February lo, 1916. 
LAND AND WATER 
harbour, few cities of the world such a sky ; Cadmus would 
have loved it. Here above everything else is the spirit of 
Youth ; Daring and High Adventure breathe in the Pacific 
wind and fill the lungs of the men who pursue Trade to the 
confines of the earth. 
in this city of youth, the three adventurers were at no 
loss for amusement during the hours separating them from 
their appointment with Screed. Tillman, having raised 
some money, invited them to luncheon at a restaurant, after 
which they took themselves off to Farm Cove, where Tillman 
had some friends amongst the Navy people. Here he secured 
the loan of a boat and went fishing for bream. 
" This is better than sitting in restaurants and places," 
said the ingenuous Tillman. " There's no drink to be had, 
and you get the fresh air and you get fish^sometimes. 
Besides, you can think out here better than ashore." 
I Macquart in the stern sheets, lounging, with one foot 
across the gunnel, and his old hat tilted over his eyes, nodded. 
He had done nothing, neither rowed nor helped with the hnes. 
He seemed the concretion of laziness. When manual work 
was forward, it was always the same, the engineer of fortune 
shrank into himself, and it was noticeable now that the 
two younger men, so far from even mildly resenting or jesting 
at the supineness of the Wonder Worker, accepted it. He 
was the thing that interested them at this moment more than 
any other thing in hfe. Leaving aside the fact that he held 
all the threads from which they hoped to weave their fortune, 
the man himself exercised a potent spell on their imagination. 
The fishing proved good, but even the excitement of 
hauling in red bream and trevally did not entirely obliterate 
the figure of Fortune in the stern of the boat, or the fascina- 
tion of the thought of what it might lead them to. 
fAt five o'clock they hauled in their hnes. Tillman 
presented the fish they had caught to the owner of the boat in 
return for the loan of it, then they went off to tea at an inn, 
and at eight o'clock punctually they appeared in Bury 
Street. Bury Street, in the suburbs of the city, has a touch 
of France about it, bright-looking little villas set in prim 
Uttle gardens alternate with semi-detached residences. At 
one extremity it tails off into workmen's cottages, and it 
ends, frankly discarding the higher respectabilities, in a 
steam laundry. .Screed's house was at the better end of the 
street, and he was working in his garden when they arrived. 
He had a passion for gardening. Screed was one of those 
broody individuals very difficult to assess at their proper 
value either in morals or money. He had risen from nothing, 
yet he was reputed to be exceedingly well-off. He had the 
reputation for wealth, yet he never gave away a penny and he 
made no show at all. He was plain almost to ugliness and he 
dressed abominably. All these facts stood him well in busi- 
ness ; they had gained for him the reputation of being a solid 
man. Dingy as a moth, he corrected the gaudiness of his 
partner, Curlewis, and he knew it. With one of the most 
brilhant business intellects in Sydney, he was condemned to 
hide his shining Ught behind the shutters of the firm, to do all 
the thinking and let Curlewis do all the talking. 
He might have escaped from all this by starting in busi- 
ness for himself, yet he did not. There was some want in 
his nature, some timidity in entering upon a lone venture, 
some defect that made it impossible for him to row alone — 
and he knew it, and he hated Curlewis for it. 
It was not a melodramatic hatred. He would not have 
hurt his partner in business or in person for the world ; it was 
more in the nature of a good substantial disUke based on the 
firm foundation of his — Screed's — Umitations. 
Now when Macquart had told his tale that morning in 
the office, Screed's unerring instinct for truth where money 
was concerned had warned him that here was Truth. He did 
not think it highly probable that an expedition started after 
this long-buried gold would succeed in bringing it back, but 
he considered it highly possible. He saw in Macquart an 
adventurer of a new type, he felt his soul ; with that pro- 
found instinct for men that never erred, he was not baffled 
by the strangeness of this new specimen of humanity that 
had come before him. 
He had listened to Curlewis casting cold water on the 
story and he had made up his mind. He would investigate 
the matter for himself, and if he saw a chance of success in 
it, he would push it. The thing might fail—if it succeeded, 
the money returns would be less to him than the triumph 
over Curlewis. Besides this, Screed was a man of imagina- 
tion with an instinct for adventure, but no stomach for it, 
Besides this, he possessed the gambUng instinct none the 
less strong from long suppression. 
He gave his guests good-evening, put away the hose 
with which he had been watering the garden and led them 
into the house. 
