‘Have you discovered the fire, sir?’ said the captain, calling down to him in such a collected voice as he would have used in requesting a passenger to take wine with him. ‘Yes, sir. It is a small affair. The hose will suffice, I think, sir.’ An instant after, the clanking of the plied pump was to be heard along with the sound of water steadily gushing, followed by a cloud of steam, which quickly vanished. A quarter of an hour later the mate came up black as a chimney-sweep. He touched his cap to the captain, and simply said: ‘the fire’s out, sir.’ ‘What was it, Mr. Prance?’ ‘A bale of blankets, sir.’ ‘Can you guess how it originated?’ ‘I expect that the man Crabb----’ began the mate. The captain started and stared. ‘The man Crabb,’ continued Mr. Prance, ‘whom we imagined dead and buried, sir, has been skulking in the hold’--old Keeling frowned with amazement--‘and I have no doubt he fired the bale whilst lighting his pipe.’ ‘Crabb in the hold!’ cried the skipper; ‘do you speak of the man whom we buried, sir?’ ‘The same, sir,’ answered Mr. Prance. Old Keeling gazed about him with a gaping face. ‘But he died, sir, and was buried,’ he exclaimed. ‘I read the funeral service over him, and saw, sir--Mr. Prance, I _saw_ with my own eyes the hammock fall from the grating after it had been tilted.’ The chief officer said something in reply which I did not catch, owing to the noise amongst the men who were yet in the hold and the talk of the sailors round about. He then walked to the boatswain’s berth followed by the captain, that old marline-spike’s eyes might bear witness to the assurance that the Crabb who had leapt up out of the fore-hatch in a smother of smoke was the same Crabb who had been solemnly interred over the ship’s side some weeks before. Mr. Cocker came wriggling out of the hold and got on to the deck alongside of me to superintend the restowal of the broken-out goods. ‘Is the fire out?’ I asked. ‘Black out,’ he answered. ‘It was no fire, to speak truly of it, Mr. Dugdale. A top bale of blankets or some such stuff was smouldering in about the circle of a five-shilling piece--a little ring eating slowly inwards, but throwing out smoke enough to furnish forth a volcano for a stage-scene. A beastly smell! not to speak of some of the stuff down there being as blackening as a shoe-polisher’s brushes.’ Here he looked at the palms of his hands, which were only a little more grimy than his face.--‘But what’s this I hear about Crabb? Has the dead sailor come to life again?’