d not troubled himself to show even a decent pretense of
interest in his old friend's perpetually-interrupted narrative. It was
only when Sir Joseph had reached his last sentence--intimating that the
man overboard might turn out in course of time not to be a man of the
pilot-boat's crew--it was only then that Turlington sat up in his chair,
and showed signs of suddenly feeling a strong interest in the progress
of the story.

Sir Joseph went on:

"As soon as we got on deck, we saw the man in the water, astern. Our
vessel was hove up in the wind, and the boat was lowered. The master and
one of the men took the oars. All told, our crew were seven in number.
Two away in the boat, a third at the helm, and, to my amazement, when
I looked round, the other four behind me making our number complete.
At the same moment Mahogany Dobbs, who was looking through a telescope,
called out, 'Who the devil can he be? The man is floating on a hen-coop,
and we have got nothing of the sort on board this pilot-boat.'"

The one person present who happened to notice Richard Turlington's
face when those words were pronounced was Launcelot Linzie. He--and he
alone--saw the Levant trader's swarthy complexion fade slowly to a
livid ashen gray; his eyes the while fixing themselves on Sir Joseph
Graybrooke with a furtive glare in them like the glare in the eyes of a
wild beast. Apparently conscious that Launce was looking at him--though
he never turned his head Launce's way--he laid his elbow on the table,
lifted his arm, and so rested his face on his hand, while the story went
on, as to screen it effectually from the young surgeon's view.

"The man was brought on board," proceeded Sir Joseph, "sure enough, with
a hen-coop--on which he had been found floating. The poor wretch was
blue with terror and exposure in the water; he fainted when we lifted
him on deck. When he came to himself he told us a horrible story. He was
a sick and destitute foreign seaman, and he had hidden himself in the
hold of an English vessel (bound to a port in his native country) which
had sailed from Liverpool that morning. He had been discovered, and
brought before the captain. The captain, a monster in human form, if
ever there was one yet--"

Before the next word of the sentence could pass Sir Joseph's lips,
Turlington startled the little party in the cabin by springing suddenly
to his feet.

"The breeze!" he cried; "the breeze at last!"

As he spoke, he wheeled ro