"Kindly walk up," said Kettle, with bitter hospitality, as fresh flocks of them were heaved up over the bulwarks. "Don't hesitate to grumble if the accommodation isn't exactly to your liking. We're most pleased to strike out cargo to provide you with an elegant parlor, and what's left I'm sure you'll be able to sit on and spoil. Oh, you filthy, long-haired cattle! Did none of you ever wash?" Fiercely the _Grosser Carl_ burned to the fanning of the gale, and like furies worked the men in the boats. The _Grosser Carl's_ own boat joined the other two, once the ferrying was well under way. She had hung alongside after Kettle cast off her line, with her people madly clamoring to be taken on board; but as all they received for their pains was abuse and coal-lumps--mostly, by the way, from their own fellow-countrymen, who made up the majority of the _Flamingo's_ crew--they were presently driven to help in the salving work through sheer scare at being left behind to drown unless they carried out the fierce little English Captain's orders. The _Flamingo's_ chief mate oversaw the dangerous ferrying, and though every soul that was transshipped might be said to have had ten narrow escapes in transit over that piece of tossing water, luck and good seamanship carried the day, and none was lost. And on the _Grosser Carl_ the second mate, a stronger man, brazenly took entire command, and commended to the nether gods all who suggested ousting him from that position. "I don't care a red what your official post was on this ship before I came," said the second mate to several indignant officers. "You should have held on to it when you had it. I've never been a skipper before, but I'm skipper here now by sheer right of conquest, and I'm going to stay on at that till the blooming old ship's burnt out. If you bother me, I'll knock your silly nose into your watch-pocket. Turn-to there and pass down another batch of those squalling passengers into the boats. Don't you spill any of them overboard either, or, by the Big Mischief, I'll just step down and teach you handiness." The second mate was almost fainting with the heat before he left the _Grosser Carl_, but he insisted on being the last man on board, and then guyed the whole performance with caustic gayety when he was dragged out of the water, into which he had been forced to jump, and was set to drain on the floor gratings of a boat. The _Grosser Carl_ had fallen away before the wind, and was spouting flame from stem-head to poop-staff by the time the last of the rescuers and the rescued were put on the _Flamingo's_ deck, and on that travel-worn steamboat were some six hundred and fifty visitors that somehow or other had to be provided for.