ving
forty winks?' roars the other. 'Damme! that's English, ain't it?'

"'Surely,' ses the cap'n, 'surely you didn't wish to be left to perish
in that little craft. I had a supernatural warning to steer this course
on purpose to pick you up, and this is your gratitude.'

"'Look here!' ses the other. 'My name's Cap'n Naskett, and I'm doing
a record trip from New York to Liverpool in the smallest boat that has
ever crossed the Atlantic, an' you go an' bust everything with your
cussed officiousness. If you think I'm going to be kidnapped just to
fulfil your beastly warnings, you've made a mistake. I'll have the law
on you, that's what I'll do. Kidnapping's a punishable offence.'

"'What did you come here for, then?' ses the cap'n.

"'Come!' howls Cap'n Naskett. 'Come! A feller sneaks up alongside o' me
with a boat-load of street-sweepings dressed as sailors, and snaps me up
while I'm asleep, and you ask me what I come for. Look here. You clap on
all sail and catch that boat o' mine, and put me back, and I'll call it
quits. If you don't, I'll bring a law-suit agin you, and make you the
laughing-stock of two continents into the bargain.'

"Well, to make the best of a bad bargain, the cap'n sailed after the
cussed little boat, and Mr. Salmon, who thought more than enough time
had been lost already, fell foul o' Cap'n Naskett. They was both pretty
talkers, and the way they went on was a education for every sailorman
afloat. Every man aboard got as near as they durst to listen to them;
but I must say Cap'n Naskett had the best of it. He was a sarkastik
man, and pretended to think the ship was fitted out just to pick up
shipwrecked people, an' he also pretended to think we was castaways what
had been saved by it. He said o' course anybody could see at a glance we
wasn't sailormen, an' he supposed Mr. Salmon was a butcher what had been
carried out to sea while paddling at Margate to strengthen his ankles.
He said a lot more of this sort of thing, and all this time we was
chasing his miserable little boat, an' he was admiring the way she
sailed, while the fust mate was answering his reflexshuns, an' I'm
sure that not even our skipper was more pleased than Mr. Salmon when
we caught it at last, and shoved him back. He was ungrateful up to
the last, an', just before leaving the ship, actually went up to Cap'n
Brown, and advised him to shut his eyes an' turn round three times and
catch what he could.

"I never saw the skipper so