ainmast and smallpox." Gobal was not
cheerful.

Tarboe caught at something. "You've got our man?" Gobal drank off his
wine slowly. "Yes," he said. "Well?--Why don't you fetch him?"

"You can see him below."

"The man has legs, let him walk here. Hello, my Gobal, what's the
matter? If he's here bring him up. We've no time to lose."

"Tarboe, the fool got smallpox, and died three hours ago--the tenth man
since we started. We're going to give him to the fishes. They're putting
him in his linen now."

Tarboe's face hardened. Disaster did not dismay him, it either made him
ugly or humourous, and one phase was as dangerous as the other.

"D'ye mean to say," he groaned, "that the game is up? Is it all
finished? Sweat o' my soul, my skin crawls like hot glass! Is it the
end, eh? The beast, to die!"

Gobal's eyes glistened. He had sent up the mercury, he would now bring
it down.

"Not such a beast as you think. Alive pirate, a convict, as comrade in
adventure, is not sugar in the teeth. This one was no better than the
worst. Well, he died. That was awkward. But he gave me the chart of the
bay before he died--and that was damn square."

Tarboe held out his hand eagerly, the big fingers bending claw-like.

"Give it me, Gobal," he said.

"Wait. There's no hurry. Come along, there's the bell: they're going to
drop him."

He coolly motioned, and passed out from the cabin to the ship's side.
Tarboe kept his tongue from blasphemy, and his hand from the captain's
shoulder, for he knew only too well that Gobal held the game in his
hands. They leaned over and saw two sailors with something on a plank.

"We therefore commit his body to the deep, in the knowledge of the
Judgment Day--let her go!" grunted Gobal; and a long straight canvas
bundle shot with a swishing sound beneath the water. "It was rough
on him too," he continued. "He waited twenty years to have his chance
again. Damn me, if I didn't feel as if I'd hit him in the eye, somehow,
when he begged me to keep him alive long enough to have a look at the
rhino. But it wasn't no use. He had to go, and I told him so.

"Then he did the fine thing: he give me the chart. But he made me swear
on a book of the Mass that if we got the gold we'd send one-half his
share to a woman in Paris, and the rest to his brother, a priest at
Nancy. I'll keep my word--but yes! Eh, Tarboe?"

"You can keep your word for me! What, you think, Gobal, there is no
honour in Black Tarboe, and y