The Singing Monkey

Front matter

The Singing Monkey

A Complete Novelette by Charles Beadle Author of “Witch-Doctors,” “Captain Tristtam’s Miracle,” etc.

Chapter I

CHAPTER I

UNDER a sky that looked like an inverted bowl of asphalt the S. S. Hesperus, with her bridge and forecastle glimmering like the whites of the eyes of the trimmers in her holds, squatted sullenly beneath a coal-tip in Barry Dock, the waters of which were like a stagnant pond covered with black slime. At each roar following the tilting of a truck she appeared to shiver with disgust as if impatiently indignant at the return, after her war record, to her common lot in commercial life.

From behind endless lines of black trucks a rackety cab throbbed fussily beneath the filigree of metal girders, and disgorged on to the puddled stones the figures of a man in a black overcoat and high-crowned derby hat, and the slim figure of a girl whose scarlet hat and green cloak were as incongruous as a parrot in a field of dingy sparrows. Hopping daintily from one dry patch to another and dodging the sooty drips from the overhead rail-track, she made her way, carrying a light grip, on to the grimy gangway.

As she reached the rail a young man in a pea-jacket, whose only recognizable features were his blue eyes, hastened from the break of the bridge toward her as she descended the short inboard ladder and, raising his peak cap with grimy fingers which held a tally-book and pencil, proffered and withdrew the other hand.

“Sorry, Miss Kelvett!” he said, showing the gleam of teeth like a negro. “I'm mighty dirty. Let me take your bag.”

“Oh, thanks! Never mind; it's quite light,” she replied, smiling. “Isn't it awful? When d'you think we'll sail?”

“Afternoon tide, I expect. Afternoon, sir!” he added, saluting the captain following the wake of his niece.

“Evenin'! H'm,” grunted the Old Man, regarding the coal-shoot. “Haven't finished yet? The agent promised for noon.”

“I know, sir; but they're finishing No. 4 now.”

“Um. Mr. Selwyn aboard yet?”

“Mr. Selwyn?”

“Yes, yes. Young Selwyn, the owner's son. The owner told me he was to come the trip with us.”

“No, sir; haven't seen him yet.”

“All hands aboard?”

“Yes sir.”

“Tugs here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right!”

As Captain Kelvett trudged across the gritty iron deck after his niece the coal-grimed second mate stood watching until the slender figure had disappeared beyond the chartroom on the bridge. Then with a grumbling sound that sounded like a curse he returned to his post, lifted a flask to his lips and, scowling, chalked down another truck-load in the tally-book.

Down in the small saloon Vivien took off her cloak with a sigh of disgust.

“Pouf!” she snorted as she removed her hat and shook her bobbed black hair. “The place is like a passport office!”

“Can't help it, Vi, dear,” responded her uncle, extracting the ship's papers from a small black bag. “Can't open the ports until we're clear of the coal-dust.”

“Oh, 2!” ejaculated Vi, ex-W. A. A. C.

“Vi, dear!' expostulated the Old Man. “I wish you2”

“Rot, uncle!” retorted Vi, laughing. “You're pre-war. We fought for liberty—which includes women, you dear old thing. Now I'm going to change and go on deck for some air and coal-dust.”

SHE literally dived into her cabin off the saloon, to emerge ten minutes later in a khaki shirt and a blue reefer jacket, smoking a cigaret.

“Oh, uncle,” she called from the companion stairs, “what's this creature like?”

“What creature?” asked Captain Kelvett, looking up from the ship's papers on the saloon table before him.

“Mr.— Oh, the owner's creature.”

“Oh, young Selwyn? I don't know. Only met him once or twice in the office. Young, rather oversmart; looks a bit—um—a bit too fond of the grog. As a matter of fact that's why they've sent him for a trip, I think. Didn't say so, but2”

“Oh, what a rotten thing to do! This isn't a Keeley's institute, is it?”

“No, but— My dear, I didn't know he was coming until yesterday and—well, you know; he's the owner's son.”

“I see. Lashings of boodle.”

“Vi, dear, I wish you2”

But his protestation was drowned in the roar of coal pouring into the ship's hold. On deck Vi mounted on to the upper bridge where, protected more or less from the clouds of coal-dust, she could smoke and watch in comfort.

