o get quick into port, and because,
sir, I have a great liking and respect for you. Now shoot along. I'll
be with you inside ten minutes."

"I like you, steward, very much," the old man quavered.

"And I like you, sir--and a damn sight more than them money-sharks aft.
But we'll just postpone this. You beat it out of here, while I finish
scuppering the rest of the water."

A quarter of an hour later, with the three money-sharks still at the mast-
heads, Charles Stough Greenleaf was seated in the cabin and sipping a
highball, and Dag Daughtry was standing across the table from him,
drinking directly from a quart bottle of beer.

"Maybe you haven't guessed it," the Ancient Mariner said; "but this is my
fourth voyage after this treasure."

"You mean . . . ?" Daughtry asked.

"Just that. There isn't any treasure. There never was one--any more
than the Lion's Head, the longboat, or the bearings unnamable."'

Daughtry rumpled his grizzled thatch of hair in his perplexity, as he
admitted:

"Well, you got me, sir. You sure got me to believin' in that treasure."

"And I acknowledge, steward, that I am pleased to hear it. It shows that
I have not lost my cunning when I can deceive a man like you. It is easy
to deceive men whose souls know only money. But you are different. You
don't live and breathe for money. I've watched you with your dog. I've
watched you with your nigger boy. I've watched you with your beer. And
just because your heart isn't set on a great buried treasure of gold, you
are harder to deceive. Those whose hearts are set, are most
astonishingly easy to fool. They are of cheap kidney. Offer them a
proposition of one hundred dollars for one, and they are like hungry pike
snapping at the bait. Offer a thousand dollars for one, or ten thousand
for one, and they become sheer lunatic. I am an old man, a very old man.
I like to live until I die--I mean, to live decently, comfortably,
respectably."

"And you like the voyages long? I begin to see, sir. Just as they're
getting near to where the treasure ain't, a little accident like the loss
of their water-supply sends them into port and out again to start hunting
all over."

The Ancient Mariner nodded, and his sun-washed eyes twinkled.

"There was the _Emma Louisa_. I kept her on the long voyage over
eighteen months with water accidents and similar accidents. And,
besides, they kept me in one of the best hotels in New Orleans for over