inute any of them permitted himself to
think, he decided that in the Herr Gott's good time the English would
send boats and fetch them off. The English had always a special gusto
for this meddling rescue work.

However, it is easy to decide on lowering boats, but not always so easy
to carry it into safe fact if you are mad with scare, and there is no
one whom you will listen to to give the necessary simple orders. And, as
a consequence, one boat, chiefly manned by the coal interest, swamped
alongside before it could be shoved clear; the forward davit fall of
another jammed, and let it dangle vertically up and down when the after
fall overhauled; and only one boat got away clear.

The reception which this small cargo of worthies met with surprised
them. They pulled with terrified haste to the _Flamingo_, got under her
lee, and clung desperately to the line which was thrown to them. But to
the rail above them came the man who expected to be ruined by this
night's work, and the pearls of speech which fell from his lips went
home through even their thick hides.

Captain Kettle, being human, had greatly needed some one during the last
half-hour to ease his feelings on--though he was not the man to own up
to such a weakness, even to himself--and the boat came neatly to supply
his want. It was long enough since he had found occasion for such an
outburst, but the perfection of his early training stood him in good
stead then. Every biting insult in his vocabulary, every lashing word
that is used upon the seas, every gibe, national, personal, or
professional, that a lifetime of hard language could teach, he poured
out on that shivering boat's crew then.

They were Germans certainly, but being an English shipmaster, he had, of
course, many a time sailed with a forecastle filled with their
nationality, and had acquired the special art of adapting his abuse to
the "Dutchman's" sensibilities, even as he had other harangues suited
for Coolie or Dago mariners, or even for that rare sea-bird, the English
sailorman. And as a final wind-up, after having made them writhe
sufficiently, he ordered them to go back whence they came, and take a
share in rescuing their fellows.

"Bud we shall trown," shouted back one speaker from the wildly jumping
boat.

"Then drown, and be hanged to you," shouted Kettle. "I'm sure I don't
care if you do. But I'm not going to have cowards like you dirtying my
deck-planks." He cast off the line to which t