During the first days of the voyage Elliott fell into greater intimacy with Henninger than with any of the others of the party. It did not take the older and more experienced man to learn all he desired to know about Elliott’s vicissitudes. Elliott told it without any hesitation, making a humourous tale of it, and, though Henninger offered no confidences in return, he told Elliott curious adventures, which, if they were true, argued an extraordinary experience of unusual and not always respectable courses of life.
Although he never became autobiographical, Elliott gathered by snatches that he must have been at one time, in some capacity, connected with the British army. Later he had certainly been an officer in the Peruvian army, but his manner of quitting either service did not appear. It was with South and Central America that he appeared to have had most to do. He had mentioned cargoes of munitions of war run ashore by night for revolutionary forces, fusilades of blindfolded men against church walls, and more peaceful quests for concessions of various sorts, involving a good deal of the peculiarly shady politics that distinguish Spanish America. Henninger drew no morals; he seemed to have taken life very much as he found it, and Elliott suspected that he had been no more scrupulous than his antagonists. At the same time he had a definite though singularly upside down morality of his own, which continually inspired Elliott with astonishment, sometimes with admiration, and occasionally with disgust.
There was a good deal of whist played in the smoking-room of an evening, and a little poker, but with low stakes. It was on the preceding passage of this very ship that a noble English lord had been robbed of four thousand pounds at the latter game, and the incident was remembered. Elliott was no expert at poker, and his friends showed no inclination for play, so that, though they were in the smoking-room every evening, it was seldom that any of them touched a card.
On the evening of the fifth day out Elliott was sitting quietly in a corner of the smoking-room with a novel and a cigar. It was nearly eleven o’clock, and the low, luxurious room was full of men, and growing very smoky in spite of the open ports. Sullivan had gone to his stateroom; Henninger and Hawke were somewhere about, but Elliott was paying no attention to anything that went on.
Suddenly he became aware of a lowering of the conversation at his end of the room. He glanced up; everybody was looking curiously in one direction. In the focus of gaze stood Henninger, engaged in what seemed a violent, but low-toned altercation with a short, fat, but extraordinarily dignified blond little man who had been prominent among the whist players. One of the ship’s officers stood by, looking annoyed and judicial. Henninger was white to the lips, and his black eyes snapped, though he was saying little in reply to the fat man’s energetic discourse. No one else approached the group, but every one observed it with interest.
All at once, upon some remark of Henninger’s, the little man hit out with closed fist, but the officer caught his arm. Elliott glanced round and saw Hawke looking on with considerable coolness, but, conceiving it his duty to stand by his friend, he got up and approached the trio.
“Go away, Elliott. This is none of your affair!” said Henninger, sharply.
Elliott retreated, feeling that he had made a fool of himself publicly and gratuitously. But he was consumed with curiosity as well as anxiety, for it struck him that this might be in some way connected with the wrecked gold-ship.
Presently the three men left the cabin together and the buzz of talk broke out again. Elliott caught Hawke’s eye, and beckoned him over.
“What was it?” he said, in an undertone.