“They shall carry back to America my farewells!” he said, smiling.  “This to Pappas, the bootblack, who is my friend.  This to a girl back in America, with eyes—­behold that darkest blue, my children; so are her eyes!  And this black one to my sister, who has lost a child.”

The first class watched the spray also—­as it rose to the lip of a glass.

Now at last it seemed they would break a record.  Then rain set in, without enough wind to make a sea, but requiring the starboard ports to be closed.  The Senior Second, going on duty at midnight that night, found his Junior railing at fate and the airpumps going.

“Shut ’em off!” said the Senior Second furiously.

“Shut ’em off yourself.  I’ve tried it twice.”

The Senior Second gave a lever a vicious tug and the pump stopped.  Before it had quite lapsed into inertia the Chief’s bell rang.

“Can you beat it?” demanded the Junior sulkily.  “The old fox!”

The Senior cursed.  Then he turned abruptly and climbed the steel ladder he had just descended.  The Junior, who was anticipating a shower and bed, stared after him.

The Senior thought quickly—­that was why he was a Senior.  He found the Red Un’s cabin and hammered at the door.  Then, finding it was not locked, he walked in.  The Red Un lay perched aloft; the shirt of his small pajamas had worked up about his neck and his thin torso lay bare.  In one hand he clutched the dead end of a cigarette.  The Senior wakened him by running a forefinger down his ribs, much as a boy runs a stick along a paling fence.

“Wha’ ish it?” demanded the Red Un in sleepy soprano.  And then “Wha’ d’ye want?” in bass.  His voice was changing; he sounded like two people in animated discussion most of the time.

“You boys want to earn a sovereign?”

The Purser’s boy, who had refused to rouse to this point, sat up in bed.

“Whaffor?” he asked.

“Get the Chief here some way.  You”—­to the Purser’s boy—­“go and tell him the Red Un’s ill and asking for him.  You”—­to the Red Un—­“double up; cry; do something.  Start him off for the doctor—­anything, so you keep him ten minutes or so!”

The Red Un was still drowsy, and between sleeping and waking we are what we are.

“I won’t do it!”

The Senior Second held out a gold sovereign on his palm.

“Don’t be a bally little ass!” he said.

The Red Un, waking full, now remembered that he hated the Chief; for fear he did not hate him enough, he recalled the lifebelt, and his legs, and the girl laughing.

“All right!” he said.  “Gwan, Pimples!  What’ll I have? 
Appendiceetis?”

“Have a toothache,” snapped the Senior Second.  “Tear off a few yells—­anything to keep him!”

It worked rather well; plots have a way of being successful in direct proportion to their iniquity.  Beneficent plots, like loving relatives dressed as Santa Claus, frequently go wrong; while it has been shown that the leakiest sort of scheme to wreck a bank will go through with the band playing.