“Ah!” Cai glanced at her with sharp suspicion.  “So that’s the latest game, is it?  He’s been gettin’ at you—­a mere child like you!—­and sends you off here to work on my feelin’s! . . .  I thought better of ’Bias:  upon my soul, I did.”

“An’ you’d better go on thinkin’ better,” retorted Fancy with spirit.  “Cap’n Hunken sent me?  What next? . . .  Why, he never spoke a word to me!”

“Then I don’t see—­”

“Why I’m here?  No, you don’t; but you needn’t take up with guesses o’ that sort.”

“I’m sorry if I mistook ye, missy.”

“You ought to be.  Mistook me?—­O’ course you did.  And as for Cap’n Hunken’s sendin’ me, he don’t even know yet that he’s lost his money:  and if he did he’d be too proud, as you ought to know.”

“Lost his money?” echoed Cai.  “What money?”

“Well, to start with, you don’t suppose Mr Rogers got his stroke for nothin’?  ‘Twas the news about the Saltypool that bowled him out:  an’ between you an’ me, in a few days there’s goin’ to be a dreadful mess.  He always was a speckilator.  The more money he made—­and he made a lot, back-along—­the more he’d risk it:  and the last year or two his luck has been cruel.  In the end, as he had to tell me—­for I did all his writin’, except when he employed Peter Benny,—­he rode to one anchor, and that was the Saltypool.  He ran her uninsured.”

“Uninsured?” Cai gave a low whistle.  “But all the same,” said he, “an’ sorry as I am for Rogers, I don’t see how that affects—­”

“I’m a-breakin’ it gently,” said Fancy, not without a small air of importance.  “Cap’n Hunken had a small sum in the Saltypool—­a hundred pounds only.”

“I wonder he had a penny.  ’Tisn’t like ’Bias to put anything into an uninsured ship.”

“Mr Rogers did it without consultin’ him.  Cap’n Hunken didn’ know, and I didn’ know, for the money didn’ pass by cheque.  Some time back in last autumn—­I’ve forgot the date, but the books’ll tell it—­the old man handed me two hundred pound in notes, not tellin’ me where they came from, with orders to pay it into his account:  which I took it straight across to the bank—­”

“Belay there a moment,” interrupted Cai.  “A moment since you mentioned one hundred.”

“So I did, because we’re talkin’ of Cap’n Hunken.  Two hundred there were, and all in bank notes:  but only one hundred belonged to him—­and I only found that out the other day, when he heard that Mr Rogers had put it into the Saltypool, and there was a row.  As for the other—­ Lawks, you don’t tell me ’twas yours!” exclaimed Fancy, catching at the sudden surmise written on Cai’s face.

“Why not? . . .  If he treated ’Bias that way?  Sure enough,” said Cai.  “I took him a hundred pounds to invest for me, about that time.”

“Did he pay you a dividend this last half-year?”

“To be sure—­seven pound, eight-an’-four.”