“I’m too hard up to be noble,” said Wenlock drily.  “I’ve not come here on philanthropy, and marrying that girl is part of my business.  Besides, hang it all, man, think of what she is, and think of what I am.”  He looked himself up and down with a half humorous smile—­“I know nice people at home who would be civil to her, and after all, hang it, I’m not unmarriageable personally.”

“Still,” said Kettle doggedly, “I don’t like the idea of it.”

“Then let me give you an inducement.  I said I was not down here on philanthropy, and I don’t suppose you are either.  You’ll have my passage money?”

“Two and a-half per cent of it is my commission.  The rest goes to the owners, of course.”

“Very well, then.  In addition to that, if you’ll help this marriage on in the way I ask, I’ll give you L50.”

“There’s no man living who could do more usefully with L50 if I saw my way of fingering it.”

“I think I see what you mean.  No, you won’t have to wait for it.  I’ve got the money here in hard cash in my pocket ready for you to take over the minute it’s earned.”

“I was wondering, sir, if I could earn it honorably.  You must give me time to think this out.  I’ll try and give you an answer after tea.  And for the present I shall have to leave you.  I’ve got to go through the ship’s papers:  I have to be my own clerk on board here just now, though the Company did certainly promise me a much better ship if I beat up plenty of cargo, and made a good voyage of it with this.”

The Parakeet worked her way along down the Red Sea at her steady nine knots, and Mr. Hugh Wenlock put a couple of bunk pillows on a canvas boat-cover under the bridge deck awnings, and lay there and amused himself with cigarettes and a magazine.  Captain Owen Kettle sat before a table in the chart-house with his head on one side, and a pen in his fingers, and went through accounts.  But though Wenlock, when he had finished his magazine, quickly went off to sleep, Captain Kettle’s struggles with arithmetic were violent enough to keep him very thoroughly awake, and when a due proportion of the figures had been checked, he put the papers in a drawer, and was quite ready to tackle the next subject.

He had not seen necessary to mention the fact to Mr. Wenlock, but while that young man was talking of the Miss Teresa Anderson, who at present was “quite a big personage in her way” at Dunkhot, a memory had come to him that he had heard of the lady before in somewhat less prosaic terms.  All sailormen who have done business on the great sea highway between West and East during recent years have had the yarn given to them at one time or another, and most of them have regarded it as gratuitous legend.  Kettle was one of these.  But he was beginning to think there was something more in it than a mere sailor’s yarn, and he was anxious to see if there was any new variation in the telling.

So he sent for Murray, his mate, a smart young sailor of the newer school, who preferred to be called “chief officer,” made him sit, and commenced talk of a purely professional nature.  Finally he said:  “And since I saw you last, the schedule’s changed.  We call in at Dunkhot, for that passenger Mr. Wenlock to do some private business ashore, before we go on to our Persian Gulf ports.”