“Better stow that you-be-damned manner of yours, young man. We’re outlaws, liable to be blown out of water any blessed minute. Those tarriers for’ard had just as soon throw you overboard as not if they don’t like your style. You ain’t a shipwrecked hero. You’re an unavoidable nuisance aboard this hooker. We’ve got other fish to fry.” The young man flushed angrily. He was pleasant-featured, fair-haired, of athletic build, his accent suggesting that he had imported it from England. He was conscious of his own importance in the world whose idols were money and social position. Grizzled old Johnny Kent, who had diced with fortune and looked death between the eyes on many seas, knew only one distinction between men. They were “good stuff” or they were “quitters.” As for money, to have a dollar in one’s pocket after a week ashore argued a prudence both stingy and unmanly. Wherefore he wholly failed to grasp the view-point of the young man who had been wrecked in a sea-going yacht. Fortunately Captain O’Shea came back to divert the chief engineer’s outspoken opinions. He called the castaway aside to say: “Come to the galley with me and the cook will do his best for ye. I will sit down there and hear your yarn. If you want some clothes, maybe I can fit you out. My men are looking after your sailors.” “This is a filibustering expedition, I take it,” exclaimed the other as they went forward. “I do not admit it,” judicially replied Captain O’Shea. “I will not turn state’s evidence against meself.” When they had perched themselves upon stools at the galley table the young man handed the skipper his card, which read: “_Mr. Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen._” The recipient eyed the card critically and commented: “Dutch? I had a Dutchman as bos’n once and, saving your presence, he was an oakum-headed loafer. Now, how did ye come to be in these waters and whose yacht was it?” Young Mr. Van Steen proceeded to explain. “She was the _Morning Star_, owned by my father, the New York banker--the old house of Van Steen & Van Steen. You have heard of it, of course. He decided to take a winter holiday-trip and asked me to go along--that is to say, Miss Forbes and me. She is my fiancée----” “You mean the young one. And she has signed on to marry you?” broke in Captain O’Shea with marked interest. “Yes. She invited her aunt, Miss Hollister, to make the voyage as a sort of chaperon. We cruised to Barbadoes, where my father was called home on business and took a mail-steamer in a hurry. We jogged along in the _Morning Star_ until her captain lost his bearings, or something of the kind, and you know the rest. We were ordered into a boat, but while waiting for an officer and more sailors a rain-squall came along--a nasty blow it was--and our boat broke loose, and we couldn’t get back to the yacht. The wind was dead against us.”