Miss Pilbeam sat in deep thought.  “It’s the getting aboard that’s the trouble,” she said, slowly.  “You’d have to disguise yourself.  It would have to be a good disguise, too, to pass my father, I can tell you.”

Captain Bligh gave a gloomy assent.

“The only thing for you to do, so far as I can see,” said the girl, slowly, “is to make yourself up like a coalie.  There are one or two colliers in the harbor, and if you took off your coat—­I could send it on afterwards—­rubbed yourself all over with coal-dust, and shaved off your moustache, I believe you would escape.”

“Shave!” ejaculated the skipper, in choking accents.  “Rub—!  Coal-dust!”

“It’s your only chance,” said Miss Pilbeam.

Captain Bligh leaned back frowning, and from sheer force of habit passed the ends of his moustache slowly through his fingers.  “I think the coal-dust would be enough,” he said at last.

The girl shook her head.  “Father particularly noticed your moustache,” she said.

“Everybody does,” said the skipper, with mournful pride.  “I won’t part with it.”

“Not for my sake?” inquired Miss Pilbeam, eying him mournfully.  “Not after all I’ve done for you?”

“No,” said the other, stoutly.

Miss Pilbeam put her handkerchief to her eyes and, with a suspicious little sniff, hurried from the room.  Captain Bligh, much affected, waited for a few seconds and then went in pursuit of her.  Fifteen minutes later, shorn of his moustache, he stood in the coal-hole, sulkily smearing himself with coal.

“That’s better,” said the girl; “you look horrible.”

She took up a handful of coal-dust and, ordering him to stoop, shampooed him with hearty good-will.

[Illustration:  “She took up a handful of coal-dust and, ordering him to stoop, shampooed him with hearty good-will.”]

“No good half doing it,” she declared.  “Now go and look at yourself in the glass in the kitchen.”

The skipper went, and came back in a state of wild-eyed misery.  Even Miss Pilbeam’s statement that his own mother would not know him failed to lift the cloud from his brow.  He stood disconsolate as the girl opened the front door.

“Good-by,” she said, gently.  “Write and tell me when you are safe.”

Captain Bligh promised, and walked slowly up the road.  So far from people attempting to arrest him, they vied with each other in giving him elbow-room.  He reached the harbor unmolested, and, lurking at a convenient corner, made a careful survey.  A couple of craft were working out their coal, a small steamer was just casting loose, and a fishing-boat gliding slowly over the still water to its berth.  His own schooner, which lay near the colliers, had apparently knocked off work pending his arrival.  For Sergeant Pilbeam he looked in vain.

He waited a minute or two, and then, with a furtive glance right and left, strolled in a careless fashion until he was abreast of one of the colliers.  Nobody took any notice of him, and, with his hands in his pockets, he gazed meditatively into the water and edged along towards his own craft.  His foot trembled as he placed it on the plank that formed the gangway, but, resisting the temptation to look behind, he gained the deck and walked forward.