Vi was looking forward to an amusing trip. Since being “” she had suffered a little from the effects of pneumonia contracted in France. This had prevented her renewing a medical course afforded by a small income inherited from her mother. The doctors had ordered her to take a sea-voyage, and fortunately her uncle could give her what her purse could not pay for.

Ina feminine way—for even the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps hasn't taken the “fem” out of the word—she wondered idly what sort of “creature” the owner's son would be. Usually, she knew, officers and engineers of tramp steamers are not very interesting from a social point of view, although campaign experience had eliminated many little snobbish frills from her system, besides teaching her to smoke and to say “2” with her red lips instead of with her mind.

In the matter of “2” and tobacco there was probably more than a suspicion that the tendency to an excessive use of both drugs was due to a suppressed desire to show all and sundry, particularly ancient maiden ladies of England and the sentimental youths—if any remained—that women were free and equal wielders of the vote. Yet the handling of women had really taught her self-reliance and initiative just as much as leading men teaches a man, and in the knowledge of that she gloried; a type of girl who had discarded forever the ghosts of the crinoline and corsets of the savage Victorian era.

But to her uncle, who had been through the horrors of submarine war, in which he had been torpedoed twice, she had remained what he had always considered her, a mad-cap child—only possibly a little bit worse than ever!

AS IS often the case the agents were wrong and the second mate right. Within an hour the coal tip ceased to belch “black diamonds” into the capacious hold of the Hesperus, and two hours later a procession of beings, who might excusably be mistaken for negroes, emerged from the dusty bowels of the boat for the shore. Immediately afterward the dock pilot, who had been passing the grimy hour or two over a grog in the saloon after the manner of pilots, ascended to the bridge in company with Captain Kelvett.

The grizzled mate took up his position on the fo'c's'l' head and the second went aft. Men cried, tugs panted and fussed, the telegraph tinkled below in the engine-room and slowly the biscuit-box shaped hull of the tramp veered across the stagnant dock.

“Don't seem that young Selwyn is going to turn up,” remarked Captain Kelvett to his niece, who was interestedly watching the maneuvers of warping out.

“Perhaps he doesn't take kindly to coal-dust and rain,” she responded. “Don't blame the dear.”

“Oh, you won't say that when we're outside the roads and get washed down, Vi,” retorted the Old Man, who, like any sailor, was apt to take umbrage at any insult to his ship however ancient and humble she be.

“She certainly wants her buttons burnished!” replied the military niece. “Never mind, uncle,” she added, laughing. “I'll admit I didn't look pretty myself as a rooky doing fatigue. Oh, look at that funny little tug casting off or something. Why, she or it or whatever you call 'em looks exactly like our colonel. She puffed in that identical asthmatical manner.”

As soon as the blunt bow of the Hesperus was free of the other vessels along the dock-side the horny hand of the pilot summoned her own power. Cautiously she felt her way through the narrow passage of the lock-gates, waggling her tail in the absurd self-satisfied manner of the deep-laden tramp to the shouting of the harbor master. Just then she was hailed from the wharf. There a young man in a Homburg hat and coat, and carrying a cane, seated on a valise, waved his hand languidly.

“There's that fellow Selwyn,” muttered Captain Kelvett.

Vi eyed the distant figure appraisingly.

“Looks quite a lad,” she commented.

“Um. Why the 2 he can't come aboard like a gentleman instead of a drunken fireman I don't know,” grumbled the Old Man as he irritably pulled down the handle of the engine-room telegraph. “Stopping the way on her an' all, confound the man!”

As the port quarter of the ship crunched the fenders against the quayside the fashionable young man shouted hilariously to the second mate to lend him a hand. The grimy young man stared at him and bade him in rude terms to seek a warmer climate.

“Are you the 's'cond'?”

“I am,” snapped the second mate.

“Well, put over a gangway at once,” commanded the stranger arrogantly, “I'm Mr. Claude Selwyn.”

“Mr. Carnell!” bawled the captain from the bridge.

“Aye, aye, sir!” responded Carnell.

“Throw Mr. Selwyn a rope ladder. He's coming aboard.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” mumbled Carnell, throwing up his hand as a signal that he had understood the order.

A handy rope ladder was accordingly thrown over the quarter, and up this Mr. Selwyn proceeded to climb none too agilely. As he approached the rail the grimy Second held out his hand courteously to assist him. As Selwyn grabbed he apparently forgot that he could not hold his cane and the hands at the same time.

