for taking this
strange and somewhat ominous precaution. He had been in far too
unexpected and particularly "tight" places to laugh at any precaution.
The only thing that did cause him the ghost of a smile was, in
imagination, the faces of his fellow-passengers could they only have
seen what he was doing.

This done, he took his way to the captain's cabin. It was only his
shaken nerves, he told himself, as he picked his way across the wet and
slippery decks. He had put a pretty stiff strain upon them of late, and
now they were paying him out. That was all. Still he did not laugh at
himself on account of the precautions he had been taking, nor would he
do so even in the safe and cheerful light of to-morrow morning.

"Hallo, Musgrave," cried Cheyne, "I had about given you up for to-night.
Thought you had turned in. However, roll up, man. Better late than
never." And diving into a locker, he produced a bottle from his private
store, for the bar was long since closed for the night. "Turton was up
here just now, but had to go down and settle some row that had broken
out among his lambs. Those are passengers I don't care about."

This was in allusion to a number of soldiers who had been sent on board
the _Scythian_ at the last moment, in charge of a captain and subaltern;
and a mutinous, unruly crowd they were.

"Those time-expired men are the devil of a nuisance, Musgrave," went on
Cheyne. "Why on earth can't they send them home in a troopship, or
charter a vessel on purpose, instead of saddling them on to us? Crowded
up, too, with ordinary passengers as we are."

"But they're not all time-expired men, eh?"

"Not much. About a third of 'em are lunatics or prisoners under
sentence, or bad hats generally."

"Been up to anything fresh then?" said Roden, blowing out a cloud.

"Nothing in particular; but they are always more or less unruly. The
last people I want to see on board ship are a lot of soldiers,
especially time-expired ones."

"How many of them are there, skipper? Couple of hundred, eh?"

"Less five. If that lunatic, who jumped overboard yesterday morning at
bath parade, had gone down it would have made yet another less. We were
delayed about twenty minutes or more, and when the boat came up with him
the beggar tried all he knew to swim away from it. I was watching him
through the glass, expecting every minute to see him risen by a shark,
but no. If he'd been a sane man and a useful membe