Page:Life's Handicap - Kipling (1891).djvu/205

THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS

Sec. 7. (1)	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	Causing Conspiring with other persons to cause	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	a mutiny sedition	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	in forces belonging to Her Majesty's	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	Regular force, Reserve forces, Auxiliary forces, Navy.

When three obscure gentlemen in San Francisco argued on insufficient premises they condemned a fellow-creature to a most unpleasant death in a far country, which had nothing whatever to do with the United States. They foregathered at the top of a tenement-house in Tehama Street, an unsavoury quarter of the city, and, there calling for certain drinks, they conspired because they were conspirators by trade, officially known as the Third Three of the I.A.A.—an institution for the propagation of pure light, not to be confounded with any others, though it is affiliated to many. The Second Three live in Montreal, and work among the poor there; the First Three have their home in New York, not far from Castle Garden, and write regularly once a week to a small house near one of the big hotels at Boulogne. What happens after that, a particular section of Scotland Yard knows too well, and laughs at. A conspirator detests ridicule. More men have been stabbed with Lucrezia Borgia daggers and dropped into the Thames for laughing at Head Centres and Triangles than for betraying secrets; for this is human nature.