Evening Star Newspaper, January 8, 1898, Page 18

THE EVENING STAR, .SATURDAY, JANUARY: 8, 1898-24 PAGES, “You've struck the wrong mat i Capt. Kettle. “I'm most kinds of Idiot, but I'm not the sort to go ramming “my head against the French government for toid,” said Carnegie, wearlly, were a man that feared noth- “I was “that chat I'm not a man who'll take ticket to land myself in an usly mess unless pays my train fare and gives me something to spend at the other end. I sir, by trade or profession, chever you like to name it, and mboat when a row been not say but what I've more than once out of wrestling with an that’s the kind of brute But what you propose is different; it's out of my line. It's gaol breaking, no less, with a spell of seven yea in the jug if I don’t succeed; and no kind of credit to wear, or dollars to jingle, if I carry it through as you wish. And may I ask, sir, why I should interest myself in this Mr. Clare? I never heard of him till I came in this room talf an hour ago in answer to your adver- tsement.”” “He ts do unjustly the condemned,” Carnegie repeated, sh he were quoting from a ke me suffering imprisonment in this pestilential place—er—Cayenne, for a fault which some one else has committed; end uniess he is rescued he will die there 1 am appealing to your human- ity, captain. Would you see a fellow- countryman wronged? “I have only to leok In the glass for retorted Kettle. ‘Most people's kicks come to me when I am any within hail. And you'll kindly obse to go on for Mr. Clare's innocence. French courts and the French peo! Jour own admitting, took a very different View of the mater. They said with clear- he did sell those plans of for- » Germans, and, knowing their ng at such a matter, it oniy ¢ he wasn't guillotined out of The le, by ughter who is sure of his ne matter,” said Cai “And,” he added, “I © chief person who and fingered the en bis cap. He had a espect for the other sex. 19 made me adver- faring man who skill to carry out We had two hun- ean you credit ‘e m not skipper who's not enouzh, and the end of it. f doing this business, n’s fighting and sir, a man can't notes, y enough ctor in ¥_ Of business, let alone a Cayenne warders, with a ‘ir own value and importance. setting out to French Guiana back, and steamer fare for of us would come to more than of postage stamps. And, then, » I come m? You say I can pock- balance. But I'm nanged if I see whole squad big idea of t Then, ther et tie where the balance is going to be squeezed from. ilo) is mere Solishness, and the thimg I can do is to go away wit ther talk. By James, sir, I can say that if you'd given me this pre. cious scheme as your own there's a man in room who would have had a smashed for his impudence; but, as you tell there's a lady in the case, I'll say no more Captain Kettle stood up, thrust out his chin age and swung on his cap. Then it_off again, and coughed | with politen ened, and the girl they peaking about came into stepped quickly across she said, “I could not leave you alone with my fa any ionger. I just had ome in and thank you for f * you would be the man trouble. I knew it from and red- it is beyond you escaped from the It jzeted with the badge on his pect, miss,” said he, “what other man could do I would not shy i but thing you've got here's ." the girl broke out passion- he has not earned it. He was 1 unju: He was condemned as a id others. They were powerful—he was without interest—and all France was shrieking for a victim. Mr. Clare was a subordinate in a government aecus seapexoat effice through which these plans of for- tresses had passed. He was by birth half an Englishman, and so it was easy to raise suspicion against him. The¥ forged great sheaves of evidence; they drew off attention from the real’ thieves; they shamed him horribly, and then they sent him off to those awful Isles de Salut for life. Yes, for life, till age or the diseases of the place should free him by death. Can you think of anything more frightful?” “Mr. Clare is fortunate In having such a friend. “A friend!” she repeated. “Has not my father told you? I am his promised wife. Fancy the irony of it. We were to have been married the very day he was con- demned. It was my money and my father’s which defended him at the trial, and it nearly beggared us. And now I will spend the last penny I can touch to get him free again.” Captain Kettle coughed once more. Was upon a question of money that Carnegie and I split, miss. I said to a hundred pounds would not work it, there's the naked truth.” “But it must,” she eried, “it must! You think us mean, niggardly. But it is not that; we can raise no more. We are at the end of our funds. Look around at this room. Does this Icok like riches?” It did not. They were in a grimy Néw- castle lodging, au troisieme, and at one Bide of the room the flank of a bedstead showed itself in outline against a curtain. The paper was torn, and the carpet was absent, and from the shaft of the stair- way came that mingled scent of clothes and fried onion which is native to this type of dwelling. Carnegle himself was a faded man of fifty. His daughter carried the recent traces of beauty, but anxiety had lined her face, and the pinch of res angustae had frayed her gown. All went to advertise the truth of what the girl had been say- irg; the Kettle’s heart warmed