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Ally Bazan had sobbed in his excitement over that vision and did not regain the power of articulate speech till the “loot” was safely stowed in the ‘tween-decks and Hardenberg had given order to come about.

“Now,” he had observed dryly, “now, lads, it’s Hongkong—or bust. ”

The tackle had fouled aloft and the jib hung slatting over the sprit like a collapsed balloon.

“Cast off up there, Nick!” called Hardenberg from the wheel.

Nickerson swung himself into the rigging, crying out in a mincing voice as, holding to a rope’s end, he swung around to face the receding hut: “By-bye-skevitch. We’ve hadsucha charming evening. Do hope-sky we’ll be able to come again-off. ” And as he spoke the lurch of theBerthatwitched his grip from the rope. He fell some thirty feet to the deck, and his head carromed against an iron cleat with a resounding crack.

“Here’s luck,” observed Hardenberg, twelve hours later, when Slick Dick, sitting on the edge of his bunk, looked stolidly and with fishy eyes from face to face. “We wa’n’t quite short-handed enough, it seems. ”

“Dotty for fair. Dotty for fair,” exclaimed Ally Bazan; “clean off ‘is nut. I s’y, Dick-ol’-chap, wyke-up, naow. Buck up. Buck up.’Ave a drink. ”

But Nickerson could only nod his head and murmur: “A few more—consequently—and a good light——” Then his voice died down to unintelligible murmurs.

“We’ll have to call at Juneau,” decided Hardenberg two days later. “I don’t figure on navigating this ‘ere bath-tub to no Hongkong whatsoever, with three hands. We gotta pick up a couple o’ A. B.’s in Juneau, if so be we can. ”

“How about the loot?” objected Strokher. “If one of those hands gets between decks he might smell—a sea-otter, now. I put it to you he might. ”

“My son,” said Hardenberg, “I’ve handled A. B.’s before;” and that settled the question.

During the first part of the run down, Nickerson gloomed silently over the schooner, looking curiously about him, now at his comrades’ faces, now at the tumbling gray-green seas, now—and this by the hour—at his own hands. He seemed perplexed, dazed, trying very hard to get his bearings. But by and by he appeared, little by little, to come to himself. One day he pointed to the rigging with an unsteady forefinger, then, laying the same finger doubtfully upon his lips, said to Strokher: “A ship?”

“Quite so, quite so, me boy. ”

“Yes,” muttered Nickerson absently, “a ship—of course. ”

Hardenberg expected to make Juneau on a Thursday. Wednesday afternoon Slick Dick came to him. He seemed never more master of himself. “How did I come aboard?” he asked.

Hardenberg explained.

“What have we been doing?”

“Why, don’t you remember?” continued Hardenberg. He outlined the voyage in detail. “Then you remember,” he went on, “we got up there to Point Barrow and found where the Russian fellows had their post, where they caught sea-otters, and we went ashore and got ’em all full and lifted all the skins they had——”

“’Lifted’? You meanstolethem. ”

“Come here,” said the other. Encouraged by Nickerson’s apparent convalescence, Hardenberg decided that the concrete evidence of things done would prove effective. He led him down into the ‘tween-decks. “See now,” he said. “See this packing-case”—he pried up a board—“see these ‘ere skins. Take one in y’r hand. Remember how we found ’em all in the cellar and hyked ’em out while the beggars slept?”

“Stolethem? You say we got—that isyoudid—got somebody intoxicated and stole their property, and now you are on your way to dispose of it. ”

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0;Oh, well, if you want to put it thataway. Sure we did. ”

“I understand——Well——Let’s go back on deck. I want to think this out. ”