He beckoned to Sir Joseph to lean over the bulwark, and hear something he had to say in private.  “Remember what I told you about Launcelot Linzie!” he whispered fiercely.  His parting look was for Natalie.  He spoke to her with a strong constraint on himself, as gently as he could.  “Don’t be alarmed; I shall see you in London.”  He seated himself in the boat and took the tiller.  The last words they heard him say were words urging the men at the oars to lose no time.  He was invariably brutal with the men.  “Pull, you lazy beggars!” he exclaimed, with an oath.  “Pull for your lives!”

THIRD SCENE.

The Money Market.

Let us be serious.—­Business!

The new scene plunges us head foremost into the affairs of the Levant trading-house of Pizzituti, Turlington & Branca.  What on earth do we know about the Levant Trade?  Courage!  If we have ever known what it is to want money we are perfectly familiar with the subject at starting.  The Levant Trade does occasionally get into difficulties.—­Turlington wanted money.

The letter which had been handed to him on board the yacht was from his third partner, Mr. Branca, and was thus expressed: 

“A crisis in the trade.  All right, so far—­except our business with the small foreign firms.  Bills to meet from those quarters, (say) forty thousand pounds—­and, I fear, no remittances to cover them.  Particulars stated in another letter addressed to you at Post-office, Ilfracombe.  I am quite broken down with anxiety, and confined to my bed.  Pizzituti is still detained at Smyrna.  Come back at once.”

The same evening Turlington was at his office in Austin Friars, investigating the state of affairs, with his head clerk to help him.

Stated briefly, the business of the firm was of the widely miscellaneous sort.  They plied a brisk trade in a vast variety of commodities.  Nothing came amiss to them, from Manchester cotton manufactures to Smyrna figs.  They had branch houses at Alexandria and Odessa, and correspondents here, there, and everywhere, along the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the ports of the East.  These correspondents were the persons alluded to in Mr. Branca’s letter as “small foreign firms;” and they had produced the serious financial crisis in the affairs of the great house in Austin Friars, which had hurried Turlington up to London.

Every one of these minor firms claimed and received the privilege of drawing bills on Pizzituti, Turlington & Branca for amounts varying from four to six thousand pounds—­on no better security than a verbal understanding that the money to pay the bills should be forwarded before they fell due.  Competition, it is needless to say, was at the bottom of this insanely reckless system of trading.  The native firms laid it down as a rule that they would decline to transact business with any house in the trade which refused to grant them their privilege.  In the ease of