toward her. He knew right well the nip of pov- erty himseif. But still he did not see his way to perform impossibilities, and he lifted up his voice and said so with glum frankness. “I am not rememberi: for a minute, miss,” he explained, “that I am a fellow with a wife and children dependent on my earnings; as though I might be Mr. Clare's relative; THE ESCAPE a ‘WRITTEN FOR THE EVENING STAR BY CUTOLIFFE HYRE. —— (Copyright, 1807, the S. 8. McClure Co.) and I have got nothing new to tell you. A hundred pounds will not do it, and that is the end of the matter.” The girl wrung her hands and looked piti- fully across at her father. ty though that will force us to go hungry. And that is final, captain. If my own neck depended upon it, I could not lay hands on more. Capt. Owen Kettle’s face wore a look of pain. He was a man of chivalrous !n- stincts; it irked him to disoblige a lady; but the means they offered him were so terribly insufficient. He did not repeat his refusal its face, it is sufficiently low in the water for the spindrift to whip every inch of its surface during even the mildest of gales. On these occasions the wind lifts great layers of sand from off the roof of the isle; but even the sea spews up more sand against the beaches; and so the bulk of the isle remains a constant quantity, although the material whereof it is built is no two months the same. As a residence the place ts singularly un- desirable, and it is probable that until Capt. Owen Kettle scraped for himseif a shelter trench in the middle of the turile back of sand, the isle had been left severely alone by man throughout all the centuries. Still, human breath was hourly drawn in the immediate neighborhood, and when the airs blew tcward the isle, or the breezes lay stagnant, sharp human cries fell dimly on Kettle’s ear, to tell him that men near st hand were alive and awake and plying their appointed occupations. The larger wooded isle, which lay a long rifle shot away, was part of the French penal set- tlement of Cayenne, and the cries were the higher notes of its tragic opera. But they affected Capt. Kettle not at all. He was there on business; ke had been at much pains to arrive at his present situation, and had earned a bullet scar across the temple during the process; and as some time was to elapse before his next move became due, he was filling up the inter- vening hours by the absorved pursuit of literature. He squatted on the floor of his sandpit, with his teeth set in the butt of a cold cigar, and rapped out the lines of son- nets and transferred them to a sheet of sea-stained paper. He used the stubby bul- let of a revolver cartridge from lack of more refined pencil, and his muse worked “DO YOU DARE TO THREATEN ME?” aloud, but his face spoke with eloquent sympathy. girl sank into one of the shabby pairingly. “If you fail me, sir,” “then I have no hope.” Kettle’ turned away, still fingering the tarnished badge on is cap, and stared drearily through the grimy window panes. A silence filled the room. Carnegie broke it. “Other men answered the advertisement,” he suggested. “I know they did,” his daughter said; “and I read their letters; and I read Capt. Kettle’s; and if there is one man who could help us out of ali those that answered, he is here now In this room. My heart went out to him at once when I saw his applica- tion. I had never heard of him before, but when I read the few pages he sent, it came to me that I knew him intimately from then onward, and that he and no other in all the world could do the service which said, addressing the lit- “1 learned from that let- ter that you made poetry; and I felt that the romance of this matter would carry you on where any other man with merely al instincts would fail.” you ...e poetry, miss? write it,” she said, “for the magazines, and sometimes it get print.” Would you mir aking hands with ed int will let that mean the signing of our con- | tract. Capt. Kettle held out_his fist. “Put it there, m: dhe. “Tl 'rench govern- ment is a lumping big concern, but I've bucked against rmment before and out top si . by James; I'll do it You t home, miss, and write | poetry, and magazi tit instead of th rotten adv s they're so fond of, and you'll be doing Great Britain a large service. What the people in this country need is nice rural poetry to tell . em what sun: and how corn grows, and all th are like, t, and not cutthroat stories they might fill out for themselves from the morning newspapers if they Only knew the men and the ground. “If I can only know you're at home here, miss, doing that, 1 can set about this other matter with a cheerful heart. I don’t think the money will be of much good; but you may trust me to get out to French Guiana somehow, even if I have to work my way there before the mast; and I'll collar hold of Mr. Clare for you and deliver him on “Put It There, Miss,” He Said. board a British ship in the best repair which circumstances will permit. You mustn't expect me to do impossibilities, miss; but I'm working now for a lady who writes poetry for the magazines, and you'll see me go that near to them you'll prob- ably be astonished.” IL Turn now to another scene. There fs a certain turtle-backed isie in the Caribbean sea sufMiciently small and naked to be nameless on the charts. The admiralty hy- drographers mark it merely