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“Well, here’s another blessed day,” said Harman, as he took his trick with the steering paddle, “and that chap will be wakin’ just now with a palm-toddy head on him to find we’ve done him, but he won’t never know it’s us, worse luck. Anyhow, he’ll have his headache. There ain’t nothin’ to beat a palm-toddy head unless maybe samshu, but, samshu or palm toddy, drink don’t pay, nor Bourbon, nor Champagne—it don’t pay. I’m not sayin’ if a chap could get drunk and stay drunk I wouldn’t be the first to jine in, but it’s the wakin’ up——Oh, d——n petticuts!”

He had put his hand in his pocket for the handkerchief, at that moment flaunting itself on Motul beach around the brows of its proud possessor.

“Mind your steering!” cried Davis. “What ails you? Mind your paddle or we’ll be over.”

“Me handkerchief’s gone,” cried the distracted Harman. “She’s took it. Twice she nicked it from me before, and I ought to ha’ known—she’ll have flung them away, for it’s only the rag she wanted—buzzed them into the harbour most like. They were tied in the corner of it and she’d ha’ thought them stones—ten thousand dollars’ worth of——”