ck.

"Brayvo!" grunted Bill Adams. "The lad's nimble enough with his
fives, I will say, for all his sea-lawyerin'."

"We must 'ave him, Bill; if I take him myself we must 'ave him!"
cried Ben Jope, dancing with admiration. '"Tis no more than a mercy,
neither, after the trouble he's been and laid up for hisself."

Into what precise degree of mental confusion Mr. Jope had worked
himself the Major could never afterwards determine; though he soon
had every opportunity to think it out at leisure.

For the moment, as a boatswain's whistle shrilled close behind his
ear, he was merely bewildered. He did not even know that the mouth
sounding it was Mr. Jope's. It _ought_ to have sounded on board
H.M.S. _Poseidon_.

As the crowd to right and left of him surged to its feet, he saw at
intervals along the gallery, sailor after sailor leap up with drawn
cutlass. He saw some forcing their way to the exits; and as the
packed throng, swaying backwards, bore him to the giddy edge of the
gallery rails, he saw the whole audience rise from their seats with
white upturned faces.

"The Press!" called someone. Half a dozen, then twenty, then a
hundred voices took up the cry:

"The Press! The Press!"

He turned. What had become of Mr. Jope?

What, indeed? Cutlass between teeth, Mr. Jope had heaved himself
over the gallery rail, caught a pillar between his dangling feet, and
slid down it to the Upper Circle; from the Upper Circle to the Dress
Circle; from the Dress Circle to the Pit. A dozen seamen hurrahed
and followed him. To the audience screaming, scattering before them,
they paid no heed at all. Their eyes were on their leader, and in
silence, breathing hard, each man's teeth clenched upon his cutlass,
they hounded after him and across the Pit at his heels.

It may be that this vivid reproduction of his alleged exploit off
Pernambuco for the moment held Mr. Orlando B. Sturge paralysed.
At any rate, he stood by the footlights staring, with a face on which
resentment faded into amaze, amaze into stupefaction.

It is improbable that he dreamed of any personal danger until the
moment when Mr. Jope, leaping the orchestra and crashing, on his way,
through an abandoned violoncello, landed across the footlights and
clapped him on the shoulder.

"Never you mind, lad!" cried Mr. Jope cheerfully, taking the cutlass
from between his teeth and waving it. "You'll get better treatment
along o' we."

"What mean you? Unhand me