htin', self-bailin', she can't capsize, and if I was to tell
you how many thousands of dollars she cost, you wouldn't believe me."

Condy and Blix spent a delightful half-hour in the boat-house while
Captain Jack explained and illustrated, and told them anecdotes of
wrecks, escapes, and rescues till they held their breaths like
ten-year-olds.

It did not take Condy long to know that he had discovered what the
story-teller so often tells of but so seldom finds, and what, for want
of a better name, he elects to call "a character."

Captain Jack had been everywhere, had seen everything, and had done
most of the things worth doing, including a great many things that he
had far better have left undone. But on this latter point the Captain
seemed to be innocently and completely devoid of a moral sense of right
and wrong. It was quite evident that he saw no matter for conscience
in the smuggling of Chinamen across the Canadian border at thirty
dollars a head--a venture in which he had had the assistance of the
prodigal son of an American divine of international renown. The trade
to Peruvian insurgents of condemned rifles was to be regretted only
because the ring manipulating it was broken up. The appropriation of a
schooner in the harbor of Callao was a story in itself; while the
robbery of thirty thousand dollars' worth of sea-otter skins from a
Russian trading-post in Alaska, accomplished chiefly through the agency
of a barrel of rum manufactured from sugar-cane, was a veritable
achievement.

He had been born, so he told them, in Winchester, in England, and--
Heaven save the mark!--had been brought up with a view of taking
orders. For some time he was a choir boy in the great Winchester
Cathedral; then, while yet a lad, had gone to sea. He had been
boat-steerer on a New Bedford whaler, and struck his first whale when
only sixteen. He had filibustered down to Chili; had acted as ice
pilot on an Arctic relief expedition; had captained a crew of Chinamen
shark-fishing in Magdalena Bay, and had been nearly murdered by his
men; had been a deep-sea diver, and had burst his ear-drums at the
business, so that now he could blow tobacco smoke out of his ears; he
had been shipwrecked in the Gilberts, fought with the Seris on the
lower California Islands, sold champagne--made from rock candy,
effervescent salts, and Reisling wine--to the Coreans, had dreamed of
"holding up" a Cunard liner, and had ridden on the Strand in a ha