The _Higgins_ had been waiting two days for her last man when Bucking Broncho fell a victim to the manhunters. The cowpuncher, discovered in Chinatown busy celebrating his first night off the prairie, was pounced upon by these vultures as "an easy thing." Skilfully they drugged him, cheerfully they possessed themselves of his wad of notes, then, overcome by the humour of the idea, instead of substituting the trade rags for his clothes as usual in shanghai-ing men, they slung him aboard an hour after midnight in all the glory of chaps and spurs. Thus, with her complement gained at last, the _Higgins_ was about to get under weigh. Wholly oblivious of the events of the past night, thanks to the strength of the dope, with buzzing head and half-fuddled senses the cowboy stood gazing stupidly at the scene before him. "I'm shorely plumb locoed," he muttered. "What for of a play is this I'm into?" Overhearing this, the man sluicing himself turned round. "Bit muzzy still, mate----" he began, and then stopped in surprise. This man formed a big contrast to the broken-looking crowd in the foc's'le. As he stood there in the morning light, stripped as he was to the waist, he looked the beau ideal of health: the muscles on his arms and shoulders stretched the skin till it shone, and heightened the artistic effect of the beautiful Japanese tattooing which, in the shape of dragons, butterflies, Geisha girls, and other quaint designs, made a picture gallery of his body. Six foot high at least, he stood lightly on his feet with the careless grace of one used to a heaving deck. A peculiar look of devil-may-care good nature stamped his clean-cut, deeply tanned features, yet there was a keen glint of shrewdness in his blue eyes, decision in his firm chin and resolute lips, with just a touch of martial fierceness in the twirl of his small moustache. No tenderfoot this man, though there was no mistaking his nationality. "A d----d Britisher" was written large all over him. Bare-footed though he was, in well-worn dungarees, with leather belt and sheath-knife, his birth was plain as his nationality. In England they would use one word to describe him--the one word "rolling-stone"; but in the world not one but a dozen words would be required--frontiersman, sailor, soldier, gold-miner, cowboy, hunter, scout, prospector, explorer, and many more, all marked "dangerous" in the catalogue of professions, for the "rolling-stone" takes to dangers and hardships just as a city man does to dollars and comforts. And who shall lay the blame? It's all in the blood, whether you take your strain from Francis Drake the buccaneer or Shylock the Jew. Such was the man who faced Broncho--just a British rolling-stone, a modern freelance, a sea rover. As he spoke, Bucking Broncho gave him a keen look, and then cried out: "I'm a coyote if it ain't Derringer Jack. Shake, old pard, you-alls ain't shorely forget Bucking Broncho?"