Extracted from Popular magazine, 01 July 1913, pp. 92–117. Included (with some modifications) in The Adventures of Captain O'Shea (1913) as "The King of Trinidaro."
The King and Captain O'Shea
By Ralph D. Paine
Author of "The Quest of the Golden Table," "The Guests of Captain O'Shea," Etc.
Before Johnny Kent settled down on his farm in the State of Maine to live the quiet life of a landsman he had taken part in many varied adventures on the ocean wave. Ralph Paine has told us of some of the exploits of this sturdy old engineer who, with his bosom friend, Captain Mike O'Shea, had sailed the seas in all sorts of craft. Here is the hitherto untold narrative of how Captain O'Shea and Johnny Kent did their best to place a king on his throne. A breezy romance of shipmates twain whose imagination and love of adventure led them into a danger-fraught enterprise.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCING HIS MAJESTY.
YOUNG Captain Michael O'Shea, shipmaster, sat by a window of the Jolly Mermaid tavern, at Blackwall on the Thames, below London. His companion, Johnny Kent, was a stout, red-faced, gray-headed man who had sailed the seas in many kinds of steamers as chief engineer. These two leisurely drank mugs of bitter beer, and gazed with professional interest at the crowded shipping of that great seaport thoroughfare which sailormen call London River. The Jolly Mermaid was one of a jostling row of ancient buildings with bow windows and balconies painted in bright hues, which overhung the tide at Blackwall to remind one of the maritime London of towering frigates and high-pooped galleons and stout seamen of Devon. The near-by shore was filled with shipyards and weedy wharves, and a little way downriver was the entrance of the vast inland basin called the East India Docks, where soared a wonderful confusion of spars and rigging, and the red funnels of the Union Castle liners lay side by side.
On the turbid river moved in procession a singular variety of craft—drifting Thames barges with dyed sails, square-riggers in tow, Norwegian tramps half hidden beneath uncouth deckloads of lumber, rusty Spanish fruiters, coastwise schooners, spray-stained steam trawlers from the Dogger Bank, stubby Dutch eel-schuits, stately mail boats homeward bound from the tropics, sooty colliers from Cardiff.
They slid past with an incessant din of whistles, which, warning, expostulating, shouted the rules of the road in the language of the sea.
These familiar sights and sounds pleased Captain O'Shea, and he was contented with his seat by the window of the Jolly Mermaid and the excellent brew dispensed by the apple-cheeked young woman behind the bar. Amphibious loafers drifted in and out, or cast anchor on the wharf alongside—riggers, watermen, dock laborers, sailors who seemed to have a world of time on their hands. Their gait was slouching, their attire careless, and their conversation peppered with sanguinary references to their eyes.
"'Tis a restful place, Johnny, and as diverting as a theater," observed O'Shea.
The chief engineer returned rather fretfully:
"I'm willing to be idle in this bit of slack water for a while, and sort of pull myself together, Cap'n Mike. But this don't earn wages, and I ain't makin' much headway toward buyin' that farm down in the State o' Maine."
Whimsical amusement lighted O' Shea's bold, smooth-shaven features as he replied:
"I am not a man to seek a humdrum life, afloat or ashore, you impatient old pirate! There was a lot of fuss kicked up at home about that last voyage of ours, as ye well know. And there was a strong chance that we would be laid by the heels in one of Uncle Sam's jails for breaking the laws between nations. We are better off where we are."
"Governments are touchy, but it's dog-goned foolishness to hold it against us," grumbled Johnny Kent. "We were peacefully runnin' a cargo of guns and cartridges ashore for them rebellious patriots in the Caribbean, and most strictly mindin' our own business. That Spanish gunboat got in our way, and her intentions was plain blood-thirsty. What if we did ram her and then blow her up? She interfered with men who were try in' to make an honest livin' on the high seas."
"Argue as far as you like, Johnny. It won't alter the fact that it was healthier for you and me to make ourselves hard to find."
"But it's discouragin' to look for another ship here in England, Cap'n Mike. We can't show Board of Trade certificates. We're fish out of water. American masters' and engineers' papers are no good among these Britishers."
"'Tis not easy to find our kind of a ship anywhere," O'Shea reminded him. "Big risks and big wages is our game. There are no revolutions popping the lid off in Central or South America, and we will sit tight and trust in my lucky star. I have a gold piece or two left in the toe of the sock where I stowed it against times like this. And we have not sunk so low that we must sign on for a lawful voyage in a ship that does not dodge every smoke she sights."
Johnny Kent crooked a finger at the barmaid, and sought consolation in another mug of bitter, while Captain O'Shea turned to a morning newspaper and ran his eye down the ship-news column to note the arrivals and departures. Then he cast a cursory glance at the foreign dispatches, which might perchance disclose some disturbance of the world's peace and an opportunity for venturesome men used to alarms and stratagems. There was a report of the seizure of a German steamer for smuggling arms to a Persian Gulf port. O'Shea brightened, and decided to investigate the contraband trade of the Persian Gulf and ascertain who was instigating it.
Johnny Kent was moved to begin an aimless yarn about a certain wicked skipper of Yankee clipper fame who fetched his second mate all the way home from Cape Town doubled up in a hencoop as a punishment for impertinence. It was one of those garrulous, interminable yarns which box the compass without maintaining steerage way. O'Shea listened politely, but with a manner slightly absent-minded, having heard the tale of the unfortunate second mate and the hencoop in at least five different ports.
The yarn was cut short, and the two men screwed around in their chairs to stare at a visitor whose presence in the humble longshore tavern of the Jolly Mermaid was most extraordinary.
He was an elderly and very dignified gentleman, of a spare figure and the stiffly erect carriage of an army officer. His features, thin and rather refined than forceful, were given an air of distinction by a white mustache and imperial. From the silk hat and frock coat with the ribbon of an order in the lapel to the tan gaiters and patent-leather shoes, he was dressed with fastidious nicety. In a club window of Pall Mall, he would have been a conspicuous ornament. In the dingy taproom of the Jolly Mermaid, he was startlingly incongruous.
The stranger had the grand manner, and it fitted him like a glove. He was not offensively self-important, but one knew him to be a personage who expected the world to show him deference. The barmaid, who was no dunce at reading human nature, bobbed a curtsy, and withheld the flippant persiflage which was wont to delight the nautical patrons of the place.
A moment later there entered the tavern a brisk young man with a sandy complexion and a roving eye, who was smartly, but a trifle showily, attired—a keen, up-to-snuff young man, who knew his way about. With a respectful bow he addressed the impressive elderly gentleman:
"I told him to meet us here, if your majesty pleases."
The apple-cheeked barmaid was threatened with a fainting spell at the intimation that royalty stood within the tavern walls, but rallied bravely to suggest, in a fluttered voice:
"There's a tidy little back room, your royal 'ighness, where you can set quiet and privatelike without common folks starin' and gawkin' at your worship."
"Thanks. I am rather tired after tramping about the docks," amiably replied the personage, in the pleasantly modulated accents of the cultivated Englishman. To the brisk young man he said:
"Let us sit down, and look over some of the memoranda while we are waiting."
"Certainly, your majesty," quoth the young man; and with this they passed into the little back room and closed the door. A beefy dock laborer ripped out an oath of amazement, and clattered from the bar to tell his friends that "one o' them blighted, bleedin' kings was in the Jolly Mermaid, large as life, so 'elp me!"
That brace of exiled mariners, Captain O'Shea and Johnny Kent, gazed blankly at each other, and, being seasoned persons of wide experience, tacitly agreed to wait and try to fathom the riddle. They had dealt with presidents of uneasy republics near the equator, and had violently interfered in affairs of state; but a real king, to be surveye4 at close range, was a fascinating novelty.
Johnny Kent had carefully adjusted his spectacles to his nose to survey this rare spectacle, and he now shoved them up beyond his bushy brows before he hoarsely confided to his comrade:
"I thought they went about disguised, Cap'n Mike, same as we run a blockade with no lights and the steamer's name boards covered up. Is he the real king, or is it just play actin'?"
"Europe is full of kings that have been kicked out of their berths," answered O'Shea. "Maybe this one is a has-been, but he doesn't look to me like a counterfeit. And I would not set him down for a lunatic out for a stroll with his keeper."
"He handles himself as sane as you or me," agreed the chief engineer. "But this is surely a dog-goned queer place to find a stray king."
"'Tis worth watching, Johnny. I'm on my beam ends for puzzlement."
Ere long there appeared from the street a bow-legged, barrel-chested, hairy-fisted man with a rolling gait, whom a landlubber might have classified as a rough and hearty British seaman accustomed to command vessels in the merchant trade. A captious critic would have, perhaps, surmised that he had been pickled in rum as well as in brine. Glancing at a card held between a grimy thumb and finger, he asked the barmaid:
"Is Baron Frederick Martin Strothers hereabouts, my girl? Captain Handy's compliments."
"If you mean the dashin' young man with the red weskit, 'e is settin' in yonder with his majesty."
"Right you are!" exclaimed Captain Handy. "My business with his majesty, but the baron has charge of the arrangements as minister of finance. A nipper of Scotch whisky, neat, miss, before I talk to 'em."
"What sort of a king is 'e, and what's his bloomin' handle?" she eagerly besought him. "Are you makin' gyme of me?"
The hearty British shipmaster looked inscrutable, tossed the whisky into his heated coppers, and slowly assured her:
"Women's curiosity is the fatal weakness of the sex, my dear. A king is a king wherever you find him. And my advice to you is not to go bragging about and telling all hands that his majesty has patronized the Jolly Mermaid."
He trudged to the rear room, hat in hand, and timidly knocked on the door. As it opened, the quick ear of Captain O'Shea heard the mysterious personage saying to the brisk young man:
"A steamer of the tonnage of this Tyneshire Glen is what I wish. If your investigation has satisfied you that she is thoroughly seaworthy, and in good repair, and Captain Handy also recommends her"
The door closed behind Captain Handy; and O'Shea, glancing in that direction, smiled cynically, and observed to Johnny Kent:
"Did you size him up? You know the kind. Every big port has them—broken shipmasters, disrated mates, beach combers that aren't fit to take a scow to sea."
