nturers, and led the way back into the
cabin.

Chapter 6. THE PARTNERS

Each took a side of the fixed table; it was the first time they had sat
down at it together; but now all sense of incongruity, all memory of
differences, was quite swept away by the presence of the common ruin.

'Gentlemen,' said the captain, after a pause, and with very much the air
of a chairman opening a board-meeting, 'we're sold.'

Huish broke out in laughter. 'Well, if this ain't the 'ighest old rig!'
he cried. 'And Dyvis, 'ere, who thought he had got up so bloomin' early
in the mornin'! We've stolen a cargo of spring water! Oh, my crikey!'
and he squirmed with mirth.

The captain managed to screw out a phantom smile.

'Here's Old Man Destiny again,' said he to Herrick, 'but this time I
guess he's kicked the door right in.'

Herrick only shook his head.

'O Lord, it's rich!' laughed Huish. 'It would really be a scrumptious
lark if it 'ad 'appened to somebody else! And wot are we to do next? Oh,
my eye! with this bloomin' schooner, too?'

'That's the trouble,' said Davis. 'There's only one thing certain: it's
no use carting this old glass and ballast to Peru. No, SIR, we're in a
hole.'

'O my, and the merchand' cried Huish; 'the man that made this shipment!
He'll get the news by the mail brigantine; and he'll think of course
we're making straight for Sydney.'

'Yes, he'll be a sick merchant,' said the captain. 'One thing: this
explains the Kanaka crew. If you're going to lose a ship, I would ask
no better myself than a Kanaka crew. But there's one thing it don't
explain; it don't explain why she came down Tahiti ways.'

'Wy, to lose her, you byby!' said Huish.

'A lot you know,' said the captain. 'Nobody wants to lose a schooner;
they want to lose her ON HER COURSE, you skeericks! You seem to think
underwriters haven't got enough sense to come in out of the rain.'

'Well,' said Herrick, 'I can tell you (I am afraid) why she came so
far to the eastward. I had it of Uncle Ned. It seems these two unhappy
devils, Wiseman and Wishart, were drunk on the champagne from the
beginning--and died drunk at the end.'

The captain looked on the table.

'They lay in their two bunks, or sat here in this damned house,' he
pursued, with rising agitation, 'filling their skins with the accursed
stuff, till sickness took them. As they sickened and the fever rose,
they drank the more. They lay here howling and groaning, drunk and
dying, all