Bones took an especial delight in the _Wiggle_; it was his very own ship, and he gave her his best personal attention. It was Bones who ordered from London especially engraved notepaper headed "H. M. S. _Komfuru_"--the native name sounded more dignified than _Wiggle_, and more important than "Launch 36." It was Bones who installed the little dynamo which--when it worked--lit the cabins and even supplied power for a miniature searchlight. It was Bones who had her painted Service grey, and would have added another funnel if Hamilton had not detected the attempted aggrandizement. Bones claimed that she was dustproof, waterproof, and torpedo-proof, and Hamilton had voiced his regret that she was not also fool-proof. At five o'clock the next morning, when the world was all big hot stars and shadows, and there was no sound but the whisper of the running river and the "ha-a-a-a--ha-a-a-a" of breakers, Bones came from his hut, crossed the parade-ground, and, making his way by the light of a lantern along the concrete quay--it was the width of an average table--dropped on to the deck and kicked the custodian of the _Wiggle_ to wakefulness. Bones's satellite was one Ali Abid, who was variously described as Moor, Egyptian, Tripolitan, and Bedouin, but was by all ethnological indications a half-breed Kano, who had spent the greater part of his life in the service of a professor of bacteriology. This professor was something of a purist, and the association with Ali Abid, plus a grounding in the elementary subjects which are taught at St. Joseph's Mission School, Cape Coast Castle, had given Ali a gravity of demeanour and a splendour of vocabulary which many better favoured than he might have envied. "Arise," quoth Bones, in the cracked bass which he employed whenever he felt called upon to deliver his inaccurate versions of Oriental poets-- "Arise, for morning in the bowl of night Has chucked a stone to put the stars to flight. And lo! and lo!... Get up, Ali; the caravan is moving. Oh, make haste!" ("Omar will never be dead so long as Bones quotes him," Hamilton once said; "he simply couldn't afford to be dead and leave it to Bones!") Ali rose, blinking and shivering, for the early morning was very cold, and he had been sleeping under an old padded dressing-gown which Bones had donated. "Muster all the hands," said Bones, setting his lantern on the deck. "Sir," said Ali slowly, "the subjects are not at our disposition. Your preliminary instructions presupposed that you had made necessary arrangements _re personnel_." Bones scratched his head. "Dash my whiskers," he said, in his annoyance, "didn't I tell you that I was taking the honourable lady for a trip? Didn't I tell you, you jolly old slacker, to have everything ready by daybreak? Didn't I issue explicit an' particular instructions about grub?" "Sir," said Ali, "you didn't." "Then," said Bones wrathfully, "why the dickens do I think I have?"