If I had not set myself down to write the story of Madame Gilbert in relation to His Lordship the Cannibal I should entertain my readers with full details of the Humming Top's illicit enterprises. Abetted by Captain Ching and Madame Gilbert, the capable Scot, Ewing, let himself go. "It should never be said of me," he remarked, "that I encouraged the vices of the Dagoes by making them inexpensive. They shall find their sins a most costly luxury. In the eyes of the judeecious my operations convey a strictly moral lesson." To dopes and drinks he added chemicals and dyes of high commercial importance. "In brand they are Swiss, but in parentage suspiciously German; the Dagoes will pay the more for them on that account."

The stowage capacity of the Humming Top filled him with admiration.

"The design of this boat," pronounced Ewing, "is vairy creditable to my friend Ar-r-chie Denny of Dumbarton. He was not at the time she was constructed the Baronet that he grew into; just plain Ar-r-chie. He is a vairy far-sighted man, is Ar-r-chie Denny. When he designed that snug wee hold below the main deck, so modest, so unobtrusive, so shrinking from observation, yet so bountiful in capacity, he must have foreseen that his yacht would find its way into gude judeecious Scots hands. He is a vairy releegious man, is Ar-r-chie Denny. I shall chairge the idolatrous Papists a price for the dopes and dyes which will gratify his Presbyterian conscience. The Scots, you will observe, Madame, are a grand God-fearing people."

"I am a Papist," whispered Madame. "It was not my fault, and I am not a very good one."

"The better for that; the better for that," said Ewing, encouragingly. "You need only a gude Scots Presbyterian husband and you would become a pairfect wumman."

Ching entered with zeal into the lawless projects of the Scots Engineer. His ancestors—and mine—had played the merry three-legged game a few hundred years earlier, and, like all of true Devon stock, he was unchangeable in temper. He was a smuggler by inheritance. Out of Plymouth to the Slave Coast with beads and trumpery—the first leg. From the Coast to the West Indies with a cargo of blackbirds—the second leg. From the West Indies to Plymouth with rum and molasses—the third leg. That was the merry three-legged game with hundreds per cent. profit at the end of each leg. And in those righteous days no excess profits duty. We of Devon played it, and the Pilgrim Fathers of Rhode Island played it—with geographical modifications—and we remained citizens of the highest repute. John Hawkins, who began it, became a Knight by the hand of Queen Elizabeth, and Treasurer of the Royal Navy of England. We have fallen upon soft times, but even now the Devon folk—and Scots like friend Ewing—revert to ancestral types and practices. "A far-sighted man is Ar-r-chie Denny," murmured Ewing again, as he stuffed packages into the snug wee hold between the main deck and the ballast tanks. "He would just love to be here to see how we appreciate his cunning war-r-k."

Ewing speedily found that Plymouth was an unsympathetic base for his illicit operations. In the old days Cawsand at the western entrance of the Sound had been a famous smuggling centre, but its glory had departed. Plymouth itself was hedged about with unromantic restrictions. Ewing's Glasgow accomplices could pass down dyestuffs and chemicals in gratifying quantity, but dopes, the glowing fount of profits, declined to flow.

"The English," wailed Ewing, "give no encouragement to honest Scottish enterprises. Their jealousy is just parochial. There was a time when one could ship any damn thing out of Glasgow, but there is too much of the Royal British fossilised old Navy about Plymouth. Those Keyham blacksmiths did their wor-r-st to strip my turbines with their monkey tricks when the Humming Top was requisitioned, and the port authorities are every bit as feckless as the Navy, all forms and Customs regulations. Give me immoral belle France and worthy dishonest Spain."

He did better at Bordeaux, and best of all at Lisbon, to which easy-going jumping-off place his Glasgow friends ordered Switzerland to consign the soul-raising dopes which England had barred as immoral. There are few scruples about Switzerland and fewer still about Portugal.

"We Scots are proud of our national institutions," remarked Ewing, when Lisbon unfolded to him its charms as an abetter of crime, "until we come to experience their rotten foolishness. We are too intolerant and logical; give me the broadminded and wholly unscrupulous Dagoes for business partners. We lack sympathy with human weakness, but the Dagoes coin dollars out of it all the time. If I were a wee bit younger I would turn Dago myself."

When at last the Humming Top cast off at Lisbon and stretched away at her leisurely eleven knots for Colon and the South Seas she was stuffed with stores of "prodeegious richness," all insured.

