sun, and beneath them her name, the Josiah Childs, in tall gilt letters.
"Better make it a crown, ma'am," the waterman repeated with a drunken chuckle.
Mrs. Wesley rose in her seat. Her hand went up, and Charles made sure she meant to box the man's ears. He could not see the look on her face, but whatever it was it cowed the fellow, who seized his oars again and began to pull for dear life, as she sat back and laid her hand on the tiller.
"Easy, now," she commanded, after twenty strokes or so. "Easy, and ship your oar, unless you want it broken!" But for answer he merely stared at her, and a moment later his starboard oar snapped its tholepin like a carrot, and hurled him back over his thwart as the boat ran alongside the Albemarle's ladder.
"My friend," said Mrs. Wesley coolly, "you have a pestilent habit of not listening. I hired you to row me to the Albemarle, and this, I believe, is she." Then, with a glance up at the half-dozen grinning faces above the bulwarks, "Can I see Captain Bewes?"
"Your servant, ma'am." The captain appeared at the head of the ladder; a red apple-cheeked man in shirt-sleeves and clean white nankeen breeches, who looked like nothing so much as an overgrown schoolboy.
"Is Mr. Samuel Annesley on board?"
Captain Bewes rubbed his chin. He had grown suddenly grave. "I beg your pardon," said he, "but are you a kinswoman of Mr. Annesley's?"
"I am his sister, sir."
"Then I'll have to ask you to step on board, ma'am. You may dismiss that rascal, and one of my boats shall put you ashore."
He stepped some way down the ladder to meet her and she took his hand with trepidation, while the Albemarle's crew leaned over and taunted the cursing waterman.
"There—that will do, my man. I don't allow swearing here.
Steady, ma'am, that's right; and now give us a hand, youngster."
"Is—is he ill?" Mrs. Wesley stammered.
"Who? Mr. Annesley? Not to my knowledge, ma'am."
"Then he is on board? We heard he had taken passage with you."
"Why, so he did; and, what's more, to the best of my knowledge, he sailed. It's a serious matter, ma'am, and we're all at our wits' ends over it; but the fact is—Mr. Annesley has disappeared."
CHAPTER III.
That same evening, in Mr. Matthew Wesley's parlour, Johnson's Court, Captain Bewes told the whole story—or so much of it as he knew. The disappearance from on board his ship of a person so important as Mr. Samuel Annesley touched his prospects in the Company's service, and he did not conceal it. He had already reported the affair at the East India House and was looking forward to a highly uncomfortable interview with the Board of Governors: but he was concerned, too, as an honest man; and had jumped at Mrs. Wesley's invitation to sup with her in Johnson's Court and tell what he could.
Mr. Matthew Wesley, as host, sat at the head of his table and puffed at a churchwarden pipe; a small, narrow-featured man, in a chocolate-coloured suit, with steel buttons, and a wig of professional amplitude. On his right sat his sister-in-law, her bonnet replaced by a tall white cap: on his left the Captain in his shore-going clothes. He and the apothecary had mixed themselves a glass apiece of Jamaica rum, hot, with sugar and lemon-peel. At the foot of the table, with his injured leg supported on a cushion, reclined the Reverend Samuel Wesley, Junior, Usher of Westminster School, his gaunt cheeks (he was the plainest-featured of the Wesleys) wan with recent illness, and his eyes fixed on Captain Bewes's chubby face.
"Well, as I told you, Mr. Annesley's cabin lay beside my state-room, with a window next to mine in the stern: and, as I showed Mrs. Wesley to-day, my stateroom opens on the 'captain's cabin' (as they call it), where I have dined as many as two dozen before now, and where I do the most of my work. This has three windows directly under the big poop-lantern. I was sitting, that afternoon, at the head of the mahogany swing table (just as you might be sitting now, sir) with my back to the light and the midmost of the three windows wide open behind me, for air. I had the ship's chart spread before me when my second mate, Mr. Orchard, knocked at the door with word that all was ready to cast off. I asked him a few necessary questions, and while he stood there chatting I heard a splash just under my window. Well, that might have been anything—a warp cast off and the slack of it striking the water, we'll say. Whatever it was, I heard it, turned about, and with one knee on the window-locker (I remember it perfectly) took a glance out astern. I saw nothing to account for the sound: but I knew of a dozen things which might account for it—anything, in fact, down to some lazy cabin-boy heaving the dinner-scraps overboard: and having, as you'll understand, a dozen matters on my mind at the moment, I thought no more of it, but turned to Mr. Orchard again and picked up our talk. To this day I don't know that there was anything in the sound, but 'tis fair to tell you all I can."—Captain Bewes took a sip at his grog, and over the rim looked down the table towards Samuel, who nodded.
The Captain nodded back, set down his glass, and resumed. "Quite so. The next thing is that Mr. Orchard, returning to deck two minutes later and having to pass the door of Mr. Annesley's cabin on his way, ran against an old Hindu beggar crouching there, fingering the door-handle and about to enter—or so Orchard supposed, and kicked him up the companion. He told me about it himself, next day, when we found the cabin empty and I began to make inquiries. 'Now here,' says you, 'here's a clue,' and I'm not denying but it may be one. Only when you look into it, what does it amount to? Mr. Annesley—saving your presence—was known for a stern man: you may take it for certain he'd made enemies over there, and these Hindus are the devil (saving your presence again, ma'am) for nursing a grudge. 'Keep a stone in your pocket seven years: turn it, keep it for another seven; 'twill be ready at hand for your enemy'—that's their way. But, to begin with, an old jogi is nothing strange to meet on a ship before she clears. These beggars in the East will creep in anywhere. And, next, you'll hardly maintain that an old beggarman ('seventy years old if a day,' said Orchard) was going to take an active man like Mr. Annesley and cram him bodily through a cabin window? 'Tis out of nature. And yet when we broke into his cabin, twenty-four hours later, there was not a trace of him: only his boxes neatly packed, his watch hanging to the beam and just running down, a handful of gold and silver tossed on to the bunk—just as he might have emptied it from his pockets—nothing else, and the whole cabin neat as a pin."
"But," objected Mr. Matthew Wesley, "if this jogi—or whatever you call him—had entered the cabin for no good, he would hardly have missed the money lying on the bunk."
"Sir, you must not judge these eastern mendicants by your London beggars. They are not thieves, nor avaricious, but religious men practising self-denial, who collect alms merely to support life, and believe that money so bestowed blesses the giver."
"A singularly perverted race!" was the apothecary's comment.
Captain Bewes turned towards Mr. Samuel, who next spoke from the penumbra at the far end of the table. "I believe, Captain," said he, "that these mendicants are as a rule the most harmless of men?"
"Wouldn't hurt a fly, sir. I have known some whose charity extended to the vermin on their own bodies."
Mrs. Wesley sat tapping the mahogany gently with her finger-tips. "To my thinking, the key of this mystery, if there be one, lies at Surat. My brother had powerful enemies: his letters make that clear. We must
