'I say, old cock, pull yourself together,' said Logan, and rushing down the companion stairs, he reappeared with a bottle of champagne. To extract the cork (how familiar, how reassuring, sounded the _cloop_!), and to pour the foaming beverage into two long tumblers, was, to the active Logan, the work of a moment. Shaking Bude, he offered him the beaker; the earl drained it at a draught. He shuddered, but rose to his feet. 'Not a man alive on that doomed vessel,' he was saying, when anew the still air was rent by the raucous notes of a megalophone: 'Is _your_ exhibit all right?' 'Fit as a fiddle,' answered Logan through a similar instrument. 'Our exhibits are gone bust,' answered Captain Noah Funkal. 'Our professors are in fits. Our darkeys are all dead. Can your skipper come aboard?' 'Just launching a boat,' cried Logan. Bude gave the necessary orders. His captain stepped up to him and saluted. 'Do you know what these red fire-flies were that come aboard, sir?' he asked. 'Fire-flies? Oh, _musae volitantes sonorae_, a common phenomenon in these latitudes,' answered Bude. Logan rejoiced to see that the earl was himself again. 'The other gentlemen's scientific beasts don't seem to like them, sir?' 'So Captain Funkal seems to imply,' said Bude, and, taking the ropes, with Logan beside him, while the _Pendragon_ lay to, he steered the boat towards the _George Washington_. The captain welcomed them on deck in a scene of unusual character. He himself had a revolver in one hand, and a belaying pin in the other; he had been quelling, by the tranquillising methods of Captain Kettle, a mutiny caused by the terror of the crew. The sailors had attempted to leap overboard in the alarm caused by the invasion of the Berbalangs. 'You will excuse my friend and myself for not being in evening dress, during a visit at this hour,' said Bude in the silkiest of tones. 'Glad to see you shipshape, gentlemen,' answered the American mariner. 'My dudes of professors were prancing round in Tuxedos and Prince Alberts when the darned fire-flies came aboard.' Bude bowed. Study of Miss McCabe had taught him that Tuxedos and Prince Alberts mean evening dress and frock-coats. 'Did _your_ men have fits?' asked the captain. 'My captain, Captain Hardy, made a scientific inquiry about the--insects,' said Bude. 'The crew showed no emotion.' 'I guess our fire-bugs were more on business than yours,' said Captain Funkal; 'they've wrecked the exhibits, and killed the darkeys with fright: except two, and _they_ were exhibits themselves. Will you honour me by stepping into my cabin, gentlemen. I am glad to see sane white men to-night.'