“Talk about your hoodoos!” he gritted.  “Talk about your banana skins of Tophet!  Twice I’ve slipped up on it and struck that infernal island.  Even his name written on a piece of paper is a cuss to the man that lugs it!”

But after hale second thought he put the check back into his wallet and the wallet into his breast pocket and buttoned his coat securely.  And the set of his jaws and the wrinkling of his forehead showed that the duel between him and Colonel Ward was not yet over.

As the steamer with the dun smoke-stack approached Cod Lead he noted sourly the frantic signallings of the marooned.  He leaned on the rail and watched the departure of the officer of the faded blue cap with his crew of the sponson boat.  He observed the details of the animated meeting of the rescuers and the rescued.  Without great astonishment he saw that Hiram, of all the others, remained on shore, leaning disconsolately against the protecting bulk of Imogene.

“It’s most a wonder he didn’t try to load that infernal elephant onto that life-boat,” he muttered.  “If I couldn’t travel through life without bein’ tagged by an old gob of meat of that size, I’d hire a museum and settle down in it.”

Cap’n Sproul, still leaning on the rail, paid no attention to the snort that Colonel Ward emitted as he passed on his way to the security of the steamer’s deck.  He resolutely avoided the reproachful starings of the members of the Smyrna fire department as they struggled on board.  Mr. Butts came last and attempted to say something, but retreated promptly before the Cap’n’s fiendish snarl and clicking teeth.

“That man there, with the elephant, says he can’t leave her,” reported Faded Cap to the wondering group on the bridge.

“A United States cutter isn’t sent out to collect menageries accompanied by dry-nurses,” stated the commander.  “What is this job lot, anyway—­a circus in distress?”

“Says the elephant can swim out if we’ll rig a tackle and hoist her on board.  Says elephant is used to it.”

Something in the loneliness of the deserted two on Cod Lead must have appealed to the commander.  He was profane about it, and talked about elephants and men who owned them in a way that struck an answering chord in the Cap’n’s breast.  But he finally gave orders for the embarkation of Imogene, and after much more profanity and more slurs which Hiram was obliged to listen to meekly, the task was accomplished, and the cutter proceeded on her way along coast on further errands of mercy.

And then the Cap’n turned and gazed on Hiram, and the showman gazed on the Cap’n.  The latter spoke first.

“Hiram,” he said, “it ain’t best for you and me to talk this thing over, just as it stands now—­not till we get back to Smyrna and set down on my front piazzy.  P’r’aps things won’t look so skeow-wowed then to us as they do now.  We won’t talk till then.”

But the captain of the cutter was not as liberal-minded.  In the process of preparing his report he attempted to interview both the Cap’n and Colonel Ward at the same time in his cabin, and at the height of the riot of recriminations that ensued was obliged to call in some deck-hands and have both ejected.  Then he listened to them separately with increasing interest.