"But go careful, Ching, if you love me," implored Ewing. "I have covered the lot on board of us at Lloyd's, but a claim won't bear looking into. If we do get wrecked this side of Valparaiso, it has got to be a thorough casualty. A total loss. A sunk ship tells no tales."

"We are not going to be lost," promised the Skipper.

"Speak softly, man," whispered Ewing. "Speak soft. Rub wood. Ye carry CÆsar and his fortunes. There is sair peril in boastfulness at sea."

To Madame the flagrant abuse of Sir John Toppys' marine hospitality was a rich jest, packed with many a subtle stimulus to laughter. One remorseless Fate—in the person of the late Hon. William Toppys—had given a coloured Head to an ultra-respectable and unimaginative English Family. A second Fate—in the person of naughty Madame Gilbert—had corrupted the virtue of the Family Yacht, and set her rollicking across the seas as a flagrantly unchaste smuggler. The private list of her "soul-raising" stores, designed to pander to the degenerate tastes of South American Dagoes, almost staggered Madame herself, and she turned for the solace of her seasoned conscience to the blameless manifest craftily prepared by Captain Ching for the edification of the Panama Canal Board.

"You are sure there will be no examination?" she asked the Skipper.

"Sure," he said confidently. "We are landing nothing in the Canal Zone, and the Board doesn't care two pins what we carry through."

"If that is so," murmured Madame; "if we get through without scandal, I will tell Sir John Toppys all about it. He is a white man, Captain Ching, who trusted me. One owes something," added Madame virtuously, "to a white man who really trusts one."

Confession after crime was to Madame—and I am afraid also to the "grandly releegious" Ewing—greatly to be preferred to weak repentance before hand.

"It is the golden rule of life," said Ewing, "not to repent too soon. There is a time and season for all things."

That very up-to-date yacht the Humming Top carried a wireless plant and a Marconi operator. Aerials hung between the slim masts, and their range of contact with the outside world extended for five hundred miles—by day. By night it was much wider. The operator, as they hummed along, picked up the news of the day for Madame's edification; it cannot be said that he was overworked.

I think Madame's state room—it really was worthy of that abused epithet—must have been designed for the use of Sir John Toppys and his departed lady, in the days when space at sea was a new luxury. With its appurtenances—a dressing-room at one end and a bathroom at the other—it was thirty feet long, and it contained, as has been said, a spring bedstead hung hammock-wise. The bed gave discreetly to the roll of the ship. In the dressing-room which had a door of direct communication, was installed Madame's maid, a French girl who detested the sea and did not conceal her hatred. She became reconciled to the months of sea travel by the gratifying circumstance that she and Madame were two lone women in a man-infested ship. Marie could do with a large surplusage of Man.

The saloon on the upper deck was the Mess of Madame and the chief officers; to the two junior deck officers and the two assistant Engineers was assigned the Mess Room aft on the main deck out of which their cabins opened, and to them, at their own request, was added the society at meals of Marie.

"How many?" enquired Madame, when Ching diffidently communicated the invitation. "Four of them? Marie could keep a dozen busy. She will make four hop pretty briskly." In spite of bouts of sea-sickness I fancy that Marie enjoyed her voyage.

Between Madame Gilbert and her companions grew up a close friendship. She talked freely with them except upon the purpose of her travels. That was maintained for the present as a Family Secret. They, simple creatures, sometimes wondered why Sir John Toppys should spend so much money upon Madame's pleasures and refrain from sharing them with her. His absence was grateful in their sight—for did they not between them monopolise a most gracious and entertaining lady?—but they often wondered at his lack of enterprise.

"Ching," said Ewing confidentially, "you are married as tightly as I am, and both of us are faithful—in reason—to our wedded wives. But if you had the chance of an unlawful holiday cruise with our beautiful Madame Gilbert, would you not jump at it?"

"Ewing," said Ching, as confidentially, "I am a sinful man. I should."

"Sir John Toppys must be a meeracle," declared Ewing, after a long pause.

"Perhaps it is Madame who is the miracle," observed the Skipper shrewdly.

The ripe flavour of Ewing's Scottish character was not appreciated by Madame Gilbert until a conversation took place off Valparaiso, for the contraband cargo had all been disposed of—at cash prices—and Ching and Ewing were counting up their gains in Madame's presence. Half the profits were set aside for the Owner of the Humming Top, and were safely locked up with the ship's gold in the Captain's safe.

"It's an awful sum of money to pay over to the idle rich," wailed Ewing.

