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- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Venture into the exotic and mysterious world of "Eve's Island" by Edgar Wallace. When a secluded island reveals its dark secrets, a thrilling adventure unfolds filled with hidden treasures, perilous encounters, and unexpected alliances. As the tension escalates, every twist and turn keeps you guessing until the breathtaking climax. This captivating tale of suspense, danger, and discovery is perfect for those who crave an unforgettable adventure.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Eve’s Island
THE GENESIS OF THE HISTORY
I. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FIRST WITNESS: CAPTAIN WALTER FORD, R.N., C.M.G.
II. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE SECOND WITNESS: ERNEST GEORGE STUCKEY
III. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE THIRD WITNESS: WILLIAM C. HACKITT
IV. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE THIRD WITNESS: WILLIAM C. HACKITT {continued)
V. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FOURTH WITNESS: RICHARD CALLUS
VI. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FOURTH WITNESS: RICHARD CALLUS (continued)
VII. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FOURTH WITNESS: RICHARD CALLUS (continued)
VIII. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FOURTH WITNESS: RICHARD CALLUS (continued)
IX. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FOURTH WITNESS: RICHARD CALLUS (continued)
X. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FOURTH WITNESS: RICHARD CALLUS (continued)
XI. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FOURTH WITNESS: RICHARD CALLUS (continued)
XII. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FOURTH WITNESS: RICHARD CALLUS (continued)
XIII. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FOURTH WITNESS: RICHARD CALLUS (continued)
XIV. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FIFTH WITNESS: SIR GEORGE CALLIPER
XV. — FURTHER EVIDENCE BY THE FOURTH WITNESS: RICHARD CALLUS
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Eve’s Island
THE GENESIS OF THE HISTORY
EDWARD G. TATHAM was born in Virginia in the United States of America. All the world knows that now. There are people in Springville, Va., who say they remember him as a child sitting before old Crubbs’s Store twiddling his bare toes in the dust. A tow-headed boy they described him, with a long, serious face, and blue eyes that looked you through and through, as though you were a new variety of insect, or a fabulous freak of nature. They say too that he was talkative even in that far-away time, would recite conventional pieces, had a marvellous head for detail and was admitted to the debating society which forgathered daily at Crubbs’s, on terms of equality.
This Mr. Crubbs the Elder told me himself, but I have advised my Government to attach little credence to his statement, because, I am informed, Crubbs is an inveterate remembrancer, and for a consideration would give you personal reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, or for the matter of that, of George Washington.
Such meagre records as Springville affords point to the fact that Edward Garfield Tatham was born on April 1st, 1873, his father being Clark Thomas Tatham, his mother before marriage a Miss Georgina Mary Daly. They came from an Eastern State, Tatham senior being a dealer in horses, and they remained long enough in Springville to distinguish the town by producing the child who was afterwards to be a European casus belli (nearly), and then returned East.
The father died in Baltimore in ‘81, the mother in Troy, N.Y., in ‘84, and Edward G. Tatham, so far as I can ascertain, was reared by a Michael Joseph Daly who ran a pool room on the East Side. Daly became an Alderman, and was presumably a good man, for he died at a comparatively early age, and what happened to his nephew (for this was the relationship in which Edward Tatham stood) is rather a matter of conjecture than definite history.
At the age of twelve he crossed the Atlantic and took up his residency with some disreputable relations, to whose tender care Uncle Mike on his death-bed had consigned him, and he lived in a street very near to the Rotunda, Dublin.
I find that he was convicted and fined two shillings and sixpence for selling newspapers in the street. That is not an offence; but the charge was “that he did on the 8th of October wilfully obstruct the Queen’s highway, to wit Sackville Street, and when warned by Constable Patrick O’Leary, used insulting and abusive language calculated to cause a breach of Her Majesty’s peace. Further, that he did assault and do injury to one Patrick Moriaty, an itinerant vendor of newspapers, aged 14, by striking him in the face.”
I have seen in a newspaper file of the period an account of the trouble which rose as a result of young Tatham’s first interference with vested interests—for Patrick Moriaty claimed the monopoly of selling Freeman’s Journals in that particular section and resented the appearance of a newcomer.
Selling newspapers in Dublin was not young Tatham’s forte; three months later he was in London. He had severed his connection with his relatives—possibly, indeed probably, they had taken the initiative.
