at he could want
there. It seemed a sort of mad freak. He thrusts under my nose three
rings, which looked very tiny on his big, brown palm, growling out--

"'For Maggie! Which?'

"I got a kind of scare at this. I couldn't make a sound, but I pointed
at the one that sparkled white and blue. He put it in his waistcoat
pocket, paid for it with a lot of sovereigns, and bolted out. When
we got on board I was quite out of breath. 'Shake hands, old chap,' I
gasped out. He gave me a thump on the back. 'Give what orders you like
to the boatswain when the hands turn-to,' says he; 'I am off duty this
afternoon.'

"Then he vanished from the deck for a while, but presently he came out
of the cabin with Maggie, and these two went over the gangway publicly,
before all hands, going for a walk together on that awful, blazing hot
day, with clouds of dust flying about. They came back after a few hours
looking very staid, but didn't seem to have the slightest idea where
they had been. Anyway, that's the answer they both made to Mrs.
Colchester's question at tea-time.

"And didn't she turn on Charley, with her voice like an old night
cabman's! 'Rubbish. Don't know where you've been! Stuff and nonsense.
You've walked the girl off her legs. Don't do it again.'

"It's surprising how meek Charley could be with that old woman. Only
on one occasion he whispered to me, 'I'm jolly glad she isn't Maggie's
aunt, except by marriage. That's no sort of relationship.' But I think
he let Maggie have too much of her own way. She was hopping all over
that ship in her yachting skirt and a red tam o' shanter like a bright
bird on a dead black tree. The old salts used to grin to themselves when
they saw her coming along, and offered to teach her knots or splices. I
believe she liked the men, for Charley's sake, I suppose.

"As you may imagine, the fiendish propensities of that cursed ship were
never spoken of on board. Not in the cabin, at any rate. Only once
on the homeward passage Charley said, incautiously, something about
bringing all her crew home this time. Captain Colchester began to look
uncomfortable at once, and that silly, hard-bitten old woman flew out at
Charley as though he had said something indecent. I was quite confounded
myself; as to Maggie, she sat completely mystified, opening her blue
eyes very wide. Of course, before she was a day older she wormed it all
out of me. She was a very difficult person to lie to.

"'How awful,' she sai