by a tiny black dot; the American chartmaker has gone further, and branded it as “shoal,” which seems to hint (and quite incorrectly) that there is water over it, at least during spring tides. The islet, which is egg-shaped, measures I am looking at the matter] some 180 yards across its longer diameter, and although no green seas can roll across with lusty pace, as, indeed, It was always wont to do when the world went more than usually awry with him. ‘To even catalogue the little scamp's ad- ventures since his parting with Miss Car- negie in that Tyneside iodging would be to Write a lengthy book, and they are omitted here in toto, because to detail them would of recessity compromise worthy men, both French and English, who do not wish their tratlic with Kettle to be publiciy advertised. Suffice It to say, then, that he made his way out to French Guiana by ways best krcwn to himself; pervaded Cayenne under an alias which the local gendarmerie laid bare; exchanged pistol shots with those in authority to avoid arrest, and, in fact, put the entire penal colony, from the governor down to the meanest convict, into a fever of unrest entirely on his especial behalf. He was put to making temporary head- quarters In a mangrove swamp, and com- pleting his preparations from there, and, to say the least of it, matters went hardly with him. Kut at last he got his prelimina settled, and left his bivovac among maddening mosquitos and slime the and the snaky tree roots, and took to the seas the again in a lugsail bout which he annexed by force of arms from its four original owrers. A cold-minded pei taking of thet boat was an pi but Kettle iold hin as the French of Cayenne we he w a ecornized belligere all the maneuvers of war were pen to him. He had no mo: capturing that lugsail boat from on might say that the t of glaring If that so far concerned superior fox an Nelson once had about taking dary ips from the neh in Bay of Aboukir. He had a depot ¢ : ats up a mangre ight he saile nd built them cached by cne of his agent creek, and under cover of up and got these on board, Ughtly under the thwarts of his boat so they would not shift in tue seaway. faally, again cloaked by fr ily dark- hg ran on to the beaen of the turtle- jet, hid his boat in a guiley of the coped out a personal residen he would be visible only to God and a the sea fowl, and sat himself down to wait fer an appointed hour. er y the sun led him, by night the sea mists drenched him to the skin, and at times gales lifted the surface from the Caribbean and sent it whistling across the root of the volleys of stinging spend- rift. Moreover, he was constantly pesiered by that local ailment, chills and fever, partly as a result of two or three trifling wounds bestowed by the gendarmerie, and partly as payment for residence in the mi- asmatic mangrove swamps. So that, on the whole, life was not very tolerable to him, and he might have been pardoned had he cursed Miss Carnegie for sending him on so troublesome an errand. But he did not do this. He remembered that she was oc- cupying herself at home in Newcastle with the creation of poetry for the British maga- zines, according to their agreement, and he forgot his discomforts in the glow of a Mae- cenas. It was the first time he had been a bona fide patron of letters, and the pleasure of it intoxicated him. A fortnight passed by--he had given Clare a fortnight in the message he smug- gled into the convict station for him, to make certain preparations—and at the end of that space of time, Captain Kettle rolled his manuscript inside an oilskin cover and addressed it to Miss Carnegie—in case of accidents. He put beckets on the top of his cap, slipped his revolver into these, and put the cap on his head; and then, strip- ping to the buff, he left his form and got up onto the sand, and walked down its milkwarm surface to the water's edge. The ripples rang like a million of the timiest bells upon the fine shingle, and the stars in the velvet night above were re- flected in the water. It was far too still a night for his purpose, far too dangerously clear. He would have preferred rain, or even half a gale of wind. But he had fixed his appointment, and was not the man to let any detail of added danger make him break a tryst. So he waded down into the lenely sea, and struck out a steady breast stroke for the Isle de Salut, which loomed in low black outline across the waters be- fore him. A more hazardous business than this part of the man’s expedition tt would be hard to conceive. There were no prisoners in the world more zealously guarded than those in the pestilential isle ahead of him. They were forgers, murderers, or, what the French hate still more, traitors and foreign spies; and once they stepped ashore upon the beach, they were there for always. They were all life-sentence men. Until ferocious labor, or the battefings of the climate sent them to rest below the soil, they were doomed to pain with every Deeenieenaes like this makes despe: te ing like desper- ate men, and did any of the prisoners— éven the most cowardly of them—see the giimmer of a chance to e would leap to take it, even though he knew that a certain hailstorm of lead would pelt along his trail. And as m@ eonecquence the rim of the isle bristled with:armed warders, all of them marksmen, whe shot at anything that moved, and who had ax little compunction in dropping a prisaner as.aay other aporte- man would have én knecking over a part- ridge, S bees To, add to Captadn Kettle’s tally of dan- gers, the phospheeesceace that night was Pecullarly vivid; the ses glowed where he breasted it; his wake was lit with streams ilver fire; his whole body stood out like a smoulder of fieme om a cloth of black velvet. His presepce moved upon the face of the waters agsan ‘open ‘advertisement. He was an illuminated target for every rifle that chose to sight him, and far worse, he was a fiery bright enough to draw every shark in the Cariboean. “And sharks swarmed there. ,|His dimbs crept as he swam with them. . 