“Well, Mr. Mate,” said Kettle grimly, “I hope you’ll decide she’s seaworthy, because, whatever view you take of it, as I’ve got this far, here I’m going to stay.”

The mate frowned.  He was a young man; he was here in authority, and he had a great notion of making his authority felt.  Captain Kettle was to him merely a down-on-his-luck free-passage nobody, and as the mate was large and lusty he did not anticipate trouble.  So he remarked rather crabbedly that he was going to obey his orders, and went aft along the slanting deck.

It was clear that the vessel had been swept—­badly swept.  Ropes-ends streamed here and there and overboard in every direction, and everything movable had been carried away eternally by the sea.  A goodly part of the starboard bulwarks had vanished, and the swells gushed in and out as they chose.  But the hatch tarpaulins and companions were still in place; and though it was clear from the list (which was so great that they could not walk without holding on) that her cargo was badly shifted, there was no evidence so far that she was otherwise than sound.

The third mate led the way on to the poop, opened the companion doors and slide, and went below.  Kettle followed.  There was a cabin with state rooms off it, littered, but dry.  Strake went down on his knees beneath the table, searching for something.  “Lazaret hatch ought to be down here,” he explained.  “I want to see in there.  Ah, it is.”

He got his fingers in the ring and pulled it back.  Then he whistled.  “Half-full of water,” he said.  “I thought so from the way she floated.  It’s up to the beams down here.  Likely enough she’ll have started a plate somewhere.  ’Fraid it’s no go for you, Captain.  Why, if a breeze was to come on, half the side of her might drop out, and she’d go down like a stone.”

Now to Kettle’s honor be it said (seeing what he had in his mind) he did not tackle the man as he knelt there peering into the lazaret.  Instead he waited till he stood up again, and then made his statement coldly and deliberately.

“This ship’s not too dangerous for me, and I choose to judge.  And if she’ll do for me, she’s good enough for the crew I’ve got in your boat.  Now I want them on deck, and at work without any more palaver.”

“Do you, by God!” said the mate, and then the pair of them closed without any further preliminaries.  They were both of them well used to quick rough-and-tumbles, and they both of them knew that the man who gets the first grip in these wrestles usually wins, and instinctively each tried to act on that knowledge.

But if the third mate had bulk and strength, Kettle had science and abundant wiriness; and though the pair of them lost their footing on the sloping cabin floor at the first embrace, and wriggled over and under like a pair of eels, Captain Kettle got a thumb artistically fixed in the bigger man’s windpipe, and held it there doggedly.  The mate, growing more and more purple, hit out with savage force, but Kettle dodged the bull-like blows like the boxer he was, and the mate’s efforts gradually relaxed.