e their money was spent.

'How can they have got money since last night?' Charlie said to Ping
Wang.

'They've borrowed from their mates,' Ping Wang suggested, but they soon
discovered that his explanation was not the right one. As the boat
bobbed up and down by the side of the _Lily_, the men took from the
bottom of it a fishing-net, and handed it up to the skipper, who was
leaning over the gunwale.

'They have stolen that net,' Charlie remarked, guessing the truth, 'and
the skipper is going to buy it from them.'

'It's a new one, skipper,' one of the thieves exclaimed, as he jumped on
board.

'All right,' the receiver of stolen property answered, 'Go down below
and enjoy yourselves.'

The two men descended at once into the saloon, while the skipper, after
examining the net, dragged it aft, and removing a hatchway dropped the
net into the hold. As he did so Charlie stepped forward, and looking
down, saw, by the light of the wire-guarded lamp, that the hold was half
full of nets, oars, buckets, ropes, cooking utensils, brass fittings,
mops, oilies, and other things too numerous to mention.

'All that is stolen property, I suppose?' Charlie said to the skipper.

'Well, it wasn't stolen from you,' the skipper answered, 'so you have no
cause to grumble.'

He closed the hatchway, and then turned to Charlie to abuse him more
freely, but just as he began a seaman came up and told him that a
mission ship had joined the fleet of trawlers.

Forgetting all about Charlie, the skipper hurried away to look at the
new craft, and found that the news was true. Very bad news he considered
it, for he knew that the North Sea fishermen never came aboard a coper
if there was a mission ship with the fleet. Tobacco is sold cheaper on a
mission ship than on a coper, and naturally the fishermen, who have very
little money to spend, buy in the cheapest market. Moreover, every man
aboard a mission ship is a friend of the fishermen, and there is not a
trawler in the North Sea on which it is not possible to find two or
three men who have good reasons for blessing mission ships. Hundreds of
men have been carried aboard these floating hospitals and nursed back to
health.

When the mission ship was about half a mile from the _Lily_, Charlie
said to the coper skipper: 'Now is your chance to get rid of Ping Wang
and me. Hail that boat and send us aboard her.'

'Hail a craft like that?' the skipper answered roughly. 'I'd sink her
with ple