Page:Morley roberts--Blue Peter--sea yarns.djvu/90

74 remarkable disappearance of Captain Brogger, two days before the Enchantress was due to be towed down stream to the ocean, caused rather more sensation than it might have done a few years ago. The newspapers took two sides, and regarded two hypotheses as needing no proof. The papers which were trying to make Portland smell sweetly in the nostrils of the mercantile world said that some of the boarding-house bosses might be able to clear up the mystery. They gave reasons for supposing that Brogger was not loved by the tyrants of the water-front. But other papers declared that he had been knocked on the head and dumped into the river by some of his own crew. One reporter declared that a more evil-looking lot of ruffians than the crowd on board the Enchantress never towed past Kalama. This journal was partially owned by Lant and Gulliver. They owned something of everything, even a judge. And the good police did what they were told, so long as it was possible. They set about a story that Brogger had committed suicide. The crew said he had been looking wild of late. Mr. Plump had no theory, and was only mad that he had no master's certificate. Young Dodman went