ng, mum, as fast as I can," sang out Llewellyn aloud,
adding _sotto voce_ for his own satisfaction, "Hang that Major Madam!
I'd never have shipped in the _Nancy Bell_ if I had a-knowed she was
coming aboard! Bless you, mum, I'm coming--everything is all right and
there isn't no cause for alarm!"

"Isn't there?" indignantly demanded the lady in a queer sort of half
suffocated voice from behind the barred door of her cabin. "If you were
jumbled in a pool of water, with all your luggage on top of you, I don't
think you'd think everything right. Help, man! release me at once, or
I'll be drowned and flattened into a pancake!"

"Say, you Mister Steward, you jest hurry up and git the lady out of her
muss, and come and fix me up," chimed in the voice of Mr Zachariah
Lathrope. "I guess I've had my innards a'most squoze out agin the
durned bunk, an' feel like a dough-nut in a frying-pan. If you leave me
much longer I kalkerlate this old boss'll be cold meat, you bet, and
you'll have the funeral to pay!"

Mr Meldrum coming to Llewellyn's aid, the steward managed at length to
clear away the wreckage from before the door of Mrs Major Negus' cabin,
and then from that of the American, when both the occupants were found
more seriously hurt than either of their rescuers had imagined, they
thinking that their outcries had proceeded more from alarm than any real
injury.

The wife of the deputy-assistant comptroller-general of Waikatoo was
lying, all purple in the face, with a heavy portmanteau on the top of
her, on the deck of her cabin in nearly a foot of water; and by the time
they got her up from her perilous position she fainted dead away in the
steward's arms.

"Here, Mary!" called out Llewellyn to his wife, the stewardess, who
quickly appeared on the scene half-dressed. "Attend to this lady, while
we go and see after Mister Lathrope."

The American was in a much worse plight; for, whereas Mrs Major Negus
had only swallowed a lot of sea-water and had been only nearly
frightened to death, Mr Lathrope's sallow face was so unearthly pale
that Mr Meldrum was certain he had received some severe injury; as he
was tightly jammed between his bunk and the washing-stand, while a heavy
packing-case had tumbled out of the top berth on to one of his
shoulders, preventing him from moving.

"I guess, mister, you jest come in time," said the poor fellow with a
sickly smile, as they pulled away the case and wash-stand, and helped
him i