E ship of dead men he'd have laid round with his knife sharp enough. But then a voice no bigger than a kitten's came to Mavis speaking in English, and saying, "The water's poisoned." It was that half-Jap girl Mitsuko. She pitched the yarn how she was the daughter of an English missionary that had married a Jap wife or not as may be. Anyway, they got themselves in some sort of scrape, and had to leave Japan in a hurry. And they went in a native junk for Shanghai. But on the way they fell in with a Chinese pirate, and got made prisoners. The Chinks made short work of the Jap sailors, but they held the reverend gent and his daughter to be worth while keeping alive for the sake of ransom. The same typhoon that had played Old Harry with the Lorna Doone blew these pirates out to sea, and battered them all to bits. And it seems they took a dislike to the missionary or thought him unlucky. Anyways, they tipped him over the side. of side. And Mitsuko wasn't so innocent as she looked. She had some kind of charm with her that was stuffed with poison. And when her dad was made an end of she popped this into the water, and it was that and not the plague that made the pirates turn their toes up. Well, now there was three of them with only a few drops left in the breaker of the Cap'n's boat. Pram made no bones about it. He said out loud that they must leave the rationed them very strict the girl on the ship, and die their blowing from the south'ard, own way in their own boat. it was their best chance now But Mavis said they couldn't they'd got a little water to leave her to die of her own push off from the junk and try poison like that. And before and make the trade route. Pram could get another word Pram said Mavis didn't set in she called to them piteous store one scrap by the treasure, that the ship was full of and the junk was fair laden treasure. Well, treasure was with it-stones and metal and no use to them as they were, all. But he wasn't going away but Pram wasn't one for leav- so light himself. In the end ing any loot behind even if he he struck an agreement with should be at the point of death. Mavis that they'd tell no one, There's no knowing how it and sink the junk in ten would have ended, but while fathoms of water so as she they were arguing the skipper wouldn't break up or be found, looked up and took note of a and go home and come out change in the weather. They again with a diving rig-out stayed by the ship, and in an and smouch the lot. And they hour they had rain. And it agreed to take nothing away rained and blew all day, and with them, only the bearings they caught water in the sail of where the junk lay. That of the ship's boat, and in what shows you Mavis was cunning. stuff they could spread off the He wouldn't take the risk for junk, and they squeezed the himself and the girl of having water off their own clothes any treasure in shares in a boat when they were soaked. And where Pram was. Not a stitch the grub wasn't run out, and of treasure would Mavis allow. they had more from the pirate. And that made Pram pretty They'd pitched the bodies over sick, but he had to give in and by then, of course, and they keep quiet, for he couldn't cleaned up a bit and stayed navigate. It's my belief Mavis on the junk all night, and in thought more of the little girl the morning they made out than the boodle, and that if palm-trees. They were all re- all had got safe ashore he'd have vived by now. They rowed off wiped his share of the junk in in the boat, but the land was favour of Pram. That's where only one of those coral rucks Pram was a bit too smart. It sticking out of the water, and was greed and jealousy made a very small one at that. The him do the clumsy thing he did. skipper had got the sextant and a chronometer and a chart with him, and he took his sun and made out they weren't more than two hundred miles off the track of shipping, and there was a fair breeze as 66 6 Well, I tell you we got very thick together, and he told me all about it, and he said that if we could get the bearings out of the skipper we'd make a dash for the treasure before old Mavis suspected. I glass of the mate to get the figures small enough. I put them on with a pointed bristle, and spoiled two flags doing it, which we burned together and also the paper. "Then that young Aukland got carrying on with Mitsuko, and that fairly made Pram wild. He said you couldn't trust a woman with a secret, and though she'd given a solemn promise when they took her off the junk to keep mum, young Aukland would be bound to get the truth out of her. I was for giving the man his due, but Pram said if Mavis was in it there would have to be a share for the girl as well, and that would make it divide by four instead of two. The nearer we got to home, the more the treasure weighed on him and got on his brain. He asked the old man for the bearings point blank, though it had been part of their compact that Mavis should keep them to himself. But he made no odds about it, and Pram brought them to me on a bit of paper written down by the Cap'n. Well, now, he was in no end of a stew about the thing getting mislaid or found out. All the voyage I'd been making a model of my old ship the Roebuck, that I served on for ten years, to put in a bottle. And the idea came to me that we could put the bearing on the house-flag of this boat, and it would be a sure safe way of keeping it, and nobody 'd be any the wiser for the figures. But I thought then, and I think now, it was not a very sensible idea, only I had to hit on something to keep Pram quiet, and he took to the notion. He said, If this ship goes down and we lose all our gear, that bottle's bound to float and get washed up, and we'd have it back by advertising in the papers." So that's what I done: I put the figures in ink in the middle of the house-flag. The flag was made in two thicknesses, and the figures put on both sides. I had to borrow a magnifying never could rightly tell whether it was all as Pram made it out or not. I had a sort of idea that he was smitten himself with Mitsuko, and