Of his life in London as a boy little is known. He worked, that is certain. But he was never more than two or three months in any one job. I have traced him to printers, shoemakers, and milk vendors. He seemed to be consumed with a spirit of restlessness which made the monotony of any form of employment maddening. “He just threw up and tried another stunt,” said one authentic witness. It is certain that he attended the evening classes which a beneficent county council instituted for the benefit of those victims of neglected opportunity which abound. Here, for a few coppers payable weekly, he was perfected in the elements of education. He won a prize for practical chemistry worth much more than his year’s school fees. One of his history essays was reprinted in the council magazine. He was quick to learn, immensely alert, “and,” said a master who remembered him, “gifted with an extraordinary imagination.” He had other qualities which were to come to fruition later.
I can picture him, a raw lank boy, crouched over the pine desk of the board school, hungry, for his salary, so far as I could learn, was never higher than $2.50 at the period, and more than half of that went in lodging.
“He was more hungry for knowledge,” said the master; “he devoured information as bears devour buns. As fast as one threw him a scrap he gobbled it. And if his food came too slowly, he reached out a paw the claws of which were notes of interrogation.”
In ‘89 Tatham vanished. I can find no trail, no single clue of his movements. My own view is that he joined the British Army, but I have no support for this theory. Tatham himself is silent, and since I do not regard that period as being of vital importance in the compilation of the history, I have not pursued inquiries with any great diligence.
It was after the events which led to the assembling of our fleet in the Southern Atlantic, and when the name of Edward G. Tatham was on the lips of every man, woman, and child in the civilised world, that I was summoned to Washington to interview the President. He had previously been pleased to congratulate me on my history of the Spanish-American War—a history which I might claim in all modesty was as unprejudiced an account of actual happenings as was possible to collect so soon after the event.
I was ushered into his private office, and he shook hands with me warmly.
“It is good of you to come,” he said with that expansive smile of his; “I wanted to see you for reasons which are half official, half sentimental.”
He paced up and down the apartment, his hands deep in his trousers’ pockets.
“You know what has happened in the South Atlantic,” he said. “You are aware that there has been a bother over President Tatham—trouble which is now happily at an end—and you know some of the causes which led up to that trouble?”
I nodded. The story was common property.
“The English Government has held a secret commission,” continued the President; “it has been sitting for three weeks to root out the whys and the wherefores, and the evidence will never be published.”
I nodded again.
“There is very little to learn,” I said; “we know that Tatham—”
He lifted his hand to stop me, and smiled.
“You know nothing,” he said. “Do you know Eve Smith? Do you know Callus the Correspondent? Do you know Hackitt the engineer?” he tapped the table before him and spoke deliberately. “Do you know the Scout?”
I was puzzled.
“The Scout, Mr. President?”
“It is a racehorse,” he said, enjoying my bewilderment, “and the racehorse was the crux of the whole crisis—though few knew it, or know it now.”
He opened a drawer in his desk, and took out a large envelope: from this he withdrew a number of sheets of paper.
“Here are the bones of the story,” he said. “I have them through—er—diplomatic channels. Now I want you to go to Europe and encase these bones with flesh. You will find a list of people who will give you information—the British Government will offer no objection, once they understand that you know who the witnesses are. Tatham was a citizen of this country—he would be still if he had not made laws of his own—he has been in conflict with Europe and has won out. Do you go and tell us how he did it—good-bye, and a pleasant voyage.”
And that is how I came to write the strangest book that has ever been written. A book with material for a good novel, if somebody more gifted than I care to take it in hand. And the fragments of the story, now presented to the English and American public for the first time, were collected in strange places.
For when I arrived in England many of the principal actors of the drama had scattered. The man Stuckey I interviewed in Wormwood Scrubbs prison, the war correspondent I ran to earth in a little café in Cadiz in the south of Spain, Sir James Calliper I found in Scotland, and fortunately he had the necessary blue books with him to elucidate his end of the story. Captain Ford I crossed Siberia to meet—his ship was on the China station—and Hackitt I met last of all in Rio de Janeiro.
Each of these witnesses was necessary. Their independent stories made the complete history of the most extraordinary adventure that ever man embarked upon.
The Congo Government side of the story I have not given. It was obviously prejudiced. In Brussels they regard Tatham as a vulgar thief, though he made generous reparation.
In piecing the story together I give the statements of the witnesses, not in the order in which they were given, but in such sequence as carries the story without a break.
I. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE FIRST WITNESS: CAPTAIN WALTER FORD, R.N., C.M.G.
