He dived down the forehatchway, just in time to escape the itching boot of the unimpressionable Mr Gates, and proceeded between decks towards the stern. Presently he came to the alley-way in question. The man was still there, but had slightly shifted his position since Allerton had last seen him. He was now reclining across the passage, with his head sunk on his chest. His feet were bare, and he was attired in a blue jumper and a pair of trousers which had once belonged to a suit of orange-and-red pyjamas. His appearance was not impressive.

Allerton stirred him gently with his foot.

"Wake up, old man," he remarked, "or there'll be hell -well, I'm d-d!"

For the man had drowsily lifted his heavy head and displayed the features of Hughie Marrable.

They gazed at each other for a full minute. Then Allerton said feebly

"You've preferred the Or. inoco to the Apulia after all, then?"

"I've been filled up with opium before," he said, "but this is the first time I've been sand-bagged. I suppose I was sand-bagged first and hocussed afterwards. Yes, that's it."

He looked almost pleased. He was a man who liked to get to the bottom of things. Presently he continued

"Could you get me a drink of water? I've got a tongue like a stick of glue."

Allerton departed as bidden, presently to return with pannikin. Hughie was standing up in the alley-way, swaying unsteadily and regarding his attire.

"I say," he said, after gulping the water, "would you mind telling me-you see, I'm a little bit wuzzy in the head at present-where the devil I am, and whether I came on board in this kit or my own clothes?"

"Steamship Orinoco," replied Allerton precisely-" from New York, for Bordeaux."

"Let me think," said Hughie

"Orinoco? Ah! now I'm beginning to see daylight. What's the name of the owner, our friend from Coney Island?" Allerton told him. "But he's more than your friend now," he added; "he's your employer."

Hughie whistled long and low. "I see," he said. "Shanghaied-eh? Well, I must say he owed me one : I fairly barked his nose for him that night. But now that he has had me knocked on the head and shipped on board this old ark, I think he has overpaid I owe him one again;

me.

E

and, with any luck, he shall have it."

"Do you remember being slugged?" said Allerton.

"Can't say I do precisely. Let me see. I recollect coming along Forty-Second Street on my way to the Manhattan. I'd been dining at The Lambs, and I stopped a minute on the sidewalk under an L railwaytrack to light my pipe, whenyes, it must have happened then."

"I expect you had been shadowed all day," said Allerton. "But I'm forgetting my duties. You are wanted on deck."

feeling less dizzy and more collected each minute, set no particular store by the oratorical display to which he was being treated. In fact, he was almost guilty of the discourtesy of allowing his attention to wander. He set the crown upon his offence by interrupting the captain's peroration.

"Look here, skipper," he said, brusquely breaking in upon a period, "you can drop that. My name is Marrable. I am not a stowaway, and I have been dumped on board this ship by order of"

"Your name," said Captain Kingdom with relish, "is any

"Not much! He doesn't travel by his own ships. It's the captain. I understand that you are to be presented to the company as a little stowaway, and great surprise and pain will be officially manifested at your appearance on board."

"All right. Come along and introduce me."

Captain Kingdom's method of dealing with stowawaysnatural and artificial was simple and unvarying. On presentation, he first of all abused them with all the resources of an almost Esperantic vocabulary, and then handed them over to Mr Gates to be kicked into shape.

On Hughie Marrable's appearance on deck the captain proceeded with gusto to Part One of his syllabus. Hard words break no bones, and Hughie, who was breathing in great draughts of sea-air and

"Look here," said Hughie, "I want a word with youin your own cabin for choice. All right," he continued with rising voice, as the captain broke out again, “I'll have it here instead. First of all, what is Mr Noddy Kinahan paying you for this job?"

The captain turned to the mate.

"Sock him, Mr Gates!" he roared.

Mr Gates, whose curiositytogether with that of the rest of the crew-had been roused, as Hughie meant it to be, by the latter's reference to Mr Noddy Kinahan's share in the present situation, moved forward to his task with less alacrity than usual, and paused readily enough when Hughie continued

"If you'll put back, captain, and land me anywhere within a hundred miles of New York,

"I'll show you," roared the incensed skipper. "Knock him silly, Mr Gates!"

Mr Gates came on with a rush. But Hughie, who all this time had been taking his bearings, leapt back lightly in his bare feet and snatched a capstan - bar from the rack behind him.

"Keep your distance for a moment, Mr Gates," he commanded, "if you don't want your head cracked. I haven't finished interviewing this captain of yours yet. Happy to oblige you later, for any period you care to specify."

"Nother Percy!" commented Mr Dingle dejectedly, expectorating over the side. He was a plain man, was Mr Dingle, and loved straight hitting and words of one syllable.

Mr Gates paused, and Hughie, leaning back against the bulwarks and toying with the capstan-bar, continued to address the fulminating mariner on the bridge.