The former slipped and fell into the dock. With one leg cocked over the taffrail the owner's son stopped and treated the odd loungers on the quay and the attentive people on the boat to a fluent flow of words that would have raised the envy of the proverbial trooper.

“Look here,” interrupted the Second sharply before the epic was concluded; “you cut that out, mister.”

The owner's son regarded the filthy-looking object in front of him and desired to know in the name of the alleged abode of an alleged person whom he thought he was talking to.

“That's all right,” responded Carnell curtly. “You may be the owner's son, 2 knows, but anyway you're going to keep your mouth shut when women are about.”

“Women by 2!” exclaimed the other, cocking the other leg over the taffrail, “Where?”

“On the bridge—the captain's niece,” retorted Carnell sharply. “Get inboard; we're casting off.”

“So there is!” ejaculated the owner's son, looking up toward Vi on the bridge. “What luck!”

He jumped to the deck, gave a tip to the loafer who had followed him with his valise, and, turning to the Second, added—

“Just bring my bag along, will you?”

The Second glanced at him briefly from head to foot, turned away and held up both hands, calling out to the bridge—

“All clear, sir!”

Gingerly as if suddenly conscious of the filth from which he had derived so many pleasures in life Mr. Claude Selwyn picked his way amid the coal-strewn deck, mounted the ladder to the upper bridge and, glancing curiously at the figure of Vi, greeted the Captain hilariously:

“Hullo, cap'n; here I am. Thought I'd join the old tub after all.”

“Very kind, Mr. Selwyn,” muttered the Old Man, frowning unconsciously. “Um. This is my niece, Miss Kelvett—Mr. Claude Selwyn.”

“How d'ye do,” greeted Mr. Selwyn, sweeping off his hat. “Awfully glad to meet you.”

VI REGARDED him slowly over the top of a cigaret. She saw a man of about thirty who was rather pouched under the eyes, with a prinky nose and a tight, hard mouth decorated by a military-trimmed mustache.

“Really?” she drawled.

“Oh, aren't you?” he queried insolently.

“I reserve my decision,” she retorted, smiling.

“Begad, a Portia on a tramp!” he responded. “I'm awf'ly glad I came. Oh,” he added, glancing aft; “that bally fool's forgotten to bring my bag along. I say, cap'n, will you send some one along to fetch it? And by the way, did my stuff come aboard all right?”

“Half-speed, Mr. Fellows?” inquired Captain Kelvett of the pilot. “Half-speed it is! What's that, Mr. Selwyn? Oh, yes. I'll send a man along as soon as we're clear of the gates.”

Claude Selwyn frowned annoyance, turned aside and remarked to Vi gaily:—

“So were to be fellow passengers! I'd no idea I was going to be so bally lucky. The gov'nor insisted, and to tell the truth I kicked like—er—the devil. A fellow never knows his luck though; what?”

“Possibly.”

Vi leaned over the rail, paused as as if relenting and wishing to be sociable, added—

“D'you live in Cardiff?”

“Lord, no fear!” ejaculated Selwyn. “Awful bally hole.”

“Really? I was born there,” commented Vi coldly, regarding the cold green seas of the Bristol Channel.

“Oh, I say! 2 it all, so was I for that matter,” responded Selwyn. “But you know some Johnny says that there are only two things a chap can't choose—his parents and his place of birth.”

“Most true and most unfortunate,” agreed Vi, turning toward him. “Personally I regret that I'm not the daughter of a millionaire aristocrat and a cobbler's daughter—which would probably be the best chance for a genius.”

“A genuis! Well, I am or will be a millionaire,” retorted Selwyn, whose mustaches, which were rather like a tortured yew-hedge, were twisted to one side. And2”

For a fraction of a second Vi's big green eyes grew larger; then she took the cigaret from her lips and laughed.

“Quite so,” she responded gaily. “But—” she paused in mockery of his manner—“you're not an aristocrat.”

He stared at her for a moment. Both sides of his hard mouth curved.

“That's so,” he admitted. “My father was a shipping-clerk on the wharf over there; but he's got the goods.”

“Possibly,” retorted Vi. “But the third generation, you know2”

“!”

“Quite true,” agreed Vi, “but you learned that phrase in school and not from your mother.”

A shadow of anger passed across his eyes and the thin mouth tightened as he said—

“Maybe; that's not democratic.”

