he said at last, looking mighty white about the gills, ’this ship that we are in is more than half mine.  I am chief owner.  I’ll stake me share of the ship on the next game against all that I have lost.’  ‘Done!’ said I, and shuffled, cut, and dealt.  He went four on three highest trumps, and an ace, and I held four small trumps.  ‘It’s a bad job for my creditors,’ he said, as he threw his hand down.  Ged!  I started on that vyage a poor captain, and I came into port very fairly well off, and sailing in me own ship, too!  What d’ye think of that?”

“Wunderbar!” ejaculated the German.  “And the captain?”

“Brandy, and delirium tremens,” the major said, between the puffs of his cigarette.  “Jumped overboard off Finisterre, on the homeward vyage.  Shocking thing, gamblin’—­when you lose.”

“Ach Gott!  And those two knives upon the wall, the straight one and the one with the crook; is there a history about them?”

“An incident,” the major answered languidly.  “Curious, but true.  Saw it meself.  In the Afghan war I was convoying supplies through the passes, when we were set upon by Afreedees, hillmen, and robbers.  I had fifty men of the 27th Native Infantry under me, with a sergeant.  Among the Afreedees was a thumping big chief, who stood among the rocks with that very knife in his hand, the long one, shouting insults at our fellows.  Our sergeant was a smart little nigger, and this cheek set his blood up.  Be jabers! he chucked his gun down, pulled out that curved dagger—­a Ghoorkha knife it is—­and made for the big hillman.  Both sides stopped firing to see the two chaps fight.  As our fellow came scrambling up over the rocks, the chief ran at him and thrust with all his stringth.  Be jabers!  I thought I saw the pint of the blade come out through the sergeant’s back.  He managed to twist round though, so as to dodge it.  At the same time he hit up from below, and the hillman sprang into the air, looking for all the world like one o’ those open sheep you see outside a butcher’s shop.  He was ripped up from stomach to throat.  The sight knocked all the fight out of the other spalpeens, and they took to their heels as hard as they could run.  I took the dead man’s knife away, and the sergeant sold me his for a few rupees, so there they are.  Not much to make a story of, but it was intheresting to see.  I’d have bet five to three on the chief.”

“Bad discipline, very bad,” Baumser remarked.  “To break the ranks and run mit knives would make my old Unter-offizier Kritzer very mad indeed.”  The German had served his time in the Prussian Army, and was still mindful of his training.

“Your stiff-backed Pickelhaubes would have had a poor chance in the passes,” answered the major.  “It was ivery man for himself there.  You might lie, or stand, or do what you liked as long as you didn’t run.  Discipline goes to pieces in a war of that sort.”