elow him listened
wonderingly. "Afternoon, Captain. Got 'em all?"

"Afternoon, Captain. Oh, we didn't lose any. But a few drowned their
silly selves before we started to shepherd them."

"What ship was it? The French boat would be hardly due yet."

"No, the old _Grosser Carl_. She was astern of her time. Much obliged to
you for the grub, Captain. We'd have been pretty hard pushed if we
hadn't met you. I'm sending you a payment order. Sorry for spoiling
your passage."

The liner captain looked at his watch.

"Can't be helped. It's in a good cause, I suppose, though the mischief
of it is we were trying to pull down the record by an hour or so. The
boat, there! Are you going to be all night with that bit of stuff?"

The cases of food were transshipped with frantic haste, and the boat
returned. The greyhound leaped out into her stride again the moment she
had hooked on, and shot ahead, dipping a smart blue ensign in salute.
The _Flamingo_ dipped a dirty red ensign and followed, and, before dark
fell, once more had the ocean to herself.

The voyage home was not one of oppressive gayety. The first-class
passengers, who were crammed into the narrow cabin found the quarters
uncomfortable, and the little shipmaster's manner repellent. Urged by
the precedent in such matters, they "made a purse" for him, and a
presentation address. But as they merely collected some thirty-one
pounds in paper promises, which, so far, have never been paid, their
gratitude may be said to have had its economical side.

To the riffraff in the hold, for whose accommodation a poor man's
fortune had been jettisoned, the thing "gratitude" was an unknown
emotion. They plotted mischief amongst themselves, stole when the
opportunity came to them, were unspeakably foul in their habits, and,
when they gave the matter any consideration at all, decided that this
fierce little captain with the red torpedo beard had taken them on board
merely to fulfil some selfish purpose of his own. To the theorist who
has sampled them only from a distance, these off-scourings of Middle
Europe are downtrodden people with souls; to those who happen to know
them personally, all their qualities seem to be conspicuously negative.

The _Flamingo_ picked up the landmarks of the Southern Irish coast, and
made her number to Lloyd's station on Brow Head, stood across for the
Tuskar, and so on up St. George's Channel for Holyhead. She flew a
pilot jack there, and off Point Lynus