Tono-Bungay, H. G. Wells [reading like a writer .TXT] 📗

make the lamp trade sit on its tail and howl. We’d put Ediswan and all of ’em into a parcel without last year’s trousers and a hat, and swap ’em off for a pot of geraniums. See? We’d do it through Business Organisations, and there you are! See? Capern’s Patent Filament!

“The Ideal and the Real! George, we’ll do it! We’ll bring it off! And then we’ll give such a facer to Boom, he’ll think for fifty years. He’s laying up for our London and African meeting. Let him. He can turn the whole paper on to us. He says the Business Organisations shares aren’t worth fifty-two and we quote ’em at eighty-four. Well, here we are gettin’ ready for him⁠—loading our gun.”

His pose was triumphant.

“Yes,” I said, “that’s all right. But I can’t help thinking where should we be if we hadn’t just by accident got Capern’s Perfect Filament. Because, you know it was an accident⁠—my buying up that.”

He crumpled up his nose into an expression of impatient distaste at my unreasonableness.

“And after all, the meeting’s in June, and you haven’t begun to get the quap! After all, we’ve still got to load our gun.”

“They start on Toosday.”

“Have they got the brig?”

“They’ve got a brig.”

“Gordon-Nasmyth!” I doubted.

“Safe as a bank,” he said. “More I see of that man the more I like him. All I wish is we’d got a steamer instead of a sailing ship.”

“And,” I went on, “you seem to overlook what used to weigh with us a bit. This canadium side of the business and the Capern chance has rushed you off your legs. After all⁠—it’s stealing, and in its way an international outrage. They’ve got two gunboats on the coast.”

I jumped up and went and stared out at the fog.

“And, by Jove, it’s about our only chance!⁠ ⁠… I didn’t dream.”

I turned on him. “I’ve been up in the air,” I said. “Heaven knows where I haven’t been. And here’s our only chance⁠—and you give it to that adventurous lunatic to play in his own way⁠—in a brig!”

“Well, you had a voice⁠—”

“I wish I’d been in this before. We ought to have run out a steamer to Lagos or one of those West Coast places and done it from there. Fancy a brig in the channel at this time of year, if it blows southwest!”

“I dessay you’d have shoved it, George. Still⁠—you know, George.⁠ ⁠… I believe in him.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I believe in him, too. In a way. Still⁠—”

He took up a telegram that was lying on his desk and opened it. His face became a livid yellow. He put the flimsy paper down with a slow, reluctant movement and took off his glasses.

“George,” he said, “the luck’s against us.”

“What?”

He grimaced with his mouth⁠—in the queerest way at the telegram.

“That.”

I took it up and read:

“Motor smash compound fracture of the leg gordon nasmyth what price mordet now.”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

“That’s all right,” I said at last.

“Eh?” said my uncle.

“I’m going. I’ll get that quap or bust.”

II

I had a ridiculous persuasion that I was “saving the situation.”

“I’m going,” I said quite consciously and dramatically. I saw the whole affair⁠—how shall I put it?⁠—in American colours.

I sat down beside him. “Give me all the data you’ve got,” I said, “and I’ll pull this thing off.”

“But nobody knows exactly where⁠—”

“Nasmyth does, and he’ll tell me.”

“He’s been very close,” said my uncle, and regarded me.

“He’ll tell me all right, now he’s smashed.”

He thought. “I believe he will.”

“George,” he said, “if you pull this thing off⁠—Once or twice before you’ve stepped in⁠—with that sort of Woosh of yours⁠—”

He left the sentence unfinished.

“Give me that notebook,” I said, “and tell me all you know. Where’s the ship? Where’s Pollack? And where’s that telegram from? If that quap’s to be got, I’ll get it or bust. If you’ll hold on here until I get back with it.”⁠ ⁠…

And so it was I jumped into the wildest adventure of my life.

I requisitioned my uncle’s best car forthwith. I went down that night to the place of despatch named on Nasmyth’s telegram, Bampton S.O. Oxon, routed him out with a little trouble from that centre, made things right with him and got his explicit directions; and I was inspecting the Maud Mary with young Pollack, his cousin and aide, the following afternoon. She was rather a shock to me and not at all in my style, a beast of a brig inured to the potato trade, and she reeked from end to end with the faint, subtle smell of raw potatoes so that it prevailed even over the temporary smell of new paint. She was a beast of a brig, all hold and dirty framework, and they had ballasted her with old iron and old rails and iron sleepers, and got a miscellaneous lot of spades and iron wheelbarrows against the loading of the quap. I thought her over with Pollack, one of those tall blond young men who smoke pipes and don’t help much, and then by myself, and as a result I did my best to sweep Gravesend clean of wheeling planks, and got in as much cord and small rope as I could for lashing. I had an idea we might need to run up a jetty. In addition to much ballast she held, remotely hidden in a sort of inadvertent way a certain number of ambiguous cases which I didn’t examine, but which I gathered were a provision against the need of a trade.

The captain was a most extraordinary creature, under the impression we were after copper ore; he was a Romanian Jew, with twitching, excitable features, who had made his way to a certificate after some preliminary naval experiences in the Black Sea. The mate was an Essex man of impenetrable reserve. The crew were astoundingly ill-clad and destitute and dirty; most of them youths, unwashed, out of colliers. One, the cook was a mulatto; and one, the best-built fellow of