“If you ask me,” said Kettle, “it was sheer nobility of character.  I had a good deal of talk with that young gentleman, sir.  He was a splendid fellow.  He had a true poetical soul.”

Mr. Lupton winked sceptically.  “He managed to play the part of a thorough-paced young blackguard at home pretty successfully.  He was warned off the turf.  He was kicked out of his club for card-sharping.  He was—­well, he’s dead now, anyway, and we won’t say any more about him, except that he’s been stone-broke these last three years, and has been living on his wits and helping to fleece other flats.  But he was only the tool, anyway.  There is a bigger and more capable scoundrel at the back of it all, and, thanks to the scare you seem to have rubbed into that spotty-faced young mug you’ve got locked up down below, I think we can get the principal by the heels very nicely this journey.  If you don’t mind, I’ll go and see this latest victim now, before he’s had time to get rid of his fright.”

Captain Kettle showed his visitor courteously down to the temporary jail, and then returned to the chart-house and sipped his tea.

“His name may really have been Cranze, but he was a poet, poor lad,” he mused, thinking of the dead.  “That’s why he couldn’t do the dirty work.  But I sha’n’t tell Lupton that reason.  He’d only laugh—­and—­that poetry ought to be a bit of a secret between the lad and me.  Poor, poor fellow!  I think I’ll be able to write a few lines about him myself after I’ve been ashore to see the agent, just as a bit of an epitaph.  As to this spotty-faced waster who swapped names with him, I almost have it in me to wish we’d left him to be chopped by those sharks.  He’d his money to his credit anyway—­and what’s money compared with poetry?”

CHAPTER XII

THE FIRE AND THE FARM

The quartermaster knocked smartly, and came into the chart-house, and Captain Kettle’s eyes snapped open from deep sleep to complete wakefulness.

“There’s some sort of vessel on fire, sir, to loo’ard, about five miles off.”

The shipmaster glanced up at the tell-tale compass above his head.  “Officer of the watch has changed the course, I see.  We’re heading for it, eh?”

“Yes, sir.  The second mate told me to say so.”

“Quite right.  Pass the word for the carpenter, and tell him to get port and starboard lifeboats ready for lowering in case they’re wanted.  I’ll be on the bridge in a minute.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the quartermaster, and withdrew into the darkness outside.

Captain Owen Kettle’s toilet was not of long duration.  Like most master mariners who do business along those crowded steam lanes of the Western Ocean, he slept in most of his clothes when at sea as a regular habit, and in fact only stripped completely for the few moments which were occupied by his morning’s tub.  If needful, he could always go out on deck at a second’s notice, and be ready to remain there for twenty-four hours.  But in this instance there was no immediate hurry, and so he spent a full minute and a half over his toilet, and emerged with washed hands and face, sprucely brushed hair and beard, and his person attired in high rubber thigh-boots and leather-bound black oilskins.