                               THE "GLORIA SCOTT"

     "I have some papers here," said my friend Sherlock Holmes, as we sat
     one winter's night on either side of the fire, "which I really think,
     Watson, that it would be worth your while to glance over. These are
     the documents in the extraordinary case of the Gloria Scott, and this
     is the message which struck Justice of the Peace Trevor dead with
     horror when he read it."

     He had picked from a drawer a little tarnished cylinder, and, undoing
     the tape, he handed me a short note scrawled upon a half-sheet of
     slate gray-paper.

     "The supply of game for London is going steadily up," it ran.
     "Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all
     orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen-pheasant's
     life."

     As I glanced up from reading this enigmatical message, I saw Holmes
     chuckling at the expression upon my face.

     "You look a little bewildered," said he.

     "I cannot see how such a message as this could inspire horror. It
     seems to me to be rather grotesque than otherwise."

     "Very likely. Yet the fact remains that the reader, who was a fine,
     robust old man, was knocked clean down by it as if it had been the
     butt end of a pistol."

     "You arouse my curiosity," said I. "But why did you say just now that
     there were very particular reasons why I should study this case?"

     "Because it was the first in which I was ever engaged."

     I had often endeavored to elicit from my companion what had first
     turned his mind in the direction of criminal research, but had never
     caught him before in a communicative humor. Now he sat forward in his
     arm-chair and spread out the documents upon his knees. Then he lit
     his pipe and sat for some time smoking and turning them over.

     "You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?" he asked. "He was the
     only friend I made during the two years I was at college. I was never
     a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my
     rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I
     never mixed much with the men of my year. Bar fencing and boxing I
     had few athletic tastes, and then my line of study was quite distinct
     from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact
     at all. Trevor was the only man I knew, and that only through the
     accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I
     went down to chapel.

     "It was a prosaic way of forming a friendship, but it was effective.
     I was laid by the heels for ten days, but Trevor used to come in to
     inquire after me. At first it was only a minute's chat, but soon his
     visits lengthened, and before the end of the term we were close
     friends. He was a hearty, full-blooded fellow, full of spirits and
     energy, the very opposite to me in most respects, but we had some
     subjects in common, and it was a bond of union when I found that he
     was as friendless as I. Finally, he invited me down to his father's
     place at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I accepted his hospitality for
     a month of the long vacation.

     "Old Trevor was evidently a man of some wealth and consideration, a
     J.P., and a landed proprietor. Donnithorpe is a little hamlet just to
     the north of Langmere, in the country of the Broads. The house was an
     old-fashioned, wide-spread, oak-beamed brick building, with a fine
     lime-lined avenue leading up to it. There was excellent wild-duck
     shooting in the fens, remarkably good fishing, a small but select
     library, taken over, as I understood, from a former occupant, and a
     tolerable cook, so that he would be a fastidious man who could not
     put in a pleasant month there.

     "Trevor senior was a widower, and my friend his only son.

     "There had been a daughter, I heard, but she had died of diphtheria
     while on a visit to Birmingham. The father interested me extremely.
     He was a man of little culture, but with a considerable amount of
     rude strength, both physically and mentally. He knew hardly any
     books, but he had traveled far, had seen much of the world. And had
     remembered all that he had learned. In person he was a thick-set,
     burly man with a shock of grizzled hair, a brown, weather-beaten
     face, and blue eyes which were keen to the verge of fierceness. Yet
     he had a reputation for kindness and charity on the country-side, and
     was noted for the leniency of his sentences from the bench.

     "One evening, shortly after my arrival, we were sitting over a glass
     of port after dinner, when young Trevor began to talk about those
     habits of observation and inference which I had already formed into a
     system, although I had not yet appreciated the part which they were
     to play in my life. The old man evidently thought that his son was
     exaggerating in his description of one or two trivial feats which I
     had performed.

     "'Come, now, Mr. Holmes,' said he, laughing good-humoredly. 'I'm an
     excellent subject, if you can deduce anything from me.'

     "'I fear there is not very much,' I answered; 'I might suggest that
     you have gone about in fear of some personal attack within the last
     twelve months.'

     "The laugh faded from his lips, and he stared at me in great
     surprise.

     "'Well, that's true enough,' said he. 'You know, Victor,' turning to
     his son, 'when we broke up that poaching gang they swore to knife us,
     and Sir Edward Holly has actually been attacked. I've always been on
     my guard since then, though I have no idea how you know it.'

     "'You have a very handsome stick,' I answered. 'By the inscription I
     observed that you had not had it more than a year. But you have taken
     some pains to bore the head of it and pour melted lead into the hole
     so as to make it a formidable weapon. I argued that you would not
     take such precautions unless you had some danger to fear.'

