Page:Guy Boothby - The Beautiful White Devil.djvu/99

tioned- in the West Indies, and soon after he was made commander of his ship, that he met my mother, a beautiful Creole, and married her. From the moment of his marriage the good luck which had hitherto attended his career seemed to desert him; he lost his ship on an uncharted rock, and, when he was appointed to another, was ordered to a bad station, where he nearly lost his wife and his own life of fever. With his recovery came the most unfortunate part of his career. For just as he was about to be relieved, a charge was preferred against him by the admiral of the station, of so base and wicked a description that all those who heard it refused at first to entertain the notion. He was court-martialled and expelled the service. Since then the charge has been proved to have been entirely without foundation, but by the time that was known my poor father had died in exile. He appealed, but what was the use of that? To a proud, headstrong man, conscious of his innocence, such disgrace was unbearable, and he at length fled from England, resolved to shake its dust for ever off his feet. He went to India, but the result of the trial was known there, and every post was barred to him. He passed on to Singapore, and finally to Hong Kong, but always with the same result. By this time everything that was obstinate and worst in him was roused; and when the admiral, the same who had brought the charge against him, was transferred to the China station, my father sought him out in Shanghai, decoyed him outside the city, requested him to publicly admit that the charges he had brought against him were false, and on his refusing, produced pistols, invited him to a duel, and shot him dead. Then, while the police were hunting for him,