“Oh, come!” said Glass, shaking him by the shoulder; “that bet you sent in last night!  When the Chink said you wanted to buy the low field for all six pools, and to bet five hundred to boot that you’d win, I thought you were either drunk or crazy.  Yesterday’s run was four-fifty-one, a regular corker, and yet with even better weather conditions, you took only the numbers below four-thirty-one.  I argued with the Chinaman ’til I was blue in the face, but he stood pat, said, you were all right, and had told him what to do.  Nothing but an accident could have saved you, and it arrived.  You’ve won the biggest pool of the crossing, don’t you think it’s about time for you to set ’em up?  Say Martini cocktails for the crowd, eh?”

Reynolds was jostled about in congratulation and good-humored banter.  Everybody was glad of the boy’s success, he was an all round favorite, and some of the men who had won his money felt relieved to return it.

“Here’s your cocktail, Freddy,” cried Glass, “and here’s to you!”

Reynolds stood in the midst of the crowd, his face flushed, his hair tumbled.  With a quick movement he sent the glass and its contents spinning out of a near-by port-hole.

“Not for Frederick!” he said with emphasis, “I’ve been that particular kind of a fool for the last time.”

Some hours later when the crowd went below to dress for dinner, Reynolds dropped behind to ask the Second Officer about the man who had been rescued.

“He is still pretty full of salt water,” said the Officer, “but he is being bailed out.”

“How did it happen?” asked Reynolds.

“Give it up.  He hasn’t spoken yet.  It looks as if he were getting ready to do some outside cleaning, for he had on a life-preserver.  Funny thing about it, though, that’s not his work.  He’s not even on duty during the starboard watch.  The man in the lookout saw him climb out on the bow, shout something up to him, then fall backward into the water.  I’ll be hanged if I can make it out.  Tsang Foo is one of the steadiest sailors on board.”

“Tsang Foo!” shouted Reynolds.  “You don’t mean that man was Tsang?”

With headlong haste he seized the bewildered officer and made him pilot him below decks.  Stumbling down the ladders and through dark passages, he at last reached the bunk where Tsang Foo lay with the ship’s surgeon and a steward in attendance.

The Chinaman’s lips were drawn tightly back over his prominent teeth, and his breath came in irregular gasps.  Across the pillow in a straight black line lay his dripping queque.  As his eyelids fluttered feebly, the doctor straightened his own tired back.

“He’ll come round now, all right,” he said to the steward.  “Give him those drops and don’t talk to him.  He’s had a close call.  I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

Reynolds crowded into the narrow apace the doctor had left.  The fact that he was saved from disgrace was utterly blotted out by the bigger fact that this ignorant, uncouth, foreign sailor had fearlessly risked his life to save him from facing a merited punishment.  Reynolds’s very soul seemed to grow bigger to accommodate the thought.