Hughie turned and regarded his guest. The greater part of a magnum of vitriolic champagne had disappeared down that gentleman's throat. His eye had brightened, and now twinkled facetiously as he surveyed first Hughie and then the girl at the piano. "_Une petite pièce de tout droit_--eh, what?" he remarked. Hughie, beginning to understand why his companion was now swabbing decks instead of ruling ancestral acres, nodded shortly. Allerton noticed his host's momentary distance of manner, and leaned across the table with an air of contrition. "I'm afraid," he said apologetically, "that I'm getting most infernally full. You see how it is with me, don't you? I'm that sort of bloke. Always have been, from a nipper. Thash--That's why I'm here. It's a pity. And the worst of it is," he added, in a sudden burst of candour, "that I'm going to get much fuller. It's a long time since I tasted this." He touched his glass. "It isn't served out on the Orinoco. Do you--er--mind?" Hughie, with a queer feeling of compassion, smiled reassuringly, and ordered another bottle. If Allerton was about to get drunk, he should get drunk like a gentleman for once in a way. Then his attention reverted to the piano. There had been a development. The girl was mechanically playing one of the compositions of that delicate weaver of subtle harmonies, Mr. John Philip Sousa; but she was not reading her music. Her eyelids were resolutely lowered, as if she wished to avoid seeing something. The reason resolved itself into a gentleman who was leaning over the front of the piano, gazing amorously down upon the musician, and endeavouring, with surprising success, to make himself heard above one of the composer's most characteristic efforts. Hughie looked him up and down. He was a big man, powerfully built, with little pig's eyes set close together, and a ponderous and vicious-looking lower jaw. Was _he_ her husband? wondered the deeply interested Hughie. No: he was too obviously endeavouring to make himself agreeable. "Marrable, my son," suddenly interpolated the convivial but observant Allerton, "you're cut out! No use bidding against that customer. Do you know who he is?" "No. Who?" "That," replied the deck-hand with an air of almost proprietary pride, "is Noddy Kinahan." "Oh! And who may he be?" "Gee! (Sorry! One picks up these rotten Yankee expressions somehow.) I mean, I am surprised you haven't heard of him. He's rather a big man here. In fact, to be explish--explicit,"--Mr. Allerton was fast arriving at that stage of intoxication which cannot let well alone, but must tempt Providence by dragging in unnecessarily hard words,--"he is my employer." "Anything else."