Page:Paine--J Archibauld McKaney collector of whiskers.djvu/113

  they got ashore and then his friends would "bomb" them one at a time.

Pebotsky was fairly wild to save the ship, but he could not. It was too late. These two infernal machines of his had been stowed some where at the bottom of thousands of tons of miscellaneous cargo. He wouldn't know the boxes if he saw them. A friend of his had looked after shipping them. He was responsible only for their confounded insides. Even if the crew should be set to work to dump every package of cargo into the sea they could not have half of it out of the doomed ship in the next twenty-four hours. And the first machine had been timed to go off at noon sharp. He said that they exploded themselves by means of chronometer attachments.

I listened to this awful narrative in speechless horror while Pebotsky raved and tore his hair and tried to think of some way of saving Miss Fletcher and himself. I managed to express my surprise that he should have been so ready to blow up a thousand innocent souls to bag his trust magnates, but Pebotsky [95