"The serang said she-was a big buffalo bull of a woman, with a terror of a temper. I don't know what's Mr. Wenlock's business, sir; but whether he wants to start a dry-goods agency, or merely to arrange for smuggling in some rifles, he'd better make up his mind to square her first and foremost. She will have a finger in every pie. She's as curious as a monkey, too, and there's no doing anything without letting her know. And when she says a thing, it's got to be done." "Is she the head chief's favorite wife, then?" "That's the funny part of it: she isn't married. These Orientals always get husbands early as a general thing, and you'd have thought that in her juvenile days, before she got power, they'd have married her to some one about the town, whether she liked it or not. But it seems they didn't, because she said she'd certainly poison any man if they sent her into his zenana. And later on, when she came to be boss, she still kept to spinsterhood. Guess there wasn't any man about the place white enough to suit her taste." "H'm. What you've told me seems to let daylight on to things." "Beg pardon, sir?" Captain Kettle put his hand kindly on Murray's shoulder. "Don't ask me to explain now, my lad, but when the joke comes you shall share the laugh. There's a young man on this ship (I don't mind telling you in confidence) whose ways I don't quite like, and I think he's going to get a lesson." He went out then under the awnings of the bridge deck, and told Wenlock that he would probably be able to earn his fee for helping on the marriage, and Wenlock confidently thought that he quite understood the situation. "Skipper's a bit of a methody," thought Mr. Hugh Wenlock, "but his principles don't go very deep when there are fifty sovereigns to be earned. Well, he's a useful man, and if he gets me snugly married to that little girl, he'll be cheap at the price." The _Parakeet's_ voyage to Dunkhot was not swift. Eight-and-a-half knots was her most economical pace for coal consumption, and at that gait she steamed. With a reputation to make with his new owners, and two and a-half per cent, commission on all profits, Kettle had developed into a regular glutton for cargo; and the knowledge of men and places which he had so laboriously acquired in former days served him finely. Three times he got doles of cargo at good stiff freights at points where few other men would have dreamed of looking. He was an ideal man for the master of an ocean tramp. He was exactly honest; he had a world of misfortunes behind to spur him on; he was quick of decision; and he had developed a nose for cargo, and a knack of extorting it from merchants, that were little short of miraculous. And, in fact, if things went on as they had started, he stood a very good chance of making 50 per cent, on the _Parakeet's_ capital for the voyage, and so earning promotion to one of the firm's better ships.