I've been disinfected and fumigated till I couldn't hardly
breathe. Races has their special diseases, just the same as they has
their special foods: this war'n't an English sickness; all its
characteristics were Chinee, and it killed the Captain because he'd
lived that long with Chinamen that, I firmly believe, his pigtail had
begun to shoot. Furrin crews, furrin crews! Give me the British sailor,
an' I'll sail my ship anywhere."

"And run her on the rocks, at the end of the voyage," growled the Pilot.

"I never came ashore to argify," retorted the Captain. "But if it comes
to a matter of navigation, there _are_ points I could give any man, even
pilots."

Seeing that the bone of contention was about to be gnawed by the
sea-dogs, Rose interposed with a question.

"Have you just come ashore, Captain?"

"In a manner o' speakin' he has," answered her father, who took the
words out of his friend's mouth, "and in a manner o' speakin' he hasn't.
You see, my dear, we went for a little preliminary cruise."

"The first thing your father told me was about this here robbery of
mails. 'When was that?' I asked. 'On the night of the 8th or early
morning of the 9th,' he says. That was when the captain of the barque
died. I remembered it well. 'Summerhayes,' I said, 'I have a notion.'
And this is the result, my dear."

From the capacious pocket of his thick pilot-jacket he pulled a brown
and charred piece of canvas.

"What's that?" he asked.

"I haven't the least idea," replied Rose.

"Does it look as though it might be a part of a mail-bag?" asked
Sartoris. "Look at the sealing-wax sticking to it. Now look at _that_."
He drew from the deep of another pocket a rusty knife.

"It was found near the other," he said. "Its blade was open. And what's
that engraved on the name-plate?--your eyes are younger than mine, my
dear." The sailor handed the knife to Rose, who read the name, and
exclaimed, "B. Tresco!"

"That's what the Pilot made it," said Sartoris. "And it's what I made
it. We're all agreed that B. Tresco, whoever he may be, was the owner of
that knife. Now this is evidence: that knife was found in conjunction
with this here bit of brown canvas, which I take to be part of a
mail-bag; and the two of 'em were beside the ashes of a fire, above high
water-mark. On a certain night I saw a fire lighted at that spot: that
night was the night the skipper of the barque died and the night when
the mails were robbed. You see, whe