Captain Walter Ford, Royal Navy, Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, commanding the first-class cruiser Ontario. Captain Ford is a tall, spare man of fifty, slightly grey. He received me on board his ship off Hong Kong, and was a little stiff and reluctant to give me the information I required. Fortunately the letter which our Ambassador in London procured for me from the British Admiralty was sufficient to relieve him of every anxiety regarding a possible breach of the Official Secrets Act, and he told me all he had to tell concisely and briefly, with an admirable regard for essential facts.
“I WAS for some years in command of the survey ship Charter,” said Captain Ford, “and I am well acquainted with the island which is now known as Tatham Island. As far as I can remember its exact position is Lat. 20.5.5 West, and Long. 37.15.4 South. I last visited the place in October, 1897, to take soundings at the northern side of the island. The island has all the appearance from the sea of being uninhabited, in fact it seems to be little more than a huge barren rock that rises perpendicularly from the water. It reminded me in conformation of an enormous iceberg. So unpromising was the aspect that it was only after considerable persuasion that I yielded, with great reluctance, to the suggestion of my chief officer that an attempt should be made to explore the interior.
“The island itself is ten miles in length, and at its widest point eight miles across.
“What finally decided me to make a more complete and searching examination was the discovery by the navigating officer, Lieutenant A. S. W. Sanders, R.N. This was no less than evidence of a subterranean river which apparently emptied itself on the south side of the island immediately beneath the cliff, which we named Signal Hill. The presence of fresh water had been unsuspected by those explorers who had from time to time sighted the island, and it was due to this fact that the sovereign claims of Great Britain had never been pushed home.
“Up to within two years ago the exact nationality of this island had not been determined, and its proprietorship was nebulous. It was claimed by Great Britain in conformity with the Tsai-Lang Treaty, by Portugal, as the result of an ‘Occupation,’ and by Holland. It is marked on all German maps as a German possession.
“On the discovery of the subterranean river I decided to make an investigation into the interior of the island, and in consequence, on the 28th of October, 1897, I despatched Lieutenant Granger, R.N., in the steam pinnace, with instructions to circumnavigate the island, and report upon possible landing-places.
“On his return he informed me that, notwithstanding a most painstaking search, he had failed to discover a foothold on the precipitous cliffs that formed the coastline. At only one spot had he been able to secure a landing, and that was on the northeastern side, where a strip of beach, totally covered at high water, but measuring 50 feet by 17 feet (from water’s edge to the base of the cliff) at low water, enabled him to land.
“But from this spot, as from all others, so far as he could see, the rock rose to the height of 500 feet without a break or cranny that could afford foothold. So unusual were these features that, after perusing Lieutenant Granger’s report, I myself made a personal inspection of the island, but with no better fortune than my officer. I should have returned without pursuing what appeared to be a fruitless search, but for the suggestion of Mr. Granger that a photograph might be taken of the interior of the island by means of a kite.
“A kite was accordingly rigged up, and the necessary apparatus to secure a picture was ingeniously improvised by Surgeon Doyle. Our first efforts were crowned with success: the camera worked satisfactorily. Before the plate was developed I sent the kite up again, but it was unfortunately carried away by a gust of wind.
“The third and fourth attempts were successful, and the photographs we secured were highly satisfactory. So far as we could see, the interior of the island was a great green valley, plentifully wooded and watered, with a number of small rivers converging towards the southern ‘wall’ of the island. There was no sign of human habitation, but on enlarging the photograph there was evidence of abundance of game and of animal life—so far as I could make out: herds of animals resembling the South African quagga.
“Isochromatic plates were employed, which enabled me to gauge the geological formation; especially do I refer to the range of hills that lines the inside of the western wall. Of these I reported:
“‘Have the appearance of being highly mineralized.’
“I concluded my soundings in December, at about which period I forwarded my report to the Lord of the Admiralty.
“I had at that time no idea of the existence of Captain Tatham. The island was known as the Île de Desolation, or Woortz Island. I first heard of Captain Tatham when the rest of the world heard of him—in quite a casual way.
“My reports to the Admiralty were in the nature of confidential documents. I cannot say whether Captain Tatham had an opportunity of seeing them.”
II. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE SECOND WITNESS: ERNEST GEORGE STUCKEY
The privilege of interviewing Ernest George Stuckey was granted by the Secretary of Home Affairs. The interview took place in the large prison in a suburb of London known as Wormwood Scrubbs. Here in the presence of two warders Stuckey told me his end of the story. A tall good-looking man, of smart appearance despite the hideous khaki of his prison clothes, the man looked what he was—an ex-soldier. He sat at the end of a ten-foot deal table and I at the other. The warders sat midway between us, one at each side of the table.
