Jeckol eyed us all around, but nobody smiled.
"You're getting at me," he said. "Never mind. Only I'm going to write the yarn, you know. You'd much better help me pick the right hero. What's your famous Albro like?"
"The takingest chap that ever stood in shoe leather," cried young Harris with a rush. "Absolutely. I never saw him only twice, but I remember just how he looked and what he said. The first time he was drunk—but—but that was all right. He sang 'Mad Bess of Bedlam' to make your hair curl. And one night in Brisbane when he took on the Castlereagh Slasher for two rounds—"
"Six foot of mad Irishman," said Peters, "and about three inches of dreamy Spaniard atop of that—to put a head on the mixture, you might say. Blue-black wavy beard and an eye like a blue glass marble—"
"With the sunlight shining through!" Harris shot in.
"James O'Shaughnessy Albro." Peters lingered upon the name. "As to his luck, Cap'n Bartlet may be right, but I wouldn't call it so. He was born too late. He should ha' been a conquistador—d'y' call 'em?—and gone swaggerin' up and down in the old time holdin' pepper rajahs to ransom and carvin' out kingdoms. Whereas he was only Jim and anything you like between a navvy and a millionaire.
"Nobody knows what he'd done back home—prob'ly he got to bulgin' over too many boundaries and needed room. He blew into the Endeavor River one season with a tradin' schooner of his own—curly maple saloon, satin divans, silver-mounted gun racks—by Joe, you'd ha' thought he was goin' to trade with cherryubims for golden harps in the isles of paradise. And so he very nearly did, too, what with the dare-devil chances he took, till he lost craft and all on a race back from Thursday Island."
"Wrecked?" asked Jeckol.
"Just gambled. Old man Tyler could lay his Hawfinch half a point nearer the wind than a chap has a right to expect from an archbishop. Jimmie paid over at the dock head and went weavin' his way up Charlotte Street a beggar, turned into a political barney they were havin' there, and made them a roarin' speech on somethin'—temperance prob'ly. And, by Joe, if they didn't elect him a divisional councilor the next day!"
"I've heard of that," proffered Harris with a grin. "Wasn't it the same winter he did a quick dash to the tin mines for his health? It seems there was a beauteous and wealthy widow. He couldn't have loved her half so well had he not loved her pretty under-housemaid more. So he started for Mount Romeo!... My word, he'd turn the worst scrape into a romance, that fellow! They say he made a big winning at Romeo—just to console himself."