But one morning, before the Flamingo had finished with her calls on the ports of the Texan rivers, a matter happened on board of her which stirred the pulse of her being to a very different gait.  The steward who brought Captain Kettle’s early coffee coughed, and evidently wanted an invitation to speak.

“Well?’ said Kettle.

“It’s about Mr. Hamilton, sir.  I can’t find ’im anywheres.”

“Have you searched the ship?”

“Hunofficially, sir.”

“Well, get the other two stewards, and do it thoroughly.”

The steward went out, and Captain Kettle lifted the coffee cup and drank a salutation to the dead.  From that very moment he had a certain foreboding that the worst had happened.  “Here’s luck, my lad, wherever you now may be.  That brute Cranze has got to windward of the pair of us, and your insurance money’s due this minute.  I only sent that steward to search the ship for form’s sake.  There was the link of poetry between you and me, lad; and that’s closer than most people could guess at; and I know, as sure as if your ghost stood here to tell me, that you’ve gone.  How, I’ve got to find out.”

He put down the cup, and went to the bathroom for his morning’s tub.  “I’m to blame, I know,” he mused on, “for not taking better care of you, and I’m not trying to excuse myself.  You were so brimful of poetry that you hadn’t room left for any thought of your own skin, like a chap such as I am is bound to have.  Besides, you’ve been well-off all your time and you haven’t learned to be suspicious.  Well, what’s done’s done, and it can’t be helped.  But, my lad, I want you to look on while I hand in the bill.  It’ll do you good to see Cranze pay up the account.”

Kettle went through his careful toilet, and then in his spruce white drill went out and walked briskly up and down the hurricane deck till the steward came with the report.  His forebodings had not led him astray.  Hamilton was not on board:  the certain alternative was that he lay somewhere in the warm Gulf water astern, as a helpless dead body.

“Tell the Chief Officer,” he said, “to get a pair of irons out of store and bring them down to Mr. Cranze’s room.  I’m going there now.”

He found Cranze doctoring a very painful head with the early application of stimulant, and Cranze asked him what the devil he meant by not knocking at the door before opening it.

Captain Kettle whipped the tumbler out of the passenger’s shaking fingers, and emptied its contents into the wash-basin.

“I’m going to see you hanged shortly, you drunken beast,” he said, “but in the mean while you may as well get sober for a change, and explain things up a bit.”

Cranze swung his legs out of the bunk and sat up.  He was feeling very tottery, and the painfulness of his head did not improve his temper.  “Look here,” he said, “I’ve had enough of your airs and graces.  I’ve paid for my passage on this rubbishy old water-pusher of yours, and I’ll trouble you to keep a civil tongue in your head, or I’ll report you to your owners.  You are like a railway guard, my man.  After you have seen that your passengers have got their proper tickets, it’s your duty to—­”