y was down already; but he made nothing of it. Up he
jumps, one leap, swings his long legs over the rail, and there he is
on board. They pass up his swell dunnage, and he puts his hand in his
trousers pocket and throws all his small change on the wharf for them
chaps to pick up. They were still promenading that wharf on all fours
when we cast off. It was only then that he looked at me--quietly, you
know; in a slow way. He wasn't so thin then as he is now; but I noticed
he wasn't so young as he looked--not by a long chalk. He seemed to touch
me inside somewhere. I went away pretty quick from there; I was wanted
forward anyhow. I wasn't frightened. What should I be frightened for? I
only felt touched--on the very spot. But Jee-miny, if anybody had told
me we should be partners before the year was out--well, I would have--"

He swore a variety of strange oaths, some common, others quaintly
horrible to Schomberg's ears, and all mere innocent exclamations of
wonder at the shifts and changes of human fortune. Schomberg moved
slightly in his chair. But the admirer and partner of "plain Mr. Jones"
seemed to have forgotten Schomberg's existence for the moment. The
stream of ingenuous blasphemy--some of it in bad Spanish--had run dry,
and Martin Ricardo, connoisseur in gentlemen, sat dumb with a stony gaze
as if still marvelling inwardly at the amazing elections, conjunctions,
and associations of events which influence man's pilgrimage on this
earth.

At last Schomberg spoke tentatively:

"And so the--the gentleman, up there, talked you over into leaving a
good berth?"

Ricardo started.

"Talked me over! Didn't need to talk me over. Just beckoned to me, and
that was enough. By that time we were in the Gulf of Mexico. One night
we were lying at anchor, close to a dry sandbank--to this day I am not
sure where it was--off the Colombian coast or thereabouts. We were
to start digging the next morning, and all hands had turned in early,
expecting a hard day with the shovels. Up he comes, and in his quiet,
tired way of speaking--you can tell a gentleman by that as much as by
anything else almost--up he comes behind me and says, just like that
into my ear, in a manner: 'Well, what do you think of our treasure hunt
now?'

"I didn't even turn my head; 'xactly as I stood, I remained, and I spoke
no louder than himself:

"'If you want to know, sir, it's nothing but just damned tom-foolery.'

"We had, of course, been having short ta