e where you are; but it was a ticklish
job. The skipper was nothing to me one way or another, any more than you
are at this moment, Mr. Schomberg. You may light your cigar or blow your
brains out this minute, and I don't care a hang which you do, both or
neither. To bring the skipper up was easy enough. I had only to stamp on
the deck a few times over his head. I stamped hard. But how to keep him
up when he got there?

"'Anything the matter; Mr. Ricardo?' I heard his voice behind me.

"There he was, and I hadn't thought of anything to say to him; so I
didn't turn round. The moonlight was brighter than many a day I could
remember in the North Sea.

"'Why did you call me? What are you staring at out there, Mr. Ricardo?'

"He was deceived by my keeping my back to him. I wasn't staring at
anything, but his mistake gave me a notion.

"'I am staring at something that looks like a canoe over there,' I said
very slowly.

"The skipper got concerned at once. It wasn't any danger from the
inhabitants, whoever they were.

"'Oh, hang it!' says he. 'That's very unfortunate.' He had hoped that
the schooner being on the coast would not get known so very soon.
'Dashed awkward, with the business we've got in hand, to have a lot of
niggers watching operations. But are you certain this is a canoe?'

"'It may be a drift-log,' I said; 'but I thought you had better have a
look with your own eyes. You may make it out better than I can.'

"His eyes weren't anything as good as mine. But he says:

"'Certainly. Certainly. You did quite right.'

"And it's a fact I had seen some drift-logs at sunset. I saw what they
were then and didn't trouble my head about them, forgot all about it
till that very moment. Nothing strange in seeing drift-logs off a coast
like that; and I'm hanged if the skipper didn't make one out in the
wake of the moon. Strange what a little thing a man's life hangs on
sometimes--a single word! Here you are, sitting unsuspicious before me,
and you may let out something unbeknown to you that would settle your
hash. Not that I have any ill-feeling. I have no feelings. If the
skipper had said, 'O, bosh!' and had turned his back on me, he would not
have gone three steps towards his bed; but he stood there and stared.
And now the job was to get him off the deck when he was no longer wanted
there.

"'We are just trying to make out if that object there is a canoe or a
log,' says he to Mr. Jones.

"Mr Jones had come up, lo