Part 34 (2/2)
”Yes, sir,” said the steward.
Continuously the dividends of Bird, Bird and Co. outweighed every other consideration, and the _Flamingo_ dodged on with her halting voyage. At the first place he put in at, Kettle sent off an extravagant cablegram of recent happenings to the representative of the Insurance Company in England. It was not the cotton season, and the Texan ports yielded the steamer little, but she had a ton or so of cargo for almost every one of them, and she delivered it with neatness, and clamored for cargo in return. She was ”working up a connection.” She swung round the Gulf till she came to where logs borne by the Mississippi stick out from the white sand, and she wasted a little time, and steamed past the nearest outlet of the delta, because Captain Kettle did not personally know its pilotage. He was getting a very safe and cautious navigator in these latter days of his prosperity.
So she made for the Port Eads pa.s.s, picked up a pilot from the station by the lighthouse, and steamed cautiously up to the quarantine station, dodging the sandbars. Her one remaining pa.s.senger had pa.s.sed from an active nuisance to a close and unheard prisoner, and his presence was almost forgotten by every one on board, except Kettle and the steward who looked after him. The merchant seaman of these latter days has to pay such a strict attention to business, that he has no time whatever for extraneous musings.
The _Flamingo_ got a clean bill from the doctor at the quarantine station, and emerged triumphantly from the cl.u.s.ter of craft doing penance, and, with a fresh pilot, steamed on up the yellow river, past the white sugar-mills, and the heavy cypresses behind the banks. And in due time the pilot brought her up to New Orleans, and, with his gla.s.ses on the bridge, Kettle saw his acquaintance, Mr. Lupton, waiting for him on the levee.
He got his steamer berthed in the crowded tier, and Mr. Lupton pushed on board over the first gang-plank. But Kettle waved the man aside till he saw his vessel finally moored. And then he took him into the chart-house and shut the door.
”You seem to have got my cable,” he said. ”It was a very expensive one, but I thought the occasion needed it.”
His visitor tapped Kettle confidentially on the knee. ”You'll find my office will deal most liberally with you, Captain. But I can tell you I'm pretty excited to hear your full yarn.”
”I'm afraid you won't like it,” said Kettle. ”The man's obviously dead, and, fancy it or not, I don't see how your office can avoid paying the full amount. However, here's the way I've logged it down”--and he went off into detailed narration.
The New Orleans heat smote upon the chart-house roof, and the air outside clattered with the talk of negroes. Already hatches were off, and the winch chains sang as they struck out cargo, and from the levee alongside, and from New Orleans below and beyond, came tangles of smells which are peculiarly their own. A steward brought in tea, and it stood on the chart-table untasted, and at last Kettle finished, and Lupton put a question.
”It's easy to tell,” he said, ”if they did swap names. What was the man that went overboard like?”
”Little dark fellow, short sighted. He was a poet, too.”
”That's not Hamilton, anyway, but it might be Cranze. Is your prisoner tall?”
”Tall and puffy. Red-haired and a spotty face.”
”That's Hamilton, all the way. By Jove! Skipper, we've saved our bacon.
His yarn's quite true. They did change names. Hamilton's a rich young a.s.s that's been painting England red these last three years.”
”But, tell me, what did the little chap go overboard for?”
”Got there himself. Uneasy conscience, I suppose. He seems to have been a poor sort of a.s.sa.s.sin anyway. Why, when that drunken fool tumbled overboard amongst the sharks, he didn't leave him to be eaten or drowned, is more than I can understand. He'd have got his money as easy as picking it up off the floor, if he'd only had the sense to keep quiet.”
”If you ask me,” said Kettle, ”it was sheer n.o.bility of character. I had a good deal of talk with that young gentleman, sir. He was a splendid fellow. He had a true poetical soul.”
Mr. Lupton winked sceptically. ”He managed to play the part of a thorough-paced young blackguard at home pretty successfully. He was warned off the turf. He was kicked out of his club for card-sharping. He was--well, he's dead now, anyway, and we won't say any more about him, except that he's been stone-broke these last three years, and has been living on his wits and helping to fleece other flats. But he was only the tool, anyway. There is a bigger and more capable scoundrel at the back of it all, and, thanks to the scare you seem to have rubbed into that spotty-faced young mug you've got locked up down below, I think we can get the princ.i.p.al by the heels very nicely this journey. If you don't mind, I'll go and see this latest victim now, before he's had time to get rid of his fright.”
Captain Kettle showed his visitor courteously down to the temporary jail, and then returned to the chart-house and sipped his tea.
”His name may really have been Cranze, but he was a poet, poor lad,” he mused, thinking of the dead. ”That's why he couldn't do the dirty work.
But I sha'n't tell Lupton that reason. He'd only laugh--and--that poetry ought to be a bit of a secret between the lad and me. Poor, poor fellow!
I think I'll be able to write a few lines about him myself after I've been ash.o.r.e to see the agent, just as a bit of an epitaph. As to this spotty-faced waster who swapped names with him, I almost have it in me to wish we'd left him to be chopped by those sharks. He'd his money to his credit anyway--and what's money compared with poetry?”
CHAPTER XII
THE FIRE AND THE FARM
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