     "'Anything else?' he asked, smiling.

     "'You have boxed a good deal in your youth.'

     "'Right again. How did you know it?  Is my nose knocked a little out
     of the straight?'

     "'No,' said I. 'It is your ears. They have the peculiar flattening
     and thickening which marks the boxing man.'

     "'Anything else?'

     "'You have done a good deal of digging by your callosities.'

     "'Made all my money at the gold fields.'

     "'You have been in New Zealand.'

     "'Right again.'

     "'You have visited Japan.'

     "'Quite true.'

     "'And you have been most intimately associated with some one whose
     initials were J. A., and whom you afterwards were eager to entirely
     forget.'

     "Mr. Trevor stood slowly up, fixed his large blue eyes upon me with a
     strange wild stare, and then pitched forward, with his face among the
     nutshells which strewed the cloth, in a dead faint.

     "You can imagine, Watson, how shocked both his son and I were. His
     attack did not last long, however, for when we undid his collar, and
     sprinkled the water from one of the finger-glasses over his face, he
     gave a gasp or two and sat up.

     "'Ah, boys,' said he, forcing a smile, 'I hope I haven't frightened
     you. Strong as I look, there is a weak place in my heart, and it does
     not take much to knock me over. I don't know how you manage this, Mr.
     Holmes, but it seems to me that all the detectives of fact and of
     fancy would be children in your hands. That's your line of life, sir,
     and you may take the word of a man who has seen something of the
     world.'

     "And that recommendation, with the exaggerated estimate of my ability
     with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me, Watson, the
     very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be
     made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby. At the
     moment, however, I was too much concerned at the sudden illness of my
     host to think of anything else.

     "'I hope that I have said nothing to pain you?' said I.

     "'Well, you certainly touched upon rather a tender point. Might I ask
     how you know, and how much you know?' He spoke now in a half-jesting
     fashion, but a look of terror still lurked at the back of his eyes.

     "'It is simplicity itself,' said I. 'When you bared your arm to draw
     that fish into the boat I saw that J. A. had been tattooed in the
     bend of the elbow. The letters were still legible, but it was
     perfectly clear from their blurred appearance, and from the staining
     of the skin round them, that efforts had been made to obliterate
     them. It was obvious, then, that those initials had once been very
     familiar to you, and that you had afterwards wished to forget them.'

     "'What an eye you have!' he cried, with a sigh of relief. 'It is just
     as you say. But we won't talk of it. Of all ghosts the ghosts of our
     old lovers are the worst. Come into the billiard-room and have a
     quiet cigar.'

     "From that day, amid all his cordiality, there was always a touch of
     suspicion in Mr. Trevor's manner towards me. Even his son remarked
     it. 'You've given the governor such a turn,' said he, 'that he'll
     never be sure again of what you know and what you don't know.' He did
     not mean to show it, I am sure, but it was so strongly in his mind
     that it peeped out at every action. At last I became so convinced
     that I was causing him uneasiness that I drew my visit to a close. On
     the very day, however, before I left, an incident occurred which
     proved in the sequel to be of importance.

     "We were sitting out upon the lawn on garden chairs, the three of us,
     basking in the sun and admiring the view across the Broads, when a
     maid came out to say that there was a man at the door who wanted to
     see Mr. Trevor.

     "'What is his name?' asked my host.

     "'He would not give any.'

     "'What does he want, then?'

     "'He says that you know him, and that he only wants a moment's
     conversation.'

     "'Show him round here.' An instant afterwards there appeared a little
     wizened fellow with a cringing manner and a shambling style of
     walking. He wore an open jacket, with a splotch of tar on the sleeve,
     a red-and-black check shirt, dungaree trousers, and heavy boots badly
     worn. His face was thin and brown and crafty, with a perpetual smile
     upon it, which showed an irregular line of yellow teeth, and his
     crinkled hands were half closed in a way that is distinctive of
     sailors. As he came slouching across the lawn I heard Mr. Trevor make
     a sort of hiccoughing noise in his throat, and jumping out of his
     chair, he ran into the house. He was back in a moment, and I smelt a
     strong reek of brandy as he passed me.

     "'Well, my man,' said he. 'What can I do for you?'

     "The sailor stood looking at him with puckered eyes, and with the
     same loose-lipped smile upon his face.

     "'You don't know me?' he asked.

     "'Why, dear me, it is surely Hudson,' said Mr. Trevor in a tone of
     surprise.

