“Joe wouldn’t like it, mum,” said the boy anxiously. The last glimpse he had had of the skipper’s face did not make him yearn to share his bed with him. “Stuff an’ nonsense!” said Mrs. Harbolt hotly. “Who’s Joe, I’d like to know? Out you come.” “I can’t move, mum,” said Jemmy firmly. “Nonsense!” said the lady. “I’ll just put it straight for you first, then in it you go.” “No, don’t, mum,” shouted Jemmy, now thoroughly alarmed at the success of his plot. “There, there’s a gentleman in that bunk. A gentleman we brought from London for a change of sea air.” “My goodness gracious!” ejaculated the surprised Mrs. Harbolt. “I never did. Why, what’s he had to eat?” “He—he—didn’t want nothing to eat,” said Jemmy, with a woeful disregard for facts. “What’s the matter with him?” inquired Mrs. Harbolt, eyeing the bunk curiously. “What’s his name? Who is he?” “He’s been lost a long time,” said Jemmy, “and he’s forgotten who he is—he’s a oldish man with a red face an’ a little white whisker all round it—a very nice-looking man, I mean,” he interposed hurriedly. “I don’t think he’s quite right in his head, ’cos he says he ought to have been buried instead of someone else. Oh!” The last word was almost a scream, for Mrs. Harbolt, staggering back, pinched him convulsively. “Jemmy!” she gasped, in a trembling voice, as she suddenly remembered certain mysterious hints thrown out by the mate. “Who is it?” “The _captain!_” said Jemmy, and, breaking from her clasp, slipped from his bed and darted hastily on deck, just as the pallid face of his commander broke through the blankets and beamed anxiously on his wife. Five minutes later, as the crew gathered aft were curiously eyeing the foc’s’le, Mrs. Harbolt and the skipper came on deck. To the great astonishment of the mate, the eyes of the redoubtable woman were slightly wet, and, regardless of the presence of the men, she clung fondly to her husband as they walked slowly to the cabin. Ere they went below, however, she called the grinning Jemmy to her, and, to his private grief and public shame, tucked his head under her arm and kissed him fondly. IN LIMEHOUSE REACH It was the mate’s affair all through. He began by leaving the end of a line dangling over the stern, and the propeller, though quite unaccustomed to that sort of work, wound it up until only a few fathoms remained. It then stopped, and the mischief was not discovered until the skipper had called the engineer everything that he and the mate and three men and a boy could think of. The skipper did the interpreting through the tube which afforded the sole means of communication between the wheel and the engine-room, and the indignant engineer did the listening.