1 To move fast was to;increase the phos- Phorescence, to move si¢w was to linger in that horrible suspense and I think it is one of the highest testimonials to Kettle’s in- dominable courage when I can say that not ence during that ghastly voyage did he either hurry or scurry or splash. He was @ prey to the most abominable dread; he expended one and ashalf hours over an hour's swim, and it seemed to him a space of years; and when he grounded on the beach of the Isle de Salut he was almost fainting from the strain of his emotions, and for a while lay on the sand, sobbing like an hysterical school girl. But a sound revived him and sent full energy Into his limbs again without a prelude. From the distance there came to Lim the noise of shod feet crunching with regulation tread along the shingle. He was lying In the track of a ‘3 beat By instinct his hand draxged the revolver from its beckots on hin cap, and then he rose to his fect and darted away like some slim, pink g across the beach into the shelter of the thickets, He lay there hold- ing his breath, and watehed the sentry pace up on his patrol. It wax evident that the man had not seen him; the fellow neither glanced toward the cover nor searched the beach for foot t teks; und yet he carried is rifle in the crook of his arm ready for Snapshot, and filckered his eyes to this ‘de and to that like a man” habitually trained to sudden alarms and a quick trig- ser finger. His every movement was elo- quent of the care with which the Isle de Salut was warded. Kettle waited till the man had gone off into the dark again and the soundless dis- ance, and then stepped out from his am- h, and ran at speed along the dim star- Ht beach. The sandpits sprang backwards from his flying tocs and the birds in the forest rim moved uneasily as he passed. The little man was seabred first and last, and he had no knowledge of woodcraft; a silent stork was a flight far beyond him; and he raced along his way, revolver in hand, confident that he could shoot any in- truding sentry before a rifle could be brought to bear. Of course the discharge of weapons would have waked the fsle and brought the whole Wasps nest about his ears. But this was a state of things he could have faced out brazenly. ‘Throughout all his stormy life he had never yet shirked a melee, and per- haps immunity from serious harm ‘had s:ven him an over-estimate of the percent- age of bullets which g0es astray. At any rate the thrill of brisk fighting w: ‘as a ple: ure he well knew, and he never went far out of his way to ayold it. But, as it Was, he sped along his path unnoticed. The blunders of chance threatened hiai through the shadows and th tries so that no living so arm, till at last he pulled the edge of the open sg; in the grim convict barrack itself. And now began a hateful tedium of waiting. The day he had fixed with Cc w > Tight one: the hour of the rer chain of sen- picked up the p panting at ce which hedged vous was vague.!He had said “as mianight as maybe” in’ his message; but he was only able to guess at the time him. self, and hi eXpecied that Clare was in a milar plight. Anyway, the man w r d Kettle gnawed his fingers he awaited hi under the winking ars y full of In the forest trees the j flies, and the tre ickets, and the katy ds, kept up thei ldening chor drumming mosquitoes scented the naked man from afar, inch of his bedy to the isi, damp at of the to get his breath, If was full of the uneasy of ren sleeping in dis- comfort, and at regular inter y wretch within the walls Dieu, Dieu, Di as though he were a humen cuckoo clack condemned to chime after stated lapses of. minutes, An hour passed sind still the uneasy night without notice that a prisoner ing to eseape. Another hour went and Captain Ketile began to contem- te the pos:ibilities of attacking the grim building with his own, itching fingers, and dragging Clare forth in the teeth of what- ever opposition might befall. “Dieu, Dieu, Dicu,” rang out the tormented man'within the wa nd then from round the fur- ngle of the pl. 1 figure came run- ning. who red wildly about him as though in s h of some one. Kettle stepped cut from bis nook of con- ment, a clear, pale mark in the star- The runrer swerved, stopped and Kettle beckoned him and raced The ‘litth you'll lor thrust Mr. Cla out sir, a_moist I pre- be to have the honor of Kettle, that was Carneg - quickly. ‘The; will be after me dire ud if th catch me I shall be is your boat? But the little naked man did not budge. “I am accustomed, sir,” he said stifily, “to having my “E don’t let us get ay “Captain Kettl Oh, afterward. But t once. But this waiting may cost zB