ith bullet marks.

"What's this, then?" I asked, rolling my eyes round.

"Hetty, what's this?" he asked, with his pipe in his hand and his head
cocked sideways.

"Naval supremacy and the command of the seas," said she, like a child
repeating a lesson.

"That's it," he shouted, stabbing at me with the amber. "Naval supremacy
and command of the seas. It's all here right under your nose. I tell
you, Munro, I could go to Switzerland to-morrow, and I could say to
them--'Look here, you haven't got a seaboard and you haven't got a port;
but just find me a ship, and hoist your flag on it, and I'll give you
every ocean under heaven.' I'd sweep the seas until there wasn't a
match-box floating on them. Or I could make them over to a limited
company, and join the board after allotment. I hold the salt water in
the cup of this hand, every drop of it."

His wife put her hands on his shoulder with admiration in her eyes. I
turned to knock out my pipe, and grinned over the grate.

"Oh, you may grin," said he. (He was wonderfully quick at spotting what
you were doing.) "You'll grin a little wider when you see the dividends
coming in. What's the value of that magnet?"

"A pound?"

"A million pounds. Not a penny under. And dirt cheap to the nation that
buys it. I shall let it go at that, though I could make ten times as
much if I held on. I shall take it up to the Secretary of the Navy in
a week or two; and if he seems to be a civil deserving sort of person I
shall do business with him. It's not every day, Munro, that a man comes
into his office with the Atlantic under one arm and the Pacific under
the other. Eh, what?"

I knew it would make him savage, but I lay back in my chair and laughed
until I was tired. His wife looked at me reproachfully; but he, after a
moment of blackness, burst out laughing also, stamping up and down the
room and waving his arms.

"Of course it seems absurd to you," he cried. "Well, I daresay it would
to me if any other fellow had worked it out. But you may take my word
for it that it's all right. Hetty here will answer for it. Won't you,
Hetty?"

"It's splendid, my dear."

"Now I'll show you, Munro; what an unbelieving Jew you are, trying to
look interested, and giggling at the back of your throat! In the first
place, I have discovered a method--which I won't tell you--of increasing
the attractive power of a magnet a hundred-fold. Have you grasped that?"

"Yes."

"Very good. You are also awa