I do not intend to imply that Kettle actually drove a winch, or acted as stevedore below, or sweated over bales as they swung up through a hatch, but he did work as gangway man, and serve at the tally desk, and oversee generally while the crew worked cargo; and his watch over the passengers was at this period of necessity relaxed.  He tried hard to interest Hamilton in the mysteries of hold stowage, in order to keep him under his immediate eye.  But Hamilton bluntly confessed to loathing anything that was at all useful, and so he perforce had to be left to pick his own position under the awnings, there to doze, and smoke cigarettes, and scribble on paper as the moods so seized him.

It was off one of the ports in the peninsula of Yucatan, toward the Bay of Campeachy, that Cranze chose to fall overboard.  The name of the place was announced by some one when they brought up, and Cranze asked where it was.  Kettle marked it off with a leg of the dividers on the chart.  “Yucatan,” said Cranze, “that’s the ruined cities shop, isn’t it?”—­He shaded his unsteady eyes, and looked out at a clump of squalid huts just showing on the beach beyond some three miles of tumbling surf.  “Gum! here’s a ruined city all hot and waiting.  Home of the ancient Aztecs, and colony of the Atlanteans, and all that.  Skipper, I shall go ashore, and enlarge my mind.”

“You can go if you like,” said Kettle, “but remember, I steam away from here as soon as ever I get the cargo out of her, and I wait for no man.  And mind not to get us upset in the surf going there.  The water round here swarms with sharks, and I shouldn’t like any of them to get indigestion.”

“Seem trying to make yourself jolly ob—­bub—­jectiable’s morning,” grumbled Cranze, and invited Hamilton to accompany him on shore forthwith.  “Let’s go and see the girls.  Ruined cities should have ruined girls and ruined pubs to give us some ruined amusement.  We been on this steamer too long, an’ we want variety.  V’riety’s charming.  Come along and see ruined v’riety.”

Hamilton shrugged his shoulders.  “Drunk as usual, are you?  You silly owl, whatever ruined cities there may be, are a good fifty miles in the bush.”

“’S all you know about it.  I can see handsome majestic ruin over there on the beach, an’ I’m going to see it ’out further delay.  ’S a duty I owe to myself to enlarge the mind by studying the great monuments of the past.”

“If you go ashore, you’ll be marooned as safe as houses, and Lord knows when the next steamer will call.  The place reeks of fever, and as your present state of health is distinctly rocky, you’ll catch it, and be dead and out of the way inside a week easily.  Look here, don’t be an ass.”

“Look here yourself.  Are you a competent medicated practitioner?”

“Oh, go and get sober.”

“Answer me.  Are you competent medicated practitioner?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Very well then.  Don’t you presume t’lecture me on state of my health.  No reply, please.  I don’ wan’ to be encumbered with your further acquaintance.  I wish you a go’ morning.”