The promotion of the admiral, and other sea comedies
Date: 2022-09-06T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Short stories; English; Sea stories; English fiction -- 20th century

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Title: The promotion of the admiral, and other sea comedies

Author: Morley Roberts

Release date: September 6, 2022 [eBook #68919]
Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: L. C. Page & Company, 1902

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68919

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROMOTION OF THE ADMIRAL, AND OTHER SEA COMEDIES ***

ADMIRAL SIR RICHARD DUNNE

The Promotion of
the Admiral

And Other Sea Comedies

By

Morley Roberts

Author of
"The Colossus," "The Fugitives," etc.

Illustrated

BOSTON * L. C. PAGE
& COMPANY * Publishers

Copyright, 1902, 1903
By THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

Copyright, 1903
By L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)

All rights reserved

Third Impression

Published August, 1903

THE WORKS OF
MORLEY ROBERTS

The Idlers
Lady Penelope
Rachel Marr
The Promotion of the Admiral

L. C. PAGE COMPANY
New England Building
Boston, Mass.

CONTENTS

I. The Promotion of the Admiral

II. The Settlement with Shanghai Smith

III. The Policy of the Potluck

IV. The Crew of the Kamma Funder

V. The Rehabilitation of the Vigia

VI. Three in a Game

VII. The Man from Abo

VIII. The Scuttling of the Pandora

THE PROMOTION OF THE ADMIRAL.

Mr. Smith, who ran a sailors' boarding-house in that part of San Francisco known as the Barbary Coast, was absolutely sui generis. If any drunken scallawag of a scholar, who had drifted ashore on his boarding-house mud-flats, had ventured in a moment of alcoholic reminiscence to say so in the classic tongue, Shanghai Smith would have "laid him out cold" with anything handy, from a stone-ware match-box to an empty bottle. But if that same son of culture had used his mother tongue, as altered for popular use in the West, and had murmured: "Jerusalem but Mr. Smith's the daisy of all!" Smith would have thrown out his chest and blown through his teeth a windy oath and guessed he was just so.

"Say it and mean it, that's me," said Smith. "I'm all right. But call me hog and I am hog; don't you forget it!"

Apparently all the world called him "hog." For that he was no better than one, whether he walked, or ate, or drank, or slept, was obvious to any sailor with an open eye. But he was hard and rough and tough, and had the bull-headed courage of a mad steer combined with the wicked cunning of a monkey.

"Don't never play upon me," he said often. "For 'get even' is my motter. There ain't many walkin' this earth that can say they bested me, not from the time I left Bristol in the old dart till now, when I'm known the wide world over."

So far as ships and sailormen were concerned he certainly spoke the truth. He was talked of with curses in the Pacific from the Prybiloffs to the Horn, from San Francisco to Zanzibar. It was long odds at any given time in any longitude that some seaman was engaged in blaspheming Shanghai Smith for sending him on board drunk and without a chest, and with nothing better to propitiate his new shipmates with than a bottle of vinegar and water that looked like rum till it was tasted. Every breeze that blew, trade wind or monsoon, had heard of his iniquities. He got the best of every one.

"All but one," said Smith in a moment of weakness, when a dozen men, who owed so much money that they crawled to him as a Chinaman does to a joss, were hanging upon his lips—"all but one."

"Oh, we don't take that in," said one of the most indebted; "we can 'ardly believe that, Mr. Smith."

Sometimes this unsubtle flattery would have ended in the flatterer being thrown out. But Smith was now gently reminiscent.

"Yes, I was done brown and never got the best of one swine," said the boarding-house keeper. "I don't ask you to believe it, for I own it don't sound likely, me being what I am. But there was one swab as give me a hidin', and he give it me good, so he did."

He looked them over malignantly.

"I kin lick any of you here with one hand," he swore, "but the man as bested me could have taken on three of you with both hands. And I own I was took aback considerable when I run against him on the pier at Sandridge when I was in Australia fifteen years ago. He was a naval officer, captain of the Warrior, and dressed up to kill, though he had a face like a figure-head cut out of mahog'ny with a broad-axe. And I was feelin' good and in need of a scrap. So when he bumped agin me, I shoved him over—prompt, I shoved him. Down he went, and the girls that know'd me laughed. And two policemen came along quick. I didn't care much, but this naval josser picks himself up and goes to 'em. Would you believe it, but when he'd spoke a bit I seed him donate them about a dollar each and they walked off round a heap of dunnage on the wharf, and the captain buttoned up his coat and came for me. I never seen the likes of it. He comes up dancin' and smilin', and he kind of give me half a bow, polite as you like, and inside of ten seconds I knew I'd struck a cyclone, right in the spot where they breed. I fought good—(you know me)—and I got in half a dozen on his face. But I never fazed him none, and he wouldn't bruise mor'n hittin' a boiler. And every time he got back on me I felt as if I'd been kicked. He scarred me something cruel. I could see it by the blood on his hands. Twarn't his, by a long sight, for his fists was made of teak, I should say. And in the end, when I seemed to see a ship's company of naval officers around me, one of them hit me under the ear and lifted me up. And another hit me whilst I was in the air, and a third landed me as I fell. And that was the end of it, so far's I remember. When I came to, which was next day in a kind of sailors' hospital, I reached up for a card over my head, and I read 'concussion of the brain' on it. What's more, I believed it. If the card had let on that I'd been run over by a traction engine and picked up dead, I'd have believed it. And when I reely came to my senses, a med'cal student says as Captain Richard Dunn, of the Warrior, had bin to inquire when the funeral was, so's he could send a wreath. They said he was the topside fighter in the hull British Navy. And I'm here to say he was."

He breathed fierce defiance and invited any man alive to tell him he was lying.

"And you never got even?" asked the bar-tender, seeing that no one took up the challenge.

"Never set eyes on him from that day to this," said his boss regretfully.

"And if you did?"

Smith paused, took a drink.

"So help me, I'd Shanghai him if he was King of England!"

And one of the crowd, who had put down the San Francisco Chronicle in order to hear this yarn, picked it up again.

"S'elp me," he said, in a breathless excitement, "'ere's a bally cohincidence. 'Ere's a telegram from 'Squimault, saying as how the flagship Triumphant, Hadmiral Sir Richard Dunn, K.C.B., is comin' down to San Francisco!"

"Holy Moses, let's look!" said Shanghai Smith.

He read, and a heavenly smile overspread his hard countenance. He almost looked good, such joy was his.

"Tom," he said to the bar-tender, "set up the drinks for the crowd. This is my man, for sure. And him an admiral, too! Holy sailor, ain't this luck?"

He went out into the street and walked to and fro rubbing his hands, while the men inside took their drink, and looked through the uncleaned windows at the boss.

"Holy Mackinaw," said Billy, who had drifted West from Michigan, "I reckon never to hev seen Mr. Smith so pleased since he shipped a crowd in the Harvester, and got 'em away that night and shipped 'em in the Silas K. Jones."

"He's struck a streak o' luck in his mind," said one of the seamen; "and it's this 'ere hadmiral. Now mark me, mates, I wouldn't be that 'ere hadmiral for the worth of California. Mr. Sir Blooming Hadmiral, K.C.B., et setterer, is going to 'ave a time."

He shook his head over the melancholy fate of a British admiral.

"Rot!" said one of the younger men; "'tain't possible to do nothin' to the likes of an admiral. Now, if 'twas a lieutenant or even a captain, I'm not sayin' as Mr. Smith mightn't do somethin'. But an admiral——"

"You mark me," said the older man, "I'd rather be as green as grass and ship as an able-bodied seaman with Billy Yates of the Wanderer, than be in that hadmiral's shoes. What do you say, Tom?"

Tom filled himself up a drink and considered.

"Wa'al," he answered after a long pause, "it's my belief that it won't necessary be all pie to be an admiral if the boss is half the man he used to be. For you see 'tis quite evident he has a special kind of respect for this admiral, and when Mr. Smith has been done by any one that he respects, he don't ever forget. Why, you know yourselves that if one of you was to do him, he'd forgive you right off after he'd kicked the stuffing out of you."

This clear proof that Mr. Smith did not respect them and was kind was received without a murmur. And as the boss did not return, the tide of conversation drifted in the narrower more personal channels of the marvels that had happened in the "last ship." And in the meantime H.M.S. Triumphant, known familiarly on the Pacific Coast station as "the Nonsuch, two decks and no bottom," was bringing Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Dunn, K.C.B., to his fate in San Francisco.

"Was there ever such luck—was there ever such luck?" murmured Mr. Shanghai Smith. "To think of him turnin' up, all of his own accord, on my partic'lar stampin' ground! And I'll lay odds he's clean forgot me. I'll brighten up his memr'y with sand and canvas and souji-mouji, so I will! Holy sailor, was there ever such luck?"

The morning of the following day H.M.S. Triumphant lay at her anchors off Saucelito in San Francisco Bay, and was glad to be there. For this was in the times when the whole British fleet was not absolutely according to Cocker. She leaked not a little and she rolled a great deal, and she would not mind her helm except upon those occasions when the officer in charge of the deck laid his money and his reputation on her going to starboard when, according to all rules, she should have altered her course to port. But though she was a wet ship with a playful habit of trying to scoop the Pacific Ocean dry, and though her tricks would have broken the heart of the Chief Naval Constructor had he seen her at them, she was the flagship in spite of her conduct, because at that time she was half the whole Pacific Squadron. The other half was lying outside Esquimault Dry Dock waiting for it to be finished. And when the Chronicle said that "Dicky Dunn" was the admiral, it had not lied. If any of that paper's reporters had known "Dicky" as his men knew him, he would have spread himself in a column on the admiral's character and personal appearance.

"He's the dead-spit of a boson's mate, to be sure," said the crew of the Triumphant when they received him at Esquimault. "An 'ard nut he looks!"

And a "hard nut" he certainly was. Though he stood five feet nine in height, he looked two inches less, for he was as broad as a door and as sturdy as the fore-bitts. His complexion was the colour of the sun when it sets in a fog for fine weather: the skin on his hands shone and was as scaly as a lizard's hide. His teeth were white and his eyes piercing. He could roar like a fog-horn, and sing, as the crew said, "like any hangel." There wasn't the match of "Dicky" on any of the seas the wide world over. The only trouble was that he looked so much like the traditional sailor and buccaneer that no one could believe he was anything higher than a warrant officer at the most when he had none of his official gear about him.

Though the admiral did not know it, one of the very first to greet him when he set his foot on dry land at the bottom of Market Street was the man he had licked so thoroughly fifteen years before in Melbourne.

"Oh, it's the same," said Smith to his chief runner, who was about the "hardest case" in California. "He ain't changed none. Just so old he was when he set about me. Why, the galoot might be immortal. Mark him, now; will you know him anywhere?"

"It don't pay me ever to forget," replied the runner. He had to remember the men who owed him grudges.

"Then don't forget this one," said Smith. "Do you find me a considerate boss?"

"Oh, well——" said the runner ungraciously.

"You've got to do a job for me, Billy."

"And what?"

"I'm goin' to have this hyer admiral shipped before the stick on the toughest ship that's about ready to go to sea," replied Smith.

Billy flinched.

"Sir, it's the penitentiary!"

"I don't care if it's lynchin'," said Smith. "Help—or get. I'm bossin' this job. Which is it?"

And Billy, seeing that he was to play second fiddle, concluded to help.

"And," he said to himself, "if we get nailed I'll split. Calls himself a 'considerate boss.' Well, Shanghai Smith has a gall!"

"Which do you reckon is the worst ship inside the Gate now?" asked Smith, after he had savoured his cunning revenge for a few minutes.

"The Harvester ain't due for a month, sir."

Smith looked melancholy.

"No, she ain't, that's a fact. It's a solid pity. Sant would have suited this Dunn first class." He was the most notorious blackguard of a shipmaster yet unhung, and the fact that Smith and he were bitter enemies never blinded Shanghai to the surpassing merits of his brutality.

"There's the Cyrus G. Hake."

Smith shook his head contemptuously.

"D'ye think I want to board this admiral at the Palace Hotel? Why, Johnson hasn't hurt a man serious for two trips."

"Oh, well, I thought as he'd sure break out soon," said Bill; "but there's the President. They do say that her new mate is a holy terror."

"I won't go on hearsay," said Smith decidedly. "I want a good man you and I know—one that'll handle this Dicky Dunn from the start. Now, what's in the harbour with officers that can lick me?"

"Well, I always allowed (as you know, Mr. Smith) that Simpson of the California was your match."

Smith's face softened.

"Well, mebbe he is."

At any other time he would never have admitted it.

"And the California will sail in three days."

"Righto," said Smith. "Simpson is a good tough man and so is old Blaker. Bill, the California will do. But it's an almighty pity the Harvester ain't here. I never knew a more unlucky thing. But we must put up with the next best."

"But how'll you corral the admiral, sir?" asked Bill.

"You leave that to me," replied his boss. "I've got a very fruitful notion as will fetch him if he's half the man he was."

Next evening Smith found occasion to run across a couple of the Triumphant's crew, and he got them to come into his house for a drink.

"Are these galoots to be dosed and put away?" asked the bar-tender.

"Certainly not," said Smith. "Fill 'em up with good honest liquor at my expense."

The bar-tender hardly knew where good honest liquor was to be found in that house, but he gave the two men-o'-war's men the slowest poison he had, and they were soon merry.

"Is the admiral as dead keen on fightin' with his fists as he was?" asked Smith.

"Rather," said the first man.

"Oh no, he's tired," said the second. "'E allows 'e can't find no one to lick 'im. 'E never could."

"Oh, that's his complaint, is it?" said Smith. "And is he as good as he was?"

"I heerd him tell the first luff on'y the other day as 'e reckoned to be a better man now than he was twenty years ago. And I believes 'im. 'Ard? Oh my! I do believe if 'e ran agin a lamp-post he'd fight through it."

It was enough for Smith to know that the admiral was still keen on fighting. To draw a man like that would not be so difficult. When he had turned the two naval seamen into the street, he called for the runner.

"Have you found out what I told you?"

"Yes," replied Bill. "He mostly comes down and goes off at eleven."

"Is he alone?"

"Mostly he has a young chap with him. I reckon they calls him the flag-lieutenant: a kind of young partner he seems to be. But that's the only one so far. And the California sails day after ter-morrer, bright and early."

"Couldn't be better," said Smith. "After waitin' all these years I can't afford to lose no time. Thishyer racket comes off to-night. Look out, Mr. Bully Admiral! I'm on your track."

And the trouble did begin that night.

Mr. 'Say-it-and-mean-it' Smith laid for Admiral Sir Richard Dunn, K.C.B., etc., etc., from ten o'clock till half-past eleven, and he was the only man in the crowd that did not hope the victim would come down with too many friends to be tackled.

"It's a penitentiary job, so it is," said Bill. And yet when the time arrived his natural instincts got the better of him.

The admiral came at last: it was about a quarter to twelve, and the whole water-front was remarkably quiet. The two policemen at the entrance to the Ferries had by some good luck, or better management, found it advisable to take a drink at Johnson's, just opposite. And the admiral was only accompanied by his flag-lieutenant.

"That's him," said Smith. "I'd know the beggar anywhere. Now keep together and sing!"

He broke into "Down on the Suwannee River," and advanced with Bill and Bill's two mates right across the admiral's path. They pretended to be drunk, and as far as three were concerned, there was not so much pretence about it after all. But Smith had no intention of being the first to run athwart the admiral's hawse. When he came close enough, he shoved the youngest man right into his arms. The admiral jumped back, and landed that unfortunate individual a round-arm blow that nearly unshipped his jaw. The next moment every one was on the ground, for Bill sandbagged the admiral just as he was knocked down by the lieutenant. As Sir Richard fell, he reached out and caught Smith by the ankle. The boarding-house master got the lieutenant by the coat and brought him down too. And as luck would have it, the youngster's head hit the admiral's with such a crack that both lay unconscious.

"Do we want the young 'un too?" asked Bill when he rose to his feet, swinging his sand-bag savagely. And Smith for once lost his head.

"Leave the swine, and puckarow the admiral," he said. And indeed it was all they could do to carry Sir Richard without exciting any more attention than four semi-intoxicated men would as they took home a mate who was quite incapacitated.

But they did get him home to the house in the Barbary Coast. When he showed signs of coming to, he was promptly dosed and his clothes were taken off him. As he slept the sleep of the drugged, they put on a complete suit of rough serge toggery and he became "Tom Deane, A.B."

"They do say that he is the roughest, toughest, hardest nut on earth," said Bill; "so we'll sec what like he shapes in the California. I dessay he's one of that lot that lets on how sailormen have an easy time. It's my notion the California will cure him of that."

By four o'clock in the morning, Tom Deane, who was, as his new shipmates allowed, a hard-looking man who could, and would, pull his weight, lay fast asleep in a forward bunk of the California's foc'sle as she was being towed through the Golden Gate. And his flag-lieutenant was inquiring in hospital what had become of the admiral, and nobody could tell him more than he himself knew. So much he told the reporters of the Chronicle and the Morning Call, and flaring headlines announced the disappearance of a British admiral, and the wires and cables fairly hummed to England and the world generally. At the same time the San Francisco police laid every waterfront rat and tough by the heels on the chance that something might be got out of one of them.

"What did I tell you?" asked Bill in great alarm, as he saw several intimate friends of his being escorted to gaol.

"Are you weakenin' on it?" said Smith savagely. "If I thought you was, I'd murder you. Give me away, and when I get out, I'll chase you three times round the world and knife you, my son."

And though Bill was so much of a "terror," he could not face Smith's eyes.

"Well, I ain't in it, anyhow," he swore.

But certainly "Tom Deane, A.B." was in it, and was having a holy time.

When the admiral woke, which he did after half an hour's shaking administered in turns by three of the California's crew, who were anxious to know where he had stowed his bottle of rum, he was still confused with the "dope" given him ashore. So he lay pretty still and said:

"Send Mr. Selwyn to me."

But Selwyn was his flag-lieutenant, and was just then the centre of interest to many reporters.

"Send hell; rouse out, old son, and turn to," said one of his new mates. And the admiral rose and rested on his elbow.

"Where am I?"

"On board the California, to be sure."

"I'm dreaming," said the admiral, "that's what it is. To be sure, I'm dreaming."

There was something in his accent as he made this statement that roused curiosity in the others.

"No, you ain't—not much," said the first man who had spoken; "and even if you was, I guess Simpson will wake you. Rouse up before he comes along again. He was in here an hour back inquiring for the trumpet of the Day of Judgment to rouse you. Come along, Deane! Now then!"

"My name's Dunn," said the admiral, with contracted brows.

"Devil doubt it," said his friend; "and who done you? Was it Shanghai Smith?"

The admiral sat up suddenly, and by so doing brought his head into violent contact with the deck above him. This woke him thoroughly, just in time to receive Mr. Simpson, mate of the California, who came in like a cyclone to inquire after his health.

"Did you ship as a dead man?" asked Mr. Simpson, "for if you did, I'll undeceive you."

And with that he yanked the admiral from his bunk, and dragged him by the collar out upon the deck at a run. Mr. Simpson was "bucko" to his finger-tips, and had never been licked upon the high seas. But for that matter Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Dunn, K.C.B., had never hauled down his flag either to any man. It surprised him, as it would have surprised any of his crew, to find that he took this handling almost meekly. But then no one knows what he would do if the sky fell; and as far as the admiral was concerned, the entire world was an absurd and ridiculous nightmare. He rose at the end of his undignified progress and stared at the mate.

"Who—who are you?" he said.

Mr. Simpson gasped.

"Who am I—oh, who am I? Well, I'll oblige you by statin' once for all that I'm mate of this ship, and you're my dog."

But the "dog" shook his head.

"Nothing of the sort," he said, as he staggered with the remains of the opiate. "I'm a British admiral, and my name's Sir Richard Dunn. Where's my ship?"

Any ordinary kind of back-answer or insubordination received only one kind of treatment on board the California, and when a man had been beaten to a jelly, he rarely recovered enough spirit to inquire why he had been hammered. But this was a new departure in back-talk.

"Oh, you're an admiral—an admiral, heh?" said Simpson.

"Of course," said Sir Richard, and a sudden gust of rage blew the last opium out of him. "Why, damn it, sir, what the devil do you mean by laying your filthy paws on me? Where's your captain, sir? By all that's holy, I'll smash you if you so much as look at me again."

Now it is a remarkable fact that the utterly and entirely unexpected will sometimes shake the courage of the stoutest heart. It is possible that a tiger would itself turn tail if a lamb rushed at him with open mouth. And though Mr. Simpson would have tackled a prize-fighter, knowing he was a prize-fighter, the fact that one of the kind of men whom he was accustomed to wipe his boots on now turned upon him with entirely strange language and a still stranger air of authority, for a moment daunted him utterly. He stood still and gasped, while the admiral strode aft and went up the poop ladder. He was met there by the captain, who had been the terror of the seas as a mate. A narrow escape of a conviction for murder had partially reformed him. He had also become religious, and usually went below when Simpson or the second "greaser" was hammering any one into oblivion and obedience.

"What is this?" asked Captain Blaker mildly, yet with a savage eye. "Mr. Simpson, what do you mean by allowing your authority (and mine delegated to you) to be disregarded?"

"Sir," said Mr. Simpson, and then the admiral turned on him.

"Hold your infernal tongue, sir," he roared. "And, sir, if you are the master of this vessel, as I suppose, I require you to put about for San Francisco. I am a British admiral, sir; my name is Sir Richard Dunn."

"Oh, you're an admiral and you 'require'?" said Blaker. "Wa'al, I do admire! You look like an admiral: the water-front is full of such. Take that, sir."

And the resurgent old Adam in Blaker struck the admiral with such unexpected force that Dunn went heels over head off the poop and landed on Simpson. The mate improved the opportunity by kicking him violently in the ribs. When he was tired, he spoke to the admiral again.

"Now, you lunatic, take this here ball of twine and go and overhaul the gear on the main. And if you open your mouth to say another word I'll murder you."

And though he could not believe he was doing it, Sir Richard Dunn crawled aloft, and did what he was told. He was stunned by his fall and the hammering he had received, but that was nothing to the utter and complete change of air that he experienced. As he overhauled the gear he wondered if he was an admiral at all. If he was, how came he on the maintopgallant-yard of a merchant ship? If he wasn't, why was he surprised at being there? He tried to recall the last day of his life as an admiral, and was dimly conscious of a late evening somewhere in San Francisco at which he had certainly taken his share of liquor. A vague sense of having been in a row oppressed him, but he could recall nothing till he had been yanked out of his bunk by that truculent devil of a mate then patrolling the poop.

"I—I must be mad," said the admiral.

"Now then, look alive there, you dead crawling cat," said Mr. Simpson, "or I'll come up and boot you off the yard. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, sir," said the admiral quickly, and as he put a new mousing on the clip-hooks of the mizzen-topmast-staysail-tripping-line block, he murmured: "I suppose I never was an admiral after all. I don't seem to know what I am." And the hardest nut among the admirals of the Active List wiped away a tear with the sleeve of his coat as he listened to the sacred Commination Service with all its blessings, intoned in a down-east twang by the eminent Mr. Simpson.

"He's crazy," said Simpson to the second greaser. "Says he's an admiral. I've had the Apostle Peter on board, and a cook who said he was St. Paul, but this is the first time I've run against an admiral before the mast."

"Does he look like it, sir?" asked Wiggins, laughing.

"He looks the toughest case you ever set eyes on," said Simpson. "But you'd have smiled to see the way the old man slugged him off the poop. And yet there's something about him I don't tumble to. I guess that's where his madness lies. Guess I'll cure him or kill him by the time we get off Sandy Hook.—Now then, you admiral, come down here and start up the fore rigging, and do it quick, or I'll know the reason why."

And the Knight Commander of the Bath came down as he was bid, and having cast a perplexed eye over Simpson and Wiggins, who sniggered at him with amused and savage contempt, he went forward in a hurry.

"This is a nightmare," he said; "I'm dreaming. Damme, perhaps I'm dead!"

When he had overhauled the gear at the fore—and being a real seaman, he did it well—Wiggins called him down to work on deck, and he found himself among his new mates. By now they were all aware that he believed he was an admiral, and that he had spoken to Simpson in a way that no man had ever done. That was so much to his credit, but since he was mad he was a fit object of jeers. They jeered him accordingly, and when they were at breakfast the trouble began.

"Say, are you an admiral?" asked Knight, the biggest tough on board except Simpson and Wiggins.

And the admiral did not answer. He looked at Knight with a gloomy, introspective eye.

"Mind your own business," he said, when the question was repeated.

And Knight hove a full pannikin of tea at him. This compliment was received very quietly, and the admiral rose and went on deck.

"Takes water at once," said Knight; "he ain't got the pluck of a mouse."

But the admiral went aft and interviewed Mr. Simpson.

"May I have the honour of speaking to you, sir?" he said, and Simpson gasped a little, but said he might have that honour.

"Well, sir," said Sir Richard Dunn, "I don't know how I got here, but here I am, and I'm willing to waive the question of my being a British admiral, as I can't prove it."

"That's right," said Simpson. "Ah, I'll have you sane enough by-and-by, my man."

The admiral nodded.

"But I wish to have your permission to knock the head off a man called Knight for'ard. It was always my custom, sir, to allow fights on board my own ship when I considered them necessary. But I always insisted on my permission being asked. Have I yours, sir?"

Simpson looked the admiral up and down.

"Your ship, eh? You're still crazy, I'm afraid. But Knight can kill you, my man."

"I'm willing to let him try, sir," said the admiral. "He hove a pannikin of tea over me just now, and I think a thrashing would do him good and conduce to the peace and order of the foc'sle."

"Oh, you think so," said Simpson. "Very well, you have my permission to introduce peace there."

"I thank you, sir," said the admiral.

He touched his hat and went forward. He put his head inside the foc'sle and addressed Knight:

"Come outside, you bully, and let me knock your head off. Mr. Simpson has been kind enough to overlook the breach of discipline involved."

And Knight, nothing loth, came out on deck, while Simpson and Wiggins stood a little way off to enjoy the battle.

"I'd like to back the admiral," said Wiggins.

"I'll have a level five dollars on Knight," said Simpson, who remembered that he had, on one occasion, found Knight extremely difficult to reduce to pulp.

"Done with you," said Wiggins.

And in five minutes the second mate was richer by five dollars, as his mates carried Knight into the foc'sle.

"I don't know when I enjoyed myself more," said Simpson, with a sigh—"even if I do lose money on it. While it lasted it was real good. Did you see that most be-ewtiful upper cut? And the right-handed cross counter that finished it was jest superb. But I'll hev to speak to the victor, so I will."

And he addressed the admiral in suitable language.

"Don't you think, because you've licked him, that you can fly any flag when I'm around. You done it neat and complete, and I overlook it, but half a look and the fust letter of a word of soss and I'll massacre you myself. Do you savvy?"

And the admiral said:

"Yes, sir."

He touched his cap and went forward to the foc'sle to enter into his kingdom. For Knight had been "topside joss" there for three voyages, being the only man who had ever succeeded in getting even one pay-day out of the California. The principle on which she was run was to make things so hot for her crew that they skipped out at New York instead of returning to San Francisco, and the fresh crew shipped in New York did the same when they got inside the Golden Gate.

"I understand," said the admiral, as he stood in the middle of the foc'sle, "that the gentleman I've just had the pleasure of knocking into the middle of next week was the head bully here. Now I want it thoroughly understood in future that if any bullying is to be done, I'm going to do it."

All the once obedient slaves of the deposed Knight hastened to make their peace with the new power. They fairly crawled to the admiral.

"You kin fight," said one.

"I knew it jest so soon as you opened yer mouth," said another. "The tone of yer voice argued you could."

"It's my belief that he could knock the stuffin' out o' Mr. Simpson," said the third.

"'Twould be the best kind of fun," said another admirer of the powers that be, "for Blaker would kick Simpson in here, and give the admiral his job right off. He's got religion, has Blaker, but he was an old packet rat himself, and real 'bucko' he was, and believes in the best men bein' aft."

And though the admiral said nothing to this, he remembered it, and took occasion to inquire into its truth. He found that what he knew of the sea and its customs was by no means perfect. He learnt something every day, and not least from Knight, who proved by no means a bad sort of man when he had once met his match.

"Is it true," asked the admiral, "what they say about Captain Blaker giving any one the mate's job if he can thrash him?"

"It used to be the custom in the Western Ocean," said Knight, "and Blaker was brought up there. He's a real sport, for all his bein' sort of religious. Yes, I'll bet it's true." He turned to the admiral suddenly. "Say, you wasn't thinkin' of takin' Simpson on, was you?"

"If what's you say's true, I was," said the admiral. "It don't suit me being here."

"Say now, partner," put in Knight, "what's this guff about your being an admiral? What put it into your head?"

And Sir Richard Dunn laughed. As he began to feel his feet, and find that he was as good a man in new surroundings as in the old ones, he recovered his courage and his command of himself.

"After all, this will be the deuce of a joke when it's over," he thought, "and I don't see why I shouldn't get a discharge out of her as mate. Talk about advertisement!"

He knew how much it meant.

"Look here, Knight," he said aloud, "I am an admiral. I can't prove it, but my ship was the Triumphant. I don't want to force it down your throat, but if you'd say you believe it, I should be obliged to you."

Knight put out his hand.

"I believes it, sonny," he said, "for I own freely that there's suthin' about you different from us; a way of talk, and a look in the eye that ain't formiliar in no foc'sle as I ever sailed in. And if you was lyin', how come you to lie so ready, bein' so drunk when Simpson hauled you out o' yer bunk? No, I believe you're speakin' the trewth."

And Sir Richard Dunn, K.C.B., shook hands with Charles Knight, A.B.

"I won't forget this," he said huskily. He felt like Mahomet with his first disciple. "And now, in confidence," said the admiral, "I tell you I mean to have Simpson's job by the time we're off the Horn."

"Good for you," cried Knight. "Oh, he kicked me somethin' cruel the time him and me had a turn-up. Give it him, old man. And here's a tip for you. If you get him down, keep him down. Don't forget he kicked you, too."