foam not sir, but as S our liy nxious to take for the boat, you’ swim ahead of you before you r And he told of the way he “There was no other plan for it, It would have been sheer foo have brought my boat to this Ml these busy people with guns prowling ut. I had just got to leave her at headquarters, and you must make up your mind to swim and risk the shatks if you wish to join her.” IT am open to risking anything,” said Clare. “It's neck or nothing with me after what I did five minutes back in that hell over ycnder. One of the warders—’ he broke off and dragged a hand across his root here, a good ach that.” had com Mr. Clar shness to land with eyes. “Look here, ca we are bound to be seen if we go back round by the beach. Come with me and I'll show you 4 track through the woods.” He started off into the cover without waiting for a reply, and Kettle, with a frown, turned and followed at his heels. Capt. Kettle preferred to do the ordering himself, and this young man seemed apt to assert command. However, the moment was one for hurry. The night was begin- ning to thin. So he got up speed agaln, and the trees and the underbrush closed behind him. “Dieu, dieu, dieu,” cried out the torment- ed prisoner within the wall as a parting benediction. I. Som? men, lkegthe ,Bistorical Dr. Feil, have the knack, ynkaewn to themselves, of inspiring dislike In others, and Clare had this effect upon @apti’Owen Kettle. The little sailor's dislike. was born at the first moment of their mgeting; it grew as he ran through the foredt of; the Isle de Salut; and even when Cltre féH upon a sentry and beat the sense out of fijm as neatly as he could have done dt himself, Kettle failed to admire or sympathias with him. On the return swim tc the turtle-backed island he came very near fo wishing: that a shark would get the mag, although such a calam- ity would have nt His own almost cer- tain destruction; ‘and ;When they lay to- gether, packed like a. of sardines in the shelter pit, under, the tolerable sunshine of the succeeding day, ft was with difficulty he could keep haAds off this fellow whom he had géne through so much to help. Clare put in what of talking was done; the sailor preserved a sour glum silence; he felt that if he gave his vinegary tongue the freedom it wished for, nothing could pre- vent a collision, He argued out with himself the cause for this dislike during. the succeeding night. They had got the boat in the water, had mastheaded the lug and were running northwest before a snoring breeze toward the British West Indian Islands. He him- self, with main-sheet-in one hand and tiller in the other, was in solitary command. Clare was occupied in bailing back the seas to their appointed place. Fora long time the utmost he could dis- cover against the man was that on occa- sions he “was too bossy,” and with bitter Satire he ridiculed himself for a childish weakness. But then another thought dritt- ed into his mind, and he picked it up and weighed ‘iit, and balanced it, and vaiued it, ay | til, under the fostering care, it grew, and the little sailor felt with a glow and a tightening of the lips‘that"he had now in- deed a real and legitimate cause for hate. What mention had this fellow Clare made of Miss Carnegie? Practically none. He, Kettle, had stated by whom he was sent to the rescue, and Clare had received the news with a casual “‘Oh;” and a yawn. He had offered further information (when the first scurry of the escape was over, and they were cached in the sandpit) upon Miss Carnegio’s movements and her condition as last viewed in Newcastle, and Clare had pleaded tiredness and suggested another hour for the recital. Was this the proper attitude for a lover? It was not. Was this meet behavior for the future husband of such &@ woman as Miss Carnegie, who was not only herself, but who also wrote poet- ry for the magazines? Ten thousand times over, it was not. He sheeted home the lug a couple of inches in response to a shift of the breeze and opened his lips in speech. “Miss Carnegie, sir,” he began, “is a lady I esteen: very highly.” “She is a_nice girl, with the bailer. “She is willing to beggar herself to do you service, sir.” “Yes, I know she is very fond of me.” nd I should like to know if you are equally fond of her 3 “Steady, captain, steady. I don’t quite see what you have got to do with it.” He paused and looked at the sailor curiously. “Look here, I say, you seem to talk wu deuce of a deal about Miss Carnegie. Are you sweet on her yourself?” Capt. Keitle glared, -and it is probable that if such an action would not have swamped the boat, he would have dropped the tiller and left the marks of his dis- pleasure upon Clare's person without fur- ther barter of words. But as it was, he deigned to speak. “You dog,” he said, “if you make a suggestion like that again I'll kill you. You've no right to say such a thing. I just honor Miss Carnegie as though she were the queen, or even more, because she writes verse for the magazines, and the queen only writes diaries. And, besides, there could be nothing more between us; I'm a married man, sir, with a family. “But about this otner matter; it seems to me I'm the party that kind of holds your fate just at present, young man. If I shove this tiller across, the boat'll broach- to und swamp, and whatever happens to me—and I don't vastly