“Yes,” answered Cartoner, watching his hands, for there was a sort of exultation in Kosmaroff’s voice, as if fate had offered him a chance which he never expected.

Cable came aft and stood beside Cartoner.

“I want to go to sea this tide,” he said.  “Where is the other man?”

“The other man is Prince Martin Bukaty,” was the answer.  “Help me to lift him on board.”

“Why can’t he come on board himself?”

“Because he is dead,” answered Kosmaroff, with a break in his voice.  And he lurched forward against the rail.  Cartoner caught him by one arm and held him up.

“I am so weak!” he murmured, “so weak!  I am famished!”

Cartoner lifted him bodily over the rail, and Cable received him, half fainting, in his arms.  The next moment Cartoner was kneeling in the boat that rode alongside.  He slowly raised Martin, and with an effort held him towards the captain, who was sitting astride on the rail.  Thus they got him on board and carried him to the cabin.  They passed through it to that which was grandly called the captain’s state-room.  They laid him on the locker which served for a bed, while Kosmaroff, supporting himself against the bulkhead, watched them in silence.

The captain glanced at Martin, and then, catching sight of Kosmaroff’s face, he hurried to the cabin, to return in a minute with the inevitable decanter, yellow with age and rust.

“Here,” he said, “drink that.  Eat a bit o’ biscuit.  You’re done.”

Kosmaroff did as he was told.  His eyes had the unmistakable glitter of starvation and exhaustion.  They were fixed on Cartoner’s face, with a hundred unasked questions in them.

“How did it happen?” asked Cartoner, at length.

“They fired on us crossing the frontier, and hit him.  Pity it was not me.  He is a much greater loss than I should have been.  That was the night before last.  He died before the morning.”

“Tut! tut!” muttered Captain Cable, with an unwritable expression of pity.  “There was the makings of a man in him,” he said—­“the makings of a man!”

And what Captain Cable held worthy of the name of man is not so common as to be lost to the world with indifference.  He stood reflecting for a moment while Kosmaroff ate the ship’s biscuit offered to him in the lid of a box, and Cartoner stared thoughtfully at the flickering lamp.

“I’ll take him out to sea and bury him there,” said Cable, at length, “if so be as that’s agreeable to you.  There’s many a good man buried at sea, and when my time comes I’ll ask for no better berth.”

“That is the only thing to be done,” said Cartoner.

Kosmaroff glanced towards the bed.

“Yes,” he said, “that will do.  He will lay quiet enough there.”

And all three, perhaps, thought of all that they were to bury beneath the sea with this last of the Bukatys.

Captain Cable was the first to move.  He turned and glanced at the clock.