“No one let me out.  I picked the lock.  Will that suit you?” lied Franz, protecting me.

“What’s the lad been and done?” asked the mate of the Lord Summerville.

“I was shanghaied in New York,” put in Franz swiftly, “and I demand English justice.”

“And you shall get it, my man!” answered the mate proudly, “for you have been assaulted on English ground, as I’ll stand witness.”

A whistle was blown.  Men came running.  Soon Franz was outside the jurisdiction of Germany.

* * * * *

The next day Captain Schantze stalked about, hardly speaking to Miller.  He was angry and laid the blame at the latter’s door.

“Miller, why in the name of God didn’t you guard that fellow better?  An English court ... you know what they’ll do to us!”

Miller spread his hands outward, shrugged his shoulders expressively, remained in silence.  The two mates and the captain ate the rest of their supper in a silence that bristled.

The ship was detained for ten days more after its cargo had been unloaded.

At the trial, during which the “old maids” and The Sailors’ Aid Society came to the fore, Captain Schantze roared his indignant best—­so much so that the judge warned him that he was not on his ship but on English ground....

Franz got a handsome verdict in his favour, of course.

And for several days he was seen, rolling drunk about the streets, by our boys, who now looked on him as a pretty clever person.

* * * * *

It was my time to run away—­if I ever intended to.  Within the next day or so we were to take on coal for the West Coast.  We were to load down so heavily, the mate, who had conceived a hatred of me, informed me, that even in fair weather the scuppers would be a-wash.  Significantly he added there would be much danger for a man who was not liked aboard a certain ship ... by the mates ... much danger of such a person’s being washed overboard.  For the waves, you know, washed over the deck of so heavily loaded a ship at will.

* * * * *

On the Lord Summerville was a mad Pennsylvania boy who had, like myself, gone to sea for the first time ... but he had had no uncle to beat timidity into him ... and he had dared ship as able seaman on the big sky-sailed lime-juicer, and had gloriously acquitted himself.

He was a tall, rangy young bullock of a lad.  He could split any door with his fist.  He liked to drink and fight.  And he liked women in the grog-house sense.

One of his chief exploits had been the punching of the second mate in the jaw when both were high a-loft.  Then he had caught him about the waist, and held him till he came to, to keep him from falling.  The mate had used bad language at him.

Hoppner had worked from the first as if he had been born to the sea.