“Said he’d come for the fun of the thing.”

Captain Image gave a grim laugh.  “Well, I think he’ll find all the fun he’s any use for before he’s ashore again.  Extraordinary thing some people can’t see they’re well off when they’ve got a job ashore.  Now, Mr. Strake, hurry with that boat and get her lowered away.  You’re to take charge and bring her back; and mind, you’re not to leave the captain here and his gang aboard if the vessel’s too badly wrecked to be safe.”

He turned to Kettle.  “Excuse my giving that last order, old man, but I know how keen you are, and I’m not going to let you go off to try and navigate a sieve.  You’re far too good a man to be drowned uselessly.”

The word was “Hurry,” now that the final decision had been given, and the davit tackles squeaked out as the lifeboat jerked down toward the water.  She rode there at the end of her painter, and the three rowers and the third mate fended her off, while Kettle’s crew of nondescripts scrambled unhandily down to take their places.  The negro stowaway refused stubbornly to leave the steamer, and so was lowered ignominiously in a bowline, and then, as he still objected loudly that he came from Sa’ Leone, and was a free British subject, some one crammed a bucket over his head, amidst the uproarious laughter of the onlookers.

Captain Kettle swung himself down the swaying Jacob’s ladder, and the boat’s painter was cast off; and under three oars she moved slowly off over the hot sun-kissed swells.  Advice and farewells boomed like a thunderstorm from the steamer, and an animated frieze of faces and figures and waving headgear decorated her rail.

Ahead of them, the quiet ship shouldered clumsily over the rollers, now gushing down till she dipped her martingale, now swooping up again, sending whole cataracts of water swirling along her waist.

The men in the boat regarded her with curious eyes as they drew nearer.  Even the three rowers turned their heads, and were called to order therefor by the mate at the tiller.  A red ensign was seized jack downward in her main rigging, the highest note of the sailorman’s agony of distress.  On its wooden case, in her starboard fore-rigging, a dioptric lens sent out the faint green glow of a lamp’s light into the sunshine.

The third mate drew attention to this last “Lot of oil in that lamp,” he said, “or it means they haven’t deserted her very long.  To my mind, it must have been in yesterday’s breeze her cargo shifted, and scared her people into leaving her.”

“We shall see,” said Kettle, still staring intently ahead.

The boat was run up cannily alongside, and Kettle jumped into the main chains and clambered on board over the bulwarks.  “Now, pass up my crew, Mr. Strake,” said he.

“I’m coming myself next, if you don’t mind,” said the third mate, and did so.  “Must obey the old man’s orders,” he explained, as they stood together on the sloping decks.  “You heard yourself what he said, Captain.”