     "'Hudson it is, sir,' said the seaman. 'Why, it's thirty year and
     more since I saw you last. Here you are in your house, and me still
     picking my salt meat out of the harness cask.'

     "'Tut, you will find that I have not forgotten old times,' cried Mr.
     Trevor, and, walking towards the sailor, he said something in a low
     voice. 'Go into the kitchen,' he continued out loud, 'and you will
     get food and drink. I have no doubt that I shall find you a
     situation.'

     "'Thank you, sir,' said the seaman, touching his fore-lock. 'I'm just
     off a two-yearer in an eight-knot tramp, short-handed at that, and I
     wants a rest. I thought I'd get it either with Mr. Beddoes or with
     you.'

     "'Ah!' cried Trevor. 'You know where Mr. Beddoes is?'

     "'Bless you, sir, I know where all my old friends are,' said the
     fellow with a sinister smile, and he slouched off after the maid to
     the kitchen. Mr. Trevor mumbled something to us about having been
     shipmate with the man when he was going back to the diggings, and
     then, leaving us on the lawn, he went indoors. An hour later, when we
     entered the house, we found him stretched dead drunk upon the
     dining-room sofa. The whole incident left a most ugly impression upon
     my mind, and I was not sorry next day to leave Donnithorpe behind me,
     for I felt that my presence must be a source of embarrassment to my
     friend.

     "All this occurred during the first month of the long vacation. I
     went up to my London rooms, where I spent seven weeks working out a
     few experiments in organic chemistry. One day, however, when the
     autumn was far advanced and the vacation drawing to a close, I
     received a telegram from my friend imploring me to return to
     Donnithorpe, and saying that he was in great need of my advice and
     assistance. Of course I dropped everything and set out for the North
     once more.

     "He met me with the dog-cart at the station, and I saw at a glance
     that the last two months had been very trying ones for him. He had
     grown thin and careworn, and had lost the loud, cheery manner for
     which he had been remarkable.

     "'The governor is dying,' were the first words he said.

     "'Impossible!' I cried. 'What is the matter?'

     "'Apoplexy. Nervous shock, He's been on the verge all day. I doubt if
     we shall find him alive.'

     "I was, as you may think, Watson, horrified at this unexpected news.

     "'What has caused it?' I asked.

     "'Ah, that is the point. Jump in and we can talk it over while we
     drive. You remember that fellow who came upon the evening before you
     left us?'

     "'Perfectly.'

     "'Do you know who it was that we let into the house that day?'

     "'I have no idea.'

     "'It was the devil, Holmes,' he cried.

     "I stared at him in astonishment.

     "'Yes, it was the devil himself. We have not had a peaceful hour
     since--not one. The governor has never held up his head from that
     evening, and now the life has been crushed out of him and his heart
     broken, all through this accursed Hudson.'

     "'What power had he, then?'

     "'Ah, that is what I would give so much to know. The kindly,
     charitable, good old governor--how could he have fallen into the
     clutches of such a ruffian! But I am so glad that you have come,
     Holmes. I trust very much to your judgment and discretion, and I know
     that you will advise me for the best.'

     "We were dashing along the smooth white country road, with the long
     stretch of the Broads in front of us glimmering in the red light of
     the setting sun. From a grove upon our left I could already see the
     high chimneys and the flag-staff which marked the squire's dwelling.

     "'My father made the fellow gardener,' said my companion, 'and then,
     as that did not satisfy him, he was promoted to be butler. The house
     seemed to be at his mercy, and he wandered about and did what he
     chose in it. The maids complained of his drunken habits and his vile
     language. The dad raised their wages all round to recompense them for
     the annoyance. The fellow would take the boat and my father's best
     gun and treat himself to little shooting trips. And all this with
     such a sneering, leering, insolent face that I would have knocked him
     down twenty times over if he had been a man of my own age. I tell
     you, Holmes, I have had to keep a tight hold upon myself all this
     time; and now I am asking myself whether, if I had let myself go a
     little more, I might not have been a wiser man.

     "'Well, matters went from bad to worse with us, and this animal
     Hudson became more and more intrusive, until at last, on making some
     insolent reply to my father in my presence one day, I took him by the
     shoulders and turned him out of the room. He slunk away with a livid
     face and two venomous eyes which uttered more threats than his tongue
     could do. I don't know what passed between the poor dad and him after
     that, but the dad came to me next day and asked me whether I would
     mind apologizing to Hudson. I refused, as you can imagine, and asked
     my father how he could allow such a wretch to take such liberties
     with himself and his household.

