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Page 3
"This is no time to discuss style, Murray," interposed Sir Walter.
"Socrates may speak and spell like Chaucer if he pleases; he may even part
his infinitives in the middle, for all I care. We have affairs of greater
moment in hand."
"We must ransack the earth," cried Socrates, "until we find that boat. I'm
dry as a fish."
"There he goes again!" growled Murray. "Dry as a fish! What fish I'd like
to know is dry?"
"Red herrings," retorted Socrates; and there was a great laugh at the
expense of the purist, in which even Hamlet, who had grown more and more
melancholy and morbid since the abduction of Ophelia, joined.
"Then it is settled," said Raleigh; "something must be done. And now the
point is, what?"
"Relief expeditions have a way of finding things," suggested Dr.
Livingstone. "Or rather of being found by the things they go out to
relieve. I propose that we send out a number of them. I will take Africa;
Bonaparte can lead an expedition into Europe; General Washington may have
North America; and--"
"I beg pardon," put in Dr. Johnson, "but have you any idea, Dr.
Livingstone, that Captain Kidd has put wheels on this House-boat of ours
and is having it dragged across the Sahara by mules or camels?"
"No such absurd idea ever entered my head," retorted the Doctor.
"Do you then believe that he has put runners on it, and is engaged in the
pleasurable pastime of taking the ladies tobogganing down the Alps?"
persisted the philosopher.
"Not at all. Why do you ask?" queried the African explorer, irritably.
"Because I wish to know," said Johnson. "That is always my motive in
asking questions. You propose to go looking for a house-boat in Central
Africa; you suggest that Bonaparte lead an expedition in search of it
through Europe--all of which strikes me as nonsense. This search is the
work of sea-dogs, not of landlubbers. You might as well ask Confucius to
look for it in the heart of China. What earthly use there is in ransacking
the earth I fail to see. What we need is a naval expedition to scour the
sea, unless it is pretty well understood in advance that we believe Kidd
has hauled the boat out of the water, and is now using it for a
roller-skating rink or a bicycle academy in Ohio, or for some other
purpose for which neither he nor it was designed."
"Dr. Johnson's point is well taken," said a stranger who had been sitting
upon the string-piece of the pier, quietly, but with very evident
interest, listening to the discussion. He was a tall and excessively
slender shade, "like a spirt of steam out of a teapot," as Johnson put it
afterwards, so slight he seemed. "I have not the honor of being a member
of this association," the stranger continued, "but, like all well-ordered
shades, I aspire to the distinction, and I hold myself and my talents at
the disposal of this club. I fancy it will not take us long to establish
our initial point, which is that the gross person who has so foully
appropriated your property to his own base uses does not contemplate
removing it from its keel and placing it somewhere inland. All the
evidence in hand points to a radically different conclusion, which is my
sole reason for doubting the value of that conclusion. Captain Kidd is a
seafarer by instinct, not a landsman. The House-boat is not a house, but a
boat; therefore the place to look for it is not, as Dr. Johnson so well
says, in the Sahara Desert, or on the Alps, or in the State of Ohio, but
upon the high sea, or upon the waterfront of some one of the world's great
cities."
[Illustration: "'DR. JOHNSON'S POINT IS WELL TAKEN'"]
"And what, then, would be your plan?" asked Sir Walter, impressed by the
stranger's manner as well as by the very manifest reason in all that he
had said.
"The chartering of a suitable vessel, fully armed and equipped for the
purpose of pursuit. Ascertain whither the House-boat has sailed, for what
port, and start at once. Have you a model of the House-boat within reach?"
returned the stranger.
"I think not; we have the architect's plans, however," said the chairman.
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