron eye-bolts by way of handles, doubled

the wire-rope, and set half a dozen men to smite with an

extemporised battering-ram at the end of the piston-rod, where it

peered through the piston, while the donkey-engine hauled upwards

on the piston itself. After four hours of this furious work, the

piston-rod suddenly slipped, and the piston rose with a jerk,

knocking one or two men over into the engine-room. But when Mr.

Wardrop declared that the piston had not split, they cheered, and

thought nothing of their wounds; and the donkey-engine was

hastily stopped; its boiler was nothing to tamper with.

And day by day their supplies reached them by boat. The skipper

humbled himself once more before the Governor, and as a

concession had leave to get drinking-water from the Malay

boat-builder on the quay. It was not good drinking-water, but

the Malay was anxious to supply anything in his power, if he were

paid for it.

Now when the jaws of the forward engine stood, as it were,

stripped and empty, they began to wedge up the shores of the

cylinder itself. That work alone filled the better part of three

days - warm and sticky days, when the hands slipped and sweat ran

into the eyes. When the last wedge was hammered home there was

no longer an ounce of weight on the supporting-columns; and Mr.

Wardrop rummaged the ship for boiler-plate three-quarters of an

inch thick, where he could find it. There was not much available,

but what there was was more than beaten gold to him. In one

desperate forenoon the entire crew, naked and lean, haled back,

more or less into place, the starboard supporting-column, which,

as you remember, was cracked clean through. Mr. Wardrop found

them asleep where they had finished the work, and gave them a

day's rest, smiling upon them as a father while he drew

chalk-marks about the cracks. They woke to new and more trying

labour; for over each one of those cracks a plate of

three-quarter-inch boiler-iron was to be worked hot, the

rivet-holes being drilled by hand. All that time they were fed on

fruits, chiefly bananas, with some sago.

Those were the days when men swooned over the ratchet-drill and

the hand-forge, and where they fell they had leave to lie unless

their bodies were in the way of their fellows' feet. And so,

patch upon patch, and a patch over all, the starboard

supporting-column was clouted; but when they thought all was

secure, Mr. Wardrop decreed that the noble patchwork would never

support working engines; at the best, it could only hold the

guide-bars approximately true. The deadweight of the cylinders

must be borne by vertical struts; and, therefore, a gang would

repair to the bows, and take out, with files, the big bow-anchor

davits, each of which was some three inches in diameter. They

threw hot coals at Wardrop, and threatened to kill him, those who

did not weep (they were ready to weep on the least provocation);

but he hit them with iron bars heated at the end, and they limped

forward, and the davits came with them when they returned. They

slept sixteen hours on the strength of it, and in three days two

struts were in place, bolted from the foot of the starboard

supporting-column to the under side of the cylinder. There

remained now the port, or condenser-column, which, though not so

badly cracked as its fellow, had also been strengthened in four

places with boiler-plate patches, but needed struts. They took

away the main stanchions of the bridge for that work, and, crazy

with toil, did not see till all was in place that the rounded

bars of iron must be flattened from top to bottom to allow the

air-pump levers to clear them. It was Wardrop's oversight, and he

wept bitterly before the men as he gave the order to unbolt the

struts and flatten them with hammer and the flame. Now the broken

engine was underpinned firmly, and they took away the wooden

shores from under the cylinders, and gave them to the robbed

bridge, thanking God for even half a day's work on gentle, kindly

wood instead of the iron that had entered into their souls. Eight

months in the back-country among the leeches, at a temperature of

84 degrees moist, is very bad for the nerves.

They had kept the hardest work to the last, as boys save Latin

prose, and, worn though they were, Mr. Wardrop did not dare to

give them rest. The piston-rod and connecting-rod were to be

straightened, and this was a job for a regular dockyard with

every appliance. They fell to it, cheered by a little chalk

showing of work done and time consumed which Mr. Wardrop wrote

up on the engine-room bulkhead. Fifteen days had gone -fifteen

days of killing labour - and there was hope before them.

It is curious that no man knows how the rods were straightened.