"I don't forget," said Sir Richard—"I don't forget, by any means."

Yet he did his duty like a man. Though many things were strange to him, he tumbled to them rapidly. One of his fads had been doing ornamental work even when he was an admiral, and he put fresh "pointing" on the poop ladder rails for Blaker in a way that brought every one to look at it. There was no one on board who could come within sight of him at any fancy work, and this so pleased Simpson that the admiral never had a cross word till they were south of the Horn. Then by chance the mate and the captain had a few words which ended in Simpson getting much the worst of the talk. As luck would have it, the admiral was the handiest to vent his spite on, and Simpson caught him a smack on the side of his head that made him see stars.

"Don't stand listenin' there to what don't concern you, you damned lazy hound," he said. And when the admiral picked himself off the deck, Simpson made a rush for him. The admiral dodged him and shot up the poop ladder. He took off his cap to the captain, while Simpson foamed on the main-deck and called him in vain. At any other time Blaker would have gone for the seaman who dared to escape a thrashing for the moment by desecrating the poop, but now he was willing to annoy Simpson.

"Well, what do you want?" he roared.

The admiral made a really elegant bow.

"Well, sir, I wanted to know whether Western Ocean custom goes here. I've been told that if I can thrash your mate, I shall have his job. They say forward that that's your rule, and if so, sir, I should like your permission to send Mr. Simpson forward and take his place."

There was something so open and ingenuous in the admiral that Captain Blaker, for the first time on record, burst into a shout of laughter. He went to the break of the poop and addressed the mate.

"Do you hear, Mr. Simpson?" he inquired genially.

"Send him down, sir," said Simpson.

"Are you sure you can pound him?"

Simpson gritted his teeth and foamed at the mouth.

"Kick him off the poop, sir."

The admiral spoke anxiously.

"I'm a first-class navigator, sir. Is it a bargain?"

And Blaker, who had never liked Simpson, laughed till he cried.

"Are you willing to stake everything on your fightin' abilities, Mr. Simpson?"

And when Simpson said "Aye" through his teeth, the admiral jumped down on the main-deck.

Now, according to all precedents, the fight should have been long and arduous, with varying fortunes. But the admiral never regarded precedents, and inside of ten seconds Mr. Simpson was lying totally insensible under the spare topmast. To encounter the admiral's right was to escape death by a hair's-breadth, and it took Charles Simpson, Able Seaman (vice Mr. Simpson, Chief Officer), two hours and a quarter to come to.

"And I thot he could fight," said the disgusted skipper. "Come right up, Mr. What's-your-name; you're the man for me. There ain't no reason for you to trouble about my second mate, for Simpson could lay him out easy. All I ask of you is to work the whole crowd up good. And I don't care if you are an admiral, you are the right sort all the same. I guess that Simpson must have reckoned he struck a cyclone."

And Blaker rubbed his hands. Like Simpson at the fight between the admiral and Knight, he did not know when he had enjoyed himself more. He improved the occasion by going below and getting far too much to drink, as was his custom. And the promoted admiral took charge of the deck.

"Ability tells anywhere," said Sir Richard Dunn. "I didn't rise in the service for nothing. Ship me where you like, and I'll come to the top. If I don't take this hooker into New York as captain and master, I'll die in the attempt."

He had quite come to himself and was beginning to enjoy himself. His natural and acquired authority blossomed wonderfully when he took on the new job, and as Blaker never swore, the admiral's gift of language was a great vicarious satisfaction to him. Wiggins accepted the situation without a murmur. Even Simpson himself bore no malice when his supplanter not only showed none, but after knocking the boson's head against a bollard, gave his place to the former mate. Though he kept the men working and got the last ounce out of them, none of them were down on him.

"I tell you he's an admiral, sure," they said.

"He's got all the ways of one, I own," said Bill, an old man-o'-war's man. "I spoke to an admiral myself once, or rather he spoke to me."

"What did he say?" asked the rest of his watch.

"He said," replied Bill proudly—"he upped and said, 'You cross-eyed son of a dog, if you don't jump I'll bash the ugly head off of you.' And you bet I jumped. Oh, he's all the ways of some admirals, he has."

"Well, admiral or none," said the rest of the crowd, "things goes on pleasanter than they done when you was mate, Simpson."

And Simpson grunted.

"And he gets more work out of us than you done either, Simpson, for all your hammerin' of us."

"I'll likely be hammerin' some of you again shortly," said Simpson. And as he was cock of the walk in the foc'sle, whatever he was in the ship, the others dried up.

Nothing of great interest happened till they were well east of the Horn and hauled up for the northward run. And then Blaker took to religion (or what he called religion) and rum in equally undiluted doses.

"I'm a miserable sinner, I am," he said to the admiral, "but all the same, I'll do my duty to the crowd."

He called them aft and preached to them for two hours. And when one man yawned, he laid him out with a well-directed belaying pin. The next day, when it breezed up heavily and they were shortening sail, he called all hands down from aloft on the ground that their souls were of more importance than the work in hand.

"Come down on deck, you miserable sinners," said Blaker through a speaking trumpet. His voice rose triumphantly above the roar of the gale. "Come down on deck and listen to me. For though I'm a miserable sinner too, there's some hopes for me, and for you there's none unless you mend your ways, in accordance with what I'm telling you."

Even with the speaking trumpet he could hardly make himself heard over the roar of the increasing gale and the thunderous slatting of the topsails in the spilling-lines.

"Don't you think, sir, that they'd better make the topsails fast before you speak to them?" said the admiral.

"No, I don't," replied Blaker—"not much I don't, not by a jugful. For if one of 'em went overboard, I'd be responsible before the throne. And don't you forget it."

"Damme, he's mad," said Sir Richard—"mad as a march hare. She'll be shaking the sticks out of her soon."

He leant over the break of the poop, and called up Wiggins.

"Mr. Wiggins, one word with you."

Wiggins came up, as Blaker roared his text through the trumpet.

"Will you stand by me, Mr. Wiggins, if I knock him down and take command?"

"I will; but mind his gun," said Wiggins. "When he's very bad, he'll shoot."

It was not any fear of Blaker's six-shooter that made the admiral hesitate. To take the command, even from a madman, at sea is a ticklish task and may land a man in gaol, for all his being a Shanghaied admiral.

"I tell you, Mr. Wiggins, that Simpson is a good man. I'll bring him aft again."

And Wiggins made no objection when Simpson was called up by the admiral.

"Mr. Simpson," said the mate, "this is getting past a joke. Have you any objection to taking on your old job if I secure this preaching madman and take command?"

Simpson was "full up" of the foc'sle, and as he had a very wholesome admiration for the admiral, he was by no means loth to return to his old quarters.

"I'm with you, sir. In another quarter of an hour we shall have the sticks out of her."

And still Blaker bellowed scripture down the wind. He was still bellowing, though what he bellowed wasn't scripture, when Simpson and Wiggins took him down below after five minutes of a row in which the deposed captain showed something of his ancient form as the terror of the Western Ocean. As they went, the admiral, now promoted to being captain of a Cape Horner, picked up the battered speaking trumpet and wiped some blood from his face, which had been in collision.

"Up aloft with you and make those topsails fast," he roared. "Look alive, men, look alive!"

And they did look alive, for "Dicky" Dunn never needed a speaking trumpet in any wind that ever blew. When things were snugged down and the California was walking north at an easy but tremendous gait, he felt like a man again. He turned to Simpson and Wiggins with a happy smile.

"Now we're comfortable, and things are as they should be, Mr. Simpson, let the men have a tot of grog. And how's Mr. Blaker?"

"Wa'al," said Simpson cheerfully, "when we left him he warn't exactly what you would call religious nor resigned."

But if Blaker was not happy, the admiral was thoroughly delighted.

"Now you see what I said was true," he declared at dinner that night; "if I hadn't been an admiral and a man born to rise, how could I have been shipped on board this ship as a foremast hand and come to be captain in six weeks? I'll be bound you never heard of a similar case, Mr. Simpson."

And Simpson never had.

"Was it Shanghai Smith, do you think, as put you here?" he asked.

The admiral had heard of Shanghai Smith in the foc'sle.

"When I get back I'll find out," he said. "And if it was, I'll not trouble the law, Mr. Simpson. I never allow any man to handle me without getting more than even."

"You don't," said Simpson. If his manner was dry, it was sincere.

"But I don't bear malice afterwards. Your health, Mr. Simpson. This kind of trade breeds good seamen, after all. But you are all a trifle rough."

Simpson explained that they had to be.

"When the owners' scheme is to have one man do three men's work, they have to get men who will make 'em do it. And when the owners get a bad name and their ships a worse, then men like Shanghai Smith have to find us crews. If you could get back to San Francisco and hammer an owner, some of us would be obliged to you, sir."

"Ah, when I get back!" said the admiral. "This will be a remarkable yarn for me to tell, Mr. Simpson. I still feel in a kind of dream. Would you oblige me by going to Mr. Blaker and telling him that if he continues to hammer at that door I'll have the hose turned on him."

And when Simpson went to convey this message, the admiral put his feet on the table and indulged in a reverie.

"I'll make a note about Shanghai Smith, and settle with him in full. But I shall rise higher yet. I know it's in me. Steward!"

"Yes, sir," said the steward.

"I think I'll have some grog."

He drank to the future of Admiral Sir Richard Dunn, master of the California.

THE SETTLEMENT WITH SHANGHAI SMITH.

It is easy to understand that there was something more than a flutter in shipping circles in San Francisco, to say nothing of the sailors' boarding-houses, when a telegram reached that city from New York which was expanded as follows:—

"THE LOST ADMIRAL.

"Admiral Sir Richard Dunn, whose mysterious disappearance in San Francisco three months ago caused such great excitement, has arrived at New York in command of the ship California. He was, it appears, assaulted, and drugged, and put on board that vessel, and owing to a series of exciting incidents during the passage, finally took charge of her. The admiral is in good health. He states that he has no idea who was responsible for the outrage."

The bar-tender at Shanghai Smith's house was the first to spot this cable. He put his hand on the bar and vaulted it.

"Say, Billy, see this."

He shook up the runner who was taking a caulk on a hard bench, having been engaged between four and six in getting three drunken men on board the Wanderer. It is often easier to get a dozen amenable to reason than three, just as it is easier to handle many sheep than few. He was very tired and sulky.

"Well, wo'd's up now?" he grunted.

"Hell is up, and flamin'," said Tom. "You ain't forgot the admiral by any chance, now?"

Billy woke as suddenly as if he had been sleeping on the look-out and had been found hard and fast by the mate.

"Eh, what, has the California turned up?"

"You bet she has," said Tom. And he burst into laughter. "What d'ye reckon he was on board of her when she came to N' York?"

"Cook's mate?"

"No, captain, captain! Think of that. And he says he don't know who laid him out and put him aboard of her."

Billy rose.

"Here, gimme the paper. You're drunk."

He read the telegram with protruding eyes.

"By the holy frost, but he must be a dandy, Say, Smith must know this."

He marched to Smith's bedroom and induced his boss to sit up and hear the news, after Smith had used more bad language with his eyes shut than most men in San Francisco could lay their tongues to when wide awake.

"Don't I tell you it's about the admiral," expostulated Billy; "it's about Dunn, as you shoved on the California."

But now Shanghai was wide awake. He looked at Billy with wicked eyes.

"As I shoved in the California, eh? Say that again and I'll get up and knock the corners off of you. You miserable Tarhead, if I hear you whisper that I had the last joint of the little finger of my left hand in the game, I'll murder you."

Billy fell back from the bed in alarm. Though he looked big enough to have eaten Shanghai Smith, he lacked the "devil" which had made his boss what he was—the terror of the "coast" and of sailormen, and a political power in his quarter of the city.

"Oh, very well then, Mr. Smith, but who done it?"

"Understand that no one knows who done it, you dog," said Smith, reaching for what he called his "pants," "but if any one done it, it was you. And don't you forget it. I hire you to do the work, and I'll see you does it. Don't get me mad, or you'll be runnin' to the penitentiary howlin' for ten years to get away from me."

And Billy went back to Tom.

"He's fair luny, that's what he is. But if he reckons I'm goin' to the calaboose for him, he'll run up agin a snag."

And presently Smith came out to breakfast with a face as black as a near cyclone. Billy and Tom jumped when he spoke, and all those men in his house who were in a lee shore, as regards dollars, got away from him and adorned a neighbouring fence.

"What's wrong wiv Shang'ai?" asked a Londoner; "'es a black 'un, but I never seed 'im so rorty as this!"

And no one answered him. They were a sick crowd at any time, and now, when their slave-owner roared, their hearts were in their boots.

But Smith was only trying to keep up his own courage. Not once, but many times since he had got even with the man who had given him a thrashing, he had regretted his method of revenge.

"I'd best have bashed him and left him laying on the Front," said Smith, "and here's Tom and Bill know the whole racket. I've half a mind to have them put out of the way. In such a place as this, who can a man trust? Bah, it sickens me, it does. It fair sickens me."

He was virtuously indignant with an ungrateful world. Even his revenge had been a failure. How in the name of all that was holy and unholy had the admiral managed to rise from the foc'sle to the command of the California?

"And I thought Blaker and Simpson was both men!" said Smith with disgust. "There ain't any trustin' to appearances, nor to reputation neither. But how could the swine have done it?"

An early evening paper had the whole story, and as Shanghai was still up town, all his crowd of crimps and slaves roared over the yarn.

"He fo't the mate and was give 'is billet," said one. "I say, but old Blaker was a sport. That's real old Western Ocean packet law. And then Blaker went luny with psalm singing and the hadmiral locked 'im up. 'Strewth, but it must 'ave bin a picnic! I'd 'ave give a month's wages to see the show. But 'oo was it shang'aied a hadmiral?"

He spoke with bated breath.

"Who'd it be but Smith?" asked the speaker's mate sulkily. "He's a devil, a notorious devil, as we know. He'd shanghai his father for a quarter, if he was dry. And a month back my own brother that shipped in the Cyrus J. Brown told me as Shanghai had a down on this very man."

"Then I wouldn't be Smith for all 'is money. This'll be a Government business."

It would have been if the admiral had been any other kind of man. But Admiral Sir Richard Dunn was one of those, and they get rarer every day, who prefer handling their own affairs. He had a gift of humour, too, and was mightily pleased with himself.

"Whoever it was that laid for me, he never meant to make me master of the California," he said, as he came west on the cars. "And whoever he was, I will fix him. The mate was pretty certain it was this Shanghai Smith. If it was——"

If it was, it seemed a healthy thing for Mr. Smith to leave San Francisco and hide somewhere in the Islands. But all his interests kept him where he was, even when H.M.S. Triumphant came down again from Esquimault and lay waiting for the admiral off Goat Island.

The crew of the Triumphant, being very proud of their own special admiral, were in so furious a rage against any one connected with crimping in the city, that no "liberty" was granted to any one of them.

"It's hall very fine," said the Triumphants unanimously, "but these 'ere Americans are too smart by 'alf. Them and hus'll part brass-rags one of these fine days. But ain't it fine to think that Dicky went to sea as a man before the stick, and come out right on top?"

They chortled with exceeding pleasure,—with pleasure founded on his achievements and on the unexpected experiences he had had of sea-life.

"To think of Dicky bunking it among a crowd of merchant Jacks," said the crew. "We'd give a lot to 'ave seen him shinning up aloft for dear life."

But all the same, they loved him dearly, and when he came alongside five days later, not all their sense of discipline prevented their breaking into a storm of cheers that rang out across the bay and was almost heard at Oakland. Hard as Dicky Dunn was, he went to his cabin rather in a hurry. For once in his life he could hardly trust himself to speak. But he received the congratulations of the captain and officers, including young Selwyn, who had been with him when he had been kidnapped, with the greatest calm.

"Yes, I've had some experience," he said, "and I don't know that it has done me any harm. I know more of the conditions on board merchant vessels than I did before."

"And what do you propose to do, Sir Richard?" asked Selwyn an hour later. "The authorities and the police seemed very anxious to do what they could."

The admiral lighted one of his own cigars, and found it more to his taste than the ship's tobacco of the California.

"I don't propose to trouble the police," he said, "nor need there be any international correspondence so far as I'm concerned. I'll play my own game. I think, Selwyn, that I know who laid for us that night. And from what I learnt in the California (I learnt a lot, by the way) I've a notion that ordinary justice would never get hold of the man, at least not in San Francisco, not even if I paid for it."

"Then what——"

But Dicky Dunn interrupted him.

"I've a notion," he said significantly.

And that afternoon he sent Selwyn ashore with a very polite note to the chief of the San Francisco police, saying that Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Dunn would be very glad to see that gentleman on board the Triumphant late that evening, if he could make it convenient to come.

"Let the band begin to play!" said Mr. Peter Cartwright; "it looks as if I'd better face the music. I wonder if he has any kinkle as to the man who did it? It's more than I have, unless it was Smith, or Sullivan."

As he drew his five thousand dollars a year and pickings partly through the grace of both the notorious boarding-house keepers that he mentioned, he did not relish running against them. Nevertheless, it was better to do that than run against a mightier snag. He looked, with a groan, at the pile of correspondence which had accumulated since the admiral's disappearance.

"And here's the British Consul wants to see me to-morrow!" he cried. "They'll cinch me if they can get no one else."

And he went on board the Triumphant feeling as if he was out of a job.

The admiral received him courteously, and was alone.

"This has been a bad business, admiral, sir," said Mr. Cartwright, "and as chief of police of this city I feel it as a personal slur. Your request to see me anticipated me by no more than twelve hours. I proposed to seek an interview with you to-morrow morning."

"I am obliged to you," said the admiral. "Will you have anything to drink?"

"It was rather cold on the water," replied Cartwright.

And when the chief of police had a tumbler of hot whiskey and water in both hands, the admiral opened up.

"I've sent for you, Mr. Cartwright," he began, "to tell you that I don't want any proceedings taken about this matter."

Cartwright opened his mouth and stared at the admiral in surprise. Then he began to imagine he understood. Sir Richard Dunn had evidently been somewhere on the night of his disappearance which would not suit him to have known.

"Ah, I see," said Cartwright, with a subtle smile.

"I've my own notions as to the brand of justice dispensed in this State, Mr. Cartwright. It is considerably milder than the native liquors. I want your assistance in doing without the law, and in administering justice myself. Have you any notion of the gentleman who shipped me in the California?"

"It was probably a boarding-house master," said Cartwright.

"Of course."

"It might have been Sullivan, or the Sheeny, or Williams, or Smith."

"Is that the scoundrel they know here as Shanghai Smith?" asked the admiral.

And Cartwright nodded.

"The crew of the California put it down to him at once."

"I don't know that it was necessary him," said Cartwright pensively; "though he has the worst name, he's no worse than the others. For my own part, I reckon the Sheeny—he's a Jew boy, of course—is a deal tougher than Smith."

And just then Selwyn, who knew the chief of police was on board, put his head into the admiral's cabin.

"Could I speak to you a moment, Sir Richard?"

And Dicky Dunn went outside.

"I thought as you had this Cartwright with you, sir," said Selwyn, "that I ought to tell you a queer yarn that has just been brought me by one of the quartermasters. It seems that one of the men has a story that you once had a fight with Shanghai Smith and hurt him badly. It was in Australia I believe—in Melbourne."

"Stay a minute," said the admiral; "let me think. Yes, by Jove, I did have a row on Sandridge Pier years ago, and I broke the man up so that he had to go to a hospital. And his name—yes, it was Smith. Thanks, Selwyn, I'll see if this man ever was in Australia."

He went back to Cartwright

"Now as to the Sheeny, admiral," said Cartwright, who was beginning to feel comfortable.

"Never mind the Sheeny, Mr. Cartwright," said his host; "do you know Smith's record? Where did he come from?"

"He came from Melbourne," replied the chief.

And the admiral slapped his leg.

"That's the man, I believe."

"Why?"

"Never mind why," said Dunn. "But supposing it was, could we prove it against him?"

"I doubt it," said Cartwright cheerfully. "Probably no one would know it but his runner. And Bill Haines would perjure himself as easy as drink lager."

"But if we did prove it?"

"There'd be an appeal, and so on," said the chief.

He indicated large and generous delay on the part of the merciful American law by a wave of his hand.

"You see we couldn't prove, anyhow, that he knew you was you," said Cartwright, "and if I know my own business, it would come down to a matter of assault and so many dollars."

"That's what I imagined," said the admiral. "So I propose to take the matter in hand myself and relieve you of it. For though Smith, or the real man, might come off easily, if I choose to have it made an international business some one will have to pay who is not guilty."

"That's likely enough," said Cartwright uneasily. "On the whole, admiral, I'd rather you took the job on yourself, provided it was put through quietly. What do you propose?"

Dunn put his hands in his pockets, and "quarter-decked" his cabin.

"I want to be sure it's Smith—morally sure. How can I be made sure? I'll tell you now what I know about him."

He repeated what Selwyn had said, and told him the story of his having fought a man on Sandridge Pier at Melbourne fifteen years before.

"His name was Smith."

"It fits as neat as a pair of handcuffs," said the chief of police. "I'll think over it and let you know. Stay, sirree, I've got it now. Look here, admiral, now you mark me. This is a scheme. It'll work, or my name's Dennis. I'll have it put about in the right quarter that though there ain't evidence to touch the real man who worked the racket on you, it is known who actually corralled you and shoved you on the California. I'll get the proper man to give it away that a warrant is being made out. And next day I'll have all the runners of all the chief boarding-houses arrested. Do you see?"

"No, I don't," said the admiral.

"Oh, come," cried Cartwright. "The man we don't arrest will be the man who done it."

"Yes, but——"

"Well," said Cartwright, "I understood you didn't particularly hanker to catch the under-strapper."

"Ah," said the admiral, "of course I see. You mean——"

"I mean the boarding-house boss will shove the runner that did it out of sight. And then you'll know him by reason of the very means he takes not to be given away. For of course he'd reckon that the runner on being held would squeal."

"It's a good plan," said the admiral. "And when I know, what kind of punishment would Mr. Smith like least of all?"

"Provided you remember he's an American citizen, I don't care what you do," replied the chief. "But if you asked me, I should get him served the way he's served you. Shanghai Smith among a crowd of sailormen in an American ship, such as the Harvester (and the skipper of the Harvester hates him like poison)—and she sails in three days—would have a picnic to recollect all his life. For you see, they know him."

"I'll think it over," said the admiral. "Your plan is excellent.

"So it is," said Cartwright, as he was rowed ashore, "for Smith ain't no favourite of mine, and at the same time it will look as if I gave him the straight racket, anyhow."

He sent an agent down to the water front that very night. The man dropped casual hints at the boarding-houses, and he dropped them on barren ground everywhere but at Shanghai Smith's.

"Jehoshaphat," said Smith, "so that's the game!"

Peter Cartwright had, in his own language, "reckoned him up to rights"; for the very first move that Smith played was to make a break for Billy's room. As the runner had been up most of the night before enticing sailormen off a Liverpool ship just to keep his hand in, he was as fast asleep as a bear on Christmas Day, and he was mighty sulky when Smith shook him out of sleep by the simple process of yanking his pillow from under his head.

"Ain't a man to get no sleep that works for you?" he demanded. "What's up now?"

"Hell is up, and fizzling," replied Smith. "I've had word from Peter Cartwright that you'll be arrested in the mornin' if you don't skin out. It's the admiral. I wish I'd never set eyes on him. Come, dress and skip: 'twon't do for you to be gaoled; mebbe they'd hold you on some charge till you forgot all you owe to me. There ain't no such thing as real gratitude left on earth."

Billy rose and shuffled into his clothes sullenly enough.

"And where am I to skip to?"

"To Portland," said Smith; "the Mendocino leaves in the mornin' for Crescent City and Astoria, don't she? Well, then, go with her and lie up with Grant or Sullivan in Portland till I let you know the coast is clear. And here's twenty dollars: go easy with it."

He sighed to part with the money.

"I'd sooner go down to Los Angeles," grunted Billy.

But Smith explained to him with urgent and explosive blasphemy that he was to get into another State in order to complicate legal matters.

"You've the brains of a Flathead Indian, you have," said Smith, as he turned Billy into the street on his way to find the Mendocino. "What's the use of havin' law if you don't use it?"

And in the morning, when Smith heard that ten runners at least had been urgently invited to interview Mr. Peter Cartwright, he was glad to be able to declare that Billy was not on hand.

"He's gone East to see his old man," he said drily. "And as his father is a millionaire and lives in the Fifth Avenue, N' York, he couldn't afford to disregard his dyin' desire to see him."

"You are a daisy, Smith," said the police officer who had come for Billy. "Between you and me, what have you done with him?"

Smith shook his head.

"I shot him last night and cut him up and pickled him in a cask," he said with a wink. "And I've shipped him to the British Ambassador at Washington, C.O.D."

"You're as close as a clam, ain't you, Smith? But I tell you Peter is havin' a picnic. This admiral's game was playin' it low down on Peter, whoever did it. There are times when a man can't help his friends."

Smith lied freely.

"You can tell Peter I had nothin' to do with it."

"Yes, I can tell him!" said the police officer. And he did tell him. As a result the chief of police wrote to the admiral:—

"SIR,—

"I have interrogated all the runners but one belonging to the chief boarding-houses, and have succeeded in obtaining no clue. The one man missing was runner to Mr. William Smith, commonly known as 'Shanghai' Smith. Under the circumstances, and considering what you said to me, I am inclined to wait developments. If you will inform me what you wish me to do, I shall be glad to accommodate you in any way."

"Yours truly,
"PETER CARTWRIGHT.

"P.S.—If you could write me a letter saying you are quite satisfied with the steps I have taken to bring the offender to justice, I should be obliged.

"P.S.—If you wish to meet Mr. John P. Sant, captain of the Harvester, now lying in the bay and sailing the day after to-morrow, I can arrange it."

But both the postscripts were written on separate pieces of paper. Mr. Cartwright was not chief of police in a land of justice for nothing. He knew his way about.

Dicky Dunn, on receiving Peter's letter, called in his flag-lieutenant.

"When they shanghaied me, they knocked you about rather badly, didn't they, Selwyn?"

Selwyn instinctively put his hand to the back of his head.

"Yes, Sir Richard. They sand-bagged me, as they call it, and kicked me too."

"I'm pretty sure I know who did it," said the admiral, "and I'm proposing to get even with the man myself. It seems that it will be a difficult thing to prove. Besides, I'm not built that way. I don't want to prove it and send the man to gaol. I like getting even in my own fashion. What would you do if I could tell you who it was that laid the plot against us that night?"

Selwyn was a clean-skinned, bright-eyed, close-shaven young fellow, as typical an Anglo-Saxon salted in the seas as one could meet. His eyes sparkled now.

"I—I'd punch his head, sir."

The admiral nodded.

"I believe I did punch his head, years ago, Selwyn. But he was looking for a fight and found it, and ought to have been satisfied. Between you and me and no one else, the chief of police here and I have fixed this matter up between us. He says that he has no evidence, and the only man who might have given the affair away has been shipped off somewhere. I'm going to show Mr. Smith that he didn't make a bucko mate of me for nothing. And I want you to help. I've got a scheme."

He unfolded it to Selwyn, and the young lieutenant chuckled.

"He used to be a seaman," said the admiral, "but for twelve years he's been living comfortably on shore, sucking the blood of sailors. And if I know anything about American ships—and I do—he'll find three months in the fo'castle of this Harvester worse than three years in a gaol. Now we're going to invade the United States quite unofficially, with the connivance of the police!"

He lay back and laughed.

"Oh, I tell you," said the admiral, "he ran against something not laid down in his chart when he fell in with me. You can come ashore with me now and we'll see this Cartwright. American ways suit me, after all."

"Then I understand, Mr. Cartwright," said the admiral, an hour later, "that there won't be a policeman anywhere within hail of this Smith's house to-morrow night?"

"I've got other business for them," said Peter.

"And I can see Mr. Sant here this afternoon?"

"I'll undertake to have him here if you call along at three."

He spent the interval at lunch with the British Consul.

"I tell you what, Stanley," said the admiral, "I don't care what they did to me, for it's done me no harm. But after this you should be able to make them enforce the laws. If they would only do that, the Pacific Coast wouldn't stink so in the nostrils of shipmasters and shipowners."

The consul explained the local system of politics. It appeared that every one with any business on the borders of crime insured against the results of accidents by being in politics.

"And if the thieving politicians appoint the man to control them, what's the result?"

"The result is—Shanghai Smith," said the admiral. "Well, I'll see you later. I've an appointment with Mr. Sant, of the Harvester."

The consul stared.

"What, with Sant? Why, he got eighteen months' hard labour for killing a man six months ago."

"But he's not in prison?"

"Of course not," said the consul. "He was pardoned by the Governor."

"He's just the man I wish to see," cried Dicky Dunn.

He found Sant waiting at Cartwright's office. He was a hard-bitted, weather-beaten gentleman, and half his face was jaw. That jaw had hold of a long cigar with his back teeth. He continued smoking and chewing, and did both savagely. What Peter had said to him did not come out, but by agreement the admiral was introduced as Mr. Dunn.

"You have reason not to like Shanghai Smith?" said Peter.

"That's so," nodded Sant.

"Mr. Dunn does not like him either. Could you make any use of him on board the Harvester?"

"I could," said Sant, grinning; "he'd be a useful man."

"If you imagined you missed a man to-morrow morning just as you were getting up your anchor, and some one hailed you and said they had picked one up, you would take him aboard?"

"Wet or dry," said Sant.

"I'll undertake he shall be wet," said the admiral. "Eh?" And he turned to Selwyn.

"Yes, sir," replied the lieutenant, "that could be arranged."

"Very well, Mr. Sant," said the admiral.

"And it's understood, of course," said Peter, "that you gentlemen never saw each other and don't know each other when you meet, it being a matter of mutual obligation."

"I agree," said Sant. And the admiral shook hands with a gentleman who had been pardoned by an amiable Governor.

"And of course," Cartwright added as he escorted the admiral and Selwyn into the passage, "if there should be a shindy at Smith's and any of your men are in it, we shall all explain that it was owing to your having been put away. And two wrongs then will make it right. I guess the newspapers will call it square."

