he duty that day with a sort of suppressed fierceness,
happened on the bridge, his commander observed:

"There's nothing amiss with that flag."

"Isn't there?" mumbled Jukes, falling on his knees before a deck-locker
and jerking therefrom viciously a spare lead-line.

"No. I looked up the book. Length twice the breadth and the elephant
exactly in the middle. I thought the people ashore would know how to
make the local flag. Stands to reason. You were wrong, Jukes. . . ."

"Well, sir," began Jukes, getting up excitedly, "all I can say--" He
fumbled for the end of the coil of line with trembling hands.

"That's all right." Captain MacWhirr soothed him, sitting heavily on a
little canvas folding-stool he greatly affected. "All you have to do is
to take care they don't hoist the elephant upside-down before they get
quite used to it."

Jukes flung the new lead-line over on the fore-deck with a loud "Here
you are, bo'ss'en--don't forget to wet it thoroughly," and turned with
immense resolution towards his commander; but Captain MacWhirr spread
his elbows on the bridge-rail comfortably.

"Because it would be, I suppose, understood as a signal of distress," he
went on. "What do you think? That elephant there, I take it, stands for
something in the nature of the Union Jack in the flag. . . ."

"Does it!" yelled Jukes, so that every head on the Nan-Shan's decks
looked towards the bridge. Then he sighed, and with sudden resignation:
"It would certainly be a dam' distressful sight," he said, meekly.

Later in the day he accosted the chief engineer with a confidential,
"Here, let me tell you the old man's latest."

Mr. Solomon Rout (frequently alluded to as Long Sol, Old Sol, or Father
Rout), from finding himself almost invariably the tallest man on board
every ship he joined, had acquired the habit of a stooping, leisurely
condescension. His hair was scant and sandy, his flat cheeks were pale,
his bony wrists and long scholarly hands were pale, too, as though he
had lived all his life in the shade.

He smiled from on high at Jukes, and went on smoking and glancing about
quietly, in the manner of a kind uncle lending an ear to the tale of an
excited schoolboy. Then, greatly amused but impassive, he asked:

"And did you throw up the billet?"

"No," cried Jukes, raising a weary, discouraged voice above the harsh
buzz of the Nan-Shan's friction winches. All of them were hard at work,
snatching slings of cargo, high up, to