my conversation to Service matters, and after punctiliously taking leave of my hostess, I returned to Nice. John Crichton never joined the Camel Corps. It was destined to be the last time I was to see him, for he went west across the barricades of Neuve Chapelle just after the outbreak of war the following year. I doubt whether he left a will-which, after all, was strictly his own concern, for both his parents were dead, and he had not a soul dependent upon him. sort of life is pretty demoral- stricted During the latter part of the war military duties in London occasionally took me to the City offices of the great shipping lines, and one drizzling afternoon I found myself sheltering under the portals of a world-famed registry wherein are preserved the records of vessels and voyages long since forgotten. Musing over the many strange histories which must be buried amongst these archives, there flashed across my mind the old bell at Kebba and its curious inscription. I inquired whether it was possible to trace the Star of Havanna, and in a spacious record-room I interviewed a grey-headed clerk-curious anachronism in those topsy-turvy days amongst brightly-adorned girls, who flitted paper-laden through corridors and offices, or smoked V. was a full-rigged barque built at Harwich about the time when England, having vanquished Napoleon on the seas, diverting her maritime energies to merchant craft and commerce with America. After several successful voyages, she sailed from London in May 1825 for Charleston and New Orleans with a cargo of calico prints. She was evidently one of the best ships of her day, for she had twenty-two passengers on board, chiefly Southern planters returning to their homes. A French family bearing a historic name had taken passage for Charleston. With them, so a copy of the purser's schedule testified, they had a considerable amount of property, including a strong box containing jewellery and gold, whose value, even in those days, closely approximated a six-figure sum. The Star of Havanna never reached her destination. She was reported as last seen five days off the Carolina coast, but ship, passengers, and crew were never heard of again, and not the slightest trace was ever found. When I had garnered the bare official details, I turned to the clerk, and asked if he happened to remember the previous seeker into the history of the ill-fated vessel. "I've forgotten his name," he said, "but he was an army officer who had travelled abroad a lot. He spent days hunting out the records of all sorts of ships that used to run from Africa to the West Indies in the old slaving days. Perhaps you knew him, sir?” As briefly as possible I intimated that we had both closely studied African history, and were interested in the Star of Havanna because we understood that she was one of the vessels engaged in the slave traffic. 66 "No," he added; as you see by her papers, she was never near Africa. Your friend went to such trouble to find out all about her that I thought at the time he was writing a sea-yarn. We get lots of people like that here, you know. Either that, or he was some relation to the French people on board, for he was often over in Paris, and told me once that they had only just managed to get away to England with their valuables during the Revolution." Coincidence has wide-embracing arms, and when it stands astride two continents and overlooks the possibilities of a century, one finds it difficult to establish what lawyers call conclusive proof. Nevertheless, to my mind, the facts which I have so imperfectly pieced together cannot fail to correlate the loss of the Star of Havanna with the death of the hunted seaman on the black-scarped peak of Kebba; and perhaps, what is of keener interest to the Nigerian traveller of to-day, the origin of the evil juju of the Rock. For the rest, his tory tells us that the breaking- undetected across the Atlantic up of the sea-power of France to her old hunting-grounds with about that time set free a small the plunder. And it was one fleet of privateering vessels of member of this crew of scoundoubtful repute, to whom for drels who outwitted the rest decades adventure upon the and succeeded in escaping into high seas had been the breath the interior of Africa with the of life. The final suppression most valuable booty of all. of the slave-trade threw them He it was who perished so upon their own resources, and miserably at Kebba; his the those few who elected not to epitaph, that sinister tradition settle down to legitimate trade which will ever be associated ventures hoisted any flag which with the Rock, what time the suited their purpose, and lived sunlit waters below roll down for a very brief period by on their long journey to meet violence and piracy on the the restless breakers of the high seas. I think there is no Gulf of Guinea. doubt that it was the unhappy Of the precise part enacted fate of the richly-laden Star of by John Crichton in the drama Havanna to cross the path of nearly a hundred years later, one of these unknown ex- who can tell? Allah," said slavers, who, after scuttling the old ex-slave, "has