“Yes, it is,” she countered swiftly. “A true aristocrat—true, I said—has drawn noblesse oblige in his mother's milk and the proletariat has learned to work from the same source; but you're neither fish, flesh nor fowl! Have you a match?”

“I beg your pardon,” he murmured as he held a match under the shelter of the dodger.

“Thank you. Ah,” she cried as the ship courtesied to the swell outside the gates, “how glorious is that!”

“That's another rough fact,” he replied, grimacing.

Vi laughed maliciously. At that moment came the commotion as the Channel pilot came to relieve the dock-pilot and the ship slowed down to drop the latter. With the former came the second mate, Carnell, to begin his dog watch.

“I say, you!” exclaimed Selwyn as soon as he saw Carnell. “Where the 2's my bag?”

Carnell eyed the owner's son from head to foot slowly.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said distinctly.

“Where's my bag, confound it! I left it with you aft there.”

“I haven't the remotest idea of what you're talking about,” Carnell replied casually. He glanced at the captain's niece and on to the pilot, to whom he repeated—

“Stop it is, sir!”

Vi had caught the glance, the accent and the expression. She turned aside to smile. In response to a summons from her uncle Vi followed him from the bridge. When they were in the saloon Vi remarked—

“Who's that second mate of yours?”

“Good Heavens, Vi, I don't know,” responded her uncle, and added as if in explanation:

“He only signed on this last trip. Seems a decent chap, capable, and that's all I care. Don't like this other bumptious young man though.”

“Don't you? I think I rather like him. I love a scrap; and he's so funny!”

With which feminine remarked Vi dived into her cabin.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

FOR nearly a week the squat tramp swabbed off the marks of her trade, wallowed and plunged through cold green seas and stinging rainstorms. Vi, who after one day of uneasy emotions regarding food had proved to be a good sailor, spent most of her time on the upper bridge wrapped in oilskins, inhaling stores of tangy ozone into her injured lungs. Down below amid the creak and groan and swish Mr. Claude Selwyn lay wedged in his bunk, cursing his father for having sent him; cursing, too, the ship, the sea, the sky and the pussyfooted Chinese steward who waited upon with numerous bottles of champagne which the owner's son had provided for his plutocratic pleasure.

“You cussee too muchee,” Chi Loo told him softly many times. “You savvee man cussee too muchee s'ip go for die one time.”

“Be glad if the 2 thing did anyway,” moaned Selwyn. “Get out, you 2 2 chink, and don't talk so much! Here, come back, you! Open another bottle, savvee? Oh, Lord—urrgh!”

Once indeed Selwyn sent for the captain and irritably ordered him to put into the nearest port. Captain Kelvett regretted that he was unable to do so and advised him to go up on deck. Whereupon the owner's son wanted to know with many adjectives whether the ship didn't belong to him, and threatened to have the master sacked if he didn't obey. Captain Kelvett smiled indulgently, urged him not to drink so much champagne and left him.

When the Hesperus was wallowing off the coast of Portugal with a half-gale from the sou'west on her squat quarter Selwyn did struggle to the saloon table with the fiddles on, looking very white and wan. But the sight of Vi eating with the gusto of a sea-whipped appetite sent him scuttling back to his bunk peevishly protesting that they were leaving him to die.

The morning Vi spent as usual on the upper bridge, her dark, bobbed hair matted with rain upon her glowing cheeks framed in a yellow oilskin.

“When d'you think we shall be out of this dirty weather, Mr. Masters?” she inquired of the mate, whose grizzled mustaches stuck over a woolen wrapper which always he persisted in using as if he were subject to asthma or some other sedentary complaint.

“'Morrow probably, miss. Soon as we get through the Straits. Feel all right to-day?”

“All right!” echoed Vi indignantly. “I've been all right right along. Happen to be a good sailor, you know, Mr. Masters.”

“Mr. Selwyn there can't say as much, then. Haven't seen him since we cleared the roads.”

“Neither have I,” said Vi, smiling. “Except this morning for a moment.”

“Nice lad,” mumbled the old man, who always spoke as if airing a chronic grievance. “A bit wild. Always was, even as a kiddie. But he's got an eye for the main chance same as his pa.”

“You've been long with the firm, Mr. Masters?”

“Thirty years, miss. Started with 'em when old man Selwyn bought his first tramp. James Selwyn it was then, down on Water Street.”

“But,” exclaimed the girl, “why haven't you got a command by now? Why, it's2”

“Never had the price.”

