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“Well, sir, it was just dusking in as they weighed and stood up towards Port William, the wind blowing pretty steady from the south’ard. At about ten minutes to seven o’clock it blew up in a sudden little squall–nothing to mention; the fishing-boats just noticed it, and that was all. But it was reckoned that squall capsized the Queen of Sheba. She never reached Port William, and no man ever clapped eyes on her after twenty minutes past six, when Dick Crego declares he saw her off the Blowth, half-way towards home, and going steady under all canvas. The affair caused a lot of stir, here and at Port William, and in the newspapers. Short-handed as they were, of course they’d no business to carry on as they did–‘specially as my wife declares from her looks that Mrs. Blake was feelin’ faint afore they started. She always seemed to me a weak, timmersome woman at the best; small and ailin’ to look at.”

“And Mr. Blake?”

“Oh, he was a strong-made gentleman: tall, with a big red beard.”

“The son?”

“Took after his father, only he hadn’t any beard; a fine upstanding pair.”

“And no trace was ever found of them?”

“Not a stick nor a shred.”

“But about this Visitors’ Book? You’ll swear they took it with them? See, there’s not a stain of salt-water upon it.”

“No, there isn’t; but I’ll swear young Mr. Blake had it in his hand as he went from my door.”

I said, “Mr. Job, I’ve kept you already too long from your dinner. Go and eat, and ask them to send in something for me. Afterwards, I want you to come with me and take a look at my yacht, that is lying just outside the haven.”

As we started from the shore Mr. Job, casting his eyes over the Siren, remarked, “That’s a very pretty yawl of yours, sir.” As we drew nearer, he began to eye her uneasily.

“She has been lengthened some five or six feet,” I said; “she was a cutter to begin with.”

“Lord help us!” then said Mr. Job, in a hoarse whisper. “She’s the Queen of Sheba. I’d swear to her run anywhere–ay, or to that queer angle of her hawse-holes.”

A close examination confirmed Mr. Job that my yacht was no other than the lost Queen of Sheba, lengthened and altered in rig. It persuaded me, too. I turned back to Plymouth, and, leaving the boat in Cattewater, drove to the Millbay Station and took a ticket for Bristol. Arriving there just twenty-four hours after my interview with Mr. Job, I made my way to Mrs. Carlingford’s lodgings.

She had left them two years before; nothing was known of her whereabouts. The landlady could not even tell me whether she had moved from Bedminster: And so I had to let the matter rest.

But just fourteen days ago I received the following letter, dated from a workhouse in one of the Midland counties:–

“DEAR SIR,–I am a dying woman, and shall probably be dead before this reaches you. The doctor says he cannot give me forty-eight hours. It is angina pectoris, and I suffer horribly at times. The yacht you purchased of me is not the Wasp, but the Queen of Sheba. My husband designed her. He was a man of some property near Limerick; and he and my son were involved in some of the Irish troubles between 1881 and 1884. It was said they had joined one of the brotherhoods, and betrayed their oaths. This I am sure was not true. But it is certain we had to run for fear of assassination. After a year in Liverpool we were forced to fly south to Port William, where we brought the yacht and lived for some time in quiet, under our own names. But we knew this could not last, and had taken measures to escape when need arose. My husband had chanced, while at Liverpool, upon an old yacht, dismantled and rotting in the Mersey–but of about the same size as his own and still, of course, upon the register. He bought her of her owner–a Mr. Carlingford, and a stranger–for a very few pounds, and with her–what he valued far more–her papers; but he never completed the transfer at the Custom House. His plan was, if pressed, to escape abroad, and pass his yacht off as the Wasp, and himself as Mr. Carlingford. All the while we lived at Port William the Queen of Sheba was kept amply provisioned for a voyage of at least three weeks, when the necessity overtook us, quite suddenly– the name of a man, MacGuire, in the Visitors’ Book of a small inn at Penleven. We left Penleven at dusk that evening, and held steadily up the coast until darkness. Then we turned the yacht’s head, and ran straight across for Morlaix; but the weather continuing fine for a good fortnight (our first night at sea was the roughest in all this time), we changed our minds, cleared Ushant, and held right across for Vigo; thence, after re-victualling, we cruised slowly down the coast and through the Straits, finally reaching Malaga. There we stayed and had the yacht lengthened. My husband had sold his small property before ever we came to Port William, and had managed to invest the whole under the name of Carlingford. There was no difficulty about letters of credit. At each port on the way we had shown the Wasp’s papers, and used the name of Carlingford; and at Lisbon we read in an English newspaper about the supposed capsizing of the Queen of Sheba. Still, we had not only to persuade the officials at the various ports that our boat was the Wasp. We knew that our enemies were harder to delude, and our next step was to make her as unlike the Wasp or the Queen of Sheba as possible. This we did by lengthening her and altering her rig. But it proved useless, as I had always feared it would. The day after we sailed from Malaga, a Spanish-speaking seaman, whom we had hired there as extra hand, came aft as if to speak to my husband (who stood at the wheel), and, halting a pace or two from him, lifted a revolver, called him by name, and shot him dead. Before he could turn, my son had knocked him senseless, and in another minute had tumbled him overboard. We buried my husband in the sea, next day. We held on, we two alone, past Gibraltar– I steering and my son handling all the sails–and ran up for Cadiz. There we made deposition of our losses, inventing a story to account for them, and my son took the train for Paris, for we knew that our enemies had tracked the yacht, and there would be no escape for him if he clung to her. I waited for six days, and then engaged a crew and worked the yacht back to F–. I have never since set eyes on my son; but he is alive, and his hiding is known to myself and to one man only–a member of the brotherhood, who surprised the secret. To keep that man silent I spent all my remaining money; to quiet him I had to sell the yacht; and now that money, too, is gone, and I am dying in a workhouse. God help my son now! I deceived you, and yet I think I did you no great wrong. The yacht I sold you was my own, and she was worth the money. The figures on the beam were cut there by my husband before we reached Vigo, to make the yacht correspond with the Wasp’s certificate. If I have wronged you, I implore your pardon.–Yours truly,

“CATHERINE BLAKE.”

Well, that is the end of the story. It does not, I am aware, quite account for the figure I saw standing by the Siren’s wheel. As for the Wasp, she has long since rotted to pieces on the waters of the Mersey. But the question is, Have I a right to sell the Siren? I certainly have a right to keep her, for she is mine, sold to me in due form by her rightful owner, and honestly paid for. But then I don’t want to keep her!