Kettle turned on his companion with a sudden viciousness. "By James!" he
snapped, "you better take care of your-words, or there'll be a man in
this smoke-room with a broken jaw. I allow no one to sling slights at
either me or my ship. No, nor at the firm either that owns both of us.
You needn't look round at the young lady behind the bar. She can't hear
what we're saying across in this corner, and if even she could she's
quite welcome to know how I think about the matter. By James, do you
think you can speak to me as if I was a common railway director? I can
tell you that, as Captain of a passenger boat, I've a very different
social position."

"My dear sir," said Lupton soothingly, "to insult you was the last thing
in my mind. I quite know you've got a fine ship, and a new ship, and a
ship to be congratulated on. I've seen her. In fact I was on board and
all over her only this morning. But what I meant to point out was
(although I seem to have put it clumsily) that Messrs. Bird have chosen
to schedule you for the lesser frequented Gulf ports, finding, as you
hint, that cargo pays them better than passengers."

"Well?"

"And naturally therefore anything that was done on the _Flamingo_ would
not have the same fierce light of publicity on it that would get
on--say--one of the Royal Mail boats. You see they bustle about between
busy ports crammed with passengers who are just at their wits' end for
something to do. You know what a pack of passengers are. Give them a
topic like this: Young man with expectations suddenly knocked overboard,
nobody knows by whom; 'nother young man on boat drawing a heavy
insurance from him; and they aren't long in putting two and two
together."

"You seem to think it requires a pretty poor brain to run a
steam-packet," said Kettle contemptuously. "How long would I be before I
had that joker in irons?"

"If he did it as openly as I have said, you'd arrest him at once. But
you must remember Cranze will have been thinking out his game for
perhaps a year beforehand, till he can see absolutely no flaw in it,
till he thinks, in fact, there's not the vaguest chance of being dropped
on. If anything happens to Hamilton, his dear friend Cranze will be the
last man to be suspected of it. And mark you, he's a clever chap. It
isn't your clumsy, ignorant knave who turns insurance robber--and
incidentally murderer."

"Still, I don't see how he'd be better off on my ship than he would be
on the bigger