“Shift your pistol to muzzle end, and bring it here.”

Sheriff obeyed the order promptly.  He had seen enough of Captain Kettle’s usefulness as a marksman not to dispute his wishes.

“Did you know that we came here to stir up a war between our folks at home and the Transvaal?”

“I suppose so.”

“And smash up the telegraph instruments afterward, so that it could not be contradicted till it was well under way?”

“That would have been necessary.”

“And you remember what you told me on that steamboat?  Oh! you liar!” said Kettle, and Sheriff winced.

“I’m so beastly hard up,” he said.

Captain Kettle might have commented on his own poverty, but he did not do this.  Instead, he said:  “Now we’ll go back to the ship, and of course you’ll have to scuttle her just as if you’d brought off your game here successfully.  Run England in for a bloody war, would you, just for some filthy money?  By James! no.  Come, march.  And you, Mr. Telegraph Clerk, get under weigh with that deaf and dumb alphabet of yours, and ring up the Cape, and tell them what’s been sent is all a joke, and there’s to be no war at all.”

“I’ll do that, you may lay your heart on it,” said the operator.  “But Mr. I-don’t-know-what-your-name-is, look here.  Hadn’t you better stay?  I’ll see things are put all right.  But if you go off with those two sharks, it might be dangerous.”

“Thank you, kindly, sir,” said Kettle; “but I’m a man that’s been accustomed to look after myself all the world over, and I’m not likely to get hurt now.  Those two may be sharks, as you say, but I’m not altogether a simple little lamb myself.”

“I shall be a bit uneasy for you.  You’re a good soul whoever you may be, and I’d like to do something for you if I could.”

“Then, sir,” said Kettle, “just keep quiet, here, and get on with your work contradicting that wire, and don’t send for any of those little Portuguese soldiers with guns to see us off.  It’s a bad beach, and we mayn’t get off first try, and if they started to annoy us whilst we were at work, I might have to shoot some of them, which would be a trouble.”

“I’ll see to that,” said the operator.  “We’ll just shake hands if you don’t mind, before you go.  There’s more man to the cubic inch about you than in any other fellow I’ve come across for a long time.  I’ve no club at home now, or I’d ask you to look me up.  But I dare say we shall meet again some time.  So long.”

“Good-by, sir,” said Kettle, and shook the operator by the hand.  Then he turned, and drove the other two raiders before him out of the house, and down to the beach, and, with the Krooboys, applied himself to launching the surf-boat through the breakers.

“Run the old shop into a war, would you?” he soliloquized to two very limp, unconscious figures, as the Krooboys got the surf-boat afloat after the third upset.  “It’s queer what some men will do for money.”  And then, a minute later, he muttered to himself:  “By James! look at that dawn coming up behind the island there; yellow as a lemon.  Now, that is fine.  I can make a bit of poetry out of that.”