LAND AND WATER 
February 3, 1916. 
bullet wuuud. like a sieve yet as full of Ufe as a grig. 1 reckofi 
he was the sort of immortal u crocodile is. 
•• VVeU Laut played up to that game, and the cargo of 
the Tcnchellim being of no manner of use to him. he makes 
uge presents 'to the'chief men. and by night on the sly he 
L'Pts his cases of specie ashore and caches them. The value 
bf that 'pecie ran to. roughly, half a m.Uion as counted in 
EiiKhsh gold com, or pretty near seven tons of gold. 
^Macquart paused^^for a moment to deal with Ins ciga . 
and let the statement sink into the mtelhgences of his 
audience. 
Curlewis alone spoke. „ , 
" You are pretty precise," said he. Yet all that 
''•^^^■^"N^aUnirMvTfimsrd'-^sidXcquart. "and you'll 
^^^ '^^l^tSZ d^iS'elerything of worth out of the 
laschclling. set alight to her by accident, and that s the 
blackest btt of the business, for it seems she caught fire 
while the crew was aboard, and somehow or another the 
tuc's'le hatch had been lastened, so the whole lot were fried 
said Curlewis. "Why, this chap 
" Good God ! " 
"^"'■•S'eiunS^'it," said Macquart : " but one man of them 
escaped, a lellow to whom Lant had taken a fancy ; he vvas 
' lurigltly chap and Lant■^ right hand and so he escaped 
•'Well Lant settled down among the Dyaks. waiting till 
thinKS had blown over in Macassar and his name was forgotten, 
and he fell into the life there and grew l^^^v/J^,^ t°ok a wife 
to pass the time. The young fellow he h^^ saved from the 
crew didn't like this; he fancied, and nghtly enough, that 
Lant was done for, sprung in the imtiative and grown ?.t 
1 the intellect ; besides. Lant began to treat hmi as a sub- 
ochnate Besides, he had a wish for that lump of specie 
aU for himself, and Lant didn't give him even the promise 
of a sniff in. Besides, one day Lant's Dyak wife presented 
h ,n v^ h a baby. Chaya was the wife's name and Chaya 
hey Tailed the girl, and the young feUow saw that with a 
ianiily growing up his chance of the specie was growing smaUer, 
mi lie tixed it in his mind to do Lant in. 
' What was that youim fellow's name ? " suddenly asked 
Curlewis with his eyes steadily fixed on Macquart 
The question brought the tale-teller up aU standing. He 
hesitated a moment. „ , • c -ii t^^ t'„, 
" Smith was his name. Or let us call him Smith, for I m 
not free, under promise— though hes dead now— to give 
the real thing. We'll call him Smith.' 
" Go on," said Curlewis. . , j t 
" Well, this Smith, he fixed it in his mind to do Lant m, 
and so it happened. Lant one day disappeared He d kept 
his dignity with the Dyaks and his distance, so that they 
still bdieved in him as a sort of God, not a real God. you 
unde^tand. but an Atu Jalan. White people among the 
Dyak?Sd the name once of being Atu Jalans. soit of spirits 
returned from the dead. They thought Lant had gone a 
trip to heaven or somewhere, and would return, sure. 
" Well Smith found himself free of Lant. but he hadn t 
.eckoned on Lant's wife, Chaya. There's nothing more sure 
than that women and dogs hunt by scent and have some 
means of finding out things that men don t suspect Any- 
how Lant 's Nvife took a down on Smith. You see she didn t 
think Lant a god for the very good reason that he was her 
hu band, and fhe susi^cted Smith of having done him in and 
she got up a yarn about him, said he had witched her baby 
which wa^ only three months old then and she got lots of 
dicvers They had never cottoned to Smith from the firs^t, 
and Ihey went for him, and he escaped down that nver by 
the skin of his teeth-that was sixteen years ago. He got 
01 in a prau and was picked up by an Engli^li ^hiP. but lie d 
?akeii w?tli him the bearings of the cache and the chart ot 
just where it was. Much good they did him. 
" Three years he knocked about the world, and then he 
had a dust tip somewheie in the French colonies and killed 
uf reicTman and got sent to Noumea for life He was stuck 
the le S.v?n yearsliid escaped. He still had his chart and 
^knowledge of the cache. Much good they did him. Lhe 
u^iH is so chock-full of fools he could get no one to listen 
to him. Then I met him two years back and did him a service 
Sid before he pegged out he gave me fuU directions and the 
Sart and more than that, the New Guinea coast map with 
the riVer marked down. It was easy for him to put his finger 
on the point.-There's no mistaking the entrance to that 
"''""^kacquart rose and threw his cigar end into the grate. 
