waiting on the quay for her with such correspondence as had come addressed to her in her absence. And Captain Peter Putt, taking his mail and sorting through it perfunctorily, found his attention arrested by an envelope imperatively marked “Urgent.”

Ripping it open, he glanced rapidly through the missive it contained. This done, he pushed his cap to the back of his head with a helpless gesture, blowing stertorously, and then read the letter for a second time.

After that, he stared about the vessel for some while, blinking incredulously. At last, with a comprehensive sweep of his arm, he summoned his crew about him. Leaving their labours to be completed by indignant hands on the quay, they gathered round the plump little form of Captain Dutt.

“Boys,” announced the skipper, simply, “the show’s bust!”

There was a startled, perplexed silence, and then the voice of Mr. Joseph Tridge rose aggrievedly.

“What ’ave they been finding out about us now?” he wanted to know. “Some folks is never ’appy without they’re trying to make mischief. What are we supposed to ’ave done wrong now, eh?”

“It can’t be that chap we sold the fish to in Starcross,” declared Mr. Horace Dobb, the cook. “Because I saw ’im the night before we left, and ’e never said a word about it to me. Kept ’is ’ead turned stiff the other way all the time, in fact.”

“There was that chap in Teignmouth,” recalled the p. 3aged Mr. Samuel Clark, uncomfortably. “You know, what we sold the—the tobaccer to.”

p. 3

“’Im?” returned Horace, the cook, with scorn. “’E ’asn’t got a leg to stand on. I never told ’im it was smuggled tobaccer, did I? I simply said it was stuff that ’adn’t paid duty. No more it ’ad! Serves ’im right for jumping to conclusions, just because a sailorman’s carrying a parcel on a dark night!”

“Yes, boys,” said the skipper, with a long, quivering sigh, as one awakening to cold reality from a happy dream, “it’s all over! All over! Itchybod!” he remarked, with sad satisfaction in finding the word. “Itchybod, that’s it!”

“And ’oo’s ’e?” truculently demanded Mr. Tridge. “What’s ’e got to say against us? Why, I’ll take my oath I ain’t ever even ’eard of ’im before!”

“It ain’t a ’im,” explained the skipper. “It’s a bit of clarsical 

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