"There isn't, and I've been there. You want a shot-gun in Florida to shoot callers with, not eatables. I've written verse there, and good verse, but it was the same old tale, sir, that brought it up to my fingers' ends. I'd been having trouble just then--yes, bad trouble. No, Mr. Hamilton, you go home, sir, to England and find a country place, and get on a farm, and watch the corn growing, and hear the birds sing, and get hold of the smells of the fields, and the colors of the trees, and then you'll enjoy life and turn out poetry you can be proud of." "Doesn't appeal to me. You see you look upon the country with a countryman's eye." "Me," said Kettle. "I'm seaport and sea bred and brought up, and all I know of fields and a farm is what I've seen from a railway-carriage window. No, I've had to work too hard for my living, and for a living for Mrs. Kettle and the youngsters, to have any time for that sort of enjoyment; but a man can't help knowing what he wants, sir, can he? 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." "I'm piously hoping the drunken brute will tumble overboard," Hamilton muttered; "it would save a lot of trouble for everybody. Eh, well," he said, "I suppose I'd better go and look after him," and got up and went below. Captain Kettle sat where he was, musing. He had no fear that Cranze, the ship's butt and drunkard, would murder his man in broad, staring daylight, especially as, judging from the sounds, others of the ship's company were at present baiting him. But he did not see his way to earning that extra £200, which he would very much like to have fingered. To let this vulgar, drunken ruffian commit some overt act against Hamilton's life, without doing him actual damage, seemed an impossibility. He had taken far to great a fancy for Hamilton to allow him to be hurt. He was beginning to be mystified by the whole thing. The case was by no means so simple and straightforward as it had looked when Lupton put it to him in the hotel smoking-room ashore. Had Cranze been any other passenger, he would have stopped his drunken riotings by taking away the drink, and by giving strict orders that the man was to be supplied with no further intoxicants. But Cranze sober might be dangerous, while Cranze tipsy was merely a figure of ridicule; so he submitted, very much against his grain, to having his ship made into a bear-garden, and anxiously awaited developments. The _Flamingo_ cleared the south of Florida, sighted the high land of Cuba, and stood across through the Yucatan channel to commence her peddling business in Honduras, and at some twenty ports she came to an anchor six miles off shore, and hooted with her siren till lighters came off through the surf and the shallows.