“Did they say much about the wreck?” I asked.

“There wasn’t much to say, I reckon,” replied the man-o’-war’s man.  “It was all in the papers.  ’Ardy used to yarn most about the coins he had gone through; he had lived with book-makers, and jockeys, and pugs, and actors, and all that:  a precious low lot!” added this judicious person.  “But it’s about here my ’orse is moored, and by your leave I’ll be getting ahead.”

“One moment,” said I.  “Is Mr. Sebright on board?”

“No, sir, he’s ashore to-day,” said the sailor.  “I took up a bag for him to the ’otel.”

With that we parted.  Presently after my friend overtook and passed me on a hired steed which seemed to scorn its cavalier; and I was left in the dust of his passage, a prey to whirling thoughts.  For I now stood, or seemed to stand, on the immediate threshold of these mysteries.  I knew the name of the man Dickson—­his name was Carthew; I knew where the money came from that opposed us at the sale—­it was part of Carthew’s inheritance; and in my gallery of illustrations to the history of the wreck, one more picture hung; perhaps the most dramatic of the series.  It showed me the deck of a warship in that distant part of the great ocean, the officers and seamen looking curiously on; and a man of birth and education, who had been sailing under an alias on a trading brig, and was now rescued from desperate peril, felled like an ox by the bare sound of his own name.  I could not fail to be reminded of my own experience at the Occidental telephone.  The hero of three styles, Dickson, Goddedaal, or Carthew, must be the owner of a lively—­or a loaded—­conscience, and the reflection recalled to me the photograph found on board the Flying Scud; just such a man, I reasoned, would be capable of just such starts and crises, and I inclined to think that Goddedaal (or Carthew) was the mainspring of the mystery.

One thing was plain:  as long as the Tempest was in reach, I must make the acquaintance of both Sebright and the doctor.  To this end, I excused myself with Mr. Fowler, returned to Honolulu, and passed the remainder of the day hanging vainly round the cool verandahs of the hotel.  It was near nine o’clock at night before I was rewarded.

“That is the gentleman you were asking for,” said the clerk.

I beheld a man in tweeds, of an incomparable languor of demeanour, and carrying a cane with genteel effort.  From the name, I had looked to find a sort of Viking and young ruler of the battle and the tempest; and I was the more disappointed, and not a little alarmed, to come face to face with this impracticable type.

“I believe I have the pleasure of addressing Lieutenant Sebright,” said I, stepping forward.

“Aw, yes,” replied the hero; “but, aw!  I dawn’t knaw you, do I?” (He spoke for all the world like Lord Foppington in the old play—­a proof of the perennial nature of man’s affectations.  But his limping dialect, I scorn to continue to reproduce.)