And so the funds were raised without the aid of Shylock, and the shapely twin-screw steamer the Gehenna was chartered of Charon, and put under the command of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who, after he had thanked the company for their confidence, walked abstractedly away, observing in strictest confidence to himself that he had done well to prepare that bottle beforehand and bribe Crusoe’s man to find it.
“For now,” he said, with a chuckle, “I can get back to earth again free of cost on my own hook, whether my eminent inventor wants me there or not. I never approved of his killing me off as he did at the very height of my popularity.”
[IV]
On Board the House-Boat
Meanwhile the ladies were not having such a bad time, after all. Once having gained possession of the House-boat, they were loath to think of ever having to give it up again, and it is an open question in my mind if they would not have made off with it themselves had Captain Kidd and his men not done it for them.
“I’ll never forgive these men for their selfishness in monopolizing all this,” said Elizabeth, with a vicious stroke of a billiard-cue, which missed the cue-ball and tore a right angle in the cloth. “It is not right.”
“No,” said Portia. “It is all wrong; and when we get back home I’m going to give my beloved Bassanio a piece of my mind; and if he doesn’t give in to me, I’ll reverse my decision in the famous case of Shylock versus Antonio.”
“Then I sincerely hope he doesn’t give in,” retorted Cleopatra, “for I swear by all my auburn locks that that was the very worst bit of injustice ever perpetrated. Mr. Shakespeare confided to me one night, at one of Mrs. Cæsar’s card-parties, that he regarded that as the biggest joke he ever wrote, and Judge Blackstone observed to Antony that the decision wouldn’t have held in any court of equity outside of Venice. If you owe a man a thousand ducats, and it costs you three thousand to get them, that’s your affair, not his. If it cost Antonio every drop of his bluest blood to pay the pound of flesh, it was Antonio’s affair, not Shylock’s. However, the world applauds you as a great jurist, when you have nothing more than a woman’s keen instinct for sentimental technicalities.”
“It would have made a horrid play, though, if it had gone on,” shuddered Elizabeth.