“I WAS at one time messenger at the Admiralty, but I am now undergoing sentence of twelve months’ hard labour for a crime under the Official Secrets Act. Prior to my entering the service of the Admiralty,” said Stuckey, “I was a corporal in the Artillery. I know the record room in the old Admiralty buildings, and was for some time in charge. There were many documents filed for reference to which I had access. They were confidential documents, but ‘confidential’ is only a phrase, so far as certain army and navy documents are concerned, and is frequently added to a form or letter merely in accordance with regulations, when the contents are of no especial value either to the sender or the recipient.
“I have often amused myself by looking through some of the dockets, but I have seldom found anything worth the search. I might explain to you that my only object was to gratify an idle curiosity and to fill in the time.
“I remember reading Captain Ford’s report on Tatham Island. It was numbered Ch. 7743, 1897. I believe the ‘Ch’ stands for ‘Charter,’ the name of the ship commanded by the Captain. This report interested me very much, as I am naturally of an imaginative and romantic disposition, and I have spent many hours ‘making up’ impossible stories about the island, and dreamt all kinds of wonderful dreams regarding its possibilities. I knew, and know Captain Ford’s report by heart, and I could draw a plan of the island almost blindfolded. It was in 1899 that I first saw the chart, and became interested in it. Towards the end of that year the South African War broke out, and I was mobilized with the reserve and proceeded to South Africa on board the Drayton Grange.
“We were attached to General French for the greater part of the campaign, but towards the end, when the condition in the Cape Colony became serious, I was sent down with half a battery, under Captain Powell, of the Royal Horse Artillery, to join Henniker’s column.
“It was very hard work, for Henniker kept us going day and night. He had half a regiment of a newly raised corps of irregulars with us, Kitchener’s Fighting Scouts, as tough a lot as you could imagine, but tip-top fighters. That is where I first saw Captain Tatham.
“He was a tall man with a ready laugh, and eyes that looked you through and through, yet with a curious amused look, as if you were a new kind of caterpillar. He was a rare man when it came to fighting. He never seemed to know what fear was.
“I think he had been one of the original Rhodesian pioneers. I liked the look of him the moment I saw him, and, although he was an officer and I was one of the rank and file, we got quite chummy after a bit.
“This may sound strange, but it must be remembered that on active service, discipline, or what I might call ceremonial discipline, becomes relaxed; and then again, an officer of an irregular force is not so strict in his relations with men as is an officer of the standing army.
“In the course of a chat with him one night I mentioned the Ford report, and he was very much interested. He got me to tell him half a dozen times over, and then I drew the map for him and gave him some rough idea as to the pictures that were taken by the kite.
“The ‘highly mineralized’ paragraph in the report excited him most, and the next night he wrote down as much as I could remember of Captain Ford’s statement in his field pocket-book.
“I thought he was American by his accent, and I was pretty sure I was right when he told me that he was a ‘cosmopolitan,’ because that is the name the Americans give themselves when they know little of their own country.
“He told me he had done a lot of prospecting, and could ‘smell gold.’ As far as I remember he commanded No. 2 Squadron of the Scouts, and his men were devoted to him. They were all his own men, men he had trekked with, and prospected with, and gone hunting with, and he used to call them by their Christian names, and more often than not they called him ‘Ned.’
“What struck me about him was his extraordinary power of concentration. I’ve seen him sitting by his fire for hours on end, staring into the flame, with a look on his face such as I have seen on those of Buddhist priests in Burma.
“When he had finished thinking you could see he had whatever plan his mind was working at all cut and dried, and with no single detail unprovided for, and, whether it was a farm raid, or a bit of scouting, or a pitched battle, he had reviewed every possible combination of circumstances and provided for every contingency.
“This is how he struck me. I was brigaded with him until about six months before the end of the war, when he was sent with his regiment into the Pietersburg district, which is north of Pretoria, and I did not see him again until after the war.
“I heard rumours through some of his men whom I met at Wynberg Hospital—I was wounded in a fight with De Wet—that he was quarrelling with the Government over looted cattle.
“It appeared that there was a dispute as to his share of the prize money. I guess it was not his personal share that affected him, as much as the thought that his men were being unjustly treated. The upshot of it was that the Government behaved rather badly, and he came out of the business much poorer than when he went in.
“It was in June, 1902, that I met him again. I had taken my discharge, and was back again at the Admiralty, when I received a note from him asking me to meet him at Fregiloni’s Restaurant off the Strand.
