o, as Scotty learned later. When the flotilla of boats
swarmed into her path, she backed her main yards with much chattering
and yelling of her crew, and Scotty's boat approached her side, where a
Jacob's-ladder hung invitingly.

"Get up there, you miserable Sawnee," said the skipper. "I wouldn't put
you aboard a white man's vessel, for you'll wreck her as you did mine."

It is very impolite, and sometimes inexpedient, to call a Scot a Sawnee.

Scotty climbed the ladder with his shovel, and when he stood upon the
rail, turned and let it fly towards the captain in the stern-sheets. Had
it struck edge first it would have cut him in two; as it happened, the
handle merely flattened his nose. The captain sank down, then, rising,
fired a revolver at Scotty, but missed, and forthwith ordered his men to
give way.

And then, amid the excited cries and orders of the Italian captain,
Scotty was pulled down from the rail, mobbed around the deck a
little--though he fought furiously--by the three mates of the bark, and
bundled into a hatch-house. And long after he was locked in he could
hear the excited and puzzled accents of the Italian captain, calling to
the misguided castaways, who would not be rescued; then he heard the
yards braced, and knew that he was homeward bound.

"If the bloody hooker don't sink on the way," he growled. "Howe'er, I'll
no revile the craft that carries me, for it's lang odds she gits the
warst o' it."

Shipboard etiquette is international. Scotty, in throwing the shovel,
had violated the strictest clause in the code, and the Italian captain,
though understanding nothing of the circumstances, had sensed the
enormity of his offense, and punished him. But he was not confined long;
the door was soon opened, and from the jabbering and gestures of the
three mates he understood that he was to go forward. He went, and with a
bucket of salt water and a piece of old canvas so improved his personal
appearance as to partly overrule the prejudice against him.

Seamanship, like nautical etiquette, is international, and though he
understood not one word of what was said to him, and though not a man
aboard understood him, yet he knew what to do without orders, and soon
proved himself superior to any of the officers. The rather impulsive,
but generous, captain noticed this, and made as much of him as was
possible without a common means of communication; but Scotty ascribed it
to the influence of the unblessed, but j