The Turtles of Tasman

th its messages. Never had there been such visitors to the Travers home. Some came with the reminiscent roll of the sea in their gait. O

e equally various, from the South Sea trader with the discovery of a new guano island and the Latin-American with a nascent revolution on his hands, on through Siberian gold chases and the prospecting of the placer benches of the upper Kuskokeem, to darker things that were mentioned only in whispers. And Captain Tom regretted the temporary indisposition that prevented immediate departure with them, and continued to sit and drowse more a

you ain't forgot Tasman, eh?-nor the scrap at Thursday Island. Say-old Tasman was killed by his niggers only last year up German New G

brother to another visitor. "He pulled me out of a tight place on the We

lest blue, a slash-scarred mouth that a blazing red beard could n

ater, Tom had h

nk it will bother to a

ed splendidly. "You know half

rederick was morally certain that th

his own orderly desk taking stock of the difference between him and his brother.

ays, and he, Frederick, had done the work. Early and late and all days he had been at it. He remembered the season when Isaac's wide plans had taken one of their smashes, when food had been scarce on the table of a man who owned a hundred thousand acres, when there had been no money to hire harvesters for the hay, and when Isaac would not let go his grip on a single one of his acres. He, Frederick, had pitched the hay,

d the enlargement of the town water-system-how he had manoeuvred and financed, persuaded small loans at ruinous interest, and laid pipe and made joints by lantern light while the workmen slept, and the

rick remembered the final conference in the kitchen-Tom, and he, and Eliza Travers, who still cooked an

lecked, parboiled arms. "Isaac was right. It will be worth mi

Tom cried. "Let Frederick

nce, but all the vision of t

ntime let me have ten thousand. I'll sign off quitclaim to everything. And give m

that far past day, throwing up

ned to the breaking point to

urt house," Tom had urged. "I know the ba

ndred thousand in ten year

thousand. Sell it for ten and let me have it. It's a

old), and sailed away in the old schooner, the benediction of the town upon

en when Eliza Travers was being operated on for her eyes, and Frederick h

an over in his mind a few of the glimpsed highlights of Tom's career. He had fought in some sort of foreign troubles in Armenia. He had been an officer in the Chinese army, and it was a certainty that the trade he later drove in the China Seas was illicit. He had been caught running arms into Cuba. It seemed he had always been running somethi

He looked at the date, April 18, 1883, and opened another packet. "May 5th," 1883, was the dated sheet he drew out.

here's a wreck on Midway Island. A fortune in it, salvage you know. Auction in two days. Cable me four thousand." The last he examined, ran: "A deal I can swing with a little cash. It's big, I tell

I O U's. Frederick musingly weighed the packet of them in his hand, as though to determine

air he saw Polly just tiptoeing from the room. Tom's head lay back, and his bre