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"Incredible licence!" breathed Cobby. "Who can it be?"

"There you beat me—though I expected he'd not be far, and have been on the look-out to spot him. Anyway, here he is."

"And are the ratlins of fibre or wire?"

"Wire-rope those foremost ones."

"Then he must have a hack-saw. We will report to the captain, and have a search——"

Rolls threw his hand. "Of course, the captain will know; but that says nothing. The bottom of the Atlantic is a fine place to hide a hack-saw—if he didn't nick it from the ship's chest, to put back after using...."

This thing sensationalized the last three days of the voyage for everyone—an eruption in the uninterrupted.

Only one man—a steerage passenger—did not appear in the assembly before the captain in the saloon: him the doctor reported to be ill—had pharyngitis—inflammation of the mouth—had to be interviewed separately in his bunk.

"Which of them would that be?" Rolls asked himself.

Knowing all the faces present, and unable to recall the absent face, he conceived a curiosity to see it, and the next morning took down a bottle of "bub" (rum-and-milk), in a neighbourly way to the sick one—"something to keep the blues out, friend."