     "'"Ah, my boy," said he, "it is all very well to talk, but you don't
     know how I am placed. But you shall know, Victor. I'll see that you
     shall know, come what may. You wouldn't believe harm of your poor old
     father, would you, lad?" He was very much moved, and shut himself up
     in the study all day, where I could see through the window that he
     was writing busily.

     "'That evening there came what seemed to me to be a grand release,
     for Hudson told us that he was going to leave us. He walked into the
     dining-room as we sat after dinner, and announced his intention in
     the thick voice of a half-drunken man.

     "'"I've had enough of Norfolk," said he. "I'll run down to Mr.
     Beddoes in Hampshire. He'll be as glad to see me as you were, I dare
     say."

     "'"You're not going away in any kind of spirit, Hudson, I hope," said
     my father, with a tameness which mad my blood boil.

     "'"I've not had my 'pology," said he sulkily, glancing in my
     direction.

     "'"Victor, you will acknowledge that you have used this worthy fellow
     rather roughly," said the dad, turning to me.

     "'"On the contrary, I think that we have both shown extraordinary
     patience towards him," I answered.

     "'"Oh, you do, do you?" he snarls. "Very good, mate. We'll see about
     that!"

     "'He slouched out of the room, and half an hour afterwards left the
     house, leaving my father in a state of pitiable nervousness. Night
     after night I heard him pacing his room, and it was just as he was
     recovering his confidence that the blow did at last fall.'

     "'And how?' I asked eagerly.

     "'In a most extraordinary fashion. A letter arrived for my father
     yesterday evening, bearing the Fordingbridge post-mark. My father
     read it, clapped both his hands to his head, and began running round
     the room in little circles like a man who has been driven out of his
     senses. When I at last drew him down on to the sofa, his mouth and
     eyelids were all puckered on one side, and I saw that he had a
     stroke. Dr. Fordham came over at once. We put him to bed; but the
     paralysis has spread, he has shown no sign of returning
     consciousness, and I think that we shall hardly find him alive.'

     "'You horrify me, Trevor!' I cried. 'What then could have been in
     this letter to cause so dreadful a result?'

     "'Nothing. There lies the inexplicable part of it. The message was
     absurd and trivial. Ah, my God, it is as I feared!'

     "As he spoke we came round the curve of the avenue, and saw in the
     fading light that every blind in the house had been drawn down. As we
     dashed up to the door, my friend's face convulsed with grief, a
     gentleman in black emerged from it.

     "'When did it happen, doctor?' asked Trevor.

     "'Almost immediately after you left.'

     "'Did he recover consciousness?'

     "'For an instant before the end.'

     "'Any message for me?'

     "'Only that the papers were in the back drawer of the Japanese
     cabinet.'

     "My friend ascended with the doctor to the chamber of death, while I
     remained in the study, turning the whole matter over and over in my
     head, and feeling as sombre as ever I had done in my life. What was
     the past of this Trevor, pugilist, traveler, and gold-digger, and how
     had he placed himself in the power of this acid-faced seaman?  Why,
     too, should he faint at an allusion to the half-effaced initials upon
     his arm, and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingham?
     Then I remembered that Fordingham was in Hampshire, and that this Mr.
     Beddoes, whom the seaman had gone to visit and presumably to
     blackmail, had also been mentioned as living in Hampshire. The
     letter, then, might either come from Hudson, the seaman, saying that
     he had betrayed the guilty secret which appeared to exist, or it
     might come from Beddoes, warning an old confederate that such a
     betrayal was imminent. So far it seemed clear enough. But then how
     could this letter be trivial and grotesque, as described by the son?
     He must have misread it. If so, it must have been one of those
     ingenious secret codes which mean one thing while they seem to mean
     another. I must see this letter. If there were a hidden meaning in
     it, I was confident that I could pluck it forth. For an hour I sat
     pondering over it in the gloom, until at last a weeping maid brought
     in a lamp, and close at her heels came my friend Trevor, pale but
     composed, with these very papers which lie upon my knee held in his
     grasp. He sat down opposite to me, drew the lamp to the edge of the
     table, and handed me a short note scribbled, as you see, upon a
     single sheet of gray paper. 'The supply of game for London is going
     steadily up,' it ran. 'Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now
     told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your
     hen-pheasant's life.'

     "I dare say my face looked as bewildered as yours did just now when
     first I read this message. Then I reread it very carefully. It was
     evidently as I had thought, and some secret meaning must lie buried
     in this strange combination of words. Or could it be that there was a
     prearranged significance to such phrases as 'fly-paper' and
     'hen-pheasant'?  Such a meaning would be arbitrary and could not be
     deduced in any way. And yet I was loath to believe that this was the
     case, and the presence of the word Hudson seemed to show that the
     subject of the message was as I had guessed, and that it was from
     Beddoes rather than the sailor. I tried it backwards, but the
     combination 'life pheasant's hen' was not encouraging. Then I tried
     alternate words, but neither 'the of for' nor 'supply game London'
     promised to throw any light upon it.

