The second mate broke in upon his commander’s brooding.  “We shall have a nice bill for Lloyds this journey.”

Kettle made no answer.  He continued staring moodily at the spouting flames ahead.  The second mate coughed.  “Shall I be getting derricks rigged and the hatch covers off?”

Kettle turned on him with a sudden fierceness.  “Do you know you’re asking me to ruin myself?”

“But if we jettison cargo to make room for these poor beggars, sir, the insurance will pay.”

“Pay your grandmother.  You’ve got a lot to learn, my lad, before you’re fit to take charge of a ship, if you don’t know any more than that about the responsibility of the cargo.”

“By Jove! that’s awkward.  Birds would look pretty blue if the bill was handed in to them.”

“Birds!” said Kettle with contempt.  “They aren’t liable for sixpence.  Supposing you were travelling by train, and there was some one else’s portmanteau in the carriage, and you flung it out of the window into a river, who do you suppose would have to stand the racket?”

“Why, me.  But then, sir, this is different.”

“Not a bit.  If we start in to jettison cargo, it means I’m a ruined man.  Every ton that goes over the side I’ll have to pay for.”

“We can’t leave those poor devils to frizzle,” said the second mate awkwardly.

“Oh, no, of course we can’t.  They’re a pack of unclean Dutchmen we never saw before, and should think ourselves too good to brush against if we met them in the street, but sentiment demands that we stay and pull them out of their mess, and cold necessity leaves me to foot the bill.  You’re young, and you’re not married, my lad.  I’m neither.  I’ve worked like a horse all my life, mostly with bad luck.  Lately luck’s turned a bit.  I’ve been able to make a trifle more, and save a few pounds out of my billets.  And here and there, what with salvage and other things, I’ve come in the way of a plum.  One way and another I’ve got nearly enough put by at home this minute to keep the missis and me and the girls to windward of the workhouse, even if I lost this present job with Birds, and didn’t find another.”

“Perhaps somebody else will pay for the cargo we have to put over the side, sir.”

“It’s pretty thin comfort when you’ve got a ‘perhaps’ of that size, and no other mortal stop between you and the workhouse.  It’s all very well doing these things in hot blood; but the reckoning’s paid when you’re cold, and they’re cold, and with the Board of Trade standing-by like the devil in the background all ready to give you a kick when there’s a spare place for a fresh foot.”  He slammed down the handle of the bridge-telegraph, and rang off the Flamingo’s engines.  He had been measuring distances all this time with his eye.

“But, of course, there’s no other choice about the matter.  There’s the blessed cause of humanity to be looked after—­humanity to these blessed Dutch emigrants that their own country doesn’t want, and every other country would rather be without.  Humanity to my poor old missis and the kids doesn’t count.  I shall get a sludgy paragraph in the papers for the Grosser Carl, headed ‘Gallant Rescue,’ with all the facts put upside down, and twelve months later there’ll be another paragraph about a ‘case of pitiful destitution.’”