"Exactly so," said the admiral.

And when he reached the Triumphant he had very nearly worked out the plan by which the row at Shanghai Smith's was to occur.

"I'll just go over it with you, Selwyn," he said, when he reached his cabin again. "Now you must remember I rely on your discretion. A wrong step may land us in trouble with the authorities and the Admiralty. There never was a Government department yet which wouldn't resent losing a fine chance of a paper row, and if they catch me settling this matter out of hand, my name is Dennis, as the Americans say. And I don't want your name to be Dennis either."

"Well, what do you propose, Sir Richard?" asked Selwyn.

"This is rightly your show and mine," said the admiral. "I won't have any one else in it, that I can help. I ought to speak to Hamilton, but I won't. I'll keep him out of the trouble"—for Hamilton was the captain of the Triumphant. "I suppose the men here are really fond of me?" said the admiral interrogatively.

"They have no monopoly of that," said Selwyn.

"Is there any one of them you could drop a hint to, that you could trust?"

"Of course," said Selwyn; "there's Benson, whose father works for mine as gardener. We used to fight in the toolhouse at home, and now he would jump overboard if I asked him."

"Do you mean Benson, my coxs'n?"

"Yes, sir."

"He's the very man. You might let him know that if he should get into any trouble, he will be paid for it. I leave the rest to you. You can go ashore now, with this note to Stanley. That will give you a chance to take Benson with you and speak to him on the quiet. I don't know that I care particularly to hear any more about it till the day after to-morrow, unless I have to. Ultimately all the responsibility is mine, of course."

And by that Selwyn understood rightly enough that Dicky Dunn, for all his cunning, had no intention of shirking trouble if trouble came. He went ashore and took Benson up town with him.

"Do the men think it was Shanghai Smith that laid for us, and put the admiral away, Benson?" he asked as they went up Market Street.

"There ain't the shadder of a doubt 'e done it, sir," said Benson.

"And they don't like it?"

"Lord bless you, sir. It's very 'ard 'avin' all liberty stopped, but between you and me it was wise to stop it. They would 'ave rooted 'is 'ouse up and shied the wreckage into the bay."

"It's a pity that you and about twenty more couldn't do it," said Selwyn. "And if one could only catch hold of the man himself and put him on board an outward-bound ship, it would do him good."

Benson slapped his leg.

"Oh, sir, there ain't a man on board the Triumphant that wouldn't do six months with pleasure to 'ave the 'andlin' of 'im."

"No?"

"For sure, sir."

I was lying awake last night thinking of it,"
said Selwyn; "at least, I believe I was awake—perhaps I was dreaming. But I seemed to think that a couple of boats' crews were ashore, and that you went to Shanghai's place for a drink."

"I've done that same, sir," said Benson, "and the liquor was cruel bad."

"And I dreamed—yes, I suppose it was a dream—that you started a row and made hay of his bar and collared him, and took him in the cutter and rowed him round the bay till about four in the morning."

"You always was very imaginary and dreamy as a boy, sir, begging your pardon, sir," said Benson.

"And I dreamed you came to the Harvester——"

"Her that's lying in the bay—the ship with the bad name among sailormen?"

"That's the ship," said Selwyn; "and you hailed her and asked the captain if a man had tried to escape by swimming. And he said 'Yes,' and then you said you'd picked him up."

Benson looked at him quickly.

"But he wouldn't be wet, sir."

"Oh yes, he would, Benson. You could easily duck him over-board."

Benson stared very hard at the lieutenant.

"Of course. I could very easy duck him—and love to do it, too. And did the captain of the Harvester own to him, sir?"

Selwyn nodded.

"He would, Benson—I mean he did, of course."

"I suppose," asked Benson, with his eyes on the pavement, "that it had been arranged so?"

"In the dream, yes," said the lieutenant.

"Was it for to-morrow evening, sir?"

"I thought so," said Selwyn. "And the curious thing about it was that the whole thing was done as quietly as possible. All you men went to work in silence without as much as a hurrah. And one of the boats brought me ashore and the other brought the admiral. And it was only after you had put the man on board the Harvester that you came back for the admiral at five in the morning, Benson."

"And what about the boat as brought you, sir?"

"I came back at twelve and went on board with them, after the fight, and while you were rowing Mr. Smith about the bay, cheering him up."

"Was there anything else, sir?"

"Nothing," said Selwyn, "only that I forget whether it came out. If it did, the men said it was a game all of their own. And I think—no, I'm sure—that if any one got into trouble it paid him well, after all."

"Of course it would, sir," said Benson warmly. "I wish it could really come off. You never know your luck, sir."

"I think Mr. Smith doesn't," said Selwyn.

And when Benson went on board again and had a long confabulation with two boats' crews, there was a unanimous opinion among them that Mr. Smith had piled his ship up with a vengeance when he ran against a British admiral.

"There ain't to be no weepons," said Benson—"nothin' worse nor more cuttin' than a stay-sail 'ank as a knuckle-duster, and even that I don't recommend. An odd stretcher or two and the bottles there will do the job. And the word is silence, now and then."

"Mum's the word," said the men. And like the children that they were, they wrought the whole ship's company into a frenzy of excitement, by dropping hints about as heavy as a half-hundredweight on every one who was not in the game. Had there been much longer to wait than twenty-four hours, they must have told, or burst. And if they had not burst, the others would have finally reached the truth by the process of exhaustion.

It was nine o'clock on the following evening that the admiral went on shore to dine with the British consul. He told Benson that he might be later than eleven. And as Benson touched his cap he took the liberty of believing he might be as late as five in the morning. And just about eleven Selwyn came ashore in another boat with papers which had to go to the admiral. That is what he said to the first lieutenant. Captain Hamilton was sleeping the night at the house of a cousin of his in San Francisco.

"I shall be back in an hour, Thomas," said Selwyn. And the two coxs'ns were left in command of the cutting-out expedition. The whole business was nearly wrecked at the outset by the settlement of the question as to who was to be left in charge of the boats. Finally Thomas and Benson ordered two men to stay, and the defrauded men sat back and growled most horribly as the rest moved off towards Shanghai Smith's in loose order.

"Look 'ere," said Billings to Graves as they were left alone, "it's hobvious one must stay with the boats; but one's enough, and on an hexpedition like this, horders ain't worth a damn. I'll howe you a quid, a whole quid, and my grog for a month if you'll be the man to stay."

"No, I'll toss you, the same terms both sides."

And the spin of coin sent Billings running after the rest. He was received by Benson with curses, but he stuck to the party all the same.

"Very well, you report me! You know you can't," he said defiantly. "And I've give Graves a thick 'un and my grog for a month to be let come."

This awful sacrifice appealed even to Benson.

"All right," he said. "But if I can't report you for this, I can the next time."

"Next time be damned," cried Billings; "'oo cares about next time, now?"

And they hove in sight of Shanghai Smith's.

It was the first time a bluejacket had been near the place since a day or two before the admiral's disappearance. And at first when Shanghai saw them come in he regretted that Billy, his best fighting man, was by now well on his way to Portland. But for at least ten minutes the Triumphants behaved very well. Benson had a good head and had arranged matters very neatly.

"You look 'ere," he had said; "the thing to look out for is the barman. He keeps a gun, as they calls it 'ere, on a shelf under the bar. Smith, 'e'll 'ave one in his pocket. So when I says, 'This rum would poison a dog,' don't wait for no back answer, but lay the bar-keeper out quick, with a stone matchbox or anything 'andy. And the nearest to Smith does the same to 'im. He'll likely not be be'ind, but if 'e is, bottle 'im too, and not a word of jaw about it first or last."

They stood up to the bar, and Benson ordered drinks for himself and three particular pals of his.

"Ain't this Mr. Smith's?" he asked.

"I'm Smith," said Shanghai.

"'Ere's to you. I've often heard of you," said Benson. And three or four merchant seamen sitting about the room sniggered and passed a few sneering remarks among themselves about "Liberty Jack."

Smith, who had taken enough that night to make him rash, referred to the admiral.

"So your admiral has come back, has he?"

"He has," said the Triumphants. "And Dicky Dunn is lookin' for the man that played that dirty game on him."

And Smith shrugged his shoulders as he half turned away.

"'Tain't half so dirty as this rum," said Benson; "it would poison a dog."

And as the words left his mouth the ball opened with a sudden and tremendous crash. Two heavy matchboxes went for Tom behind the bar: one laid him out as quietly as if he had been hocussed; the other smashed a bottle which held a liquor known on the Barbary Coast as brandy, and starred the mirror behind the shelves. Thomas at the same moment stooped and caught Shanghai Smith by the ankles and pitched him on his head. He never had time to reach for his "gun." The merchant seamen jumped to their feet and made for the door.

"Stop them!" said Benson, and half a dozen bluejackets hustled them back again. "No you don't, Johnnies; you can stay and 'ave free drinks, and look after the man behind the bar. Drag out that Smith and get 'im in the open air." And Thomas dragged Smith into the darkness by his collar.

"There's to be no drinkin' for us," said Benson. "Smash what you like, and taste nothin'." And in less than a minute Shanghai's place was a lamentable and ghastly spectacle.

"Sarves him right," said one of the merchant seamen, as he salved a bottle of poison. "Oh, ain't he a sailor-robbing swine?"

"Fetch him in and let him look at it," said Benson, with a wink.

Thomas had been primed.

"He's come to and run like billy-oh!" he cried.

But Smith was incapable of running. He was being carried by two bluejackets.

"After 'im, after 'im," said Benson; and in another moment the whole house was dear.

When Tom came to, he found the place a wreck, and four boarders too far gone in free liquor to offer any useful explanation of what had occurred since the rum had been pronounced fit to poison a dog.

"All I know is," said the soberest, "that he fit and we fit and fit and fit, and then 'e run."

And when Tom sought for the police, it was very odd that there was not one to be found in the quarter of San Francisco which most needs clubbing to keep it in order. There was not even one to bear witness that a crowd of bluejackets and an American citizen had come along the water front at midnight. But five minutes after midnight a British lieutenant could have taken his oath that both crews were in their boats and at least moderately sober.

"I've seen the admiral, Benson," said Selwyn, as he stepped into his boat and sat down, "and he may be later than he said."

"Very well, sir," replied Benson.

And as soon as Selwyn had disappeared into the darkness, the boat with Mr. Shanghai Smith in followed suit. And the bay of San Francisco is not so well policed that they had any one inquiring what they were doing as they pulled across to Saucelito, and laid up quietly till three o'clock.

"He ain't dead, we hopes," said the crew of the boat.

"Not 'e," said Benson; "'is 'eart beats all to rights, and 'is head is perfectly sound, bar a lump the size of a 'en's egg. That up-endin' dodge of Thomas's is very fatal in a row—oh, it's very fatal."

It was nearly two o'clock before Shanghai made any motion. But when he did begin to get conscious, he found his mind and his tongue with surprising rapidity.

"That 'ead of yourn must be made of five-eighths boiler-plate, Mr. Smith," said Benson, as Smith sat up suddenly.

"What am I doin' here?" asked Smith.

"'Ow do we know?" asked the delighted crew. "You would come. It warn't no good excusin' of ourselves."

Smith put his hand to his head.

"Who hit me?" he demanded savagely.

"No one," said the crew unanimously; "you tried to stand on your 'ead."

"Put me ashore," said Smith. "What are you goin' to do?"

"We're waitin' to see the 'Arvester yonder 'eave 'er anchor up," replied Benson. "We're in the sailor-supplyin' line, we are, same as you was."

"He don't like to hear that," said Billings; "we're cutting him out of a job. And this time we ain't supplyin' admirals."

"No, we ain't. Yah, you man-buyin', sailor-robbin' swine! And 'twas you dared touch our admiral. Oh, you dog, you!"

They all took a turn at him, and Smith saw he was in the tightest corner he had ever occupied. This was satisfactorily expressed for him.

"Say, Shanghai, did you ever hear of Barney's bull?"

And when Smith refused to answer, they answered for him.

"He was jammed in a clinch, and so are you. You're goin' to 'ave the finest time of all your life. Did you ever 'ear of Sant of the 'Arvester?"

And Smith, for all his brutal courage, shook in his boots.

"I'll give you chaps a hundred dollars to put me ashore," he cried. "I never touched Sir Richard Dunn."

"Dry up," said Benson, "and don't lie. We wouldn't part with you, my jewel, not for a thousand. What made you desert from the 'Arvester, a comfortable ship like that, with sich a duck of a skipper?"

"I'll give you a thousand," said Smith desperately.

"At four o'clock you're goin' on the 'Arvester—and 'tis nigh on three now. Sant wouldn't miss a man like you, so smart and 'andy, for all the gold in Californy. Own up as you shanghaied the admiral?"

Smith grasped at any chance of avoiding the Harvester. For Sant had a dreadful name, and both his mates were terrors.

"If I own I put him away, will you take me ashore and hand me over to the police?"

He was almost in a state of collapse.

Benson looked at the man, and in the faint light of far-off day still below the horizon the boat's crew saw him wink.

"We'll vote on it, if you owns up. What d'ye say, chaps?"

"Aye, we'll vote," said the men. "Say, did you do it?"

But Smith saw how the voting would go, and refused to speak. They heard six bells come across the water from many ships. And then they heard seven. There was a grey glint in the east. The sand-dunes on the verge of the Ocean Park whitened as they pulled for the Harvester. They heard the clank of her windlass brakes and the bull voice of her mate, as he encouraged his men to do their best by threatening them with three months of hell afloat.

Smith offered Benson two thousand dollars.

"I wouldn't part with you except to Sant for all you ever robbed men of," said Benson—"and what that is, on'y you knows. Pull, boys; her cable's up and down. No, hold on a moment; he must be wet, of course."

In spite of his struggles they put him over the side and soused him thoroughly. When they pulled him on board again, he sat cursing.

"Now, boys, bend your backs."

And when he came up alongside the Harvester she was just moving under the draught of her loosed topsails.

"Harvester, ahoy!" cried Benson.

"Hallo!" said Sant. "What is it?"

"You don't happen to have lost one of your crew, tryin' to desert by swimmin', sir?"

"Have you picked him up? What's his name, does he say?"

"It's Smith, sir."

"That's the man," said Sant. "I want him badly."

But Smith cried out:

"This is kidnappin', Mr. Sant. I refuse to go."

"Oh, Smith," said Sant, "I'll take all the chances of it's bein' anythin' you like. Throw them a rope."

And the Triumphants towed alongside.

"Up you go," said Benson.

"I won't," said Smith.

"Won't you?" asked Benson. "We'll see about that. Hook on there, Billings."

And the next moment Smith was jammed in a running bowline round his waist.

"Sway him up," said Benson; and the crew of the Harvester hoisted the notorious robber with about the only feelings of pleasure they were likely to know till they reached New York. And the Triumphants pushed off as they heard the mate address Mr. Smith in language which did his reputation and the reputation of the ship most ample justice.

"There's talk and there's a fore-topsail-yard-ahoy voice for you," said Benson. "Oh, Mr. Smith will be looked after, he will. Now, chaps, pull for it, or the admiral will be waitin', and if that 'appens, 'twill be 'Stand from under.'"

THE POLICY OF THE POTLUCK.

Concerning the permanent and immutable characteristics of ships, the unhappy man who has never had his limited range of vision broadened by a trip in a sailing ship must of necessity know little. He probably falls into the fallacy, common even among those who follow the sea, that a partial or entire clearance of her "crowd" will quite alter her nature; whereas sailors being sailors—that is, people of certain fairly definite attributes—any given environment makes them much the same as those who preceded them.

But entire changes in the personnel of a vessel rarely take place. The officers change, but the crew remains: the crew goes, but officers stay. Or more frequently some few men are favourites of one or two of the officers, and they mingle with the new crew like yeast, till the ancient fermentation is visible once more.

Ships (to speak thus of their companies) talk of the same subjects over a million miles of changing seas: they have a permanent stock of subjects. These include all which are perennially of interest to seafaring men, such as homes versus boarding-houses, but they include also something more individual, something more intimately connected with the essence of that particular vessel. And the one unending topic of interest on board the Potluck was foreign politics.

How this came about no one knew, though many theories were set afloat and sunk again every Sunday afternoon. Some said that the first captain of the Potluck was called Palmerstone, and that he introduced the subject of England versus the world as soon as he came on board. Others swore that they had been told by a clerk in the employ of the firm that there had been a discussion over her very keel concerning the introduction into her frame of foreign oaks.

"This was the way of it," said Jack Hart, who was the chief upholder of this particular theory, and the son of a little shipbuilder—"the lot that built her at Liverpool was the mixedest crowd of forsaken cranks as ever handled timber. So the clerk said. And one had a hankerin' for teak and another for hoak (with odd leanin's now and agin for Hafrican and Portugee and French hoak), and another he said 'Cuban Sabicu,' and another's word was 'Hackmatack' and 'chestnut' hevery time. So they shoved in bits here and bits there till she was a reg'lar junk-shop o' samples. And that's the reason she's a foreign talking argument ship. And a mighty good reason too."

The crowd listened in silence.

"If you knew as much about arguin' as you know (seemin'ly) about timbers as no man ever heerd of, your argument might stand," said Mackenzie, a withered old foc'sle man. "But it ain't to reason as the natur' of the woods in a ship should make us talk this way or that. If so be a ship was built o' teak, d'ye think we'd talk the 'jildy jow,' you black 'son of a gun' lingo?"

Hart shook his head.

"No ship ain't never built all of teak as I ever heerd of, and so your eye's out, Mac. But a man with 'arf an eye could see the knowledge of her bein' so built might lead right hup to talk about the stren'ths of the countries as well of the vally of their timbers."

"So they might," said the almost convinced crowd. "Now Jack Hart 'as the gift, so to speak, of seein' through things."

"And once started, who'd stop it?" asked Jack triumphantly. "I knowed a ship as 'ad fresh crowd after fresh crowd in her, but she for ever 'ad a black cat aboard. And they talked 'cat' to make you sick. And I knowed another as 'ad from launch to her hultimate pilin' up in the Bermudas the fashion of calling the skipper the 'Guffin.' And hevery skipper was the 'Guffin,' new and old, go or stay. But when we broke hoff to hargue, why, we was talkin' about them French jossers and whether Sallis-bury was a-goin' to let 'em chip into our game and straddle the Nile."

"That's so," said the crowd, and the House was rough.

Meanwhile, the skipper, or "old man" (who henceforward, by the way, was called the "Guffin"), and his two mates were discussing the latest aspect of world politics, as they drank whiskey and water.

"What's wrong with Salisbury," said the Guffin, who was as stout as a barrel and as sturdy, "is, that he ain't got a backbone. He just lets 'em blow him about like so much paper. What he wants is stiffenin': he's like a sprung spar. That's what he's like."

The mate, a tough-looking dog with hair like anæmic tussac grass in patches on his face, shook his head.

"I've a greater opinion of him, captain, than you have. All his double shuffle is cunning. It's getting back so's to lead them French on. Mark me, he'll play them yet a fair knock-out."

The Guffin sneered.

"He may have cunnin', Lampert, but he ain't no real tact. Now, diplomatic tact, I take it, is not givin' way into the gutter, but just showin' as you're a nice pleasant-spoken chap as don't mean to be put on. It's my good opinion as these foreigners don't yearn to fight us. And men like you and me, Lampert, gets to learn the way of handlin' foreigners. Who has so much experience with 'em as them in command of English ships?"

"That's so," said the second mate, who had been listening. "Now last v'y'ge in the Battleaxe, there was a Dago in my watch as come from the betwixt and between land where Spain jines France. And he was the Dagoest Dago I ever sailed with. But I knew the breed, and the first time he opens his garlicky mouth I hauled off and hit him. And then I took his knife away and snapped the point off. And I says to him, 'Now, you black beggar, every time at muster you'll show me that knife, and there'll be peace in the land.' And he done so, and there was peace."

The captain (or "Guffin") smote his thigh.

"You're right, Simcox, you're right, and if Salisbury was to take a leaf out of your log-book in respects of handlin' Dagoes, 'twould be better for all concerned. But no, not him. He goes on seein' them French make a fleet and he lets 'em! He actually sees 'em with their fleet sharpenin' on the grindstone and never says from the poop, 'Chuck that overboard, you swine, or I'll come and 'andle you so's you'll be glad to die.'"

The second mate was much gratified, as was obvious by his standing first on one foot and then on another. But Lampert was not so pleased.

"Why, you talk—you, captain and you, Simcox—as if they had a fleet. Why, it's my opinion—and experts say 'ditto' to me there—that a string o' band-boxes with crackers in 'em, and all on a mud-flat, would do as much harm as the French fleet—unless they blows up when we takes 'em."

The Guffin shook his head.

"Well, you know, Lampert, as I never 'ad no opinion of their fleet. But that ain't the question. Salisbury may have 'is reasons for not takin' it away, though I fails to see 'em; but the real question is, why we don't have a man with guts and go in command. It's my firm belief as there's many a merchant captain as could work the diplomatic game to better hadvantage. Look at the experience we has, dealing with owners contrary as hell, and with consignees and with 'arbour-masters and pilots. Where Salisbury is wrong, is in his not goin' about and freshin' up his mind. And he works by rule o' thumb and dead reckoning. It ain't no wonder we can see where's his eye's out."

"It ain't," said the compliant Simcox.

"Well," sighed Lampert, "I owns freely as I don't feel that sure I'd like to run his show."

The Guffin laughed.

"But you ain't 'ad my experience yet, Lampert. Now, I'd hundertake to come right down into the harena, and make them French and Germans sit up like monkeys on a horgan while I played the tune."

"I believe you," said Simcox, rubbing his hard hands.

"Look at the difficulties we 'as to contend with," said the skipper, with a rapidly thickening utterance and an increasing loss of aspirates—"look at the vig'lance we 'as to use. Rocks and shoals and hother ships. It's 'igh education to be a master-mariner, and the Board of Trade knows it—knows it well. This 'ere crowd's all English except that one Dutchman, but if so be we'd English and Dagoes, and Dutchmen and Calashees, I'd 'ave showed you and Salisbury 'ow to 'andle mixed sweets. Vig'lance, difficulties, bright look-out, and the rule o' the road. And look at the chart! That's me!"

And very shortly afterwards the triple conversation ceased, for the captain lay snoring in his cabin.

The Potluck was a barque of eleven hundred tons' register, and was bound for Adelaide, with a general cargo of all mixed things under heaven and on earth. Now she was engaged in running down her easting, and, as her skipper believed, was somewhere about Lat. 44° 30' S., Long. 50° E., and not far off the Crozets. The westerly winds were blowing hard, but had the worst chill of winter off, for the month was September. Nevertheless, as old Jones, the skipper, was on a composite track, with a maximum latitude of 45° S., and was bound farther south still it might have been to the advantage of all concerned if he had drunk less, talked little, and minded his own business instead of arguing foreign politics.

But to each man Fate often gives his chance of proving what he boasts to be his particular skill in the universe.

When Lampert relieved Simcox at midnight, the weather was thick, and neither man's temper was of the sweetest, so they had a bit of a breeze.

"What kind of a relief d'ye call this?' growled Simcox.

"I call it a very good relief," replied Lampert, "and a darned sight better one than you deserve. You owe me ten minutes even now."

He looked down the scuttle at the clock.

"Why, you owe me twenty."

Simcox flew out with pretended politeness.

"Oh, make it half an hour! Don't let's haggle about such a trifle. What's it matter if I stand here waiting? Can't I keep the whole bloomin' watch for you?"

"Go to hell," said Lampert sulkily.

And Simcox went below.

"To be a sailor is to be a natural born fool," said Lampert, addressing the bitter and unkindly elements at large, "and to be on board a ship with such a windy gassing crowd, from the old man down to the cook, is very trying. It's very trying."

The wind took off a little later, but the weather was still thickish.

"It's like lookin' through a haystack," grunted Lampert, "but there, bar an island or so there's nothing to speak of in our way. And if the skipper will crack on, and it a week since we saw the sun, it's the owners' look out, not mine."

He spoke with a certain bitterness, as though he would really enjoy being wrecked, in the trust that the Potluck was not insured, and that old Jones would get his certificate cancelled, or at least suspended.

"'Twould give the old ass time to study foreign politics," sneered Lampert, as it breezed up again.

And five minutes' later, while Lampert was lighting his pipe half-way down the cabin stairs, he heard a bellow forward which made him drop thoughts of tobacco.

"Breakers ahead!"

The watch came out on deck and ran aft; and were followed by the watch below in various articles of attire, not calculated to keep them very warm.

The Potluck had been running with the wind nearly dead aft.

"Starboard, starboard!" roared Lampert. "Oh, steady; hold her there!"

The vessel ran off to port at a sharp angle to her wake.

"Up here some," yelled the mate, "and set the spanker! Stand by the—— My God!"

And, as old Jones and Simcox came on deck, the Potluck was hard and fast ashore. With one simultaneous crack the three topmasts went over the side, and as the men and officers jumped under the shelter of the weather rail, Lampert and those of the watch who were with him came tumbling down from the poop. They reckoned on a boiling sea coming after and sweeping them away. But though the malignity native to matter had set the Potluck ashore, by good luck she was hard and fast in the one sheltered cove on the island. When Lampert by instinct altered her course to port, as he heard the coast breakers at the starboard bow, he had run her in between two ledges of rock, of which the outer or more westerly one acted as a complete breakwater.

The skipper, who had been lying flat when the others jumped for the main deck, got up and crawled forward to the break of the poop. He was half-paralysed with a mixture of funk and rage. He addressed himself and his remarks to the sky, the sea, and the island, but above all to Lampert.

"You man-drowning, slop-built caricature of a sailorman, what 'ave you bin and done with my ship?" he bellowed. "Oh, Lord, I'm a ruined man; by gosh, I'll murder you!"

He tumbled down on the main deck and made for Lampert, who easily dodged him.

"Shut up, you old idiot!" said the mate contemptuously. "Who but me told you that if you drove her in thick weather, and no sun seen for a week, you'd pile her up?"

Simcox caught Jones and held him.

"Good lord, sir," said the second greaser, "it's no time to fight."

"No, it ain't," said Jack Hart boldly.

That a foremast hand should dare to shove his oar in, almost cowed the poor old Guffin. It was something out of nature.

"It ain't no time for jawbation," insisted Hart, about whom the others had gathered. "It's time for thinkin' out the politics of the situation, and if I'm not mistaken we shall be able to walk ashore by the morning, and there won't be no ship for any one to command—so what's the use of jaw? I say get up stores, eh, Mackenzie?"

"Don't ask me," said old Mac. "I was thinkin' that mighty soon we'd be able to settle that question about the buildin' of the Potluck."

And as by this time Jones was calming down and was rather inclined to cry, Lampert came up to the restive crowd.

"You dry up, Hart," he said roughly. "Until the ship's broken up, you're on the articles. Say another word and I'll break your jaw."

"Yes, sir," said Hart respectfully.

Until dawn they loafed about the deck and in the cabin and foc'sle, discussing whether they were on one of the Crozets or what, and whether they would stay long there, and if so what, and so on.

And just as the dawn broke over the island they got an awful surprise. They saw a man standing on the low cliff on about a level with the jagged splinters of the fore-topmast where it had gone short in the cap.

"The bloomin' hisland's in'abited," cried a foremast hand, and every one rushed forward to interview the gesticulating stranger.

"Wod's the bloke say?" asked the crowd. "Oh, say it again!" And the stranger said it again.

But the crowd shook a unanimous head.

"I believe the silly galoot don't talk English," cried Hart; "'ere, where's Dutchy?"

They shoved their one "Dutchman" forward, and after some interchange of utter un-intelligibilities, listened to by every one with bated breath, Hermann turned round.

"I not versteh, captain. I denk him ein French."

The Frenchman was joined by two or three more, and then by a dozen.

"Why, they're all French," said the disgusted crowd. "What's Frenchmen doin' on any island of ours?"

And until the sea went down, which it did sufficiently to allow them to get ashore at about ten o'clock, they discussed the question as to whether the Crozets were English or not. It was settled by old Mackenzie.

"All islands as don't belong to any one belongs to us," he said; "it was arranged so by Disraeli."

They got ashore with some risk, and were greeted by the Frenchman in the most amiable way.

"Poor beggars!" said the crew; "it must be 'ard on a soft lot of things like them to be on a des'late hisland. Ain't it a wonder Froggies ever goes to sea? But does they belong 'ere, or was they piled hup same's hus?"

Hart found himself alongside a Frenchman with a long red Liberty cap on, and a big pair of ear-rings in his ears.

"Goddam," said the Frenchman.

"That's what we say," cried Hart. "Here, you chaps, he speaks English."

"Hurrah!" said the crowd.

"I spike Engelish," nodded the stranger.

"How'd you come 'ere?" asked the eager chorus.

The Frenchman nodded.

"Goddam!" he said, smiling. "Ship! Por'smout'—London! I spick En'lish."

"Well, then," said Hart desperately, "just dry up with your mixed hogwash, and spit it all out free as to 'ow you came 'ere, and wot the name o' this bally rock is, and who's its in'abitants. Now, give it lip!"

"Hart's a nateral born speaker, and 'as a clear 'ead," said the crowd. "'E puts it in a nutshell, and don't run to waste in words."

But the Frenchman looked puzzled.

"Comb wiz," he said; "spik En'lish besser," and he pointed over the low rise.

"Steady!" said Hart; "boys, I'm not clear as to whether we hain't bein' led hinto a hambush. It hain't nateral for shipwrecked Englishmen to find Frenchies shipwrecked too!"

"It ain't," said the crew suspiciously.

"And even if it's all right, we bein' strangers might be led into makin' a treaty without knowin' all there is to know. I vote waitin' till the officers comes up."

They squatted down on rocks and on the lumps of tussac grass till the captain and the two mates came along with the rest of the Frenchmen. Hart communicated his suspicions to the skipper, who was decidedly under the influence of alcohol.

"That's all right," said the Guffin thickly. "We can manage Frenchmen. They ain't goin' to make no French Shore question on no more of our islands. One Newfoundland's enough for me. I'll show you n'gotiations—'gotiashuns is my forte!" And he led the way over the hill. Below them they saw the wreck of a French barquantine.

