he sound of it was metallic.

"Oh, don't mind me," he said, with a self-depreciatory wave of his hand.
"I don't count. Go on, go on, I pray you."

But the gates of speech were closed, and we, too, rose from the table and
laughed awkwardly.

CHAPTER XXI

The chagrin Wolf Larsen felt from being ignored by Maud Brewster and me
in the conversation at table had to express itself in some fashion, and
it fell to Thomas Mugridge to be the victim. He had not mended his ways
nor his shirt, though the latter he contended he had changed. The
garment itself did not bear out the assertion, nor did the accumulations
of grease on stove and pot and pan attest a general cleanliness.

"I've given you warning, Cooky," Wolf Larsen said, "and now you've got to
take your medicine."

Mugridge's face turned white under its sooty veneer, and when Wolf Larsen
called for a rope and a couple of men, the miserable Cockney fled wildly
out of the galley and dodged and ducked about the deck with the grinning
crew in pursuit. Few things could have been more to their liking than to
give him a tow over the side, for to the forecastle he had sent messes
and concoctions of the vilest order. Conditions favoured the
undertaking. The _Ghost_ was slipping through the water at no more than
three miles an hour, and the sea was fairly calm. But Mugridge had
little stomach for a dip in it. Possibly he had seen men towed before.
Besides, the water was frightfully cold, and his was anything but a
rugged constitution.

As usual, the watches below and the hunters turned out for what promised
sport. Mugridge seemed to be in rabid fear of the water, and he
exhibited a nimbleness and speed we did not dream he possessed. Cornered
in the right-angle of the poop and galley, he sprang like a cat to the
top of the cabin and ran aft. But his pursuers forestalling him, he
doubled back across the cabin, passed over the galley, and gained the
deck by means of the steerage-scuttle. Straight forward he raced, the
boat-puller Harrison at his heels and gaining on him. But Mugridge,
leaping suddenly, caught the jib-boom-lift. It happened in an instant.
Holding his weight by his arms, and in mid-air doubling his body at the
hips, he let fly with both feet. The oncoming Harrison caught the kick
squarely in the pit of the stomach, groaned involuntarily, and doubled up
and sank backward to the deck.

Hand-clapping and roars of laughter from the hunters greet