“I would willingly be drowned if I could see that old scoundrel go to the bottom of the sea.”
Several of our party overheard the remark and I turned laughingly to Bennett and said: “Nonsense; he can’t harm any one and there is an old proverb about the impossibility of drowning those who are born to another fate.”
That very night, however, as I stood near the cabin door, conversing with my treasurer and other members of my company, Henry Bennett came up to me with a wild air, and hoarsely whispered:
“Old Bennett has gone forward alone in the dark to feed his monkey, and d—n him, I am going to throw him overboard.”
We were all startled, for we knew the man and he seemed terribly in earnest. Knowing how most effectively to address him at such times, I exclaimed.
“Ridiculous! you would not do such a thing.”
“I swear I will,” was his savage reply. I expostulated with him, and several of our party joined me.
“Nobody will know it,” muttered the maniac, “and I shall be doing the world a favor.”
I endeavored to awaken him to a sense of the crime he contemplated, assuring him that it could not possibly benefit any one, and that from the fact of the relations existing between the editor and myself, I should be the first to be accused of his murder. I implored him to go to his stateroom, and he finally did so, accompanied by some of the gentlemen of our party. I took pains to see that he was carefully watched that night, and, indeed, for several days, till he became calm again. He was a large, athletic man, quite able to pick up his namesake and drop him overboard. The matter was too serious for a joke, and we made little mention of it; but more than one of my party said then, and has said since, what I really believe to be true, that “James Gordon Bennett would have been drowned that night had it not been for P. T. Barnum.”
This incident has long been known to several of my intimate friends, and when Mr. Bennett learns the fact from this volume, he may possibly be somewhat mollified over his payment to me, fifteen years later, of $200,000 for the unexpired lease of my Museum, concerning which some particulars will be given anon.