"Blimy," said the crowd, with a frown, "if they 'aven't got the best part of our hisland!"

It was not to be endured by any lot of Englishmen under the sun, that the best part of this rock should be occupied by their natural foes, and soon there was evidence that in any attempt to turn the Frenchmen out the British leader would have a united nation at his back.

The Guffin and the two mates argued it, and Lampert was the Opposition.

"W'y, wot's this you're sayin'?" asked the disgusted skipper; "did I think to 'ave shipped a Verning 'Arcourt among my lot? You're a Little Englander, and nothin' but it, Lampert."

"They was here first," said Lampert obstinately.

"But the hisland is British ground," urged Simcox, "and where our flag flies no Frenchman can have the best. We gives 'em liberty to trade, and they can take what's left. What for have we always beat 'em if we're to give in now?"

"Continuosity of foreign politics is my motter," said the skipper. "With continuosity and joodishus firmness, and a polite 'hout o' this,' you'll see 'em listen to reason, and evacuate. I shall send hin my hultimatum this very afternoon. And you, Simcox, shall be hambassador."

Simcox looked anxious.

"Well, captain, I was thinking it would be judicious policy to send in the Dutchman. It will remind them that Europe is more or less agin them, and to have a Dutchman here will make 'em think twice afore they elects for war."

The skipper shook his head.

"No, Simcox, it looks judicious on the surface, but takin' deeper thought it ain't. It would aggerawate them, and that ain't policy. We fights if we must, but don't start it by doin' anythin' unpleasin' more'n askin' for our rights. And in n'gotiashuns it ain't policy to remind 'em deliberate of the time the Prooshians beat 'em. And moreover it's accordin' to no tradition I've heard of to send a furriner as hambassador. No, Simcox, you shall go. I'll draw up the hultimatum at once."

He returned on board the wreck of the Potluck, and in company with a bottle of brandy strove with the situation, while the crowd and their spokesman, Hart, argued like a House of Commons.

"It ain't any good talkin'," said Jack, "and hevery one knows that give a Frenchman the chance of hargument he'll talk a government mule's 'ind leg off. 'Hout of this,' is the on'y hargument a Frenchman hunderstands."

"But they seems to be a good many more of 'em than us," suggested the crowd.

"Come to that," said Hart, "it's the on'y just ground we 'as to go for 'em. For if they was on'y ekal numbers, it'd be cowardly to whack 'em, and I for one would be on the side of just goin' down there and shovin' them out peaceful. I'm for the hultimatum right off. I wonder 'ow the Guffin will put it. Say, boys, 'ere 'e comes!"

The "old man" staggered up with a sheet of paper in his hand.

"Have you done it, sir?" asked Simcox. "Let's hear it."

"Yes, read it out," said Lampert, with half a sneer, which the skipper did not notice.

The crowd gathered round as the captain squatted on a rock.

"On board the British barque Potluck, belonging to the British port Liverpool; owners, McWattie & Co.; Captain Abednego Jones.

"MR. SIMCOX,—Sir——"

"Eh, what?" said the astounded Simcox.

"It's addressed to you, Simcox," said the skipper blandly.

"Why?" asked Simcox.

The skipper shook his head impatiently.

"I thought you'd 'ave knowed, Simcox. You're the hambassador, and you've to communicate this to 'em."

"Oh, go on, sir," said the crowd.

The skipper resumed:

"MR. SIMCOX,—Sir, you'll be so good as to be so kind as to communicate the contents of this 'ere letter to them French of the wreck we don't know the name of, and tell them to clear. For there ain't no reasonable grounds for supposin' this ain't a British hisland (seeing that mostly all hislands is) and they've by comin' 'ere first got and taken possession of the best bit of it, which can't be allowed, as it's contrary to law in such case made and purvided. So you'll inform 'em it ain't goin' to be put up with, and they must evacuate immejit and resume the statues quo——"

"What's that?" asked Simcox.

"It's Latin, you unutterable ass," said the skipper, with a look of withering contempt.

"I don't know Latin," said the poor second mate.

"And who expected it of you?" asked the skipper. "It means that things are to go on as they was afore they come:

"——resume the statues quo, and don't stand no hargument. You are to tell 'em it will be considered an unfriendly hact, and that we 'as cleared for haction in consequence of not believing them such cowards as to quit. But quit they must, and no mistake, or we resort without delay to the arbitrage and general haverage of war. Given this day on board the British barque Potluck by me,

"CAPTAIN ABEDNEGO JONES."

"First rate!" said the crew. "That'll give 'em the jumps."

"And how am I to translate it?" asked the miserable Simcox.

"That's your look-out," said the Guffin, with a hiccup. "Shall I keep a dog and bark myself? Now, 'urry and get it hover. And let hevery one 'ave a weapon, 'andspikes and belayin' pins. Now go, Simcox!"

"Hart, come along with me," said Simcox.

And as the "old man" was engaged in keeping his balance, he made no objection.

"I think this is a herror of judgment, sir," said Hart; "my hidea of a hultimatum was jumpin' on 'em unexpected, and givin' 'em toko afore they know'd where they was. My notion of fightin' (and it pays hevery time) is to haggravate your man till he's ready to 'it, but to 'it 'im fust. An' if I thinks a cove will 'it me in five minutes, I lets no time go by in hanticipatin' 'im. But this will warn 'em."

"But they have no one who really knows English, Hart," groaned Simcox; "and I don't know the first word of French."

"Never mind, sir," said Hart encouragingly. "I've 'ad many a row with a Frenchy, and I never knowed my 'avin' not the least notion of what 'e meant ever stopped the fight from comin' off. If so be I see you get stuck, I'll come in, sir."

And they were met by the French sailor who thought he spoke English.

"I spik En'lish, goddam," said the Frenchman. "Leaverpool, Por'smout'; mais le capitaine spik besser."

"Good-mornin'," said Simcox meekly to the French captain, a long unhappy looking man, who might have been the skipper of a chasse-marée for all the style he put on.

"Mais, oui——" said the captain.

"This 'ere paper is for you," said Simcox, "and by the powers I hope you can't read it."

He handed the ultimatum to the Frenchman, who studied it while his crew came round.

"Je ne peux pas le lire, monsieur," he said at length.

Simcox turned to Hart.

"There, now what the blazes am I to do when he talks that way?"

"Just hexplain it," said Hart, as he helped himself to a chew. "Say, 'Hout o' this!'"

"It means you've got to go," said Simcox; "you can't be allowed to stay in the best part of our island."

"Goddam," cried the Frenchman, with his hand in his hair. "I spik English, two, tree word: pilote, feesh, shannel, owaryo!"

"Owaryo?" asked Simcox.

"That's his way o' sayin' 'How are you?'" interjected Hart, who was contemptuously sizing up the French sailors.

"Ah, how are you?" said Simcox.

"Owaryo," replied the French captain, smiling.

"Very well, thanks," said Simcox; "but I'm the ambassador."

"Ma foi, ambassadeur! You spik Français?"

"And you've just got to get," added Simcox.

"March!" cried Hart.

The Frenchmen "jabbered" a bit among themselves.

"Quoi donc? Marcher?" asked their skipper.

"We, old son," said Hart; "marshay if you like. Just pack up and quit. We gives you an hour to gather up your dunnage. Now do you understand?"

Whether the Frenchmen understood or not it was tolerably obvious they did not like the tone with which Hart spoke, or the looks of evident disfavour he cast at them. The captain turned away.

"Stop!" said Hart, and he went in for a dumb pantomime, in which he vaguely suggested that over yonder hill was an army of Englishmen.

"And we mean 'avin' our rights," he ended with. And just then old Jones appeared in sight.

"Are they jossers goin' to evacuate or not?" he bellowed. "What's their captain say to the statues quo? Don't they know the first thing about diplomatics? Tell 'em that to prepare for peace we makes war."

"War it is," said Hart, and he launched himself at a crowd of Frenchmen, as his mates came tumbling down the hill.

The fight was short, sharp, and pretty decisive, for the Potluck's crowd numbered ten able seamen, one ordinary seaman, and two boys, or with the captain and the two mates, sixteen in all. Against this array there were twenty-one Frenchmen, and though Hart, in his first onslaught, knocked down two, he was himself stretched out by a third armed with a broken hand-spike. And Simcox fled with the infuriated foreigners at his heels. The true battle (for this was but an affair of outposts) joined on the crest of the rise, and in five minutes the English were in flight for the shelter of the piled-up Potluck. Old Jones was keeled over once, but Lampert and Mackenzie dragged him away and got him down to the ship. He swore most terribly.

"'Ere's a pretty kettle o' fish," said he at last; "a pretty lot I 'as to my back to let a few Frenchies lick 'em this way. What's the good o' diplomatics if my men 'asn't the guts to support me? Where's that Simcox?"

"Here, sir," said the ambassador.

"Who told you to start a row?" demanded the skipper. "Don't you know your duty? You was to give 'em the hultimatum and retire dignified. Do you call it retirin' dignified to run and beller like a bull-calf?"

Simcox looked sulky and injured.

"How was I to look dignified with six of 'em after me—and two with knives and one with a meat-chopper?" he asked. "And as for startin' a rough house, 'twas Hart as done it."

"Where's Hart?" yelled the Guffin.

"'Ere, 'Art, where are you?" said the crowd.

"I believe he's a prisoner," said Lampert.

"Oh, Lord," said the crowd, "but Jack never 'ad no discretion."

"We must 'ave him liberated," said the skipper firmly. "No man of mine must be in the 'ands of them mutilatin' French. Simcox, you'll 'ave to go to 'em again and open n'gotiashuns!"

"No, sir," said Simcox, "if you'll excuse me, I'll do nothin' of the sort. I've had my fill up of bein' ambassador."

"This is mut'ny," said the skipper; "but under the painful national circumstances I shan't do nothin' but order you to your cabin, where you'll consider yourself in custody."

Simcox looked greatly relieved, and went without delay.

"Mr. Lampert, you'll be hambassador," said the old man, after a drink of brandy.

The mate looked the skipper up and down.

"I'll see you further first," he cried. "'Twas you that started the row and the trouble, and you can get out of it as you like."

"This is rank mut'ny," said the skipper, "and you could be 'ung for refusin' duty. But under the painful nash'nal circumstances you can retire to your cabin and be your own bloomin' policeman till peace is restored, when I'll try you and sentence you, you run and scuttle swine you."

"Oh, that's all right," said the mate contemptuously.

"Now, men," said the skipper thickly, "what I wants is 'earty support. Who'll volunteer for to be hambassador?"

The crew looked at each other and shook their heads. They scuffled with uneasy feet on the lopsided deck.

"They're standin' upon the 'ill as thick as pea-sticks," said one of the boys.

"Speak hup," roared the skipper.

The crew shoved old Mac in front.

"We've revolved the notion up and over," said Mac, "and we've come to the conclusion, sir, there ain't nothin' to be got by sendin' ignorant men like we on such errands."

The skipper hiccupped angrily.

"Who asted you to think? But I ain't the man to press unwilling lubbers into goin' aloft, I can lead the way. Go into the fo'castle, you dogs, and consider yourselves under arrest. Go!"

"Blimy," said the crowd, "but we're all in our own custody, so we are. Now what's the old man goin' to do?"

They watched him from the fo'castle as he staggered into his own part of the ship.

"I'll be my own hambassador," said Jones. "I'll show 'em 'ow to work things with dignity; I'll show that ass Lampert what's o'clock. What you wants in such cases made and provided is tact, and go, and innerds. Innerds is the chief need. Why fight if palaver'll do? Where I was wrong was to send a galoot like Simcox. But what could I do but work the best with the tools I 'ad? If I'd gone myself, we'd 'ave made peace afore there was a row."

He came staggering out of the cabin with a case of brandy and laid it on the after capstan.

"I guess I'll have a boy," said Jones. "'Ere, you scum, send me Billy." And Billy came aft.

"I releases you temp'ry without bail," said the skipper fiercely, "so puckalow that case and foller me. No, you wait till I gets a tablecloth as a signal I'm willin' to 'ave peace."

When he came out with a cloth he went ashore and stumbled up the hill, followed by the boy Billy, bearing the case of brandy. He found the crew of the Frenchmen lining the crest, and heard them talk.

"Say, Johnny French," said old Jones, "if you wants war, prepare for peace. Who's the captain?"

"Sapristi!" said the French captain.

Jones nodded.

"Give it up, old son. It warn't my fault, if relyin' on the discretion of ambassadors ain't a fault: and maybe you can swaller the hultimatum with some real good brandy throwed in. And is your name Sapristi?"

"Nom de Dieu——" began the Frenchman, but Jones waved his hand with dignity.

"Call yourself what you like, but 'ave you got anythin' in the way of a marlinspike or a splice bar as'll open this yer case?"

The foreigners, perceiving that the Englishman was on an errand of peace, gathered about the case, and soon discovered from the stencilled inscription that it at any rate pretended to come from Cognac.

"Goddam," said the little red-capped Frenchman who had first discovered them. "Cognac! I spik English—brandee, Por'smout', Lon-don!"

Jones made signs that he presented the case to them.

"I ain't above makin' a concession or two," he remarked confidentially to the French captain; "but if I'd listened to my lot on board, it would 'ave been blood up to the neck."

The Frenchman shook his head.

"You bet it would 'ave bin," said Jones earnestly, "but what d'ye say to 'avin' a drink? Billy, gimme your knife."

And with it he started opening the case, while the Frenchmen's eyes gleamed in pleasing anticipation. They had not had a drink for weeks. And as they carried the case down to the ship with Jones and their own captain in the rear, they concluded that the English were not such bad chaps after all.

"But where's my man 'Art!" asked Jones, when he came to the French camp.

"'Ere I be," cried Hart, who was lashed hard and fast to a round rock. "Lord, captain, but I've 'ad a time. Can't you cut me adrift, sir?"

Jones shook his head.

"You interferin' galoot, it serves you right. And as for that, the 'ole crew's under arrest, where I put 'em for mut'ny, and I don't see as I should so pick and choose among 'em as to use my hinfluence to 'ave you let go. At any rate, bide a bit, and I'll see."

For it was obvious that the drinking was going to begin. The French captain served the liquor out in a small glass to every one, and presently some of his melancholy disappeared. He gave an order to one of his men who brought two more glasses, one for the English captain, and one for himself.

"I looks towards you," said Jones.

"À votre santé," cried the Frenchman. "Monsieur, vous êtes un homme de coeur quand mêne."

"I don't savvy, but I dessay you means well," said the captain. "Now, if I'd thought to bring along the signal book we might 'ave 'ad quite a talk. But time enough; I dessay afore we're took off I shall patter your lingo like blazes. Shall I cut my man loose there?"

He pointed to Hart, and though two of the Frenchmen, who had black eyes, remonstrated against the deed of mercy, Hart was unlashed and given a drink.

"Here's to you, old cocklywax," said Hart, with a scrape of his leg. "I bears no grudge, not me."

And very soon the French and English skippers were talking to each other at the rate of knots, while Hart sat in a crowd of Frenchmen and told them all about everything.

It was close on sundown when Jones returned to the Potluck. He had to be helped up the side by some of the crew.

"Ain't we under arrest?" they asked. "Does we dare come out?"

Jones hiccupped.

"I releases you on your own recognition," he said. "So down you come and 'elp."

When he put his foot on the deck, he mustered all hands aft.

"And you, Lampert, and you, Simcox!"

The two mates came out of their cabins.

"And where's Hart?"

"If you please, sir, he's drunk," said Billy.

"Arrest 'im," said the skipper; "what's 'e mean by it? Now, look 'ere, you bally lot, what does you think of yourselves?"

The crew appeared uneasy.

"I went all by my lone," said the skipper, hanging on to the poop ladder, "all by my lone I went, and I brings back peace! Do you 'ear? But when I sent you, what use was you? I released 'Art, who's repaid me by bein' unable to see an 'ole in a ladder; and I've concluded a treaty of peace and friendship with the French. Next time (if so be a German ship comes ashore) I'll go out as my own hambassador. No, Simcox, never more! No, Lampert, never, never more! I just speaks to that French crowd, and they are civil and drink fair. They recognised they'd met their match. Their skipper says, says he, 'Captain Jones, I owns fair and square I'm not your ekal at diplomatics.' He adds, moreover, 'Captain Jones, damn me if I believe your match is to be found.' And I says, with dignity (with dignity, Simcox), 'Right you are!' That's what I says. And as for you, you ratty galoots, you'll treat 'em when you meets 'em just the same as if they wasn't French. Do you 'ear me? That's my hultimatum. Now you can go. That'll do the watch."

He turned to the mates.

"I thought better of you two, so I did," he remarked sadly. "But there, you 'aven't 'ad my experience, and when I gets 'ome I shall see as them that is in power at the Furrin Office 'ears 'ow I done it. Salisbury ain't my stiffness of backbone, and 'e ain't my tact. If so be as 'e was to invite them Frenchmen to dinner, it would be different. They knows (as the French captain owned to me; fair and square 'e owned it) they don't 'ave no nat'ral right to hislands and col'nies. Make the Frenchmen's 'omes 'appy and they'll stay at 'ome. Think it hout; you'll see 'ow it could be done. There now, that'll do you. I disarrest you!"

And the "old man" rolled cheerfully for his cabin.

"By my lone I done it!" said the Guffin.

THE CREW OF THE KAMMA FUNDER.

The stars of European science, who had been shining in a wonderful constellation over Quebec, were just about to leave Canada in that well-known comfortable liner, the Nipigon, when a most annoying thing happened. The cattle-ship Abbitibbe, never famous at any time for minding her helm, got her steam steering gear jammed as she was passing the Nipigon, and took a wide sheer to port when she should have altered her course to starboard. The peaceful preparations of the passenger boat were broken up, and her crew received the wild charge of the Abbitibbe with curses, which, though effectual in heating the atmosphere, were no use as a fender. The Nipigon was cut down to the water's edge, and the scientific lights of Europe were much put out. They hurried ashore in the most irregular and unscientific manner, and, having sent others for their baggage, began to make preparations for going to New York, as no other good passenger boat was leaving the St. Lawrence for a week.

But Nature, possibly out of revenge for the unseemly curiosity evinced by all men of science, was beforehand with them. Misfortunes, as was once observed by an intelligent, if pessimistic, anthropoid ape, never come singly. It was the twelfth of November, and a sudden blizzard, bringing all the snow it could carry, broke up communication with the south. If the men of science were to keep their appointments with their universities, it was necessary to sail from Canada at once. They shipped themselves under protest upon the Nemagosenda, of 2,900 tons register, which was little better than a tramp, and was commanded by Captain Joseph Prowse.

"Immortal Jehoshaphat!" said Captain Prowse; "here's a go! What, we with passengers? Oh, get out!"

"You've got to take 'em," said the agent philosophically; "maybe they'll teach you something, and it'll be a good advertisement."

"Gah'n!" said Prowse; "carryin' scientific jossers won't bring better freight next season. I wish you'd get me chock up with cattle. I can't stand scientists; my sister married one that was an 'erbalist in the Old Kent Road—and since he went to chokey I've lost conceit with science. However, if it must be—why, send 'em along!"

Captain Prowse was not a popular skipper with sailors. They said that he was a "hard nut" and a "sailor-robber," and that his American experience had made him nearly as deadly as any American captain with a belaying-pin. But sailors' experience only works backward: they are good at reminiscence only, and the Nemagosenda got a crew in spite of the captain's reputation. It is possible they would not have shipped if they had known that men of European light and leading were to come with them. Those who follow the sea have a great respect for knowledge, but they despise men in soft hats and spectacles. And it cannot be denied that scientific men are as a rule too simple and gentle to look as if they could take care of themselves. According to Jack, that is the first duty of man, though he premises naturally that even the toughest courage and the greatest skill may come to grief about women.

"A thunderin' measly lot," said Simpkins A.B. to his particular mate, when the scientific passengers came on board; "why, they've all soft 'ats but one! And long beards! And three out of four with specs! Holy sailor, what a gang!"

Harris nodded.

"Why, there's twenty of 'em, Bill, but I'll bet a plug of the best to an old chew that me and you goin' for 'em with belayin'-pins could do up the 'ole crowd in five minutes."

"You've sized 'em up," said Simpkins, with a sneer, and then the captain roared.

"Aye, aye, sir," said the mate. "Let go! All gone, sir! Now then, haul in." And the Nemagosenda went out into the stream.

It took some three days or so for the men of science to settle down. For during the first few days the pathology of sea-sickness occupied all their attention; they had no time for other things. But when their last all-night session was over, and they were seen again upon deck, the affairs of the Nemagosenda became interesting. The mate and the port watch developed long-threatened divergencies, and Captain Prowse came to the assistance of his chief officer with a brass belaying-pin. As the result of this the pathologist indulged in a little practical surgery, and a division arose in the scientific ranks. The political economist argued with the statistician.

"Statistics prove that the common sailor must be treated with sternness," said the authority in figures, "and it is our duty to support authority."

"The captain is a brute," said the political economist, "and for two pins I would tell him so. You cannot neglect the human factor——"

"Says political economy," sneered the statistician.

And then the geologist, who was a man of sense, said they were both talking rot. The discussion on the poop was broken up by the captain, who came on deck with a face like the north-west moon in a fog. Having demanded the presence of the crew aft, he gave them an address on their duties to their superiors.

"You think yourselves a fine lot of chaps," said the captain fiercely, "but my opinion of you is that you are a scaly crowd of wharf-rats, and all your relations of both sexes are no better than they should be. So look here, you swine, I'll have you know I'm Captain Joseph Prowse, and the man that gives any slack jaw to any officer of mine gives it to me. And the man that gives it to me will wish he was dead before he sees Liverpool. That's me. I'm Captain Joseph Prowse, so I am, and any crew under me has got to know it. I'm king here, and I'll wade in blood before I get off my throne. Mr. Watts, put this crawling lot to holy stoning the deck!"

And Captain Joseph Prowse rejoined his scientific passengers.

"All crews is the same, gentlemen," he said thickly; "there's something deep and dark in the nature of things as makes 'em so. Those that do the rough work on board ships are just so necessarily, and if I was to ship a crew of angels, though they might be handy for going aloft, they'd turn devils by the time they'd ate a pound of beef and biscuit."

"Have you ever tried kindness and persuasion?" asked the meteorologist.

The captain looked him up and down.

"Ever tried it!" he ejaculated scornfully; "'ave I ever tried anything else? It's kindness to sailormen to let 'em know who's boss. Spare the belayin'-pin and the 'andspike and you'll spoil the sailor. Oh, Solomon know'd his business when he used them words. He didn't sail to Ophir for nothin'."

"But, Captain Prowse," said the meek gentleman, whose great subject was cannibalism, "isn't it very unpleasant work rubbing the decks with stones this cold weather?"

"Unpleasant!" said the skipper, "and what do you think? Was I proposin' to reward 'em?"

"I suppose not," said the ethnologist, "but I'm sure it's awful work. I could never do it."

Captain Prowse snorted.

"Oh yes, you could, if you was in my crew," he remarked. "If one of you gents was captain, you'd find this crowd couldn't do nothing but sit in the foc'sle and drink 'ot coffee. It's all accordin' where you are, and what kind of a man's on top."

"In other words, circumstance creates character," said the statistician.

"That's a ridiculous exaggeration," said the authority on heredity. "A man is what he is born."

Captain Joseph Prowse laughed scornfully.

"Not he—he's what I makes of him, and if you gents was under me I'd make you sailors long afore you suspected it. By the way, could you tell me what branch of science an 'erbalist belongs to?"

And the conversation followed more pleasant lines.

The Nemagosenda, although little better than a tramp in her appearance, could do her ten knots an hour on less than twenty tons of coal a day, and she soon got out to the Banks, where the men of science discussed fishing, and the colour of sea-water, and icebergs.

"Yes," said the geologist, "an iceberg swims on an average seven-eighths below and an eighth above."

"Gammon!" said Captain Prowse rudely; "why, any sailor knows better. I'm surprised at a scientific josser like you bein' so ignorant. It's one-third above and two below. You ask my mate if it isn't so."

"Ah, thanks, I will," said the geologist pleasantly. "Mr. Watts is a well-informed man?"

"Rather," said Prowse, nodding; "there's not a den o' thieves in any port in Europe he can't find blindfold. And 'e knows more about icebergs than me, for he once went a trip in a Dundee whaler. He ain't proud of it, and don't talk of it much, for whalers is no class, as you may guess. But he's keen on knowledge, is Watts, I'll say that for him. You might do worse than ask him for some ackerate information. He's a perfect whale on fogs, too!"

If Mr. Watts was the authority on fogs that his captain made out, he soon had an opportunity of showing it, for half-way across the Banks it was impossible to see farther than one could throw half a hundredweight, and the Nemagosenda went tooting in darkness. But every now and again in this dim world the men of science were alarmed and entertained by sudden battles in blasphemy between Captain Prowse, or the well-informed Mr. Watts, and the crew of a Bank fisherman. For fog blankets sound in the oddest, most erratic way, and the throb of a screw cannot always be heard even in the calmest foggy weather. Such swearing matches between the Nemagosenda and a smack were, when apparently good for three minutes or so, sometimes sliced right in two by the sudden dropping down of what the meteorologist called an "anacoustic" wall of fog. Like the last words of Don Whiskerandos in A Tragedy Rehearsed, a speech was cut off in the very flower of its youth.

"Where the blue blinding blazes are you coming to?" asked a faint nocturne. And when Captain Prowse had expended his last carefully prepared oration, the right of maritime reply only conferred an audible "Oh, you dog——"

"We have to thank the anacoustic properties of that fog-bank for the sudden conclusion," said the meteorologist, "for if I'm any judge of human nature, that smacksman is still firing red-hot words into space."

"Yes, sir," said Prowse indignantly, "they're a foul-mouthed lot. It's as much as I can do to keep even with 'em. But I'll slow down no more."

He telegraphed "Full speed ahead" and left Mr. Watts with awfully worded instructions to sink anything, from a battleship to the meanest brig afloat. In the saloon he sat at the head of the table, and drank rum hot.

"Science proves that rum 'ot is the sailor's drink," said Captain Prowse, "and the correct drink. For we all drink it, and flourish on it. And the reason is that it goes by contraries. It's cold work bein' at sea, and so we takes it 'ot; and the sea is salt, so we takes it sweet: and it comes from the West Indies."

"And that proves it," said the geologist warmly. "What a head you have, Captain Prowse!"

The skipper nodded.

"You may well say so," he affirmed; "a phrenologist gave me a chart of my 'ead once, a scientific chart with the soundings wrote out plain, and what proved him right was his sayin' that 'ere and there I was too deep for him. And I paid him a guinea. Well worth it, it was, for he said, 'You get married,' and I done so, and Mrs. Prowse hasn't her living equal. I wish I'd brought that chart with me. It would 'ave interested you gents to know what a brother scientist thought of me."

"It would indeed," said the pathologist.

"But there, I'll tell you what I am," said Prowse, "I'm a down-righter, that's me. I'm captain of my boat, I am, and if I was afloat on a hencoop with all its crew I'd like to see the cock as would crow before I gave him orders. Authority comes nat'ral to me. I'll be boss wherever I am—(Hancocks, more rum!)—and I would have succeeded in whatsoever I took hold of. Phrenology told me so, wrote out plain. And I've a kind of leanin' towards science ever since that phrenologist put 'is 'and on my 'ead and said with a start of surprise, 'Captain, you're a wonder.' But I've always wondered what it was made scientific chaps look so 'elpless.—(Hancocks, more rum.)—But don't you fret, gents; I'm Captain Joseph Prowse, and I'll put you safe ashore, or die in the attempt."

And as he again ejaculated "Hancocks, more rum," he fell asleep upon the table.

"Gentlemen," said the geologist, "as our interests are now secure, I vote we go to bed."

But it was still a heavy fog, and the Nemagosenda was doing her ten knots an hour. Other steamers were doing the same, or even more. Some twenty-knot liners slowed down (in order that they might say that they had slowed down) to about nineteen knots and a half; and some, acting on the theory that the sooner they went through the fog-belt, the better for every one, gave their engines all the steam they could make, and stepped out for America or England at the pace of an indolent torpedo-boat. And the result of this was that at about four bells in the middle watch, when the mate's aching eyes could see forty imaginary steamers where there were none, he omitted to observe that there was a real one coming for him till it was too late. The Nemagosenda uttered one long horrid wail, which was answered in vain, and the next minute the men of science were shot out of their bunks, and their steamer was taking in the Atlantic through a hole about the size of a dock gate.

What became of the lucky, or unlucky, boat, which got her blow in first, the crew of the sinking steamer did not inquire. They heard her toot in the distance, and in answer they blew their whistle for help. But though a whistle in a fog may be evidence of good faith, it is not necessarily for wide publication, and it is quite possible that the stranger, if she did not sink, lost her bearings in the fog, and went off in the wrong direction. At any rate the crew and passengers of the Nemagosenda found themselves adrift in three boats, and in less than a quarter of an hour they heard, though they could not see, their steamer blow her deck out and disappear.

"All up with the Goose-ender," said the crew sulkily, "and now of course it will blow."

As ill-luck and hurry would have it, in the last rush for life most of the crew had tumbled into the mate's and second mate's boats. With the lights of science were the captain and Simpkins, A.B.

"Immortal Jehoshaphat!" said Mr. Joseph Prowse, "this is a pretty state of affairs. That man-drowning swine of a liner! I 'ope she's gone down! I hope the codfish are sizing her captain up, and sayin' what they think of him. Simpkins, keep holloaing! Where's them other boats?"

"I can't holler no more, sir," whispered Simpkins hoarsely, "my throat's give out."

And as the wind rose the three boats drifted apart. Four eminent scientific persons at the oars kept their boat head on to sea, and six other eminent persons lay on the bottom boards and wished they were dead, until the dawn crawled into the east and showed them that they were alone.

