ek, and, as a natural consequence, the
papers came out next morning with accounts of the rescue varying from
two columns to a page in length.

It is one of the most wonderful attributes of the modern Press that it
can, at any time between midnight and publishing hours, collate and
elaborate the biography of a man who hitherto has been entirely obscure,
and considering the speed of the work, and the difficulties which hedge
it in, these lightning life sketches are often surprisingly full of
accuracies. But let the frillings in this case be fact or fiction, there
was no doubt that Kettle and his crew had saved a shipload of
panic-stricken foreign emigrants, and (to help point the moral) within
the year, in an almost similar case, another shipload had been
drowned through that same blind, helpless, hopeless panic. The pride of
race bubbled through the British Daily Press in prosaic long primer and
double-leaded bourgeois. There was no saying aloud, "We rejoice that an
Englishman has done this thing, after having it proved to us that it was
above the foreigner's strength." The newspaper man does not rhapsodize.
But the sentiment was there all the same, and it was that which actuated
the sudden wave of enthusiasm which thrilled the country.

[Illustration: STRANGERS CAME UP AND WRUNG KETTLE'S UNWILLING HAND.]

The _Flamingo_ was worked into dock, and a cheering crowd surged aboard
of her in unrestrainable thousands. Strangers came up and wrung Kettle's
unwilling hand, and dropped tears on his coat-sleeve; and when he swore
at them, they only wept the more and smiled through the drops. It was
magnificent, splendid, gorgeous. Here was a man! Who said that England
would ever lose her proud place among the nations when she could still
find men like Oliver Kelly--or Kattle--or Cuttle, or whatever this man
was called, amongst her obscure merchant captains?

Even Mr. Isaac Bird, managing owner, caught some of the general
enthusiasm, and withheld, for the present, the unpleasant remarks which
occurred to him as suitable, touching Kettle's neglect of the firm's
interest in favor of a parcel of bankrupt foreigners. But Kettle himself
had the subject well in mind. When all this absurd fuss was over, then
would come the reckoning; and whilst the crowd was cheering him, he was
figuring out the value of the jettisoned cargo, and whilst pompous Mr.
Isaac was shaking him by the hand and making a neat speech for the ear
of casual reporter