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Captain Kettle showed his visitor courteously down to the temporary jail, and then returned to the chart-house and sipped his tea. "His name may really have been Cranze, but he was a poet, poor lad," he mused, thinking of the dead. "That's why he couldn't do the dirty work. But I sha'n't tell Lupton that reason. He'd only laugh and that poetry ought to be a bit of a secret between the lad and me.

Cranze is the er his friend who stands to draw the stamps." "Does Mr. Hamilton know you?" "Never seen me in his life." "Does this thief Cranze?" "Same." "Then, sir, I'll tell you what's your ticket," said Kettle, who had got an eye to business. "Take a passage with me out to the Gulf and back, and keep an eye on the young gentleman yourself.

He was not specially thankful to Hamilton for saving his life; said, in fact, that it was his plain duty to render such trifling assistance; and further stated that if Hamilton found his way over the side, he, Cranze, would not stir a finger to pull him back again.

"I'm going to see you hanged shortly, you drunken beast," he said, "but in the mean while you may as well get sober for a change, and explain things up a bit." Cranze swung his legs out of the bunk and sat up. He was feeling very tottery, and the painfulness of his head did not improve his temper. "Look here," he said, "I've had enough of your airs and graces.

So Cranze found himself hurtled out on to the lower fore-deck, where somebody handcuffed him neatly to an iron stanchion, and presently a mariner, by Captain Kettle's orders, rigged a hose, and mounted on the iron bulwark above him, and let a three-inch stream of chilly brine slop steadily on to his head.

He was very white about the face, except for his nose, which was red, and his eye had brightened up considerably. He was quite sober, and quite able to weigh any words that were dealt out to him. "Now," said Kettle judicially, "what have you done with Mr. Hamilton?" "Nothing." "You deny all knowledge of how he got overboard?" Cranze was visibly startled. "Of course I do. Is he overboard?"

"You're putting the thing in a new light, sir, and I thank you for what you've said. I see my course plain before me. So soon as we have dropped the pilot, I shall go straight to this Mr. Cranze, and tell him that from information received I hear he's going to put Mr. Hamilton over the side. And then I shall say: 'Into irons you go, my man, so soon as ever Hamilton's missing."

When any of the ship's company had a minute or so to spare, they came and gave Cranze good advice and spoke to him of his own unlovableness, and Cranze hurled brimstone back at them unceasingly, for king's peg in quantity always helped his vocabulary of swear-words.

It was off one of the ports in the peninsula of Yucatan, toward the Bay of Campeachy, that Cranze chose to fall overboard. The name of the place was announced by some one when they brought up, and Cranze asked where it was. Kettle marked it off with a leg of the dividers on the chart. "Yucatan," said Cranze, "that's the ruined cities shop, isn't it?"

He cast a bowline on to the end of the main sheet, and, watching his chance, hove the bight of it cleverly into Hamilton's grasp, and as Hamilton had come up with Cranze frenziedly clutching him round the neck, Kettle was able to draw his catch toward the lighter's side without further delay.