“There’s devilry here,” said I.  “Give me the crooked stick from the corner.”

It was an ordinary walking-cane with a hooked top.  I passed it over the candlestick and gave it a pull.  With a flash a row of polished steel fangs shot out from below the upper lip, and the great striped chest snapped at us like a wild animal.  Clang came the huge lid into its place, and the glasses on the swinging rack sang and tinkled with the shock.  The mate sat down on the edge of the table and shivered like a frightened horse.

“You’ve saved my life, Captain Barclay!” said he.

So this was the secret of the striped treasure-chest of old Don Ramirez di Leyra, and this was how he preserved his ill-gotten gains from the Terra Firma and the Province of Veraquas.  Be the thief ever so cunning he could not tell that golden candlestick from the other articles of value, and the instant that he laid hand upon it the terrible spring was unloosed and the murderous steel pikes were driven into his brain, while the shock of the blow sent the victim backward and enabled the chest to automatically close itself.  How many, I wondered, had fallen victims to the ingenuity of the mechanic of Ausgburg?  And as I thought of the possible history of that grim striped chest my resolution was very quickly taken.

“Carpenter, bring three men, and carry this on deck.”

“Going to throw it overboard, sir?”

“Yes, Mr. Allardyce.  I’m not superstitious as a rule, but there are some things which are more than a sailor can be called upon to stand.”

“No wonder that brig made heavy weather, Captain Barclay, with such a thing on board.  The glass is dropping fast, sir, and we are only just in time.”

So we did not even wait for the three sailors, but we carried it out, the mate, the carpenter, and I, and we pushed it with our own hands over the bulwarks.  There was a white spout of water, and it was gone.  There it lies, the striped chest, a thousand fathoms deep, and if, as they say, the sea will some day be dry land, I grieve for the man who finds that old box and tries to penetrate into its secret.

A SHADOW BEFORE

The 15th of July, 1870, found John Worlington Dodds a ruined gamester of the Stock Exchange.  Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man.  And yet he had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish townlet of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter of the sum which he had earned during the single day that he was within its walls.  There is a romance of finance yet to be written, a story of huge forces which are for ever waxing and waning, of bold operations, of breathless suspense, of agonised failure, of deep combinations which are baffled by others still more subtle.  The mighty debts of each great European Power stand like so many columns of mercury, for ever rising and falling to indicate the pressure upon each.  He who can see far enough into the future to tell how that ever-varying column will stand to-morrow is the man who has fortune within his grasp.