The Tomahawk. [volume] (White Earth, Becker County, Minn.) 1903-192?, 1925-09-03

you will become famous" And
the speaker was worth 50OOO,-
600.
Il can do 1t as sure as you are on
this Ship was the reply. And this
speaker was worth $50.
There is nothing more certain than
that / am on this ship, l am sorry to
say. 1 would give $10,OOO,O00 If were
lot.
There are worse places to be In
than on a ship as we'll found as this
one is, even if she hasn't any propel-
Ter or other motive power"
'True, but, in my estimation. being
out here helpless on the ocean, en-
tirely cut off from communication with
interests whose vastness you cannot
conceive, is absolutely indescribable
torture. 1t Is not dollars and cents
alone that Is involved. If it were mere
Iy money 1 could stand the strain
thousand times easier"
The liner whose decks the two men
who thus conversed were pacing was
30 days overdue. While she was given
up for lost by nearly everybody in the
several countries interested in her fate,
the actual facts were that she had only
dropped her propeller and performed
the unusual feat of drifting for al
most a month without being sighted.
Among the passengers Of the
crippled liner were a score of men who
in the financial world ranked as mil
lionaires, and they were a hundred
times as fretful as those of moderate
means who were in the same boat.
The enforced idleness made life in
tolerable to the financiers, and If any
body could have set them ashore In a
civilized community, he could have
collected about billion dollars-pro-
vided the men af money made good the
offers they voiced.
But the man most anxious to escape
from the lolling liner was Mr.. Jacob ].
Robinson, the impatient individual who
declared that he would give $1O,OOO,OOO
to safely terminate the exasperating
voyage.
He said so much about vastly i'm.
portant transaction in which he was
vitality interested that everybody on
board the ship at last became so i'm
bued with anxiety as to its outcome
that that anxiety amounted to a posi-
tive relief to them, because 1t kept all
hands from brooding over their own
troubles.
The transaction harped on by the
financier had been in negotiation be-
fore he had started on hurried bust
ness trip abroad, and, according to
his assertion, he had received cable ad
vices as to it's progress up to the hour
he set out to return home, but, Of
course, what had happened in the
month he was at sea was a mystery to
him.
So he pranced to and fro, daily, look
ing for q vessel which might be "hired
or bought" as he put it, in order that
he might be transported to a point
where he could gain the keenly coveted
information.
Other millionaires on the helpless
ship had big transactions pending, but,
In comparison with the Robinson affair
they shrank into the dimensions Of
bucket shop deals, as the indications
were that it was something that would
or maybe had, turned the financial
world wrong end first, or had whirTed
the governments Of several big nations
into such tangle that chaos reigned
or at least a general war was already
being waged.
The impatient millionaire gave no
details, but always talked in glittering
generalities, and no one had the temer-
ity to ask for specific information on
such momentOus subject. The other
millionaires discussed the question
among themselves, and INDUCED in all
kinds Of surmises-at many of which
they shivered-but the mystery re-
NAMED impenetrable. Yet, none could
doubt that the transaction" was
something awful, and the sympathy
awakened at length attained such q
depth that blind pool of fabulous
proportions was made up by the money
kings to be offered in case it should be
needed - provided, always, rescue
came.
Mr.. Robinson was so sincere and yet
so mild-mannered in all he said that
his assertions were convincing to the
minds of all. Even Jack Albright, the
least anxious passenger, who admitted
that he was glad he didn't have to pay
his board on the prolonged voyage, was
convinced that the fnancier was not
crazy.
Jack was about thirty-five years old