It was a chill and watery dawn, and as the boat topped the cold green waves on the edge of the Bank the prospect was eminently unkind. The wind was not heavy, but it blew hard enough to bring the spray of each curling wave inboard, and every one was soaked to the skin. The sky was lowering and overcast, and though the fog was dissipated, a mist covered the sun till it looked, as Simpkins remarked, about as warm as a new tin plate.

It must be said for Captain Joseph Prowse that he retained in some measure those characteristics of authority which he claimed for himself, and by a forced optimism, which the nature of his crew made him adopt, he endeavoured to cheer them up.

"My luck's temporary out," he declared, with some show of cheerfulness, "but it ain't the first time I've been run down, and with God's 'elp, gents, it won't be the last. And it's clean against the nature of things for so many learn'd men to come to grief at one fell blow. 'Ere or there a scientific josser may come to grief in a crowd, but so many bein' together is the best of insurances. I'll pull you through; you mind me. All I ask you to remember is that I'm captain, and what I says goes now and always."

"It's all very well," said the meteorologist, whose temper was going with the skin of his hands, "but we all thought you had no right to run so fast in a fog."

Captain Prowse gasped, and then recovered himself.

"Didn't I tell you I was captain here, same as on the steamer?"

"You did," said the sulky man of science.

"Then hold your jaw," said Captain Prowse; "when you, or the likes of you, is asked for criticism, it'll be time for you to give it. Till then you'll give your captain no lectures on the running of his vessel. God and the Queen's enemies 'as sunk my ship, but neither one nor the other has took away my natural gift of authority, so shut up!"

And though the meteorologist choked with rage, he said no more. Simpkins and the captain consulted.

"We're right in the track of steamers more or less," said Captain Prowse, "and it bein' so damp we can hang out without much drink for a day or so. And biscuit we 'ave plenty."

Simpkins nodded.

"Yes, sir, but this 'ere's a sulky useless lot, sir."

"So they are," said Prowse, "but they'll 'ave to shape themselves as I bid 'em. The first crooked word and there'll be a man of science missing out of this bright gal-acksy of talent. I don't care where I am, but there I'll be captain. I don't care if they was my owners, I'd run 'em all the same. They ain't passengers no more, they're my crew."

He took a drink out of a flask and sank back in the stern-sheets.

"I want you men to keep your eyes skinned," he said presently. "Which of you is the astronomer?"

"I am," answered the bow oar, who was a long, thin man, in a wideawake and spectacles.

"Then keep a bright look-out or you'll see stars," said Prowse. "And while I'm on it, I want you jossers to know that you ain't passengers no more, but a boat's crew, and my boat's crew, and you'll have to look lively when I sing out. So the sooner we get a bit farther south the better it will be. That will do."

And muttering that he meant being captain whether he was on an ice-floe or a mud-barge, he fell asleep and snored.

"This brute is coming out in his true colours," said the astronomer. "What did he mean by saying I should see stars?"

"Begging your pardon, sir," said Simpkins, "he meant he'd plug you."

"Plug me?"

"Bung your eye up," explained Simpkins, "and Lor' bless you, he'd do it. Oh, a rare chap is the captain; why, some years half his money goes in fines."

"I wish to heaven I was ashore," said the poor astronomer, "and when I get there I'll see he never gets another job."

Simpkins eyed the sleeping skipper in alarm.

"Best not let him 'ear you, matey," he cried. "He'd haze you to death."

"Haze me?"

"Work you up," explained the seaman.

"What's that?"

"And I thot you was all learn'd!" said Simpkins, with great contempt. "I mean he'd just sock it to you till you was fair broke up."

The day passed without any incident of vital importance. It is true they sighted the smoke of a steamer hull down on the southern horizon, but they saw nothing else across the waste of heaving water. Every now and again the captain woke up and made a few remarks on the nature of authority, and what he proposed doing to those who did not "knuckle under." But the night fell without any signs of mutiny on the part of the scientific crew.

In the very early dawn the astronomer, who had slept in uneasy snatches, woke up for the tenth time and changed his position. Simpkins and the geologist were keeping the boat before the sea, which was running south-east, and they were both half-blind with fatigue.

"I believe I see something out there," said the astronomer feebly.

"You are always seein' suthin'," said Simpkins crossly, but as he spoke he looked round and almost dropped his oar.

"Wake up, captain!" he shouted. "Here's a barque almost so near we could touch her."

The skipper roused up, and with him the rest. They jumped to their feet.

"Sit down, sit down, you gang of idiots," said the captain; "d'ye want to capsize us?"

"Oh, we are saved, we are saved!" said the ethnologist, for within half a mile of them a vessel lay with her main-topsail aback. There was nothing odd about her to the uneducated eye, but the skipper looked at Simpkins, and Simpkins looked at the skipper.

"Derelict," said both.

For with such a light breeze it was absurd to see a barque with nothing set but a close reefed main-topsail, and a fore-topmast staysail hanging in hanks like a wet duster.

"She has seen us," said the geologist.

"Seen your grandmother," said the skipper rudely. "There ain't a soul aboard her, and she's water-logged and loaded with lumber out of Halifax, and she's a northerner, and about six hundred tons register. Get the oars out. If her decks are awash, she'll be better than this boat."

By the time they came within a cable's length of her, it was broad daylight, and the least maritime member of any European scientific society was able to form an opinion as to her being derelict. As she rolled, the water came out of her scuppers, for her main-deck was almost level with the sea. Part of the gear was let go, and most of the yards were chafing through their parrals, the main-top-gallant yard, indeed, was only hanging by the tie and the lifts, and came crash against the mast every time the sea lifted the vessel's bows. Half the bulwarks were gone, and the remains of the displaced deck cargo showed through the gaps. As they got up to her she went right aback and came round slowly on her heel.

"Row up close, sir," said Simpkins, "and I'll jump."

"No," said Captain Prowse, "not with this lot. I wouldn't go near her with a crew of misfits like these, not for money. We'll go a bit closer, and you must swim."

And in ten minutes Simpkins was on board. He threw the end of a vang across the boat, and they brought her astern.

"Thank Heaven," said the men of science as they trod the slippery decks of the Kamma Funder, belonging to Copenhagen.

But their troubles were only just beginning.

The skipper walked aft on the slippery deck, and climbed upon the poop by way of the rail, for some of the loose lumber had dislodged and smashed the poop ladder. When he found his foot upon his native heath, he was once more Captain Joseph Prowse in all his glory; and turning about, he addressed his crew.

"Simpkins," he said, "you are chief officer, second officer and bo'son, and don't you forget it. As for you others, I'll have you know that you're the crew. Just drop any kind of heightened notion that you are passengers, and we'll get along easy; but if you don't, look out for squalls. Simpkins, turn this useless lot to throwin' the remains of the deck cargo overboard, and try a couple of 'em at the pumps; maybe her seams may have closed up again by now." And going aft to the scuttle, he disappeared from view.

"Well," said the geologist, "of all the infernal——"

"Oh, stow that," cried Simpkins, "and turn to. You're here, ain't you, and lucky you should consider yourself. And the captain's a man of his word, as I know; so look slippy and pass this bloomin' truck over the side."

The miserable crew looked at each other in despair.

"Come now," said Simpkins impatiently, "do you want me to report you chaps as refusin' duty?"

The geologist, who was the youngest and sturdiest man in the crowd, said that he did; but the astronomer and the entomologist remonstrated with him.

"I think we'd better," said the unhappy insect man. "This Prowse seems a regular brute."

"He is," said the astronomer, "and I pray to Heaven that he doesn't find any rum on board."

But Heaven did not listen, and the captain presently came on deck with a flushed face.

"Simpkins," roared Prowse, as his head appeared over the edge of the scuttle.

"Yes, sir," said the new mate.

"Is that lumber over the side yet?"

"Quick, for Gawd's sake," said Simpkins, and the reluctant men of science commenced sliding the boards over.

"It's going, sir," answered Simpkins.

"Goin'!" said Prowse, when he got his hands on the after poop rail. "Goin'! I should say so! What a crowd! Oh, you miserable things, I'll shape you; I'll get you into condition; I'll make sailors of you. Get two of these hoosiers on to the pumps and see if she's leakin' very bad, and then we'll make sail. This 'ere Kamma Funder won't make a quick passage, but by the time we're picked up, or sail 'er 'ome, I'll make you chaps fit to ship in the worst Cape Horner that ever sailed."

He turned away, but stopped.

"And when the deck's clear, Simpkins, you can let 'em eat what they can get. There's plenty of biscuit, but mighty little else. Now then, you Stars, pump!"

And the astronomer and entomologist pumped for their lives, while the sea round about the waterlogged barque was whitening rapidly with many thousand feet of Nova Scotian lumber. For when the captain was out of sight, Simpkins was encouraging, and talked what he told them was "horse" sense.

"You wants to get back 'ome to your families, don't you," he asked, "and to your instruments and your usual ways of livin'? Why, of course you does. Then buck up, and pitch in, and learn to do your dooty. I'm not a hard man. I can make allowances. I know you didn't ship to do this. But it's your luck, and you must. Now then, that'll do the deck. Just lay into this pump all of you, and I'll sound 'er again."

And as good luck would have it, there soon appeared some reason for hoping that the leaks in the Kamma Funder had closed.

"Blimy," said Simpkins, "we'll 'ave 'er sailin' like a witch yet. Chuck yerselves into it, and I'll call the captain."

But the captain was fast asleep in the bunk of the late skipper.

"What's become of her crew?" asked the new crew, as they sat round the deck and ate their biscuit.

"Took off by a steamer," said Simpkins; "you see they've left their boats, and the captain says the ship's papers 'as gone, so they was took off, for sure."

"I wish we were taken off," said the weary astronomer.

"That'll come, I dessay," replied the consolatory Simpkins, "but if we sails 'er 'ome, we'll get salvage, and your time won't be wasted. So cheer up, and let's make sail, while a couple of you keeps the pumps a-goin'."

The wind by now was a light north-westerly breeze, and though the barque worked heavily and wallowed in the sea, Simpkins took her as she went round and put the geologist at the helm.

"Keep the wind in the back o' your neck," said Simpkins to the nervous helmsman, "and I'll loose the foresail."

He jumped up aloft and loosed the foresail and two fore-topsails. Coming down, he got the scientific crew to work.

"Here you, ketch hold of this and pull. There, that will do. Belay! Tie the thing up, I mean, on that thing, you silly ass!"

And the member of the Royal Society, who was thus addressed for the first time since he had left school, made the starboard fore-sheet fast to the cleat.

"You ain't such an ass as you wants to make out," said Simpkins, as he watched him critically; "me and the captain will soon put you chaps in shape. Now then, all of you! Fore-topsail 'alliards! Stretch it out and lay back. Which of you can sing?"

They declared that none of them could.

"Then I must," said Simpkins; and he gave them the chanty "Handily, boys, so handy," until he had the topsail well up. And just as the crew were looking aloft with a strange new feeling of actual pleasure in seeing results grow under their hands, a sudden row arose aft. The captain was interviewing the geologist.

"Steer small," said Captain Prowse; "don't work the bally wheel as if you was workin' a chaff-cutter."

"I'm doin' my best," said the furious man of science, "and I beg you will speak to me civilly."

"I'll speak to you how I like," said Prowse; "didn't I tell you a while back as you wasn't a passenger no more, but one of my crew?"

"Sir," said the geologist, "I beg that you will be so good as to refrain from speaking to me. I am not accustomed to be talked to in that tone."

Captain Prowse gasped, and, walking hurriedly to the side, endeavoured to pull a fixed belaying-pin from the rail. After three or four trials he came to a loose one. By this time the Kamma Funder was yawing all abroad, and when Captain Prowse came towards the wheel again, the geologist let go, and in his turn sought for a weapon. The captain caught the wheel in time to prevent the vessel getting right aback, and roared:

"Mutiny, mutiny!"

Simpkins and the scientific association came running aft.

"Simpkins," shrieked Prowse, "ketch hold of that geological chap."

"I dare either of you to touch me," said the geologist; "the first one that does, I'll brain him!"

He held the iron pin firmly, and looked desperate.

"Come and ketch hold of the wheel," said Prowse, in a choking voice.

"No, don't let him," said the offender, and a violent argument arose.

"This is perfectly scandalous," said the meek astronomer, "and——"

"We won't put up with it," cried the entomologist.

"I must obey orders," said Simpkins.

"Or I'll murder you," screamed the skipper.

"If he lets go she'll be took aback," said Simpkins, "and it'll be a lot of trouble."

"We don't care," said the men of science, and then the captain let go and rushed for the geologist. Simpkins broke from the astronomer and caught the spinning wheel just as the geologist knocked the captain down.

"Oh," cried the pathologist, "I believe you've killed him."

"I hope so," said the hero of the occasion, with rather a pale face, "I'm not going to be bullied by any coarse brute of a sailor."

"But he's the captain," said Simpkins.

But mutiny was in their hearts. They all talked at once, and the pathologist felt the captain's skull to see whether it was still sound.

"Will he die?"

"No," said the doctor, "he has a skull like a ram's. Take him below."

"And lock him in," said the astronomer. "And we can argue with him through the door."

It was a happy thought, and even Simpkins, in spite of his ingrained respect for the lawful authority of the most lawless skipper, approved the suggestion.

"You ain't all so soft as you look," said Simpkins, "but the sea does bring the devil out in a man if so be he's got any."

And they carried Captain Joseph Prowse down below. As his cabin door would not lock, they jammed short pieces of sawed lumber between it and the other side of the alley way.

"It's mutiny," said Simpkins, "but it's done, and maybe he'll cool off when he comes to and finds his 'ead aching."

But nevertheless the situation was not pleasant, and no one was quite certain as to what should be done.

"Hold a committee meeting," said the entomologist.

The others said that was nonsense. Simpkins, who now looked on the geologist as captain of the mutineers, touched his hat to him, and begged leave to speak.

"Well," said the geologist, "what is it?"

"Ain't some of you gents good at instruments?" asked Simpkins. "For if you are, and if you could get hold of a sextant, it would be doin' things regular if you was to take a sight of the sun."

The ethnologist turned to the astronomer.

"How humanity yearns for a certain regularity!" he said; "it would really comfort Simpkins if you would squint at the sun through a gaspipe."

"You find me the sextant," said the astronomer, "and I'll do it."

"What, you?" said Simpkins. "I'd never ha' thought it."

Though he could not be induced to say in public why he would never have thought it, in private he revealed to the inquisitive ethnologist that the astronomer looked "the measliest of the whole gang, sir."

The discussion, which had been held on deck, with Simpkins at the wheel, was broken up by the captain hammering furiously on his jammed door.

"Go down and soothe him," said Simpkins nervously, "and mind you tell him I done nothin' but give in to superior overwhelmin' odds. For so I did, gentlemen, so I did, as you know, bein' those as done it."

The committee went below, with the geologist leading. He carried his belaying-pin in his pocket. As they marched, the uproar was tremendous.

"What a skull he must have!" said the ethnologist. "I wish I had it in my collection."

"So do I," said the pathologist

And the authority on philology pressed to the front rank, for Captain Joseph Prowse was doing his best.

"Lemme out," he roared; "oh, when I do get out, I'll show you what I am."

"Shut up!" said the young geologist, with firmness.

The captain gave an audible gasp.

"Shut up?" he inquired weakly.

"Yes," said the leader, "and give us your sextant, if you have one."

"Well, I'm damned," said Prowse, after a long and striking pause. "May I inquire if you've took command? For if so, and you require my services to peel pertaters and sweep the deck, just say so, and let me out."

"Will you be civil if we let you out?" asked the astronomer kindly.

"Civil?" said Prowse, choking; "what do you think?"

"We don't think you will be," replied the astronomer, "from the tone of your voice."

"I'm sure he won't be," said the geologist.

"I think we'd better keep him where he is," said the rest anxiously; "why, the man's nothing but a raging lunatic."

"Oh!" said Prowse from within. "Look here, you mutineers, is Simpkins in this?"

"No," said the geologist, who showed a little humour occasionally, "he's out of it. He tried to rescue you, so we hung him. But he came to again, and is now at the wheel. What about that sextant?"

"I ain't got no sextant," said Prowse sulkily. He recognised it was no use kicking, and the rum was dying out of his aching head.

"Then let's go on deck," said the men of science. "What's the use of talking to him."

"Oh, please," said the subdued skipper; but they paid no attention, and returned to Simpkins.

At various intervals during the day Prowse made more and more pitiful appeals to be let out. But as the weather was clear and bright, Simpkins and his "overwhelming odds" were at work on deck, and paid little or no attention. Simpkins now did not take his line from the skipper, but, feeling that the command was in commission, adopted the manner of the sergeant-instructor at a gymnasium.

"Now, if a couple or four of you gentlemen would keep the pumps going," he urged from his station at the wheel, "we should get along a deal better. And if you, sir, would come and take the wheel agin for two shakes of a lamb's tail, I don't see no reason I shouldn't loose the upper main-topsail."

So the geologist took the wheel while Simpkins went aloft and loosed the upper main-topsail.

"Supposing you wanted to have less sail presently," said the astronomer to Simpkins, when the topsail was set, "what would you do?"

"You gents would 'ave to 'elp stow it," said Simpkins.

"What, go aloft?" asked the astronomer.

"And why not?" demanded Simpkins. "It's easy, going aloft—as easy as fallin' from the side of an 'ouse."

"So I should think," cried the astronomer, shivering. "I hope the weather will remain fine."

"You know it's really remarkable how useful such an uneducated man can be," he said presently to some of the others. "Now, what use am I?"

Simpkins was passing and heard this. He paused and eyed the astronomer.

"Well, to speak the truth, sir," he said sympathetically, "you ain't much; but you do what you can at the end of a rope. And I shouldn't be surprised if you're all right at 'ome."

"All of which is good against vanity," said the astronomer, as the barque under most of her plain sail steered east-south-east into the track of the Atlantic liners. "And do you know, absurd as it may seem, I am beginning to feel very well indeed—better than I have done for years."

As the night fell, the captain, who had by that time lost all his alcoholic courage, appealed for mercy. He shouted his petition to those on deck through the cabin port-hole. But he tried Simpkins first.

"Simpkins," he yelled.

"Yes, sir," said Simpkins, with his head over the rail.

"Come and let me out."

"I darn't, sir," said Simpkins; "they're all very fierce and savage agin you, especial about your using bad language, and each of 'em 'as a belayin'-pin and is a-watchin' of me. It's more than my life's worth to let you out. And——"

"Yes," said the skipper.

"It's more'n yours is worth too. You must ask 'em civil."

"And give your word of honour," suggested the ferocious geologist in a whisper.

"And give your word of honour——"

"To act civilly and quietly to every one."

"To act civil and quiet, sir," said Simpkins.

"And not to talk too much about authority, or drink any more rum," prompted the savage astronomer.

"And not to be too rumbumptious, or to get squiffy again," said Simpkins.

"For," said the brutal geologist, "if you will agree to these terms, we shall be glad of your advice and assistance, Captain Prowse."

"I'll think of it," returned the skipper sulkily.

"All right," said the rude geologist, "take a day or two to think it over."

"Oh, Lord," said Prowse hastily. "I've thought of it, and I agree."

And when he came on deck the savage and ferocious scientific captains remarked in a friendly manner that it was a fine evening.

"Damme," said the one-time skipper, "I'm blowed if I ain't the crew of the Kamma Funder."

THE REHABILITATION OF THE VIGIA.

The mate or the Palembang walked the weather side of the poop, and felt just then that he was full up to the back teeth of the mighty sea and all its works. He yearned for Leith Walk or Wapping; to lie on a hot dry beach would be heaven, for the hot wet south-west monsoon was blowing the Palembang towards Bombay, and the Maldivhs were on the starboard beam.

Jack Wilson propped his eyes open and cursed the slow passage of time towards midnight. As he peered down below at the lighted clock he was inclined to swear that the second mate had come out and stopped it. But presently it was five minutes to twelve, and to his disgust sleepiness passed away as his relief stumbled up the poop ladder and came aft. "Jerusalem, but it's dark," said the second greaser, as he looked up aloft and round about him.

"Have the gas lit," growled Wilson, as he was going forward.

"Sulky devil!" replied the second. "When do you have a civil word for any one?"

This was all in the night's work, and no one was a penny the worse. Civility at midnight is often too dear to be bought from any one but an inferior; and Wilson and Green knew each other very well.

The Palembang was running with the wind on the port quarter, and for a quiet life the old lady was under shortened canvas. She went at it like an old dame in wind and snow; a reefed foresail represented picked-up petticoats; the stowed royals and topgallant-sails suggested that a hat with feathers had been replaced by a handkerchief. For the monsoon was blowing stiff that July night seven degrees to the north of the Line, and threatened to blow stiffer yet.

As it was getting towards two o'clock, or four bells, the captain came on deck, and nodded at the binnacle when Green said: "Good-morning, sir." Then he spread his legs out and considered the dark universe for awhile.

"It has waked up a bit since I went below, Mr. Green," he said presently; and, wanting no answer, he got none. The song of the wind in the rigging and the draught under the foot of the foresail were answer sufficient. There was a pleasing hiss alongside as the Palembang shoved through the Indian Ocean and left a lighter wake behind.

"There's a vigia marked on the chart for hereabouts," said Captain Spiller presently; "it got there through that old fool Banks of the Simoom. He reported it years ago, but it warn't never confirmed. Rocks, he said, and one like Cleopatra's Needle."

"Then you don't credit it either, sir?" asked Green presently.

"I know Banks," replied Spiller, snorting, "and never was such a man for imagination and want of judgment. I'd take it as proof positive as nothing was, if he said it stood to reason it must be. And I'm a man as likes a clean and decent chart. A chart is the character give to an ocean by them as has employed it, a bundle of chits, as the Hindoo beggars say, and to go an' lump in a suspicion agin' the character of an ocean on the word of a man like Banks, why, I've no patience. I've a notion that the law of libel ought to have a say in it."

"Aye, sir," said Green. "The Indian Ocean versus Banks."

"And I'd believe it of Banks that he done it just to get his name mentioned, and to rise a bit of a palaver about him. He's a most conceited chap is Banks, and not by any means the seaman he'd like to be thought. And they actually sent a man-o'-war down to look up his Simoom Rocks and they came back and never seen 'em."

"And nobody else ever did, sir?"

"Of course not," said Spiller; "they might as well set traps to catch the rats that a man sees when he's got the jimjams. And nothing makes Banks angrier than to throw out a hint you don't believe in them rocks. I always gets him on it, by asking for a clean chart and proved shoals, and what not, and giving it him hot and heavy on vigias and the like. Bah, I ain't no patience."

And Spiller tramped the deck for a bit. Presently he came back to where Green stood.

"He'll be in Bombay before us," he said gloomily. "I have to own the Simoom's faster than the Palembang, but if she was sailed by a better man she'd make quicker passages. Why, an engineer in a steamer can pass a thorough sailor in a scow."

His heart was bitter, but the thought that Her Majesty's cruiser Amphion had discredited the Simoom vigia was balm to his inmost soul, as he turned to go below.

"Keep a bright look-out," he growled, and he left Green to consider the matter of vigias in general, and the Simoom vigia in particular.

For these vigias, the terror of seamen, are like malicious spirits. Some man has seen them, or has imagined them, and for ever after they bear sway in the minds of those who sail upon the great deep. Perhaps they are but a floating mass of wreck, on which the sea breaks; in the south, what was seen was, it may be, a drifting berg; on the shores of West Africa, perchance a river has sent out a floating island. Any accident of imagination may create them; alcohol bears them on its tide: they are the rats and ghosts and terrible creeping things of the delirium of the sea that is born of rum. A heavy heeled spar as it floats becomes a pinnacle of rock; the boat that bears dead men in it is for ever after to be avoided. Here a rip of currents, and there a heavy overfall, become fixed terrors and are given names.

For this is the sea that is unknown yet, and shall for ever be unknown. It works upon the mind of man very subtly, and yet again with tremendous strength. Under the sea are earthquakes, and in it volcanoes. Of these islands are born, and again they pass away, while the little creature man skims upon the surface of the ocean like a water-beetle, and may be seen no more.

When Green was left alone upon the poop of the Palembang, save for the presence of the man at the wheel, something of the wonderful majesty of the sea came down upon him, and for a moment touched his nerves. Trust in the captain he had none, for Spiller was of the usual alcoholic order; so he got out the chart and looked at it. There stood the vigia marked "Simoom Rock." Perhaps it existed after all. He remembered the history of the Aurora Islands to the cast of the Falklands. Even now, some old sailors believe there are such islands, real land, not ice grounded on deep soundings. And the Simoom vigia was close at hand, if it existed at all. Allowing for sufficient uncertainty in its supposed position, it might be anywhere within a degree. He stared out into the darkness and imagined he saw it. It was here, it was there, it was nowhere: it was a wraith of the mind, and dissolved. He put back his night-glasses, and whistled, till he remembered there was quite enough wind, and that he had no desire to turn the hands up to shorten sail.

"Jerusalem, it is dark," he said again, and he recalled Wilson's reply, "Have the gas lit." Aye, that would be pleasant. For a moment he saw the streets of London town with a diminuendo in lamps, and then he pulled himself together. It breezed up a bit and was four bells. He hove the log, and went along the lee side to go below to enter it on the slate. She made a biggish weather roll, and the decks being slippery, he steadied himself and put his head outside the rail to take a look ahead. And at that moment, as he says, he saw the Simoom vigia. His heart stood still, and then thumped furiously. In spite of the hiss of the seas, and the windy roar of the rigging, the sound of his pulse in his ears was like the sound of a pump. He was paralysed, and yet he knew that the Palembang was rushing on destruction.

"Hard a starboard!" he said coolly, but in a choking voice.

"Sir?" said the astounded man at the wheel.

"Hard a starboard, damn you," said Green fiercely.

And the helmsman ground the wheel hard down with the air of a surprised martyr. As the Palembang bowed and came round almost at right angles to her former course, Green swears he saw broken water, though he lost the sharp pinnacle of rock he had seen at first.

Old Spiller, who was not asleep, came up on deck in a hurry.

"What's she off her course for?"

Green told him, and Spiller swore.

"You saw nothing, you damn fool."

"I did."

"You didn't, you imaginative ass."

Green wanted to plant his fist between Spiller's eyes, but did not; for he was a married man and hated to lose a job. He ground his teeth and turned away. The Palembang was put on her course again, and after interrogating the man on the look-out and the man at the wheel, who acknowledged they had seen nothing, the skipper swore promiscuously at everything, and went below to lay his soul in soak.

"What one man sees another'll look for, and what a fool looks for a fool will see," he cried, without knowing what a neat addition he had made to the subject of suggestion. And by the time that Wilson relieved him at four o'clock Green was curiously uncertain as to whether he had seen straight or not.

"Now, did you?" asked Wilson.

"Two hours ago I'd have sworn to it," said the second mate, scratching his head.

"Well, I've a notion you did," cried Wilson. "Between you and me and the mizzen-mast, I think Banks is a right smart man."

"I believe I can swear I saw it," said young Green, much encouraged. "Yes, there were at least three rocks, one of them a pinnacle like an obelisk."

And with Wilson secretly on his side, he was quite sure of it before they reached Bombay, though Spiller was for ever jeering at him, and making the ship as uncomfortable as he could.

"Mebbe you can see ghosts, too," he was constantly suggesting.

"I'll quit at Bombay if he'll give me my discharge," said Green.

And sure enough Spiller did, when he met Green on the Apollo Bunda in a confidential yarn with Banks, who, for a seaman of the old class, was a very gentlemanly man with neat white whiskers.

"You've been encouraging him about that vigia," roared Spiller, and when he wrote out Green's discharge, he offered to give him a special character for seeing ghosts.

"But not rats!" said Green nastily, as he put his discharge into his pocket; for the last time Spiller overdrank himself he had a very bad time with rodents.

It was the best of luck for Green that he got out of the Palembang, for Banks's mate fell ill, and the second had no mate's ticket. So Green, being in great favour, through having seen the poor discredited Simoom vigia, got the job, for he had passed for mate just before signing as second in the Palembang.

Banks took him round with him, and again tackled the captain of the Amphion about that vigia, showing his new witness; but Captain Melville shook his head.

"The old man is crazy about those rocks," was all he said, as he refused to discuss the matter.

But Banks and Spiller went at it hammer and tongs when they met ashore.

"He saw nothing," said Spiller.

"Only what I saw."

"I told the fool about it and he imagined the rest, as you did."

Banks fumed.

"Lucky you didn't run the Palembang on my imagination. Slow as she goes, she'd have slammed herself into matchwood."

Spiller choked with rage.

"Look here, I'll sail all over your blooming rocks, as I have done afore. You just made this up to get notoriety, and have your ship's name on the chart, and be put in the Directory. I know you, Banks, and I don't think much of you, and never did. To get yourself talked about you'd report that you'd seen the Flying Dutchman. Vigias, indeed! A disfigurement on any chart! You'll have the chart of the Indian Ocean as big a disgrace as the North Atlantic if you have your way. Didn't you find nothing new to report this time?"

Banks rose up in a towering rage.

"You're no gentleman, Captain Spiller, and I'll speak no more with you, not till you own that the Simoom Rocks are real. And may you never have occasion to rue finding them out as such. I'll let you know I've as great a respect for the chart as you have, and if you ever run your old tub on my rocks, you can call 'em Spiller's Reef, for all I care, so there," and he perspired off to his vessel.

In shipping circles opinion was divided between the master of the Simoom and the master of the Palembang. And it being the fashion of the sailorman, or, for that matter, of human-kind in general, to decide matters that admit of doubt according to personal prejudice and ancient opinion, there were more on Spiller's side than on Banks's. For one thing, it is the perpetual ambition of all true sons of the ocean to discover something new and have his ship's name tagged on to it, and every one was jealous of Banks. When the Amphion looked for the rocks without success, they threw out dark hints about a dead whale or a tree stump having been seen, and some said "Rum," just as others said "Rats," contemptuously.

Others, with a very fine contempt for the Navy, were of opinion that Captain Melville of H.M.S. Amphion considered he owned half the Indian Ocean and all the Arabian Sea, and would be as much put out at finding an unmarked rock or shoal in either as if he slipped upon an old chew on his own quarterdeck. These were on Banks's side, of course. And some who disliked Spiller said they believed in this new set of rocks to annoy him, ending very naturally in holding the opinion they argued for.

