last penny. I stayed with him about a couple of months then, giving my wits to the job, and it was there I met Karl, the German engineer, who had got it into his head that gas was the motor of the near future. He talked of using it for the copper work, and then of building gas launches for transport; but he didn't know that he'd set me all aglow with another thought, which was nothing less than this—that I should build a steamer driven by gas, and run a game of piracy on the Atlantic with her. Do you call it lunacy? Well, other men have made good company for such lunatics, the Corsican murderer at Moscow among 'em. And what was it to be but a fight of one man against the world—a fight to set your best blood running fast in your veins, to brace every nerve in your body? Boy, I lived for a year on that excitement, which was more even than the drink to me. I left the mine to cruise again in the Rossa with the old hands; but we had added a long 'chaser' to our list of guns, and in the three months out we took twenty ships and over two hundred thousand in specie. I saw from the beginning of it that the one thing we couldn't stand against with a coal steamer was the constant putting into port to fill her bunkers; and I knew that if we didn't find some haven of refuge out of the common run, the day would come when we should swing like common cut-throats. I had taken Karl on
