Dialstone Lane | Page 6

his host's tales of
distant seas.
It was the first of many visits. Sometimes he brought Mr. Tredgold and
sometimes Mr. Tredgold brought him. The terrors of the crow's-nest
vanished before his persevering attacks, and perched there with the
captain's glass he swept the landscape with the air of an explorer
surveying a strange and hostile country.
It was a fitting prelude to the captain's tales afterwards, and Mr. Chalk,
with the stem of his long pipe withdrawn from his open mouth, would
sit enthralled as his host narrated picturesque incidents of hairbreadth
escapes, or, drawing his chair to the table, made rough maps for his
listener's clearer understanding. Sometimes the captain took him to
palm-studded islands in the Southern Seas; sometimes to the ancient
worlds of China and Japan. He became an expert in nautical terms. He

walked in knots, and even ordered a new carpet in fathoms--after the
shop-keeper had demonstrated, by means of his little boy's arithmetic
book, the difference between that measurement and a furlong.
[Illustration: "Sometimes the captain took him to palm-studded islands
in the Southern Seas."]
"I'll have a voyage before I'm much older," he remarked one afternoon,
as he sat in the captain's sitting-room. "Since I retired from business
time hangs very heavy sometimes. I've got a fancy for a small yacht,
but I suppose I couldn't go a long voyage in a small one?"
"Smaller the better," said Edward Tredgold, who was sitting by the
window watching Miss Drewitt sewing.
Mr. Chalk took his pipe from his mouth and eyed him inquiringly.
"Less to lose," explained Mr. Tredgold, with a scarcely perceptible
glance at the captain. "Look at the dangers you'd be dragging your craft
into, Chalk; there would be no satisfying you with a quiet cruise in the
Mediterranean."
"I shouldn't run into unnecessary danger," said Mr. Chalk, seriously.
"I'm a married man, and there's my wife to think of. What would
become of her if anything happened to me?"
"Why, you've got plenty of money to leave, haven't you?" inquired Mr.
Tredgold.
"I was thinking of her losing me," replied Mr. Chalk, with a touch of
acerbity.
"Oh, I didn't think of that," said the other. "Yes, to be sure."
"Captain Bowers was telling me the other day of a woman who wore
widow's weeds for thirty-five years," said Mr. Chalk, impressively.
"And all the time her husband was married again and got a big family
in Australia. There's nothing in the world so faithful as a woman's

heart."
"Well, if you're lost on a cruise, I shall know where to look for you,"
said Mr. Tredgold. "But I don't think the captain ought to put such ideas
into your head."
Mr. Chalk looked bewildered. Then he scratched his left whisker with
the stem of his churchwarden pipe and looked severely over at Mr.
Tredgold.
"I don't think you ought to talk that way before ladies," he said, primly.
"Of course, I know you're only in joke, but there's some people can't
see jokes as quick as others and they might get a wrong idea of you."
"What part did you think of going to for your cruise?" interposed
Captain Bowers.
"There's nothing settled yet," said Mr. Chalk;" it's just an idea, that's all.
I was talking to your father the other day," he added, turning to Mr.
Tredgold; "just sounding him, so to speak."
"You take him," said that dutiful son, briskly. "It would do him a world
of good; me, too."
"He said he couldn't afford either the time or the money," said Mr.
Chalk. "The thing to do would be to combine business with pleasure--to
take a yacht and find a sunken galleon loaded with gold pieces. I've
heard of such things being done."
"I've heard of it," said the captain, nodding.
"Bottom of the ocean must be paved with them in places," said Mr.
Tredgold, rising, and following Miss Drewitt, who had gone into the
garden to plant seeds.
Mr. Chalk refilled his pipe and, accepting a match from the captain,
smoked slowly. His gaze was fixed on the window, but instead of
Dialstone Lane he saw tumbling blue seas and islets far away.

"That's something you've never come across, I suppose, Captain
Bowers?" he remarked at last.
"No," said the other.
Mr. Chalk, with a vain attempt to conceal his disappointment, smoked
on for some time in silence. The blue seas disappeared, and he saw
instead the brass knocker of the house opposite.
"Nor any other kind of craft with treasure aboard, I suppose?" he
suggested, at last.
The captain put his hands on his knees and stared at the floor. "No," he
said, slowly, "I can't call to mind any craft; but it's odd that you should
have got on this subject with me."
Mr. Chalk laid