wore rings
like them. I wish collateral like them came into my loan offices these
days. They're worth big money."

* * * * *

"I just want to tell you, Killeny Boy, that maybe I'll be wishin' before
the voyage is over that I'd gone on a lay of the treasure instead of
straight wages," Dag Daughtry confided to Michael that night at turning-
in time as Kwaque removed his shoes and as he paused midway in the
draining of his sixth bottle. "Take it from me, Killeny, that old
gentleman knows what he's talkin' about, an' has been some hummer in his
days. Men don't lose the fingers off their hands and get their faces
chopped open just for nothing--nor sport rings that makes a Jew
pawnbroker's mouth water."

CHAPTER XI

Before the voyage of the _Mary Turner_ came to an end, Dag Daughtry,
sitting down between the rows of water-casks in the main-hold, with a
great laugh rechristened the schooner "the Ship of Fools." But that was
some weeks after. In the meantime he so fulfilled his duties that not
even Captain Doane could conjure a shadow of complaint.

Especially did the steward attend upon the Ancient Mariner, for whom he
had come to conceive a strong admiration, if not affection. The old
fellow was different from his cabin-mates. They were money-lovers;
everything in them had narrowed down to the pursuit of dollars. Daughtry,
himself moulded on generously careless lines, could not but appreciate
the spaciousness of the Ancient Mariner, who had evidently lived
spaciously and who was ever for sharing the treasure they sought.

"You'll get your whack, steward, if it comes out of my share," he
frequently assured Daughtry at times of special kindness on the latter's
part. "There's oodles of it, and oodles of it, and, without kith or kin,
I have so little time longer to live that I shall not need it much or
much of it."

And so the Ship of Fools sailed on, all aft fooling and befouling, from
the guileless-eyed, gentle-souled Finnish mate, who, with the scent of
treasure pungent in his nostrils, with a duplicate key stole the ship's
daily position from Captain Doane's locked desk, to Ah Moy, the cook, who
kept Kwaque at a distance and never whispered warning to the others of
the risk they ran from continual contact with the carrier of the terrible
disease.

Kwaque himself had neither thought nor worry of the matter. He knew the
thing as a thing that occasionally happened to human creatures. It
bothered hi