guns to see us off. It's a bad beach, and we
mayn't get off first try, and if they started to annoy us whilst we were
at work, I might have to shoot some of them, which would be a trouble."

"I'll see to that," said the operator. "We'll just shake hands if you
don't mind, before you go. There's more man to the cubic inch about you
than in any other fellow I've come across for a long time. I've no club
at home now, or I'd ask you to look me up. But I dare say we shall meet
again some time. So long."

"Good-by, sir," said Kettle, and shook the operator by the hand. Then he
turned, and drove the other two raiders before him out of the house, and
down to the beach, and, with the Krooboys, applied himself to launching
the surf-boat through the breakers.

"Run the old shop into a war, would you?" he soliloquized to two very
limp, unconscious figures, as the Krooboys got the surf-boat afloat
after the third upset. "It's queer what some men will do for money." And
then, a minute later, he muttered to himself: "By James! look at that
dawn coming up behind the island there; yellow as a lemon. Now, that is
fine. I can make a bit of poetry out of that."

CHAPTER VII

THE DERELICT

"Her cargo'll have shifted," said the third mate, "and when she got that
list her people will have felt frightened and left her."

"She's a scary look to her, with her yard-arms spiking every other sea,"
said Captain Image, "and her decks like the side of a house. I shouldn't
care to navigate a craft that preferred to lie down on her beam
ends myself."

"Take this glass, sir, and you'll see the lee quarter-boat davit-tackles
are overhauled. That means they got at least one boat in the water. To
my mind she's derelict."

"Yard-arm tackles rigged and overhauled, too," said Captain Image.
"She'll have carried a big boat on the top of that house amidships, and
that's gone, too. Well, I hope her crew have got to dry land somewhere,
or been picked up, poor beggars. Nasty things, those old wind-jammers,
Mr. Strake. Give me steam."

"But there's a pile of money in her still," said the third mate,
following up his own thoughts. "She's an iron ship, and she'll be two
thousand tons, good. Likely enough in the 'Frisco grain trade. Seems to
me a new ship, too; anyway, she's got those humbugging patent tops'ls."

"And you're thinking she'd be a nice plum if we could pluck her in
anywhere?" said Image, reading what was in his mind.

"Well, me lad