Ocean Tramps

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

I said nothing for a while, thinking this thing over. I was sure Murchison was right.

This thing would have been weighing in the sailor’s mind for years; from what I could make out at Churles Street he had evidently been making John some sort of allowance; one could fancy the long watches of the night, the pacing of the deck under the stars, and the mind of the sailor always teased by the fact that he was party to this business, a forgery that had kept a brother, however bad, out of his inheritance. Then the last frantic attempt to put things right in the face of death, the agonised thought that to write the thing on paper was useless, paper that would be washed away by the rain or blown away by the wind.

“Well,” said I to Murchison, “it seems plain enough, and now, on the face of it, what would you advise me to do?”

“If I were in your place,” said he, “I would do nothing. You say this elder brother is a scamp; Alexander, on the other hand, is a rogue; if you mix yourself up in the business you may have trouble. Why should you worry yourself about a bad lot of strangers?—turn it down.”

That seemed sensible enough, but you see Murchison knew only the bare facts of the case; he had not seen that notice board tossing about in the desolation of the Pacific.

I left him without having made up my mind as to what I should do, half determined to do nothing.

The bother was that the facts Murchison had put before me gave a new complexion to the whole business, a new urgency to that message which I had not delivered. I felt as if the captain of the Shanghai had suddenly come to my elbow, him and his uneasy conscience craving to be put at rest. Just so, but on the other hand there was John Abbott, and I can’t tell you the grue that chap had given me. It wasn’t that he was a boozer, or a waster; he was bad; bad right through and rotten. There is a sixth sense, it has to do with morals and the difference between good and evil; it told me this chap was evil, and the thought of helping to hand him a fortune made my soul revolt.

Still, there you are, I didn’t make the chap, and the fact remained that in doing nothing I was holding him out of his rights.

All that evening the thing worried me and most of that night. Next morning I couldn’t stand it any longer. I took the train for Oakslot in Kent. I had determined to go straight to Alexander Abbott, beard him, tell him of the notice I had found and see what he had to say. The idea came to me that he might make restitution in some way without handing all the fortune over to John—anyhow, it would be doing something, and I determined to use all my knowledge and power if necessary.

Ever been to Oakslot? It is the quaintest and quietest place, and it wasn’t till I got out of the train and found myself on the platform that the terrible nature of the business I was on took me by the arm.