Telling Muir that I would rejoin him at the inn before long, I slipped off my clothes, tossed them together in a heap on the beach with a big stone atop to keep them from being blown away, and plunged into the water. I am a strong swimmer, and the tide was running out so swiftly that when I reached the “Cuban Queen,” which was moored about a mile from shore, I was not in the least “winded,” and indeed felt more than fit to fight my way back against the current. But, in order that the game should work out as I had planned, it was necessary for me to assume the appearance of being extremely exhausted. Hence when I found myself approaching the hulk I began to make a pretence of swimming feebly, panting noisily meanwhile, and sending up the most pitiful cries for help. As I had expected and intended, Hughes came on deck, and looking over the ship’s side inquired loudly, “Wot’s the ---- row?” Hughes, I may here remark, was, as I soon discovered (you could not be in his company for half a minute without doing so), a man of painfully limited vocabulary. Perhaps I should say that his colour sense had been developed at the expense of his vocabulary, for if he did not see everything in a rose-coloured light, he certainly applied one adjective, vividly suggestive of crimson, to every object which he found it necessary to particularise. “Wot’s the ---- row?” he repeated, when there was no immediate reply to his question. “Help!” I gasped faintly, pretending to make frantic clutches at a mooring chain, and clinging to it as if half dead with exhaustion and fear. “Who are yer?” he inquired suspiciously, “an’ how’d yer get ’ere?” I was anxious to play my part so as not to arouse his suspicion, hence I did not reply for at least a minute, but continued to pant, gasp, and cough, until my breath might reasonably be supposed to have returned, and then I said faintly, “Help me to get on board and I’ll tell you.” “You can’t coom aboord,” he answered surlily. “No one ain’t allowed aboord these ships.” “I _must_,” I said, with as much appearance of resolution as was consistent with the half-drowned condition which I had assumed. “Must yer?” he said. “We’ll ---- soon see about that,” and then for the second time he put the question, “Who are yer, and ’ow’d yer get out ’ere?” I replied, in sentences suitably abbreviated to telegraphic terseness, that my name was Max Rissler. Was a friend of Mr. Hardy Muir. Was staying at Canvey for shooting. Had thought would like a swim. Had got on all right till I had tried to turn, and then had found current too strong. Had become exhausted, and must have been drowned if had not fortunately been carried past hulk. Hughes evidently considered the explanation satisfactory, for his next question was not about myself but about my intentions. “And what are you going to do now?” “Come on board,” I answered promptly. “Yer can’t do that,” he said. “No one ain’t allowed aboord these ---- boats.”