were travelling by train, and there was some one else's
portmanteau in the carriage, and you flung it out of the window into a
river, who do you suppose would have to stand the racket?"

"Why, me. But then, sir, this is different."

"Not a bit. If we start in to jettison cargo, it means I'm a ruined man.
Every ton that goes over the side I'll have to pay for."

"We can't leave those poor devils to frizzle," said the second mate
awkwardly.

"Oh, no, of course we can't. They're a pack of unclean Dutchmen we never
saw before, and should think ourselves too good to brush against if we
met them in the street, but sentiment demands that we stay and pull them
out of their mess, and cold necessity leaves me to foot the bill. You're
young, and you're not married, my lad. I'm neither. I've worked like a
horse all my life, mostly with bad luck. Lately luck's turned a bit.
I've been able to make a trifle more, and save a few pounds out of my
billets. And here and there, what with salvage and other things, I've
come in the way of a plum. One way and another I've got nearly enough
put by at home this minute to keep the missis and me and the girls to
windward of the workhouse, even if I lost this present job with Birds,
and didn't find another."

"Perhaps somebody else will pay for the cargo we have to put over the
side, sir."

"It's pretty thin comfort when you've got a 'perhaps' of that size, and
no other mortal stop between you and the workhouse. It's all very well
doing these things in hot blood; but the reckoning's paid when you're
cold, and they're cold, and with the Board of Trade standing-by like the
devil in the background all ready to give you a kick when there's a
spare place for a fresh foot." He slammed down the handle of the
bridge-telegraph, and rang off the _Flamingo's_ engines. He had been
measuring distances all this time with his eye.

"But, of course, there's no other choice about the matter. There's the
blessed cause of humanity to be looked after--humanity to these blessed
Dutch emigrants that their own country doesn't want, and every other
country would rather be without. Humanity to my poor old missis and the
kids doesn't count. I shall get a sludgy paragraph in the papers for the
_Grosser Carl_, headed 'Gallant Rescue,' with all the facts put upside
down, and twelve months later there'll be another paragraph about a
'case of pitiful destitution.'"

"Oh, I say, sir, it won't be as bad as all that. Bir