The reception which this small cargo of worthies met with surprised them.  They pulled with terrified haste to the Flamingo, got under her lee, and clung desperately to the line which was thrown to them.  But to the rail above them came the man who expected to be ruined by this night’s work, and the pearls of speech which fell from his lips went home through even their thick hides.

Captain Kettle, being human, had greatly needed some one during the last half-hour to ease his feelings on—­though he was not the man to own up to such a weakness, even to himself—­and the boat came neatly to supply his want.  It was long enough since he had found occasion for such an outburst, but the perfection of his early training stood him in good stead then.  Every biting insult in his vocabulary, every lashing word that is used upon the seas, every gibe, national, personal, or professional, that a lifetime of hard language could teach, he poured out on that shivering boat’s crew then.

They were Germans certainly, but being an English shipmaster, he had, of course, many a time sailed with a forecastle filled with their nationality, and had acquired the special art of adapting his abuse to the “Dutchman’s” sensibilities, even as he had other harangues suited for Coolie or Dago mariners, or even for that rare sea-bird, the English sailorman.  And as a final wind-up, after having made them writhe sufficiently, he ordered them to go back whence they came, and take a share in rescuing their fellows.

“Bud we shall trown,” shouted back one speaker from the wildly jumping boat.

“Then drown, and be hanged to you,” shouted Kettle.  “I’m sure I don’t care if you do.  But I’m not going to have cowards like you dirtying my deck-planks.”  He cast off the line to which their boat rode under the steamer’s heaving side.  “You go and do your whack at getting the people off that packet, or, so help me James! none of you shall ever see your happy Dutchland again.”

Meanwhile, so the irony of the fates ordered it, the two mates, each in charge of one of the Flamingo’s lifeboats, were commanding crews made up entirely of Germans and Scandinavians, and pluckier and more careful sailormen could not have been wished for.  The work was dangerous, and required more than ordinary nerve and endurance and skill.  A heavy sea ran, and from its crests a spindrift blew which cut the face like whips, and numbed all parts of the body with its chill.  The boats were tossed about like playthings, and required constant bailing to keep them from being waterlogged.  But Kettle had brought the Flamingo to windward of the Grosser Carl, and each boat carried a line, so that the steam winches could help her with the return trips.