"I must see your papers, Captain." He got right down to business. Just then the gramophone struck up "Tipperary," and he began to whistle the tune while his men made for the galley. I ushered the two officers to the cabin. The one who stuck his head in first retreated holding his nose. "What a hell of a smell!" "Excuse me, Mister Officer, but my stove is out of order. I could not know you gentlemen were giving me a visit to-day." "Oh, never mind, Captain, that's all right, that's all right." I had purposely hung my underwear up to dry so it would be in their way and so that, in stooping to get under it, they would see the name "Knudsen" embroidered on it. As the chief search officer crossed the cabin he suddenly saw my charming wife Josephine, with her blonde wig, her swollen jaw, and the rug hiding her big feet. "Oh, excuse me." "That is my wife, Mister Officer. She has been having a bad go with the toothache." He was chivalrous, just as most Englishmen are. He might have been talking to a court lady, instead of that rascal Schmidt. "Sorry, madam, to intrude like this, but we must do our duty." "All right!" said my lovely but somewhat distorted better half in a high falsetto voice out of one corner of her mouth. "By Joe, Captain, you haven't much cabin left, have you? You have been through some rough weather!" "I wouldn't mind the rest, Mister Officer, but look at my papers. They are soaked, too." "I can understand that, after the weather you've had." "Yes, Mister Officer, it's all right for you to see them in this condition, because you saw the storm yourself, but later, if I meet some of your comrades who didn't hit the blow that we had, they may not take my word for it. That's what's worrying me." "Oh, don't worry, Captain, I'll give you a memorandum explaining the condition of your papers. You are lucky to have saved your ship." That memorandum was just what I wanted. There was no telling when we might be searched again. I had the papers scattered all over the cabin to dry, and each time I handed one to him I spat a stream of tobacco juice on the cabin floor. He examined the papers with a practised eye and made entries in his notebook. Each page in his book was for a ship, and I could see that thirty or forty pages had been used already. Yes, he was an experienced officer. When he came to the last document, the one signed with the false signature of the British Consul at Copenhagen and sealed with a false British Imperial seal, and read the formal statement that the _Irma's_ cargo of lumber was destined for the use of the British government in Australia, he turned to me suddenly. "These papers are all right, Captain."