he was jealous. was jealous. But anyhow it came about in the end that he said we must get rid of her and the Cap'n, not only for their shares in the treasure but because Mitsuko would be bound to let the secret out, and then he'd be in a fix with me as well as Mavis. Pram was a hard man with his business. Just because I wouldn't take a hand in killing the poor girl myself, he made out that if he did it, he'd have to have more share in the treasure than me, and that's what I had to agree to if I was going to get anything at all-in fact, I was in his power all round. He said we'd kill one of them, and the Law could kill the other. He knew exactly where the Cap'n stowed his sheath-knife. if he'd been spotted by Mavis in his cabin, he knew what excuse he'd make that he was come to talk secrets about the junk. And if Mitsuko had spotted his coming into her cabin, what would be wrong with saying he'd come for a kiss He was a smart fellow. Well, he strangled her first, and he stabbed her after for the sake of using the Cap'n's knife. But it was me who took the knife, and put it on the rollingchock under her cabin port, and I stuck it there with a bit of tar so it wouldn't roll off ; and afterwards I was in a terrible stew lest they should have wondered how the bit of tar came to be there, and lest they should have found a fingermark on it.' "When Johnson had said this he was taken with his heart stopping again and short of breath, and crying out, 'God have mercy on my soul for a wicked sinner! Then he pulled round again, and said, Of course, I knew the shindy off Ushant was made by you and your damned wooden fluke. I'd heard you blaring on it in Hong Kong. I told Pram. And I said, "That chap's smoked us, and he's trying some funny witch game on.' Oh, Lord, there's more in it than you when you're swinging it, or I shouldn't have cracked up same as I did to-day-you damned witch! When you did it off Ushant it made my marrow quake, though I knew very well it was you, and I came near to giving the whole game away. But Pram was smart. He kidded the men it was Jap spooks follering the ship after Mavis, and that they'd brought the fog and all and would have us on the rocks in a jiffy.' He paused a long while for breath, and I gave him a drink; then he went on. 'I had the bottle with the ship in it when we left the ship. I had to put it on the floor of the boat when we was rowing. But when we saw that great bow bear down on us out of the fog and got in a panic and dropped our oars in spite of the officers' shouting, I had the bottle in my hand again, and it was in my hand when the boat was capsized. Only when I came round and found myself on a French trawler that picked me up, it was gone.' Araby stopped talking, and closed his eyes. After a bit he said soft-like, 'You've got it all now. I feel better by miles. Perhaps I'll pull round yet. And you'll swear not to tell? Not, anyways, till I'm earthed up? ' "I was thinking whether I would or not, when he began to hum his old tune, 'I'll sing thee songs of Araby,' and as I sat and listened it brought the King Cophetua back like magic with all those that were gone, and that poor little Mitsuko leaning over the side that wonderful moonlight night when the sea was afire. I couldn't think of Mitsuko and not hate this man lying in front of me humming so contented, and I ground my teeth at him. He stopped in the last bar and sat up sudden with his eyes staring out of his head. And he seized my arm, and pulled on it. Then he whispered, 'Oak for God's love,' and his head rolled to one side, and he was gone. For a minute I was sorry for him. There seemed something repentant about the peaceful way he'd hummed his old tune; something hymn-like about it; and though there wasn't any wallet under his pillow, and though he hadn't got any money in the world as far as I could make out, and I hated and despised him, I had him rigged out with an oak coffin at my own expense. There's something in the nature of wood that appeals to me too: you never get no metal instruments sympathetic with you as you do wood ones, and a man who has worked in wood all his life will hold one kind above another. This bit of wood now "-Hubbard fingered the bull-roarer-" will talk, I tell you. If it hasn't got a soul, it's got something darned near it. And when Araby asked to be laid out in oak, I felt there were soft spots in him for all he was so bad. "But that's neither here nor there. Come to Pramaster. After a bit, when I'd done with the States, I took to voyaging again as a bit of a change, and got a good job as steward in the second class on a Western Ocean boat. You understand that seeing Araby and what had happened had put me off my instrument for a bit. Not that there was any fuss over his death, mind you. A doctor there who knew him examined him when he was dead, and said the drink had ruined his heart, and that when he heard me on my roarer he had choked as he was drinking, and that had finally jiggered his works. But I got sick of the sea after two years, and I got took on in the Halls in London with my roarer. Then I started to tour with it. "When I was in Bournemouth I was going along the pavement, not thinking anything in particular, when I saw a ship in a bottle stuck in a curio-shop window. I read the name on her bows like a flash, and it was the Roebuck. I went in and asked the man how he'd come by it, and he said he'd had it three weeks ago from a lodging-house keeper. He gave me her name, and I went to see her. She said she'd had it over four years, and that a little girl that came with a party from London in the summer had seen it stranded in shallow water by where she was paddling, and had picked it up and had meant to take it back home with her, but when it came to packing up, the luggage was such a tight fit they were afraid of it breaking on the way, so it was left over till the next summer. But the party didn't come again, as the little girl had took diphtheria and died, but she'd kept it till three weeks gone, and then sold it to the curio-shop for five bob. the |