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After completing his forage, without molestation, Mawhood returned to Philadelphia. During the continuance of this incursion, which lasted six or seven days, not more than two hundred men could be collected to reinforce Colonel Shreve, who was consequently unable to effect any thing, and did not even march to the lower parts of Jersey, which were plundered without restraint.

"Why, no," answered she, puzzled. "There was an old fellow named Shreve who ran steamboats before Jackson fought the redcoats at New Orleans. In Shreve's time the cabins were curtained off, just like these new-fangled sleeping-car berths. The old man built wooden rooms, and he named them after the different states, Kentuck, and Illinois, and Pennsylvania.

Also, he was seeking local color, and whatever information he could pick up about "King" Waldon. He had heard of the death of "King" Waldon, down in Samoa Waldon, the trader, of the vanishing race of island adventurers and he expected to travel about the south seas investigating the "king's" past, so he could write a book about the old viking. He had heard that Captain Shreve had known Waldon.

"Surely you don't mean the Golden Bough?" "But I do," said Briggs. He waved his hand. "There she is the Golden Bough. All that is left of the finest ship that ever smashed a record with the American flag at her gaff. She's a coal hulk now, but once she was the finest vessel afloat. Eh, Captain?" Captain Shreve nodded affirmation.

"We got to do it now, guns or no guns ain't that right, mates?" said the man, Green. "And the money, too!" added Blackie, artfully. "Enough of it aft there to set us all up for gents." Boston plucked me by the sleeve. "Me and Jack are goin' to have a few words private," says he to the rest. "He's with us no fear a feller like Jack Shreve stands by his mates. Come on, Jack."

A dozen men were on the way to produce a Clermont had Fulton failed; but Shreve had no rival in his plan to build a flat-bottomed steamboat. The remarkable success of his design is attested by the fact that in two decades the boats built on his model outweighed in tonnage all the ships of the Atlantic seaboard and Great Lakes combined.

He took the pen from the Shipping Commissioner's hand and wrote the name in the proper place upon the articles. "A. Newman," that is how he wrote it. Not the first time he had clapped eyes upon ship's articles, one could see with half an eye. I wrote my own "John Shreve" below his name, with an outward flourish, but with a sinking sensation inwardly.

He stopped his whetting and tried the edge of the blade with his thumb; then, suddenly, he reached out and clutched my wrist, and continued in a voice so charged with pain and grief, that I was appalled. "Ah'd do mos' anything foh de lady, but, Shreve, it ain't foh me, and it ain't foh any of us forward to say what's goin' to happen in dis ship.

Hence, he was honoring a cargo carrier with his presence instead of taking his ease upon a mail-boat. Captain Shreve must tell him all he knew about the "king." He was intensely interested in the subject. Splendid material, you know. That romantic legend of Waldon's arrival in the islands too good to be true, and certainly too good not to put into a book. Was Captain Shreve familiar with the tale?

General Washington had given early intelligence of this expedition to Governor Livingston; and had requested that he would immediately order out the militia to join Colonel Shreve, whose regiment was detached into Jersey; but the legislature had neglected to make provision for paying them; and the governor could not bring them into the field.