[90]
]This was the requiem of him as he passed to join the other shades of Yamnibar. Slain by a dog and the cunning of his own hand.
As for the gold that ‘Jim’ had lain by so quietly, and watched so patiently through the years, we never got any of it.
The three nuggets figured in the police-court inquiry, with other things, under the title of ‘Exhibit A.’
That was the last glimpse we had of them.
Departmental red tape enwrapped them so closely that no amount of solicitation could render them visible again—to us.
Easier would it be to draw leviathan from the waters with a bit of twine and a crooked pin than to draw ‘treasure trove’ from the coffers of a treasury—colonial or otherwise.
To this day they are possibly accumulating dust, pigeon-holed with the depositions in the case. But I doubt it, I doubt it.
[91]
]THE PROTECTION OF THE ‘SPARROWHAWK.’
Many people have their special antipathies. There are instances on record of one fainting at the scent of heliotrope; of another becoming hysterical at the mewing of a cat; and so on, and so on, ad infinitum. The Scotch, as a rule, are anything but a nervously susceptible nation, taken either collectively or individually. Nor have I heard that those members of it who follow the sea as a calling are more so than their shorekeeping compatriots.
Still, to the present day, and probably to the day of his departure, John M‘Cracken, retired master mariner, of Aberdeen, becomes signally and powerfully moved by the cry of the domestic duck, rendered universally and approximately as ‘Quack!’ His red face grows redder, his light blue eyes glower menacingly, and his hands open and close nervously, as if longing for some missile wherewith to annihilate the unconscious fowl—or its human imitator.