"How's that?" I thought. "Why are the guns pointing? We are a peaceable Norwegian sailing ship. Why the guns?" She had her big guns trained on us, and her officers were on the bridge looking us over with their glasses. "Can we have been betrayed?" I asked myself. "Of what use is the best mask, of what use are the best men, if a traitor has done his dirty work?" The thought of treachery always makes the fighting man tremble. I went into my cabin, and like the drowning man who grasps at a straw, I remembered how before leaving port a friend gave me a parcel, saying: "My boy, take this package with you. But never open it unless you are in a tight fix. Then it may save you." Well, we were in a tight fix all right, so I opened the package. I took off one wrapper after another. Ah! It was a bottle of rare old Napoleon brandy, almost priceless, made more than a hundred years ago. "What was good for Napoleon ought to be good for me. He fought against the British, too. Maybe this is just what we need." I took sixteen or eighteen swallows, and with each gulp felt my cares getting lighter and lighter. Never did I thank God so much that I am not a teetotaller. The cruiser had put out a small boat. Two officers and sixteen sailors were rowing toward us. We must receive them cordially, I thought. Going to the gramophone I put on, "It's a Long Way to Tipperary." That will make the officers feel good. I also told the cook to stand in the door of the galley with a bottle of whisky in his hand. I know the British! I know what they like, and I guessed that while the officer proceeded with his job, his jack-tars would go poking about to see if they might find anything suspicious. I also suspected that they would go to the galley and sing out: "'I there, Cookie, got any grog?" Always give a British sailor a drink, or a German sailor, or an American sailor, or any kind of a sailor, for that matter. The boat was alongside. I began to swear at my men. It was hard for them to forget their naval habits, and, with an officer coming aboard, they were standing as stiffly as if at attention. "Take the line, by Joe. Give a hand, by Joe. Don't stand there like wooden men, by Joe." Then, too, it would sound natural to hear a Norwegian skipper swearing at his men. The search officer clambered aboard. "Merry Christmas, Captain." "Merry Christmas, Mister Officer," I replied, using the kind of broken English I thought a Norwegian skipper would use. I talk English with an accent, luckily about the same brand you would hear in a Scandinavian port. "But," I continued, "if you want to see what kind of Christmas we have had come along down to my cabin." "A bit of a nasty blow this past week, eh, what!" agreed the officer, "and from the look of your deck you've had more than your share of it. We went in behind the islands and waited for her to blow over." "Yes, luckily for us," I thought to myself.