Tom was soon stripped, dried, swathed in warm blankets, and dosed with brandy till his blood tingled. Mr. Greatorex fussed round him, waiving his proffered explanations until he was thoroughly recovered. Then Tom gave him an account of all that had happened since he left the yacht, Mr. Greatorex breaking in every now and then with “Dear, dear!” “You don’t _say_ so!” “The villains!” “What a _mercy_!” and such like exclamations. Early in the narrative he interrupted with a question: “You say Oliphant! Who’s Oliphant? Am I on my _head_ or my _heels_?” “Oh, I forgot you didn’t know,” said Tom with a smile. “Your new stoker was Oliphant in disguise. You see, Byles, your late stoker, had to remain at home and attend to his sick mother.” “No more sick than I am!” declared Mr. Greatorex. “Don’t believe he _had_ a mother! M’Cracken, indeed! I’ll M’Cracken him! I hope his father will get him well _thrashed_ when he goes back to school.” “He’s rather big for that, don’t you think?” “The bigger the better! I never _heard_ of such a thing! The impudence of it! And taking us all _in_ so! What things are coming to I don’t know. No obedience, no respect for age—pretending to be Scotch, too——” “Well, he is Scotch, you know.” “Don’t tell _me_! He’s only Scotch when it suits him. There are others like him in the Lords. He was never Scotch in _my_ house—where he shall never show his face again, _never_!” Tom was not deceived by this explosion of wrath. He knew very well that Mr. Greatorex was only relieving the tension of his feelings, and working off his nervous excitability on the most convenient object. “Les absents ont toujours tort,” he remembered. Mr. Greatorex presently calmed down, and heard the rest of the story in comparative quietude. “And what are we to _do_?” he said at the close. “Swob doesn’t matter; we’re not bound to lift a finger for _him_; but we can’t leave Ingleton and M’C—— and Oliphant in the hands of those wretches. They’ll break up our machine, too, and play the very deuce with _my property_. What are we to _do_?” What Tom answered is shown by subsequent events. Two or three hours after his return to the yacht, when he had had a thorough rest and a good meal, a well-armed party, consisting of the whole ship’s company except the cook and one seaman, left the yacht, on which all lights had been extinguished, and rowed with muffled oars to a sheltered cove on the south side of the bay—that furthest removed from the Arab encampment. Mr. Greatorex had insisted on joining the party. In vain Tom pointed out that a hard march was before them, suggesting delicately that Mr. Greatorex was not so light as he once was. The merchant puffed the objection away. They disembarked in dead silence, and, leaving two of their number to take the boat back to the yacht, made their way cautiously up the cliff.