“‘Come!’ howls Cap’n Naskett. ‘Come! A feller sneaks up alongside o’ me with a boat-load of street-sweepings dressed as sailors, and snaps me up while I’m asleep, and you ask me what I come for. Look here. You clap on all sail and catch that boat o’ mine, and put me back, and I’ll call it quits. If you don’t, I’ll bring a law-suit agin you, and make you the laughing-stock of two continents into the bargain.’ “Well, to make the best of a bad bargain, the cap’n sailed after the cussed little boat, and Mr. Salmon, who thought more than enough time had been lost already, fell foul o’ Cap’n Naskett. They was both pretty talkers, and the way they went on was a education for every sailorman afloat. Every man aboard got as near as they durst to listen to them; but I must say Cap’n Naskett had the best of it. He was a sarkastik man, and pretended to think the ship was fitted out just to pick up shipwrecked people, an’ he also pretended to think we was castaways what had been saved by it. He said o’ course anybody could see at a glance we wasn’t sailormen, an’ he supposed Mr. Salmon was a butcher what had been carried out to sea while paddling at Margate to strengthen his ankles. He said a lot more of this sort of thing, and all this time we was chasing his miserable little boat, an’ he was admiring the way she sailed, while the fust mate was answering his reflexshuns, an’ I’m sure that not even our skipper was more pleased than Mr. Salmon when we caught it at last, and shoved him back. He was ungrateful up to the last, an’, just before leaving the ship, actually went up to Cap’n Brown, and advised him to shut his eyes an’ turn round three times and catch what he could. “I never saw the skipper so upset afore, but I heard him tell Mr. McMillan that night that if he ever went out of his way again after a craft, it would only be to run it down. Most people keep pretty quiet about supernatural things that happen to them, but he was about the quietest I ever heard of, an’, what’s more, he made everyone else keep quiet about it, too. Even when he had to steer nor’-nor’-west arter that in the way o’ business he didn’t like it, an’ he was about the most cruelly disappointed man you ever saw when he heard afterwards that Cap’n Naskett got safe to Liverpool.” AFTER THE INQUEST It was a still fair evening in late summer in the parish of Wapping. The hands had long since left, and the night watchman having abandoned his trust in favour of a neighbouring bar, the wharf was deserted. An elderly seaman came to the gate and paused irresolute, then, seeing all was quiet, stole cautiously on to the jetty, and stood for some time gazing curiously down on to the deck of the billy-boy _Psyche_ lying alongside.