care—it’s a sure thing you will go to the place where there's assented the :aan weeping and gnashing of teeth. How'd you like that?” “Not a bit. I want to live. I've gone through tae worst time a human man can evdure on that ghastly island astern there, and I'm due for a great lot of the swects of life to make up for it. And if it inter- ests you to know it, captain—I do owe you somothing personally, I suppose, and you have some right to be In my confidence—if it interests you to hear such a thing, I may tell you I shall probably marry Miss Car- e as soon as I get back to her.”” “Then do you love her?” “I don't quite know what love is. But I like her well enough, if that will do for you. Hadn't we better take down a reef in the lug? I can hardly keep the water un- age “By James, you leave me to sail this boat,” said Kettle, “and attend to your blessed bailing, or I'll knock you out of her. The conversation languished for some curs after this, and kettie, with every rerve on the strain, humored the boat as she raced before the heavy following ; whilst the ex-convict scooped back the water which eternally slopped in green streams over her gunwale. It was Clare 0 set up the talk again, ‘Did she know anything about those of the French fortresses?” es Carnegie had the most definite ideas on the subject.” “I suppose she'd found out by that time did get hold of them out of , and sell them to the Ger- For one of the few times in his life Kettle lied. “She knew the whole from start to finish” “Well, I was a fool to muddle it. With any decent luck I ought to have brought off the coup without any wis T could ha laid quiet a year or ull the fuss blew over, and then had a tidy fortune to go upon and been able to marry whom I pleased, or not marry at all. Eh—well, skippe that bubble’s cracked, and I suppose the best thing I can do now is to marry old Carnegi girl, after ail.” “TI don’t see why you should.” “Man must look after himself, captain. I come back to the world stone broke, and I don’t want to lack biscuits.” “But.” sald Kettle, “I don’t see where you will get them from. The Carncgies are not rich.” “Old man Carnegie will exude sovereigns when I start to squeeze him. You wait and si then you've quite made up your mind to marry this lady?” “Quite.” “That's what you say,” retorted Kettle. ‘ow you hear me. Miss Carnegie thinks you are in love with her, and you are not that by many a long fathom, so there goes item the fi In the second place, she theught you were sent to Cayenne unju ly, whereas by your own showing you're a dirty thicf, and deserved all you got. And, thirdly, I don’t approve of squeezing fath- ers-in-law as an industry for young men newly out of jail.” “You truculent little ruffian, do you dare to threaten me? “I'd threaten the Smperor of Germany if I was close to him, nd didn't like what he was doing. Here, you! Don’t you litt tha r at me, or I'll slip some } through your mangy hide before you can wink. Now you'll just unders} rest of this cruise, till you stay forward, and I’m on the quar} deck. If you move aft I'll shoot you dead and thank you fer giving me the chance. But if you get ashore ail in one piece Pll spike your guns in another way.” “How?” asked the man, sulenly. for the e make our port, “You'll find out when’ you get there,” said Kettl “And now don't you peak tom You aren't wholesome. Get on with your bailing. D°you hear me, there? Get on with that bailing. I don't want my beat to be swamped through your cursed laziness!’ * . . . . . . Now to which port it was ef the British West India Islands that the lugsafl boat and its occupants arrived IE never quite made out, and, indeed, the method in which pt. Ketile “ Mr. Clare's “guns” was hidden from me till quite recently. A week ago, however, a letter of his drifted into my hands, and as it seems to explain all that is necessary I give it here exactly as it left his pen “WEST INDIA ISLANDS. “To Miss Carnegie, Jesmond st, Newcastle, Engian “Honored Madam—Am pleased to report have carried out part of yr esteemed com- mands. Went to Cayenne as per instruc- tions and took Mr. Clare away trom French Government, they not consenting. Landed him in good condition at this place. Having learnt that he did steal those plans, and moreover he saying he did not care for you the way he ought, have taken liberty to guard lest Fe should trouble you in future. To do this found old colored washerwoman here (widow) who was proud to have white husband. Him objecting 1 swore to tell French Consul if he did not marry and get him sent back to Cayenne. So ne married. She weighs 250 Ibs. I enclose copy of their marriage lines so you can see all is correct. “Trust you will excuse liberty. He hae made one escape; you have made another. “The weather is very sultry here, but they say there is fine scenery up-coun- try. “Sahai get English magazine some day. when things blow over a bit and I can come that way again, to look for your poetry. “Hoping this finds you in good health as it leaves me at present. “Yrs obedient, KETTLE (Master).” ———__ New York in 2000 A. D. From Municipal Affairs. How the people will live in 2000 A. D. it is impossible to guess, but it is not likely that they will live In the closely huddied habitations of the present day. The indica- tions are these: The tenement house will be unknown, and no