you, Miss Maxwell. You remember? Commodore! Huh!"

Something must be done to stem the long-pent flood of Mr. Boyle's
gossip. Elsie turned on him desperately.

"How do you expect me to listen to you, and work at the same time?" she
said.

"Sorry," he answered, composing himself to sleep.

Courtenay glanced at the chronometer.

"I must be off," he announced. "Tollemache may need some help with his
bombs, and those Chileans require looking after."

Christobal, too, quitted the chart-room to visit his patients. He had
said very little while he sat there, and Elsie did not know whether to
laugh or cry at the tragic-comedy of her environment. She was only
certain of one thing--she would like to box Boyle's ears. She was
completely at a loss to account for his persistent efforts to drag in
references to their prior conversation. She dared not catechize him.
That would be piling up more difficulties for the future. But what
possessed him to blurt out such embarrassing details in the presence of
the two men whom she most wished to remain in ignorance of them?

She peeped at Boyle sideways. His eyes were closed, the cigar was
between his teeth, and he had a broad grin on his face. She could not
guess that the once taciturn chief officer of the _Kansas_ was saying
to himself:

"My godfather, how Pills glared! There will be trouble on this ship
about a woman before long, or I'm a Dutchman. An' didn't the skipper
rise at the fly, too! Huh!"

He uttered the concluding monosyllable aloud.

"Did you speak?" inquired Elsie, severely.

"Eh? No, Miss Maxwell."

"Oh, I thought you wanted to say something."

"Not a word. Too much talking makes my back stiff."

"Your physical peculiarities are amazing, Mr. Boyle."

"Huh, it's odd how things take some people. I once knew a chap,
skipper of the _Flower of the Ocean_, who could drink a hogshead of
beer an' be as sober as a judge except in one leg, an' that was a
wooden one."

She laughed. It was impossible to be vexed with him.

"You have met some very remarkable shipmasters, if all you say be
true," she cried.

"Sailors are queer folk, believe me. That same brig, _Flower of the
Ocean_, an' a pretty flower she was, too--all tar an' coal-dust, with a
perfume that would poison a rat--put into Grimsby one day, an' the
crowd went ashore. They kicked up a shindy with some bar-loungers, an'
the fur flew. When the police came, old Peg-leg, the skipper, you