g with it, as the next chapter will
show.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THINGS BECOME SHAKY, SO DOES MR WEBSTER, AND THE RESULTS ARE AN ILLNESS
AND A VOYAGE.

The old Indian officer who was drowned, as we have seen, in the wreck of
the _Swordfish_, was in no way connected with Mr John Webster. In
fact, the latter gentleman read his name in the list of those lost with
feelings of comparative indifference. He was "very sorry indeed," as he
himself expressed it, that so many human beings had been swept off the
stage of time by that "unfortunate wreck," but it did not add to his
sorrow that an old gentleman, whom he had never seen or heard of before,
was numbered with the drowned. Had he foreseen the influence that the
death of that old officer was to have on his own fortunes, he might have
looked a little more anxiously at the announcement of it. But Colonel
Green--that was his name--was nothing to John Webster. What mattered
his death or life to him? He was, no doubt, a rich old fellow, who had
lived in the East Indies when things were conducted in a rather loose
style, and when unscrupulous men in power had opportunities of
feathering their nests well; but even although that was true it mattered
not, for all Colonel Green's fortune, if thrown into the pile or taken
from it, would scarcely have made an appreciable difference in the
wealth of the great firm of Webster and Company. Not that "Company" had
anything to do with it, for there was no Company. There had been one
once, but he had long ago passed into the realms where gold has no
value.

There was, however, a very large and important firm in Liverpool which
was deeply interested in the life of Colonel Green, for he had long been
a sleeping partner of the firm, and had, during a course of years,
become so deeply indebted to it that the other partners were beginning
to feel uneasy about him. Messrs. Wentworth and Hodge would have given
a good deal to have got rid of their sleeping partner, but Colonel Green
cared not a straw for Wentworth, nor a fig for Hodge, so he went on in
his own way until the _Swordfish_ was wrecked, when he went the way of
all flesh, and Wentworth and Hodge discovered that, whatever riches he,
Colonel Green, might at one time have possessed, he left nothing behind
him except a number of heavy debts.

This was serious, because the firm had been rather infirm for some years
past, and the consequences of the colonel's death were, that it beca