‘Ah! my boys,’ said the venerable founder of the feast, as he took a second sip at the potent liquor, ‘here’s a blue blazing day for ye—puts me in mind, and you too mayhap, of a morning in the doldrums, where sun is sun, and the very sea seems to simmer like a can of hot broth. I’d like to smell blue water again, I would. I’d an offer, Monday, to command a decentish brig, West Ingies and Demerary way; regular molasses wagon; but old as I am, I’d rather have another bout in the South Seas. Black-birding for the Fiji and Queensland labour market is about the best sport a man can have, since they spoiled the fun we used to have off the West Coast.’ ‘Ay, but that game’s pretty near played out too,’ answered Hold meditatively. ‘Why, you yourself, Captain Grincher, lost your schooner that the man-o’-war captured off the Solomons, and were tried at Sydney for what the government fellows called kidnapping. No; give me Chinese waters, and a handy crew aboard a bit of a fast-sailing lorcha to’—— ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ broke in the American, now in a good temper; ‘allow me to say it air a pity to see men of your talents a-huddling of ’em into corners wheer they’ll fail of their just reward. Now, listen, ef I could but get together a few spirited citizens and, mind ye, the handful of coin necessary for preliminary expenses, this child could point the place where lies, in fourteen fathom water, the treasure-ship _Happy Land_ that left San Francisco, bound for New York, in the fall of ’49, and never was heard of more. She had the value, in dust and bars, of’—— But the precise amount of the golden freight which, on board the _Happy Land_, awaited the bold explorers who should reach that sunken vessel, is not destined to be set down in these pages, for the coloured steward at this juncture appeared holding a letter between his dusky finger and thumb. ‘For Cap’en Hold,’ said the mulatto; and Hold, recognising the handwriting, jumped to his feet in a trice, and snatched rather than received the envelope which the dark Ganymede of Plugger’s held out to him; and tearing it open, read as follows: ‘Come, and come at once. There is no time to lose. Something has occurred—something which makes your presence necessary. Come by noonday train. I will be at the park gate to the north soon after ten o’clock. Meet me there.’ The letter was signed ‘Ruth Willis.’