When old Banks got on the high horse and swore he would not speak again to the disbeliever in the vigia, he meant it, and added details to his statement.

"Not if I found him in a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean," he swore excitedly.

The quarrel was as bitter as polemic theology. Spiller was a rank atheist, a scorner, a scoffer, a pagan, a heathen. If Banks had written a new creed, he would have begun it: "I believe in the Simoom Rocks to the west of the Maldivhs." He clung to their existence pathetically, and when an impecunious skipper of a storm-disgruntled tramp wanted to borrow a couple of hundred rupees from him, and remarked incidentally that he had seen broken water in the supposed position of the discredited reef, Banks forked out with enthusiasm and took down a lying statement joyfully.

But when the Simoom was ready for sea again, that same tramp skipper, who was a wild disgrace to the respectable mystery of the sea, executed a few manoeuvres which let the Palembang get ahead of her. For the tramp (Julius Cæsar was her name) had engines of an obstinate and eccentric character. Sometimes they worked, and sometimes they didn't, and on this particular occasion they refused to be reversed at any price. As the Julius Cæsar wouldn't go astern, her captain shoved her at the crowded shipping ahead and put her through, whooping on the bridge like a maniac. He grazed three other steamers, took a bumpkin off a sailing vessel, slipped between two others, and in one last complicated evolution smashed the jibboom of the Simoom, brought down her fore-topgall'n'-mast, and escaped to sea in a cyclone of curses of which the calm centre was the Palembang.

"I'll report you," said Spiller to Banks, when he left Bombay.

"Go to hell," cried Banks, who rarely swore save in a gale of wind.

"After you," said Spiller, with what is popularly known as truly Oriental politeness; and as a parting taunt he sang out, "What about them rocks?"

"You're an ungrammatical, uneducated man," screamed Banks, dancing furiously.

But Green and Wilson waved their caps to each other. For all their way of passing compliments when one gave the other a Western Ocean relief at midnight, they were good friends.

The Simoom got to sea inside of forty-eight hours, for Banks lost no time. He had made up his mind to waste some on the next chance he had of looking for his blessed rocks, unless the monsoon blew too hard.

They had a fairly decent show running down the coast on the inside of the Laccadivhs, and, taking the usual circumbendibus to the eastward between Keeling and the Chagos Archipelago, picked up beautiful "passage" winds and south-east trades, and went home booming. Green found Banks a first-class "old man," and the Simoom as comfortable as a good bar parlour, compared with the sorry old bug-haunted Palembang, where a man's toes got sore with the pedicuring work of cockroaches. He made up his mind to stick to her, as he evidently suited Banks. They both got cracked a little on the Simoom Rocks, and gradually talked themselves into the belief of a shark's-tooth reef a mile long with one special fang that rivalled a young peak of Teneriffe.

The Palembang came into Liverpool River about three weeks after the Simoom, and Green, back at work after ten days at home, had a high time with Wilson. But the skippers passed each other with their noses in the air as high as squirrels' tails, and never swopped a word in a fortnight.

As luck would have it, they were both for Bombay again, only to give Spiller a chance of getting there first, the Simoom was to call at the Cape. Just before the Palembang cleared, Banks and Spiller fell up against each other on the landing stage, and as Spiller was full up to his back-teeth and uvula, he broke silence and went for the upholder of the vigia in high style. He could have taken a first-class in bad language at any Australian back-blocks academy of cursing—and what they don't know in blasphemy there can only be learnt from a low-class Spaniard. So the air was blue from Liverpool to Manchester, and to the Isle of Man, and Banks got up and left. For when he was ashore he was very religious. Even at sea he carried a prayer-book and an odd volume of virulent sermons, of the kind which indicate that no man need forgive any enemy who is not of the same persuasion. But to tell the truth, Banks could have forgiven anything but an insult to his beloved rocks.

"Such a man oughtn't to live," he cried angrily, as he went off in a tremulous rage. "He's predestined to the pit!"

And he trusted that Providence might one day yield him a chance of getting even. His prayers were fervent towards that end, and if Providence works, as it sometimes appears to do, through rum and ignorance and a good conceit in a man, there was a chance of his appeals being attended to.

On the passage out to the Cape they saw nothing of the Palembang. But there she was heard of as having being seen somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Agulhas Bank, having a real good time in that native home of the god of the winds, where fifty per cent. of all the breezes that do blow are gales that dance in and out and about like a cooper round a cask.

But the Simoom had luck, and slipped through as if Æolus never spotted her. And old Banks chortled happily, and sang an extra hymn on Sunday, compensating the men (otherwise disposed to growl at the innovation) with an extra lot of grog. For your true sailorman is the real conservative, and things that don't happen in the first week of a new ship have no business to happen afterwards—which is a hint some young second mates may find handy to remember. And remembering this will enable you to see why no true old shellback will ship in a steamboat, any more than the guard of a coach would let himself to any beastly new railroad.

The south-west monsoon had backed down to the Line about the time they crossed it; and the Simoom sweated up to the Maldivhs very comfortably.

"We've made a good passage—a ripping good passage," said old Banks, rubbing his hands, "and I'm condemned if I don't shape a course for my rocks, Mr. Green."

As he had been shaping for them ever since he had deliberately gone out of his way to take the route east of Madagascar, instead of the Inner or Mozambique route, Green winked the other eye and said nothing. To tell the truth, he himself had a hankering to set his mind at rest on the subject, for he felt his credit involved with the skipper's.

The man at the wheel overheard what Banks said, and when he stumped for'ard the whole crew knew that the Simoom was looking for a needle in the Indian Ocean.

"A life's job, my bullies," said their informant. "We'll be like the crew of the Flying Dutchman yet."

"I'm wondering whether Spiller came up this way, now," said old Banks presently, with an interrogative cock of his head.

"And not by the channel?" asked Green.

Banks turned about.

"Mr. Green, may the Lord forgive me, but I just hate that Spiller with an unholy hatred. Every time he gets a show he brags he's run right over where I located my rocks, and not only that, but criss-cross in the latitude where they might be. And he set about that he'd herring-boned a course on the chart on the longitude, going back and forth on it like a dog in a turnip field. So now he'll be up here again to have another shy for it. If he saw 'em, he'd swear he never. And why he hates me so I can't tell, unless it was I did my duty once, and let him know what a God-fearing man thought of a blasphemer."

Green nodded.

"That's likely it, sir."

"So it is, so it is," cried Banks pensively; "he has no grace in him, and he set it about, I know, that I soak at sea if I'm sober ashore. He said my rocks were delirium tremens; and I'm a discredited man, wounded in a tender spot."

It was just four bells in the forenoon watch then, and soon after they snugged her down, as the wind was very heavy in puffs and the sky low and dark. Just before eight bells Green spotted a vessel on the starboard bow, and called the old man. He came on deck like a whiteheaded Jack-in-the-Box.

"Keep her away," he cried. "I'll bet she's the Palembang. Shake out them reefs and hoist the main-t'gall'n's'l again."

His grammar failed in excitement.

"We're overhauling her hand over hand, anyhow," suggested Green.

"If I can pass him going two foot for his one, I'd run the Simoom under," screamed the skipper. "And when we come up with him, if my voice in a trumpet can carry, I'll tell him what I think of him. He thinks I'm soft because I sing hymns on Sunday. I'll let him know before I sang hymns I was the biggest tough on the Australian coast. God's truth I was! And I wish I was now—oh, how I wish it, and him ashore with me!"

And Green believed it, because he had to! There was something in the old man's eye as he walked to and fro, an unregenerate blood-thirsty snap, that was very convincing. So the reefs were shaken out of the topsails, and even that did not satisfy the skipper.

"I'll let him know that a saved and repentant Christian isn't necessary a worm," said Banks. "Mr. Green, set the mainsail!"

The Simoom was snoring through it now, and Green stared.

"What she can't carry she may drag," said the skipper, with flashing eyes.

And the Simoom lost her courtesy with the sea under the influence of the mainsail, for the monsoon was a stiff one. She shouldered the Indian Ocean aside like a policeman shoving through a crowd; she scooped up tons of it as a scraper team scoops sand, and ran at any extra sea like a bull at a hedge. The men were under the break of the t'gallant foc'sle, sheltering from the cataract. They knew the Palembang was ahead, and were as eager as the skipper to overhaul her. Through the bos'on and his mate it had leaked out that the old man was keen for a palaver with Spiller.

"He's like a bull whale in a flurry," said one who had been whaling. "Now my notion is that the skipper kin blaspheme if he wants to."

The Palembang was visibly herself and no other vessel by this time, and she carried all she could stand.

"I've half a notion to have the t'gall'n-sails set," said Banks, looking up aloft. "And if we weren't overhauling her twenty-three to the dozen, damme, but I would!"

For the Palembang showed nothing above her reefed topsails, and the foresail had a reef in it, and the Simoom came after her like the inside edge of a cyclone.

"Gimme my trumpet," cried Banks. "Mr. Green, take the wheel, and run her as close as maybe."

And the second mate stood at the main-topsail halliards.

"Palembang ahoy!" yelled Banks through his trumpet as he came tearing up on the weather side of his enemy's ship.

"Where the blue blazes are you coming to?" shrieked Spiller, who was both drunk and angry.

"Passing you as if you was standing still, you low, uneducated swine," said Banks. "And I could do it under jury rig."

"What about them rocks?" jeered Spiller through his trumpet. "What's the price of vigias, you notorious old liar, you disgrace to the perfession?"

They were close alongside now, not half a cable's length apart; a good cricketer could have shied a cricket ball the distance easily.

"Leggo the main-topsail halliards," said Banks, and then to the surprise of his crew and the utter astonishment of Spiller he poured out a torrent of the most blood-curdling abuse which had ever defiled the Indian or any other ocean.

"You think I'm soft, you dog," he boomed through his spurt of blasphemy, "and reckon because I've got notions of decency I'm to be trod on. Run on my rocks and sink and burn."

His voice rose to a scream and cracked. He tried to speak, but tried in vain.

"Mr. Green, here," he whispered, and leaving the wheel to the man he had displaced, the mate jumped to the lee poop rail.

"Tell him he's no sailor; my voice is gone. Say he's a—oh, tell him anything you feel."

Green did so, and satisfied himself and Banks and the entire crew. And then, seeing Wilson, he gave him a friendly bellow.

"What cheer, Wilson!"

And hoisting the topsails, they ran on, leaving Spiller choking with helpless rage.

As it grew darker and they dropped the Palembang they picked up the mainsail, and shortened down for the night.

"We ain't in no hurry," whispered Banks, "and to-morrow we'll be up with my rocks, if I've hit it off right."

He was now sombre and dignified, and spoke with particular grammatical and moral accuracy. Not the ghost of a damn issued from his lips. He reproved Green for swearing, and held a service in the cabin, much to the disgust of the entire ship, as it wasn't Sunday. Perhaps to punish himself, for he always liked to stand well with the crowd, he gave them no grog after it.

In the morning he sent a man on the fore-topgallant-yard looking for his rocks, and as he gave notice that any one who sighted them first should have five pounds, the entire watch, which should have been below snoring, sat like crows up aloft and strained their eyes all round the horizon.

At ten Banks was jovial and got his voice back. At noon he was anxious. By four o'clock he shortened sail again.

"We've overrun 'em," he said sadly. "If they're still about, we're to the west of 'em. Mr. Green, during the night we'll stand under easy sail to the eastward. I'm set on seeing those rocks again, if I lose a week."

And the night fell darkly.

No matter whose watch it was, mate's or second mate's, the white-whiskered skipper was on deck every ten minutes, peering into the black darkness with his glasses. The old chap's nerves were on edge; his imagination flamed; he saw reefs and pinnacles of islands every moment, and heard the boom of breakers.

When Green relieved his subordinate at midnight, the second mate whispered to him:

"The old man's as nervous as a cat. To hear him jaw you'd think the bottom of the sea was rising up. Mind you ain't high and dry on a new continent by daylight."

"We'll whack it out fair among the lot of us," said Green. "Jeewhillikins, what's that?"

He spoke suddenly, in an altered voice, and Milton jumped.

"What?"

"I thought I saw a flare to the southward."

"Lordy, you've got them too," said Milton. "Let's go ashore, and have a walk on the Apollo Bunda."

"Stow it," cried Green, and holding on to the mizzen-topgallant backstay, he jumped upon the rail.

"Look, look!" he cried, and Milton, looking, saw a faint glow to the southward—or fancied he saw it.

"Call the old man," said Green, and in two and three-fifths seconds by any man's chronometer, Banks was on deck, and saw nothing.

"But did ye see it, man?" he yelled; "and if so, what's it mean?"

"Some one struck a match in Colombo," said the second mate irreverently. For he had sailed with Banks for years, and at times took liberties.

"I only trust to Providence that it isn't that wicked man's ship in any trouble," said the skipper viciously. "Mr. Green, we'll stand to the south'ard for a while."

"Lay aft the watch," sang out Milton, and they braced her up to within two points of the wind.

Both watches stayed on deck in the little excitement, and in the course of the next hour they reported all kinds of non-existent things. "Rocks on the starboard bow" were varied by "A vessel on the port bow," and a planet low down in a break of cloud was "A steamer's head-light, sir."

"Collision with Venus," cried Milton.

But just in the 'twixt and 'tween of earliest dawn, when the grey ghost of day walked in the east, a man up aloft sang out with startling energy:

"Two dark rocks right ahead, sir."

The main-deck hummed suddenly, and a patter of bare feet told that the entire crew had run for the foc'sle head. The skipper nipped into the mizzen rigging quick as a chipmunk.

"Keep her away a point or two," he cried.

"Away a point or two, sir," echoed the helmsman.

"I see 'em, Mr. Green," yelled the old chap; "and just where I figured them out to be. There'll be three, there'll be three."

He paused and looked down on Green.

"But—but two will do me," he added cautiously. "I never pinned my faith to three."

Green climbed alongside him, and even a bit higher.

"Lord, sir, they're boats," he cried.

"No, rocks," said the skipper.

"Boats," repeated the mate, obstinately.

"So they are! Damn!" cried the skipper.

And then the same verdict came from aloft, and was confirmed by the entire sea jury.

The disappointed captain dropped back on deck.

"Now, if they were the Palembang's boats," suggested Green.

"No such luck," said the skipper. "Is there any one in 'em, and do they see us?"

"By the same token they see us now!" shouted Green, and in a quarter of an hour the boats were alongside, and the Simoom lay to.

"What boats are those?" squealed Banks.

"The Palembang's," replied a voice from the tumbling cockleshells.

The skipper and the mates said "Whew!" and Banks was fairly dancing.

"And where's your ship?"

"Bottom of the Indian Ocean," said a voice that Banks recognised as Spiller's.

"Is that you, Captain Spiller?" he inquired, with much exaggerated courtesy.

"It is," growled Spiller.

"Did you by any chance come across my rocks as you sailed along so pleasant?"

Spiller swore in a muffled voice.

"Not by your description of 'em: far from it," he replied at last.

"We'll see about that," said Banks. "Now then, come under the lee quarter, and we'll have some of you aboard; the captain of the Palembang last."

"Whad yer mean?" cried Spiller sulkily.

"What I say," said Banks softly.

And when every one was out of the boats but Spiller, he stood by the line.

"Now, captain, were they my rocks or not?"

"No," said Spiller.

"Then stay in your damned boat," cried Banks. "Cast that line off, Spiller. You won't? Then cut it, Mr. Green."

Green smiled but didn't move. The skipper borrowed a knife from the nearest seaman by taking it out of its sheath.

"Now, was they or not?"

"No," cried Spiller.

"One, two, and at three I cut," said Banks. "One—two——"

"Very well, they was, then," shrieked Spiller; and the next minute he was on deck.

"I'll have you sign a paper to that effect," said Banks, "and if you don't, the whole of your crew will, including your mate."

Wilson, who was standing by Green, said that he would willingly, and when Spiller scowled, he scowled back.

"And now, Mr. Green," cried Banks cheerfully, "since we know where they are, and can find 'em any time, you may put her on her course again. And we'll have a little thanksgiving service for all this."

He did not explain whether the service was for the established character of the Simoom Rocks, or for the rescue of the shipwrecked crew, but when he got them all below he handed round hymn books.

"First of all we will sing hymn No. 184 of Hymns Ancient and Modern," he said softly, and when Spiller looked it up he was very much annoyed.

THREE IN A GAME.

Things were quiet in San Francisco—that is to say, though the usual blackguards spouted on the Sand-Lot on Sundays, there was no great political row on. The President of the United States had still three years to run before any chance of a second term, and local politics had quietened. The Governor of the State, though an angel to one side and a devil to the other, had been "let up on" at last, and the reporters for the daily papers had to invent "stories" to keep themselves going. That only kept their hand in. It was a blessing to them without any disguise when the rivalry between young Jack Hunt and Sibley Gawthrop for the hand and the money and the affections of Edith Atherton became public property. It was most of all a blessing to Gardiner, the smartest new man on the San Francisco Chronicle, who knew both of the boys well.

For how could any "story" fail to pay dividends when two of the swagger "Anglo-Franco-Californians," the most beautiful girl on the coast, and Shanghai Smith, the most scoundrelly boarding-house keeper on the Pacific, played leading parts in the drama? And when one reflects that San Francisco, the Pacific itself and the Atlantic, and the Sailors' Home in Well Street, London, came into the newspaper play quite naturally, it seems obvious there was meat for any reporter's teeth.

Gardiner, of course, was not in the high-toned gang to which Hunt and Gawthrop belonged, but he knew them both very well, although he had only been in California a short year. He knew every one in San Francisco, from the biggest toughs on Telegraph Hill, and the political bosses, to the big pots and their womankind. He knew Miss Atherton too. He wanted to know her better. Though he was on the staff of the Chronicle, it was his own fault. If he could have only got on with his father in New York, he might have been as rich as Hunt himself. But the boy who cannot differ on vital points with his father before he is sixteen is no true American, and Gardiner was U.S. to his fingertips.

"I'll get there yet," said Gardiner. His chance was coming. There are more ways of succeeding than one.

"How is it you bow to a reporter on the Chronicle, my dear?" asked a friend of Edith Atherton's. "I understand that is what he is."

"I do it because he might have been my brother," said Edith Atherton.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that his father nearly married my mother," said Edith; "but he was too autocratic, and he married an Englishwoman. I don't wonder George Gardiner could not hit it off with him. Poor boy! I wish he could."

Certainly he was far finer-looking than either Hunt or Gawthrop—that is the way her friend interpreted the girl's sigh.

"And he's cleverer too," said the older woman acutely, "nevertheless——"

And "nevertheless" was very easy to interpret.

"Which will it be, I wonder?" said her friend.

The solution lay on the knees of the gods, and in the hands of Shanghai Smith.

That night Hunt met Gardiner at the club by chance, and stayed with him all the evening.

"What are you looking so down about?" asked the newspaper man. "You are drinking too much. Ease up on it."

Indeed, Hunt was drinking too much. He drank enough to loosen his tongue.

"Damn that Gawthrop," he said.

"Ah, I see," cried Gardiner; "is that it?"

And Hunt nodded sulkily. Then he wept.

"If he was only out of the way," he moaned, "I believe I could work the racket with her."

Gardiner shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah, well, buck up. Come on. I'm going to the office."

They walked into Kearney Street and turned east towards the Chronicle offices. As they passed Bush Street a very hard-looking citizen nodded to Gardiner.

"Who's that?" asked Hunt.

"Don't you know him? That's Shanghai Smith, the biggest scoundrel unhung. He's a sailors' crimp, and a daylight robber, and a man with a 'pull.'"

Certainly Smith had some political power. In the United States it is impossible to avoid politics and the police at the same time, except by lavish bribery.

"And why do they call him 'Shanghai'?" asked Hunt.

"Because he 'shanghais' men," answered Gardiner, "and nowadays that means drugging a man and putting him aboard some ship. Oh, he's a daisy. He'd ship your dad to New York round the Horn if there was money in it. When a man disappears in this city we look first in the morgue, and then make inquiries at Smith's."

"I wish Gawthrop was in the morgue, I do," said Hunt "And here I'll say good-night. You're a good chap, Gardiner, if you are a newspaper man, and it's been a relief to talk to you, so it has."

They shook hands and parted, but Gardiner had not walked ten yards before he turned and came back. His eyes glittered curiously. Hunt's were blurred and fishy. He had certainly taken a little too much. Gardiner wondered if he had taken too much to remember in the morning what happened now.

"You wish he was in the morgue, eh?"

"I do," said Hunt firmly. "I do."

"Why not get him shanghaied?" asked Gardiner, and he walked away very swiftly, and did not return when Hunt called to him.

"By the Great Horn Spoon and the tail of the Sacred Bull, I'll not give her up," said Gardiner; "certainly not to a man like Hunt, or to a dude like Gawthrop. Sooner than that I'll write to the old man and squeal. He'll rub it in, but after all he is the dad, and she——"

Ah, she was everything.

"Let the best man win. I'm in the game, after all," said Gardiner. "And to think if she hadn't recognised me to-day I'd have thrown it up!"

He was not surprised to see Hunt the next afternoon, though every one else in the office was astonished to see him looking for a mere reporter.

"Do you remember what you said to me last night?" asked Hunt rather nervously.

"About what?"

"About somebody called Shanghai Smith?"

He stared out of the window as he spoke.

"I remember, Hunt."

"Can it be done?"

"Can what be done?"

"Could I get rid of that Gawthrop for a month or two?"

"I shouldn't be surprised, if you put up the dollars."

"Will you help me?"

"And get myself—disliked?"

He was going to say—"get myself in the penitentiary," but on reflection he did not desire to frighten Hunt. After all, the affair would cause so much laughter that legal proceedings were not likely to rise out of it.

"I don't want you to show. Only give me a pointer. Could you bring this Smith to me?"

Gardiner stabbed his desk with a pen-knife, and considered the matter for a moment.

"Look here," he said, "I want to deal as squarely as I can with you. I don't want either you or Gawthrop to marry this particular lady."

Hunt stared at him.

"You don't? Oh! I say, Gardiner——" and he burst into laughter, which Gardiner apparently did not resent.

"Yes, I know I'm a newspaper dog, and so on; let that be. If I chose to crawl down and go East, I could stack dollar for dollar with half of you in time. What I'm telling you is this: I think Gawthrop has more show than you, and I'd be glad to get him out of the way, just as he'd no doubt be glad to get you out. I'll help if you'll hold your tongue about me, whatever happens."

"Very well," said Hunt; "I give you my word."

"Whatever happens?"

"Whatever happens."

"Of course I shall do everything I can to win."

"That's only natural," said Hunt; "but I'll bet you a thousand dollars that if I get Gawthrop out of the way I'll marry Miss Atherton inside of three months."

"Whatever happens?"

"Whatever happens."

"Then I take that bet," said Gardiner, "and to-morrow you shall meet Shanghai."

But when Hunt had gone, Gardiner winked steadily at nothing and stroked his chin.

"Great Scott, this is a game," he said. "I wonder where Gawthrop is?"

But before he found out he sat down and wrote a letter to the elder Gardiner in New York. It was late that evening before he went down to that undesirable quarter of San Francisco known as the Barbary Coast, where Shanghai Smith had his sailor-robbing den located.

As he went along the water-front and saw the ships lying at the wharves, it was "plumb" dark. Though he knew every tough in the city, he walked some way from the edge of the wharves and kept his hand on his six-shooter in the right-hand pocket of his coat. There is never any knowing what may happen in the low quarters of that sink of the Pacific, where all the scum of the world gathers, and it is well to keep one's eyes skinned lest worse may befall. Gardiner had no desire to turn up on a trestle at the morgue as his next public appearance. But though he was careful, he went cheerfully, and could not help laughing.

"Great Scott, to think of Sibley Gawthrop as an able seaman on board the Harvester or the Wanderer! But won't it do him good? These young Californians are a rotten crowd."

He came at last to Smith's house, and stepped upon the verandah floor boldly.

"Why, it's Mr. Gardiner of the Chronicle, so it is," said Billy, who was Smith's runner, and, next to his boss and a few politicians, the hardest case in California. "Is it Mr. Smith you want to see, sir?"

"I'm only just doing a run around, and thought I'd look in, Billy," said Gardiner carelessly.

"Ay, just a cultus nannitch, as they say in Chinook," replied Billy. "But we're always glad to see you."

Gardiner doubted that. But Smith was always civil to newspaper men. He hadn't Gardiner bought, as he had the police, and he knew that a true column and a bit on his doings might bring down an avalanche any day.

"And here is Mr. Smith," said Billy.

"How are you makin' it?" asked Smith, "and what'll you drink?"

But Gardiner was not drinking. It was so notoriously unhealthy to drink at Shanghai's place that few sober men were reckless enough to take a cocktail there.

"How are you off for men?" asked Gardiner. "Is business good?"

Smith shook his head.

"Men? There are too many of 'em! Now hell ain't fuller of devils, Mr. Gardiner, than what San Francisco is of sailors, and you know as well as me that with sailormen a drug in the market, I don't come out on top."

"To be sure," said Gardiner, "but I was thinking, as I came along, that you might get a ship for a young friend of mine."

"I'll be glad to do anythin' for any friend of yours," said Smith, "but as I'm tellin' you, 'tis as easy to be President of the United States as to do business with the streets full of men that lets on to be sailors. What kind of a job is your friend lookin' for?"

Gardiner laughed.

"I want him to go a voyage before the mast. It will do him good."

"Ah," said Smith quickly, "what's the game? But whatever it is with you, I'm on! Say it and mean it!—that's me."

Gardiner edged him up to the quiet end of the verandah.

"Smith, can you hold your tongue and earn a thousand dollars?"

"Can I do what?" asked Smith. "Look here, so help me, I'd cut my tongue out for a thousand. I tell you, things are tough. What's the game?"

And Gardiner, after looking round, whispered in his ear.

"Whew!" whistled Smith; "you don't mean it. Young Sibley Gawthrop! Holy sailor, I'd rather not touch him. His father is a power in the land."

Gardiner shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, very well, there are others. And in any case, who need know you took a hand in it? Now, will you or won't you? Yes or no, or I quit right here."

"You don't quit. I'll do it," said Smith. "I'll do it for you, C.O.D."

It can be judged how much he did it for Gardiner when C.O.D. is translated "Cash on Delivery."

"Right!" said Gardiner, "and pick him a nice easy ship. A good old English limejuicer will be the thing. I want him to go to Europe."

He went up town, and curiously enough found himself having supper in the swagger restaurant of the city at the next table to Hunt's victim.

"Gawthrop, I want to have a talk with you on very special business," he said. "Can you spare me half an hour to-morrow morning if I call on you?"

And when they parted next morning, after their talk on "very special business," Sibley Gawthrop was in a high state of excitement.

"If I can only get that Hunt out of the way for three months, I believe I can work the racket with her. But what I can't understand is Gardiner's notion that he has any chance. I suppose that's what he meant by keeping on saying, 'Don't think I do this for you. I'm not in it for friendship or for my health. I'll do you if I can.' Poor beggar, he hasn't the least show. Oh, but isn't this a game! To think of old Hunt turning up in the London Docks!"

He actually drove along the water-front that morning in order to gloat over the ships in the harbour, and when he saw men working up aloft he burst into laughter. The notion was splendid, whatever motive Gardiner had in putting him up to it. It was odd that he had never taken any interest in the seafaring trade of the city before. Gawthrop eyed the very loafers on the wharves with new feelings. Though he did not know it, he saw Shanghai Smith and his runner Billy at the bottom of Spear Street.

"Jehoshaphat," said Smith, "now this is a queer coincī-dence. Billy, that's the young feller I've been telling you about. See him?"

"Rather," growled Bill. "When do you want him shipped, and how am I to get him?"

"I'll tell you when it's fixed up," said Smith. "I've got to see the chap that's runnin' the show."

"There'll be a holy row on about it," grunted Bill. "It ain't exackly legitimate business, Mr. Smith. It's all mighty well doin' what I know. I can get a crew out of a ship in the bay with any man; but shanghain' sons of millionaires——"

"You're a forsaken fool," said Smith. "If you do it neatly, who's to know till he comes back? And who knows then you or I done it? And ain't I reckonin' to allow you a bonus of ten dollars extra? With times as they is now, ten dollars is ten dollars, lemme tell you. And you've taken to growlin' lately in a way I'm not goin' to stand, Bill. I don't want any slack-jaw from you, so there."

"Who's givin' any slack-jaw?" expostulated the runner. "I suppose a man can hev an opinion?"

"And he can keep it till called for, too," said his boss. "I can lick you any time."

And Bill growled, "Who says you can't? Would I be workin' for you if you couldn't?" The inference was not exactly obvious.

That afternoon Gardiner came down again to the Barbary Coast, and had another talk with Shanghai Smith.

"What, another of 'em?" asked Shanghai. "I say, Mr. Gardiner, this is a bit thick!"

"Yes, it's two thousand dollars thick," said Gardiner; "if you could only ship a whole crew on such terms, you might retire and go in for politics."

"And who's the man this time?"

"It's Jack Hunt."

"Him as is payin' for Gawthrop?"

Gardiner nodded.

"And who's payin' for Hunt?"

Gardiner took him by the greasy lapel of his coat.

"I'll tell you—it's Gawthrop!"

Gardiner, who was doing the dramatic criticism for the Chronicle that night, saw Gawthrop and Hunt in Miss Atherton's box at the Opera House. They appeared to be on very good terms, and were both in an excellent humour. For all that he had planned, George Gardiner was in no great good temper when he imagined that Edith showed more favour to Sibley than to his rival.

"He's not a bad sort, but he's not the sort to marry a girl like that," said Gardiner; "if she only knew the life he has led, she'd give him the mitten right off. And I could let her know. It's doing him a favour to send him to sea. And as for Hunt, he's really mean. Life won't be all pie to him as he's laid it out to be. She'll think they've shied off, and will be mad, and more ready to listen to a man who has loved her for years, as she knows. If she'd only take me while I'm poor, I'd be the proudest man in California. And wouldn't it make all California sick!"

