every conceivable act took
the form of saying "snap!"

The odd fish that came to us! And among others came Gordon-Nasmyth, that
queer blend of romance and illegality who was destined to drag me into
the most irrelevant adventure in my life the Mordet Island affair; and
leave me, as they say, with blood upon my hands. It is remarkable how
little it troubles my conscience and how much it stirs my imagination,
that particular memory of the life I took. The story of Mordet Island
has been told in a government report and told all wrong; there are still
excellent reasons for leaving it wrong in places, but the liveliest
appeals of discretion forbid my leaving it out altogether.

I've still the vividest memory of Gordon-Nasmyth's appearance in the
inner sanctum, a lank, sunburnt person in tweeds with a yellow-brown
hatchet face and one faded blue eye--the other was a closed and sunken
lid--and how he told us with a stiff affectation of ease his incredible
story of this great heap of quap that lay abandoned or undiscovered
on the beach behind Mordet's Island among white dead mangroves and the
black ooze of brackish water.

"What's quap?" said my uncle on the fourth repetition of the word.

"They call it quap, or quab, or quabb," said Gordon-Nasmyth; "but our
relations weren't friendly enough to get the accent right....

"But there the stuff is for the taking. They don't know about it.
Nobody knows about it. I got down to the damned place in a canoe alone.
The boys wouldn't come. I pretended to be botanising." ...

To begin with, Gordon-Nasmyth was inclined to be dramatic.

"Look here," he said when he first came in, shutting the door rather
carefully behind him as he spoke, "do you two men--yes or no--want to
put up six thousand--for--a clear good chance of fifteen hundred per
cent. on your money in a year?"

"We're always getting chances like that," said my uncle, cocking his
cigar offensively, wiping his glasses and tilting his chair back. "We
stick to a safe twenty."

Gordon-Nasmyth's quick temper showed in a slight stiffening of his
attitude.

"Don't you believe him," said I, getting up before he could reply.
"You're different, and I know your books. We're very glad you've come
to us. Confound it, uncle! Its Gordon-Nasmyth! Sit down. What is it?
Minerals?"

"Quap," said Gordon-Nasmyth, fixing his eye on me, "in heaps."

"In heaps," said my uncle softly, with his glasses very oblique.

"You're only fit for th