The crew of the Haliotis remember that week very dimly, as a

fever patient remembers the delirium of a long night. There were

fires everywhere, they say; the whole ship was one consuming

furnace, and the hammers were never still. Now, there could not

have been more than one fire at the most, for Mr. Wardrop

distinctly recalls that no straightening was done except under

his own eye. They remember, too, that for many years voices gave

orders which they obeyed with their bodies, but their minds were

abroad on all the seas. It seems to them that they stood through

days and nights slowly sliding a bar backwards and forwards

through a white glow that was part of the ship. They remember an

intolerable noise in their burning heads from the walls of the

stoke-hole, and they remember being savagely beaten by men whose

eyes seemed asleep. When their shift was over they would draw

straight lines in the air, anxiously and repeatedly, and would

question one another in their sleep, crying, "Is she straight?"

At last - they do not remember whether this was by day or by

night - Mr. Wardrop began to dance clumsily, and wept the while;

and they too danced and wept, and went to sleep twitching all

over; and when they woke, men said that the rods were

straightened, and no one did any work for two days, but lay on

the decks and ate fruit. Mr. Wardrop would go below from time to

time, and pat the two rods where they lay, and they heard him

singing hymns.

Then his trouble of mind went from him, and at the end of the

third day's idleness he made a drawing in chalk upon the deck,

with letters of the alphabet at the angles. He pointed out that,

though the piston-rod was more or less straight, the piston-rod

cross-head - the thing that had been jammed sideways in the

guides - had been badly strained, and had cracked the lower end

of the piston-rod. He was going to forge and shrink a

wrought-iron collar on the neck of the piston-rod where it joined

the cross-head, and from the collar he would bolt a Y-shaped

piece of iron whose lower arms should be bolted into the

cross-head. If anything more were needed, they could use up the

last of the boiler-plate.

So the forges were lit again, and men burned their bodies, but

hardly felt the pain. The finished connection was not beautiful,

but it seemed strong enough - at least, as strong as the rest of

the machinery; and with that job their labours came to an end.

All that remained was to connect up the engines, and to get food

and water. The skipper and four men dealt with the Malay

boat-builder by night chiefly; it was no time to haggle over the

price of sago and dried fish. The others stayed aboard and

replaced piston, piston-rod, cylinder-cover, cross-head, and

bolts, with the aid of the faithful donkey-engine. The

cylinder-cover was hardly steam-proof, and the eye of science

might have seen in the connecting-rod a flexure something like

that of a Christmas-tree candle which has melted and been

straightened by hand over a stove, but, as Mr. Wardrop said,

"She didn't hit anything."

As soon as the last bolt was in place, men tumbled over one

another in their anxiety to get to the hand starting-gear, the

wheel and worm, by which some engines can be moved when there is

no steam aboard. They nearly wrenched off the wheel, but it was

evident to the blindest eye that the engines stirred. They did

not revolve in their orbits with any enthusiasm, as good

machines should; indeed, they groaned not a little; but they

moved over and came to rest in a way which proved that they

still recognised man's hand. Then Mr. Wardrop sent his slaves

into the darker bowels of the engine-room and the stoke-hole, and

followed them with a flare-lamp. The boilers were sound, but

would take no harm from a little scaling and cleaning. Mr.

Wardrop would not have any one over-zealous, for he feared what

the next stroke of the tool might show. "The less we know about

her now," said he, "the better for us all, I'm thinkin'. Ye'll

understand me when I say that this is in no sense regular

engineerin'."

As his raiment, when he spoke, was his grey beard and uncut hair,

they believed him. They did not ask too much of what they met,

but polished and tallowed and scraped it to a false brilliancy.

"A lick of paint would make me easier in my mind," said Mr.

Wardrop, plaintively. "I know half the condenser-tubes are

started; and the propeller-shaftin' 's God knows how far out of

the true, and we'll need a new air-pump, an' the main-steam

leaks like a sieve, and there's worse each way I look; but -

paint's like clothes to a man, 'an ours is near all gone."

The skipper unearthed some stale ropy paint of the loathsome

green that they used for the galleys of sailing-ships, and Mr.

Wardrop spread it abroad lavishly to give the engines

self-respect.

His own was returning day by day, for he wore his loin-cloth

continuously; but the crew, having worked under orders, did not

feel as he did. The completed work satisfied Mr. Wardrop. He

would at the last have made shift to run to Singapore, and gone

home without vengeance taken to show his engines to his brethren

in the craft; but the others and the captain forbade him. They

had not yet recovered their self-respect.

"It would be safer to make what ye might call a trial trip, but

beggars mustn't be choosers; an if the engines will go over to

the hand-gear, the probability - I'm only saying it's a

probability the chance is that they'll hold up when we put steam

on her."