Though he did not know it, both Gawthrop and Hunt played into his hands. Each was quite convinced that he was the favoured lover, and as they both had a secret they used it when they got a chance.

"Gawthrop is a very nice fellow," said Jack Hunt condescendingly; "but he never knows his own mind, Miss Atherton. I should never be surprised to hear he had gone to Europe. He's fond of travel, and very, very inconstant."

"Indeed," said Edith. She had found him fairly persevering. It was strange when Hunt was called outside for a few minutes that Gawthrop, who this night had shown no jealousy, threw out a dark hint that Hunt was no true Californian.

"I shouldn't be in the least surprised to hear he had gone to Europe," he said. "He's very flighty. I suppose that is the reason he didn't marry while he was young."

Hunt was thirty, and his rival was twenty-six.

"And don't you want to see Europe?" asked Edith, who wondered what was in the wind.

"Ah, some day, but not alone," answered Sibley. "I shall never go without a companion."

"You should go with Jack Hunt," said Edith mischievously. "I certainly wonder none of you travel more. Now, Mr. Gardiner down there has been all over the world."

"Ah, poor Gardiner!" said Sibley. "How is it so clever and good-natured a man should be doing what he is?"

And much to Sibley's astonishment, Edith Atherton turned on him with an odd question.

"Well—and what are you doing?"

Perhaps if Gardiner had heard her ask that question, he might have considered that Shanghai Smith need not intervene after all.

But Smith did intervene that night.

When Gawthrop left the theatre he went straight down Market Street to the water-front, and found his way to Shanghai Smith's without any difficulty. He had plenty of pluck, and plenty of ignorance of the real conditions of life in San Francisco. What he heard and what he read about the matter did not touch him; he lived in security in quite another world from the scoundrels at the bottom of Clay Street and the toughs of the "Coast." Life there was a theatrical representation. He sat in the stalls and said, "Poor devils, do they really live that way?" He was Sibley Gawthrop, the son of a big man: he was a power himself: he had no fear, and went into the trap smiling. If he carried in his hip pocket what Westerners call a "gun," it was on account of Western traditions. He showed no caution, though he walked whistling in the middle of the road. He had no chance to use any weapon, and he never saw Smith. He never even saw Billy, Smith's runner, till Billy sand-bagged him on the back of the head. For Smith was not to be found at his house. He was with Gardiner, and they were both waiting till they heard from the runner that Gawthrop was safely disposed of.

"I ain't goin' to show in it," said Smith, "and why should I? The Hampshire is short of two hands as I shipped in her myself. They don't go aboard when they should, and they turns up drunk at my house, and Billy puts them on board. Can I help it if he puts the wrong ones on her? Of course I cayn't. And if Billy finds the cash agreed on on 'em and hands it to me, why, I'll keep it till it's claimed by the owners of it!"

He winked his eye at Gardiner, and the journalist burst into laughter.

"They'll not touch me," he said, "and if they do, I shall either have the laugh on them or shan't care."

As he spoke, there was a message sent up from the street. A boy wanted to see Mr. Gardiner.

"A printer's devil, of course," said Gardiner. But he knew the word came from Billy.

"Billy, Mr. Smith's runner, gimme a quarter to run up to you, sir, and say it's all right," said the young hoodlum. "And he said you was to gimme another quarter."

Billy had said nothing of the kind, but the boy got it all the same.

And half an hour later Jack Hunt interviewed Billy the runner in about the same place in the dark road that Gawthrop had met him. The runner went through his pockets eagerly.

"Two thousand in the one night," said Billy. "Oh, ain't Smith doin' well? And two first-class guns as belongs to me. I'll shove 'em on board the Hampshire bright and early. Oh, I done it clean and neat."

He had great professional pride, and when he came alongside the Hampshire at four o'clock in the morning, and found all hands getting up the anchor, he felt that the thing was going to finish itself without a hitch.

"Once at sea and the job's complete. Hallo, there, send down a whip into the boat," he cried. "I've got them two as skipped. And good men, too, when they're sober."

He heard the first mate bellow:

"Mr. Jones, get these swine on board quick. Drunk, are they? We'll sober 'em. Up aloft and loose the topsails."

And the two lights of San Francisco society were carried into the foc'sle.

"Blimy, but I'd give sumfink to be as blind speechless as this," said one cockney, "and there ain't no chance of it till we gets to London."

But the mate was roaring overhead. They dropped Hunt and Gawthrop into two empty bunks and went on deck.

"Can't you turn those men to?" asked the chief mate, Mr. Ladd, of Jones. And Jones went into the foc'sle and punched both of these gentlemen in the ribs.

"Wake up, you drunken galoots," said Jones.

In answer they both sighed and snored, and turned peaceably to rest. Jones, who knew a bit, unhooked the lamp from the sweating beam overhead, and lifting Hunt's eyelid with his thumb, saw that the man's pupil was down to a pin-point. It was the same with Gawthrop.

"Hocussed, of course," he said. And he reported aft that not even putting them under the hose would wake them for some hours.

"Confound all California and its manners and customs," said Ladd.

But the manners and customs of Shanghai Smith at any rate saved Hunt and Gawthrop from eight hours of the finest education in the world. It was noon, and the Hampshire's crowd was at dinner when Gawthrop showed signs of animation.

"Ah, humph!" said Gawthrop, and without opening his eyes he reached out and pressed the head of a small bolt with his thumb.

"What's the josser doin' of?" asked Tom, the cockney who had sighed over the fact that there was no chance of getting intoxicated until they reached London.

"Johnson, give me some tea," said Gawthrop. He believed that his man had answered the electric bell. But there was a Johnson, or more properly a Johanssen, among the crew.

"Here, Dutchy, give him some tea."

Gawthrop opened his eyes and yawned. He shut his eyes again, but did not shut his mouth in time to prevent Bill Yardley, who was the joker of the crowd, dropping a piece of soaked biscuit into it. Gawthrop spluttered, coughed violently, and sat up. As he did so he of course hit his head a smart crack on the deck above him. He sat up again on his elbow, and stared about him stupidly.

"'Ere, come out, matey, and 'ave yer grub," cried the kindly crew with one voice.

"You've 'ad a rare good caulk," said Tom encouragingly.

"Eh, eh, what?" asked Gawthrop. He blinked at the men, and with a fallen jaw wagged his head from side to side.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"On board the 'Ampshire, sonny," said Tom. "Come, show a leg!"

"Humph!" said Gawthrop, and he rolled a dry tongue against his teeth. "Am I asleep?"

"I'll lay odds you won't be in ten minutes," said Tom. "What's the game you're playin'?"

Gawthrop stared at him and rolled his eyes round the foc'sle. He saw fifteen grinning faces in the light from the scuttle above. Outside the open foc'sle door he beheld the foremast, with its rail and the gear coiled on the pins.

"It's a ship," said Gawthrop, "it's obviously a ship!"

The men looked at each other.

"D'ye think he's a greenhorn?"

"Hocussed!"

"Shanghaied!"

The word "Shanghai" fetched Gawthrop clean out of his dream.

It hit him fair and square, and though it half-stunned him, it woke him, all the same.

"Where am I?"

"In the Hampshire and at sea," said all hands eagerly. They saw what had happened quicker than he did. For reasons which he did not yet understand they believed him a seaman, but they saw he had been shipped against his will.

"D'ye think it was Shanghai Smith as done it?"

"Ah," said Gawthrop. "Why, where's Hunt?"

"D'ye mean your mate as come aboard wid you?" asked Tom. "There 'e is, 'ard and fast asleep. Wake 'im up, chaps: I say, 'ere's a game."

Gawthrop put a leg out and dropped on deck just as Tom got Hunt by the hair and gave it a yank that nearly raised his scalp, but did not wake him.

"Is this 'im?"

In the half-light Gawthrop saw a face which was the colour of dark mahogany, and did not recognise his rival.

"No," he said. He did not know that Billy, with a professional ardour that did him credit, had coloured Hunt and himself with walnut juice on their faces and hands till they appeared to have been tanned the three skins deep.

And just as Gawthrop denied that he knew Hunt, the boson's whistle blew.

"You'd best come on deck. They're goin' to pick the watches," said Tom. And Gawthrop, still in a maze, followed the rest. When the fresh air blew on him, his mind cleared as suddenly as if a fog had rolled up.

"By the Lord, I've been done," he said, and he knew it was Gardiner who had done him. "All right," he said, "I'll get even. The captain must put back. I'll pay him to do it."

His knowledge of the sea was limited. Though he was the citizen of a republic, he had been accustomed to deference. That was when he was Sibley Gawthrop. He was now a nameless man in dungaree trousers and a blue shirt, in a ship bound for London with a fine fair wind. He walked aft with the defiant yet shamed air of a man who has been at a fancy ball and finds himself surprised by daylight.

"I want to see the captain," he said to the first man whom he met aft. It happened to be Jones, the second "greaser."

"That's him on the poop," said Jones, staring at him; "take a good look at him, you drunken swab. Why the blue blazes didn't you come on board before?"

"My good fellow," said Gawthrop haughtily, "there has been a mistake. I must be put on shore immediately."

"Oh," said Jones, "oh, indeed! There has been a fatal error, has there? And I'm your good fellow, am I? Take that, you swine."

And what Gawthrop took caused him to sit down very suddenly on a hard teak deck.

"What's the matter, Mr. Jones?" asked the captain, coming to the break of the poop.

"Nothing, sir, nothing," said Jones, foaming at the mouth, "only this ratty hoodlum isn't sober yet. I'll have him in my watch if Mr. Ladd hasn't any fancy for him."

"Sir," said Gawthrop, still in a sitting position, "I'm not a sailor, and have been put on board against my will. My name's Gawthrop—Sibley Gawthrop of Menlo Park. I'm well known in San Francisco."

"Dry up!" said Jones; "known to the police, I should say. And your name's either Fisher or Bates. And where's that other josser? I'll soon see if he's one of the same sort."

He shot forward, and was presently seen emerging from the foc'sle holding the astounded Hunt by the nape of the neck. He ran him aft and discharged him like a catapult right among the men. He fell down alongside Gawthrop.

"Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones," said the skipper mildly. But if he was going to remonstrate with Jones on his American methods, the two hands who had caused the fuss put him off. For Hunt and Gawthrop, on recognising each other, as they did now in spite of their high colouring, lost no time in speech, but went for each other without a word. They locked together and rolled headlong into the starboard scuppers; for though the ship was on an even keel with a fine northerly breeze, the deck had a big camber to it. Then Captain Singleton lost all his mildness at this outrageous insult to his high authority.

"Pull them apart," he roared, as Jones dived for Gawthrop's ankle, and two of the crew got Hunt by the legs. "What the devil does this mean?"

"It means he's had me shanghaied," said Hunt. "I know it."

"And you—oh, I'll kill you," spluttered Gawthrop.

"Send them both up here," said the captain. He stared at them like a fury when they stood before him. No two harder looking cases ever had an interview with a skipper, for Gawthrop was bleeding from the nose, and Hunt had lost all his shirt but the neck-band. They glared at each other, and Jones stood between them ready.

"Now then," said Singleton, "before I put you in irons I'd like to know what you mean by daring——"

It was paralysing to both Gawthrop and Hunt to be looked at as the captain looked at them. They felt like the scum of the earth.

"It's a mistake, a dreadful mistake," said Hunt; "if you will put me ashore, I'll give you five thousand dollars."

And the eager crowd on the main-deck sniggered.

"Lord, he's very big in drink, ain't 'e?" said Tom.

The skipper frowned, and shook his fist right against Hunt's face.

"You hound, don't joke with me. What's this man's name, Mr. Jones?"

"It's either Bates or Fisher," said Jones.

"No, my name's Hunt," cried Hunt. And one of the men on deck, an insinuating beggar who liked to curry favour with the powers, cried:

"His name's Fisher, sir. I've seed him often about the front."

"It's not, it's not," said Hunt furiously. "I'm a man well known in San Francisco."

"Shut up!" said Jones; "the other joskin said that."

"I won't shut up," roared Hunt, quite losing his temper. "I warn you all to put me ashore, or I'll ruin the lot of you."

"Oh," said the captain, "indeed, well, we'll see. Mr. Jones, you can have the one there—Bates, I think. Mr. Ladd, look after this sailorman with the five thousand dollars. Now if there's another word comes out of either of you, or if you start fighting again and I hear of it, I'll make the pair of you wish you'd died before you saw me."

And Jones shoved both of them down on the main-deck. The two unfortunates recognised that their only chance, and that the faintest, lay in speaking together.

"But we're neither of us sailors, sir," they said piteously.

"This is where we manufacture sailors," said Captain Singleton, who was not without humour. "Mr. Jones, Mr. Ladd, you hear that I hope they won't be able to say as much for themselves this day three months."

And the crew laughed, as in duty bound. But Hunt and Gawthrop did not laugh.

"D'ye think there's any truth in what those two men said?" asked Captain Singleton of his mate.

"Likely enough, sir," replied Ladd. "Aren't we out of San Francisco?"

"I certainly don't seem to remember their faces," said the skipper, "but they'll have to do. Make what you can of them. If it's any ways true, it's no good telling them we think so."

"Certainly not, sir," said Ladd. "But what's their remedy?"

He knew perfectly well that there was no practical remedy against the ship. And Hunt and Gawthrop were well aware they had none against their friend Shanghai Smith, or against Gardiner.

They had no chance of speaking to each other till the second dog-watch, and then only in the presence of the whole crowd, who were very anxious to get to the bottom of the mystery.

"They ain't sailormen, not they," growled the oldest man on board, who came from Brook Street, Shadwell, and was known as "Shadwell," though his real name was Shaw, "and a nice thing for hus. Two less to take the wheel. I calls it a bally shime."

He looked at Hunt with an air of unutterable contempt, and sniffed every time the man spoke. Gawthrop, who was younger and more elastic, sat on the other side of the foc'sle, and presently addressed Hunt.

"I suppose we must make the best of it, Hunt."

"Don't speak to me, sir," said Hunt, and the crew roared.

"Tell us 'ow it 'appened, do," said Tom. "Oh, ain't your friend 'aughty? Tell us, 'as 'e got that five thousand dollars?"

"Not on him," replied Gawthrop.

"Look 'ere," said Tom, "if you'll tell us the troof, I'll stand you a drop of rum. I've a nip left. And this is a teetotal ship, this is."

He could not conceive any man refusing such a bribe. And Gawthrop, in spite of everything, could hardly help laughing at Hunt's face. He took the rum partly to have an excuse for telling the story. It was the wisest thing to be friends with every one, and after all, if he was out of the running for a time, so was Hunt.

"Well," said Gawthrop, "I and my cheerful friend over there are very great friends indeed. But I wanted him out of San Francisco for a time, for reasons. And I got Shanghai Smith to arrange it."

"We know him," said the crowd eagerly. "Oh yes, we know him!"

"I stayed in 'is 'ouse."

"So did I."

"Shut up and let him tell us."

And Hunt by now was all alone on the starboard side. Even old Shadwell came across to hear the yarn.

"Another friend of mine suggested it," said Gawthrop, "and fixed it up for me."

That was Gardiner," said Hunt.

"It was," said Gawthrop, "and I paid a thousand dollars to have Mr. Hunt put here."

"That's what I paid to have you put here," said Hunt. "A friend of mine put me up to it."

"That was Gardiner," said Gawthrop.

"It was," said Hunt.

"And that's why we're both here," said Gawthrop, and his aspect was at once so melancholy and so comic that all hands shrieked with laughter. Old Shadwell creaked like the cheep of a block.

"But what'd this hyer Gardiner to do with the show?" asked the only American in the crew. "It looks like as if he played the pair of you for suckers."

"You hear that, Hunt?"

"I hear," said Hunt sulkily. "Wait till I see him."

"You ain't told us hall," said Shadwell, with a gloomy air of suspicion. "I knows somethin' of life, and somethin' about women; and there was a woman in this."

"Mr. Shadwell is right," said Gawthrop.

"I was to have taken her for a drive this morning," said Hunt; "and a pretty sort of a man I shall look, not turning up."

"Never mind," said Gawthrop. "I was to have taken her out this afternoon."

Old Shadwell nodded gloomily.

"What 'ave I often told you about 'em, boys!" he said. "This proves it. A woman's like a cat with nine lives, and nine sorts of dispositions, and if she don't satisfy 'em with nine sort of man fool she ain't happy. I've know them as nine wouldn't satisfy. And they're all the same; there's different nations of men, but women is all one nation. You can bet your boots, you two fellers, that your girl is out with some one else. This here v'yge will do you good if it rams that into you."

He turned to the others.

"D'ye believe what this young feller has told you?"

They said they did. Shadwell turned again to Gawthrop.

"It's 'ard lines on men as is sailormen, and ships so short-'anded as they always is with greedy owners, to 'ave ship-mates as can't do their work. But you look bright, young feller, and if you skips quick and does your best, there ain't no reason as you shouldn't be some kind of use in the world before we're off the Horn. And I say the same to you over there."

"Go to the devil," replied Hunt sulkily.

"Sailormen don't go there. They goes to Fidler's Green," said Shadwell. "And mark me! Put the girl out of your minds. This was a put-up job, and she was in it. She'll marry this here Gardiner!"

"He hasn't a cent," said Gawthrop contemptuously.

"It don't follow," said Shadwell stubbornly, "that because woman is wicked by nature they ain't silly by choice. I tell you Gardiner 'as gone to wind'ard of you! He's laughin' this very minute!"

And so he was. But Edith Atherton was by no means amused at the sudden disappearance of the two men who were supposed to stand highest in her favour. Whether she cared much or little for either of them, or not, it was unpleasant to have them fail to keep their appointments, and to leave San Francisco without a word of explanation. Her first and very natural impulse was to let every one infer that she had rejected both of them. But when old Mr. Gawthrop called on her during the second day she had to own that she understood the mystery as little as the newspapers did. And all the papers were very keen on any scent.

"But, Mr. Gawthrop, they both said something that I could not understand. Mr. Hunt said that he was sure that your son would soon go to Europe, and not ten minutes after Sibley said the same of Mr. Hunt."

The explanation seemed easy to the old man. Both of them imagined that his rejected rival would travel. The rest must be a coincidence. He went away to the police, and the police invented many hypotheses. They were learned in the matter of disappearances in San Francisco. But none of the hypotheses seemed to fit. Both the young men were wealthy, and it seemed certain that one or the other of them was bound to succeed with the lady in question. Nevertheless, old Gawthrop learnt some things about his son which surprised him.

There was one newspaper which suggested that they might have been shanghaied. It was the Chronicle, on which Gardiner worked. For though he had made up his mind to do very little more work on any paper, he was loyal to his flag so long as he hoisted it, and meant that the Chronicle should be able to sail in at the last and say, "We told you so." And when every one else on the paper failed in getting an interview with Miss Atherton, he volunteered to try.

"You must understand, however," he said to his editor, "that even if I see her I don't promise to write anything about it. You see, I knew her a little when she was in New York two years ago, and though I'm not in the gilt-edged crowd she adorns here, I owe her something."

And Edith Atherton saw him, although she did consider a man on a newspaper little, if anything, higher than a deck-hand in a Bay ferry-boat. She had never understood what he was doing in California at all. He went to interview her, and she interviewed him.

"I'm here as a man from the Chronicle, Miss Atherton," said Gardiner. He spoke almost timidly. It was the first time he had ever been alone with her.

"You are not here as a man from the Chronicle" said Edith.

"You mean——?" said Gardiner eagerly.

"I mean that," said Edith—"just that. You are here as the Mr. Gardiner I met in New York."

Gardiner's eyes sparkled. He looked at her, smiled, and then laughed.

"But mayn't I ask you anything about the—mystery?" he asked.

"I don't see what it has to do with me," replied Edith. "But I see your paper says they have been shanghaied? Tell me what that means."

He explained: no man knew better.

"You mean they have gone to sea as common sailors?" she exclaimed.

"That is the theory of the Chronicle" said Gardiner drily. "If we are right, it will do them both good."

"I'm rather sorry for Sibley Gawthrop," she said; but Gardiner was not so young as to be discouraged by her sympathy for Sibley.

"May I be sorry for him too?" asked Gardiner, boldly.

Edith Atherton stared at him and dropped her eyes.

"How is your father?" she asked irrelevantly. "He was a very nice old man."

"So he is," replied Gardiner, "the only trouble was that he believed he owned me. He came from the South, and was one of the few Southerners, who, on losing their slaves, played their own game on the men from the North. He and I quarrelled about a subject in which I considered he had no right to interfere."

There were no obvious implications in the way he spoke, and Edith Atherton saw none.

"What was that?" she asked, innocently enough.

"His view was that I shouldn't marry until he let me. I wanted to marry you."

Edith gasped a little and took hold of her chair as she bent forward.

"Indeed, Mr. Gardiner."

"And I still want to, Miss Atherton. And as the lady whom he wished me to marry was married a month ago, I think he will forgive me, if I ask him. It was always understood, even when we parted, that he would reinstate me as his partner if I succeeded for myself."

"And have you succeeded?" asked Edith with bent head.

Gardiner rose from his chair and went towards her.

"That is for you to say," he cried.

And when he returned to the office he handed in no more than a paragraph. It was considered in some quarters an adequate explanation of the disappearance of Hunt and Gawthrop. Yet it was not adequate for Edith. It was only when she became Mrs. Gardiner, and they were on their way East, that her husband told her the truth.

"I'm really very sorry now," said Gardiner. "Nevertheless, it will do them lots of good. They required it. You never really liked either of them, Edith?"

"No-o, not that way," said his wife. But she said to herself, "Next day I should have accepted Mr. Gawthrop!"

They ran into Laramie Junction, that horrible centre of sage-brush and alkali. A bitter wind drove dust against the windows of their car.

"It's a ghastly prospect," said Gardiner, as he looked out on the prairie.

"It would have been," replied his wife absently.

"It would have been?" asked her husband in surprise.

"I mean it is, of course," said Edith hastily.

THE MAN FROM ABO

William, or, as he was usually called, Bill, Noyes, was a citizen of the United States, and, like most citizens of that part of the Western Continent, he was accustomed to do as he "darned pleased." But besides being an American citizen, he was an American shipmaster, and such are accustomed to having their own way and giving no one else a chance. He explained this to the crowd in the State of Oregon, bound from San Francisco to Bordeaux, with wine which was going to be converted into claret. For this was some time ago, before the wine-growers there had it all their own way in the French Republic.

"You're dogs, and I'm the man with the whip. You're hogs, and I'm your driver. I'm boss, and captain, and governor, and congress, and the senate, and the president, and don't any of you forget it! If I hadn't been brought up religious I'd go a step farther still. Let me hear a growl out of you, and I'll make you wish you were in hell. Do your duty, and I'll make this ship paradise. It shall be as sweet to you as a full roost of chickens to a buck nigger on a dark night. I'm a good man, I am, and I know it. You'll know it, too. I'll see to that. Now then, Mr. Bragg, start them to. D'ye see that damned Dutchman? He looks as if he didn't understand 'United States.' Jolt him on the jaw for me!"

And the unfortunate Dutchman, who was really a Finn from Abo, got a crack with a closed fist that made him see more stars than even the American flag of liberty can boast.

"What for? I done nuttin'," he yelled, as he put his hand to his head; but never another man opened his mouth.

"Say another word," said Bragg, "and I'll ram a belaying-pin crossways down your throat," and this was the beginning.

"Very good indeed," said Noyes. "Now every one understands, Mr. Bragg, and no one can say everything warn't explained to them clearly. Work the drink out of 'em. I'm for a holy, healthy, happy crew."

And Noyes went below for a drink. He was, as he often said, a sober man.

"One tot every time the bell strikes, and two at eight-bells, and as a man can't sleep and drink, I take what I should take before I turn in."

But none of the men for'ard got as much as a teaspoonful even after shortening sail, or on Saturday nights.

"We've struck it rich," said the crowd, when they got together in the second dog-watch. "We've struck it rich. There's no fatal error about that. You can see it with half an eye a mile off. The skipper's a holy terror!"

"Ya! ya! we've got to yoomp!" said a real Dutchman, and he was put in the place proper to a Dutchman at once.

"Speak when you are spoken to," said the English and American seamen all at once. "These Dutchmen are getting past a joke, bullies."

"So they are," said old Mackenzie, a shellback of the briniest description. "When I was a boy, if one of them opened his mouth too wide we used to put something in it."

"What did you put in?" asked the eager Anglo-Saxons.

"Oh, anything as he couldn't eat," said Mac. "A ball o' twine or a swab. I remember one Dutchy as would talk——"

But just then the man from Abo came in, and though the crowd was not really sympathetic, they asked him how his jaw felt. It appeared after all that he understood "United States" sufficiently well when it was to the point: that is, when it concerned his duty or the talk that goes on in a foc'sle. A word beyond these limits opened his eyes and shut his mouth. He was then like a waiter fresh from the Continent, who can talk in English about food, and food only.

"Never you mind, Dutchy," said one of his own watch. "Mebbe, after all, it'll do you good. If Bragg hammers you, we won't."

Even such consolation was better than none, and Dutchy was truly grateful. The lot of a "Dutchman" at sea is not always beer and skittles. But even an Anglo-American crowd can have sympathy when they are like to want it themselves. They certainly found that Billy Noyes's notion of a paradise made Tophet look cool, even as depicted to a sad and sober sailor in a waterside Bethel. They wanted Bordeaux badly, and under the influence of that desire and the stimulation supplied by the officers they lost no time in getting there. And as they were a fine lot as men go, few of them came in for actual hammering. The slowest got that always, and the man from Abo was the man to get it.

It was marvellous to observe how much he got and how little it seemed to hurt him. He was knocked down once a day and twice on Sundays. Even when he got a chance to be first up aloft he never seemed to know it. The only way he had of getting down first was to fall. And once when he did so without seriously damaging himself Bragg hammered him for doing it.

"What you're after is to be laid up; I see that," said Bragg. "But let me catch you at it."

And Hans shook his head under Bragg's heavy hand till he forgot he had bruises on him the size of a soup-plate.

"Dutchy's a fair wonder," said the crowd, rejoicing in their own freedom; "he's taking the whack of all us and never turns a hair. We'll have to get up a subscription for him. Ain't he just tough? Say, Dutchy, suppose you and Bragg or you and the old man was to have a fair set-to, d'ye think you could down either of 'em?"

"Ya," said Hans from Abo very soberly, "neider of 'em can't hurt me mooch."

"He's made of teak," said the admiring crowd. "Now, there ain't one of us wouldn't be bunged up if we'd been hit about like him, and he ain't got a mark."

"It reminds me of a Chinky I fo't once," said one of the men. "I knocked him down seven times, and then two other chaps chucked him out. And next morning he was as cheerful as you please and never fazed; not a mark to him. I give him ten cents for a drink to let me look at him close. Dutchy's just such another, he's a real tough, so he is."

Hans's marvellous capacity for being hammered was soon noted aft.

"Why don't you take a pillow to him?" said Noyes, with a sneer. "To see you hit him, Bragg, makes me tired, and you used to be a hard man, too."

The mate was injured in his tenderest point.

"I done my best," he said suddenly. "I carn't help it if the swine is made of injy-rubber. I pretty near skinned my knuckles on him yesterday, and he's as fresh as paint to-day. Try him yourself, sir."

"I hired you," retorted Noyes; "but if I do get at him you'll see something fly."

They were well to the nor'ard and eastward of the Horn before Noyes happened to try, and it was blowing a snorter from the south-west. As the men came down on the poop after stowing the lower mizzen-topsail, Hans, having gum-boots on, slipped and fell against the skipper. The next moment Hans was on his back and Noyes had his knuckles to his own mouth.

"Great Scott!" said Noyes, with a face like a comic door-knocker or a Japanese grotesque, and he turned about and went below.

"It serves him right," said Hans. "Oh, no, I ain't hurt. It is nuttin'."

And though he showed nothing, not even a slight puffiness on his high cheek-bone, the skipper wore a mitten on his right hand for days. Noyes even conceived a certain respect for the Finn.

"I thought I'd hit a bollard," he said. "I ought to have hit him on the jaw, or where he keeps his wind."

By dint of these object-lessons Hans gradually got an easier time. If Bragg ever went for him he kicked him, and the marks he made, if he made any, did not show, for Hans came on board clothed, and never undressed till they reached the Line in the Atlantic. There he took a bath. As he said, he always made a point of having some buckets of water thrown over him every time he crossed the equator homeward bound; perhaps he thought it kept him fresh. But by then Bragg was even tired of kicking him. Nothing made him go slower or faster. He went at the pace he had been born to, and he never learnt anything more than he had known at seventeen. If there is any truth in the transmigration of souls, Hans must have been a tortoise and was destined to "jump up" again as a sloth. But once, after a long slow month of provocation, he hit the real Dutchman from Amsterdam, and that native of Holland "went to sleep" for two hours.

"He's the on'y Dutchman I ever had any real respect for," said the crowd each for himself. But of course he was a Finn, and, as every one knows, a Finn triumphs over his disabilities as a Dutchman by virtue of strange gifts.

"No, I don't believe none of that jaw about Finns and witchcraft," said old Mackenzie, "but I own there's always somethin' strange about a Finn. Now, all Hans's nature seems to 'ave run to 'ardness. What a saddle 'is skin would make!" For Mac had spent two years in the Australian bush, and was never tired of relating his strange experiences on horseback.

And presently the State of Oregon began, as the men said, to smell land. It was off Finisterre that Noyes proved the man from Abo could bleed; for the skipper never forgot that he had been knocked out in one round by knocking down a 'Dutchman.' The thought rankled, and when Hans was at the wheel when the wind was light out of the north-east the skipper's temper, ragged at a contrary wind when he had made a record passage so far, led him a little astray. For, as he often said, "It's all right marking men when one's bound home and when they've time to get well bound to Yewrope, but I like to leave 'em without no visible sign to say you've larrupped 'em when I'm bound East."

