d, "it can't be Dick Merton!
Why, how are you, old man?"

This was an unexpected piece of luck in the midst of my perplexities.
Dick was just the man I wanted; kindly and shrewd in his nature, and
prompt in his actions, I should have no difficulty in telling him my
suspicions, and could rely upon his sound sense to point out the best
course to pursue. Since I was a little lad in the second form at
Harrow, Dick had been my adviser and protector. He saw at a glance that
something had gone wrong with me.

"Hullo!" he said, in his kindly way, "what's put you about, Hammond? You
look as white as a sheet. Mal de mer, eh?"

"No, not that altogether," said I. "Walk up and down with me, Dick; I
want to speak to you. Give me your arm."

Supporting myself on Dick's stalwart frame, I tottered along by his
side; but it was some time before I could muster resolution to speak.

"Have a cigar," said he, breaking the silence.

"No, thanks," said I. "Dick, we shall be all corpses to-night."

"That's no reason against your having a cigar now," said Dick, in his
cool way, but looking hard at me from under his shaggy eyebrows as he
spoke. He evidently thought that my intellect was a little gone.

"No," I continued, "it's no laughing matter; and I speak in sober
earnest, I assure you. I have discovered an infamous conspiracy,
Dick, to destroy this ship and every soul that is in her;" and I then
proceeded systematically, and in order, to lay before him the chain of
evidence which I had collected. "There, Dick," I said, as I concluded,
"what do you think of that? and, above all, what am I to do?"

To my astonishment he burst into a hearty fit of laughter.

"I'd be frightened," he said, "if any fellow but you had told me as
much. You always had a way, Hammond, of discovering mares' nests. I like
to see the old traits breaking out again. Do you remember at school how
you swore there was a ghost in the long room, and how it turned out to
be your own reflection in the mirror. Why, man," he continued, "what
object would any one have in destroying this ship? We have no great
political guns aboard. On the contrary, the majority of the passengers
are Americans. Besides, in this sober nineteenth century, the most
wholesale murderers stop at including themselves among their victims.
Depend upon it, you have misunderstood them, and have mistaken a
photographic camera, or something equally innocent, for an infernal
machine."

"Nothing of the