“Thank you,” I said, seizing the treasure and dropping it into my pocket. “I had come to ask about it. It’s an old friend, and I should have been sorry to lose it.” I was turning to go out again when she stopped me once more. “There’s a bit of an unpleasantness going on in there,” she said, nodding towards the parlour. “I should be glad if you could find time to sit down there for a few minutes, sir. Perhaps the presence of a stranger and a gentleman might keep them in order.” “Very well,” I said. “Send me in a glass of grog and I’ll smoke my pipe in the parlour, and hear what they have to say.” As I entered and looked round through the blue haze of tobacco smoke, it was not difficult to see who were the parties to the “unpleasantness,” for the inmates of the room, about a dozen in number, lounged on the settles, regarding with placid expectancy two men who occupied separate tables near the fire-place. They were both mariners of the better class, apparently ship-masters; and one of them--a tall, burly Norwegian with the palest of blue eyes and a mass of straw-coloured hair and beard--stood resting his knuckles on the table while he glared ferociously at his antagonist--a thick-set, powerful man, apparently English, whose swarthy face was made remarkable by a deep scar on the jaw, the contraction of which had drawn his mouth and nose somewhat to one side. “I ask you again,” exclaimed the Norwegian, huskily, “do you say I am a liar?” The Englishman made no reply, but a curious, sour, one-sided smile spread over his face, giving it a rather sinister appearance. “Whoy don’t ye answer the man, ’nstead o’ settin’ there a-agravatin’ of ’im?” protested a jovial smacksman (who appeared to be attired for a dress rehearsal of “Puss in Boots”). “I have answered him,” replied the other gruffly. “I have told him that I have got a smashed channel and he has a dent on his stem; he’s lost half a jibboom and I’ve found one--on my deck.” “What’s the row about?” I asked a Cockney bargeman who sat near the door, fondling a pewter pot. “It’s all along of a collision. ’E begun the rumpus,” replied the bargeman jerking his head vaguely at the fireplace. “Which one?” “’Im,” responded the bargee, nodding again. “That bloke with the kink in ’is dial.” This delicate allusion to the Englishman’s facial peculiarity appeared to reach the ears of its subject, for he turned sharply and inquired-- “What’s that you’re saying?” “I was telling this gentleman what the trouble was about,” replied the bargee, meekly, evidently wishing he had clothed his ideas in less allegorical language. “And what the devil has it got to do with either you or him?” demanded the Englishman. “Why there y’are. ’Tain’t got nothin’; but I’m arst a civil question and I gives a civil answer,” and the bargee veiled his countenance with the pewter pot. “As to me,” said I, as persuasively as I could, “I hope you won’t take offence at my curiosity, which is really not unnatural, you know.”