“I don’t know quite that.  At any rate, I’ve never thought of shooting myself.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest we were alike at all in detail.  I was only thinking we had both seen rough times.  Lord forbid that any man should ever be half the fool that I have been.”  He sighed heavily.—­“However, sufficient for the day.  Look out over yonder; there’s a bit of color for you.”

A shoal of flying-fish got up out of the warm, shining water and ran away over the ripples like so many silver rats; yellow tangles of Gulf-weed swam in close squadron on the emerald sea; and on the western horizon screw-pile lighthouses stood up out of the water, marking the nearness of the low-lying Floridan beaches, and reminding one of mysterious Everglades beyond.

“A man, they tell me,” said Hamilton, “can go into that country at the back there, and be a hermit, and live honestly on his own fish and fruit.  I believe I’d like that life.  I could go there, and be decent, and perhaps in time I should forget things.”

“Don’t you try it.  The mosquitoes are shocking.”

“There are worse devils than mosquitoes.  Now I should have thought there was something about those Everglades that would have appealed to you, Skipper?”

“There isn’t, and I’ve been there.  You want a shot-gun in Florida to shoot callers with, not eatables.  I’ve written verse there, and good verse, but it was the same old tale, sir, that brought it up to my fingers’ ends.  I’d been having trouble just then—­yes, bad trouble.  No, Mr. Hamilton, you go home, sir, to England and find a country place, and get on a farm, and watch the corn growing, and hear the birds sing, and get hold of the smells of the fields, and the colors of the trees, and then you’ll enjoy life and turn out poetry you can be proud of.”

“Doesn’t appeal to me.  You see you look upon the country with a countryman’s eye.”

“Me,” said Kettle.  “I’m seaport and sea bred and brought up, and all I know of fields and a farm is what I’ve seen from a railway-carriage window.  No, I’ve had to work too hard for my living, and for a living for Mrs. Kettle and the youngsters, to have any time for that sort of enjoyment; but a man can’t help knowing what he wants, sir, can he?  And that’s what I’m aiming at, and it’s for that I’m scratching together every sixpence of money I can lay hands on.”

But here a sudden outcry below broke in upon their talk.  “That’s Mr. Cranze,” said Kettle.  “He’ll be going too far in one of his tantrums one of these days.”

“I’m piously hoping the drunken brute will tumble overboard,” Hamilton muttered; “it would save a lot of trouble for everybody.  Eh, well,” he said, “I suppose I’d better go and look after him,” and got up and went below.