"Sure! They've borrowed money off me from Baltimore to Singapore. As long as they can find a decent suit of clothes and the price of a shave, they'll throw bluffs at anybody that will listen to 'em. This Captain Handy must have sighted an easy mark in the offing."
O'Shea pondered for a moment, and asked:
"Did ye hear mention of the Tyneshire Glen steamer just now? Do you happen to know the vessel? I can't place her."
Johnny Kent grunted as if he had sat upon a tack, and answered with heated emphasis:
"Maybe it's the old Tyneshire Glen that was carryin' cotton out of Savannah years ago. I went aboard to see her chief once, and her plates was rusted so thin that I could have thrown a wrench through 'em."
Captain Handy had left the, door of the back room unlatched, and a gusty draft of sea breeze blew it partly open. The watchful pair in the taproom had a glimpse of Captain Handy standing stolidly between his majesty and the minister of finance, and heard him huskily declaim:
"The Tyneshire Glen is a bargain at thirty thousand pounds—and you needn't take my word for it. Baron Strothers here has interviewed the brokers that have her for sale, and he knows the price they put on her. And they won't take a penny less."
"I have full confidence in the judgment of my minister of finance, with Captain Handy's expert opinion to assist him," easily replied his majesty.
"Most of my papers were lost at sea," hastily put in Captain Handy, as if to forestall an awkward question. "They were tied up in a packet, your royal 'ighness, when the Falls of Clyde steamer went down, and I saved the lives of forty-seven passengers, and was the last man to leave her when she foundered under my feet. The newspapers praised me so that a modest man 'u'd blush to repeat it."
"Baron Strothers has examined your record, so he informs me, and advises me that you are to be depended upon," was the warm assurance.
In the taproom, O'Shea chuckled skeptically, and said to Johnny Kent:
"'Tis likely enough he lost his papers, but I mistrust his version of the story. What kind of a flimflam is this, anyhow? The king and the minister of finance are discussing a rotten ship and a rotten skipper as if the both of them were to be taken seriously."
After more conversation which the listeners failed to catch, the trio in the back room ended the session, and prepared to leave the tavern. As they walked out past the bar, Captain Handy was arguing with awkward gestures, the elderly personage was listening courteously, and the brisk young man was alertly keeping an eye on both, as if he had an absorbing interest in the interview. In front of the tavern they parted, Captain Handy to turn in the direction of the East India Docks, the puzzling pair of notables to seek the railroad station.
Upon O'Shea and Johnny Kent there fell a prolonged spell of silence. Each was piecing theories together, and discarding them as unsatisfactory. They were uncommonly shrewd men of their kind, but in this instance conjecture was all adrift. Of one thing they were convinced: This royal visitation had not been an elaborate hoax, and the explanation of lunacy was finally and emphatically dismissed.
"'Tis no case of barnacles on the intellect," was the verdict of O'Shea, "barring the fact that he ought to have more sense than to listen to the palaver of a rascal like this Captain Handy. Why didn't we think to follow them up and see where they went?"
"I'm too short-winded to make a good sleuthhound, Cap'n Mike, and it ain't dignified for a man of my years."
"Well, then, who is this Captain Handy?" demanded O'Shea. "We'll try another tack."
He questioned the barmaid, who was disappointing.
"He never showed hisself in 'ere before," said she. "You're more likely to find out about 'im at the docks."
"Say, Cap'n Mike," exclaimed Johnny Kent, with puckered brow, "ain't there some kind of a book written about kings, their habits and their names, and the various breeds of 'em? And where you're most apt to find 'em? Do they generally run around loose?"
"I'm not personally acquainted with a whole lot of them, Johnny, but as a rule 'tis safe to bet they don't come wandering into sailors' taverns convoyed by the minister of finance."
CHAPTER II.
A ROYAL VICTIM OF LAND SHARKS.
Next morning they carefully scrutinized the "Court Circular" of the London Times, and were more at sea than ever at discovering that the only visiting royalty comprised an unimportant cousin of the house of Hanover from a German duchy, and the dusky ruler of a native state of India. That a full-fledged king and a minister of his cabinet, both indubitably Englishmen, could be strolling about London unnoticed by the newspapers, and unknown to the public, was fairly incredible; and yet no mention could anywhere be found of the illustrious patrons of the Jolly Mermaid, although O'Shea bought the morning journals by the fistful. For the present they had to set aside the episode as prodigiously odd and inexplicable.
O'Shea took it in his head to pay a call at a ship brokers' office down in Leadenhall Street, and Johnny Kent rode with him on top of a bus. They had made the acquaintance of the managing partner of the firm under the palms of a Venezuelan seaport, and he had cherished a strong friendship for this pair of adventurous rovers. He was anxious to find a ship for O'Shea, and the latter dropped in now and then in search of news.
The comrades twain were about to dodge through the traffic of Leadenhall Street and enter the office of their friend, when O'Shea plucked Johnny Kent by the sleeve and pulled him back into an adjacent doorway. A brisk, sandy-haired young man was also doubling among the stream of vehicles which roared from curb to curb, and aiming his course for the ship brokers' office.
"'Tis the minister of finance, Johnny," cautiously spoke O'Shea. "Look at him. There he goes, right into Tavistock & Huntley's, the same destination as ours."
"Why not go in and meet him? Maybe George Huntley will introduce us, and we can slip in a few questions."
"Because I do not like this sprightly right bower of royalty, Johnny. I took a violent dislike to the Baron Frederick Martin Strothers at first sight. And my hunches about people are worth heeding when they take hold of me as strong as this one did."
From their strategic place of observation, they waited while O'Shea came to the conclusion that the brisk young man would bear a deal of watching. Flanking them, and across the narrow street, were the offices of steamship lines sailing to every part of the watery-globe, the windows emblazoned with the house flags and names of companies familiar to the ports of the Orient, Australasia, and South America. This stretch of old Leadenhall Street, down in the quaint, labyrinthian City, was one of the cosmopolitan four corners of civilization. Surely with all these fleets of steamers whose business was dispatched in the low gray buildings, there was one that needed as skilled and resourceful men as Captain O'Shea and Johnny Kent. These gentlemen of fortune thought otherwise, however, and took little interest in the companies whose ships voyaged over the regular, orderly routes of traffic.
They surmised that the brisk young man with the red waistcoat must have business to transact with Tavistock & Huntley, for he remained inside for a good half hour. Then the watchers caught no more than a farewell glimpse of him as he hastily emerged and popped into a passing hansom. Thereupon they sauntered into the ship brokers' office, and were cordially greeted by George Huntley, managing partner, a stocky, bald-headed person with mutton-chop whiskers, who looked as substantial as a brick house. The spirit of romance was in him, however, and he secretly envied O'Shea his illogical pursuit of hazards for sheer love of them.
Steering them into a small private room, he plumped himself into the chair at the desk, waved them to a leather-covered lounge, and inquired, with much gusto:
"And how are my disreputable friends this morning? Anything in the wind?"
"'Tis still blowing a dead calm for us, but the weather is suspicious in one quarter of the compass," answered O'Shea, who was never one to beat about the bush. "Tell me, George, what do you know about the young man that just now whisked out of here—the fancy lad with the loud vest and the high-steppin' manner? If it is not meddling with your private affairs, I should like to get a line on him."
Huntley tilted his chair, clasped his hands across a comfortable waistband, and replied, in his deliberate way:
"I have laid eyes on him only twice. His name is Strothers, I believe, and he calls himself a baron. One of those Continental titles, I fancy. This day of last week he came into our place with Captain Handy, who used to sail in the Blue Anchor service."
"Got in trouble with his owners, didn't he?" interrupted O'Shea at a guess.
"Yes. He lost a steamer in the Bay of Biscay, and the evidence went to show that he was drunk at the time. His certificate was taken away or suspended. I forget the details. He has had no ship since then. A rather shabby lot is Handy. As I was about to tell you, O'Shea, the pair of them—Captain Handy and this spruce young man, Strothers—came in to ask our cash selling price for the Tyneshire Glen, which is laid up in the East India Docks. We have no interest in the vessel beyond representing the owners, who want to get rid of her."
"And did you give the precious pair of two-spots a price on her?" blandly inquired O'Shea, as pleased as a kitten with a saucer of cream. He was fitting together a few pieces of the puzzle, and felt confident that they were about to dovetail very neatly.
"I offered them the Tyneshire Glen for twenty-four thousand pounds as she stands," replied Huntley. "It's all she's worth. She is a big steamer, almost five thousand tons, but she will need a lot of repairs. Captain Handy claimed that he had found a possible buyer in whose interests young Strothers was acting. Of course, we were willing to pay Handy a decent commission if the deal went through."
O'Shea looked sidewise at Johnny Kent, who on occasions was bright enough to see through a hole in a grind- stone. They kept their thoughts to themselves, and O'Shea commented noncommittally:
"Of course Captain Handy is entitled to a commission if he finds you a customer for the steamer, George. 'Tis an honest chance for the poor devil to pick up a few dollars. And so the young man—Strothers—came back this morning? Do I show too much curiosity in asking what he had to say?"
"You are welcome to all I know. He told me that the gentleman whose interests he represented had inspected the Tyneshire Glen yesterday, and thought she would answer his purpose. The price was satisfactory, and he would like a three days' option, which I was very willing to give him."
"And the price was still twenty-four thousand pounds?" violently put in Johnny Kent, with a snort as if his steam were rising.
"Precisely twenty-four thousand pounds, or one hundred and twenty thousand dollars of your Yankee currency, or thereabouts. Are you thinking of buying her yourself, Johnny?" said Huntley, with a broad smile.
"God forbid!" was the fervent response. "I'd be afraid to sneeze on board of her in the docks for fear her rivets would fly off."
"Oh, she isn't as bad as all that. A well-built steamer is the Tyneshire Glen, with lots of service in her."
