My publishers have been encouraged to reissue the present volume,
enlarged by the addition of several new tales. Whatever their demerits
may be, my stories are at least true to a picturesque and little known
life that is fast passing away.

LLOYD OSBOURNE

CONTENTS
PAGE

THE RENEGADE 1

THE SECURITY OF THE HIGH SEAS 55

FORTY YEARS BETWEEN 86

O'S HEAD 113

PROFESSOR NO NO 142

CAPTAIN ELIJAH COE 162

MR. BOB 192

OLD DIBS 216

THE LABOR CAPTAIN 274

A SON OF EMPIRE 297

CLOUD OF BUTTERFLIES 316

BEN 339

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

"'Jack,' she said suddenly, 'you come along with us'" _Frontispiece_

"In an instant she was tumbling backward" 52

"Jack leaped to his feet, white and speechless" 98

"'This is a black business, Silver Tongue,' I said" 118

THE RENEGADE

I

It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and from her uneasy anchorage in
the pass the German man-of-war struck the time, four bells. Overhead the
sun shone fiercely through a mist of fire; below, the bay gave back a
dancing glare; on the outer reef the long breakers foamed and tumbled,
white as far as the eye could reach. From his perch beneath the bows of
the _Northern Light_ a sailor, paint brush in hand, was slowly wearing
out the day--a brown-bearded, straight-nosed, handsome man of thirty,
his red shirt open to the waist, his bare arms stained with the
drippings of his brush. Astride of his plank, which hung suspended in
midair by a block and tackle at either end, the seaman faced the task
that seemed to have no end. For a week he had been at it, patch by
patch, working his way round the bark, while the bells had struck on the
man-of-war and the sun had risen and set.

As he swept his brush across the blistered wall in front of him, he
wondered moodily whether fate had nothing more in store for him than
this. Was he to finish as he had begun,