he old fool's way with _me_--hey?
And now you recognise it.'

"'I do,' said I, pulling out my revolver. 'You may quit fumbling in
your pocket, for it's wringing wet and these cartridges are dry, as I
have assured myself. . . . _You_ sit down on _that_ thwart, and don't
you dare open your face until I give you leave to get up and wash it.
That's _your_ trick of speech, and maybe you recognise it."

"As I covered him, Jarvis touched my elbow. 'I beg your pardon, sir,
but you're a gentleman and a passenger, and Mr. Grimalson's our
senior officer, when all's said, _and_ in command. . . . I'm not
talkin' about the rights of it nor the wrongs of it,' Jarvis went on,
as I still held the revolver levelled:' but 'tis flat mutiny you're
committing; and me and my mates'll have to range up on the side of
order. Whereby you'll be no match for us. . . . Oh, sir,' he
pleaded, 'let up with quarrelling, and let's all die decent, if we
must, when the time comes--and with a lady in the boat!'

"'Thank you, Jarvis,' said I; and lowering my revolver drew out the
cartridges pretty deliberately. 'I beg your pardon, Mr. Grimalson.
I shall not, on any provocation, interfere with you again. But
before you start baling the boat, I'll ask you to note that the third
water-breaker is stove, and it was the only full one. Saltish this
water may be, but nine-tenths of it is honest rain from heaven.'

"'My God, sir, and it's truth!' verified one of the seamen who had
scrambled forward. The full breaker had jerked loose from its
lashings and lay awash under the bowman's thwart: worse--it had
loosed the other two, and these, floating light, had washed away
overboard and gone out of ken.

"Grimalson stood up, slightly dazed. In the rock of the boat he
seemed to be shifting his weight deliberately from foot to foot.

"'Why didn't one of you report?' he shouted, in a fury at which I
smiled; it being so senseless and at the same time so cunning, as a
ruse to let him arise with dignity from the thwart. 'Why didn't
somebody report?' he repeated in an absurd official manner, quite as
though he had been a station-master interrogating a group of porters
on the whereabouts of a missing parcel.

"'Well, sir,' I answered as politely as possible; 'it was I that
first found the casks were loose, and by the accident that the rim of
the full one struck me pretty sharply, in the night, between the
shoulder-blades. I got it trigged up, as you see, before