“Be careful, Nora, you are a heedless girl at times and Gerald is very sensitive. Our plight is too serious for jesting. Of course you must be civil to the captain, but he is a perfectly impossible person. Gerald will reward him for his trouble in our behalf. We are placing ourselves under no obligations whatever.” They were quite trim and fresh in dry clothes when the cook brought up a tray laden with the best fare the ship’s stores could provide and a pot of coffee black and hot enough to revive the most forlorn castaways that ever floated. “Th’ cap’n’s compliments,” said George, entering with a cake-walk shuffle, “an’ he tells me to inform you that if th’ grub is burnt or don’t taste right he’ll hang me up by mah thumbs an’ peel off mah no-’count hide with a rope’s end.” Miss Hollister appeared so ready to believe the worst that the rascally George could not forbear to add: “Of cou’se, I’se jes’ fillin’ in till th’ regular cook gits well. Mebbe you seen him when you come aboard. He was all spraddled out. It mighty near done for big Jiminez, I’se a-tellin’ you.” “What happened to him?” breathlessly demanded Miss Hollister, her hands clasped. “He done fetch th’ cap’n a cup of cold coffee, ma’am.” “How awful! And what was the matter with the white man in the khaki uniform?” “He tried to say a good word for th’ cook. And th’ cap’n done give him _his_. This is a lively ship, ma’am.” He could not help grinning as he turned to leave, and Nora Forbes caught him in the act. “You are an utterly shameless prevaricator,” cried she, “and I have a notion to report you to the captain.” “No need of it,” exclaimed O’Shea himself, who appeared in time to grasp the luckless George by the neck and pitch him down the stairway to the lower deck. “He is a good cook, but his imagination is too strong for him at times,” explained O’Shea as he stood in the door-way, declining Nora’s invitation to enter. “The both of ye look as lovely as a May morning. It agrees with you to be shipwrecked.” Miss Hollister thawed a trifle, although she was strongly inclined to accept the cook’s story as after the fact. But it was hard resisting the blarneying sailor with the merry eyes. “Is such severity necessary? I feel that I ought to protest--” she began, spurred by the prompting of a New England conscience. “And what was that slippery divil of a cook deludin’ ye about?” The spinster mustered courage to explain. Captain O’Shea roared with glee, and turning to Nora Forbes, as if recognizing a sympathetic listener, exclaimed: “Would ye know the truth about the big nigger? Then I will introduce you to-morrow to the man that laid him out, and a better one never stood on two feet than this same Jack Gorham, the melancholy sharp-shooter who captures ’em alive with the butt of his gun.”