possible! Now what could _I_ be, eh?"

He looked fondly at the bird and the bird looked back at him, daring
to open its beak and emit a small but clear "Haw!"

"Haw yourself!" returned Osterbridge in high good humor. He leaned
back in his chair.

"Now, all this is a most _engaging_ train of thought," he pursued. "If
I could change myself, _what_ should I be?"

He fell to musing, and as he did so the dreaded shadow Chris had
anticipated fell across the doorway. A moment later Claggett Chew,
limping from an old wound and a newly received bruise, stood in the
entrance.

Osterbridge Hawsey yawned. "Ah--there you are at last, Claggett," he
said, "Battle all over? It still sounds _rather_ ferocious, to me. But
of course I am no expert. Heaven forbid!" Osterbridge ended, rolling
his eyes toward the ceiling with his vague smile.

As Claggett Chew did not reply, Osterbridge looked back at him. The
pirate's eyes were fixed on the parakeet, and his twitching fingers
played with the steel-tipped whip. Claggett Chew's voice when it came
was as sharp and as cold as a dagger in a dead man.

"I will have that bird, Osterbridge," he said.

Osterbridge's expression did not change but his eyes did, and they
became almost as icy as Claggett Chew's.

"Oh no, you will not, Claggett," he said, and his high-pitched voice
managed to be saturated with sarcasm. "This is the one thing that is
keeping me from _unutterable_ boredom, while you go into your
interminable fight." He paused to give Claggett Chew a cutting look.
"You know how I feel about piracy--too terribly degrading, though I
can see it has its excitement and rewards. But it _is_ unnecessary--"

Claggett Chew's eyes had a way of not blinking. They held a crocodile
fixity. His tone, when he spoke again, did not vary. "I am not a
trader, Osterbridge. Nor shall I bandy words with you on this subject.
Give me that bird, or I shall take it from you!"

[Illustration]

Osterbridge Hawsey rose with a slow grace from his chair, his hand
curled gently but protectingly around his parakeet.

"Claggett," he said in his thin voice that cut now with the unexpected
thinness of paper, "I am sorry to say such a thing to you, but your
fever during the weeks just past has undoubtedly altered your brain.
You are a madman, Claggett." Osterbridge Hawsey removed himself with
deliberation from the proximity of the doorway, placing himself on the
other side of the cabin table over which hung th