[Illustration: Cover art] [Frontispiece: ADMIRAL SIR RICHARD DUNNE] The Promotion of the Admiral And Other Sea Comedies By Morley Roberts Author of "The Colossus," "The Fugitives," etc. _Illustrated_ _BOSTON_ * L. C. PAGE & COMPANY * _Publishers_ _Copyright, 1902, 1903_ By THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY _Copyright, 1903_ By L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) _All rights reserved_ _Third Impression_ Published August, 1903 THE WORKS OF MORLEY ROBERTS The Idlers Lady Penelope Rachel Marr The Promotion of the Admiral L. C. PAGE COMPANY New England Building Boston, Mass. CONTENTS I. The Promotion of the Admiral II. The Settlement with Shanghai Smith III. The Policy of the _Potluck_ IV. The Crew of the _Kamma Funder_ V. The Rehabilitation of the _Vigia_ VI. Three in a Game VII. The Man from Abo VIII. The Scuttling of the _Pandora_ THE PROMOTION OF THE ADMIRAL. Mr. Smith, who ran a sailors' boarding-house in that part of San Francisco known as the Barbary Coast, was absolutely _sui generis_. If any drunken scallawag of a scholar, who had drifted ashore on his boarding-house mud-flats, had ventured in a moment of alcoholic reminiscence to say so in the classic tongue, Shanghai Smith would have "laid him out cold" with anything handy, from a stone-ware match-box to an empty bottle. But if that same son of culture had used his mother tongue, as altered for popular use in the West, and had murmured: "Jerusalem but Mr. Smith's the daisy of all!" Smith would have thrown out his chest and blown through his teeth a windy oath and guessed he was just so. "Say it and mean it, that's me," said Smith. "I'm all right. But call me hog and I am hog; don't you forget it!" Apparently all the world called him "hog." For that he was no better than one, whether he walked, or ate, or drank, or slept, was obvious to any sailor with an open eye. But he was hard and rough and tough, and had the bull-headed courage of a mad steer combined with the wicked cunning of a monkey. "Don't never play upon me," he said often. "For 'get even' is my motter. There ain't many walkin' this earth that can say they bested me, not from the time I left Bristol in the old dart till now, when I'm known the wide world over." So far as ships and sailormen were concerned he certainly spoke the truth. He was talked of with curses in the Pacific from the Prybiloffs to the Horn, from San Francisco to Zanzibar. It was long odds at any given time in any longitude that some seaman was engaged in blaspheming Shanghai Smith for sending him on board drunk and without a chest, and with nothing better to propitiate his new shipmates with than a bottle of vinegar and water that looked like rum till it was tasted. Every breeze that blew, trade wind or monsoon, had heard of his iniquities. He got the best of every one.