'A story is as good a way as any other of wiling away the evening, and you are welcome to hear the rest of this one,' admitted Dunbar. He was a grand talker, according to his compatriots, and he chiefly loved the engineers' mess-room, where he could sit by a table covered in oil-cloth, and sip a little weak whisky and water, and revert to his broadest Doric in company with some engineers from the Clyde. 'The _Rosana_,' continued Dunbar, clearing his throat, 'only carried one boat on her last journey. I happen to know that for a fact, but the Lord only knows the reason for it! Now, this boat was found, half-burnt, lying on a lonely bit of coast a few weeks after the _Rosana_ foundered. This is a thing which I may remark is not generally known; but I happen to have had ocular demonstration of it. The boat was a smart built one, with her name in gold leaf on the bows. Tranter was the captain of the _Rosana_, and he liked to have things nice. Now, why should this boat have been found half-burnt on the coast, but with a piece of her name in gold leaf still partially visible?' 'The boat probably drifted ashore,' said Peter, as if he were answering a question in a history class. Dunbar hardly seemed to hear him, and went on with hardly a moment's interruption. 'I am a student,' he said, 'of the deductive method of reasoning, and I begin with the _a priori_ assumption that E. W. Smith could not die. I should hold the same belief even if I believed in Purgatory.' (Dunbar pronounced the word with an incalculable number of r's in it, and it came from his throat like the rattle of musketry.) 'Presuming,' he went on, 'that the _Rosana_ foundered, was E. W. Smith the man to go down in her, or was he not?' 'I suppose some of them took to the boat,' said Toffy. 'In an affair of that sort it is a case of _sauve qui peut_.' 'The whole crew would have swamped the boat,' said Dunbar, who liked giving small pieces of information at a time. 'Consequently----' said Peter. 'Consequently,' said Dunbar, 'I 'm just biding my time, and I 'll tell you more when there 's more to tell.' 'It's a queer story!' said Peter. 'It's queerer than you think!' said Dunbar. 'You can't believe,' said the other, 'that this man Smith went off in the boat by himself?' 'I don't,' said Dunbar, 'for E. W. Smith couldn't row, and with all his sea-going he was a landsman to his finger-tips.' 'So then,' said Peter, 'he must have had accomplices, and accomplices always tell tales.' 'There 's one very certain way of silencing men,' said the Scot. Peter rose abruptly from his chair and threw his cigar end out over the water. 'It's a beastly suggestion,' he said briefly. His face was white, and he found himself hoping to God that this tale of Dunbar's would not bring back to him those horrible nights he had had at the beginning of the voyage.