"What she needs is a new hull, boilers, and engines," grunted Johnny. "Say, George Huntley, did this young man Strothers mention anything about buyin' the steamer for a king that is roamin' around London without any tag to him"
"A king!" ejaculated the ship broker, blinking like an astonished owl. "Are you chaps ragging me?"
"No. Maybe the joke is on us, or else this English bitter beer ain't agreein' with us, and Cap'n Mike and me have been seein' visions and hearin' things that ain't so."
Huntley cast an appealing glance at O'Shea, who said:
"'Tis evident that you are not acquainted with our particular king, George. You do not move in royal circles. You are not in our class. We will tell you about it later. About this young man that calls himself a baron—did he leave any address behind him?"
"Yes. He is staying at the Carleton, but I shall have no occasion to communicate with him. If the option expires I shall take it for granted that he doesn't want the steamer. If he pays down the cash I shall be ready to make out the papers and give Captain Handy his commission. Now you ought to tell me why you are so keen on knowing all about the business. If you refuse to explain, you are a worthless pair of blighters, and no friends of mine."
O'Shea hauled Johnny Kent to his feet, and remarked:
"We thank you kindly, George. You are a good-natured man, and we have made nuisances of ourselves. 'Tis the honest truth that we know very little more about this young man and the Tyneshire Glen than ye know yourself. But what we do know we will first investigate."
"You are conspirators born and bred," laughed Huntley, rather pleased to have what seemed an ordinary business transaction wrapped in romantic mystery. "Come and dine with me as soon as you have unraveled the plot."
They agreed to this, and straightway betook themselves to the nearest public house, where in a quiet corner a council of war was convened. Lengthy exposition of the facts was unnecessary. It was obvious that they had run athwart a scheme to defraud the confiding purchaser of the Tyneshire Glen. And their sympathies went out strongly to the royal victim. Whether or not he was a real king was beside the mark. He was very much the gentleman, and he had trusted too much in the loyalty and integrity of that enterprising young man who was called the minister of finance.
"'Tis as plain as the big nose on that red face of yours, Johnny," exclaimed O'Shea. "The two crooks are standing in together. Captain Handy recommends the ship as all right. This Baron Frederick Martin Strothers backs him up, and advised his majesty to buy her. The two blackguards get a price of twenty-four thousand pounds from George Huntley, and they tell this innocent potentate that the price is thirty thousand pounds. The difference is six thousand pounds, thirty thousand dollars, which this pair of land sharks will split up and stick in their own pockets. And they will doctor the bill of sale so the poor, deluded monarch will never know what happened to him."
"That was what we heard 'em say in the Jolly Mermaid, Cap'n Mike. The price was thirty thousand pounds. And these Britishers call us a nation of Yankee grafters!"
"'Tis my opinion that a minister of finance like this one could bankrupt a kingdom, give him time enough," said O'Shea. "He is working the game for all it's worth. He will loot the treasury as long as it looks safe and easy, and then he will resign his what-do-ye-call-it—his portfolio—and leave his bunkoed majesty to figure out the deficit."
"That poor king deserves to be delivered from his lovin' friends," replied Johnny Kent, "or he'll have to hock the crown jewels to pay for his board and washin'. What's the orders now?"
"We will ring up full speed ahead, and find this king. If the minister of finance is at the Carleton Hotel, 'tis a good bet that his majesty is not far away. That busy young man will not separate himself from a good thing."
CHAPTER III.
THE BARON INTERVENES.
The fashionable Carleton was unfamiliar territory to the inquisitive mariners, but they strolled boldly through the corridors until they fetched up in front of a desk presided over by an immaculate clerk with a languid manner, who coldly regarded them, and appeared indifferent to their wants. After waiting for several minutes for some recognition, Captain Michael O'Shea sweetly remarked:
"Will ye answer a civil question, or will I climb over the counter and jolt you wide awake?"
The languid person looked attentively at the resolute features and masterful eye of the speaker, and hastily responded:
"Beg pardon—beg pardon—what can I do for you, sir?"
"Tell me if a king is stopping in this hotel of yours, and does he have a minister of finance called Baron Strothers?"
"Ah, you mean his majesty, King Osmond of Trinadaro." And the clerk delivered these resounding syllables with unction. "Yes, he is a guest of the hotel."
"He is a real one—do you get that?" soberly whispered O'Shea to his comrade before he again addressed the clerk:
"We wish to see him on important business. We will write our names on a card."
"Baron Strothers receives such callers as are personally unknown to his majesty," the clerk explained.
"We don't wish to see the young man," said O'Shea.
"My orders are to send all cards and messages to him."
The two visitors drew apart from the desk, and put their heads together.
"The minister of finance will not let us get within a cable's length of his boss if he thinks we are seafaring men," whispered O'Shea.
"The swindler may have took notice of us in the Jolly Mermaid," growled Johnny Kent. "We might send up a card, and make headway as far as this Strothers person. Then I could knock him down, and sit on his head while you rummaged the royal apartments and found the king."
"Your methods might strike these hotel people as violent, Johnny. You're a good man at sea, but I would not call ye a diplomat. Anyhow, we will take a chance on running the blockade that this crooked minister of finance has established to prevent honest men from talking to his employer."
Returning to the desk, O'Shea picked up a pen, and wrote on a blank card:
Captain Michael O'Shea and John Kent, Esq., U. S. A., to see King Osmond on a matter that he will find interesting.
Promptly in answer to this message came word that Baron Strothers would see the gentlemen. A hotel attendant conducted them to a suite of rooms on the second floor which must have cost the royal treasury a pretty penny. At the threshold of a sort of anteroom they were met by the brisk, self-possessed young man, who gazed sharply at the sturdy, sunburned strangers, hesitated a trifle, and invited them to enter. Offering them cigars, he bade them be seated, and again scrutinized them, as if striving to recall where he might have seen them before.
Captain O'Shea, at his ease in any company or circumstances, and particularly now when he held the whip hand, asked at once:
"Are we to have the pleasure of paying our respects to his majesty?"
"You Americans are so jolly informal," smiled the minister of finance. "This sort of thing is done only by special appointment. An audience is arranged beforehand if I consider it worth while."
"But this king of yours takes a special interest in ships and sailors," suggested O'Shea. "And we have information that he will find useful."
Baron Frederick Martin Strothers changed color just a trifle, and his manner was perceptibly uneasy as he explained:
"I am awfully sorry, but he is not in at present. He will be disappointed, I'm sure. You are shipmasters or something of the sort, I take it."
"You guess right," was the dry comment of O'Shea. "I have heard that you are fond of talking to seafaring men yourself."
The shot went home. The young man moved in his chair, and looked painfully uncomfortable. Nervously twisting a cigar in his fingers, he replied:
"Ah, yes, now I know! You must have seen me at the East India Docks."
"There or thereabouts; but no matter," said O'Shea. "His majesty is not in, you say. And when will he be in the hotel again?"
"Not for several hours, I fancy. He went out with the minister of foreign affairs to keep an important appointment. Will you state your business to me? That is the customary procedure, you know."
Johnny Kent was for denouncing the young man to his face in a vocabulary well stored with brimstone; but O'Shea nudged him, and smoothly made answer:
"It would please us better to see the king himself. We will come again, or we can look for him on his way in and out of the hotel."
The young man could not dissemble signs of impatience to be rid of these pertinacious intruders.
"If you have a ship to sell, or you are looking for positions, this is only wasting time," said he. "I presume you heard something of our errand among the docks."
"Yes, we have heard of it." And O'Shea bit off the words. "Well, Johnny, shall we go below and wait till his majesty heaves in sight? This minister of finance will give us no satisfaction. And I am not used to dealing with understrappers."
"You are impertinent!" cried the young man. "I have been as courteous as possible. You will leave at once, or I shall ask the hotel management to put you out."
Up from a chair rose the massive bulk of Johnny Kent, and his ample countenance was truculent as he roared, in a voice like a gale of wind:
"You'll throw us out, you pin-headed, half-baked, impudent son of a sea cook? No, Cap'n Mike, I won't shut up. I ain't built that way. Diplomacy be dog-goned! I'm liable to lose my temper!"
"'Tis a large-sized temper to lose, and I hereby hoist storm signals," said O'Shea, with a grin, as he neatly tripped the minister of finance, who was endeavoring to reach an electric push button and summon the police.
The fervid declamation of Johnny Kent must have echoed through the apartments. It sufficed to attract the notice of a spare, erect, elderly gentleman in another room, who opened a door and stared curiously at the strenuous tableau. At sight of the kindly, refined face with the snowy mustache and imperial, O'Shea gleefully shouted:
"The king—God bless him! So this bright young minister of finance was a liar as well as a thief!"
Comically abashed, Johnny Kent mumbled an apology for making such an uproar, at which the elderly gentleman bowed acknowledgment, and said to the perturbed and rumpled Strothers:
"My dear baron, will you be good enough to explain?"
"These ruffians insisted on seeing you, and when I tried to discover their business they called me names and assaulted me," sputtered the young man, in a heat of virtuous indignation. "I was about to have them ejected."
"He was afraid of the truth," cried O'Shea. "We came to tell your majesty that he has cooked up a job to cheat ye out of six thousand pounds, and we can prove it up to the hilt. We caught him with the goods."
"That sounds a whole lot better to me than diplomacy," approvingly exclaimed Johnny Kent.
Bewildered by the vehemence of these outspoken visitors, King Osmond I. of Trinadaro turned to the sullen minister of finance, and inquired, still with his sweet kindliness of manner:
"These men do not look like ruffians, my dear baron. They impress me as having more than ordinary intelligence and force of character. What are their names, and who are they? And what is the meaning of this grave charge they bring against your integrity?"
"I am O'Shea, shipmaster, hailing from the port of New York," spoke up the one.
"I am Johnny Kent, chief engineer to Captain Mike O'Shea," said the other, "and I hail from the State o' Maine. And we can show you our papers. We didn't lose 'em in the Bay of Biscay."
Strothers stood biting his nails and shifting from one foot to the other, for once stripped of his adroit, plausible demeanor; nor could he find, on the spur of the moment, the right word to say. The royal personage said it for him:
"I think you had better retire. I wish to hear what Captain O'Shea and Mr. Kent may have to say to me."
