foreseen; everything
happened as I had been assured everything must. Nobody was about
below, only the ship's boys on deck, and nobody on the bridge. It was
twenty-five minutes past one when Raffles, without a stitch of clothing
on his body, but with a glass phial, corked with cotton-wool, between
his teeth, and a tiny screw-driver behind his ear, squirmed feet first
through the ventilator over his berth; and it was nineteen minutes to
two when he returned, head first, with the phial still between his
teeth, and the cotton-wool rammed home to still the rattling of that
which lay like a great gray bean within. He had taken screws out and
put them in again; he had unfastened von Heumann's ventilator and had
left it fast as he had found it--fast as he instantly proceeded to make
his own. As for von Heumann, it had been enough to place the drenched
wad first on his mustache, and then to hold it between his gaping lips;
thereafter the intruder had climbed both ways across his shins without
eliciting a groan.

And here was the prize--this pearl as large as a filbert--with a pale
pink tinge like a lady's fingernail--this spoil of a filibustering
age--this gift from a European emperor to a South Sea chief. We gloated
over it when all was snug. We toasted it in whiskey and soda-water
laid in overnight in view of the great moment. But the moment was
greater, more triumphant, than our most sanguine dreams. All we had
now to do was to secrete the gem (which Raffles had prised from its
setting, replacing the latter), so that we could stand the strictest
search and yet take it ashore with us at Naples; and this Raffles was
doing when I turned in. I myself would have landed incontinently, that
night, at Genoa and bolted with the spoil; he would not hear of it, for
a dozen good reasons which will be obvious.

On the whole I do not think that anything was discovered or suspected
before we weighed anchor; but I cannot be sure. It is difficult to
believe that a man could be chloroformed in his sleep and feel no
tell-tale effects, sniff no suspicious odor, in the morning.
Nevertheless, von Heumann reappeared as though nothing had happened to
him, his German cap over his eyes and his mustaches brushing the peak.
And by ten o'clock we were quit of Genoa; the last lean, blue-chinned
official had left our decks; the last fruitseller had been beaten off
with bucketsful of water and left cursing us from his boat; the last
passenger ha