     "And then in an instant the key of the riddle was in my hands, and I
     saw that every third word, beginning with the first, would give a
     message which might well drive old Trevor to despair.

     "It was short and terse, the warning, as I now read it to my
     companion:

     "'The game is up. Hudson has told all. Fly for your life.'

     "Victor Trevor sank his face into his shaking hands, 'It must be
     that, I suppose,' said he. "This is worse than death, for it means
     disgrace as well. But what is the meaning of these "head-keepers" and
     "hen-pheasants"?

     "'It means nothing to the message, but it might mean a good deal to
     us if we had no other means of discovering the sender. You see that
     he has begun by writing "The ... game ... is," and so on. Afterwards
     he had, to fulfill the prearranged cipher, to fill in any two words
     in each space. He would naturally use the first words which came to
     his mind, and if there were so many which referred to sport among
     them, you may be tolerably sure that he is either an ardent shot or
     interested in breeding. Do you know anything of this Beddoes?'

     "'Why, now that you mention it,' said he, 'I remember that my poor
     father used to have an invitation from him to shoot over his
     preserves every autumn.'

     "'Then it is undoubtedly from him that the note comes,' said I. 'It
     only remains for us to find out what this secret was which the sailor
     Hudson seems to have held over the heads of these two wealthy and
     respected men.'

     "'Alas, Holmes, I fear that it is one of sin and shame!' cried my
     friend. 'But from you I shall have no secrets. Here is the statement
     which was drawn up by my father when he knew that the danger from
     Hudson had become imminent. I found it in the Japanese cabinet, as he
     told the doctor. Take it and read it to me, for I have neither the
     strength nor the courage to do it myself.'

     "These are the very papers, Watson, which he handed to me, and I will
     read them to you, as I read them in the old study that night to him.
     They are endorsed outside, as you see, 'Some particulars of the
     voyage of the bark Gloria Scott, from her leaving Falmouth on the 8th
     October, 1855, to her destruction in N. Lat. 15° 20', W. Long. 25°
     14' on Nov. 6th.' It is in the form of a letter, and runs in this
     way:

     "'My dear, dear son, now that approaching disgrace begins to darken
     the closing years of my life, I can write with all truth and honesty
     that it is not the terror of the law, it is not the loss of my
     position in the county, nor is it my fall in the eyes of all who have
     known me, which cuts me to the heart; but it is the thought that you
     should come to blush for me--you who love me and who have seldom, I
     hope, had reason to do other than respect me. But if the blow falls
     which is forever hanging over me, then I should wish you to read
     this, that you may know straight from me how far I have been to
     blame. On the other hand, if all should go well (which may kind God
     Almighty grant!), then if by any chance this paper should be still
     undestroyed and should fall into your hands, I conjure you, by all
     you hold sacred, by the memory of your dear mother, and by the love
     which had been between us, to hurl it into the fire and to never give
     one thought to it again.

     "'If then your eye goes onto read this line, I know that I shall
     already have been exposed and dragged from my home, or as is more
     likely, for you know that my heart is weak, by lying with my tongue
     sealed forever in death. In either case the time for suppression is
     past, and every word which I tell you is the naked truth, and this I
     swear as I hope for mercy.

     "'My name, dear lad, is not Trevor. I was James Armitage in my
     younger days, and you can understand now the shock that it was to me
     a few weeks ago when your college friend addressed me in words which
     seemed to imply that he had surprised my secret. As Armitage it was
     that I entered a London banking-house, and as Armitage I was
     convicted of breaking my country's laws, and was sentenced to
     transportation. Do not think very harshly of me, laddie. It was a
     debt of honor, so called, which I had to pay, and I used money which
     was not my own to do it, in the certainty that I could replace it
     before there could be any possibility of its being missed. But the
     most dreadful ill-luck pursued me. The money which I had reckoned
     upon never came to hand, and a premature examination of accounts
     exposed my deficit. The case might have been dealt leniently with,
     but the laws were more harshly administered thirty years ago than
     now, and on my twenty-third birthday I found myself chained as a
     felon with thirty-seven other convicts in 'tween-decks of the bark
     Gloria Scott, bound for Australia.

