't want to owe this steamship company a penny when I step ashore. It
is your duty, sir, as master of this ship, to put me on the meanest job
you've got."

"My word!" exclaimed Captain Trigger.

"I'm blessed!" said Mr. Mott.

"Up where I've been running things and cock-walking like a foreman in a
shirt-waist factory, I made the rules and I enforced them. I want to say
to you that no favours were shown. If the Prince of Wales had drifted in
there, dead broke, and asked for something to eat, he would have got it,
but you bet your life he'd have had to work for it. A tramp's a tramp,
no matter how much purple he's been used to, and you can say the same
for a stowaway. What's the matter with me taking the place of one of
those deck-hands, or whatever you call 'em, you lost last night?"

"What's that?"

"Swabbers, maybe you call 'em. Men that mop up the decks after everybody
else has turned in."

"What are you talking about?" demanded the Captain, sitting up very
straight. Percival stared at him in astonishment.

"I thought you knew about it, of course. Good Lord, sir, don't you know
that a couple of your men jumped overboard last night,--or early this
morning, rather? Just as the ship was rounding that big headland--"

"Good God, man, are you in earnest?" cried Mr. Mott, starting toward the
door.

"I certainly am. I took them for deserters, of course,--not suicides,
because they didn't forget to put on life preservers before they jumped.
I haven't a doubt they were picked up, so there's no use worrying. A
minute or two after they went over,--from the bottom deck or whatever
you call it,--I heard a motor boat popping away like a gatling-gun not
far,--"

But he was alone. Captain Trigger had dashed out of the cabin in the
wake of the First Officer.

Algernon Adonis Percival stared blankly at the open door.

"Good Lord, why all this excitement over a couple of bums?" he said,
addressing space. "If they were working for me, I'd thank the Lord to be
rid of 'em so cheaply. They--Hello!"

The Second Officer popped into the room.

"Come along with me," he snapped. "Lively, now. Just where and when did
you see a couple of men go overboard? Quietly, now. We don't want to
alarm the passengers."

Within five minutes after Percival's disturbing report, the officers
of the Doraine, with set faces, were employed in a swift but silent
investigation. Before many more minutes had passed, at least a portion
of the stowaway'