never be sorry enough.
But here it is: one man's poison, another man's meat. This could not
have been handier for Mr. Massy if he had arranged that shipwreck
himself. The most timely total loss I've ever heard of."

"What became of that Massy?" asked Mr. Van Wyk.

"He, sir? Ha! ha! He would keep on telling me that he meant to buy
another ship; but as soon as he had the money in his pocket he cleared
out for Manilla by mail-boat early in the morning. I gave him chase
right aboard, and he told me then he was going to make his fortune dead
sure in Manilla. I could go to the devil for all he cared. And yet he as
good as promised to give me the command if I didn't talk too much."

"You never said anything . . ." Mr. Van Wyk began.

"Not I, sir. Why should I? I mean to get on, but the dead aren't in my
way," said Sterne. His eyelids were beating rapidly, then drooped for an
instant. "Besides, sir, it would have been an awkward business. You made
me hold my tongue just a bit too long."

"Do you know how it was that Captain Whalley remained on board? Did he
really refuse to leave? Come now! Or was it perhaps an accidental . . .?"

"Nothing!" Sterne interrupted with energy. "I tell you I yelled for him
to leap overboard. He simply _must_ have cast off the painter of the
boat himself. We all yelled to him--that is, Jack and I. He wouldn't
even answer us. The ship was as silent as a grave to the last. Then the
boilers fetched away, and down she went. Accident! Not it! The game was
up, sir, I tell you."

This was all that Sterne had to say.

Mr. Van Wyk had been of course made the guest of the club for a
fortnight, and it was there that he met the lawyer in whose office had
been signed the agreement between Massy and Captain Whalley.

"Extraordinary old man," he said. "He came into my office from nowhere
in particular as you may say, with his five hundred pounds to place, and
that engineer fellow following him anxiously. And now he is gone out
a little inexplicably, just as he came. I could never understand him
quite. There was no mystery at all about that Massy, eh? I wonder
whether Whalley refused to leave the ship. It would have been foolish.
He was blameless, as the court found."

Mr. Van Wyk had known him well, he said, and he could not believe in
suicide. Such an act would not have been in character with what he knew
of the man.

"It is my opinion, too," the lawyer agreed. The general theory was that
the captain