"Are you galling me?" a hoarse voice replied. It seemed to come out of the air, above and behind the steward. He turned with a start, and a moment later he beheld the head of Mr. Neilsen bristling above the thwarts of Number Six boat. He had been sitting in the bottom of the boat to shelter himself from the wind, and some symbolistic Puck had made him fasten his cork jacket round his pyjamas very firmly, but upside down, so that he certainly would have been drowned if he had been thrown into the water. "It's all right, Mr. Neilsen," said the steward. "The danger is over." "Are ve torpedoed?" The round-eyed visage with the bristling hair was looking more and more like Bismarck after a debauch of blood and iron, and it did not seem inclined to budge. "No, sir! The shock damaged your room a little, but we must have left the enemy behind. You had a lucky escape, sir." "My Gott! I should think so, indeed! The ship is not damaged in any vay?" "No, sir. There was a blaze in your room, and I'm afraid they had to throw all your things overboard. But the purser says he can rig you out in the morning; and we have another room ready for you." "Then I vill gum down," said Mr. Neilsen. And he did so. His bare feet paddled after the steward on the cold wet deck. At the companionway they met the shadowy figure of the captain. "I'm afraid you've 'ad an unpleasant upset, Mr. Neilsen," he said. "Onbleasant! It vos derrible! Derrible! But you see, captain, I vas correct. And this is only the beginning, aggording to my information. I hope now you vill take every bre-caution." "They must have mistaken us for a British ship, Mr. Neilsen, I'm afraid. I'm having the ship lighted up so that they can't mistake us again. You see? I've got a searchlight playing on the Argentine flag aloft; and we've got the name of the ship in illuminated letters three feet high, all along the hull. They could read it ten miles away. Come and look!" Mr. Neilsen looked with deepening horror. "But dis is madness!" he gurgled. "The _Hispaniola_ is marked, I tell you, marked, for gomplete destruction!" The captain shook his head with a smile of skepticism that withered Mr. Neilsen's last hope. "Very vell, then I should brefer an inside cabin this time." "Yes. You don't get so much fresh air, of course; but I think it's better on the 'ole. If we're torpedoed we shall all go down together. But you're safer from gunfire in an inside room." The unhappy figure in pyjamas followed the steward without another word. The captain watched him with a curious expression on his broad red face. He was not an unkindly man; and if this German in the cork jacket had not been so ready to let everybody else aboard drown he might have felt the sympathy for him that most people feel toward the fat cowardice of Falstaff. But he thought of the women and children, and his heart hardened.