ottle of
champagne and a bottle of water is not great; between a shipload of one
or of the other lay the whole scale from riches to ruin.

A second bottle was broached. There were two cases standing ready in a
state-room; these two were brought out, broken open, and tested. Still
with the same result: the contents were still colourless and tasteless,
and dead as the rain in a beached fishing-boat.

"Crikey!" said Huish.

"Here, let's sample the hold," said the captain, mopping his brow with a
back-handed sweep; and the three stalked out of the house, grim and
heavy-footed.

All hands were turned out; two Kanakas were sent below, another
stationed at a purchase; and Davis, axe in hand, took his place beside
the coamings.

"Are you going to let the men know?" whispered Herrick.

"Damn the men!" said Davis. "It's beyond that. We've got to know
ourselves."

Three cases were sent on deck and sampled in turn; from each bottle, as
the captain smashed it with the axe, the champagne ran bubbling and
creaming.

"Go deeper, can't you?" cried Davis to the Kanakas in the hold.

The command gave the signal for a disastrous change. Case after case
came up, bottle after bottle was burst, and bled mere water. Deeper yet,
and they came upon a layer where there was scarcely so much as the
intention to deceive; where the cases were no longer branded, the
bottles no longer wired or papered, where the fraud was manifest and
stared them in the face.

"Here's about enough of this foolery!" said Davis. "Stow back the cases
in the hold, Uncle, and get the broken crockery overboard. Come with
me," he added to his co-adventurers, and led the way back into the
cabin.

CHAPTER VI

THE PARTNERS

Each took a side of the fixed table; it was the first time they had sat
down at it together; but now all sense of incongruity, all memory of
differences, was quite swept away by the presence of the common ruin.

"Gentlemen," said the captain, after a pause, and with very much the air
of a chairman opening a board meeting, "we're sold."

Huish broke out in laughter. "Well, if this ain't the 'ighest old rig!"
he cried. "And Dyvis 'ere, who thought he had got up so bloomin' early
in the mornin'! We've stolen a cargo of spring water! O, my crikey!" and
he squirmed with mirth.

The captain managed to screw out a phantom smile.

"Here's Old Man Destiny again," said he to Herrick, "but this time I
guess he's kicked the door right in."