The amiable monarch was unconsciously swayed by the virile personality of O'Shea, who dominated the scene as if he were on the deck of his own ship.
Baron Frederick Martin Strothers made a last attempt to protest, but Johnny Kent glared at him so wickedly, and O'Shea moved a step nearer with so icy a glint in his gray eye, that there was a moment later a vanished minister of finance.
CHAPTER IV.
OPENING THE KING'S EYES.
The etiquette of courts troubled O'Shea not in the least as he cheerily yet respectfully suggested to the perplexed elderly gentleman:
"Now, King Osmond, if you will please sit down and let us talk things over with ye as man to man, we'll tell you how it happened."
The personage obediently did as he was told; nor could he feel offended by the shipmaster's boyish candor. O'Shea chewed on his cigar, and his eyes twinkled as he glanced at the stubborn visage of Johnny Kent, which was still flushed and stormy. His majesty began to get his wits together, and to wonder why he had permitted this brace of total strangers to take him by storm. O'Shea broke into his cogitations by explaining:
"You are surprised that you chucked the trusted minister of finance out of the room and consented to listen to us at all. In the first place, we are not asking anything of you. What I mean is, we felt bound to put you next to the dirty deal that was framed up to rob ye."
"We saw you in the Jolly Mermaid tavern, and we liked your looks," ingenuously added Johnny Kent. "We decided to do you a good turn whether we ever saw the color of your money or not."
"And we didn't like the cut of the jib of your minister of finance," resumed O'Shea. "And we were dead sure that Captain Handy was rotten."
King Osmond earnestly interrupted:
"But I have had all the confidence in the world in Baron Strothers; and as a British sailor of the tarry breed, Captain Handy"
"The two of them are tarred with the same brush," exclaimed O'Shea. "They fixed it up between them to pay twenty-four thousand pounds for the Tyneshire Glen, and sell her to you for thirty thousand. 'Tis a simple matter to produce the evidence. Send a messenger to Tavistock & Huntley, in Leadenhall Street. The magging partner will be glad to come here at once. He named the price to Captain Handy and your precious minister of finance. 'Tis a clear case."
"You can buy her yourself from George Huntley, and he'll be darn glad to get his price," chimed in Johnny Kent. "That ought to prove it. But if you'll listen to me you'll have nothin' to do with the Tyneshire Glen."
The faith of King Osmond in human nature had been severely jarred, but somehow he could not doubt the statements of these headstrong, rugged men, who drove their words home as with a sledge hammer. Toward the graceless minister of finance he felt more sorrow than anger as he wove together in his mind this and that circumstance of previous transactions which should have made him more vigilant. But the culprit was the son of a dear friend, and his credentials had been impeccable. The king had become fond of him.
"I shall obtain from Tavistock & Huntley confirmation of your story, as you suggest," he slowly replied to O'Shea. "In the meantime, I wish you would tell me about yourselves."
"We are looking for big risks and big wages," said O'Shea, with a smile. "Johnny Kent and I are better known in the ports of the Spanish Main than in London River. We have made voyages to Haiti and Honduras and Cuba without the consent of the lawful governments, and we know our trade."
King Osmond reflectively stroked his white imperial, and his face assumed an expression of vivid interest. These men were different from Captain Handy. They would neither cringe nor lie to him, and they looked him squarely between the eyes. He desired to draw them out, to let them talk at their leisure.
"Will you be good enough to come into my own rooms?" said he. "We shall find more privacy and comfort. I should like to hear of your adventures along the Spanish Main."
With a courteous gesture, he showed them into a much larger and more luxurious room, which was furnished and used as a library or private office, inasmuch as a large, flat-topped desk was strewn with books, pamphlets, and documents, and many more of them were piled on tables and on shelves against the walls. As a temporary headquarters for royalty at work, the room suggested industry and the administration of large affairs.
So friendly and unconventional was the reception granted them that Captain O'Shea and Johnny Kent were made to feel that their intrusion demanded no more explanations or apologies. Their curiosity fairly tormented them. It was on the tips of their tongues to ask the host what kind of a kingdom was his, and where it was situated; but this would be rudeness. O'Shea took note of several admiralty charts on the desk, two of them unrolled, with the corners pinned down, and a rule and dividers for measuring distances.
King Osmond, sympathetic and tactful, encouraged O'Shea to spin the yarn of his latest voyage—of a contraband cargo of arms, a steamer that fought her way clear of the enemy and all but foundered before she was beached and abandoned on a lonely coral key.
While O'Shea was telling the story, Johnny Kent let his eyes wander to a small table at his elbow. It was covered with magazines, government reports, and newspaper clippings. One of the latter was so placed that he could read it from where he sat, and with absorbed interest he perused the following paragraphs:
Colonel Osmond George Sydenham-Leach, of the ancient Norfolk family, has lived on the Continent for the last dozen years, and is better known to the boulevards of Paris than to London. He was never considered eccentric until quite recently, when his claim to the island of Trinadaro, in the South Atlantic, as a sovereign realm aroused much interest and amusement. He has assumed the title of King Osmond I.
It is said that he has created an order of nobility, and that the Insignia of the Grand Cross of Trinadaro has been bestowed upon the fortunate gentlemen comprising his cabinet and circle of advisers. A court circular is expected to appear shortly, and a diplomatic service will be organized.
Until his majesty is ready to sail for Trinadaro to occupy his principality, the royal entourage will be found in the state apartments of the Hotel Carleton. Elaborate preparations are in progress for colonizing the island of Trinadaro, and a shipload of people and material will leave London in a few weeks.
King Osmond the First has a very large fortune. He is unmarried, and his estates, at his death, will pass to the children of his only brother, Sir Wilfred Sydenham-Leach, of Haselton-on-Trent. The kinfolk of his majesty are alarmed, so it is reliably reported, lest his wealth will be squandered on this curiously medieval conception of setting up an independent principality upon an unproductive, volcanic island in mid-ocean which no nation has taken the trouble to annex.
Slowly and carefully Johnny Kent waded through this information, with never a flicker of a smile. His face was enjoyably absorbed. The solution of the mystery of King Osmond I. impressed him as neither grotesque nor curiously medieval. The blustering, simple-hearted chief engineer was in his own way a dreamer of dreams, a follower of visions, although he assumed that he had linked himself with the troubled fortunes of Captain Mike O'Shea merely for the sake of double wages and a bonus at the end of the voyage. In all London the King of Trinadaro could not have found two men of readier mind to fall in with his project and his pretensions than these. To play at being a king on a desert island, to have the means to make it all come true—why, thought Johnny Kent, and he knew O'Shea would instantly agree with him, every living man with the spirit of youth in him would jump at the chance.
He was anxious to pass the tidings on to O'Shea, and when the conversation slackened he edged in, with an excited flourish of his fist:
"We must be on our way, Cap'n Mike. His majesty is good-hearted to listen to us, but it ain't polite to talk his ear off."
With this speech went so eloquent a wink that O'Shea comprehended that the engineer had something up his sleeve. Their host cordially declared that he must see them again, and made an appointment for ten o'clock of the next forenoon. They took their departure after friendly farewells, and steered a course for Blackwall and the haven of the Jolly Mermaid.
O'Shea was as delighted as a boy to learn that King Osmond was about to found an island kingdom. It was a more attractive revelation than if he had been discovered to be the inconsequential ruler of some effete little domain of Europe. And if one planned to set himself up in business as a sovereign it was proper to use all the pomp and trappings and ceremony that belonged with the game. O'Shea was heart and soul in sympathy with the dreams and plans of the gentle elderly eccentric who had the imagination to play the part with scrupulous attention to detail.
"If he is to have a navy," cried O'Shea as he pounded his comrade on the back, "I know where he can find an admiral and a fleet engineer."
"Not so fast, Cap'n Mike. I have a notion that he'll have his own troubles gettin' to his kingdom. Any man that can be bunkoed as easy as he was is liable to have all his playthings took away from him before he has a chance to use 'em. I'll feel safer about him when he gets clear of London River."
CHAPTER V.
THE POTENTIAL LAWBREAKER.
Before seeking the royal audience next morning, they went to Leadenhall Street to see George Huntley. The ship broker greeted them indignantly.
"You would try to hoodwink me, would you?" exclaimed he. "I have found out who your mysterious king is. I received a letter from him last night, asking information about the price of the Tyneshire Glen. By Jove, I had no idea it was this crazy Colonel Sydenham-Leach, who calls himself ruler of Trinadaro."
"Own up like a man, George," shouted O'Shea. "You would like nothing better than to be this kind of a king yourself."
The stolid-looking ship broker laughed, and confessed:
"You have read my thoughts like a wizard. It would be a jolly lark—what! But, confound you, you have spoiled the sale of a steamer for me. How about that?"
"We've tried to keep an estimable king from going to Davy Jones' locker in a floating coffin that ye call the Tyneshire Glen," severely retorted O'Shea. "If he will sign us on as councilors, we will find him a real ship, and we will recommend him to deal with you. Have ye any steamers that will pass honest men's inspection?"
"Plenty of them," promptly answered Huntley.
"Then we will look at two or three of them after we have paid our respects to his majesty. We'll not let him be cheated out of his eyeteeth. We have decided to protect him. He belongs to us. Isn't that so, Johnny?"
"He needs us bad, Cap'n Mike."
Huntley became serious, and took them into the rear office before he confided:
"I don't know, I'm sure, whether you chaps are joking or not. However, here is a bit of news for you on the quiet. I met a friend of mine—a barrister—yesterday. We had luncheon at the Cheshire Cheese, and something or other set him to talking about this Sydenham-Leach affair. It seems that the lawyers are quite keen about it. The family relations are planning to kick up a devil of a row, to bring proceedings under the lunacy act, and prevent this King Osmond from sailing off to his silly island of Trinadaro. They hate to see a fortune thrown away in this mad enterprise, as they call it."
