of escaping steam
reached them.

"_Holla_! _Wer rufe_?" was the gruff answer.

"Sink me if it ain't a German!" growled Coke, _sotto-voce_, "Norrie,
you must stick here till I sing out to you. Then open your exhaust an'
unscrew a sea-cock. . . . Wot ship is that?" he vociferated aloud.

Some answer was forthcoming--what, it mattered not. The launch bumped
into the rusty ribs of a twelve-hundred ton tramp. A rope ladder was
lowered. A round-faced Teuton mate--fat and placid--was vastly
surprised to find a horde of nondescripts pouring up the ship's side in
the wake of a short, thick, bovine-looking person who neither
understood nor tried to understand a word he was saying.

These extraordinary visitors from the deep brought with them a girl and
three wounded men. By this time the captain was aroused; he spoke some
English.

"Vas iss diss?" he asked, surveying the newcomers with amazement, and
their bizarre costumes with growing nervousness. "Vere haf you coomed
vrom?"

Coke pushed him playfully into the cook's galley.

"This is too easy," he chortled. "Set about 'em, you swabs. Don't
hurt anybody unless they ax for it. Round every son of a gun into the
fo'c'sle till I come. Mr. Watts, the bridge for you. Olsen, take the
wheel. Mr. Hozier, see wot you can find in their flag locker. _Now_,
Mr. Norrie! Sharp for it. You're wanted in the engine-room."

And that is how ex-President Dom Corria Antonio De Sylva acquired the
nucleus of his fleet, though, unhappily, an accident to a sea-cock
forthwith deprived him of a most useful and seaworthy steam launch.

CHAPTER XI

A LIVELY MORNING IN EXCHANGE BUILDINGS

Coke and his merry men became pirates during the early morning of
Thursday, September 2d; the curious reader can ascertain the year by
looking up "Brazil" in any modern Encyclopedia, and turning to the
sub-division "Recent History." On Monday, September 6th, David Verity
entered his office in Exchange Buildings, Liverpool, hung his hat and
overcoat on their allotted pegs, swore at the office boy because some
spots of rain had come in through an open window, and ran a feverish
glance through his letters to learn if any envelopes bearing the
planetary devices of the chief cable companies had managed to hide
themselves among the mass of correspondence.

The act was perfunctory. Well he knew that telephone or special
messenger would speedily have advised him if news of the _Andromeda_
had