Houghton looked around him as they entered. It was 
a long, long time since he had felt the atmosphere of comfort 
and home. He had been condemned to lodging-houses and 
cheap hotels, and life on ship- board as a second class passenger, 
and he was a man who possessed a fine sense for all the things 
that make for ease and quiet enjoyment of existence. 
The lamps were lighted in the little hall where Maori 
paddles and spears slewed on the walls, with here and there 
an etching or a rare p int, and the room into which Screed 
led them, half library, half sitting-room, gave more evidence 
of the quiet good taste of the owner. 
Whiskey, a syphon of soda-water and cigars stood on a 
side table, and Screed, having helped his guests and asked 
them to be seated, plunged into the business on hand. 
Standing before the fireplace with his hands in his pockets, 
he cross-questioned Macquart upon points in his story, and 
the latter answered up without hesitation or demur, evidently 
pleased with the business-hke manner of his questioner. 
"And now," said Screed, after he had finished, "let 
us look at that map you told me of." 
Macquart rose up, fetched his hat, which he had placed 
on a chair by the door, and took from the fining of it a folded 
piece of paper yellow as parchment. He spread it on the 
table before Screed, and the others gathering round looked 
over the wool broker's shoulder as he sat with his spectacles 
on his nose and the paper before him. 
It was a rough map of the southern coast of New Guinea, 
very rough in detail except for a certain section of the coast 
almost due north of Cape York on the Australian shore. 
Here the marking was much more minute, shewing several 
rivers and one whose disemboguement was indicated by a 
cross. 
" That's the river," said Macquart, " that one with the 
cross to it. The shore is pretty hilly around there and there's 
a big rock standing up on the shore to the east of the mouth. 
The Pulpit Rock it's called. It looks like a Hght-house 
from the sea and you can sight it a long way out. All round 
there is coral reef, but the course into the river is a clear fair 
way. You see, the fresh water has eaten the coral down. 
There's no difficulty in navigating at all, though it looks bad 
enough from seaward." 
Screed got up and going to a portfolio lying on a ledge 
of one of the book-cases, took some charts from it. 
" I borrowed these to-day," said he. " Let's see what 
they have to say on the matter." 
He spread out a chart of the waters from the northern 
boundary of the great quadrangle of the Gulf of Carpentaria 
right up to the New Guinea coast and including Torres Straits. 
and by it another chart of the northern part of Torres Straits 
and the New Guinea coast directly north of Prince of Wales' 
Island. 
This was the important chart, as it gave more particularly 
the reef soundings and the rivers. 
" Ah, that's something hke," said Macquart. " Now 
you can see whether my map is correct or not. Look, there's 
the river, there are the reefs, there's where she comes out. 
Look at the soundings of the channel, ten fathom water and 
seven fathom right up to the mouth where it rises to twelve. 
You see, there's no sand to silt up the mouth, that river brings 
down very little stuff with it, too. It's different from the other 
New Guinea rivers, that mostly come out through mud 
banks and mangroves. It's gin-Jaright from that big reach 
right down to the mouth. 1 reckon it's such an old river 
that it has eaten its way right down to bed rock. You see, it 
draws most of its water from the big lakes, it doesn't draw 
from a lot of mushy little streams." 
Screed said nothing ; he was still intent on the soundings 
and on the comparison of the chart with the rough map of 
Macquart. 
" Well," said he, at last, " I think we may take it that 
your map is not in error. Now let us get to business. I 
will go into your venture, on conditions." 
Tillman drew a deep breath, and Houghton, who had 
been hanging in breathless suspense, glanced at him. Then 
they went to the other side of the table and took their seats, 
whilst Macquart, bright of eye, drew a chair up and sat down 
close to Screed. The meeting had suddenly become a con- 
ference, and the papers upon the table did not detract from 
that impression. 
" The business," went on Screed, " is the biggest gamble 
that was ever placed on the market in Sydney. My partner . 
Curlewis gave you his ideas about gambling this morning, 
and he was right ; but he did not entirely touch the point. 
Gambling is only dangerous and only wrong from a business 
point of view when indulged in outside limits. Now if I were 
to take a thousand pounds and use it in speculation or horse- 
racing for the purpose of winning money, the danger to me 
would be not the danger of losing my thousand, but the 
danger of losing it and trying to get my losses back. Men 
never are ruined by their first losses in gambling ; they are 
always ruined by trying to get those losses back. 
" But if I take a thousand pounds and put it in this 
venture of yours, and if this venture fails, I lose my thousand 
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