company waits for good kind men
to find it riches and then take 'em away from 'em. There you have
it--derelict."

"Can't you do any sort of deal?"

"They're too damned stupid. You've got to go and take it. That's all."

"They might catch you."

"They might, of course. But they're not great at catching."

We went into the particulars of that difficulty. "They wouldn't catch
me, because I'd sink first. Give me a yacht," said Gordon-Nasmyth;
"that's all I need."

"But if you get caught," said my uncle.

I am inclined to think Gordon-Nasmyth imagined we would give him a
cheque for six thousand pounds on the strength of his talk. It was very
good talk, but we didn't do that. I stipulated for samples of his stuff
for analysis, and he consented--reluctantly.

I think, on the whole, he would rather I didn't examine samples. He made
a motion pocketwards, that gave us an invincible persuasion that he
had a sample upon him, and that at the last instant he decided not to
produce it prematurely.

There was evidently a curious strain of secretiveness in him. He didn't
like to give us samples, and he wouldn't indicate within three hundred
miles the position of this Mordet Island of his. He had it clear in his
mind that he had a secret of immense value, and he had no idea at all of
just how far he ought to go with business people. And so presently,
to gain time for these hesitations of his, he began to talk of other
things. He talked very well. He talked of the Dutch East Indies and of
the Congo, of Portuguese East Africa and Paraguay, of Malays and rich
Chinese merchants, Dyaks and negroes and the spread of the Mahometan
world in Africa to-day. And all this time he was trying to judge if
we were good enough to trust with his adventure. Our cosy inner office
became a little place, and all our business cold and lifeless exploits
beside his glimpses of strange minglings of men, of slayings unavenged
and curious customs, of trade where no writs run, and the dark
treacheries of eastern ports and uncharted channels.

We had neither of us gone abroad except for a few vulgar raids on Paris;
our world was England, are the places of origin of half the raw material
of the goods we sold had seemed to us as remote as fairyland or the
forest of Arden. But Gordon-Nasmyth made it so real and intimate for us
that afternoon--for me, at any rate--that it seemed like something seen
and forgotten and now again remembered.

And in the end he