Nelse, he shrugs his shoulders.

“Aye yust know about work,” says he, lyin’ free and easy.

“That’s a swell motto to pin on the wall,” says I.  “But listen, Nelse, while I put a case to you.  Suppose, now, you’d been tipped off that if you dug under a certain bush in a certain back yard you’d find—­well, something worth luggin’ away?  Ah, never mind shakin’ your head!  This is only supposin’.  And we’ll say the neighbors were wise; they’d watched you go out with your spade and lantern.  And after you’d near broke your back diggin’ you found you’d been buffaloed.  Are you followin’ me?”

Who says a Swede is all solid maple from the neck up?  Nelse’s buttermilk blue eyes flickers with almost human intelligence.  Some of the men smother a snicker.

“Well,” I goes on, “we’ll say you was sensitive about it.  In order to duck their frivolous remarks when you came sneakin’ back, maybe you’d be deceitful enough to bluff it through.  You might lug something home in the bag, even if it was only some loose real estate.  I don’t say you would, mind you.  You got such an honest, cash-register face.  But there are shifty parties who could do that and never bat an eye.  I ain’t mentionin’ any names.”

I didn’t need to.  To a man, they glances over the rail at Mr. Ellins.

“Then that’s all,” says I.  “Only you got to lay off with them merry expressions when you lug those sacks aboard.  Handle ’em careful and reverent, and stow ’em in the main cabin where you’re told.  If you do it well I expect there’ll be more or less in it for all of you.  Now, then, got your cues, have you?”

They salutes respectful.

“Then get busy with the stevedore stuff,” says I.

And say, if they’d been coached by a stage manager they couldn’t have done better.  Course, I did catch ’em passin’ the wink to each other as two of ’em marches across the deck holdin’ a sack tender between ’em; but that was when they knew nobody but me could see.  While they was down where Old Hickory had his eye on ’em, they was as solemn as pallbearers.  But I’ll bet it wasn’t many minutes after they got to their own quarters before the hearty haw-haws was turned loose in four different languages.

Meanwhile Auntie and Mr. Ellins has been lookin’ on without gettin’ the plot of the piece.

“I must say,” Auntie comes out with, “that I see no very subtle strategy about that performance.  Those men must have suspected.  What did they think they were carrying on board so carefully?”

“Sand,” says I.

“Huh!” grunts Old Hickory.

“You said you’d stand for it,” says I.  “And all you owe ’em is about two apiece for helpin’ you save your face.”

“My face, eh?” says Old Hickory.

“Someone had to be the goat,” says I.

“Why, to be sure,” cuts in Auntie, beamin’ good-natured again.  “And I think Torchy managed it very cleverly.”