wered
by a furious siren-blast from directly astern; and out of the fog, at
twenty knots an hour, came a mammoth black steamer. Seeming to heave
the small tramp out of the way with her bow wave, she roared by at six
feet distance, and in ten seconds they were looking at her vanishing
stern. But ten minutes later the stern appeared in view, as the liner
backed toward them. The reversed English ensign still hung at the gaff;
and the starving men, some prostrate on the deck, some clinging to the
rails, unable to shout, had painted to the flag of distress and
beckoned as the big ship rushed by.

* * * * *

"There's a chance," said the captain of this liner to the pilot, as he
rejoined him on the bridge an hour later, "of international complications
over this case, and I may have to lose a trip to testify. That's the
_Afghan Prince_ and consort that I was telling you about. Strange,
isn't it, that I should pick up these fellows after picking up the
legitimate crew going east? I don't know which crew was the hungriest.
The real crew charge this crowd with piracy. By George, it's rather
funny!"

"And these men," said the pilot, with a laugh, "would have claimed
salvage?"

"Yes, and had a good claim, too, for effort expended; but they've
offset it by their violence. Their chance was good in the English
courts, if they'd only allowed the steamer to go on; and then, too,
they abandoned her in a more dangerous position than where they found
her. You see, they met her off Nantucket with sea-room, and nothing
wrong with her but broken tiller-ropes; and they quit her here close to
Sandy Hook, in a fog, more than likely to hit the beach before morning.
Then, in that case, she belongs to the owners or underwriters."

"Why didn't they make Boston?" asked the pilot.

"Tried to, but overran their distance. Chronometer must have been 'way
out. I talked to the one who navigated, and found that he'd never
thought of allowing for local attraction,--didn't happen to run against
the boat's deviation table,--and so, with all that railway iron below
hatches, he fetched clear o' Nantucket, and 'way in here."

"That's tough. The salvage of that steamer would make them rich,
wouldn't it? And I think they might have got it if they could have held
out."

"Yes; think they might. But here's another funny thing about it. They
needn't have starved. They needn't have chopped her to pieces for fuel.
I just