und to the cabin door so as to turn his back
on his guests, and hailed the deck.

"Which way is the wind?"

"There is not a breath of wind, sir."

Not the slightest movement in the vessel had been perceptible in the
cabin; not a sound had been audible indicating the rising of the breeze.
The owner of the yacht--accustomed to the sea, capable, if necessary,
of sailing his own vessel--had surely committed a strange mistake! He
turned again to his friends, and made his apologies with an excess of
polite regret far from characteristic of him at other times and under
other circumstances.

"Go on," he said to Sir Joseph, when he had got to the end of his
excuses; "I never heard such an interesting story in my life. Pray go
on!"

The request was not an easy one to comply with. Sir Joseph's ideas
had been thrown into confusion. Miss Lavinia's contradictions (held in
reserve) had been scattered beyond recall. Both brother and sister were,
moreover, additionally hindered in recovering the control of their own
resources by the look and manner of their host. He alarmed, instead
of encouraging the two harmless old people, by fronting them almost
fiercely, with his elbows squared on the table, and his face expressive
of a dogged resolution to sit there and listen, if need be, for the rest
of his life. Launce was the person who set Sir Joseph going again. After
first looking attentively at Richard, he took his uncle straight back to
the story by means of a question, thus:

"You don't mean to say that the captain of the ship threw the man
overboard?"

"That is just what he did, Launce. The poor wretch was too ill to work
his passage. The captain declared he would have no idle foreign vagabond
in his ship to eat up the provisions of Englishmen who worked. With his
own hands he cast the hen-coop into the water, and (assisted by one of
his sailors) he threw the man after it, and told him to float back to
Liverpool with the evening tide."

"A lie!" cried Turlington, addressing himself, not to Sir Joseph, but to
Launce.

"Are you acquainted with the circumstances?" asked Launce, quietly.

"I know nothing about the circumstances. I say, from my own experience,
that foreign sailors are even greater blackguards than English sailors.
The man had met with an accident, no doubt. The rest of his story was a
lie, and the object of it was to open Sir Joseph's purse."

Sir Joseph mildly shook his head.

"No lie, Richard. Witnesses pro