ugh the hawse pipe.

"What nationality are you?" asked the commander, watching the Puncher
swing and gaging distances, but sparing one eye now for his unwelcome
but official guest.

"Me, sah?"

"Yes, you."

The pilot looked anywhere but at his questioner, and a picture passed
before the commander's eyes--a memory, perhaps, of something he had
read about at school--of Christians in Nero's day being asked what their
religion was.

"Are you afraid to tell me?" he asked, softening his voice to a kinder
tone as he remembered that God did not make all men Englishmen, and
turning just in time to cause Crothers to withdraw his right leg.

The pilot's toes were, after all, not destined to be trodden on just
then.

"No, sah, Ah'm not afraid."

"What are you, then?"

"Ah'm--"

"Well? What?"

"Ah'm English!"

"What?"

"Captain, sah, Ah'm English!"

"Oh! Are you? Um-m-m! Mr. White, give this man his ten pounds, will you?
And get his receipt for it."

That appeared to end matters, so far as the commander was concerned;
official dignity forbade any further interest. But it was not so very
long since Mr. White was senior midshipman, and it takes a man until
he is admiral of the fleet to unlearn all he knew then and forget the
curiosity of those days.

"Now, I should have thought you were a Scotchman," he suggested without
smiling, studying the salt-encrusted wrinkles on the ebony face. "You
like whisky?"

"Yes, sah--positively, sah! Yes, Captain, sah--Ah do!"

Mr. White sent for whisky and poured out a stiff four fingers, to the
awful disgust of Curley Crothers, who saw the whole transaction. The
pilot consumed it so instantly that there seemed never to have been any
in the glass.

"I suppose your name's Macnab--or Macphairson--which? Sign here,
please."

The pilot took the proffered pen in unaccustomed fingers and made a
crisscross scrawl, adorned with thirteen blots. The pen nib broke
under the strain, and he handed it back with an air of confidential
remonstrance.

"That thing's no mo-ah good," he volunteered.

"So I see. Now tell me your name in full, so that I can write it next to
the mark. It's a wonder of a mark! Mac--what's the rest of it?"

"Hassan Ah."

"Machassan?"

"No, sah. Hassan Ah."

"And you're English?"

"Yes, sah."

"With that name?"

"Mah name makes no diffunts, sah. Ah'm English."

"Well--here's your money. Cutter away, there! Put the pilot and his crew
ashore! Sorry a