ie!" roared the captain. "And if you have been interfering
again with the discipline of this ship, or meddling in affairs that
don't concern you you can take the consequences, and be damned. I
don't care whether you are an English lord or not. I'm captain of this
here ship, and from now on you keep your meddling nose out of my
business."

The captain had worked himself up to such a frenzy of rage that he was
fairly purple of face, and he shrieked the last words at the top of his
voice, emphasizing his remarks by a loud thumping of the table with one
huge fist, and shaking the other in Clayton's face.

Greystoke never turned a hair, but stood eying the excited man with
level gaze.

"Captain Billings," he drawled finally, "if you will pardon my candor,
I might remark that you are something of an ass."

Whereupon he turned and left the captain with the same indifferent ease
that was habitual with him, and which was more surely calculated to
raise the ire of a man of Billings' class than a torrent of invective.

So, whereas the captain might easily have been brought to regret his
hasty speech had Clayton attempted to conciliate him, his temper was
now irrevocably set in the mold in which Clayton had left it, and the
last chance of their working together for their common good was gone.

"Well, Alice," said Clayton, as he rejoined his wife, "I might have
saved my breath. The fellow proved most ungrateful. Fairly jumped at
me like a mad dog.

"He and his blasted old ship may hang, for aught I care; and until we
are safely off the thing I shall spend my energies in looking after our
own welfare. And I rather fancy the first step to that end should be
to go to our cabin and look over my revolvers. I am sorry now that we
packed the larger guns and the ammunition with the stuff below."

They found their quarters in a bad state of disorder. Clothing from
their open boxes and bags strewed the little apartment, and even their
beds had been torn to pieces.

"Evidently someone was more anxious about our belongings than we," said
Clayton. "Let's have a look around, Alice, and see what's missing."

A thorough search revealed the fact that nothing had been taken but
Clayton's two revolvers and the small supply of ammunition he had saved
out for them.

"Those are the very things I most wish they had left us," said Clayton,
"and the fact that they wished for them and them alone is most
sinister."

"What are we to do,