et shoulder. "Come
on board again," he said. "If you lie down in your room for an hour or
so, you'll be all right again then. You're a bit over-done. I shouldn't
like you to make a fool of yourself."

"Make a fool of myself," was the bitter reply. "I've made a bigger fool
of myself in the last three minutes than any other man could manage in a
lifetime."

"I'll get you the Royal Humane Society's medal for that bit of a job,
anyway."

"Give me a nice rope to hang myself with," said Hamilton ungraciously,
"that would be more to the point. Here, for the Lord's sake let me be,
or I shall go mad." He brushed aside all help, clambered up the
steamer's high black side again, and went down to his room.

"That's the worst of these poetic natures," Kettle mused as he, too, got
out of the lighter; "they're so highly strung."

Cranze, on being lowered down to deck again, and finding his tormentors
too many to be retaliated upon, went below and changed, and then came up
again and found solace in more king's pegs. He was not specially
thankful to Hamilton for saving his life; said, in fact, that it was
his plain duty to render such trifling assistance; and further stated
that if Hamilton found his way over the side, he, Cranze, would not stir
a finger to pull him back again.

He was very much annoyed at what he termed Hamilton's "unwarrantable
attack," and still further annoyed at his journey up to the derrick's
sheave in the cargo-sling, which he also laid to Hamilton's door. When
any of the ship's company had a minute or so to spare, they came and
gave Cranze good advice and spoke to him of his own unlovableness, and
Cranze hurled brimstone back at them unceasingly, for king's peg in
quantity always helped his vocabulary of swear-words.

Meanwhile the _Flamingo_ steamed up and dropped cargo wherever it was
consigned, and she abased herself to gather fresh cargo wherever any
cargo offered. It was Captain Kettle who did the abasing, and he did not
like the job at all; but he remembered that Birds paid him specifically
for this among other things; and also that if he did not secure the
cargo, some one else would steam along, and eat dirt, and snap it up;
and so he pocketed his pride (and his commission) and did his duty. He
called to mind that he was not the only man in the world who earned a
living out of uncongenial employment. The creed of the South Shields
chapel made a point of this: it preached that to every man, accordi