_Boadicea,_ bound
for Liverpool, in Old England, while the others sailed with Captain
Slocum for Nantucket, in New England.

The _Boadicea_ was a clipper laden with hides and a miscellaneous cargo.
For seventeen days she flew before a southerly gale, being on her best
sailing point, and, after one of the shortest passages she had ever made,
she lay to, outside the bar, off the Mersey. It wanted but one hour to
daylight, the tide was flowing; the pilot sprang aboard.

"What do you draw?" he asked of the master.

"Fifteen feet, barely," was the reply.

"That will do," and the vessel's head was laid for the river.

They passed a large bark, with her topsails backed.

"Ay," remarked the pilot, "she has waited since the half-ebb; there ain't
more than four hours in the twenty-four that such craft as that can get
in."

"What is she? An American liner?" asked Wylie, peering through the gloom.

"No," said the pilot; "she's an Australian ship. She's the _Shannon,_
from Sydney."

The mate started, looked at the man, then at the vessel. Twice the
_Shannon_ had thus met him, as if to satisfy him that his object had been
attained, and each time she seemed to him not an inanimate thing, but a
silent accomplice. A chill of fear struck through the man's frame as he
looked at her. Yes, there she lay, and in her hold were safely stowed
160,000 pounds in gold, marked lead and copper.

Wylie had no luggage nor effects to detain him on board; he landed, and,
having bestowed his three companions in a sailors' boarding-house, he was
hastening to the shipping agents of Wardlaw & Son to announce his arrival
and the fate of the _Proserpine._ He had reached their offices in Water
Street before he recollected that it was barely half past five o'clock,
and, though broad daylight on that July morning, merchants' offices are
not open at that hour. The sight of the _Shannon_ had so bewildered him
that he had not noticed that the shops were all shut, the streets
deserted. Then a thought occurred to him--why not be a bearer of his own
news? He did not require to turn the idea twice over, but resolved, for
many reasons, to adopt it. As he hurried to the railway station, he tried
to recollect the hour at which the early train started; but his confused
and excited mind refused to perform the function of memory. The _Shannon_
dazed him.

At the railway-station he found that a train had started at 4 A.M., and
there was nothing until 7:30. This