ldn't hold myself. That's what led me to keep the crew together at
New York, and to return to Michigan, where I found that the mine was
making money faster almost than they could bank it, and if I was worth
a penny, I was worth a million sterling at that very time; for my
partner behaved square all through, and paid my share to the last
penny. I stayed with him about a couple of months then, giving my wits
to the job, and it was there I met Karl, the German engineer, who had
got it into his head that gas was the motor of the near future. He
talked of using it for the copper work, and then of building gas
launches for transport; but he didn't know that he'd set me all aglow
with another thought, which was nothing less than this--that I should
build a steamer driven by gas, and run a game of piracy on the Atlantic
with her. Do you call it lunacy? Well, other men have made good company
for such lunatics, the Corsican murderer at Moscow among 'em. And what
was it to be but a fight of one man against the world--a fight to set
your best blood running fast in your veins, to brace every nerve in
your body? Boy, I lived for a year on that excitement, which was more
even than the drink to me. I left the mine to cruise again in the
_Rossa_ with the old hands; but we had added a long 'chaser' to our
list of guns, and in the three months out we took twenty ships and over
two hundred thousand in specie. I saw from the beginning of it that the
one thing we couldn't stand against with a coal steamer was the
constant putting into port to fill her bunkers: and I knew that if we
didn't find some haven of refuge out of the common run, the day would
come when we should swing like common cut-throats. I had taken Karl on
board with me for the trip, and he was the man to set both things
square. He ran me north of Godthaab, in Greenland, and put me into the
fjord you have known; and he drew the plans of my ship, which I made
the Italians at Spezia build for me--for I had the money, and, as for
the metal, the phosphor bronze of which I built her--well, that was
Karl's idea, too. You may know that phosphor bronze is the finest
material for ship-building in the world, but the majority of 'em can't
use it on account of the cost of the copper. Well, the copper I had,
any amount of it; and I shipped it to Italy, and the great vessel which
your friend Hall thought was all of gold had the look of it, and was
the finest sight man ever saw when under her o