"P.S.--If you wish to meet Mr. John P. Sant, captain of the _Harvester_, now lying in the bay and sailing the day after to-morrow, I can arrange it." But both the postscripts were written on separate pieces of paper. Mr. Cartwright was not chief of police in a land of justice for nothing. He knew his way about. Dicky Dunn, on receiving Peter's letter, called in his flag-lieutenant. "When they shanghaied me, they knocked you about rather badly, didn't they, Selwyn?" Selwyn instinctively put his hand to the back of his head. "Yes, Sir Richard. They sand-bagged me, as they call it, and kicked me too." "I'm pretty sure I know who did it," said the admiral, "and I'm proposing to get even with the man myself. It seems that it will be a difficult thing to prove. Besides, I'm not built that way. I don't want to prove it and send the man to gaol. I like getting even in my own fashion. What would you do if I could tell you who it was that laid the plot against us that night?" Selwyn was a clean-skinned, bright-eyed, close-shaven young fellow, as typical an Anglo-Saxon salted in the seas as one could meet. His eyes sparkled now. "I--I'd punch his head, sir." The admiral nodded. "I believe I did punch his head, years ago, Selwyn. But he was looking for a fight and found it, and ought to have been satisfied. Between you and me and no one else, the chief of police here and I have fixed this matter up between us. He says that he has no evidence, and the only man who might have given the affair away has been shipped off somewhere. I'm going to show Mr. Smith that he didn't make a bucko mate of me for nothing. And I want you to help. I've got a scheme." He unfolded it to Selwyn, and the young lieutenant chuckled. "He used to be a seaman," said the admiral, "but for twelve years he's been living comfortably on shore, sucking the blood of sailors. And if I know anything about American ships--and I do--he'll find three months in the fo'castle of this _Harvester_ worse than three years in a gaol. Now we're going to invade the United States quite unofficially, with the connivance of the police!" He lay back and laughed. "Oh, I tell you," said the admiral, "he ran against something not laid down in his chart when he fell in with me. You can come ashore with me now and we'll see this Cartwright. American ways suit me, after all." "Then I understand, Mr. Cartwright," said the admiral, an hour later, "that there won't be a policeman anywhere within hail of this Smith's house to-morrow night?" "I've got other business for them," said Peter. "And I can see Mr. Sant here this afternoon?" "I'll undertake to have him here if you call along at three." He spent the interval at lunch with the British Consul.