In the throat of the English Channel a blundering steamship did her best to run them down, and actually rasped sides with the sailing-vessel as she tore past into the night; but nobody made an attempt to jump for safety on to her decks, nobody even took the trouble to swear at her with any thing like heartfelt profanity.

“It’s a blooming Flying Dutchman we’re on,” said the coal-trimmer who acted as mate.  “There’s no killing the old beast.  Only hope she gets us ashore somehow, and doesn’t stay fooling about at sea forever just to get into risks.  I want to get off her.  She’s too blooming lucky to be quite wholesome somehow.”

Kettle had intended to make a Channel port, but a gale hustled him north round Land’s End, “and you see,” he said to Dayton-Philipps, “what I get for not being sufficiently trustful.  The old girl’s papers are made out to Cardiff, and here we are pushed round into the Bristol Channel.  By James! look, there’s a tug making up to us.  Thing like that makes you feel homey, doesn’t it, sir?”

The little spattering tug wheeled up within hail, tossing like a cork on the brown waves of the estuary, and the skipper in the green pulpit between the paddle-boxes waved a hand cheerily.

“Seem to have found some dirty weather, Captain,” he bawled.  “Want a pull into Cardiff or Newport?”

“Cardiff.  What price?”

“Say L100.”

“I wasn’t asking to buy the tug.  You’re putting a pretty fancy figure on her for that new lick of paint you’ve got on your rails.”

“I’ll take L80.”

“Oh, I can sail her in myself if you’re going to be funny.  She’s as handy as a pilot-boat, brig rigged like this, and my crew know her fine.  I’ll give you L20 into Cardiff, and you’re to dock me for that.”

“Twenty wicked people.  Now look here, Captain, you don’t look very prosperous with that vessel of yours, and will probably have the sack from owners for mishandling her when you get ashore, and I don’t want to embitter your remaining years in the workus, so I’ll pull you in for fifty quid.”

“L20, old bottle nose.”

“Come now, Captain, thirty.  I’m not here for sport.  I’ve got to make my living.”

“My man,” said Kettle, “I’ll meet you and make it L25, and I’ll see you in Aden before I give a penny more.  You can take that, or sheer off.”

“Throw us your blooming rope,” said the tug skipper.

“There, sir,” said Kettle sotto voce to Dayton-Philipps, “you see the marvellousness of it?  God has stood by me to the very end.  I’ve saved at least L10 over that towage, and, by James!  I’ve seen times when a ship mauled about like this would have been bled for four times the amount before a tug would pluck her in.”

“Then we are out of the wood now?”