Captain Kettle buttoned his coat, and stepped to the further end of the bridge with an elaborate show of disgust.  “You are on the Stock Exchange yourself, sir?”

“Er—­connected with it, Captain.”

[Illustration:  “YOU INSOLENT LITTLE BLACKGUARD, YOU DARE TO SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT!”]

“I can quite understand our minister’s opinion of stock gamblers now.  Perhaps some day you may hear it for yourself.  He’s a great man for visiting jails and carrying comfort to the afflicted.”

“By gad!” said White, “you insolent little blackguard, you dare to speak to me like that!”

“I use what words I choose,” said Kettle, truculently.  “I’d have said the same to your late King Solomon if I hadn’t liked his ways; but if I was pocketing his pay, I should have carried out his orders all the same.”  He bent down to the voice hatch, and gave a bearing to the black quartermaster in the wheel-house below, and the little steamer, which had by this time left behind her the vessels transhipping cargo in the roads, canted off on a new course to the southward.

“Hullo,” said Sheriff, “what’s that mean?  Where are you off to now?”

Kettle mentioned the name of a lonely island standing by itself in the Atlantic.

But Sheriff and the Jew were visibly startled.  Mr. Sheriff mopped at a very damp forehead with his pocket handkerchief.  “Have you heard anything then?” he asked, “or did you just guess?”

“I heard nothing before, or I should not have signed on for this trip, sir.  But having come so far I’m going to earn out my pay.  What’s done will not be on my conscience.  The shipmaster’s blameless in these matters; it’s the owner who drives him that earns his punishment in the hereafter; and that’s sound theology.”

“But how did you guess, man, how did you know where we were bound?”

“A shipmaster knows cable stations as well as he knows owners’ agents’ offices ashore.  Any fool who had been told your game would have put his finger on that island at once.  That’s the loneliest place where the cable goes ashore all up and down the coast, and it isn’t British, and what more could you want?”

With these meagre assurances, Messieurs Sheriff and White had to be content, as no others were forthcoming.  Captain Kettle refused to be drawn into further talk upon the subject, and the pair went below to the stuffy little cabin more than a trifle disconsolate.  “Well, here’s the man you talked so big about,” said White, bitterly.  “As soon as we get out at sea, he shows himself in his true colors.  Why, he’s a blooming Methodist.  But if he sells us when it comes to the point, and there’s a chance of my getting nabbed, by gad I’ll murder him like I would a rat.”

“If he offers a scrimmage,” said Sheriff, “you take my tip, and clear out.  He’s a regular glutton for a fight; I know he’s armed; and he could shoot the buttons off your coat at twenty yards.  No, Mr. White; make the best or the worst of Captain Kettle as you choose, but don’t come to fisticuffs with him, or as sure as you are living now, you’ll finish out on the under side then.  And mind, I’m not talking by guess-work.  I know.”