hanced to see a lamp anywhere that was
carelessly tended, spattering or smoking and the flame burning low and
foul, then Andrew Harben would begin to carry on.

"Ya--ya!" he would yell, meaning why the devil don't you trim your
wicks?

Which, when you think of it, was no more than natural, as the skipper
said.

DOUBLOON GOLD

I remembered the big chap with the China-blue eyes and the great mop of
tangled fair hair. I had seen him one night, a month or so before, at
Monte Carlo, where he wound up a run against the red by snapping the
sovereigns off his cuff links. And here, in the Casino Pavao, at
Funchal, I remarked him in almost the identical gesture. He fumbled
through all his pockets before he found and tossed out upon the board a
goldpiece, broad and ruddy as his own openair face. Now, as then, I
saw him summon his last reserve for a final plunge. The coin fell on
_manque_, and there he let it lie.

We were in charge of a highly superior banker at that table--a model
banker, a window model of a banker, with spade-cut beard, jet brows,
waxen face, and perfectly faultless armor of full dress. Throughout the
evening he had been spinning the wheel and shooting the little marble
along its saucer rim with the detached regularity of an automaton. But
when this strange token dropped shimmering beside him he stood like one
transfixed, then bent over to stare, and presently passed a signal to
the fat croupier across from him. And both of them stared at the thing,
which shone like a full moon on the smooth green pool of the table.

I was not so sure of the rest. But it seemed to me that a sudden flame
lighted their professionally indifferent eyes, that the spark of some
swift excitement leaped between them. I say I could not be sure, because
I was tiptoe with eagerness myself.

Nobody else was paying any noticeable attention to the big gambler or
to his fortunes. A silent crowd jostled stiffly about the board, three
deep, unmindful of the heat, the puddled air, the aching blue-white
lights--a cosmopolitan crowd, such as one finds in the season at a minor
crossroads like Madeira, where types are varied, if not extreme.

There was the English invalid contingent, of course--the prop and frigid
corrective of so many subtropical resorts; and the local social element,
dark, dapper and Portuguese, playing a wary and penurious stake; and the
casual commercial, chiefly Teuton, playing high and stolidly; and the
whole