states. He was, by
the way, unwilling at first to accept, and it was only when I showed him
Uncle Roger's letter, and made him read the Deed of Transfer prepared in
anticipation by Mr. Trent, that he allowed me to persuade him. Finally
he said:

"As you, my good friends, have so arranged, I must accept, be it only in
honour to the wishes of the dead. But remember, I only do so but for the
present, reserving to myself the freedom to withdraw later if I so
desire."

But Constantinople was silent. The whole nefarious scheme was one of the
"put-up jobs" which are part of the dirty work of a certain order of
statecraft--to be accepted if successful; to be denied in case of
failure.

The matter stood thus: Turkey had thrown the dice--and lost. Her men
were dead; her ship was forfeit. It was only some ten days after the
warship was left derelict with every living thing--that is, everything
that had been living--with its neck broken, as Rooke informed me, when he
brought the ship down the creek, and housed it in the dock behind the
armoured gates--that we saw an item in _The Roma_ copied from _The
Constantinople Journal_ of July 9:

"LOSS OF AN OTTOMAN IRONCLAD WITH ALL HANDS.

"News has been received at Constantinople of the total loss, with all
hands, of one of the newest and finest warships in the Turkish
fleet--_The Mahmoud_, Captain Ali Ali--which foundered in a storm on
the night of July 5, some distance off Cabrera, in the Balearic
Isles. There were no survivors, and no wreckage was discovered by
the ships which went in relief--the _Pera_ and the _Mustapha_--or
reported from anywhere along the shores of the islands, of which
exhaustive search was made. _The Mahmoud_ was double-manned, as she
carried a full extra crew sent on an educational cruise on the most
perfectly scientifically equipped warship on service in the
Mediterranean waters."

When the Voivode and I talked over the matter, he said:

"After all, Turkey is a shrewd Power. She certainly seems to know when
she is beaten, and does not intend to make a bad thing seem worse in the
eyes of the world."

Well, 'tis a bad wind that blows good to nobody. As _The Mahmoud_ was
lost off the Balearics, it cannot have been her that put the marauders on
shore and trained her big guns on Ilsin. We take it, therefore, that the
latter must have been a pirate, and as we have taken her derelict in our
waters, s