“Here’s your health, Tommy,” returned Bostock.  “You’ll make an A-one bake in the New Hebrides.”

“That’s what I call talking,” cried Tom, not perhaps grasping the spirit of this doubtful compliment.  “Now you give me your attention.  We have the money and the enterprise, and I have the experience:  what we want is a cheap, smart boat, a good captain, and an introduction to some house that will give us credit for the trade.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Captain Bostock.  “I have seen men like you baked and eaten, and complained of afterwards.  Some was tough, and some hadn’t no flaviour,” he added grimly.

“What do you mean by that?” cried Tom.

“I mean I don’t care,” cried Bostock.  “It ain’t any of my interests.  I haven’t underwrote your life.  Only I’m blest if I’m not sorry for the cannibal as tries to eat your head.  And what I recommend is a cheap, smart coffin and a good undertaker.  See if you can find a house to give you credit for a coffin!  Look at your friend there; HE’S got some sense; he’s laughing at you so as he can’t stand.”

The exact degree of ill-feeling in Mr. Bostock’s mind was difficult to gauge; perhaps there was not much, perhaps he regarded his remarks as a form of courtly badinage.  But there is little doubt that Hadden resented them.  He had even risen from his place, and the conference was on the point of breaking up, when a new voice joined suddenly in the conversation.

The cabman sat with his back turned upon the party, smoking a meerschaum pipe.  Not a word of Tommy’s eloquence had missed him, and he now faced suddenly about with these amazing words:—­

“Excuse me, gentlemen; if you’ll buy me the ship I want, I’ll get you the trade on credit.”

There was a pause.

“Well, what do YOU, mean?” gasped Tommy.

“Better tell ’em who I am, Billy,” said the cabman.

“Think it safe, Joe?” inquired Mr. Bostock.

“I’ll take my risk of it,” returned the cabman.

“Gentlemen,” said Bostock, rising solemnly, “let me make you acquainted with Captain Wicks of the Grace Darling.”

“Yes, gentlemen, that is what I am,” said the cabman.  “You know I’ve been in trouble; and I don’t deny but what I struck the blow, and where was I to get evidence of my provocation?  So I turned to and took a cab, and I’ve driven one for three year now and nobody the wiser.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Carthew, joining almost for the first time; “I’m a new chum.  What was the charge?”

“Murder,” said Captain Wicks, “and I don’t deny but what I struck the blow.  And there’s no sense in my trying to deny I was afraid to go to trial, or why would I be here?  But it’s a fact it was flat mutiny.  Ask Billy here.  He knows how it was.”

Carthew breathed long; he had a strange, half-pleasurable sense of wading deeper in the tide of life.  “Well,” said he, “you were going on to say?”