O'Shea was righteously wrathful as he flung out:
"The mean-spirited, meddlesome skunks! Would they interfere with a gentleman and his diversions? Hasn't he a right to spend his money as he pleases? Have ye ever seen him, George? He is a grand man to meet, and 'tis proud we are to be his friends."
"Oh, I fancy they will have a job to prove he is insane," said Huntley. "But they may make a pot of trouble for him."
"I suppose they can pester him with all kinds of legal foolishness, and haul him before the courts, and so on," agreed O'Shea. "It would break his heart, and spoil all his fun. 'Tis an outrageous shame, George. What is the system in this country when they want to investigate a man's top story."
"I asked the barrister chap," replied Huntley. "The friends of the person suspected of being dotty—generally the near relatives—lay the case before one of the judges in lunacy, and he orders an inquiry, which is held before one of the masters in lunacy. Then if the alleged lunatic demands a trial by jury he gets it. If he can't convince them that he is sound in the thinker, then his estate is put in charge of a committee duly appointed by law."
O'Shea listened glumly, and glowered his intense displeasure. If the law could interfere with a man who wished to be a king on an island which nobody else wanted, then the law was all wrong.
"And these indecent relatives who want his money will wait and spring a surprise on him," said the aggrieved shipmaster. "They will take his ship away from him, and knock all his beautiful schemes into a cocked hat."
"I imagine he would not be allowed to leave England if the proceedings were started," said Huntley.
Johnny Kent, who had been darkly meditating, aroused himself to shout explosively:
"We'll get him to sea in his ship whenever he wants to sail, and the relatives and the judges and the masters in lunacy be darned. It ain't the first time that you and me have broken laws in a good cause, Cap'n Mike. You come along with us, George Huntley. We're on our way to have a confab with his majesty, and maybe you can do some business with him right off the reel. He ought to load his ship and head for blue water as quick as the Lord will let him. If he's a lunatic, then the most of us is queer."
"Without bragging about ourselves, I guess we can take his majesty to sea whenever he wants to go," quoth Captain O'Shea.
CHAPTER VI.
A REGULAR YANKEE TRICK
Behold, then, that pair of exiled Yankee mariners, Captain Michael O'Shea and Johnny Kent, stanchly enlisted on the side of King Osmond I. of Trinadaro against the designs of all who would thwart his gorgeous and impracticable purposes. That his rank and title were self-assumed, and his realm as yet unpeopled, impressed these ingenuous sailormen as neither shadowy nor absurd. Their services were at his disposal. They would cheerfully face any risks and obstacles to make that distant island in the South Atlantic what O'Shea called "all shipshape and ready for the king business."
Once they had gained the royal ear, it was a matter of course that they should win the royal confidence. King Osmond I. was an elderly gentleman of a singularly guileless disposition, and the notoriety attending his unique project had caused him to be surrounded by persons who knew precisely what they wanted. Of these the vanished minister of finance, Baron Frederick Martin Strothers, of the brisk demeanor and the red waistcoat, had been a conspicuous example.
It was really a rare piece of good fortune for the amiable monarch that there should have come to his aid two such hard-headed and honest adventurers as O'Shea and Johnny Kent. Their advice concerning things nautical was eminently sound; besides which, they were apt to prove a match for the attempts of the relatives of King Osmond, formerly known as Colonel Sydenham-Leach, to prevent him from sailing away to his distant principality.
The result of several conversations was that O'Shea and Johnny Kent were engaged to select a steamer for purchase, and to take charge of her for the voyage to Trinadaro. Their qualifications were warmly indorsed by the well-known ship-broking firm of Tavistock & Huntley, of Leadenhall Street. The managing partner, George Huntley, that solid man with the mutton-chop whiskers and the romantic temperament, was delighted with the arrangement, and took a boyish interest in every detail of the picturesque enterprise. It would have been a temptation not easy to resist if King Osmond had offered him the place of minister of marine, with the bestowal of the insignia of the Grand Cross of Trinadaro.
The august personage was prodigiously busy. Several secretaries and stenographers toiled like mad to handle the vast amount of clerical work and correspondence. To establish a ready-made kingdom from the ground up is no small task. The king planned to carry with him a sort of vanguard of subjects, or colonists, who were to erect buildings, set up machinery, till the soil, prospect for mineral wealth, and otherwise lay the foundations of empire. These pioneers were largely recruited from his own estates and villages in Norfolk, and formed a sturdy company of British yeomanry.
Concerning the natural advantages and resources of Trinadaro as a theater for this drama of royal ambitions and activities, the king and Captain Michael O'Shea became involved in earnest argument. The shipmaster was never one to smother his opinions from motives of flattery or self-interest, and what information about Trinadaro he had been about to pick up on his own account was not dyed in glowing colors.
"I have not seen the island meself, your majesty," said he; "but the 'Sailing Directions' set it down as mostly tall rocks, with a difficult landing place and a dense population of hungry land crabs as big as your hat. And if it was any good would not some one of these benevolent powers have gobbled it up long ago?"
King Osmond appeared untroubled, and to such objections as this he pleasantly made answer:
"Several years ago I made a long voyage in a sailing ship on account of my health, Captain O'Shea, and we touched at Trinadaro to get turtles and fresh water. It was then that I conceived the idea of taking possession of the island as an independent principality. Although it has a most forbidding aspect from seaward, there is an inland plateau fit for cultivation and settlement. It contains the ruined stone walls of an ancient town founded by the early Portuguese navigators. And it is well to remember," concluded the monarch of Trinadaro, with a whimsical smile, "that available domains are so scarce that one should not be too particular. Trinadaro appears to have been overlooked."
"'Tis the rule that the Christian nations will steal any territory that isn't nailed down," was the dubious comment of O'Shea. "They must have a poor opinion of Trinadaro; but, as ye say, 'tis about the only chance that's left for a king to work at his trade with a brand-new sign over the door."
Johnny Kent spent most of his time downriver among the London docks. Wherever seagoing steamers were for sale or charter his bulky figure might have been seen trudging from deck to engine room. George Huntley showed him the best vessels the firm had to offer, but the gray-haired mariner was bound to do his own investigating, explaining with brutal candor to the friendly ship broker:
"You're a nice man, George, and I'm fond of you, but you ain't sellin' ships for your health, and you can't help bein' a mite prejudiced in your own favor."
At length, with the royal approval, O'Shea had the purchase papers made out for the fine steamer Tarlington, which was berthed in a basin of the East India Docks. She was a modern, well-equipped freighter of four thousand tons which had been in the Australian trade and could be fitted for sea at a few days' notice. The transfer of ownership was given no needless publicity. George Huntley attended to that. He had another interview with his friend, the barrister, who hinted at forthcoming events which gravely threatened the peace and welfare of Osmond I., the kingdom of Trinadaro, and the ship in which the ruler, his court, his colonists, and his cargo were to sail.
O'Shea and Johnny Kent discussed this latest information at supper in the Jolly Mermaid tavern, with a platter of fried sole between them.
"'Tis this way," explained O'Shea: "There is no doubt at all that this grand king of ours will figure in the lunacy proceedings that we heard was in the wind. His relatives are getting greedier and more worried every day. And until the matter is decided one way or another they will use every means the law allows to head him off from spending the good money that belongs to him."
"And how can they stop him from scatterin' his coin for these wise and benevolent purposes of his?" demanded the engineer.
"Well, George Huntley says the law will permit them to clap some kind of a restraining order on the ship and hold her in the dock, with the judges' officers aboard, till the proceedings are over. And they can serve the same kind of documents on King Osmond to prevent his chasing himself beyond the jurisdiction of the court, says George."
"But all this infernal shindy can't be started unless there's proof positive that his majesty intends to fly the coop, Cap'n Mike."
"Right you are, Johnny, you old sea lawyer. They can't bother the king until he is actually on board, and the ship is cleared, so the barrister lad tells George."
"Then they'll be watchin' the Tarlington like terriers at a rat hole," exclaimed the engineer.
"No, they won't," cried O'Shea, with tremendous earnestness. "About once in so often I have a bright idea, Johnny. One of them has just now hit me between the eyes. Do ye mind how we slipped out of Charleston harbor in the Hercules steamer, bound on the filibusterin' expedition to Honduras? 'Twas a successful stratagem, and it could be done in London River."
"Sure it could!" And Johnny Kent chuckled joyously. "And the king needn't know anything about it."
"Of course we will keep it from him if we can," agreed O'Shea. "I will do anything short of murder to keep him happy and undisturbed. And it would upset him terribly to know that he must be smuggled out of England to dodge the rascals that would keep him at home as a suspected lunatic."
"We'd better put George Huntley next to this proposition of ours," suggested Johnny. "He itches to be a red-handed conspirator."
The ship broker admired the scheme when it was explained to him. Yes, the old Tyneshire Glen, which they had so scornfully declined to purchase, was still at her moorings, and they were welcome to use her as a dummy, or decoy, or whatever one might choose to call it. O'Shea could pretend to load her; he could send as many people on board as he liked, and put a gang of mechanics at work all over the bally old hooker, said Huntley. If the enemies of King Osmond took it for granted that the Tyneshire Glen was the ship selected to carry him off to Trinadaro, that was their own lookout. It was a ripping good joke, and a regular Yankee trick, by Jove!
CHAPTER VII.
PLANNING A COLOSSAL FARCE.
O'Shea and Johnny Kent took great care to avoid being seen in the vicinity of the Tarlington. Such inspection and supervision as were necessary they contrived to attend to after dark. The king was up to his ears in urgent business, and was easily persuaded to leave the whole conduct of the ship's affairs in their capable hands, and to waive preliminary visits to the East India Docks.
O'Shea employed a Scotch engineer—who wasted no words and understood that his wages depended on his taciturnity—to oversee such repair work as the Tarlington needed, and to keep steam in the donkey boilers.
All signs indicated that the Tarlington was preparing for one of her customary voyages to Australia. Soon the cargo began to stream into her hatches. The ostensible destinations of the truck-loads of cases and crates and bales of merchandise were Sydney, Melbourne, Wellington, Freemantle, and so on. One might read the names of the consignees neatly stenciled on every package. This was done under the eye of Captain O'Shea, who in his time had loaded hundreds of boxes of rifles and cartridges innocently labeled "Condensed Milk," "Prime Virginia Hams," and "Farming Tools."
