Page:The Black Cat v01no07 (1896-04).pdf/4

2 exporting movement from the United States, now continued until it had almost drained the national treasury of its precious yellow hoard, and had precipitated a commercial crisis such as never before had been experienced, the Oklahoma was taking to the shores of insatiate John Bull the largest lump amount of gold ever shipped upon a single vessel within the memory of man.

Not even in the memorable gold exporting year of 1893, ten years previous, had any such sum as this been sent abroad at one time.

It was not the usual paltry half million or million dollars that she was carrying away in her great strong room of steel and teak wood, but thirty million dollars' worth of shining eagles and glinting bars, hastily called across the ocean because of the adverse "balance of trade" and the temporary mistrust of American securities by the fickle Europeans.

The mere insurance premium on this vast sum was in itself a comfortable fortune. Business men wondered why such a large amount was intrusted to one steamer. Suppose she should collide in the fog and sink, as one great ship had done only a few weeks before—what would become of the insurance companies then?

Suppose some daring Napoleon of crime should hatch a startling conspiracy to seize the steamer, intimidate the crew and passengers, and possess himself of the huge treasure?" It would be a stake well worth long risks,” thought some of the police officials, as they read the headlines in the evening papers.

The Oklahoma was a fast sailer. Her five hundred feet of length and her twelve thousand tons of displacement were made light work of by the great clanking, triple-expansion engines when their combined force of fifteen thousand horse power was brought to bear upon her twin screws. Under ordinary conditions she ought to have made port on the other side in time to let her passengers eat late dinner on the sixth day out. Incoming steamers reported a brief spell of nasty weather in mid-ocean, however, and so her failure to reach Southampton on the sixth and even the seventh day was not particularly remarked.

The great American public had been busy with other weighty matters in the interim, including a threatened secession of the silver-producing States; and the departure of this modern argosy