man, rich or poor, will live in a house of which every room does not open freely to the outer air. “The pres- ent tendency to aggregation and conglom-- eration will lead to heaven knows what method of free, easy and cheap transporta- tion. He would ve a bold man who, recajting the short interval of time between the days of the ubiquitous omnibus and the rapid and pleasant trolley car of today, would venture to predict what will be our means of urban travel. A quarter of a cen- tury ago no one would have believed that old and young, rich and- poor, would be flying about our streets and over our coun- try roads cn rubber-tired bicycles. It would have been as absurd to predict then what we are now so familiar with as to predict now that there will be some safe and universal method of aerial or subterra- nean mode of conveyance.’ POLICEMAN IN A BOX He Attempted to Interfere at a Carai- val Party, With Umex- pected Results, One of the things which add to the gayety of nations at Christmas time is the boy. The exuberance of his good feelirg finds vent in various ways, but the most satisfactory way in a horn. A megaphone would be the really proper instrument of rejoicing, or a calliope, or a West African war drum; but these things are expensive. Very good results, however, may be at- tained by means of a ten-cent horn, about three feet long, without unnecessary dec- orations. What the Christmas boy wants is noise, and for that purpose a good, large, tin horn is worth all the pretty things in the worid. There was a horn party on a certain street in Washington one evening during the holidays. It was also a supper party. it had hired a hall and prepared for fes- tivities. As the guests paraded down the street on their way to the hall, making all the noise they thought proper, windows went down with resounding bangs, doors were opened and shut emphatically, and there was a sulphurous smell in the air. It was not long before a policeman hove in sight from around the corner. He scented trouble. His intuition was true. There was trouble, and some of it alighted on his shoulders. Matters were reasonably quiet within the hall, however, for some time. The reason was quite plain. No person can eat suc- cessfully and make a racket at the same time. The supper was a good one, and proper respect was paid to its qualities. There was, however, a little ditficulty about the surplus. A fresh detachment of guests arrived, who had already been around town, and, as the refreshments did not come fast enough to supply their wants, they sent home plates as tokens of their impatience, sailing around the room. Al- together things became rather mixed. Down below, in the dark, the policeman was waiting to see what he had better do. When he heard the smashing of the crock- ery he concluded somewhat hastily to in- vestigate, for he was an economical po- liceman, and thought it possible that some- thing besides plates was being smashed. If they were doing any battleship christen- ing there he wanted to be on hand. So up the stairs he marched and boldly entered the room. What he said to that convivial supper party will never be recorded. He knows what he meant to say, but the party did not wait to hear. They had their program for that evening made out, and it did not include the appearance of a policeman, They picked him up and swiftly carried kim down stairs, amazed, protesting and helpless. They tucked him into the nearest patrol bux, told him to be a good boy, and locked the door. Then they went back to their hall, and the bewildered officer, clasp- ing his d in both hands, heard pres- ently & away in the distance the de- isi nd of horns. He waited awhile in quiet, hoping a brother policeman would come along and report to the station, but none came. Then he began to cali for help, but there ‘was no response. It was finally borne in upon his mind that if he did not want to stay there all night he would have to de- vise some means of getting out. A patrol box is a Sy, good thing in its way, but it was not ‘intended as a sleeping apart- ment, and a cell in the District jail has some advantage over it in point of com- fort. It is quite safe from intrusion, but that is all. Not long after that the lieutenant In charge at the station received a call for help. It took some time for him to under- stand the situation, for when the traditions of the police force were made it was not contemplated that members of “‘the finest” would be jailed in their own patrol boxes, nor was it supposed that that neighbor- hood was one in which a patrol of the mili- tia was needed to keep it quiet. The more the Heutenant thought about it the less he understood it, so he determined to go and find out. It took the entire reserve force of twelve men to haul a very mtek and unhappy police officer out of that patrol box, and the lieutenant, at a loss to know how he came there, has reported that offi- cer John Smith is suspended for drunken- ness. Officer Smith knows he was not drunk, and the members of the supper party know it, too; but he cannot call upon The after-dinner Task of dish washing loses its terrors, and all household cleaning is ac- complished quickly and easily by the use of GOnreT WaAsHING PowoER Largest package—greatest economy. THE N. K. FAIRBANK COMPANY, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia. Boston, DICKENS, =—y