. Besides, it paid ten dollars a head for the landing. She has
carried in a cargo or so of junk; it was lying on the beach where a fool
master had piled it, and I took what I found. I couldn't keep track of
the underwriters' intentions."

"But the room forward----?" I broke in.

"Well, you see, last season we were pearl fishing."

"But you needed only your diver and your crew," I objected.

"There was the matter of a Japanese gunboat or so," he explained.

"Poaching!" I cried.

"So some call it. The shells are there. The islands are not inhabited. I
do not see how men claim property beyond the tide water. I have heard it
argued----"

"Hold on!" I cried. "There was a trouble last year in the Ishigaki Jima
Islands where a poacher beat off the _Oyama_. It was a desperate
fight."

Captain Selover's eye lit up.

"I've commanded a black brigantine, name of _The Petrel_," he
admitted simply. "She was a brigantine aloft, but _alow_ she had
much the same lines as the _Laughing Lass_." He whirled on his heel
to roll to one of the covered yacht's cannon. "Looks like a harmless
little toy to burn black powder, don't she?" he remarked. He stripped off
the tarpaulin and the false brass muzzle to display as pretty a little
Maxim as you would care to see. "Now you know all about it," he said.

"Look here, Captain Selover," I demanded, "don't you know that I could
blow your whole shooting-match higher than Gilderoy's kite. How do you
know I won't do it when I get back? How do you know I won't inform the
doctor at once what kind of an outfit he has tied to?"

He planted far apart his thick legs in their soiled blue trousers, pushed
back his greasy linen boating hat and stared at me with some amusement.

"How do you know I won't blow on Lieutenant or Ensign Ralph Slade,
U.S.N., when I get back?" he demanded. I blessed that illusion, anyway.
"Besides, I know my man. You won't do anything of the sort." He walked to
the rail and spat carefully over the side.

"As for the doctor," he went on, "he knows all about it. He told me all
about myself, and everything I had ever done from the time I'd licked
Buck Jones until last season's little diversion. Then he told me that was
why he wanted me to ship for this cruise." The captain eyed me
quizzically.

I threw out my hands in a comic gesture of surrender.

"Well, where are we bound, anyway?"

The dirty, unkempt, dishevelled figure stiffened.

"Mr. Eagen," its falsetto shrilled