us alight with animation; still breathed with hurry.
Though the gummy heat of the monsoon made the little cabin a sweat box,
he had not stopped to strip his rubber coat. It shone wet and streaky
under the lamp as he gestured, and the rain-drops glistening in his stub
mustache were no brighter than his eyes. And this was a notable thing of
itself--to see him so restored, the jaunty, confident young mate we had
used to know, drawn from the sulky reserve that had held him these many
weeks. But most singular of all, as it seemed to us then, was the way he
wound up his outburst:

"... So I came straight away on the jump to get you both," he declared,
in a rush. "We can straighten out this mess to-night--the three of
us--just as easy. I've a great notion.... Listen, now.

"There was a chap in a book I read, d'y'see? The other Johnnies put a
game on him. Didn't they put up a game on him, to be sure! They made
him think he was a duke or something, d'y'see? When he woke up! And, by
gum, he believed 'em! They made him. Now there's the very tip we need to
bring Chris Wickwire around all serene."

Captain Raff, sitting rigid on the couch, recovered sufficiently to
unclamp his jaw from the fag-end of a dead cheroot. He had the air of
one who goes about to pluck a single straw of sense from a whirl of
fantasy.

"A book," he repeated. "A chap in a book? What in Hull t' Halifax is the
boy talkin' about?"

Literature aboard the _Moung Poh_ was represented between the
chronometer and the bottle rack by a scant half dozen of Admiralty
publications. But Sutton laid no strain on our library. From his own
pocket, like a conjurer that draws a rabbit from a hat, and quite as
astonishingly, he produced a shabby, black-bound octavo. "Here it is,
sir. Shakespeare wrote it. And the chap's name was Christopher too--a
tinker by his trade. Queer thing!"

It was; you must figure here just how queer it was, and how far removed
we were in our lawful occasions from books and people in books and all
such recondite subjects--captain, mate, and acting engineer of a
1,500-ton tub of a country wallah trading between Calcutta, Burma, the
Straits, and the China side.

* * * * *

By common gossip up and down among the brass-buttoned tribe such
billets mostly go to men with a spot in them somewhere. We kept our
spots pretty well hidden if it was so. There was nothing publicly wrong
with any of us. Captain Raff commanded f