“‘My good man,’ I said,’I cannot leave the bridge.’

“‘Ye canna’ leave the bridge!  What for, then?’

“‘Because,’ I said, ’I must keep a look-out and see that that man on the forecastle-head does the same.  If he were to see me leave the bridge, the chances are he would get careless and sit down and go to sleep, and we might run into something, and probably sink ourselves or somebody else and lose a lot of lives.’

“By this time I heard loud voices and awful oaths coming from the after-end of the ship, so says I, ’This must be put a stop to, but I cannot leave here without somebody takin’ my place.  You must take it, and walk across and across as I am doing, so that that fellow on the look-out will think it’s me.’

“’Aa’m not pertikler what aa dee, mister, if ye ony get thor differences settled before ye come up.  Aa nivor heerd sic swearin’.’

“‘Very well,’ said I; ’you do what I’ve told you to do.  Walk steadily to and fro, and I’ll go and see what can be done.’

“When I got down below they were still wrangling, but I soon made peace with them, and they asked me to have a hand with them.  I had a look on deck.  It was a fine moonlight night, and nothing seemed to be in the way, so I began to play, and forgot all about the fellow on the bridge, and everything else for that matter, until I heard four bells go.  This reminded me, so I stopped short, went on to the poop, and the other fellows came up with me.  I was chaffing them about their row, and I heard the look-out man call out, ’A red light on the port bow, sir!’ I saw we were going a long way clear, so took no notice; but the miner on the bridge increased his pace.  In less than a minute the look-out man called out again, ‘A red light on the port bow,’ and got no answer.  I thought to myself, ’What’s going to be the upshot of this?’ when the man called out again, sharply this time, ’A red light on the port bow!’ The miner quite excitedly shouted at the top of his voice, ’Blaw the b——­y thing oot, then, and let’s hear ne mair aboot it!’”

At this conclusion the two captains laughed heartily, and so did Yaunie.  Then all at once Farquarson began as suddenly as he had left off—­

“Now, let us make up our minds never to broach running the gauntlet again in Russian waters, for they’re devils to listen, and you never know where they are.  Why, I’ve seen them at the time of the war crawlin’ and sneakin’ about all over, lying on the sofa in the billiard-rooms, and come and ask you to play in good English.  Sometimes the impudent villains would come and barefacedly sit down at the same table where you were having a meal, and begin speakin’ and get you to say something disrespectful about Russia and their Tzar, and lots of poor fellows were asked to leave the country for it.  Talk about despotism and bribery!  Well, I’ve seen some of their goings on.  What did they do when the poor Turks that were taken prisoners when Plevna fell marched into Reval?  A few of us cheered them, and the Russians got quite annoyed about it, and hustled us about as though we were common thieves, and threatened to run us into their filthy gaol.  My word, how things have altered since the days when you could kill a Russian and nobody cared a brass button!  But now—­well, there’s no word to express it.”