was not a gifted speaker in any case and being thrown out diminished his confidence and his powers still farther; discouraged, he resumed his surplice and brought the service to its traditional end.
A few moments after the last amen MrAllen led the way to the maintop. 'There, sir,' he said with modest triumph, passing the telescope to Jack. 'The mound on the right is Tina fort, and the mound on the left is old Pelusium: quite a tolerable landfall, though I say it myself.'
'As pretty a landfall as ever I saw,' said Jack. 'I congratulate you, sir.' He studied the low, distant shore-line for a while and then said 'Do you make out an odd kind of cloud a little north-west of the fort?'
'That would be the waterfowl over the Pelusiac mouth,' said Allen. 'It is only a vile great slough now, and they breed there by wholesale- cranes and water-crows and such. They keep up a sad gabble by night, if you lay over there with a south-west wind, and foul your deck some inches deep.'
'The Doctor will be pleased to hear of them, though,' said Jack. 'He loves a curious bird,' and a little later, when he was drinking a glass of madeira below, he said, 'I have a joyful surprise for you, Stephen. Mr. Allen tells me there are countless waterfowl over the silted-up Pelusian mouth.'
'My dear,' said Stephen, 'I am perfectly aware of it. This extremity of the delta is famous throughout the Christian world as the haunt of the purple gallinule, to say nothing of a thousand other wonders of creation: and I am perfectly aware that you will hurry me away from it at once, without the least remorse, as you have so often done before. Indeed, I wonder at your being so unfeeling as to mention the place at all.'
'Not really without remorse,' said Jack, filling Stephen's glass again. 'But the fact of the matter is, there is not a moment to lose, if you understand me. We have had the most amazing luck hitherto, with this blessed breeze day after day - such a passage as you would hardly dare pray for - and now there is a real possibility of our being off Mubara well before the full of the moon; so it would be the world's pity to spoil our chances for the sake of a purple gallinule. But if we bring it off - I say If we bring it off, Stephen,' said Jack clapping his hand to the wooden table-leg, 'then you and Martin shall have your bellyful of gallinules, red, white and blue: aye, and of double- headed eagles, too, both in the Red Sea and here when we re-embark, that I promise you.' He paused, whistling gently.
'Tell me, Stephen,' he went on at last, 'do you happen to know what is meant by a purse?'
'I take it to signify a small pouch or bag used for carrying money on the person. I have seen several examples in my time; and have even possessed one myself.'
'I should have said, what do Turks mean by it?'
'Five thousand piastres.'
'Lord above,' said Jack. He was not a particularly greedy man, nor in the least degree avaricious, but even in his youth, well before he fell in love with the higher mathematics, he had been pretty quick at working out prize- money, like most sailors; and now his mind, long used to astronomical and navigational calculation, worked out a captain's share of the sterling equivalent of five thousand purses in a matter of seconds, presenting him with a shining sum that would not only deal with his horribly entangled affairs at home but go a long way to restoring his fortune- a fortune that he had won by a combination of excellent seamanship, hard fighting, and uncommon good luck, and that he had lost or at least gravely imperilled by being too trustful on shore, by supposing that landsmen were more straightforward and candid than was in fact the case, and by signing legal documents without reading them on being assured that 'they were mere formalities'. 'Well,' he said, 'that is very gratifying news, upon my word: very gratifying indeed.' He filled their glasses again and said, 'I have not spoken of this caper before, because it was all so very hypothetical, so very much up in the air. It still is, of course. But tell me, Stephen, what do you think of the likelihood of success?'
'In this particular matter my opinion is worth almost nothing,' said Stephen. 'But as a general principle I should say that any expedition which has been talked about as much as this is unlikely to take the enemy by surprise. It was a common topic in Malta, and there is not a man aboard who does not know where we are bound. On the other hand there is this completely new aspect - the agreement with the French and the coming of the galley with French engineers, gunners and treasure. Of course, I have no knowledge whatsoever of the source of the intelligence or its value; but Mr Pocock was perfectly convinced of its soundness, and Mr Pocock is no fool.'
'I am so glad you think so,' said Jack. 'That was exactly my impression.' He smiled, and in his mind's eye, bright and clear, he saw the Mubara galley pulling steadily northwards, heavily ballasted and swimming rather deep. 'There are still joyful surprises in this world, whatever Mr Martin may say,' he observed. 'I have known dozens of 'em. You heard his sermon, I believe?'
'I was on the mizentop.'
'I could wish he had not talked about the ship like that.' 'Sure, he did it out of compliment to you- a thank- offering.'
'Oh, certainly: do not think me ungrateful. I am sure he meant it very kindly, and am much obliged to him for his politeness. But the hands are out of temper, and Mowett is furious. He says he will never be able to get them to priddy the deck with a whole heart again, nor take pains with the paintwork, now that it has been preached down as a vanity, and as something leading to the knacker's yard.'
'If he had not been interrupted, I am sure he would have made a better fist of it- I am sure he would have made his figurative language clear to the meanest understanding: but even so, unless one is a second Bossuet, perhaps it is a mistake to use tropes and parallels in this eminently unpoetic age.'
'Not so hellfire unpoetical as all that, brother,' said Jack. 'Rowan came out with as fine a thing as ever I heard only this very morning, just before we rigged church. He and the second mate were looking at the six-pounders and he said
'Oh ye mortal engines, whose rude throats
Th'im-mortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit.' '
'Capital, capital. I doubt if Shakespeare could have done much better,' said Stephen, nodding gravely. Of late he had noticed a very vicious tendency in these two young men, a tendency to indulge in bare-faced theft, each confident that the other's reading scarcely went beyond Robinson's Elements of Navigation.
'Wittles is up,' said Killick, appearing in the doorway together with the homely reek of boiled cabbage.
'And now I come to think of it,' went on Jack, emptying his glass, 'perhaps you may be mistaken about tropes and parallels too. I caught the allusion directly, and I said toAllen, 'He means the thunder, I believe.' 'Yes,' says Allen, 'I smoked it at once.' Smoked it at once,' repeated Jack, smiling pleasantly as the possibility of a brilliant play on the words cannon and smoke hovered in his mind. Yet even as he turned the matter over it was eclipsed by an even better thing. 'But perhaps Rowan is a second Bossuet,' he said. His deep, fruity, intensely amused laugh filled