“The price? Why, what2”

“I couldn't ever save—not on a mate's salary. Why, my dear young lady, for every ship there's half a dozen men holding extra-master's tickets. Those as has the money to invest gets the job.

“That's the way of the sea—or nowadays anyway. Always was, I reckon. Worst trade on earth. And yet I dunno. You know you get restless if you stop ashore for long.

“Sailors—some of 'em—are like that. They live a dog's life, cuss 2 out of it—beg pardon, miss!—and yet they can't keep away.”

“Heavens, I think it's a beastly shame!” ejaculated Vi.

He glanced through the window of the wheel-house at the clock and nodded to the helmsman, who struck the ship's bell. Eight bells echoed an instant later above the swish of the sea and wind from the break of the fo'c's'le head. Immediately afterward the second mate, Carnell, came on the bridge to relieve the mate, followed by a sailor to take his trick at the wheel.

“MORNING, Mr. Carnell,” greeted Vi, looking sharply at the man's features, which, when the coal-dust had been removed, revealed the weather-whipped red complexion of the Saxon.

“Goo' mornin', miss!' he responded with a distinct trace of the “sh” in his speech and, avoiding her eyes, turned his own red-rimmed ones, emphasized the more by the blond lashes, to the compass as he gabbled over the course and standing orders.

The first officer, who did not appear to notice or to care if he did notice, left the bridge mumbling something to Vi about lunch being on the table. But Vi did not seem inclined for food. She stood pretending to be interested in the tumbling lights of greens and creams, regarding the second mate obliquely while he walked, steadily enough in spite of the heaving deck, to the starboard dodger, where he began to fiddle around with the binocular-box attached to the rail.

Then after a while, as if deciding that the girl was never going below, he entered the wheel-house and bent down as if examining the steam-gear at the back. But Vi caught the significant movement of an elbow and the back of his head. Presently he came out on to the open bridge. His eyes seemed brighter and his actions more sure or perhaps more defiant.

“Beeshly wet weather!” he remarked as he passed her.

“Indeed,” said Vi with a quiver of the lips. “I should have imagined that it was exceedingly dry.”

His blue eyes held hers for a moment; then he laughed and walked on. At first Vi, who was of a sociable disposition, had met a taciturnity that was broken only by bitter remarks. The first of the mutual interests she discovered which led him to talk at all was of their respective experiences in the war; he of his not inglorious part upon, and frequently in, the water.

At times she had remarked that he became quite loquacious, his talk being interlarded with remarks of more than usual cynical bitterness, and at length she began to understand why. At first Vi was wroth and disgusted. She had a natural loathing for excess of any sort; an emotion strengthened by her slight medical knowledge, and more by her military service.

Yet she saw that he was young, not more than thirty, and from her uncle's remarks an exceedingly capable officer. 2 shame, she had muttered to herself; and took pains to show in a subtle manner what she thought.

But that seemed to make no difference to his conduct at all. And Vi realized that he must be a pretty heavy drinker, for although indulgence sometimes affected his speech it never seemed in the least degree to fuddle his brain or his feet. Of course she could not “sneak” to her uncle the captain, as apparently Carnell knew right well, although he always made a pretense of hiding his cups.

Now Vi had naturally as a woman a strong motherly instinct, and that instinct had strangely enough been fostered by her military experience as an officer of the W.A.A.C.'s, a tendency some people would say to boss one around. As she struggled against this earnest desire to lecture the man—a desire which as a matter of fact she had been fighting for several days—the subject came alongside her and leaning on the rail remarked conversationally:

“Haven't sheen Mr. Shelwyn around lately? How ish he?”

“Haven't the remotest idea!” snapped Vi.

She stared hard at the blunt black bow heaving from the green sea into gray sky and back, wiped a wet lump of hair from her right eye and turned her head.

“Mr. Carnell, why do you drink?”

“Drink!” he repeated as if he had never heard the word. “Drink! Why2”

The blue eyes stared in utter astonishment. Then slowly they seemed to glaze and came that typical Anglo-Saxon expression of blank taciturnity.

“I'm afraid that I don't understand, Mish Kelvett,” he said, the gravity of the voice drowning even the absurdity of the lisp.

“You know very well that I know that you drink, Mr. Carnell,” said Vi.

