ssel left the Colonel behind, amid jeers and all the catcalls familiar
to Southern methods of demonstration. The Colonel seemed heartbroken.
When he _steamed_ into Charleston harbor two hours after his ancient
rival, the wharf was crowded with the Colonel's "friends." When the
Colonel came ashore he dropped a few characteristic oaths, ordered
drinks all around, and said that, after the _Mary Jane_ (that was the
name painted, on her square-stern) was prinked up and her bottom
scoured, she would beat the best of them yet. He had great faith in her
possibilities. At any rate she could go in a calm.

Similar performances were repeated for a week. The Colonel planned it to
get to the city in the morning and he went back at night, until
Charleston was thoroughly familiar with his ridiculously antique yacht,
and had joked itself tired at his expense. Soon an elopement and a
murder tickled the palate of the city, and the Colonel and the _Mary
Jane_ were forgotten. When that stage was reached Charleston knew him no
more. It was now the second of June, and the _Mary Jane_ turned her ugly
prow toward the mouth of the Potomac river.

Every one knows that the Potomac empties itself into the Chesapeake bay.
The Potomac is between ninety and a hundred miles long, in its tortuous
route from Washington to the bay. At its mouth are many inlets. Each one
of these was known to Rupert and the two negro sailors. It was in the
most retired estuary that the _Mary Jane_ cast anchor on the evening of
the fifth of June. At her normal rate of speed she lay within two and a
half hours run of the Capital. At nine, at black of night, she started
for Washington. Her deck-log registered thirty-six knots an hour. She
hugged the shore, where she laid for safe passage, until she modestly
crept to an anchorage near a city wharf. Then the Colonel went ashore
with his two black men and two Swedes, to reconnoitre the town. He
always took with him a preparation of chloroform and another drug,
which, for the sake of public safety, we will not mention. This was
compounded for him in Chicago, by a chemist formerly in the employ of
Anarchists. This preparation was warranted to "make a man who smelled it
lose consciousness in less time that it takes to say Herr Most."

When Colonel Oddminton was last in Washington a casual smoking-room
acquaintance remarked, eying him with the gaze of a professional
physiognomist:

"If you'd shave off your chin, and keep your ha