"Ah, you know my name?" he twinkled pleasantly. "What a coincident!"
But I had had enough—enough of coincidence, of romance and adventure and authentic thrill to last me for some time, and rather more than I had bargained for with my ten pounds. I groped my way out into the open and the brisk morning breeze; and there, looking down to seaward through an alley in the cane, I saw the new sun come up, as round and broad and ruddy as—as a Portuguese doubloon.
THE PRACTICING OF CHRISTOPHER
Sutton was startling enough, and brisk, and eager—too eager. For five minutes after he broke in upon us he held us paralyzed with the story of his adventure through the back slums of Colootullah and the amazing discovery he had made there. And yet the gross fact glanced from us altogether, perhaps through his very vehemence, perhaps because of a certain obscure unsteadiness in the fellow....
"That's where the chief went to hide himself!" he cried, and we heard the words, but rather we were listening to the tone and watching Sutton; he convinced us of nothing.
He stood before us alight with animation; still breathed with hurry. Though the gummy heat of the monsoon made the little cabin a sweat box, he had not stopped to strip his rubber coat. It shone wet and streaky under the lamp as he gestured, and the rain-drops glistening in his stub mustache were no brighter than his eyes. And this was a notable thing of itself—to see him so restored, the jaunty, confident young mate we had used to know, drawn from the sulky reserve that had held him these many weeks. But most singular of all, as it seemed to us then, was the way he wound up his outburst:
"... So I came straight away on the jump to get you both," he declared, in a rush. "We can straighten out this mess to-night—the three of us—just as easy. I've a great notion.... Listen, now.
"There was a chap in a book I read, d'y'see? The other Johnnies put a game on him. Didn't they put up a game on him, to be sure! They made him think he was a duke or something, d'y'see? When he woke up! And, by gum, he believed 'em! They made him. Now there's the very tip we need to bring Chris Wickwire around all serene."
Captain Raff, sitting rigid on the couch, recovered sufficiently to unclamp his jaw from the fag-end of a dead cheroot. He had the air of one who goes about to pluck a single straw of sense from a whirl of fantasy.