Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/74

60 refused to give information concerning her until she had been some months at sea to prove her.

All this reading remained enigmatical, of course, and as I could make nothing of it to connect it with the events I have narrated, I went on to the writing, which was fine and small, as the writing of an exact man. And the words upon the head of it were these:—

I put from me the sorrow of the thought which the last three words brought to me, and read therefrom this history, which had these few sentences as its preface:—

"You read these words, Mark Strong, when I am dead; and I would ask you before you go further with them to consider well if you would wish, or have inclination for, a pursuit in which I have lost all that a man can lose, and in which your risk, do you take the work upon you, will be no less than mine was. For if you read what is written here, and have in you that stuff which cannot brook mystery, and is fired when mystery also