American political elections to the loss of a ship in the sea. That last business of theirs is also my business, for the time.
"Of late the English insurers have had many claims to pay—claims on ships which should have been good risks. There was the Dutch Indiaman Van Damm, a sound little iron ship of twelve thousand tons displacement. She sail out of Rotterdam for Sumatra, and start home heavy-laden with spices and silks, also with a king's ransom in pearls safely locked in her strong box. Where is she now?" He spread his hands and shrugged expressively. "No one knows. She was never heard of more, and the Lloyds had to make good her value to her owners.
"There was the French steamer l'Orient, also dissolved into air, and the British merchantman Nightingale, and six other sound ships gone—all gone, with none to say whither, and the estimable Messieurs Lloyd to pay insurance. All within one single year. Parbleu, it is too much! The English company pays its losses like a true sportsman, but it also begins to sniff the aroma of the dead fish. They would have me, Jules de Grandin, investigate this business of the monkey and tell them where the missing ships are gone.
"It may be for a year that I search; it may be for only a month, or, perhaps, I spend the time till my hair is as bald as yours, Friend Trowbridge, before I can report. No matter; I receive my ten pounds each day and all incidental expenses. Say now, are not those Messieurs Lloyd gambling more recklessly this time than ever before in their long career?"
"I think they are," I agreed.
"But," he replied with one of his elfish grins, "remember, Trowbridge, my friend, those Messieurs Lloyd were never known to lose money permanently on any transaction. Morbleu! Jules de Grandin, as the Americans say, you entertain the hatred for yourself!"
The Mevrouw churned and wallowed her broadbeamed way through the cool European ocean, into the summer seas, finally out upon the tropical waters of Polynesia. For five nights the smalt-blue heavens were ablaze with stars; on the sixth evening the air thickened at sunset. By 10 o'clock the ship might have been draped in a pall of black velvet as a teapot is swathed in a cozy, so impenetrable was the darkness. Objects a dozen feet from the porthole lights were all but indistinguishable, at twenty feet they were invisible, and, save for the occasional phosphorescent glow of some tumbling sea denizen, the ocean itself was only an undefined part of the surrounding blackness.
"Eh, but I do not like this," de Grandin muttered as he lighted a rank Sumatra cigar from the ship steward's store and puffed vigorously to set the fire going: "this darkness, it is a time for evil doings, Friend Trowbridge."
He turned to a ship's officer who strode past us toward the bridge. "Is it that we shall have a storm, Monsieur?" he asked. "Does the darkness portend a typhoon?"
"No," returned the Dutchman. "Id iss wolcanic dust. Some of dose volcano mountains are in eruption again and scatter steam and ash over a hundred miles. Tomorrow, berhaps, or de nex' day, ve are out of id an' into de zunzhine again."
"Ah," de Grandin bowed acknowledgment of the information, "and does this volcanic darkness frequently come at this latitude and longitude, Monsieur?"
"Ja," the other answered, "dese vaters are almost alvays covered; de