“He was still his old careless self, but looked curiously unnatural in his civilian clothing. He is the sort of man you cannot imagine out of riding-boots and slouch hat. I noticed that he appeared to be very poor. His boots were patched; the edge of his collar was frayed, and his suit was obviously a ready-made one. We had a modest dinner, for which he paid, tipping the waiter handsomely. He told me he was in London with one of his men trying to raise money for an ‘expedition.’
“The remainder of his squadron was at Cape Town waiting to hear from him. I asked how much money he wanted, and he said carelessly, ‘About fifty thousand dollars’—which is one thousand pounds.
“Apparently he did not know a soul in London, and so far he had found no capitalist willing to advance him the money, or indeed any money at all.
“He also informed me that he had been offered a curious kind of a job by a Spanish-American firm in the City. He did not specify what it was, or what was its particular character. He had gone to the firm in the hope of raising the money, and they had apparently offered him an alternative adventure.
“I gathered this much from the scraps of talk he let fall. Apparently he had entertained the idea and had almost accepted, for he had gone into the matter very deeply, and there was a scene when he backed out, and a most solemn exchange of promises of secrecy. It sounded very mysterious, and at one time I thought Captain Tatham was romancing.
“He said he was returning to the Cape in a week, but there were one or two things to be done. I told him that I had a little money saved, some £20 in all, and that I was willing to lend him that, and, to my consternation, he accepted my offer readily. ‘Every little helps now,’ he said. The next day I sent the money to an address he gave me, and he sent back a receipt and a promissory note for £20.
“I did not see him again. Two days later I saw a paragraph in the evening papers that was headed ‘A Remarkable Theft.’ It was to the effect that some carmen engaged by Thomas Stence and Company, the balloon makers, had been instructed to deliver a small balloon at Hurlingham to the order of Count Castini, the famous aeronaut.
“Whilst the carman was taking his tea at a coffee shop in Brentford High Street, two men extracted the bale in which the little balloon was packed and made off with it.
“As one of the men wore the leather apron of a carter, the bystanders did not suspect anything, and the two thieves were allowed to go unchallenged. A full description of the men was published, and I had no difficulty in recognizing in the ‘carman with the leather apron,’ Captain Tatham.
“A week later he sailed, and I got a note from him, posted at Southampton, in which he remarked that ‘despite almost overwhelming difficulties, we are slowly acquiring the equipment necessary to the successful issue of our expedition.’ I was a little bewildered at the time, but very soon I began to realize the significance of his theft. I did not see Captain Tatham again. I have never seen him since.
“On October 28, 1906, a few days after the sensational victory of ‘The Scout’ in the Cesarewitch, I received by District Messenger a parcel despatched from the Chancery Lane Branch. Opening it, I discovered yet another parcel done up in wax paper. On the outside was fastened a label which read, ‘It shall be returned to ye a hundred-fold—Ned Tatham.’
“Unwrapping the inner parcel I found a hundred banknotes each for £20. They were done up in bundles of fifty, and there were two such bundles. In December, of last year, in consequence of what transpired at Tatham Island, there was a departmental inquiry, as a result of which I was charged under Section 3 (c) of the Official Secrets Act—
“‘Being entrusted in confidence with any document or information relating to… the military or naval affairs of His Majesty, and wilfully and in breach of such confidence communicating the same, when in the interest of the State it ought not to be communicated.’
“I was tried at the New Bailey, and sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment with hard labour.
“I have not since received any communication from President Tatham, nor have I ever heard of Mr. Hackitt or of the girl Eve Smith.
“The money he sent me is at my bank, the Court having decided that the payment was in relation to my loan to Tatham, and not to be regarded as remuneration for information received."
III. — THE EVIDENCE OF THE THIRD WITNESS: WILLIAM C. HACKITT
William C. Hackitt was a sturdy, thick-set man of fifty. He was prosperous-looking, and apparently he has quite a bunch of money invested in real estate in Rio—where I met him.
He was an interesting type of American seaman—better educated than most men who have lived their lives afloat, cautious of speech and exact of statement. I have only given part of his story, the latter portion being identical with that told by the correspondent Callus—except that the latter’s statement is considerably more detailed and probably, since he shared the confidence of Tatham, more accurate.
“I AM a native of Seattle, Washington, and by profession I am a seaman. I first went to sea in 1872 on the sailing vessel Star of the West, ‘Frisco to Boston.
“I served before the mast for ten years before I got my mate’s certificate in an English ship. I earned a master’s ticket in 1889, and three years later I entered the service of the Coastwise line, being appointed second officer on the steamship O’sango trading between Liverpool and Cabinda.