seen. the unfortunate vessel, hurried He has recorded all." MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. THE FRANCHISE FOLLY OF 1917-18-CONCESSIONARY, NOT CONSERVATIVE, PRINCIPLES—LORD CURZON'S "FLOOD”—THE TESTIMONY OF ARISTOTLE-MR MACDONALD'S POSITION-A CARETAKER -MR ASQUITH, THE WRECKER-THE BLACK-COATED SOCIALISTS— FRANCE THEIR ENEMY. a WHILE we were waiting for the blow to fall which, we were told, impended, we had time to reflect by whose evil deeds it was that we came within the danger of the blow. Neither countries nor men rush upon ruin by accident or without premeditation. And the modest success of the Socialists at the General Election a success which, if it be not checked, will achieve our ruin presently -was ensured by the fanatics who passed, with scarce murmur of dissent, the illomened, unwanted Franchise Bill of 1917-18. The historians of the future may discover why that Bill was introduced and driven through the two Houses of Parliament with scarce a debate. Was it hypnotism which procured its ready acceptance, or were its mainsprings merely vanity and ignorance? However it came into being, one thing is certain: it was due to the surrender of certain Conservatives, who always seem to be ready with comfort and support for their adversaries when a revolution is at hand. We know those Conservatives well. Their principles are not Conservative, but concession 66 ary, as Disraeli said long ago. "This Party," he added in a sentence of grave and memorable wit, treats institutions as we do our pheasants-they preserve only to destroy them." It is, indeed, by destroying carefully preserved institutions that our "concessionaries," still wearing false labels upon their coats, have undone this realm of England. They have gone about their work of ruin with a cheerful complacency even with a foolish pride. They have inflicted more damage on the Empire than Radicals and Socialists combined, because in their wicked course they have met with no opposition. Why should they be opposed, when they were doing, unasked, the work of the enemy? It was the Unionists, as shall never be forgotten, who betrayed in Ireland the cause of the loyal citizens whom they were pledged solemnly to defend. At the very moment of a Unionist triumph Mr Galloper Smith and Mr Austen Chamberlain proved their sincerity by making terms with a gang of murderers, and showed the camera how sleek and smug men may look after they have made a meal in public not only of their words but of their principles. Shameful as the surrender was in Ireland, it is not wholly irreparable. Union has been known to follow disruption in that unhappy land, and will follow it again. To pass a Franchise Bill which adds ten million voters to the register, which practically disfranchises all classes but one, is to make a stealthy silent revolution, from which recovery cannot be made without civil war. To pass such a measure at any time without inquiry or debate would be a blunder. To pass it when the country was in the midst of a great war, when what was called "a political truce" was in force, was a crime unmatched in our political annals, sordid as they are. And the three politicians upon whom falls the heaviest burden of disgrace are Mr Lowther, the then Speaker of the House of Commons, Mr Walter Long, and Sir George Cave. To-day all three are members of the House of Lords. As we have said, we know not why in a moment of storm and stress they pushed the Bill through both Houses of Parliament. They did not share the scruple of William Pittthat is evident. When Pitt was asked to divert his attention from the prosecution of the war, "I would rather forgo for ever the advantages of reform," said he, "than risk for a moment the existence of the British Constitution." To Mr Walter Long and Sir George Cave, it seems, the existence of the British Constitution was of small moment. The Bill must be passed, we were told, and no questions asked. A certain number of gentlemen, it was said, sat round a table But always a dangerous thing to do, unless there are knives and forks and glasses on it,-and agreed upon a measure which nobody in particular wanted. The Committee, over which the Speaker presided, was said to be unanimous, and (we believe) was not, and by a reckless piece of irony the result of its deliberations was called a compromise. How that could have been a compromise, in which one side gave everything and the other side took all, is left unexplained. Mr Walter Long, speaking (we suppose) like the good old Tory that he boasts himself to be, extolled the simplicity of the plan. "We sweep away," said he, "all the existing complicated and mysterious qualifications, and put in their place two simple qualifications -a period of six months for residence, and occupation of business premises of the annual value of £10." swept away much else besides that. Meanwhile, the Bill, introduced by this eminent Conservative, wholly repealed thirty existing statutes and repealed practically thirty-two more. Not a bad day's work for a champion of things as they are! Indeed, he So without a murmur of dissent the evil Bill passed the |