Then he sat down again. „ " fi,,f = o 
' WeU " said Tillman, breaking silence, that s a 
straiuht yarn if ever there was one ; all the details and a 
cW t o back them. I'm ready to risk my life on the thing 
^'id n>- bottom dollar. Well, Curlewis, what do you say i 
Now Bobbv Tillman had up to this known only the 
lighter side of "Curlewis. He had played cards with him 
attended race meetings, met him at the clubs and grown to 
regard him as a good companion, an easy-going man ready 
to fling his monev about, and asking nothing better than 
amusement. He fancied that he knew Curlewis : as a matter 
of fact, he only knew the surface of that gentleman. 
Curlewis, despite his surface irregularities, was one of the 
most level-headed men in Sydney, one of the hardest business 
men in the Colonies, one of the least imaginative of traders. 
His business self and his social self were as widely ditferent 
from the other as the two profiles of Janus, and the business 
side of the man was the real side. u- ^ .*k 
" Well " said Curlewis, taking the cigar from his mouth 
and tipping the ash mto the grate. " It's an interesting story, 
but I am not inclined to back you in any financial undertaking 
^^^" But 'good heavens!" said Tillman, "think for a 
moment. .This isn't a financial undertaking but a specula- 
tion the grandest speculation that ever flew in Sydney. 
'" Tiiat's just my reason," said Curlewis. I nevei 
speculate." . , , • -, 
" Never speculate. Why. what s horse racing i 
" Gambling— and I never gamble." 
" Oh, good Lord I " said Tillman. Why, I ve seen 
" Yes. you have seen me back a horse for a few pounds, 
and I think you have even seen me lose a few pounds at 
Bridge— but I never gamble. When I say I never gamble, 
I don't refer to the few shillings I amuse myself by losing or 
winning at the card-table or on the race-course, and even in 
that feeble way mv losings and winnings are negligible— Last 
year— he took a" small note-book from his pocket and re- 
ferred to it. " my losings on the race-course amounted to 
seven pounds, and my winnings at Bridge— " he turned to 
another page—" to four pounds ten. Two pounds ten, you 
see I spent last year on this sort of work, and if my memory 
serves me, I came out the year before five pounds to the 
^ ° Tillman, dumbfounded at the mechanical and orderiy 
and entirely sane and sedate individual disclosing before 
his eyes, said nothing. It was like watching a butterfly 
breaking to pieces and a grub emerging from the debris. 
" Now if I were to put. say, a thousand pounds, into 
this venture of yours. I might lose it or I might win it back 
and a good deal of money on top of it. But win or lose would 
not alter the fact that I would have broken my principle. 
" Besides, though the story bears the evidence of genuine- 
ness, I do not think, honestly and speaking as a business man 
without any intention of giving offence, that any sane 
business man would risk his money on it. I don't think you 
will carry that story about in Sydney to a profit. I am cruel 
only to be kind. I think you are wasting your time all of you 
unless — " 
" Yes ? " said Tillman. 
"The three of you put your lieads together and write 
it oiil. The Bulletin might give you something for it. 
It was Macquart who broke the stony silence that followed 
on this piece of advice, and he broke it in an unexpected 
way. 
" Mr. Curiewis is right," said he. " No sane man m 
Sydney would part on such a prospectus. I'm not wishing 
to be rude to Mr. Curlewis, but sane men don't do these things, 
it's only the insane men that rise to a big occasion. I reckon 
Rhodes or some chap like that is what we want and we won t 
find him in Sydney, but I'm going to put my hand on that 
stuff if I have to walk to New Gumea 'long the great Barrier 
Reef and dig for it with my teeth when I get there. I ve 
been held back from it too long. My constitution wont 
stand it. WeU, thank you for the cigar and good-day to you, 
and when I see you again, I hope you'll be tearing your hair 
at having been out of it. Come along, boys." ■ 
He had come in last, he went out first, leading the others 
and looking not in the least dejected. 
When they were gone. Screed stopped his writing and 
turned to Curlewis. 
" Do you know what I am thinking ? said Screed, 1 
am thinking that chap Macquart never met anyone called 
Smith. It's his story, first-hand." 
" How do you mean ? " 
" I mean, it was he that did the other man in, Lant— or 
whatever his name was— and that it was he who was sent to 
Noumea." ,, 
" Anyhow, he won't get any of my money, said Cur- 
lewis. " Lot of d— d lunatics— but I won't say it was a bad 
story. That chap can pitch a yam." 
Screed finished his letter, then he rose and went out, 
telling the other as he took his hat from the peg by the door 
that he would not be long. 
(To he contitiued.) 
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