The Pursuit of the House-Boat. John Kendrick Bangs

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СКАЧАТЬ be proper, I think, if the House-boat can sail four knots an hour, to attempt to overhaul her with a launch, or other nautical craft, with a maximum speed of two knots an hour.”

      “Hear! hear!” ejaculated Cæsar.

      “That is my reason, your Majesty, for inquiring as to the speed of your late club-house,” said the stranger, bowing courteously to Solomon. “Now if Sir Christopher Wren can give me her measurements, we can very soon determine at about what rate she is leaving us behind under favorable circumstances.”

      “ ’Tisn’t necessary for Sir Christopher to do anything of the sort,” said Noah, rising and manifesting somewhat more heat than the occasion seemed to require. “As long as we are discussing the question I will take the liberty of stating what I have never mentioned before, that the designer of the House-boat merely appropriated the lines of the Ark. Shem, Ham, and Japhet will bear testimony to the truth of that statement.”

      “There can be no quarrel on that score, Mr. Chairman,” assented Sir Christopher, with cutting frigidity. “I am perfectly willing to admit that practically the two vessels were built on the same lines, but with modifications which would enable my boat to sail twenty miles to windward and back in six days less time than it would have taken the Ark to cover the same distance, and it could have taken all the wash of the excursion steamers into the bargain.”

      “Bosh!” ejaculated Noah, angrily. “Strip your old tub down to a flying balloon-jib and a marline-spike, and ballast the Ark with elephants until every inch of her reeked with ivory and peanuts, and she’d outfoot you on every leg, in a cyclone or a zephyr. Give me the Ark and a breeze, and your House-boat wouldn’t be within hailing distance of her five minutes after the start if she had 40,000 square yards of canvas spread before a gale.”

      “This discussion is waxing very unprofitable,” observed Confucius. “If these gentlemen cannot be made to confine themselves to the subject that is agitating this body, I move we call in the authorities and have them confined in the bottomless pit.”

      “I did not precipitate the quarrel,” said Noah. “I was merely trying to assist our friend on the string-piece. I was going to say that as the Ark was probably a hundred times faster than Sir Christopher Wren’s—tub, which he himself says can take care of all the wash of the excursion boats, thereby becoming on his own admission a wash-tub—”

      “Order! order!” cried Sir Christopher.

      “I was going to say that this wash-tub could be overhauled by a launch or any other craft with a speed of thirty knots a month,” continued Noah, ignoring the interruption.

      “Took him forty days to get to Mount Ararat!” sneered Sir Christopher.

      “Well, your boat would have got there two weeks sooner, I’ll admit,” retorted Noah, “if she’d sprung a leak at the right time.”

      “Granting the truth of Noah’s statement,” said Sir Walter, motioning to the angry architect to be quiet—“not that we take any side in the issue between the two gentlemen, but merely for the sake of argument—I wish to ask the stranger who has been good enough to interest himself in our trouble what he proposes to do—how can you establish your course in case a boat were provided?”

      “Also vot vill be dher gost, if any?” put in Shylock.

      A murmur of disapprobation greeted this remark.

      “The cost need not trouble you, sir,” said Sir Walter, indignantly, addressing the stranger; “you will have carte blanche.”

      “Den ve are ruint!” cried Shylock, displaying his palms, and showing by that act a select assortment of diamond rings.

      “Oh,” laughed the stranger, “that is a simple matter. Captain Kidd has gone to London.”

      “To London!” cried several members at once. “How do you know that?”

      “By this,” said the stranger, holding up the tiny stub end of a cigar.

      “Tut-tut!” ejaculated Solomon. “What child’s play this is!”

      “No, your Majesty,” observed the stranger, “it is not child’s play; it is fact. That cigar end was thrown aside here on the wharf by Captain Kidd just before he stepped on board the House-boat.”

      “How do you know that?” demanded Raleigh. “And granting the truth of the assertion, what does it prove?”

      “I will tell you,” said the stranger. And he at once proceeded as follows.

II

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The Stranger Unravels a Mystery and Reveals Himself

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      “I have made a hobby of the study of cigar ends,” said the stranger, as the Associated Shades settled back to hear his account of himself. “From my earliest youth, when I used surreptitiously to remove the unsmoked ends of my father’s cigars and break them up, and, in hiding, smoke them in an old clay pipe which I had presented to me by an ancient sea-captain of my acquaintance, I have been interested in tobacco in all forms, even including these self-same despised unsmoked ends; for they convey to my mind messages, sentiments, farces, comedies, and tragedies which to your minds would never become manifest through their agency.”

      The company drew closer together and formed themselves in a more compact mass about the speaker. It was evident that they were beginning to feel an unusual interest in this extraordinary person, who had come among them unheralded and unknown. Even Shylock stopped calculating percentages for an instant to listen.

      “Do you mean to tell us,” demanded Shakespeare, “that the unsmoked stub of a cigar will suggest the story of him who smoked it to your mind?”

      “I do,” replied the stranger, with a confident smile. “Take this one, for instance, that I have picked up here upon the wharf; it tells me the whole story of the intentions of Captain Kidd at the moment when, in utter disregard of your rights, he stepped aboard your House-boat, and, in his usual piratical fashion, made off with it into unknown seas.”

      “But how do you know he smoked it?” asked Solomon, who deemed it the part of wisdom to be suspicious of the stranger.

      “There are two curious indentations in it which prove that. The marks of two teeth, with a hiatus between, which you will see if you look closely,” said the stranger, handing the small bit of tobacco to Sir Walter, “make that point evident beyond peradventure. The Captain lost an eye-tooth in one of his later raids; it was knocked out by a marline-spike which had been hurled at him by one of the crew of the treasure-ship he and his followers had attacked. The adjacent teeth were broken, but not removed. The cigar end bears the marks of those two jagged molars, with the hiatus, which, as I have indicated, is due to the destruction of the eye-tooth between them. It is not likely that there was another man in the pirate’s crew with teeth exactly like the commander’s, therefore I say there can be no doubt that the cigar end was that of the СКАЧАТЬ