But the place to find roaring, ostentatious activity was on board the old Tyneshire Glen. Captain O'Shea visited her daily, and Johnny Kent hustled an engine-room crew with loud and bitter words. It appeared as if the ship was in a great hurry to go to sea. While O'Shea was stirring up as much pretended industry as possible, the question of a cargo was not overlooked. It was shoved on board as fast as the longshoremen in the holds could handle it. Nor did these brawny toilers know that all these stout wooden boxes so plainly marked and consigned to Trinadaro via S. S. Tyneshire Glen contained only bricks, sand, stones, and scrap iron.
They were part of the theatrical properties of Captain O'Shea, who could readily produce a make-believe cargo for a faked voyage in a steamer which had no intention of leaving port.
The London newspapers showed fresh interest in the schemes and dreams of King Osmond I. of Trinadaro. The Tyneshire Glen was visited by inquisitive journalists with note-books and cameras. Captain O'Shea welcomed them right courteously, and gave them information, cigars, and excellent whisky. They returned to their several offices to write breezy columns about the preparations for the singular voyage in the Tyneshire Glen. So severe are the English libel laws that never a hint was printed of the possible legal obstacles which might bring the enterprise to naught. For purposes of publication, King Osmond was as sane as a trivet unless a judge and jury should officially declare him otherwise.
Nevertheless, the intimation had reached the newspaper offices that the relatives of Colonel Sydenham-Leach were likely to take steps to prevent him from leaving England. And reporters were assigned to watch the Tyneshire Glen up to the very moment of departure.
Now and then Johnny Kent quietly trundled himself on board the Tarlington, and was gratified to find that progress was running smoothly in all departments. So nearly ready for sea was the big cargo boat that the time had come to devise the final details of the stratagem.
Accordingly Captain O'Shea went boldly to the customhouse, and took out clearance papers, not for the Tarlington to Australia, but for the Tyneshire Glen to the island of Trinadaro. The chief officer whom he had selected to go with him held a master's certificate, and the ship was cleared in his name.
As for the Tarlington, which was really to sail, while the Tyneshire Glen remained peacefully at her moorings in the East India Docks, O'Shea decided to omit the formality of clearances. As he explained it to Johnny Kent:
"The less attention that is called to the Tarlington the better. Once at sea, we will hoist the flag of Trinadaro over our ship, and his majesty's government will give her a registry and us our certificates. 'Tis handy to be an independent sovereign with a merchant marine of his own."
The services of an employment agency enabled O'Shea to muster several score bogus colonists or subjects of King Osmond, persons of respectable appearance, who were glad to earn ten shillings apiece by marching on board the Tyneshire Glen with bags and bundles in their hands. There could be no room for doubt in the public mind that the eccentric, grandiose Colonel Sydenham-Leach was on the point of leaving his native shores with his people and material for founding his island principality.
It seemed advisable to Captain O'Shea to take the Tarlington out of the docks late in the afternoon, swing into the river, and anchor until King Osmond should be brought aboard in a tug furnished by George Huntley. There was much less risk of observation in having the royal passenger join the ship after nightfall, and away from the populous docks, in addition to which O'Shea preferred to get clear of the cramping stone basins and gates, and hold his ship in the fairway, with room for a speedy departure in the event of a stern chase.
He artlessly explained to the king that this arrangement would allow his majesty to spend several more hours ashore in winding up his many final details of business, and he would avoid the tedious delay of warping the steamer out of the docks. The plausible shipmaster also made it clear that sailing at night would enable him to catch the turn of the tide and find high water over the shoal places in the channel.
The unsuspecting monarch approved these plans, and had no idea that they were part of an elaborate conspiracy to smuggle him out of England under cover of darkness because the authorities intended to detain him as one whose sanity must be investigated.
As a final device to throw the enemy off the scent, O'Shea conceived what he viewed as a master stroke. George Huntley was called into consultation, and promptly sent for a superannuated clerk of his office staff who had been pensioned after many years of faithful service. He proved to be a slender, white-haired man who carried himself with a great deal of dignity, and at the first glimpse of him O'Shea exclaimed delightedly:
"You couldn't have done better, George, if you had raked London with a comb. Put a snowy mustache and chin whisker on him, and he will pass for King Osmond of Trinadaro with no trouble at all."
"I think we can turn him into a pretty fair counterfeit," grinned Huntley. "And when he walks aboard the Tyneshire Glen at dusk, by Jove, and all those bogus subjects, at ten shillings each, raise a loyal cheer, the hoax will be complete. This is the artistic touch to make the job perfect."
"And what am I to do after that, Mr. Huntley, if you please?" timidly inquired the elderly clerk. "If it's only a practical joke, I don't mind"
"Play the part, Thompson. Acknowledge the homage of the ship's company, and go below at once. The ship will probably be watched by persons keenly interested in your movements. If they poke a mess of legal documents at you, accept them without argument, and walk ashore and return to London. The meddlesome gents will leave you alone after that. They will merely keep close watch of the ship lo make sure that you don't go back to her. Once in London again, pluck off the false whiskers, and be sure to come to my office in the morning and be handsomely rewarded for your exertions."
CHAPTER VIII.
ONE KING SHY.
The genuine colonists of King Osmond stole on board the Tarlington, singly and by twos and threes, some before she pulled out of the docks, others by boat after she swung into the stream. At the same time the imitation voyagers from the employment agency were making as much noise and bustle as possible as they trooped on board the Tyneshire Glen.
Captain O'Shea intended to convoy the king from the hotel to the Tarlington, but at the last moment he was detained to quell a ruction among a group of drunken firemen in the forecastle. George Huntley had been unexpectedly summoned to the Hotel Cecil to see an American millionaire who was in a great hurry to charter a yacht. O'Shea therefore sent a message to his majesty, directing him to have his carriage driven to a certain landing on the river front of the East India Docks, where he would be met by the chief officer of the Tarlington and escorted aboard the ship.
Within the same hour the dignified elderly clerk by the name of Thompson could have been seen to enter a carriage close by the Hotel Carleton, and those standing near might have heard him tell the driver to go to the steamer Tyneshire Glen, in the East India Docks.
The chief officer of the Tarlington, waiting not far from an electric light at the landing pier abreast of which the steamer was anchored in the stream, felt a certain responsibility for the safe delivery of King Osmond, and was easier in mind when he saw a carriage halt within a few yards of him. The window framed the kindly features, the white mustache and imperial which the chief officer instantly identified. Hastening to assist his majesty from the carriage, he announced apologetically:
"Captain O'Shea sends his compliments, and regrets that he is detained on board. The ship is ready as soon as you are."
The king murmured a word or two of thanks. The chief officer carefully assisted him to board the tug, which immediately backed away from the pier and turned to run alongside the Tarlington. The important passenger mounted the ship's gangway, and stood upon the shadowy deck, whose row of lights had been purposely turned off no lest the figure of the king might be discernible from shore.
Captain O'Shea had delayed on the bridge to get the ship under way as soon as the skipper of the tug sang out to him that his majesty was safely aboard. It was no time for ceremony. The business of the moment was to head for the open sea and beyond the reach of the British law and its officers.
A few minutes later Captain O'Shea hastened aft to greet his majesty and explain his failure to welcome him on board. Meeting the chief officer, he halted to ask:
"Everything all right, Mr. Arbuthnot? Did he ask for me? Did he give you any orders?"
"All satisfactory, sir. The king said he was very tired and would go to his rooms at once."
"I wonder should I disturb him?" said O'Shea to himself, hesitating. "'Tis not etiquette to break into his rest. Well, I will go back to the bridge and wait a bit. Maybe he will be sending for me. My place is with the pilot till the ship has poked her way past Gravesend and is clear of this muck of upriver shipping."
The Tarlington found a less-crowded reach of the Thames as she passed below Greenwich, and her engines began to shove her along at a rapid gait. She had almost picked up full speed, and was fairly bound out for blue water when the noise of loud and grievous protests arose from the saloon deck. The commotion was so startling that O'Shea bounded down from the bridge, and was confronted by a smooth-shaven, slender, elderly man, who flourished a false mustache and imperial in his fist as he indignantly cried:
"I say, this is all wrong, as sure as my name is Thompson! I never bargained with Mr. George Huntley to be kidnaped and taken to sea. I don't want to go, I tell you! These people tell me that this steamer is bound to some island or other thousands of miles from here. I stand on my rights as an Englishman! I demand that I be taken back to London at once!"
O'Shea glared stupidly at the irate clerk so long in the employ of Tavistock & Huntley. For once the resourceful shipmaster was so taken aback that he could only blink and open and shut his mouth. At length he managed to say, in a sort of quavering stage whisper:
"For the love o' Heaven, what has become of the real king? Who mislaid him? Where is he now?"
"I don't know, and I'm sure I don't care!" bitterly returned the affrighted Thompson. "I was an ass to consent to this make-believe job."
"But how did you two kings get mixed?" groaned O'Shea. "You're in the wrong ship. Have ye not sense enough to fathom that much? You were supposed to go aboard the Tyneshire Glen, you old blunderer!"
"The man who drove the carriage told me this was the Tyneshire Glen, I had to take his word for it. How was I to know one ship from another in the dark? I was told to pretend I was the genuine king, wasn't I? So I played the part as well as I could."
"Ye played it right up to the hilt. My chief officer will vouch for that." And O'Shea held his head between his hands. He sent for Johnny Kent, whose chin dropped when he beheld the miserable, crushed demeanor of the master of the Tarlington, who announced briefly:
"We're shy one king, Johnny. The deal was switched on us somehow. Our boss was left behind."
"Great sufferin' Caesar's ghost, Cap'n Mike!" gasped the other. "Say it slow. Spell it out. Make signs if you're so choked up that you can't talk plain."
"The real king went in the discard, Johnny. We've fetched the dummy to sea. The one that came aboard was the other one."
"Then what in blazes became of our beloved King Osmond I.?" cried Johnny.
