Boycotted Part 43

But why all this minute detail concerning one who is to disappear--if he had but known it!--before that howling night--

"Twas in '52 she grounded," said he, transferring something from his right cheek to his left. "Hang me on the Union Jack," (that was a nautical expression by which Peeler added solemnity to his statement) "if there was not exactly one million Spanish doubloons on board."

Sep whistled, but immediately checked himself, and sat down on the wind to hear the rest.

"Bust my b.u.t.tons if mortal man knows where she lies!" continued Peeler, "save and except yours 'umbly. Stand by, my shaver, and cast your c.o.c.k- eye on this bit of rag."

And he produced from his pocket a greasy piece of parchment with a map upon it.

"There," said he, laying his broad thumb on a red cross somewhere in the West Pacific, "there she lies--full of gold, my boy. s.h.i.+ver my jury- masts if she don't."

The wind on which Sep was sitting lifted him to his feet, as he grasped the map and gazed with quivering excitement on the mysterious red mark.

He laughed sardonically, and the perspiration stood in beads on his brow. Then, pus.h.i.+ng Peeler over the cliff, he put the map in his pocket, and walked on whistling in the night air to the cottage.

Sub-Chapter II.

THE SMILE.

"My own Velvetina!"

"Sep, my pet!"

"Can it really be?"

"Even so."

A silence, during which a pair of tangled eyelashes are dim with humid dew. Then--

"Did you meet daddy on the cliff, pet?"

He turned ashy white, even in the darkness, and recoiled several yards at the unexpected inquiry.

"Where?" at last he gasped, prevaricatingly.

"Then you saw him not!" cried she, "and he is out alone on this wild night; and only his thin socks on."

"Really?" replies Sep, "let me go and look for him."

He crushed her lily hand lovingly in his own and went. But he turned to the left at the end of the lane, and with scarcely half a dozen bounds reached the railway station, grasping the map and murmuring to himself, "My Velvy!" all the way.

Any one who could have seen that happy boy's face at the window of the second-cla.s.s carriage, as the train steamed majestically out of the station, would scarcely have dreamed of the deep meaning concealed beneath that ingenuous smile.

Smile on, Septimus, yet beware! The sleuth-hound is already on the track!

Sub-Chapter III.

THE SLEUTH-HOUND.

Solomon Smellie, of Scotland Yard, had yet his way to make in the world.

He was not exactly young, for time had already thinned the luxuriant growth of his hair, nor was he without enc.u.mbrance, for he had fifteen children. Yet he was an active and intelligent officer, and had once detected something--he forgot what. But that is not to the point.

What brought him, walking on this particular evening, to the foot of the beetling cliffs?

Ask the howling wind, which ever and anon flattened him against the chalk or drove him miles inland up some cavernous cave. Be that as it may, he walked.

"I wish I could detect something in all this," said he, pulling himself together, and glancing scornfully into the darkness.

As he did so, Captain Peeler's corpse alighted gracefully on the sand at his feet.

"Ah, ha!" said he, "this looks like business. Now let me think. How comes this here?"

There were no footsteps in the sand beside his own, therefore the miscreant or miscreants must have escaped in some other direction.

"Aha!" said he, presently looking up. "They may be up there."

And he leapt actively to the beetling summit.

"Better and better," said he, looking round him and observing a hoof mark in the yielding clay, of which he promptly took a plaster cast.

"Another link, ha, ha! the murderer was a horseman!"

And he sat down and wrote a lucid report on the whole case for his sergeant.

Solomon Smellie was in luck a.s.suredly! Scarcely had he concluded his literary labour, when, at a distance, he perceived a twinkling light.

"Ha, ha!" said he, "now see how the real artist in crime works. Yonder is a light. The murderer cannot have gone that way. Therefore he has gone this."

And he stepped into the railway station just as Sep's train steamed out.

"Too late, this time," muttered he, between his teeth. "But time will show--time will show!" Never did man speak a truer word!

Sub-Chapter IV.

THE STOWAWAYS.

The "Harnessed Mule" was a splendid vessel of a hundred and fifty tons; and as she sailed past the Nore like a floating queen flapping her white wings in the breeze, she reminded the beholders that England still rules the waves.

Her crew consisted of a skipper, four men, and a boy.

Was that all?

Who is this lurking figure in the forward hold, who, with a complacent smile on his lips, gazes on a crumpled map, and ever and anon sharpens a gimlet?

There is a stowaway on board the "Harnessed Mule."

One? There are two.

For in the stern hold lurks another figure, also smiling, as the wind plays through the thin hair on the top of his head, and mutters to himself--