their pockets, and plenty for making rapid and extraordinary fortunes.
Jack Holt had been in Don Carlos's army, when Ned Strong had fought on
the other side; and was now organizing a little scheme for smuggling
tobacco into London, which must bring thirty thousand a year to any
man who would advance fifteen hundred, just to bribe the last officer
of the Excise who held out, and had wind of the scheme. Tom Diver, who
had been in the Mexican navy, knew of a specie-ship which had been
sunk in the first year of the war, with three hundred and eighty
thousand dollars on board, and a hundred and eighty thousand pounds in
bars and doubloons. "Give me eighteen hundred pounds," Tom said, "and
I'm off tomorrow. I take out four men, and a diving-bell with me; and
I return in ten months to take my seat in parliament, by Jove! and to
buy back my family estate." Keightley, the manager of the Tredyddlum
and Polwheedle Copper Mines (which were as yet under water), besides
singing as good a second as any professional man, and besides the
Tredyddlum Office, had a Smyrna Sponge Company, and a little
quicksilver operation in view, which would set him straight with the
world yet. Filby had been every thing: a corporal of dragoons, a
field-preacher, and missionary-agent for converting the Irish; an
actor at a Greenwich fair-booth, in front of which his father's
attorney found him when the old gentleman died and left him that
famous property, from which he got no rents now, and of which nobody
exactly knew the situation. Added to these was Sir Francis Clavering,
Bart., who liked their society, though he did not much add to its
amusements by his convivial powers. But he was made much of by the
company now, on account of his wealth and position in the world. He
told his little story and sang his little song or two with great
affability; and he had had his own history, too, before his accession
to good fortune; and had seen the inside of more prisons than one, and
written his name on many a stamped paper.