The "Idle Rich," as Madame and Ching pointed out, had not only provided the vessel for their illicit trading operations, but had also paid handsome wages to the crew—including their noble selves. Incidentally his idle wealth purchased the tons of oil fuel—at steadily advancing prices—which they drew aboard at Colon and purposed to take in at Auckland. The "Idle Rich" supplied the Capital and working expenses; Ching, Madame, and Ewing the unscrupulous Labour. Madame, it may be observed, received nothing: Ewing and Ching drew fifty per cent. between them.

"Was not that fair?" enquired Madame.

"As a matter of metapheesical exactitude," replied Ewing cautiously, "I would not deny that the Owner's half-profit is defensible. From the point of view, mar-r-k my wor-r-ds, of the Idle Capeetalist. But the Spirit of the Age, Madame, is not concairned solely with—with the boodle. The news which flickers in over our most efficient wireless apparatus indicates that the Wor-r-kers of the Wor-r-ld are all on the Grab. I am a wor-r-ker, Ching is a wor-r-ker, you, Madame, are a wor-r-ker. Sir John Toppys is not a wor-r-ker. I don't suppose that the little man has ever sweated in his life-except maybe at the gowf. To the wor-r-kers belong the profits. That means Ching and me."

"But I am also a wor-r-ker," put in Madame slyly.

Ewing shuffled uneasily. "I have said so, and I bide by what I have said. But you have waived your rights, Madame. Ching will bear witness."

Madame laughed. Then an idea struck her, and she gleefully cast it in Ewing's voracious teeth.

"I have waived my rights. But your officers and men have not waived theirs. They are wor-r-kers. They have navigated the ship which has sailed the seas and carried the goods which Ewing and Ching and Madame—and those friends of yours in Glasgow—have bought and sold. By comparison with the junior officers and the humble men, you and I are little better than idle rich ourselves. We just give the orders; they do the hard uninteresting wor-r-k. We loll smoking here while they sweat. Surely they should have their share of the boodle."

Horror competed with exasperation on the harsh red face of the Chief Engineer. With difficulty he awaited the end of her speech and then burst out:

"Is it possible, Madame Gilbert, that you are a Socialist? I could not have believed it of you if I had not hair-r-d your terrible wur-r-ds with my own ears."

"I am more than a Socialist," said Madame proudly. "I am a Bolshevist where the humble poor are concerned."

Ewing shuddered. "I could not have believed it. It is just peetiful trash that you speak. And you in other respects a maist sensible wumman. What is ceevilisation?" Ewing flung out this large inquiry, and an answer not being offered, proceeded to supply one himself. "Ceevilisation is brains, Madame. Capital is not brains; it is gilded idleness levying toll on the honest wor-r-ker. Toilsome sweat is not brains; it just stupidly does what it is told by superior intelligences. Sir John Toppys is not ceevilisation. The men who obey our or-r-ders above deck and in the engine-room are not ceevilisation. WE are ceevilisation. Ching and I—and you, Madame, who have waived your claim to a share. And quite right, too. In strict economic justice, I, Alexander Ewing, should draw a lairger dividend from the boodle than Rober-r-t Ching. And for why? Because I have the mair brains. The oreeginal idea of this smuggling plant was mine. But I say nothing about that," he added generously. "Share and share alike. But if," he went on with vicious emphasis, "any of my engine-room hands, or my Engineers, peer their noses into my private enterprises I will sor-r-t their fat car-r-cases with a coal shovel. Ceevilisation is brains, Madame. Don't for peety's sake tell you fearsome Socialism to me any more. I just canna bear it."

The plunder was all in fat United States dollars, a noble currency which towers like a mountain peak amidst the wreckage of European depreciated paper. Ewing saw to that. He dribbled out his highly demanded stores in quantities that rather added to than diminished the exuberant buoyancy of the market. He was a Scotsman who had made a Corner, next perhaps to a Scotsman on the Make the most noble Wor-r-k of God. Dagoes of varied hues, and of more than doubtful parentage, came and went; they were closeted with Ewing in the saloon, and departed stripped. They got their dyes and their chemicals and their naughty dopes, but what a hair-raising price they were compelled to pay!

"I am no profiteer," declared Ewing. "Just a plain, honest Scottish mairchant. I chairge no mair than the mar-r-ket will bear. And I have a suspeecion that there will be no excess profits duty paid on this deal. We are private persons engaged in honourable professions, not traders or registered partners. Besides we are out of the jurisdiction of the wucked English income tax. We are patriots, too, employed upon the noble wor-r-k of reconstructing the trade of the British Empire."

When one combines lofty patriotism with some five hundred per cent. profit, the result cannot fail to be profoundly gratifying.