In the United States there is very little respect for a man who can't take care of himself, but some Europeans have silly notions. It's not uncommon even to find a consul who doesn't understand that sailors are no good unless they are in a state of mutiny or near it. There is no end to the foolishness of some consuls, as Captain Noyes often complained with natural bitterness. So when, after he had cursed Hans twice for his steering, he jammed the brass end of his telescope right between the man's eyes and cut him badly, he was quite sorry for it. You see, he had almost got to believe that the man from Abo couldn't be hurt. But a brass telescope properly applied makes four neat little cuts, one on the forehead, one on the bridge of the nose, and one on each eyebrow, as a little consideration of the human race and the nature of a circle will show. The blood ran down into Hans's eyes, and Bragg had to walk to the break of the poop and bellow:

"Relieve the wheel!"

And two days afterwards the State of Oregon, owing to a favourable change of wind, lay at Bordeaux. As soon as she did, the entire crew got too much to drink, and not even Noyes and Bragg could handle them, though the skipper was, as he had averred at the beginning of the passage, captain and congress and president all rolled in one. The only people who could handle them were the French police, and they had their work cut out. The next day, as it is the habit of Frenchmen and Spaniards and the like to let the consuls fix up all difficulties with foreign crews if they can, the American Consul was called on to arbitrate in the matter. And for the nonce the American Consul was the English one, for Mr. Schuyler had gone to Paris on what he described as business, but what no Puritan would have called such. And this is where the man from Abo came home, as one may say.

Mr. Johnson, then British Consul at Bordeaux, was a fine man with a clear skin, a merry eye, a knowledge of the world, and a hard fist. As a young man he had been amateur champion of the middle-weights in England, and though he was now a heavy-weight, he was almost as quick as he had been at twenty-two. He had a sense of fair play which was almost disgusting to masters of merchantmen, and a sense of humour which sometimes got him into trouble with the Foreign Office. For it may have been noticed that among the English Civil Service the only humour, which is, one has to own, rather sardonic, is to be found in that part of it which deals with the Income Tax. The very moment the consul had the shamefaced crew before him, and saw the officers, he knew where the trouble lay, and he thought of the boxing gloves with which he often whiled away an idle hour when the vice-consul felt "good."

"Well, now, well, what's the trouble?" asked the consul.

And Noyes told him where he thought it lay. Noyes was as smooth as bad butter, and had a heartiness about him which would have made a child cry for its mother. All the time he was talking, and the men were muttering that he was a liar, the consul was taking the crowd in. He spotted many marks and bruises on them, all come by honestly among themselves or given them without malice by the gensd'armes; but when his eye lighted on the man from Abo it stayed there.

"A comfortable ship, yes, yes," said the consul, "of course, of course! And a tough crowd to be sure. Here you, come here!"

And as the others saw that he meant Hans, they shoved him forward.

"That's a nice face you've got," said Mr. Johnson. "God bless my soul you've been running against something. Now I should say—I should say—yes, by Jove, you've been running against a telescope?"

And Hans nodded.

"Who gave you that?"

Noyes looked as black as his coat, but the Finn pointed at him with his finger.

"The cap'en, sir."

The consul looked at them both. He noted that they were both of a size, both probably of the same weight, and both looked as hard as nickel steel. His eye sparkled with a certain joy.

"Did you, Mr. Noyes?"

It enraged Noyes to be given his proper handle.

"And he deserved it," he said angrily.

"If you wanted to hit him you should have done it with your hand. But perhaps he would have been too much for you without a weapon," suggested the consul suavely.

"Not he," retorted Noyes incautiously.

Mr. Johnson looked at them both, and shrugged his shoulders.

"I believe he would lick you in a fair fight," he said with a slight sniff, and Noyes exploded.

"I could pound him to almighty smash in two minutes," he roared.

And the crowd began to see fun "sticking out a foot." They edged up closer and lost their shamefaced look.

"He could knock hell out of you," said one of them from behind, and the consul said:

"Hush, hush!"

Then he turned to Hans.

"Could he lick you, my man?"

"Not mooch," said Hans defiantly, and a subdued cheer rose from the men behind.

"Do you hear that, Mr. Noyes?" asked the consul. "Oh yes, you hear it. Well, it's all highly irregular, of course, but you understand you did wrong to hit him with a telescope, or with anything for the matter of that, and as the ship seems to have been anything but a comfortable one, I suggest that you apologise to this man at any rate, and pay him off."

"Ya, ya," said Hans, who at any rate understood the last three words.

"I apologise?" gasped Noyes. "By God, I'll lick him first and do that after! Apologise!"

"Either that, or I shall back him up in proceeding against you. Unless you would like to settle it with him now in my courtyard, with a couple of pairs of boxing gloves," said Mr. Johnson persuasively, and the crowd behind hummed applause.

"Lick him," said Bragg, "and lick him good."

He was not anxious for the job himself, but was as eager to see the scrap as the consul. It is so seldom that an officer gets a chance of seeing a real fight, and besides, he did not love Noyes at all.

And inside of two minutes the inner court saw the skipper of the State of Oregon and the man from Abo stripped to their waists and singlets.

"Pick your own seconds," said the consul gleefully, "and I'll be referee and timekeeper."

He forgot there was such a thing as the Foreign Office; but he did not forget some of the habits and customs of Western America.

"There's to be no biting, or gouging or kicking," he said, "and when a man goes down he'll have ten seconds to get up in."

The next moment Noyes sailed in. He was not a bad fighter; he could hit hard at any rate, and sometimes stopped a blow. His previous acquaintance with Hans's head led him to go for his body, and that was perhaps a little in his favour, for the Finn was all abroad all the time. At first Hans hit so slowly that when he first got there Noyes was gone, but he gradually got a little quicker. When I was eleven stone weight I used sometimes to box with a man who weighed seventeen. In the first round I used to hit him when and where I pleased; in the second I had to look out; in the third he used to get there once and finish me for the day. Like Hans, he grew quicker as he grew warmer, and yet Hans never touched the skipper at all in the first round. He was knocked all over the place, and to any outsider it looked a thousand to one on Authority. But the odd thing was that Hans's ribs seemed as hard as his head, and his wind was invulnerable. Twice he went down, but he rose quick enough, and when time was called no one puffed but the skipper.

In the second round they clinched, and when the consul called on them to break away Hans fairly threw Noyes from him.

"He'll lick him yet," said Johnson, and now Noyes had to defend himself. Any one of Hans's blows would have killed a cow if it had fairly landed. The skipper, half in despair, hit at his opponent's head, and got there. He stopped Hans, but was jarred to the shoulder. When he recovered he landed, and Hans went down to rise again like a fives ball on a hard court, and though Noyes jabbed him again and again straight in the face, he never left any mark or blood behind him. And every blow of the Finn's came nearer, quicker, more fiercely. Time was called in time to save the captain.

"I believe he'll do me," said Noyes.

"I believe it, too," said Bragg. It was not an encouraging remark to get from one's second, and Noyes felt hurt. While he was sitting on Bragg's knee Hans was walking round feeling his arms and talking.

"Ya, ya, I lick him goot," he said. "I lick him goot."

And now he was warm and like a flail. Both arms were equally good; he went at his man round arm, and missed him ten times by a mere shave. In the middle of the round Noyes, who knew he was going, worked his glove off in a close rally, and before the consul could intervene he struck Hans full in the face with his bare fist. It was a timed blow that ought to have stopped a rhinoceros, and Hans threw his head up, as the consul jumped in.

"Nein, nein," cried Hans, "take de oder off. I fight him so. I fight goot now."

And so he did, for though the glove was put on again, there was no sign of his having been hit, and Noyes's right hand was useless. A left-hander finished it, and Noyes went off his feet. When he came to he was tired and weary and found himself in the hospital with a bandaged jaw.

"I tell you there's always suthin' queer about a Finn," said the crowd. "It took brass to draw blood from him, now didn't it?"

And the man from Abo was paid off.

"I fights goot that day," he said, when he got his money, and the consul, who is now a magistrate at home, says there wasn't a bruise on him.

THE SCUTTLING OF THE PANDORA.

There are ships with good and evil reputations, independent of the men who own or sail them. Some, it would seem, had their keels laid on a lucky day, others were assuredly—

Built i' th' eclipse and rigged with curses dark.

Many have furrowed all the seas of ocean and have lost no lives, and have cost neither owner nor underwriters money. But some there are (and those who follow the sea will know them) which have never achieved a single passage without being nearly cast away, without killing or maiming men. For such a ship the very shoals themselves decrease in depth through the unlucky set of some abnormal tide: for them the 'trades' spring up far south and die in premature calm ten degrees from the Line. They are well built and highly classed, and yet spring leaks. Derelicts lie in wait for them: they are chased through every sea by cyclones and tornadoes. In them the luck of lucky men is finally of no avail: seamen fall from aloft in calms; the gear gives without notice; stores rot in spite of care. They break the heart of all who have to do with them: in them blood is suddenly spilt: in them strong men waste and die.

Such a ship was the Pandora, and, as she lay off Sandridge, at anchor in Hobson's Bay, there was not a sailorman in Australia who would have shipped in her from choice.

"I've heerd the skipper of one ship I was in talk about the nature of vessels," said Jack Marchmont, as he sat with his mate on the end of the pier, "and he allowed that ships was like men, launched with nat'ral dispositions. He talked a lot of scientific guff about deviation, and what he said was as ships had this or that deviation all according how their heads was p'inted on the stocks. If she p'inted sou-west, she played quite a different game with the compass to what she would have done if she had laid nor'-east. And I believe him. The Pandora must have p'inted straight for hell, Joe."

"She is a bad 'un, I own," said his mate, "but it ain't a matter of ch'ice. Ships is few, and men is plenty, and it's a case of 'John, get up and let Jack sit down' with you and me. If she was a wuss ship than she is, and a wetter (though this ain't a wetter), and if she killed as many as the plague, I ain't goin' to work Tom Cox's traverse ashore any more. And there ain't no beer in the scuttle-butt neither, and Bailey looks at us as black as black. I'm goin' to ship," and Joe Rennet rose.

"I ain't got a farden to jingle of a tombstone," he said.

"Mark me," said Jack gloomily, "you'll never have no tombstone if we ships in the Pandora. 'Tain't her way to run any man's relatives into that expense."

But Joe shrugged his shoulders.

"Mebbe this trip'll break her luck; and you've got to ship along. 'Cause why? We've on'y one chest atween the two of us. Cheer up, old son. Why, I'd ship in the Leander, and they say she killed and drownded seventy men in five years. Blow me, I've got to the p'int that I'd ship in a blooming diving-bell!"

And three days later the two men, with twelve others who were just as deep in debt to the boarding-house keepers, signed on for the Pandora, bound for London. They went on board that very night. The mates kept a keen eye on them: they knew the ship's reputation and more than once men who had come on board at night had disappeared by the morning. The first few hours in any ship, as in any other kind of work, are the most trying, and the first sight of a damp and empty foc'sle is for ever discouraging. For all the Pandora's crowd from London had "skipped" in Melbourne.

"And right they was," said more than one of the new crowd, "for one of them was killed, and two was drowned, and another will walk lame for the rest of his life."

But when the sun came up over the low brown hills to the eastward, and the daylight danced upon the landlocked waters of the great bay, they turned to with more cheerful hearts. The summer had spent two of its golden months, but the sky was clear, and a warm north wind blew. The ship was clean, and yet not too clean. It did not suggest the interminable intolerable labour of an American ship, all brass and bright-work. And as the new crew hove up the anchor they found the windlass was no heart-breaker.

"Give it her, boys," said the mate, and they slapped the brakes up and down with a will.

"I reckon the crowd aft are pretty decent," said Joe, as he jumped up aloft to loosen the fore-topsail. "Oh, I dessay she ain't 'arf bad."

And as the crew allowed, there was little to complain of about the way the Pandora was found.

"She ain't like our last ship," was Joe's comment. "Every time she 'it a sea out o' the common she'd shake shearpoles off of 'er, as a dog shakes water."

But Jack Marchmont was not consoled.

"I ain't denyin' that the owners and the old man do their best," he said, "but if they rove silk gear and bent silk sails, they'd not alter the nature of her. I'll feel safe when I grinds gravel under my heels, and not till then."

They told each other dolorous tales of the ship when they ate, and in the second dog-watch, which was all their own. And yet the wind was fair and put them through Bass's Strait, and well to the south and east, day by day.

"It's too good to last," said Jack.

Aft much the same feeling existed, though no one knew it for'ard. Yet Captain Rayner was a melancholy man, and seemed very soft to those whom luck had ever sent to sea with American ship-masters. He had sailed three voyages in the Pandora and had read the burial service every passage. Once he had read it to the devouring sea as a grave, when five men had gone at once from the foc'sle head; but he never spoke of the ship and her ways, even if he always came on deck with the air of a man who expects bad news. Though he never knew it, his look at last got upon the men's nerves. But their nerve was shaken from the first; superstition had hold of them. They called him 'Jonah.'

"It's a black look out with such a skipper," said some, and though the evil history of the Pandora ran far back beyond Rayner's time, they attributed her present ill-luck to him.

The mind of the seaman is a limited mind. He is a child, a creature of arrested development. The infinite sameness of the sea, its dull and at times appalling lack of interest, do not move him to growth. The romance of it is for those who know it not, or for those who pass beyond the borders of its great roads of travel. For the merchant seaman the ocean is a method of toil; only disaster or the fear of it gives it savour. And the work is the same for ever. They dwell on little things, are easily pleased, easily hurt. In such minds grows superstition, in such panic fears flourish if they are not held in a strong hand. Though both the mates were good men, they were young, and Rayner was weak.

The very fairness of the weather, though fair weather is common enough off the Horn in summer, got on the crew's minds, when they came in sight of the Diego Ramirez Islands and presently hauled up for the north.

"None of us ever passed these 'ere Daggarammarines in weather like this," they said, as they shook their heads. "Why, it might be a mill-pond!"

And when, three days later, a change of weather sent a south-west gale howling after them, they shook their heads again.

"Ah, she's goin' to get it now. This'll make up for it. Who's goin' first?"

They found out now what the Pandora could do to make their lives unhappy. She was both weatherly and fast, but her lines for'ard were such that she never rose to any sea she struck till green water poured over the top-gallant foc'sle two feet deep. She shipped one sea at midnight that ripped off the scuttle-hatch and poured solid water into the foc'sle that washed the men out of the lower bunks. The hatch went overboard, and it was morning before any one dared go on the foc'sle head to spike planks down in place of it. All night long a cataract poured down on them, and water spurted in through the plugged hawse pipes. Soon there was not a dry blanket in their den; steam rose from the wet-packed sleepers. It was 'all hands' at four bells in the middle watch, and they went on deck to shorten sail. Not a man wore oilskins; they had nothing to keep from getting wet. Even Joe, who was the most cheerful man for'ard, fell to growling.

"Call this a ship?" he said. "She's scared of the top of the sea and wants to dive so's to get out o' the wet. Stow the foresail, is it? I reckon the old man is goin' to heave her to while he can. He can't have much heart to do it with a fair wind."

And perhaps Rayner had little heart. But if he had little, the mate was cheery enough. He bellowed loudly, and the men jumped.

"Now then, haul taut the lifts," he roared. "That'll do. Weather clew-garner! Ease off the sheet a bit!"

They slacked away the tack and hauled up the weather-gear.

"Now then, lee-gear, and jump aloft and furl it."

The night was black and the wind heavy in increasing squalls. Even with the foresail hanging in the gear, and bellying out in great white bladders, she still cut the seas like a knife, and scooped the seas in over her head. Blankets and bags washed out on deck, for there was no door to the men's quarters, only a heavy canvas screen from the break of the foc'sle. And from aloft dull foam gleamed as the Pandora drove the seas asunder. The men sprang into the weather-rigging with the second mate leading. As he came to the futtock shrouds, he laid hold of the foremost shroud with his right hand, and jumped for the band of the yard-truss. His foot slipped and his hand-hold gave. He snatched with a yell at the top-gallant sheet leading through the top, but was too late to grasp and hold it.

"By God, the Pandora's luck," said the men in the rigging as they heard him reach the deck. And when the foresail was stowed and they went down they heard the man was dead. They found the Pandora made heavy weather still, when she was brought to the wind, and she only lay to decently when she was stripped to the goose-winged main-topsail. The men went into their wet and devastated den in gloomy silence.

"'Ere's a bloomin' pretty general average," said Joe, as he found his chest, which was also his chum's, staved in by the impact of an iron-bound one which had fetched away from its lashings. But no one growled, and no one answered him. The young second "greaser" had been liked by them. They sat and smoked in gloomy silence, and only half of the watch below turned into the driest bunks. They thought that the Pandora had begun, and though she lay to easily enough, few slept. They were afraid of their ship; she was unlucky, accursed, an evil personality. About her was the odour of death.

"Case was a good boy," they said, "and would have been a fine officer by-and-by. Well, our turn next."

Every time the Pandora bowed a wave the hawse-holes still spurted; the foc'sle deck ran wet and glimmered darkly in the feeble light from the stinking lanterns swinging on both port and starboard sides. The air was saturated with moisture, rank sweat ran down the beams, dripping blankets swayed from the edges of unoccupied bunks; the men were damp, subdued, unhappy. Now, as the ship lay to, the wind no longer swept into the foc'sle under the flapping screen by the windlass, but still eddies of swift cold air shook it, and the men shivered under their oilskins, that they wore now for warmth.

"I wish I'd never seed her," said Jack Marchmont, and Joe did not answer his mate. Not ten words were spoken till the wheel and look-out were relieved at four o'clock. Both were idle jobs, for the night was still as dark as death, and the wheel with a grummet over its spokes looked after itself.

"Oh, it's all solid comfort, this is," said Jack. "I wonder whose wet clothes will be for sale next?"

They buried the second mate in the grey waste of sea before they put the Pandora before the moderating gale. The mate read the burial service, for Captain Rayner stayed below. The steward told the men in a whisper that he was ill.

"He's all broke up," he said, "I seed him cryin' like a child. And no wonder; this is a wicked ship. I wish I'd left her in Melbourne."

And some of the men frowned. They did not like to hear him call the Pandora wicked. For the ship was, in its way, alive; it was possessed. They wished to propitiate it; superstition had them by the throat.

But they were easier when the body was committed to the deep. And the mate assumed a more cheerful air when he had carried the Prayer Book into his berth and came on deck again. They put the ship before the wind and loosed the foresail. But though the wind had taken off, the sea was very heavy, and the Pandora wallowed riotously. She took in seas over both rails. Thrice that day she filled the main-deck, and but for the life-lines rigged right from the foc'sle to the poop many men would have been washed overboard. As she ran with the wind on the port quarter, she sometimes dived as if she would never come up. The galley fire was out, and could not be lighted; the men drank water and ate biscuit.

"Hogs, dogs, and sailors," they said. Every time the vessel dived they held their breath.

The mate had a hard time, for Rayner was incapable of work, and she carried no apprentices. Forward there was no one capable of an officer's work; there was no broken skipper whom drink had destroyed, no young fellow with a second mate's "ticket." So Mr. Gamgee practically slept on deck in snatches till he slept almost as he stood under the weather-cloth in the mizzen rigging. He prayed for moderate weather, for a sight of the sun. But though the gale was less, it still blew hard, and the sky was black and the racing scud low, and the sun was not seen by day or a star by night. On the third day Gamgee staggered as he walked.

"If the old man can't come on deck soon I'll have to cave in," he thought. He shook his fist at the ship. "I wish I'd never seen her. She's a man-killer."

That night when the starboard watch was called at twelve the wind took off suddenly, and the Pandora pounded in the wallow of the sea like a bull-buffalo in a bog. She shipped seas over both rails; the racing waves astern came and slapped their crests at the man at the wheel; she scooped up the sea forward every stagger she made. She had been running under the reefed foresail and the fore and main topsails close reefed. Now they shook the reefs out. Gamgee was alert and alive, but his nerves half-betrayed him. He jumped from the poop to the main-deck, and back again. He wanted to be mate and second mate and skipper too. And as the fresh canvas took hold of her, she slapped at the rising sea, dived into it, and as the wind bellowed almost as keen as ever, the man at the wheel lost his nerve, gave her too much helm, snatched at her, gave her too much again, and almost broached her to. And then the mate was again on the main-deck.

Some one heard him say "O God!" as the Atlantic fell on board; but no one ever heard him say anything again.

The water filled her from rail to rail. She shuddered, and then lifted slowly, and as she ran once more before the wind and rolled, she poured out the sea on either side. The main-deck ports were burst outward, the gear floated in inextricable tangles, a four-hundred-gallon tank, lashed under the poop ladders, broke from its lashings and took charge of the deck. In the black darkness and the imminent danger men cried out. Some cried to their mates and were answered, some were not answered. With the mate three other men had gone.

And then she cleared herself once more, and the men came together under the break of the poop. Joe asked for Jack Marchmont; but Jack had saved any one from the expense of a tombstone.

"And I over-persuaded 'im to ship in her. Oh, she's a bloody ship."

Then one man said:

"Where's Mr. Gamgee?"

Joe ran up to the poop.

"Mr. Gamgee! sir!"

"He ain't here," said the man at the wheel. "Oh, Joe, what is it?"

"'Twas your doin'," cried Joe. "There's two gone, and Jack with 'em, and Mr. Gamgee!"

And the man at the wheel fell all ashake. His face was ashy in the feeble glimmer of the binnacle light.

"Come and take her, Joe," he implored. "Oh, the swine she is. I'm in a tremble, Joe. She's too much for me."

And tragedy heaped itself on tragedy. The steward came on deck, and heard that the mate was gone. He lost his head and ran in to the captain crying; he was ludicrous, horrible, speechless. And Rayner sat up in his bunk, and fell back without knowing what had happened. He never knew, for though the steward shook him feebly, his failing heart had failed, and brandy never brought him to. The steward ran on deck blubbering.

"I believe the captain's dead," he sobbed.

And the two boldest of the men took off their caps and went into the cabin humbly. A greater than their commander was there. They stood in silence, fiddling with their caps, and stared at the quiet white face upon its pillow.

"Oh yes, he's dead," they whispered. They backed out respectfully; they were stunned, and were adrift; they were all masterless men; authority had been removed; they faced the unknown with dread. They saw now that they had rested on others' knowledge. What did they know of the sea after all?

They gathered on the poop.

"What?" said Joe, who was at the wheel. "Him gone too. And we——"

They all understood. They were in peculiar isolation, in danger. And what would be said if they saved themselves and the ship?

"'Twill look as if we'd mutinied," said Joe. But he had a touch of natural authority in him. "As soon as it gets light we'll write out a true account of it and sign it, all of us. And we'll make for the nearest port."

They were all quiet men, Englishmen and Dutchmen, and there was no more drink in the ship than that in the medicine chest. The steward drank what remained of it. And in the morning all the remainder of the crew met on the poop. At first they had a certain natural reluctance to use that portion of the ship, but if they did not meet there the steersman could not take his share in the talk. But Joe did most of the talking.

"I reckon the nearest port is Buenos Ayres," he said. "This mornin' I took the liberty of lookin' at the chart, and there ain't nothin' 'andier as is common talk with sailormen. If we stand north we'll about 'it it off; or any ways, we'll 'it on the track of steamers makin' for it, and we might get the lend of a hofficer to take us in. What do you say, mates?"

Some nodded, some shrugged their shoulders, and some said, "Buenos Ayres? Oh yes, that'll do as well as another."

"And I've took the liberty," said Joe solemnly, "of borrowin' the log-book from down below, and I've wrote out a plain account of all this 'ere, as I said last night. For it's best put down, and it's ships' law as everythin' serious should be wrote out in the log-book, and nowheres else. Shall I read it?"

And he read out what he had written:—

"Three days back, as told in the log, Mr. Case, the second mate, fell from the foreyard as we was goin' to take in the foresail, and was killed. He was buried accordin' the next day, while we was 'ove to. And last night in the middle watch, as all 'ands was makin' sail, the wind 'avin' fallen light sudden and the sea bein' very 'eavy, we shipped an 'eavy sea over the port rail as washed Mr. Gamjy overboard with Jack Marchmont, A.B., Andrew Anderson, A.B., and Thomas Griggs, boy. And the captain bein' ill, as the log says, died sudden on 'earing it, and is now lyin' dead in 'is cabin. Whereas, there bein' no officer in the ship, all 'ands assembled as aforesaid, declares this is the truth, the 'ole truth, and nothin' but the truth, so 'elp us Gawd. And we intends makin' for bonus airs, or monty Vidyo."

And one by one the crew signed this simple statement, as it was held down on the top of the signal locker by its author. Those who could not write—and there were three who could not—made their marks when Joe signed for them.

"Whatever 'appens to this blasted 'ooker, we must keep 'old of this log," said Joe. "For supposin' any hother disaster befell us, as seems likely enough, and we took to the boats, it would look very bad for us, without a single officer."

It was a cold and unhappy day for them as they drove to the north-east, still under short canvas. But the weather broke a little, and they set the topgallant-sails at last.

"So long as we don't pile her up on the Falklands we should do," said the one other man on board beside Joe who seemed capable of taking responsibility. He was from Newcastle, and was, of course, known as Geordie. Naturally enough he and Joe divided the watches between them, and the remainder of the crowd sheltered their uneasy minds under their strength.

"I suppose if we bring her in we might get something extra," said Geordie, the day they buried the captain.

But Joe took him by the arm and led him for'ard from the wheel, at which a patient Swede stood.

"Geordie, old man, do you want to bring her in?" he asked.

"Why, yes, I suppose so," said Geordie. He stared at Joe. "What do you mean?"

Joe broke out strangely and struck his fist upon the rail.

"I want to see 'er sink," he said savagely. "I want to see 'er go where she's put so many good men. What right 'as we to save 'er to do more 'arm? It ain't alone as she's drownded my chum or the others, but she 'as a black record that ain't finished unless we finish it. She's strong, and will go on killin' for twenty years, Geordie. She'll make money for them as doesn't care, but what of the likes of us?"

He was greatly moved.

"She's caulked with men's lives, and painted with their blood!" he cried passionately. "I'd rather she sunk with me than sailed the seas any more."

And Geordie fidgeted uneasily

"That's true, mate, but——"

"Aye," said Joe, "I know. If we scuttled 'er 'twould look bad, and it's bad enough as it is; but 'tis a good deed, if we done it, and it should be done, and I'll tell you 'ow to do it."

He leant upon the rail and spoke earnestly, in a low voice.

"It won't do, I own, to scuttle 'er at sea, not even if we let on she leaked and logged it day by day. But if we sunk 'er in the Plate or in the bay at Monte Video, 'twould do right enough, and I've a plan for that. I made it out in the morning watch. 'Tis as easy as eatin', and easier a deal than eatin' ship's biscuit. Down below in the lazareet I'll bore 'oles in her, three or four, and plug 'em on the inside, about a foot below the water-line. And I'll over the side and plug 'em outside, then I'll draw the inside plugs. D'ye see?"

And Geordie saw.

"You needn't know it. I can do it my lone," said Joe. "And do it I will. If we gets off 'er safe she shan't kill no more. When we're out of her—and none of us will stay, as you know—she'll lie at anchor waitin' for a new crowd, and I'll come out to her in a boat and sink the murderin' old 'ooker right there."

"There'll be a ship-keeper on her," said Geordie.

"As like as not 'e'll on'y be a Spaniard," replied Joe simply. "And even if not——"

Even if not, one more was but one.

The next day the weather moderated, and the Pandora, being then, as they reckoned, well clear of the Falklands, stood due north for Cape Corrientes with the wind almost on the port beam. That night Joe went down into the lazaret with an auger, and bored three holes in her weather side.

"Good stuff and sound," he said, as he sweated over his task. "She might 'ave floated for hever."

When he drew out his auger he found that the sea raced past the hole and sometimes flipped water into it.

"On a level keel she'll have 'em about two foot under," he said. He plugged that hole and bored two others. When he had plugged these, he went on deck again. There was not a soul awake on her but Geordie and the man at the wheel. She was going now very sweetly, and making ten knots: they were running into fair weather. But she lay over far enough to make it easy for Joe to go over the side, while Geordie slacked him down from a pin in the rail.

"It's done," said Joe, as he came on board. "She'll kill no more."

It seemed to him that he was doing a good deed, for the Pandora was cruel.

And a week later, though they had sighted no land, the colour of the water had changed curiously, and looked a little reddish. When they drew some on board it was evidently not so salt as the sea, and they knew they were in the flood of the mighty Plate. The airs were now light and westerly; they hauled their wind and stood for the north-west. But still the man on the look-out on the main-royal-yard saw no land. In the afternoon they sighted the smoke of a steamer heading about west by south on their starboard beam. They laid their main-topsail to the mast and hoisted the Jack, union down.

That night they were at anchor off Monte Video, and in the morning they told their story to the British Consul. But one and all refused at any price and at all costs to go on board of the Pandora again. Joe spoke for all of them.

"We'll go to gaol sooner, sir," he said, as he stepped in front of his mates, twiddling his cap nervously, "though we wishes to say so respectfully, sir. She's a man-killer, and it's better a sight to be in the jug, or on the beach, than to be drownded. She's killed my own mate, and more than 'im. And so far back as hany of us ever 'eard of 'er, she's been at the same job. If you please, sir, we'd rather go to gaol."

They slept that night ashore, but not in gaol, and next day the owners cabled from England for a new crew to be shipped in her at any price. But no price could induce men to go in her. And on the third night she sank at her moorings in fifteen fathoms of water, and carried her ship-keeper to the bottom.

"I told you she'd kill another man yet," said Geordie.

But Joe shook his head.

"I done what was right. And after all, 'e was on'y a Spaniard, as I said."

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Table of Contents

- The Promotion of the Admiral

- THE PROMOTION OF THE ADMIRAL.

- THE SETTLEMENT WITH SHANGHAI SMITH.

- THE POLICY OF THE POTLUCK.

- THE CREW OF THE KAMMA FUNDER.

- THE REHABILITATION OF THE VIGIA.

- THREE IN A GAME.

- THE MAN FROM ABO

- THE SCUTTLING OF THE PANDORA.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE