The ship's-officers were received on the _Boodah_ in a deck-room containing a number of boats with castored keels, capable of being quickly launched down an incline, where Mr. F. Quilter-Beckett, the Admiral, with some lieutenants, awaited them at a bureau on which lay documents, while in the background stood Hogarth and Loveday, and, “Gentlemen, this is a most damned wild piece of madness!” broke out wrathfully the first-officer, as he dashed up wild-eyed to the level: “in consideration of the guns you have in this thing--” “But your Captain?” asked Quilter-Beckett, a courtly man, with a dark-curling beard, a star on his breast. “The Captain won't come!” whined the officer in perfect English: “I suppose you realize the terrible consequences of this stoppage, gentlemen?” “But you are wasting time, sir. You represent your Captain?” “Of course, I represent--!” “Then just cast your eye over this”--that so slighted letter, sent years before by Hogarth to Foreign Offices, claiming the sea as his private manor. The officer read it half through with flurried closeness; then, “Well, but what is all this?” he broke out: “is it a piece of comedy, or what, gentlemen?” “It is serious; and the last clause comes into operation to-day: only such ships being held authorized to pass on the sea as pay to the first-reached sea-fort on any voyage a tax, or sea-rent, of 4s. per ton on their registered tonnage, with an additional stamp-tax of 33s. 4d. for receipt, and a stamp-tax of £1 16s. 8d. for clearance. You will see at a glance the clauses of the law, if you cast your eyes over this schedule--” “Law!” the other broke in: “you talk of _Law_! But doesn't the sea, then, belong by right to all men--?” “Not more than the land. Ask yourself: why should it? But I do hope you won't argue: your time must be so precious”. Out shrilled the _Kaiser Wilhelm's_ whistle of recall. “I must go!” said the officer with a worried hand-toss: “I must go. If you give me those documents, I will show them to the Captain--but he is not the sort of man--this is mere piracy, after all! But, good God, gentlemen, if you only dare touch that ship, I shouldn't put myself in your place this day week for all--” He snatched the papers, dashed, and his men, in a passion of haste, lay to the oars, the _Kaiser_ only four hundred yards from the _Boodah_; and the officer, shaking aloft the documents, pitched up the stair, the centre of five hundred pairs of scared eyes, while the captain bored his way to him. Two minutes of intense low speech, crowded with gestures: and suddenly the Captain's face, till now haggard, reddened; out went his shaken fist; with eyes blazing like lunacy, up he flew to the bridge; and now he is bending down with howling throat: “Passengers to their berths!”