“Yes,” said Cartoner, putting the dates carefully together in his mind. It seemed that the building of the _Minnie_ was not the epoch upon which he reckoned his periods. “She's in Morrison's dry-dock now,” said the captain, who in a certain way was like a young mother. For him all the topics were but a number of by-ways leading ultimately to the same centre. “You should go down and see her, Mr. Cartoner. It's a big dock. You can walk right round her in the mud at the bottom of the dock and see her finely.” Cartoner said he would. They even arranged a date on which to carry out this plan, and included in it an inspection of the _Minnie's_ new boiler. Then Captain Cable remembered what he had come for, and the plan was never carried out after all. “Yes,” he said, “you've a reckoning against me, Mr. Cartoner. I have never done you a good turn that I know of, and you saved my life, I believe, that time--you and that Frenchman who talks so quick, Moonseer Deulin--that time, over yonder.” And he nodded his head towards the southwest with the accuracy of one who never loses his bearings. For there are some people who always know which is the north; and others who, if asked suddenly, do not know their left hand from their right; and others, again, who say--or shout--that all men are created equal. “I've been done, Mr. Cartoner--that is what I've come to tell you. Me that has always been so smart and has dealt straight by other men. Done, hoodwinked, tricked--same as a Sunday-school teacher. And I can do you a good turn by telling you about it; and I can do the other man a bad turn, which is what I want to do. Besides, it's dirty work. Me, that has always kept my hands----” He looked at his hands, and decided not to pursue the subject. “You'll say that for me, Mr. Cartoner--you that has known me ten years and more.” “Yes, I'll say that for you,” answered Cartoner, with a laugh. “They did me!” cried the captain, leaning forward and banging his hand down on the table, “with the old trick of a bill of lading lost in the post and a man in a gold-laced hat that came aboard one night and said he was a government official from the Arsenal come for his government stuff. And it wasn't government stuff, and he wasn't a government official. It was----” Captain Cable paused and looked carefully round the room. He even looked up to the ceiling, from a long habit of living beneath deck skylights. “Bombs!” he concluded--“bombs!” Then he went further, and qualified the bombs in terms which need not be set down here.