"How long will you take to get steam?" said the skipper.

God knows! Four hours - a day - half a week. If I can raise

sixty pound I'll not complain."

"Be sure of her first; we can't afford to go out half a mile, and

break down."

"My soul and body, man, we're one continuous breakdown, fore an'

aft! We might fetch Singapore, though."

"We'll break down at Pygang-Watai, where we can do good," was the

answer, in a voice that did not allow argument. "She's my boat,

and - I've had eight months to think in."

No man saw the Haliotis depart, though many heard her. She left

at two in the morning, having cut her moorings, and it was none

of her crew's pleasure that the engines should strike up a

thundering half-seas-over chanty that echoed among the hills.

Mr. Wardrop wiped away a tear as he listened to the new song.

"She's gibberin' - she's just gibberin'," he whimpered. "Yon's

the voice of a maniac.

And if engines have any soul, as their masters believe, he was

quite right. There were outcries and clamours, sobs and bursts

of chattering laughter, silences where the trained ear yearned

for the clear note, and torturing reduplications where there

should have been one deep voice. Down the screw-shaft ran

murmurs and warnings, while a heart-diseased flutter without

told that the propeller needed re-keying.

"How does she make it?" said the skipper.

"She moves, but - but she's breakin' my heart. The sooner we're

at Pygang-Watai, the better. She's mad, and we're waking the

town."

"Is she at all near safe?"

"What do I care how safe she is? She's mad. Hear that, now! To

be sure, nothing's hittin' anything, and the bearin's are fairly

cool, but - can ye not hear?"

"If she goes," said the skipper, "I don't care a curse. And she's

my boat, too."

She went, trailing a fathom of weed behind her. From a slow two

knots an hour she crawled up to a triumphant four. Anything

beyond that made the struts quiver dangerously, and filled the

engine-room with steam. Morning showed her out of sight of land,

and there was a visible ripple under her bows; but she

complained bitterly in her bowels, and, as though the noise had

called it, there shot along across the purple sea a swift, dark

proa, hawk-like and curious, which presently ranged alongside

and wished to know if the Haliotis were helpless. Ships, even

the steamers of the white men, had been known to break down in

those waters, and the honest Malay and Javanese traders would

sometimes aid them in their own peculiar way. But this ship was

not full of lady passengers and well-dressed officers. Men,

white, naked and savage, swarmed down her sides -- some

withred-hot iron bars, and others with large hammers - threw

themselves upon those innocent inquiring strangers, and, before

any man could say what had happened, were in full possession of

the proa, while the lawful owners bobbed in the water overside.

Half an hour later the proa's cargo of sago and trepang, as well

as a doubtful-minded compass, was in the Haliotis. The two huge

triangular mat sails, with their seventy-foot yards and booms,

had followed the cargo, and were being fitted to the stripped

masts of the steamer.

They rose, they swelled, they filled, and the empty steamer

visibly laid over as the wind took them. They gave her nearly

three knots an hour, and what better could men ask? But if she

had been forlorn before, this new purchase made her horrible to

see. Imagine a respectable charwoman in the tights of a

ballet-dancer rolling drunk along the streets, and you will come

to some faint notion of the appearance of that nine-hundred-ton,

well-decked, once schooner-rigged cargo-boat as she staggered

under her new help, shouting and raving across the deep. With

steam and sail that marvellous voyage continued; and the

bright-eyed crew looked over the rail, desolate, unkempt,

unshorn, shamelessly clothed beyond the decencies.

At the end of the third week she sighted the island of

Pygang-Watai, whose harbour is the turning-point of a pearl

sea-patrol. Here the gun-boats stay for a week ere they retrace

their line. There is no village at Pygang-Watai; only a stream

of water, some palms, and a harbour safe to rest in till the

first violence of the southeast monsoon has blown itself out.

They opened up the low coral beach, with its mound of

whitewashed coal ready for supply, the deserted huts for the

sailors, and the flagless flagstaff.

Next day there was no Haliotis - only a little proa rocking in

the warm rain at the mouth of the harbour, whose crew watched

with hungry eyes the smoke of a gunboat on the horizon.

Months afterwards there were a few lines in an English newspaper

to the effect that some gunboat of some foreign Power had broken

her back at the mouth of some far-away harbour by running at full

speed into a sunken wreck.

End of the, "DEVIL and THE DEEP SEA

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR