e of
Captain Black--quitted the town and reached Paris. Thither I followed
him, staying one day in the French capital, but going onward with him
on the following morning to Cherbourg. There he went aboard a small
yacht, and I lost him in the Channel. I returned at once to Italy, and
wired to friends in the police force at New York, at London, and San
Francisco, and at three ports in South America for news (_a_) of a new
war-ship lately completed at Spezia for the Brazilian republic; (_b_)
of a man known as Captain Black, who left the port of Cherbourg in the
cutter-yacht _La France_ on the morning of October 30th. For nearly
twelve months I waited for an answer to these questions; but none came
to me. To the best of my knowledge, the nameless war-ship was never
seen upon the high seas. I began to ask myself, if she existed, how
came it that a vessel, burnished to the beauty of gold, had been spoken
of none, seen of none, reported in no harbour, mentioned in no
despatch? Yet she remained known but to her crew and to me: and my
study of shipping lists, gazettes, and papers in all tongues, never
gave me clue to her. Only this, I had such a record of navigation as I
think man never kept yet before; and I marked it as curious, if nothing
more, that in the month when the cruiser quitted Spezia three
ocean-going steamers, each carrying specie to the value of more than
one hundred thousand pounds, went down in fair weather, and were paid
for at Lloyd's. What folly! you say again; what are you going to
conclude? I answer only--God grant that I conclude falsely--that this
terrible thing I suspect is the phantom of a too-keen imagination.

"Now, when no tidings came, either of the ship I sought or of the
man Black, I did not lose all hope. Indeed, I was much occupied
making--during a month's leisure in London--a list, as far as that were
possible, of all the gems and baubles which the dead men and women on
the sunken steamers had owned. This was a paltry record of bracelets,
and rings, and tiaras, and clasps, such stuff as any fellow of a
jeweller may sell; unconvincing stuff, worth no more than a near
relation for purposes of evidence. There was but one piece of the whole
mass that did not come in my category--a great box with a fine painting
by Jean Petitot upon its lid, and a curious circle of jasper all about
the miniatures. This was a historic piece of _bijouterie_ mentioned as
having once been the property of Necker, the Fre