     "'It was the year '55 when the Crimean war was at its height, and the
     old convict ships had been largely used as transports in the Black
     Sea. The government was compelled, therefore, to use smaller and less
     suitable vessels for sending out their prisoners. The Gloria Scott
     had been in the Chinese tea-trade, but she was an old-fashioned,
     heavy-bowed, broad-beamed craft, and the new clippers had cut her
     out. She was a five-hundred-ton boat; and besides her thirty-eight
     jail-birds, she carried twenty-six of a crew, eighteen soldiers, a
     captain, three mates, a doctor, a chaplain, and four warders. Nearly
     a hundred souls were in her, all told, when we set sail from
     Falmouth.

     "'The partitions between the cells of the convicts, instead of being
     of thick oak, as is usual in convict-ships, were quite thin and
     frail. The man next to me, upon the aft side, was one whom I had
     particularly noticed when we were led down the quay. He was a young
     man with a clear, hairless face, a long, thin nose, and rather
     nut-cracker jaws. He carried his head very jauntily in the air, had a
     swaggering style of walking, and was, above all else, remarkable for
     his extraordinary height. I don't think any of our heads would have
     come up to his shoulder, and I am sure that he could not have
     measured less than six and a half feet. It was strange among so many
     sad and weary faces to see one which was full of energy and
     resolution. The sight of it was to me like a fire in a snow-storm. I
     was glad, then, to find that he was my neighbor, and gladder still
     when, in the dead of the night, I heard a whisper close to my ear,
     and found that he had managed to cut an opening in the board which
     separated us.

     "'"Hullo, chummy!" said he, "what's your name, and what are you here
     for?"

     "'I answered him, and asked in turn who I was talking with.

     "'"I'm Jack Prendergast," said he, "and by God! You'll learn to bless
     my name before you've done with me."

     "'I remembered hearing of his case, for it was one which had made an
     immense sensation throughout the country some time before my own
     arrest. He was a man of good family and of great ability, but of
     incurably vicious habits, who had, by an ingenious system of fraud,
     obtained huge sums of money from the leading London merchants.

     "'"Ha, ha! You remember my case!" said he proudly.

     "'"Very well, indeed."

     "'"Then maybe you remember something queer about it?"

     "'"What was that, then?"

     "'"I'd had nearly a quarter of a million, hadn't I?"

     "'"So it was said."

     "'"But none was recovered, eh?"

     "'"No."

     "'"Well, where d'ye suppose the balance is?" he asked.

     "'"I have no idea," said I.

     "'"Right between my finger and thumb," he cried. "By God! I've got
     more pounds to my name than you've hairs on your head. And if you've
     money, my son, and know how to handle it and spread it, you can do
     anything. Now, you don't think it likely that a man who could do
     anything is going to wear his breeches out sitting in the stinking
     hold of a rat-gutted, beetle-ridden, mouldy old coffin of a Chin
     China coaster. No, sir, such a man will look after himself and will
     look after his chums. You may lay to that! You hold on to him, and
     you may kiss the book that he'll haul you through."

     "'That was his style of talk, and at first I thought it meant
     nothing; but after a while, when he had tested me and sworn me in
     with all possible solemnity, he let me understand that there really
     was a plot to gain command of the vessel. A dozen of the prisoners
     had hatched it before they came aboard, Prendergast was the leader,
     and his money was the motive power.

     "'"I'd a partner," said he, "a rare good man, as true as a stock to a
     barrel. He's got the dibbs, he has, and where do you think he is at
     this moment?  Why, he's the chaplain of this ship--the chaplain, no
     less! He came aboard with a black coat, and his papers right, and
     money enough in his box to buy the thing right up from keel to
     main-truck. The crew are his, body and soul. He could buy 'em at so
     much a gross with a cash discount, and he did it before ever they
     signed on. He's got two of the warders and Mercer, the second mate,
     and he'd get the captain himself, if he thought him worth it."

     "'"What are we to do, then?" I asked.

     "'"What do you think?" said he. "We'll make the coats of some of
     these soldiers redder than ever the tailor did."

     "'"But they are armed," said I.

     "'"And so shall we be, my boy. There's a brace of pistols for every
     mother's son of us, and if we can't carry this ship, with the crew at
     our back, it's time we were all sent to a young misses'
     boarding-school. You speak to your mate upon the left to-night, and
     see if he is to be trusted."

     "'I did so, and found my other neighbor to be a young fellow in much
     the same position as myself, whose crime had been forgery. His name
     was Evans, but he afterwards changed it, like myself, and he is now a
     rich and prosperous man in the south of England. He was ready enough
     to join the conspiracy, as the only means of saving ourselves, and
     before we had crossed the Bay there were only two of the prisoners
     who were not in the secret. One of these was of weak mind, and we did
     not dare to trust him, and the other was suffering from jaundice, and
     could not be of any use to us.

