"Do you mean a fight?" queried the Actor.

"Maybe."

"I don't like fights--never did." Anything that would imperil his safe
return was to be avoided.

"I neither--but sometimes you've got to. Are you handy with a gun?"

"Why?"

"Nothing--I'm only asking."

Carhart, the Man-Who-Knew-It-All, here lounged over from his seat by the
table and dropped into a chair beside them, cutting short his reply. The
Texan gave a significant look at the Actor, enforcing his silence, and
then buried his face in a newspaper a month old.

Carhart spread his legs, tilted his head back on the chair, slanted his
stiff-brim hat until it made a thatch for his nose, and began one of his
customary growls: to the room--to the drenched port-holes--to the brim
of his hat; as a half-asleep dog sometimes does when things have gone
wrong with him--or he dreams they have.

"This ship reminds me of another old tramp, the _Persia_," he drawled.
"Same scrub crew and same cut of a Captain. Hadn't been for two of the
passengers and me, we'd never got anywhere. Had a fire in the lower hold
in a lot of turpentine, and when they put that out we found her cargo
had shifted and she was down by the head about six feet. Then the crew
made a rush for the boats and left us with only four leaky ones to go
a thousand miles. They'd taken 'em all, hadn't been for me and another
fellow who stood over them with a gun."

The Bum Actor raised his eyes.

"What happened then?" he asked in a nervous voice.

"Oh, we pitched in and righted things and got into port at last. But the
Captain was no good; he'd a-left with the crew if we'd let him."

"Is the shifting of a cargo a serious matter?" continued the Actor.
"This is my second crossing and I'm not much up on such things."

"Depends on the weather," interpolated a passenger.

"And on how she's stowed," continued Car-hart. "I've been mistrusting
this ship ain't plumb on her keel. You can tell that from the way she
falls off after each wave strikes her. I have been out on deck looking
things over and she seems to me to be down by the stern more than she
ought."

"Maybe she'll be lighter when more coal gets out of her," suggested
another passenger.

"Yes, but she's listed some to starboard. I watched her awhile this
morning. She ain't loaded right, or she's loaded _wrong,-purpose_. That
occurs sometimes with a gang of striking stevedores."

The noon whistle blew and the talk ended with the setting of every