e skipper," said the
schooner's deck-hand with a very suggestive grin.

"How'd he come off?" Acton asked. "Did you go ashore for him?"

"We didn't!" said the man. "He must have swum off and crawled up the
cable. Any way, when he struck the skipper he hadn't any clothes on
him."

There was a little murmur of astonishment, and Mrs. Acton straightened
herself suddenly, while Nasmyth saw a gleam of amusement creep into
Acton's eyes. The schooner man evidently felt that he had an
interested audience, for he leaned upon the rail as he began to tell
all he knew about the incident.

"I was asleep forward, when the skipper howled as if he was most
scared out of his life," he said. "I got up out of the scuttle just as
quick as I could, and there he was crawling round behind the
stern-house with an axe in his hand, and the mate flat up against the
rail.

"'Shut that slide quick,' says the skipper. 'Shut it. He's crawling up
the ladder.'

"'I guess you can shut it yourself if you want it shut.' He asked for
whisky. 'Tell him where it is,' says the mate."

There was no doubt that the listeners were interested, and the man
made an impressive gesture. "It was kind of scaring. There was a soft
flippety-flop going on in the stern-house, and I slipped out a
handspike. Then the skipper sees me.

"'There's a drowned man crawling round the cabin with water running
off him,' he says.

"Then a head came out of the scuttle and a wet arm, and a voice that
didn't sound quite like a drowned man's says, 'Oh you----'"

Acton raised his arm restrainingly, and the narrator made a sign of
comprehension.

"He called us fools," the man explained, "and for 'most a minute the
skipper was going to take the axe to him. Then he hove it at the mate
for being scared instead, and they all went down together, and I heard
them light the stove. After that I went back and dropped off to sleep,
and the skipper sent me off at sun-up to fetch the stranger's clothes.
We set him ashore as soon as he'd got some breakfast into him."

The man rowed away in another minute or two, and, as he had evidently
told his story with a relish, Nasmyth wondered whether Martial had
contrived to offend him by endeavouring to purchase his silence. There
are, of course, men one can offer a dollar to on that coast, but such
an act requires a certain amount of circumspection.

Acton's eyes twinkled, and the men who were his guests looked at one
another meaningly.

"Well,