John Smith is not his name, but who does not know and bless him if they have ever travelled on this particular boat.

He has a big, very black mole on the extreme tip of his nose, and is the cheeriest, most optimistic soul on the ocean wave, yea! even those out-size waves in the Bay at its worst.

After the first lightning perusal of the God-sped letter, Jan Cuxson had given divers urgent orders for as much as possible of his gear in the hold to be thrown ashore.

Imagine it, and the boat almost due to sail!

He had then rushed to his cabin and initiated the maelstrom, until common sense had smitten him between the love-fogged eyes of his desire; whereupon he had heaved a huge sigh of utter contentment, propped himself against the door for the second perusal, rung the bell, countermanded all he had ordered, and left John Smith to it.

He had pulled the letter out of its envelope, growled at a vendor of Egyptian wares, and turned with a whole-hearted smile at the sound of a small voice.

“Is ’oo velly unhappy, Mr. Bear?”

The man did not know that he had become the object of that loathsome habit of nicknaming all and sundry which a certain clique on every boat consider so smart.

“I’m the happiest man on earth—­water, I mean, little one.  Yes! come along up—­and why Mr. Bear?”

Followed a scramble, a gurgle, and arranging of infinitesimal frills.

“Mummie calls ’oo Mr. Grizzly Bear because you’re cwoss!  Mrs. Tom—­Tom—­li’son says Mummie’s cwoss ’cos ’oo wouldn’t take the buns she wanted ’oo too.  Why didn’t ’oo take the buns—­buns nice, I fink!”

An agitated nurse swooped down at this crucial moment and recovered that which she had lost, leaving the man laughing aloud to the astonishment of all near him.

Laugh!  Why he had not laughed since he had left Mortehoe Church, neither had he smiled at any time upon the boat, or upon anybody except the children; and now he laughed, all on account of an atrocious scrawl on many sheets of thin paper which he started once more to read.

“I hope,” ran the scrawl of the man for whom Cuxson had fagged at Harrow, “that this catches you at Port Said, because”—­followed a badly expressed bit of business.  “London’s had the shock of many seasons, by the way.  You know that old brute, Pickled Walnuts, well I won’t say anything about the old scallawag because he’s dead.  Well! he married the other day, you’d sailed I think, I didn’t go to the wedding.  Did you know Susan, old Hetth, V.C.’s sister by marriage—­up to her eyes in debt—­sold her niece to pay them, I suppose, to the old millionaire—­wonder what hold she had on the girl.

“Anyway they went off somewhere in Devon for the honeymoon, God help her.  It seems that she had had an accident the night before, or something, and fainted, or something, directly after dinner—­the wedding dinner, I mean.  Did you ever learn composition on the Hill?  I didn’t!