“Oh!” said Hetty indignantly.

“Will you give it to me now?” said the mate, trembling at his boldness.

“Take it,” said she.  She leaned across the table, and, as the mate advanced, dabbed viciously at him with the spoon.  Then she suddenly dropped both articles on the table and moved away, as the mate, startled by a footstep at the door, turned a flushed visage, ornamented with three streaks of mustard, on to the dumbfounded skipper.

“Sakes alive!” said that astonished mariner, as soon as he could speak; “if he ain’t a-mustarding his own face now—­I never ’card of such a thing in all my life.  Don’t go near ’im, Hetty.  Jack!”

“Well,” said the mate, wiping his smarting face with his handkerchief.

“You’ve never been took like this before?” queried the skipper anxiously.

“O’course not,” said the mortified mate.

“Don’t you say o’course not to me,” said the other warmly, “after behaving like this.  A straight weskit’s what you want.  I’ll go an’ see old Ben about it.  He’s got an uncle in a ’sylum.  You come up too, my girl.”

He went in search of Ben, oblivious of the fact that his daughter, instead of following him, came no farther than the door, where she stood and regarded her victim compassionately.

“I’m so sorry,” she said “Does it smart?”

“A little,” said the mate; “don’t you trouble about me.”

“You see what you get for behaving badly,” said Miss Alsen judicially.

“It’s worth it,” said the mate, brightening.

“I’m afraid it’ll blister,” said she.  She crossed over to him, and putting her head on one side, eyed the traces wisely.  “Three marks,” she said.

“I only had one,” suggested the mate.

“One what?” enquired Hetty.

“Those,” said the mate.

In full view of the horrified skipper, who was cautiously peeping at the supposed lunatic through the skylight, he kissed her again.

“You can go away, Ben,” said the skipper huskily to the expert.  “D’ye hear, you can go away, and not a word about this, mind.”

The expert went away grumbling, and the father, after another glance, which showed him his daughter nestling comfortably on the mate’s right shoulder, stole away and brooded darkly over this crowning complication.  An ordinary man would have run down and interrupted them; the master of the Jessica thought he could attain his ends more certainly by diplomacy, and so careful was his demeanour that the couple in the cabin had no idea that they had been observed—­the mate listening calmly to a lecture on incipient idiocy which the skipper thought it advisable to bestow.

Until the mid-day meal on the day following he made no sign.  If anything he was even more affable than usual, though his wrath rose at the glances which were being exchanged across the table.

“By the way, Jack,” he said at length, “what’s become of Kitty Loney?”