ng to
his strength, is the cross dealt out which he has to bear. And Captain
Owen Kettle could not help being conscious of his own vast lustiness.

But one morning, before the _Flamingo_ had finished with her calls on
the ports of the Texan rivers, a matter happened on board of her which
stirred the pulse of her being to a very different gait. The steward who
brought Captain Kettle's early coffee coughed, and evidently wanted an
invitation to speak.

"Well?' said Kettle.

"It's about Mr. Hamilton, sir. I can't find 'im anywheres."

"Have you searched the ship?"

"Hunofficially, sir."

"Well, get the other two stewards, and do it thoroughly."

The steward went out, and Captain Kettle lifted the coffee cup and drank
a salutation to the dead. From that very moment he had a certain
foreboding that the worst had happened. "Here's luck, my lad, wherever
you now may be. That brute Cranze has got to windward of the pair of us,
and your insurance money's due this minute. I only sent that steward to
search the ship for form's sake. There was the link of poetry between
you and me, lad; and that's closer than most people could guess at; and
I know, as sure as if your ghost stood here to tell me, that you've
gone. How, I've got to find out."

He put down the cup, and went to the bathroom for his morning's tub.
"I'm to blame, I know," he mused on, "for not taking better care of you,
and I'm not trying to excuse myself. You were so brimful of poetry that
you hadn't room left for any thought of your own skin, like a chap such
as I am is bound to have. Besides, you've been well-off all your time
and you haven't learned to be suspicious. Well, what's done's done, and
it can't be helped. But, my lad, I want you to look on while I hand in
the bill. It'll do you good to see Cranze pay up the account."

Kettle went through his careful toilet, and then in his spruce white
drill went out and walked briskly up and down the hurricane deck till
the steward came with the report. His forebodings had not led him
astray. Hamilton was not on board: the certain alternative was that he
lay somewhere in the warm Gulf water astern, as a helpless dead body.

"Tell the Chief Officer," he said, "to get a pair of irons out of store
and bring them down to Mr. Cranze's room. I'm going there now."

He found Cranze doctoring a very painful head with the early application
of stimulant, and Cranze asked him what the devil he meant by not
knocking at th