"You can search me. Maybe his affectionate relatives have their hooks in him by now and have started him on the road to the dotty house."
"It ain't reasonable for us to keep on our course for Trinadaro without the boss of the whole works," suggested the chief engineer. "This is his ship and cargo."
This was so self-evident that Captain O'Shea answered never a word, but gave orders to let go an anchor and hold the ship in the river until further notice. Then he turned to glower at an excited group of passengers, who had mustered at the foot of the bridge ladder and were loudly demanding that he come down and talk to them. They were loyal subjects of the vanished monarch—his secretaries, artisans, foremen, laborers—who ardently desired an explanation. They become more and more insistent, and threatened to resort to violence unless the steamer instantly returned to London to find King Osmond.
O'Shea gave them his word that he would not proceed to sea without the missing sovereign, and during a brief lull in the excitement he thrust the bewildered Thompson, the masquerader, into the chart room, and pelted him with questions. The latter was positive that he had directed the cabman to drive to the Tyneshire Glen. Could the cabman have purposely sought the wrong ship? No, for he was particular to stop and ask his way when just inside the entrance to the docks. And while he was talking to the informant, who looked like a watchman, another person had stepped up to volunteer the desired information.
The watchman had moved on, and the cabman and the second stranger held a conversation which Thompson was unable to overhear.
"And did ye get a look at this second party?" sharply queried O'Shea.
"The carriage lamp showed me his face for a moment, and I saw him less distinctly as he moved away. He was a young man, well dressed, rather a smart-looking chap, I should say. I think he had on a fancy red waist-coat."
"Sandy-complected? A brisk walker?" roared O'Shea, in tremendous tones.
"I am inclined to say the description fits the young man," said Thompson.
"'Twas the crooked minister of finance, Baron Frederick Martin Strothers, bad luck to him!" And O'Shea looked bloodthirsty. "I'll bet the ship against a cigar that he sold out to the enemy. He stands in with the king's blackguardly relatives and the lawyers. And we never fooled him for a minute. 'Tis likely he switched the real king to the Tyneshire Glen, where the poor monarch would have no friends to help him out of a scrape. Strothers and a pal bribed the two cabmen—that's how the trick was turned. Just how they got next to our plans I can't fathom, but we will not discuss it now."
"Then it is hopeless to try to secure the king and transfer him to this steamer?" asked Thompson, easier in mind now that he understood that he had not been kidnaped.
"Hopeless? By me sainted grandmother, it is not hopeless at all!" cried Captain O'Shea, as he fled from the chart room to confer with his chief officer. Johnny Kent, restless and unhappy, had made another journey from the lower regions to seek enlightenment. O'Shea thumped him between the shoulders, and confidently declaimed:
"We've finished with all the foolish play acting and stratagems. 'Twas done to spare the sensitive feeling of King Osmond, and this wide-awake Strothers has made monkeys of us. He stacked the cards, and dealt us the wrong king. Now we're going to turn around and steam back to London and grab this king of ours, and take him to sea without any more delay at all."
"I like your language," beamingly quoth Johnny Kent. "We're due to have a little violence, Cap'n Mike."
CHAPTER IX.
THE ABDUCTION OF KING OSMOND.
While the good ship Tarlington swings about and retraces her course, there is time to discover what befell the genuine Osmond after.he had entered a carriage at the Hotel Carleton and set out to join Captain O'Shea's steamer. If it is correct to surmise that the unscrupulous Baron Strothers was the active villain of the plot, then he may have tampered with King Osmond's cabman, or employed an agent to attend to the shabby business, before the equipage left the hotel.
At any rate, the king was rapidly driven to the East India Docks, and the carriage drew up alongside the Tyneshire Glen. The royal occupant had been informed by Captain O'Shea that his ship would be out of the docks by now, and that a tug would be waiting to transfer him. In the darkness the shadowy outline of one steamer looked very like another, and King Osmond thought that perhaps the plan of sailing might have been changed at the last moment.
The cabman strenuously assured him that this was the Tarlington, and he decided that he had better go aboard and look for Captain O'Shea. If a mistake had been made, it ought to be an easy matter to find the landing pier and the waiting tug.
No sooner had the deluded king reached the deck than he was convinced that he had been directed to the wrong steamer. The people who stared at him curiously were utter strangers. There was not a subject of Trinadaro among them; nor did any of the officers of the ship step forward to greet him. He was about to accost the nearest spectator when an officious man, dressed in seedy black, confronted him, flourished a formidable-appearing document under the royal nose, and pompously affirmed:
"A writ from the judge duly appointed and authorized by the Lord Chancellor to take cognizance of such cases, distraining Colonel Osmond George Sydenham-Leach from attempting to quit the jurisdiction of said court pending an inquisition de lunatic ininquirendo. Take it calm and easy, sir. This won't interfere with your liberty as long as you obey the writ."
Another minion of the law—a fat man with a well-oiled voice—thereupon formally took possession of the steamer, explaining that because clearance papers had been issued for a voyage to Trinadaro the court held that a departure from England was actually and speedily contemplated. The presence of Colonel Sydenham-Leach on board in person was also evidence after the fact.
The blow was staggering, humiliating, incredibly painful. It shook the amiable gentleman's presence of mind to the very foundations. To be interfered with as an alleged madman was enough to bewilder the most sapient monarch that ever wielded scepter. As a landed proprietor, a retired officer of the militia, a Conservative in politics, King Osmond had profound respect for the law and the constitution of his native land. He was not one to defy a judicial writ, or to grapple with the situation in a high-handed manner. In other words, he was rather Colonel Sydenham-Leach in this cruel crisis than the sovereign ruler of the independent principality of Trinadaro.
No help or comfort was to be obtained from the company around him. These spurious voyagers from the employment agency were whispering uneasily among themselves, and regarding the unfortunate Osmond with suspicious glances. They had not bargained to entangle themselves in the affairs of an alleged lunatic on board of a ship which had been seized in the name of the law. Ten shillings was not enough for this sort of thing.
"It don't look right to me," said one of them. "The job is on the queer. I say we hook it before the bloomin' bobbies come and put the lot of us in jail."
This sentiment expressed the general view of the situation, and the counterfeit subjects of Trinadaro began to flock down the gangway and to scatter in a hunted manner among the gloomy warehouses. Presently Colonel Sydenham-Leach was left alone with the two court officers, with never a friend in sight. Recovering somewhat of his composure and dignity, he declared that he must consult with his legal advisers at once before consenting to leave the ship. He clung to the hope that delay might enable Captain O'Shea to come to his rescue, although he was unwilling to try to send a message to the Tarlington. This would reveal to the officers of the law that the wrong ship had been detained, and put them on the track of the right one.
There was no legal reason why the luckless king should not remain in the Tyneshire Glen until his lawyers could come and confer with him; wherefore the captors grumblingly sat themselves down in the cabin to wait. The king had nothing more to say to them. They were beneath his notice. He was absorbed in his own unhappy reflections. His dreams had turned to ashes. His island empire would know him not. He felt very old and helpless and sad.
Thus he sat and brooded for some time. At length he heard the sound of men tramping across the deck above his head. He roused himself to look in the direction of the doorway. A moment later it framed the well-knit, active figure of Captain Michael O'Shea. Behind him puffed stout Johnny Kent. They paused, said something to each other, and advanced to bid the drooping captive take heart.
"'Twas a good guess, your majesty," cried O'Shea. "We thought you might have gone adrift and fetched up aboard this old tub. What's the matter? Who are your two friends?"
"Officers from the bench of one of the judges in lunacy," reluctantly admitted King Osmond. "They have served distraining papers on me and on the ship."
"On this ship?" exclaimed Johnny Kent. "How ridiculous! What'll we do with this pair of bailiffs, or whatever you call 'em, Cap'n Mike? Make 'em eat their documents?"
"No; we will take the two meddlers along with us," sweetly answered O'Shea. "We can't afford to leave them behind to tell how it happened."
"But they have all the power and authority of the British government behind them," spoke up King Osmond.
"And they have a long voyage ahead of them," said O'Shea. "Your majesty can give them jobs in your own judicial department, and they will grow up with the country."
"I cannot countenance such actions," began the king; but Johnny Kent interrupted to remark, with much vehemence:
"Excuse us, your majesty, but this ain't no time for arguments about the British constitution. Cap'n Mike and me agreed to take you and your ship to Trinadaro. It was a contract, and we propose to earn our wages. If you won't come easy and willin', then we'll just have to call a couple of our men from the boat that's waitin' alongside, and escort you anyhow. We're stubborn, and we aim to live up to our agreements."
O'Shea wasted no more words. Suddenly grasping one of the officers by the back of the neck and the slack of his garments, he propelled him rapidly toward the deck, fiercely admonishing him to make no outcry unless he wished to be tossed overboard with a bullet in him.
The other man had started to flee, but Johnny Kent caught him in a few heavy strides, tucked him under one mighty arm, clapped a hand over his mouth, and waddled with his burden to the nearest open cargo port.
"Drop them into the boat," commanded O'Shea. "Ahoy, there, below! Catch these two lads, and sit on them good and hard, and let them make no noise. The end of an oar handle behind the ear will make them subside if they object."
The astonished King Osmond had followed the abductors out of the cabin. Before he could renew the discussion, Captain O'Shea, breathing hard, but calm and smiling, faced him with the courteous invitation:
"After you, your majesty. We are at your service. A few minutes in the boat, and you'll be aboard the Tarlington, and heading for the open sea."
It was obviously so futile to protest that the king meekly descended to the boat, steadied by the helping hand of Johnny Kent. The seamen shoved off, and the oars thumped in the tholepins as O'Shea steered for the long, black hull of the steamer visible a few hundred yards down stream. Unable to voice his confused emotions, the king suffered himself to be conducted up the gangway of the Tarlington.
His loyal subjects—the real ones—cheered frantically at sight of him. It was an ovation worthy of his station. He bowed and smiled, and was himself again. Already the recollection of his detention as a madman seemed less poignant. It was like a nightmare. He would try to forget it.