“Again you misunderstand me, Miss Kelvett,” he retorted with equal solemnity. “I have always undershtood that drinking—sh—shmoking—ish permitted to any one over the age of twenty-one; or ish it eighteen?”

“That's not the point. By drinking I mean to excess.”

“And by shmoking I mean to exshess.”

“Really, Mr. Carnell, I may smoke if I choose, but2”

“Quite sho,” he retorted and, turning on his heel, walked up the incline of the deck to the starboard corner.

“2 the man,” muttered Vi.

But as she clambered down the bridge-ladder she laughed.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

HOWEVER on the morrow they ran out of the dirty weather and by Tuesday morning were in the sunny Mediterranean. Most of the time Vi avoided the upper bridge during the second mate's watches. Every morning he saluted her politely but made no venture to enter into conversation.

Vi had decided that although she had perhaps exceeded the bounds of etiquette in broaching such a subject he had shown himself a “bit of a pig” in taking her up so curtly, and after all as it was no business of hers he should be allowed to go to the devil or elsewhere in his own way and gait. Yet sometimes watching him, his figure and profile against the sky as he “took the sun” on the upper bridge, a thought did occur that it was a pity to let such a nice boy ruin his career. And strangely enough she did not notice for some while after that the rawness of the eyelids had disappeared and that he did not lisp.

Of course as soon as the Hesperus ceased to plunge and roll Claude Selwyn appeared on deck again, wan and pale and rather subdued. Most of the time he lounged in a deck-chair in the lee of the chart-house, smoking cigarets and absorbing champagne at every meal and often between. Vi would lie beside him reading and sometimes chatting rather amused at the growing of the braggadocio in him as his health returned.

“Have some fizz, Miss Kelvett?” he would always say when Chi Loo appeared with the golden-necked bottle. “Rippin' stuff.”

Vi accepted until once as she was raising the glass to her lips she caught the eyes of the second mate, who was superintending some men working on an awning near by. Deliberately he smiled. Vi blushed and was furious. She put down the glass.

Afterward, to Selwyn's astonishment, she refused to drink. “2 impertinence,” she called it, losing her sense of humor. On the first opportunity she very haughtily returned the usual morning courtesy. Fortunately, she thought, second mates did not have their meals with the captain.

Selwyn's swagger grew to normal. To the captain he was condescendingly familiar, but to the officers he seldom spoke and obviously resented the fact that he was compelled to sit at table with a mere ship's mate; but to Vi he was talkative and very attentive, which rather tempted her for fun to make him fetch and carry for her.

He had had a commission in a Welsh corps, but regarding his movements in France he was so reticent that Vi shrewdly suspected that the hand of influence had kept him nearer to Paris or Boulogne than to the Flanders mud. However, he knew Paris and London from a moneyed point of view and his flippant descriptions and remarks were amusing enough to pass the time under a sky of blue on a violet sea.

According to his own account he was a bit of a gallant, and of his prowess he was apt to boast to a point beyond the canons of good taste. But to Vi after her shoulder rubbing with the world in the past four years such a small matter seemed rather silly than otherwise. And to tell the truth a small incident led her out of idle mischievousness to rather encourage him, for one afternoon as Selwyn was stroking his tiny mustaches with much gallantry in the middle of an account of life in war-time Paris she chanced to look up and beheld the Second leaning over the upper bridge, where obviously he could not help but hear, with a portentous frown of genuine anger on his face.

“Of all the 2 impertinence!” exclaimed Vi, and laughed loudly, a hilarity Selwyn naturally credited to her appreciation of his story.

SO THEY chugged across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal. The weather was as hot as the proverbial Red Sea. In the lightest of crash gowns, Vi gave up even reading in the heat. A light breeze was dead astern so that they were denied even the air made by the speed of the tramp.

Selwyn, cursing fluently because there was not an ample supply of ice, tried to bribe Chi Loo to steal some from the cabin ice-chest for his champagne, of which he guzzled exceedingly, ignoring the advice of the captain that wine merely made him feel the heat more than ever.

At dinner one night Selwyn implored the captain and Vi to join him in his cups. The heat certainly was trying. Although the captain refused Vi laughingly consented to have some. Selwyn became more than usually jubilant.

But the Old Man was right. In such a heat wine, particularly sparkling wine, does have an abnormal effect. The grizzled mate, as soon as he had finished his food, apologized and departed to the bridge to release the second. As he entered the saloon Vi was raising her glass to her lips.