“In ‘95 the company extended its operations, shipping freights to the Cape and Natal in competition with the Castle and Bucknall Lines. I was promoted to be chief officer of O’laki in 1901 at a salary of $40 a month. The work was hard, we were under-officered, and, to make matters worse, I very soon discovered that the captain of the O’laki drank heavily.
“We started our homeward voyage for Durban, Natal, in January, 1902.
“One day out, the second officer went sick, which meant that the navigation and the care of the ship devolved upon myself and the third officer. We were due to call at Port Elizabeth, and we entered the Bay in a strong north-easterly gale.
“It was rather dubious as to the advisability of anchoring, especially as the gale showed signs of increasing in strength, and the glass continued to fall. I communicated my doubts to the skipper, who was in his cabin sleeping off the effects of a drinking bout.
“He gruffly ordered me to anchor. This I did, at what I considered to be a safe distance from the shore. The wind increased in velocity, and at half-past three the harbour master signalled, ‘Get to sea with all despatch.’
“I reported this to the skipper, who, however, told me to ignore the signal. I was considerably scared, but I flew, ‘Have decided to remain’ in answer to the shore signal. As a cautionary measure I ordered the third officer to stand by to let go the storm anchor. At five o’clock our cable parted, and I dropped over the drogue, but there was no checking our drift, and I hoisted ‘N.C.’
“We went ashore at six p.m., and the crew was rescued by the Port Elizabeth lifeboat. The ship was a total wreck. At the Board of Trade inquiry my captain stated that the warning of the harbour master had not been conveyed to him, that he was in his berth ill at the time, and that I was in sole charge of the ship, and that the responsibility for obeying or disobeying the signal was mine.
“As a result of this lie, I was adjudged by the Board to have been guilty of unseamanlike conduct, and my certificate was suspended.
“The agents of the company paid me my salary, and informed me that they were advised by cable that the company had no further use for my services. Thus I found myself stranded in Port Elizabeth with some $200 and no prospects whatever.
“Luckily for me, the S.S. Inkonka, a Rennie boat, was in the Bay, commanded by Captain Moore, a big-hearted seaman of the old type, who offered me an opportunity of working my passage home as bo’sun. This, however, I declined. I was sick of seafaring and wanted a rest.
“I fixed up a passage on board the ship, and sailed for Cape Town a week after the finding of the Court. The Inkonka, although nominally a cargo boat, has excellent accommodation for passengers, and I found myself in clover, for the food was most excellent and the officers were a decent lot of men.
“There were no other passengers but myself, and, so far as the Captain knew, there was little likelihood of anybody coming aboard at Cape Town. But, to our surprise, on reaching that port we were informed by the agents that a party of fifty had booked passages for Loanda—that is, St. Paul de Loanda—which was our next port of call.
“Captain Moore was a little mystified by this unusual passenger list and pointed out the difficulty of accommodating so large a party, but the agent stated that the party were prepared to rough it, and their rates had been adjusted on that assumption. He furthermore explained that it consisted of a party of prospectors who were going to tramp through Portuguese territory to the Katanga in search of minerals.
“The party came aboard that afternoon. A harder crowd of citizens I have never struck; they were all men who had apparently seen service during the recent war, and each was armed with a Mauser rifle and a bandolier of ammunition, which I was informed represented Boer loot.
“In addition, their equipment consisted of picks, shovels, and the rough cradles that I have seen miners use in the Australian alluvial fields. Yet for all their tough appearance, they were a quiet, orderly lot of men, and there did not seem to be an ounce of whisky between the party. The leader was a singularly striking man, who was variously addressed as ‘Captain Tatham’ and ‘Ned,’ and his authority appeared to be absolute.
“I found Captain Tatham a most charming companion. Apparently he had a nodding acquaintance with every country in the world, and he even had a fair working knowledge of seamanship, having as a boy shipped before the mast.*
[* This possibly explains the disappearance of Tatham from London and the difficulty of tracing his history as a youth.]
“Very naturally, with my grievance uppermost in my mind, I confided to him the story of the wreck of the O’laki, and not only was he sympathetic, but he seemed unusually interested. He inquired as to whether I was a married man, what were my prospects, what I intended to do for a living on my return to America, and I told him I was single, and that my prospects were nil, and that for all I knew I should starve, or else go to sea again before the mast.
“He asked me in all seriousness whether I should like to be a pirate, and I answered jokingly that such a life had its attraction.
