“Oh, Peter, Peter, how little of the foresight of your saintly namesake do you possess! Does not your imagination see the little harbor of Portreath, which means the sandy cove? Of course it doesn’t, for you are probably ignorant that such a port exists. Our smelter is situated near this marine haven of rest. Stir up your fancy, my boy, and see in your mind’s eye the steamer _Rajah_, loaded with ore, but renamed the _Blue Peter_, floating majestically into Portreath. What more natural than that the grasping Stranleigh should own another copper mine where there is no smelter, and that this ship brings copper ore to our Cornwall furnace? The _Blue Peter_ shall probably first put into Plymouth, where she is less likely to be recognized by seafaring folk than would be the case at Southampton. We will there discharge the crew, giving every man double pay. We will compensate the captain and his officers, sending everybody away happy. Then we will engage another captain and another crew, who know nothing of where the steamer has come from, and thus we sail round Land’s End, and put in to little Portreath.” “You propose, then, to capture the _Rajah_ on the high seas, following it with your much more speedy yacht?” “Oh, no, not capture. I’m going to take possession, that’s all. The _Rajah_ is mine as incontestably as the yacht is. The ore with which she will be loaded is also mine. Everything shall be done as legally as if we were transacting our affairs in the Temple or Gray’s Inn. Doesn’t that put to shame your wild Scottish Highland ideas of fighting and slaughter? You ought to wear kilts and a dirk, Mackeller, but my instrument is a quill pen and nice red stamps embossed at Somerset House.” “And who will pay the men who are blasting out the ore on the banks of the river Paramakaboo?” “Why, really, Mackeller, that is no affair of mine. These industrious people are employed by the saintly Schwartzbrod. If that astute financier elects to engage a large body of labor to get out my ore for me, then I think you will admit, Mackeller, much as you are prejudiced against him, that he is really the philanthropic benefactor of his race I have always said he was.” “But--but--but,” stammered Mackeller, “when they discover how they have been befooled, there will be a riot.”