Part 33 (1/2)

”Look, there's another shark; what a number we've seen within the last day or two, captain. Is there any truth in that idea that a shark following a s.h.i.+p means that there's going to be a death on board?”

”But this one isn't following the s.h.i.+p; he's going very nearly clean in the contrary direction.”

”Yes, I know. But do you think there's anything in the idea?”

”Why, I think that if somebody died every time a shark followed a s.h.i.+p there'd soon be none of us left to go to sea at all. What the joker's really smelling after is the stuff that's thrown overboard from the cook's galley from time to time.”

”Really? Well, there goes another weird legend of the sea--weird but romantic.”

”It'd be a good thing if a few more of them went overboard,” laughed the matter-of-fact captain. ”They soon will, too--a good many have already.

In the old 'windjammer,' days when you had nothing to do half the voyage but sit and whistle for a breeze, these yarns got into Jack's head and stuck there. Now with steam and quick voyages, and a rattling spell of work in stowing cargo every few days or so, Jack hasn't got time to bother about that sort of thing.”

”Then sailors aren't superst.i.tious any more?”

”No more than sh.o.r.e folk. I've seen landsmen both on board s.h.i.+p and ash.o.r.e who could give points in that line to the scarriest old Jack-tar who ever munched salt horse, and knock him hollow at that.”

”Then you've no superst.i.tions of your own, captain--you, a sailor?”

”Not one; I don't believe any such nonsense.”

A solitary pa.s.senger, pa.s.sing at the time in his walk up and down, overhearing, smiled and nodded approval.

The _Baleka_ was steering north by north-west, every eleven or eleven and a half knots that her nose managed to shove through the water that creamed back from her straight stem bringing her an hour nearer England.

She was not a mail steamer, or even a regular pa.s.senger boat, being one of a private venture embarked in with the object of cheapening freight between England and the South African ports. But besides a full cargo she carried a limited complement of pa.s.sengers and a quite unlimited ditto of c.o.c.kroaches; otherwise she was an exceedingly comfortable boat, and combined good catering with a considerable reduction on current rates of pa.s.sage money by the ordinary lines, all of which was a consideration with those to whom a few days more or less at sea mattered nothing.

The smoking-room amids.h.i.+ps was a snug apartment with roomy chairs and well-cus.h.i.+oned lounges. In one corner three or four of the male pa.s.sengers were hard at work capturing the Transvaal--a form of amus.e.m.e.nt widely prevailing at that time, although the war had not yet been started; rather should we have omitted the transition qualification, for they had already conquered and annexed the obnoxious republic, and that with surprisingly little loss or difficulty. Then the discussion waxed lively and warm, for the justifiability of the proposed annexation had come up; meanwhile others had dropped in.

”I maintain it would be utterly unjustifiable,” said one. ”It's all very well to urge that it would be for the good of civilisation and numbers, and all that sort of thing, but we can't do evil that good may come of it. That's a hard and fast rule.”

”There's no such thing as a hard and fast rule, or oughtn't to be,”

retorted with some heat he who had borne the main part of the argument; ”but if there is, why, 'the greatest good for the greatest number' is a fairly safe one. What do you think sir?” turning to a man who was seated in another corner reading, but who had paid no attention to the discussion at all.

”Think? Oh, I don't know. I haven't been in that part long enough to have formed an opinion,” was the answer.

”But you don't agree with our friend there that there should be a hard and fast rule for everything? Surely you are of opinion that every question should be decided on its own merits?”

”Certainly,” replied the other politely, though inwardly bored at being dragged into a crude and threadbare discussion upon a subject in which he felt no interest whatever. ”That's a sound principle all the world over, and a safe one.”

”There you are,” cried the first speaker triumphantly, turning upon his antagonist. ”What did I tell you? This gentleman agrees with me entirely, as any sensible man would on such a point as that.”

”We can't do evil that good may come of it,” reiterated the said antagonist. ”That's a hard and fast rule.”

”Hard and fast rule be blowed! You might as well apply that to the Valpy case,” naming a somewhat prominent lawsuit then going forward, and relating to a disputed succession. ”If the Valpy in possession weren't justified in sticking to possession when he knew the real heir was a congenital idiot, and a homicidal one at that--why, there's no such thing as any law of common sense.”

”What were the facts?” asked the man who had been appealed to from outside. ”I have not been much in the way of reading the papers of late.”

They told him--several of them at once, as the way of a smoking-room gathering is. By judicious winnowing down he managed to elicit that a vast deal of property had been in dispute, that the holder had been an exemplary landlord, and, in short, a sort of Providence to all dependent on him; whereas the man who had successfully established his own claim, and thereby had ousted him, was one of those subjects for whom a few minutes in a lethal chamber would have const.i.tuted the only appropriate and adequate treatment. Indeed, the only matter of debate was as to whether the former holder, knowing that he was not legally ent.i.tled to remain in possession, was justified in retaining the same. Those here present were of opinion that he was.