He felt the ship tremble under his feet as her engines began to drive her toward the blessed sea and the long road to wave- washed Trinadaro. Had it not been for the bold and ready conduct of his two faithful mariners, he would now be a broken-spirited old man in London, a butt of public ridicule. He went below to the staterooms which had been suitably fitted for his comfort and privacy, and discovered that he was greatly wearied.
Before retiring, he sent one of his secretaries to request Captain O'Shea and Johnny Kent to give him the pleasure of their company at breakfast next morning.
"That makes me feel a bit more cheerful," said O'Shea to himself. "Maybe he has decided to forgive us. We were guilty of high treason, disobedience, and a few other things in packing him off to sea while he was trying to tell us he couldn't go at all. Poor old Johnny Kent was worried for fear he would order our heads chopped off."
The Tarlington was in blue water next morning when the captain and the chief engineer bashfully entered the private dining room of his majesty. The latter greeted them with marked affability, and said:
"I take great pleasure, my dear friends, in conferring on you the insignia of the Grand Cross of Trinadaro as a recognition of your invaluable loyalty and assistance. You will be entitled to call yourselves barons of my realm by royal warrant. While I must confess that I could not ordinarily approve of such summary methods as you made use of"
"It looks different now that old England is dropping astern," suggested O'Shea. "The British constitution doesn't loom as big as it did. Your own flag is at the masthead, your majesty, and you can make treaties if ye like. I thank you with all my heart for the reward you have given me."
"It pleases me a heap more to be a member of the nobility of Trinadaro than to earn big wages for the voyage," warmly assented Johnny Kent.
CHAPTER X.
IN SIGHT OF THE ISLAND KINGDOM.
Freed of all anxieties and besetments, the royal passenger resumed his labor of planning the occupations of his subjects. His enthusiasm was delightful to behold. He seemed to grow younger with every day of the voyage southward. His was to be a kingdom of peace and good will, of a benevolent ruler and a contented, industrious people. He was the stanchest kind of a royalist, and Trinadaro was to be a constitutional monarchy, with an aristocracy which should be recruited after the pioneering work had been accomplished. The existing theories and examples of republican government he regarded with peculiar disfavor.
The relations between the king and his mariners twain became those of pleasant, informal intimacy. They learned to know him much better during the long weeks at sea, and felt toward him an affectionate, tolerant respect. He was wrapped up in his one idea. His belief that he was indeed a king was as natural as breathing.
The ship had crossed the equator, and was plowing through the long blue surges of the South Atlantic when Captain O'Shea, after working out the noon observations, informed the king:
"A couple of days more, and we'll begin to look for a sight of the peaks of Trinadaro. If the weather holds calm, we can begin to put the people and the cargo ashore right after that."
"The peaks of Trinadaro!" fondly echoed King Osmond. "Do you know, Captain O'Shea, I have wondered if you considered me a crack-brained old fool. Many men in England think so, I am sure. I know that my relatives do."
"'Tis my opinion that you wish to make folks happy, and that you will do no harm with your money," was the reply. "And there's few rich men that can say the same. No, 'tis not crackbrained to want to be a king. Power is what men desire, and they will trample on others to get it. I have heard ye talk on board ship, and I have admired what you had to say. You will live your own life in your own way, but you will not forget to make this island of yours a place for men and women to call home, and to be glad that they have found it."
"I thank you, Captain O'Shea," said the other. "I cannot help thinking now and then of what will be the fate of my principality when death comes to me. If I am spared for ten or fifteen years longer, I shall have time to set my affairs in order, to make Trinadaro self-sustaining, to win the recognition of foreign governments, to arrange for an administration to succeed my reign."
"May you live to be king until you are a hundred!" cried O'Shea. "And a man who is as happy and contented as you are is pretty sure of a ripe old age."
"I hope that you and Mr. Kent will consent to sail under the flag of my merchant marine and navy as long as I live," earnestly said the king. "I have learned to depend on you, and I need not tell you that the financial arrangement will be more favorable than you could make elsewhere."
"We are restless men, your majesty," replied O'Shea, with a smile; "but we have no notion of quitting your service. 'Tis up to us to see the kingdom fairly under way before we turn rovers again."
It was early in the morning of the second day after this that the officer on watch roused out Captain O'Shea with the news that land had been sighted on the starboard bow. The master of the Tarlington stared through his binoculars at a black, jagged foreland of rock which lifted itself from the sea. He sent word to the passengers that Trinadaro lay ahead of them.
King Osmond had left word that he should be called whenever the first glimpse of his island should be revealed. But he came not to the bridge in response to the message from Captain O'Shea. In his stead appeared his physician, with a demeanor terribly distressed. His voice was unsteady as he said to Captain O'Shea:
"It is my sad duty to inform you that his majesty passed away some time during the night. His heart simply ceased to beat. It had been somewhat feeble and irregular of late, but the symptoms were not alarming. His strength was overtaxed during those last weeks in London."
O'Shea bared his head, and stood silent. The announcement was very hard to believe. Pulling himself together, he murmured to the chief officer:
"The king is dead. Please set the flag of Trinadaro at half mast."
As soon as the word was passed down to the engine room Johnny Kent sought the bridge, and his eyes were filled with tears as he exclaimed:
"It don't seem right, Cap'n Mike. I ain't reconciled to it one mite. He deserved to have what he wanted. And he dies within sight of his kingdom!"
"Yes, he has slipped his cable, Johnny. There are cruel tricks in this game of life."
"What will you do now?"
"I haven't had time to think. But one thing is certain. I will carry King Osmond to his island, and there we will bury him. 'Tis the one place in all the world where he would want to rest. And the peaks of Trinadaro will guard him, and the big breakers will sing anthems for him. And he will be the king there till the Judgment Day."
The Tarlington slowly approached the precipitous coast line, and changed her course to pass around to the lee of the island. As the deeply indented shore opened to view, and one bold headland after another slid by, a comparatively sheltered anchorage was disclosed.
There, to the amazement of Captain O'Shea, rode two small cruisers. One of them flew the red ensign of England, the other the green and yellow colors of the navy of Brazil. He guessed their errand before a British lieutenant in white uniform came alongside the Tarlington in a steam launch and climbed the gangway which had been dropped to receive him.
Gazing curiously at the silent company and the half-masted flag of Trinadaro, he was conducted into the saloon, where Captain O'Shea waited for him to state his business.
"This steamer belongs to Colonel Sydenham-Leach, I presume," said the visitor. "I should like to meet him, if you please. Sorry, but I have unpleasant news for him."
"If it is King Osmond of Trinadaro ye mean, he is dead, God rest his soul. He went out last night."
"You don't say! Please express my sympathy to the ship's company," exclaimed the lieutenant. "How extraordinary! We received orders by cable at Rio to proceed to Trinadaro in time to intercept this vessel of yours."
"And what were the orders, and why is that Brazilian man-of-war anchored alongside of you?" asked O'Shea.
"It is all about the ownership of this island," the lieutenant explained. "Nobody wanted it for centuries, and now everybody seems keen on getting hold of it. The English government suddenly decided, after you sailed from London, that it might need Trinadaro as a landing base for a new cable between South America and Africa, and sent us to hoist the flag over the place. Brazil heard of the affair, and sent a ship to set up a claim on the basis of an early discovery. The Portuguese have presented their evidence, I believe, because their people made some kind of a settlement at Trinadaro once upon a time."
"And the forsaken island was totally forgotten until poor King Osmond got himself and his project into the newspapers," slowly commented O'Shea.
"That is the truth of the matter, I fancy." The naval lieutenant paused, and commiseration was strongly reflected in his manly face. "Tell me," said he, "what was the opinion at home about this King of Trinadaro? He was a bit mad, I take it."
"No more than you or me," answered O'Shea. "He had a beautiful dream, and it made him very happy, but it was not his fate to see it come true. And no doubt it is better that he did not live to know that the scheme was ruined. His island has been taken away from him. It will be wrangled over by England and Brazil and the rest of them, and there is no room for a king that hoped to enjoy himself in his own way. The world has no place for a man like Colonel Osmond George Sydenham-Leach, my dear sir."
"Too bad!" sighed the lieutenant. "And what are your plans, Captain O'Shea? Do you intend to make any formal claim in behalf of the late king?"
"No. His dreams died with him. There is no heir to the throne. I'm thankful that his finish was so bright and hopeful. There will be funeral services and a burial to-morrow. I should take it as a great favor if detachments from the British cruiser and the Brazilian war vessel could be present."
"I will attend to it," said the lieutenant.
When the coffin of King Osmond I. was carried ashore, it was draped with the flag of Trinadaro, which he himself had designed. Launches from the two cruisers towed sailing cutters filled with bluejackets, who splashed through the surf and formed in column led by the bugles and the muffled drums. The parade wound along the narrow valleys, climbing to the plateau on which the ruler had planned to build his capital.
There the first and last King of Trinadaro was laid to rest, and the guns of the cruisers thundered a requiem. The British lieutenant count- ed the guns, and turned to Captain O'Shea to say:
"It is the salute given only to royalty, according to the navy regulations. It is the least we can do for him."
"And it is handsomely done," muttered the grateful O'Shea as he brushed a hand across his eyes.
"Will you take your ship back to England?"
"Yes. I can do nothing else. 'Twill be a sad voyage, but God knows best. As it all turned out, this king of ours had to die to win his kingdom."
When the mourners had returned to the Tarlington, Captain O'Shea and Johnny Kent went into the chart room and talked together for some time. At length the gray, portly, simple-hearted chief engineer said wistfully:
"I'm glad we stood by and did what we could for him, Cap'n Mike, ain't you?"
"You bet I am, Johnny! He was a good man, and I loved him. Here's to his majesty, King Osmond of Trinadaro! He wanted us to sail under his flag as long as he lived. There'll be trouble waiting for us in London River, for we have to account for the pair of court officers we kidnaped and the ship that took out no clearances. But we will face the music. 'Tis not much to do for' him that was so good to us."
"Well, anyhow, they can never take his kingdom away from him," softly quoth Johnny Kent.
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