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Page 5
"Bosh!" ejaculated Noah, angrily. "Strip your old tub down to a flying
balloon-jib and a marline-spike, and ballast the Ark with elephants until
every inch of her reeked with ivory and peanuts, and she'd outfoot you on
every leg, in a cyclone or a zephyr. Give me the Ark and a breeze, and
your House-boat wouldn't be within hailing distance of her five minutes
after the start if she had 40,000 square yards of canvas spread before a
gale."
"This discussion is waxing very unprofitable," observed Confucius. "If
these gentlemen cannot be made to confine themselves to the subject that
is agitating this body, I move we call in the authorities and have them
confined in the bottomless pit."
"I did not precipitate the quarrel," said Noah. "I was merely trying to
assist our friend on the string-piece. I was going to say that as the Ark
was probably a hundred times faster than Sir Christopher Wren's--tub,
which he himself says can take care of all the wash of the excursion
boats, thereby becoming on his own admission a wash-tub--"
"Order! order!" cried Sir Christopher.
"I was going to say that this wash-tub could be overhauled by a launch or
any other craft with a speed of thirty knots a month," continued Noah,
ignoring the interruption.
"Took him forty days to get to Mount Ararat!" sneered Sir Christopher.
"Well, your boat would have got there two weeks sooner, I'll admit,"
retorted Noah, "if she'd sprung a leak at the right time."
"Granting the truth of Noah's statement," said Sir Walter, motioning to
the angry architect to be quiet--"not that we take any side in the issue
between the two gentlemen, but merely for the sake of argument--I wish to
ask the stranger who has been good enough to interest himself in our
trouble what he proposes to do--how can you establish your course in case
a boat were provided?"
"Also vot vill be dher gost, if any?" put in Shylock.
A murmur of disapprobation greeted this remark.
"The cost need not trouble you, sir," said Sir Walter, indignantly,
addressing the stranger; "you will have carte blanche."
"Den ve are ruint!" cried Shylock, displaying his palms, and showing by
that act a select assortment of diamond rings.
"Oh," laughed the stranger, "that is a simple matter. Captain Kidd has
gone to London."
"To London!" cried several members at once. "How do you know that?"
"By this," said the stranger, holding up the tiny stub end of a cigar.
"Tut-tut!" ejaculated Solomon. "What child's play this is!"
"No, your Majesty," observed the stranger, "it is not child's play; it is
fact. That cigar end was thrown aside here on the wharf by Captain Kidd
just before he stepped on board the House-boat."
"How do you know that?" demanded Raleigh. "And granting the truth of the
assertion, what does it prove?"
"I will tell you," said the stranger. And he at once proceeded as follows.
II
THE STRANGER UNRAVELS A MYSTERY AND REVEALS HIMSELF
"I have made a hobby of the study of cigar ends," said the stranger, as
the Associated Shades settled back to hear his account of himself. "From
my earliest youth, when I used surreptitiously to remove the unsmoked ends
of my father's cigars and break them up, and, in hiding, smoke them in an
old clay pipe which I had presented to me by an ancient sea-captain of my
acquaintance, I have been interested in tobacco in all forms, even
including these self-same despised unsmoked ends; for they convey to my
mind messages, sentiments, farces, comedies, and tragedies which to your
minds would never become manifest through their agency."
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