can only give you five minutes, Captain. Oh, by
the way, there's a nigger stowaway from Sarry Leone you can take if you
like. He's a stonemason or some such foolishness, and I don't mind
having him drowned. If you hammer him enough, probably he'll learn how
to put some weight on a brace."

"That stonemason's just the man I can use," said Kettle. "Get him for
me. I'll never forget your kindness over this, Captain, and you may
depend upon me to do the square thing by you if I get her home."

Captain Kettle ran off down the bridge and was quickly out of sight, and
hard at his quest for volunteers. Captain Image waited a minute, and he
turned to his third mate. "Now, me lad," he said, "I know you're
disappointed; but with the other mates sick like they are, it's just
impossible for me to let you go. If I did, the Company would sack me,
and the dirty Board of Trade would probably take away my ticket. So you
may as well do the kind, and help poor old Cappie Kettle. You see what
he's come down to, through no fault of his own. You're young, and you're
full to the coamings with confidence. I'm older, and I know that luck
may very well get up and hit me, and I'll be wanting a helping hand
myself. It's a rotten, undependable trade, this sailoring. You might
just call the carpenter, and get the cover off that smaller lifeboat."

"You think he'll get a crew, then, sir, and not our deckhands?"

"Him? He'll get some things with legs and arms to them, if he has to
whittle 'em out of kindling-wood. It's not that that'll stop Cappie
Kettle now, me lad."

The third mate went off, sent for the carpenter, and started to get a
lifeboat cleared and ready for launching. Captain Image fell to
anxiously pacing the upper bridge, and presently Kettle came back
to him.

"Well, Captain," he said, "I got a fine crew to volunteer, if you can
see your way to let me have them. There's a fireman and a trimmer, both
English; there's a third-class passenger--a Dago of some sort, I think
he is, that was a ganger on the Congo railway--and there's Mr.
Dayton-Philipps; and if you send me along your nigger stonemason,
that'll make a good, strong ship's company."

"Dayton-Philipps!" said Image. "Why, he's an officer in the English
Army, and he's been in command of Haussa troops on the Gold Coast, and
he's been some sort of a Resident, or political thing up in one of those
nigger towns at the back there. What's he want to go for?"

"Said he'd come for th