straight down, and picking right up the very thing that tells the story.
What's that to me? you may ask, and why am I gone Soft Tommy on this
Museum of Crooks? They've smashed up you and Mr. Pinkerton; they've
turned my hair grey with conundrums; they've been up to larks, no doubt;
and that's all I know of them--you say. Well, and that's just where it
is. I don't know enough; I don't know what's uppermost; it's just such
a lot of miscellaneous eventualities as I don't care to go stirring
up; and I ask you to let me deal with the old girl after a patent of my
own."

"Certainly--what you please," said I, scarce with attention, for a new
thought now occupied my brain. "Captain," I broke out, "you are wrong:
we cannot hush this up. There is one thing you have forgotten."

"What is that?" he asked.

"A bogus Captain Trent, a bogus Goddedaal, a whole bogus crew, have all
started home," said I. "If we are right, not one of them will reach his
journey's end. And do you mean to say that such a circumstance as that
can pass without remark?"

"Sailors," said the captain, "only sailors! If they were all bound for
one place, in a body, I don't say so; but they're all going separate--to
Hull, to Sweden, to the Clyde, to the Thames. Well, at each place,
what is it? Nothing new. Only one sailor man missing: got drunk, or got
drowned, or got left: the proper sailor's end."


Something bitter in the thought and in the speaker's tones struck me
hard. "Here is one that has got left!" I cried, getting sharply to my