The Cruise of the Thetis | Page 4

at full speed one can scarcely feel a tremor in her."
"I am delighted to receive so excellent an account of her," answered Montijo, "and so will the Pater be when I tell him--or, rather, when you tell him; for, Singleton, I want you to promise that you will dine with us to-night, and make the Pater's acquaintance. He is the very dearest old chap that you ever met--your own father, of course, excepted--and he will be enchanted to make your acquaintance. He already knows you well enough by name to speak of you as `Jack'."
"I will do so with pleasure," answered Singleton heartily. "I have no other engagement, and after one has been to a theatre or a concert every night for a week--as I have--one begins to wish for a change. And while I don't wish to flatter you, Carlos, my boy, if your father is anything like you he is a jolly good sort, and I shall be glad to know him. But we have run somewhat off the track, haven't we? I understood that you have some sort of proposal to make."
"Yes," answered Montijo, "I have. Let me see--what were we talking about? Oh, yes, the yacht! Well, now that she is built, we are in something of a difficulty concerning her--a difficulty that did not suggest itself to any of us until quite recently. That difficulty is the difficulty of ownership. She has been built for the service of Cuba, but somebody must be her acknowledged owner; and if she is admitted to be the property of the Pater, of Marti, or, in fact, of any Cuban, she will at once become an object of suspicion to the Spanish Government, and her movements will be so jealously watched that it will become difficult, almost to the verge of impossibility, for her to render any of those services for which she is specially intended. You see that, Jack, don't you?"
"Certainly," answered Singleton, "that is obvious to the meanest intellect, as somebody once remarked. But how do you propose to get over the difficulty?"
"There is only one way that the Pater and I can see out of it," answered Montijo, "and that is to get somebody who is not likely to incur Spanish suspicion to accept the nominal ownership of the yacht, under the pretence of using her simply for his own pleasure."
"Phew!" whistled Singleton. "That may be all right for the other fellow, but how will it be for you? For that scheme to work satisfactorily you must not only find a man who will throw himself heart and soul into your cause, but also one whose honesty is proof against the temptation to appropriate to himself a yacht which will cost not far short of forty thousand pounds. For you must remember that unless the yacht's papers are absolutely in order, and her apparent ownership unimpeachable, it will be no good at all; she must be, so far at least as all documentary evidence goes, the indisputable property of the supposititious man of whom we have been speaking: and, that being the case, there will be nothing but his own inherent honesty to prevent him from taking absolute possession of her and doing exactly as he pleases with her, even to selling her, should he be so minded. Now, where are you going to find a man whom you can trust to that extent?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," answered Montijo; "at least, I didn't until I met you, Jack. But if you are willing to be the man--"
"Oh, nonsense, my dear fellow," interrupted Jack, "that won't do at all, you know!"
"Why not?" asked Montijo. "Is it because you don't care to interfere in Cuban affairs? I thought that perhaps, as you are obliged to take a longish holiday, with change of scene and interests, an outdoor life, and so on, you would rather enjoy the excitement--"
"Enjoy it?" echoed Singleton. "My dear fellow, `enjoy' is not the word, I should simply revel in it; all the more because my sympathies are wholly with the Cubans, while I--or rather my firm, have an old grudge against the Spaniards, who once played us a very dirty trick, of which, however, I need say nothing just now. No, it is not that; it is--"
"Well, what is it?" demanded Montijo, seeing that Jack paused hesitatingly.
"So near as I can put it," answered Jack, "it is this. Your father doesn't know me from Adam; and you only know as much as you learned of me during the time that we were together at Dulwich. How then can you possibly tell that I should behave on the square with you? How can you tell that, after having been put into legal possession of the yacht, I should not order you and your father