J. Thrasher Sunderland made his first break when he went to Captain Wynch of the bark _Treasure Trove_, instead of going straight to a crimp, as he ought to have done. Wynch promised to treat the kid well and try to brace him up. Never having seen Tom Letterblair he got a description of him, including the tattoo mark. Then the skipper went to Spotty Crigg and promised him a hundred dollars for doing the rough work of getting Tom on board the vessel. Letterblair was such a big, careless fellow, he never suspected anything, and a lure note fetched him to Crigg’s saloon the night before the bark cleared. Tom had been drinking hard that day—showed up badly slewed. ’Twas a jolly drunk, and he was ready for a glass with anyone. Now, Crigg hadn’t given much thought to this little transaction, for he was doing that sort of work almost every day in the week. But when that young swell, all dressed up to the nines, came into the “Bowsprit” saloon, the looks of him put a brand-new idea into Spotty’s noddle. It struck him that a hundred dollars was pretty small pay for catching a fish of that size and colour; there was evidently a big deal on somewhere. Like everyone else that read the papers, he knew considerable about Tom Letterblair, knew him for a young sport, free as water with his money. Putting two and two together, he saw that if he could save the kid instead of stealing him, there might be a good many times a hundred in the affair. Besides, there was a chance of finding out who was trying to get the shanghaing done, and then collecting blackmail. So he decided to play both ends. He would steal the wrong man, and hold on to the right one. He ran his eye around the place and saw Harry Maidslow, a scene-shifter in the old Baldwin Theatre, who used to drop in, now and then, on his nights off. Man for man, Maidslow and Letterblair were modelled on the same lines—Maidslow wore a moustache, but that would come off easy enough—yellow hair, blue eyes, big and strong build. Maidslow hadn’t a relative this side of the Rockies; no one would miss him. Crigg knew that. Spotty Crigg went so far in his mind before he thought of the tattoo mark. Captain Wynch had mentioned it as the proof that there was no mistake. And then, Crigg thought of me. I suppose lots of people would have stopped there, but Spotty Crigg had nerve, I’ll say that for him—nerve of a thousand. He worked Letterblair to drink himself to sleep, and then had him packed upstairs and put to bed, dead to the world. The next move was easy. Crigg took Harry Maidslow into his office, fed him knockout drops, and carried him up into the same room with Letterblair. Side by side he laid them both, and stripped them to undershirts.