“Talking of powder,” said the Nubian, creaking gently on her stern-moorings, “reminds me of a terrible adventure.  My very first voyage was to the mouth of a river on the West Coast of Africa, where two native tribes were at war.  Somehow, my owner—­a scoundrelly fellow in the Midlands—­had wind of the quarrel, and that the tribe nearest the coast needed gunpowder.  We sailed from Cardiff with fifteen hundred barrels duly labelled, and the natives came out to meet us at the river-mouth and rafted them ashore; but the barrels, if you will believe me, held nothing but sifted coal-dust.  Off we went before the trick was discovered, and with six thousand pounds’ worth of ivory in my hold.  But the worst villainy was to come; for my owner, pretending that he had opened up a profitable trade, and having his ivory to show for it, sold me to a London firm, who loaded me with real gunpowder and sent me out, six months later, to the same river, but with a new skipper and a different crew.  The natives knew me at once, and came swarming out in canoes as soon as we dropped anchor.  The captain, who of course suspected nothing, allowed them to crowd on board; and I declare that within five minutes they had clubbed him and every man of the crew and tossed their bodies to the sharks.  Then they cut my hawsers and towed me over the river-bar; and, having landed a good half of my barrels, they built and lit a fire around them in derision.  I can hear the explosion still; my poor upper-works have been crazy ever since.  It destroyed almost all the fighters of the tribe, who had formed a ring to dance around the fire.  The rest fled inland, and I never saw them again, but lay abandoned for months as they had anchored me, between the ruined huts and a sandy spit alive with mosquitoes—­until somehow a British tramp-steamer heard of me at one of the trading stations up the coast.  She brought down a crew to man and work me home.  But my owner could not pay the salvage; so the parties who owned the steamer—­ a Runcorn firm—­paid him fifty pounds and kept me for their services.  A surveyor examined me, and reported that I should never be fit for much:  the explosion had shaken me to pieces.  I might do for the coasting trade—­that was all; and in that I’ve remained.”

“Owners are rogues, for the most part,” commented the Danish barquentine, rubbing against the Touch-me-nots fender as if to nudge her.  “There’s the Maria Stella Maris yonder can tell us a tale of the food they store us with.  She went through a mutiny once, I’ve heard.”

“I’d rather not talk of it,” put in the Italian hastily, and a shudder ran through her timbers.  “It’s a dreadful recollection, and I have that by my mizzen-mast which all the holystone in the world can never scour.”

“But I’ve had a mutiny, too!” said the Dutch galliot, with a voice of great importance; and this time the boy felt sure that the vessels nudged one another.