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The Lieutenant of the “Mongoose” dropped into a chair and read the mail papers for an hour. Then he saw Bai-Jove-Judson in the street and shouted to him. Judson’s eyes were very bright, and his figure was held very straight, and he moved joyously. Except for the Lieutenant of the “Mongoose”, the Club was empty.

“Juddy, there will be a beautiful row,” said that young man when he had heard the news delivered in an undertone. “You’ll probably have to fight, and yet I can’t see what the Admiral’s thinking of to -“

“My orders are not to fight under any circumstances,” said Judson.

“Go-look-see? That all? When do you go?”

“To-night if I can. I must go down and see about things. I say, I may want a few men for the day.”

“Anything on the “Mongoose” is at your service. There’s my gig come in now. I know that coast, dead, drunk, or asleep, and you’ll need all the knowledge you can get. If it had only been us two together! Come over with me!”

For one whole hour Judson remained closeted in the stern cabin of the “Mongoose”, listening, poring over chart upon chart and taking notes, and for an hour the marine at the door heard nothing but things like these: “Now you’ll have to put in here if there’s any sea on. That current is ridiculously under-estimated, and it sets west at this season of the year, remember. Their boats never come south of this, see? So it’s no good looking out for them.” And so on and so forth, while Judson lay at length on the locker by the three-pounder, and smoked and absorbed it all.

Next morning there was no flat-iron in Simon’s Bay, only a little smudge of smoke off Cape Hangklip to show that Mr. Davies, the second-class engine-room artificer, was giving her all she could carry. At the Admiral’s house, the ancient and retired bo’sun, who had seen many Admirals come and go, brought out his paint and brushes and gave a new coat of pure raw pea-green to the two big cannon-balls that stood one on each side of the Admiral’s entrance-gate. He felt dimly that great events were stirring.

And the flat-iron, constructed, as has been before said, solely for the defense of rivers, met the great roll off Cape Agulhas and was swept from end to end and sat upon her twin-screws and leaped as gracefully as a cow in a bog from one sea to another, till Mr. Davies began to fear for the safety of his engines, and the Kroo boys that made the majority of the crew were deathly sick. She ran along a very badly-lighted coast, past bays that were no bays, where ugly flat-topped rocks lay almost level with the water, and very many extraordinary things happened that have nothing to do with the story, but they were all duly logged by Bai-Jove-Judson.

At last the coast changed and grew green and low and exceedingly muddy, and there were broad rivers whose bars were little islands standing three or four miles out at sea, and Bai-Jove-Judson hugged the shore more closely than ever, remembering what the Lieutenant of the “Mongoose” had told him. Then he found a river full of the smell of fever and mud, with green stuff growing far into its waters, and a current that made the flatiron gasp and grunt.

“We will turn up here,” said Bai-Jove-Judson, and they turned up accordingly; Mr. Davies wondering what in the world it all meant, and the Kroo boys grinning. Bai-Jove-Judson went forward to the bows and meditated, staring through the muddy waters. After six hours of rooting through this desolation at an average rate of five miles an hour, his eyes were cheered by the sight of one white buoy in the coffee-hued mid-stream. The flat-iron crept up to it cautiously, and a leadsman took soundings all around it from a dinghy, while Bai-Jove-Judson smoked and thought, with his head on one side.