Madame Gilbert's Cannibal

Between the arrival of Madame Gilbert at Tops Island and the coming of the Hedge Lawyer there interposed three or four brief weeks of happiness. Not for years had Madame been so...

They drew away from the South American Coast and headed for New Zealand and the Coral Sea beyond. And as Robert Ching pored over the chart of the Coral Sea it was borne in upon...

Willatopy, standing in dignified solitude upon the Captain's bridge, conned the _Humming Top_ through the deep water channels of bewildering intricacy which led from the Dungene...

That was the last of Madame Gilbert's happy days in Tops Island. Before twenty-four hours had gone by, the storm burst which whirled Willatopy as we have known him out of my sto...

Willatopy did not immediately discover that Marie had been forcibly embarked and definitely severed from his embraces. He did not attend the place of tryst next day, for he was...

Madame Gilbert's war service ended when Austria fell out. She had been in Italy busied with those obscure intrigues for the confounding of an enemy which are excused, and dignif...

The days passed, no more island schooners put in for night shelter at the entrance to the bay, and the Hedge Lawyer gained with every passing day a tighter grip upon the vagrant...

Madame Gilbert, standing by the rail, watched the boat come alongside which bore Lord Topsham and his legal adviser from Port Kennedy. They appeared to have been shopping with e...

"I spent nearly two months on Tops Island," said Madame to me, when telling her story in Whitehall, "and I was exceedingly loath to depart. I had by accident picked out the very...

It is fortunate that Madame Gilbert had already indulged her indecent sense of humour. Had she exploded at this tragic moment I should have been robbed of my story. I am sure fr...

The tide was at half ebb, and the trip out to the _Humming Top_ much wetter than Madame had expected. The long Pacific rollers were already crashing upon the bar, and had the mo...

They were gathered in the smoke-room which was planted upon the boat deck abaft the chart-house. It was the snuggery held in common by Madame and Ching and Ewing; to them was no...

Madame Gilbert kept no diary of her adventures, and her memory for dates is precarious. But the log of the _Humming Top_--to which I have had access--confirms her impression tha...

It was early in March, and the devastation wrought by the Admiralty in the yacht's graceful interior had been obliterated by the skilled hands of White of Cowes. Her upper and m...

A few more days had passed. Every afternoon, when released from attendance upon Madame Gilbert, the French girl would climb up to an appointed place on the hillside above the ca...

Three days later at noon the _Humming Top_, with thick oily smoke pouring from her funnel, was getting up steam and awaiting her pilot. Alexander Ewing, a grim happy Ewing, was...

The island schooner sailed at dawn. But three days later another came and went, and three days later yet another. It never rains but it pours. The Hedge Lawyer, spurred by a gre...

If I had not set myself down to write the story of Madame Gilbert in relation to His Lordship the Cannibal I should entertain my readers with full details of the _Humming Top's_...

The Captain of a British ship is every kind of civil authority, from magistrate and chaplain to hangman. In his capacity as coroner, Robert Ching held an enquiry in the saloon o...

"It was not intended," replied Madame Gilbert sadly. "I have been frank with you. All the interest and all the wealth of Toppys for their numberless generations would not have i...