d.

"Yes," said Mr. Darling. "She crossed to London aboard my ship three
years ago. We--we were good friends."

"Aye, ye would be," returned Dick with a drunken leer. And then,
lurching forward, "Ye'll be makin' a trip 'round to Chance Along I bes
t'inkin', sir, to put the comather on to this Dennis Nolan? Sure, an'
why not? The dirty squid bes as full o' gold an' riches as any marchant.
I'll be goin' along wid ye, sir--if ye gives me two pistols an' takes
two yerself. I'll show ye where the harbor bes, an' his own house wid
Nora in it--an' all. If we gets to the harbor quiet, about the middle o'
the night, we'll shoot the skipper in his bed, the black divil, afore he
kin so much as lay a curse on to us. I bes wid ye, sir. Ye kin trust
Dick Lynch as ye would yer own mother."

Mr. Darling said that he had a great deal of business to attend to in
the city, but that he would meet Dick Lynch in this very room, at nine
o'clock in the morning, five days later. He did not mean a word of it,
for he would not have trusted that worthy any farther than he could have
thrown him over his shoulder. But he arranged the meeting and promised
to supply plenty of pistols for the expedition. Then he said good night
and went out of the warm room and fumes of rum to the mud and driving
sleet of the night, leaving Dick Lynch smiling to himself at thought of
what his enemy, the skipper, would say when he woke up in bed some fine
morning and found himself dead.

CHAPTER XV

MR. DARLING SETS OUT ON A JOURNEY

This John Darling was no ordinary shell-back. His father was an English
parson, his uncle a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and his eldest
brother a commander in the Royal Navy. John was poor in worldly gear,
however, and had recently been third officer of the _Durham Castle_. Now
he was without a berth, and was making a bid for fortune of an unusual
and adventurous kind. In London, Sir Ralph Harwood had made him a
private offer of one thousand pounds for the recovery of the necklace of
diamonds and rubies. Darling had landed in St. John's, on his quest,
about six days before his meeting with Dick Lynch. Upon landing he had
learned at the Merchants' Club that the _Royal William_, bound for New
York from London, was reported lost. She had foundered in mid-ocean or
had been shattered upon some desolate coast. The underwriters had paid
up like men--and both the American and English press had lamented the
tragic fate of Miss Fl