brings men back?"

Rimmle laid his head to one side and nodded shrewdly. "As far as my
experience goes, Captain, it is one of three things."

"And which of the three is my failing?" Captain Blaise was absently
filling their glasses.

"M-m--It cannot be money--you never cared for that. You who have made
fortunes and spent them as fast as you made them--no, it cannot be
money. And then your newly acquired property in the States--"

"_My_ newly acquired--What of that?"

"Why, the rumor is out that you fell heir to a great estate in the
States--on the banks of the Mississippi or the Ohio, or some outlandish
name of a river in the States."

"Oh, a rumor! Go on."

"And as for the drink--it must be a great occasion, indeed, Captain,
when you take more than is good for a man. And so--"

"We can never take too much drink in good company, Rimmle. And so drink
up--here's health! And so you think it must be--" He smiled faintly at
the agent. "And yet who should know better than you that all the gold I
ever gave for a woman's favor would not suffice to keep the poorest of
them in cambric handkerchiefs."

"As to that"--the agent pursed up his full moist lips--"it is true; the
kind who looked for money were never your kind. And yet that kind
sometimes cost men a hundred times more in the end."

Captain Blaise bent deferentially toward the agent. "You think that,
Rimmle--truly?"

Rimmle bowed wisely.

Captain Blaise continued to regard him in the most friendly way, and yet
with an air of doubt, as if debating how far to discuss matters of this
kind with him. And then, leaning yet further forward and speaking
rapidly, energetically: "And agreeing that it is so, who is it that ever
regrets the price? D'y' think that I, even though I be what I be, that
I--Why, Rimmle, even you who live to amass money"--Rimmle flushed--"even
you have had your days when--To be sure you have had." Rimmle beamed.
"And so, Rimmle, you can believe possibly that Captain Blaise may yet
have his immortal hour, and cherish the hope none the less dearly in his
heart because his head, from out the experience of bitter years, tells
him that it can never be. And it may be that I go this time for neither
money nor drink, nor anything else in which traders ashore or aship
commonly bargain. But, hah, hah!"--he grinned suddenly, sardonically, at
the agent. "Think of us, Rimmle, sitting in the cabin of a West Coast
slaver and smuggler discoursing in this fa