THE FRENC The Character and Writings of Ale phonse Dandet. Paris Letter to the Philadelphia Ledger. In America and England the death of Al- phonse Daudet will be felt, though not so Widely, hardly less keenly than in France itself, for, with the possible exception of Zola, I Goubt whether any French author of our generation has been more read o side of the confines of his own country than he who hes just passed away in what should have been almost the prime of his life. He has been cailed the French Dick- ens, and from a point of view unconr, altogether with his literary quality th thet was deserved, but in the s which it is generally used the attri falls very wide of the mark. “There river in Macedon, and there is also, a river at’ Monmouth y so there may be found td in the work of the En: novelists. It was pro De of what the French call cliches marking, as it were, of his ch the somewhat wearisomely rep is a more- as Fluellen ttc glish and the the turns of expression or o| tion—which suggested the compar the general reader. Both, too, w to make use of the note of pathos too free In Daudet's case, however, of Dickens, this may be t rectly to his early environme: al struggles which succeeded his first arance in Paris, He was born only seven years ago at Nimes, where his parents kept a little shop. At seventecn he made his way to Paris, after two years of uncongenial drudgery as usher in a smell provincial school. “My God!” he said him- self, in speaking of his adventurous setting forth, “what a journey! The bare thought of it makes me shiver. Two days in a third-class carriage, with cold equaling that of Siberia. After paying for my tick- et I had just a two-franc piece left, but I was not uneasy on that score. Rich in ope, I heeded not the ice and snow, de- spite my scanty attire. I was frightfully hungry, but the seductions of the pastry and sandwiches displaytd at the railway buffets did not entice me to spend my forty sous, which I kept carefully hidden in one of my pockets.” Then came the arrival in Paris and the struggle for life. He copled manuscript for forty francs a month, and acted as secret. y to a small tradesman. He passed, in fact, through all the miseries and privations of the typical Quartier Latin Bohemian. At last he managed to publish a small collection of poe: en- titled “Les Amoureuses,” which was des- tined to become the foundetion of his for- tune. The book attracted the attention of the Empress Eugenie, who spoke to the D de Morny about it. The due made inqui and findimg the young poet without e! tuation or resources, attached him to his fice, with a salary of 200 francs a month. This to Daudet was a godsend. and enabled to buy a suit of clothes, L: he made literary use of his patron by under the ni 2 . But he s repelled the charge for he never a politician, and ev employed by a Bo frankly avowed him: if not in that d almost di- t and to the a legitimist. To this avowal the duc : “Bah! the empress also is a lecitim itieal oping ions, howev f sec ance here. What hat you should let, by his wearing his cut your hair.” For young T scmewhat fantastic fash’ arned the ridicule of his fellow : the long-haired young clerk, if he did not cut his hair, yet put a very fine point upon his pencil. He took notes of everything he saw and everything he heard, and these notes continued throughout the whole of his life and form- ed the basis of all his novels. He himself has described bis methods and the cir- cumstances under which these novels were wont to come into being. A sudden mspir- ation, a quick scheming cut of the whole psychological situation, followed by a pa- tient collection of facts, or a study and arrangement of the facis already collected— these were his only methods, But he did not Ieap into fame in a single hour. It was not until 1868 that he published “Petit Chose,” which, successful as It was. gave him no very wide recognition, and it was not until six years later that out of the failure of his play, “L'Arlesienne,” there arose his first great success, ‘Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine.” From that time forward and for ten years his output was marvelous, including, it did, not only “Fromont. Jeunes” but. “Jack,” “The Na- bab,” “Les Rois en Exil,” “Numa Rou mestan,” “L'Evangelists” and “Sapho. The production of each of these was an event in Itself, and besides bringing Dau- det fame, they brought him also that wealth and that position for which he had so long struggled. It wes shortly before the appearance of “Fromont Jeune” that Edmond About, who was colleeting some information about the earnings of French erary men, questioned Daudet as to his income. He made a calculation, and found that the average amount gained by him from Mterary work was up to that period about $1,000 a year. Since 1878 he has him- self asserted that his income has never fallen short of $20,000 a year. soe They Are Silent. Froim the Syracuse Post. We do not understand that there were many protests from married men against the new law forbidding the importation of seal skins. ——_+o +____ “Of course,” observed Xerxes, the king, “my will is law.” “Doubtless,” answered the wise man of the court, after consulting a few author- ities. ‘That is to say, if your majesty does not leave too large an estate.”—Chicago Record.