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Updated: May 17, 2025
I didn't know we were dealing with such big figures. Well, Mr. Cranze has got his inducements to murder the man, anyway." "I told you that from the first. Now, Captain, are you going to take my check for that preliminary £20?" "Hand it over," said Kettle. "I see no objections. And you may as well give me a bit of a letter about the balance."
"What are you driving at?" "You know quite well. You got that poor fellow insured just before this trip, you got him to make a will in your favor, and now you've committed a dirty, clumsy murder just to finger the dollars." Cranze broke into uncanny hysterical laughter. "That chap insured; that chap make a will in my favor? Why, he hadn't a penny. It was me that paid for his passage.
Frivolity of this sort in no way suited the appetite of Captain Owen Kettle. He talked with Cranze with a certain dry cordiality. And at times he contradicted him. In fact the little sailor contradicted most passengers if he talked to them for long. He was a man with strong opinions, and he regarded tolerance as mere weakness. Moreover, Cranze's chronic soaking nauseated him.
"If he did it as openly as I have said, you'd arrest him at once. But you must remember Cranze will have been thinking out his game for perhaps a year beforehand, till he can see absolutely no flaw in it, till he thinks, in fact, there's not the vaguest chance of being dropped on. If anything happens to Hamilton, his dear friend Cranze will be the last man to be suspected of it.
"I'll put it as definitely as you like. I'll give you £20 to keep your eye on these men, and say nothing about what I've told you, but just watch. If you catch Cranze so clearly trying it on that the Courts give a conviction, the Company will pay you £200." "It's a lot of money." "My Company will find it a lot cheaper than paying out £20,000, and that's what Hamilton's insured for." "Phew!
"Lots fellows do't now," he explained. "Never know who-you-may-meet. S' a mos' useful habit." Now Captain Kettle, in his inmost heart, considered that Cranze was nerving himself up with drink to the committal of his horrid deed, and so he took a very natural precaution.
"Let's see if he's sober yet." The man on the bulwarks let the stream from the hose flop overboard, where it ran out into a stream of bubbles which joined the wake. Cranze gasped back his breath, and used it in a torrent of curses. "Play on him again," said Kettle, and selected a good black before-breakfast cigar from his pocket. He lit it with care.
Somebody alive to the jest turned on steam, and of a sudden Cranze was plucked aloft, and hung there under the derrick-sheave, struggling impotently, like some insane jumping-jack. Amid the yells of laughter which followed, Hamilton laughed also, but rather hysterically. Kettle put a hand kindly on his wet shoulder. "Come on board again," he said.
They made out I was in such a chippy state of health that they'd not let me have any more money unless I came on some beastly dull sea voyage to recruit a bit, and one of the conditions was that one of the boys was to come along too and look after me." "You'll look pretty foolish when you tell that thin tale to a jury." "Then let me put something else on to the back of it. I'm not Cranze at all.
And that's what I'm aiming at, and it's for that I'm scratching together every sixpence of money I can lay hands on." But here a sudden outcry below broke in upon their talk. "That's Mr. Cranze," said Kettle. "He'll be going too far in one of his tantrums one of these days."
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