"Now look here, captain, I'm going to be brief with youbrief and business-like. You've been paid by Kinahan to Shanghai me and take me for a long sea-voyage. Very good. I'm

not kicking. I wanted to get to Europe anyhow, and I rather like long sea-voyages, especially before the mast. In fact, I'd rather sail before the mast on board this ship than in the cuddy. (Keep still, Mr Gates!) As I'm here, I've no particular objection to working my passage, always reserving to myself the right to make things hot for your employer when I get ashore. I'll work as an A.B. or a deck - hand if you like, though personally I would rather do something in the engine-room. I'm pretty well qualified in that direction. But I must be decently treated, and there must be no more sandbagging or knockabout variety business. Is it a deal?"

Captain Kingdom surveyed the sinewy stowaway before him thoughtfully. He saw that until Hughie gave up the capstan-bar Mr Gates would have little chance of enforcing discipline. He must temporise.

"I can give you a job in the engine-room," he said, in what he imagined was a more conciliatory tone. "Second engineer's down with something this morning. You can take his watch. Drop that capstan-bar of yours, and go and see Mr Angus, the chief."

"That should suit me," replied Hughie. "But as a guarantee of good faith, and to avoid disappointing the assembled company, I'm quite willing to stand up and have a turn with Mr Gates here, or that gentleman over by the funnel-stay, or any one else you may appoint. But I should prefer Mr Gates," he added,

almost affectionately. "I'm not in first-class form at present, as my head has got a dint in it behind; but I'll do my best. Are you game, Mr Gates?"

"Go on, Mr Gates, learn him!" commanded the highly gratified skipper.

"Drop that bar," shouted the genial Mr Gates, "and I'll kill you!"

"Half a minute, please," said Hughie, as unruffled as if he were putting on the gloves for a ten-minute spar in a gymnasium. "I'm not going to fight a man in sea-boots in my bare feet. Can any gentleman oblige me with-thank you, sir! You are a white man."

A pair of oily canvas tennis shoes, with list soles, pattered down on the deck beside him. Their donor, the "white man -a coal-black individual attired chiefly in cotton-waste was smiling affably from the engine-room hatchway.

"They'll dae ye fine," he observed unexpectedly, and disappeared below.

In a moment Hughie had slipped on the shoes. Then, casting away the bar, he hurled himself straight at the head of Mr Gates.

In the brief but exhilarating exhibition which followed Mr Gates realised that a first mate on the defensive is a very different being from a first mate on the rampage. He had become so accustomed to breaking-in unresisting dockrats and bemused foreigners, taking his own time and using his boots where necessary, that

a high-pressure combat with a man who seemed to be everywhere except at the end of his fist-to his honour, he never once thought of employing his foot-was an entire novelty to him. He fought sullenly but ponderously, wasting his enormous strength on murderous blows which never reached their mark, and stolidly enduring a storm of smacks, bangs, and punches that would have knocked a man of less enduring material into a pulp. But there is one blow which no member of the human family can stand up to, glutton for punishment though he be. Hughie made a sudden feint with his left at his opponent's body, just below the heart. Gates dropped his guard, momentarily throwing forward his head as he did so. Instantaneously a terrific uppercut from Hughie's right took him squarely under the chin. Mr Gates described a graceful parabola, and landed heavily on his back on deck, striking his head against a ring-bolt as he fell. The whole fight had lasted less that four minutes.

shrouds, leaped upon the bulwarks and pulled himself up to the level of the bridge, which was unoccupied save by the man at the wheel, who had been an enthusiastic spectator of the scene below.

Having climbed upon the bridge, and so secured the upper ground in case of any further attack, Hughie leaned over the rails and parleyed. In his hand he held a pair of heavy binoculars, which he had taken out of a box clamped to the back of the wind-screen.

"The first man who at tempts to follow me up here," he announced, when he had got his breath back, "will get this pair of glasses in the eye. Captain, I don't think you are a great success as an employer of labour. You haven't got the knack of conciliating your men. Can't we come to terms? Mine are very simple. I want some clothes my own, for

choice. If you haven't got them, anything quiet and unobtrusive will do. But I decline to go about in orange-andred pyjama trousers in midAtlantic to please you or anybody else. For one thing they're not warm, and for another they're not usual. If you will oblige me in this matter, I am quite willing to live at peace with you. I don't see that you can really suppress me except by killing me, and that is a thing which I don't think you have either the authority or the pluck to do. Why not give me a billet in the engine - room and cry quits?"

Captain Kingdom looked up at the obstreperous mutineer on the bridge, and down at the recumbent Mr Gates on the deck, and ground his teeth. Then he looked up to the bridge again.

"All right," he growled. "Come down!"

Hughie, having been relieved to a slight extent from sartorial humiliation, entered upon his engine-room duties forthwith.

The society in which he found himself consisted of Mr Angus, the chief,-engineers, like gardeners, editors, and Cabinet Ministers, are practically all Scotsmen, Mr Goble, the Acting-Second (vice Mr Walsh, sick), and a motley gang of undersized, half-mutinous, wholly vile sweepings of humanity in the form of fire

Mr Walsh was suffering from an intermittent form of malaria contracted years ago in an up-river trip to the pestilential regions round Saigon. Mr Angus, a hoary-headed and bottle-nosed Dundonian, who could have charmed a scrapheap into activity, received Hughie with native politeness, and paid him the compliment of working him uncommonly hard. He explained (with perfect truth) that the only reason why he was not at that moment driving a Cunarder