     "'From the beginning there was really nothing to prevent us from
     taking possession of the ship. The crew were a set of ruffians,
     specially picked for the job. The sham chaplain came into our cells
     to exhort us, carrying a black bag, supposed to be full of tracts,
     and so often did he come that by the third day we had each stowed
     away at the foot of our beds a file, a brace of pistols, a pound of
     powder, and twenty slugs. Two of the warders were agents of
     Prendergast, and the second mate was his right-hand man. The captain,
     the two mates, two warders Lieutenant Martin, his eighteen soldiers,
     and the doctor were all that we had against us. Yet, safe as it was,
     we determined to neglect no precaution, and to make our attack
     suddenly by night. It came, however, more quickly than we expected,
     and in this way.

     "'One evening, about the third week after our start, the doctor had
     come down to see one of the prisoners who was ill, and putting his
     hand down on the bottom of his bunk he felt the outline of the
     pistols. If he had been silent he might have blown the whole thing,
     but he was a nervous little chap, so he gave a cry of surprise and
     turned so pale that the man knew what was up in an instant and seized
     him. He was gagged before he could give the alarm, and tied down upon
     the bed. He had unlocked the door that led to the deck, and we were
     through it in a rush. The two sentries were shot down, and so was a
     corporal who came running to see what was the matter. There were two
     more soldiers at the door of the state-room, and their muskets seemed
     not to be loaded, for they never fired upon us, and they were shot
     while trying to fix their bayonets. Then we rushed on into the
     captain's cabin, but as we pushed open the door there was an
     explosion from within, and there he lay with his brains smeared over
     the chart of the Atlantic which was pinned upon the table, while the
     chaplain stood with a smoking pistol in his hand at his elbow. The
     two mates had both been seized by the crew, and the whole business
     seemed to be settled.

     "'The state-room was next the cabin, and we flocked in there and
     flopped down on the settees, all speaking together, for we were just
     mad with the feeling that we were free once more. There were lockers
     all round, and Wilson, the sham chaplain, knocked one of them in, and
     pulled out a dozen of brown sherry. We cracked off the necks of the
     bottles, poured the stuff out into tumblers, and were just tossing
     them off, when in an instant without warning there came the roar of
     muskets in our ears, and the saloon was so full of smoke that we
     could not see across the table. When it cleared again the place was a
     shambles. Wilson and eight others were wriggling on the top of each
     other on the floor, and the blood and the brown sherry on that table
     turn me sick now when I think of it. We were so cowed by the sight
     that I think we should have given the job up if had not been for
     Prendergast. He bellowed like a bull and rushed for the door with all
     that were left alive at his heels. Out we ran, and there on the poop
     were the lieutenent and ten of his men. The swing skylights above the
     saloon table had been a bit open, and they had fired on us through
     the slit.  We got on them before they could load, and they stood to
     it like men; but we had the upper hand of them, and in five minutes
     it was all over. My God! Was there ever a slaughter-house like that
     ship! Predergast was like a raging devil, and he picked the soldiers
     up as if they had been children and threw them overboard alive or
     dead. There was one sergeant that was horribly wounded and yet kept
     on swimming for a surprising time, until some one in mercy blew out
     his brains. When the fighting was over there was no one left of our
     enemies except just the warders, the mates, and the doctor.

     "'It was over them that the great quarrel arose. There were many of
     us who were glad enough to win back our freedom, and yet who had no
     wish to have murder on our souls. It was one thing to knock the
     soldiers over with their muskets in their hands, and it was another
     to stand by while men were being killed in cold blood. Eight of us,
     five convicts and three sailors, said that we would not see it done.
     But there was no moving Predergast and those who were with him. Our
     only chance of safety lay in making a clean job of it, said he, and
     he would not leave a tongue with power to wag in a witness-box. It
     nearly came to our sharing the fate of the prisoners, but at last he
     said that if we wished we might take a boat and go. We jumped at the
     offer, for we were already sick of these blookthirsty doings, and we
     saw that there would be worse before it was done. We were given a
     suit of sailor togs each, a barrel of water, two casks, one of junk
     and one of biscuits, and a compass. Prendergast threw us over a
     chart, told us that we were shipwrecked mariners whose ship had
     foundered in Lat. 15° and Long. 25° west, and then cut the painter
     and let us go.

