Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/99

Rh of none, reported in no harbour, mentioned in no despatch? Yet she remained known but to her crew and to me; and my study of shipping lists, gazettes, and papers in all tongues, never gave me clue to her. Only this, I had such a record of navigation as I think man never kept yet before; and I marked it as curious, if nothing more, that in the month when the cruiser quitted Spezia three ocean-going steamers, each carrying specie to the value of more than one hundred thousand pounds, went down in fair weather, and were paid for at Lloyd's. What folly! you say again; what are you going to conclude? I answer only—God grant that I conclude falsely—that this terrible thing I suspect is the phantom of a too-keen imagination.

"Now, when no tidings came, either of the ship sought or of the man Black, I did not lose all hope. Indeed, I was much occupied making—during a month's leisure in London—a list, as far as that were possible, of all the gems and baubles which the dead men and women on the sunken steamers had owned. This was a paltry record of bracelets, and rings, and tiaras, and clasps, such stuff as any fellow of a jeweller may sell; unconvincing stuff, worth no more than a near relation for purposes of evidence. There was but one piece of the whole mass that did not come in my category—a great box with a fine painting by upon its lid, and a curious circle of  all about the miniatures. This was a historic piece of  mentioned