is shorthanded below and says
the bilge-pumps are choked. Can you spare him a man or two to help
clear the suctions? I daresay there's a lot of stray dunnage washing
about under the stoke-hold plates. You might go down and bear a hand
yourself, as I won't leave the bridge."

"Certainly, sir; I'll go at once with Mr Stokes and take some of the
starboard watch with me. It's close on seven bells and they'd soon have
to turn out, anyway, to relieve the men now on deck."

"That'll do very well, Fosset," said the skipper, and, raising his
voice, he shouted over the rail forwards--

"Bosun, call the watch!"

Bill Masters, who had been waiting handy on the deck amidships,
immediately below the bridge, expecting some such order with the need,
as he thought, of the skipper reducing sail, at once stuck his shrill
boatswain's pipe to his lips and gave the customary call: Whee-ee-oo-
oo--whee-ee-ee.

"Starboard watch, ahoy!"

The men came tumbling out of the fo'c's'le at the sound of the whistle
and the old seadog's stentorian hail; whereupon the first mate,
selecting six of the lot to accompany him, he followed Mr Stokes
towards the engine-room hatchway.

Before disappearing below, however, the engineer made a last appeal to
the skipper.

"I say, cap'en," he sang out, stopping half-way as he toddled aft,
somewhat disconsolately in spite of the assistance given him, "now won't
you ease down, sir, just to oblige me? The engines won't stand it, sir;
and it's my duty to tell you so, sir."

"All right, Stokes; you've told me, and may consider that you've done
your duty in doing so," replied the skipper, grimly laconic. "But I'm
not going to ease down till seven bells, my hearty, unless we run across
Dick Haldane's ship before, when we'll go as slow as you like and bear
up again on our course to the westwards."

"Very good, sir," answered the old chief as he lifted his podgy legs
over the coaming of the hatchway, prior to burying himself in the
cimmerian darkness of the opening, wherein Mr Fosset and his men had
already vanished.

"I'll make things all snug below, sir, and bank the fires as soon as you
give the signal."

With that, he, too, was lost to sight.

The skipper, I could see, was not very easy in his mind when left alone;
for he paced jerkily to and fro between the wheel-house and the weather
end of the bridge as well as he was able, the vessel being very
unsteady, rolling about among the big rollers li