     "'And now I come to the most surprising part of my story, my dear
     son. The seamen had hauled the fore-yard aback during the rising, but
     now as we left them they brought it square again, and as there was a
     light wind from the north and east the bark began to draw slowly away
     from us. Our boat lay, rising and falling, upon the long, smooth
     rollers, and Evans and I, who were the most educated of the party,
     were sitting in the sheets working out our position and planning what
     coast we should make for. It was a nice question, for the Cape de
     Verds were about five hundred miles to the north of us, and the
     African coast about seven hundred to the east. On the whole, as the
     wind was coming round to the north, we thought that Sierra Leone
     might be best, and turned our head in that direction, the bark being
     at that time nearly hull down on our starboard quarter. Suddenly as
     we looked at her we saw a dense black cloud of smoke shoot up from
     her, which hung like a monstrous tree upon the sky line. A few
     seconds later a roar like thunder burst upon our ears, and as the
     smoke thinned away there was no sign left of the Gloria Scott. In an
     instant we swept the boat's head round again and pulled with all our
     strength for the place where the haze still trailing over the water
     marked the scene of this catastrophe.

     "'It was a long hour before we reached it, and at first we feared
     that we had come too late to save any one. A splintered boat and a
     number of crates and fragments of spars rising and falling on the
     waves showed us where the vessel had foundered; but there was no sign
     of life, and we had turned away in despair when we heard a cry for
     help, and saw at some distance a piece of wreckage with a man lying
     stretched across it. When we pulled him aboard the boat he proved to
     be a young seaman of the name of Hudson, who was so burned and
     exhausted that he could give us no account of what had happened until
     the following morning.

     "'It seemed that after we had left, Prendergast and his gang had
     proceeded to put to death the five remaining prisoners. The two
     warders had been shot and thrown overboard, and so also had the third
     mate. Prendergast then descended into the 'tween-decks and with his
     own hands cut the throat of the unfortunate surgeon. There only
     remained the first mate, who was a bold and active man. When he saw
     the convict approaching him with the bloody knife in his hand he
     kicked off his bonds, which he had somehow contrived to loosen, and
     rushing down the deck he plunged into the after-hold. A dozen
     convicts, who descended with their pistols in search of him, found
     him with a match-box in his hand seated beside an open powder-barrel,
     which was one of a hundred carried on board, and swearing that he
     would blow all hands up if he were in any way molested. An instant
     later the explosion occurred, though Hudson thought it was caused by
     the misdirected bullet of one of the convicts rather than the mate's
     match. Be the cause what I may, it was the end of the Gloria Scott
     and of the rabble who held command of her.

     "'Such, in a few words, my dear boy, is the history of this terrible
     business in which I was involved. Next day we were picked up by the
     brig Hotspur, bound for Australia, whose captain found no difficulty
     in believing that we were the survivors of a passenger ship which had
     foundered. The transport ship Gloria Scott was set down by the
     Admiralty as being lost at sea, and no word has ever leaked out as to
     her true fate. After an excellent voyage the Hotspur landed us at
     Sydney, where Evans and I changed our names and made our way to the
     diggings, where, among the crowds who were gathered from all nations,
     we had no difficulty in losing our former identities. The rest I need
     not relate. We prospered, we traveled, we came back as rich colonials
     to England, and we bought country estates. For more than twenty years
     we have led peaceful and useful lives, and we hoped that our past was
     forever buried. Imagine, then, my feelings when in the seaman who
     came to us I recognized instantly the man who had been picked off the
     wreck. He had tracked us down somehow, and had set himself to live
     upon our fears. You will understand now how it was that I strove to
     keep the peace with him, and you will in some measure sympathize with
     me in the fears which fill me, now that he has gone from me to his
     other victim with threats upon his tongue.'

     "Underneath is written in a hand so shaky as to be hardly legible,
     'Beddoes writes in cipher to say H. has told all. Sweet Lord, have
     mercy on our souls!'

     "That was the narrative which I read that night to young Trevor, and
     I think, Watson, that under the circumstances it was a dramatic one.
     The good fellow was heart-broken at it, and went out to the Terai tea
     planting, where I hear that he is doing well. As to the sailor and
     Beddoes, neither of them was ever heard of again after that day on
     which the letter of warning was written. They both disappeared
     utterly and completely. No complaint had been lodged with the police,
     so that Beddoes had mistaken a threat for a deed. Hudson had been
     seen lurking about, and it was believed by the police that he had
     done away with Beddoes and had fled. For myself I believe that the
     truth was exactly the opposite. I think that it is most probable that
     Beddoes, pushed to desperation and believing himself to have been
     already betrayed, had revenged himself upon Hudson, and had fled from
     the country with as much money as he could lay his hands on. Those
     are the facts of the case, Doctor, and if they are of any use to your
     collection, I am sure that they are very heartily at your service."

