"It'll have come aboard masked
in some way, and it deceived me. Unless there's the hand of a lumper
in the job--does he know no more about it than what he says?" he cried,
rounding upon me.

At this moment the steward came rushing from the companion way, and
said to the captain, in a trembling voice, "The man lies dead in his
bunk, sir, with his throat horribly cut."

"Come you along with us," said the captain, addressing me, and the
whole of us, saving the carpenter and second mate, went below.

We walked along the corridor obedient to the captain's whispered
injunction to tread lightly, and make no noise. The midnight lantern
faintly illuminated the length of the long after passage. The steward
conducted us to a cabin that was almost right aft, and threw open the
door. A bracket lamp filled the interior with light. There were two
bunks under the porthole, and in the lower bunk lay the figure of the
man I had beheld in the lazarette. His throat was terribly gashed, and
his right hand still grasped the razor with which the wound had been
inflicted.

"Is that the man?" said the captain.

"That's the man," I answered, trembling from head to foot, and sick and
faint with the horror of the sight.

"Steward, fetch the doctor," said the captain, "and tell the carpenter
we shan't want any irons here."

The narrative of my tragic experience may be completed by the
transcription of two newspaper accounts, which I preserve pasted in a
commonplace book. The first is from the Sydney Morning Herald. After
telling about the arrival of the Huntress, and the disembarkation of
his Excellency and suite, the writer proceeds thus:--

"When the ship was five days out from the Thames an extraordinary
incident occurred. A young man named William Peploe, a stowaway,
whilst hidden in the lazarette of the vessel, saw a man enter the place
in which he was hiding and attach a slow match and an infernal machine
to a barrel of gunpowder stored amidships of the lazarette, and, from
what we can gather, on top of the cargo! When the man left the hold
young Peploe heroically withdrew the match from the powder and carried
the machine on deck. The youth described the man, who proved to be a
second-class passenger, who had embarked under the name of John
Howland. When the villain's cabin was entered he was found lying in
his bunk dead, with a severe wound in his throat inflicted by his own
hand. No reason is assigned for this dasta