gerness of the bystanders, that
gentleman was now rehearsing the history of his misfortune. It was but
scraps that reached me: how he "filled her on the starboard tack," and
how "it came up sudden out of the nor'-nor'-west," and "there she was,
high and dry." Sometimes he would appeal to one of the men--"That was
how it was, Jack?"--and the man would reply, "That was the way of it,
Captain Trent." Lastly, he started a fresh tide of popular sympathy by
enunciating the sentiment, "Damn all these Admiralty Charts, and that's
what I say!" From the nodding of heads and the murmurs of assent that
followed, I could see that Captain Trent had established himself in the
public mind as a gentleman and a thorough navigator: about which period,
my sketch of the four men and the canary-bird being finished, and all
(especially the canary-bird) excellent likenesses, I buckled up my book
and slipped from the saloon.

Little did I suppose that I was leaving Act I, Scene I of the drama of
my life; and yet the scene--or, rather, the captain's face--lingered for
some time in my memory. I was no prophet, as I say; but I was something
else--I was an observer; and one thing I knew--I knew when a man was
terrified. Captain Trent, of the British brig Flying Scud, had been
glib; he had been ready; he had been loud; but in his blue eyes I could
detect the chill, and in the lines of his countenance spy the agitation,
of perpetual terror. Was he trembling for his certificate? In my
judgment it was some livelier kind of fear that thrilled in the man's
marrow as he turned to drink. Was it the result of recent shock, and had
he not yet recovered the disaster to his brig? I remembered how a friend
of mine had been in a railway accident, and shook and started for a
month; and although Captain Trent of the _Flying Scud_ had none of the
appearance of a nervous man, I told myself, with incomplete conviction,
that his must be a similar case.

CHAPTER IX

THE WRECK OF THE _FLYING SCUD_

The next morning I found Pinkerton, who had risen before me, seated at
our usual table, and deep in the perusal of what I will call the _Daily
Occidental_. This was a paper (I know not if it be so still) that stood
out alone among its brethren in the West. The others, down to their
smallest item, were defaced with capitals, headlines, alliterations,
swaggering misquotations, and the shoddy picturesque and unpathetic
pathos of the Harry Millers: the _Occidental_ al