Or--

'Mr. Potts, please be kind enough to go aloft and stop that

spilling-line on the fore-topsail-yard to the jackstay.'

And at meal-times the port watch mimicked Brose.

'Dear Mr. Potts, howner, be so good as to heat this 'orrid 'ash

without growling.'

And presently when the weather began to get cold and the men brought

out their Cape Horn P-jackets and their mitts, Geordie commenced to

growl a little.

'I hates turnin' out in the gravy-eye watch worse and worse,' he

said. 'I've half a mind to let on I'm sick.'

'You'd better go haft and tell the "old man" to 'ave the galley-fire

kep' alight all night,' said the crowd crossly. 'But you dasn't.'

'I dast,' said Geordie, 'why, I owns the bally galley!'

'You dasn't!'

'I will,' said Geordie. And next morning he went aft and touched his

cap to the skipper and begged to be allowed to speak to him.

'The galley-fire at night!' said Smith. 'Oh, certainly, Mr. Potts.

I never done it because it was against the horders of your late

revered huncle, sir.'

'He was as mean as mean,' said Geordie. 'I think I can afford the

fire, sir.'

The fire was lighted, and the crowd said Geordie was the right sort.

'And wot about the gear, Mr. Howner?' asked Jack Braby. 'If I was

you, before it gets too rotten cold, I'd have a real over'aulin' of

things.'

'I'll think of it,' said Geordie. And that very afternoon he tackled

Brose.

'The gear's tolerable rotten, sir,' he began. And the second greaser

knew he was right and yet didn't like to say so. He yearned to curse

him.

'And I'm thinkin',' said Geordie, 'it would be a good thing to get up

new stuff and overhaul everything. I risks my life every time I goes

aloft. The very reef earings would part if a school-girl yanked at

'em.'

'You'd better speak to Mr. Ware,' said Brose, choking.

And at eight bells Geordie spoke to the chief officer, who was quite

as anxious as the skipper to keep his billet. 'It shall be done,

Mister Potts,' said Ware.

In the first watch that night Geordie felt very tired, and said so.

When it was eight bells in the middle watch he was still asleep, or

pretended to be. 'Rouse out, howner,' said Braby, and he shook

Geordie up.

'I feels tolerable ill,' said Geordie. 'I don't think I shall turn

out.'

He didn't, and the rest of the port watch went on deck by themselves.

At the muster Mr. Potts didn't answer to his name.

'Mr Potts is hill, sir,' said the obsequious watch; ''e said 'e

couldn't turn out.'

'I thought it'd come soon,' said Brose to himself, and he went

for'ard to the fo'c'sle.

'Are you _very_ ill?' he asked drily.

'I don't know quite how I feel,' said the owner, 'but I thinks a

little drop of brandy would do me good.'

'I wish I could poison it,' said Brose under his voice. 'This is

most 'umiliatin' to a man in the persition of an officer.'

By noon Geordie was well enough to sit on deck and smoke a pipe. The

'old man' came to see him.

'Wouldn't you like a berth aft now, Mr. Potts?' urged the skipper.

'I'll think about it, captain,' said Geordie. 'And in the meantime I

don't think I'll turn to.'

The skipper looked at Brose.

'We can dispense with Mr. Potts's services for the time, eh, Mr.

Brose?'

'Certingly,' said Brose. But he walked to the rail and spat into the

great Pacific.

From that time onward Geordie did no work to speak of except to take

his trick at the wheel. And when they were south of the Horn he

decided to do that no longer.

'If you'll take my wheel for the rest of the passage I'll double your

wages,' he said to Braby. And Braby jumped at the offer. In the

morning Geordie went on the poop. It was noticeable that he went up

the weather poop ladder. Except in cases of hurry and emergency at

sea such a thing is next door to gross insubordination.

'I ain't goin' to take no more wheels,' said Geordie; 'and Braby will

take mine. I've doubled his wages.'

Even old Smith gasped. As for Brose he felt sea-sick for the first

time since he first went down Channel in an outward-bounder thirty

years before.

'I'll make a note of it,' said the skipper.

They shortened sail in a devilish quick flurry of a gale out the

south-west later in the day, and, as all the topsails were down on

the cap at once it was 'jump' and no mistake. As an act of kindly

condescension the owner went to the wheel and shoved away the

Dutchman there who was congratulating himself at not being on a

topsail-yard.

'Get aloft, you Dutch swab,' said Geordie. 'I'll take her for you.'

And Mr. Ware bellowed like a bull, for he had a fine

fore-topsail-yard voice, and when it was a real breeze his language

rose with the seas and was fine and flowery, vigorous and ornamental

and magnificent. While he was in the middle of a peroration which

would have excited envy in Cicero, or Burke, or a barrister with no

case, he heard the owner shouting. For a private interview with the

steward had given Geordie great confidence.

'Mr. Ware, Mr. Ware, I'd be glad if you'd cuss the men less. I don't

like it.'

The chief officer collapsed as if he were a balloon with a hole in

it, and for the next minute he and the skipper engaged in an excited

conversation.

'I can't, can't stand it,' said Ware.

'You must,' said old Smith almost tearfully.

And Ware did stand it. But, when the _Patriarch_ was shortened down

and he left the deck, he went below and swore very horribly for five

minutes by any chronometer. 'Now I know what Brose feels,' said

Ware. 'I've a great sympathy for poor Brose.'

The owner ordered a tot for all hands when they came down from aloft.

And he called the cook aft and harangued him from the break of the

poop.

'Now, Mr. Spoil-Grub, mind you cook better than you've been doin', or

I'll have you ducked in a tub and set your mate to doin' your work.'

He turned to the skipper with a beaming smile in his blue eyes.

'I can talk straight, can't I, cap?' he hiccupped blandly. 'I'm

thinkin' I'll lie down in the cabin.'

And when the 'old man' went below he found Geordie dossing in his own

sacred bunk. The poor old chap went and sat in the cabin and put his

head in his hands. 'This is a most horrid experience,' he said

mournfully. 'I don't like howners on board. I don't like 'em a bit!'

But it was not only the afterguard who suffered. Geordie shifted his

dunnage aft at last, and though he left the skipper's berth when he

was sober, he made himself very comfortable in the steward's. And he

loafed about all day on deck with his pipe in his mouth. He began to

look at the men with alien eyes.

'I tell you they're loafin', said he to Ware. 'Don't I know 'em.

They watches you like cats, and when your eyes are off 'em they do

nothin'. I'm payin' 'em to work and I'm payin' you to make 'em.

There's a leak somewhere.'

And he addressed the crowd from the poop.

'You're a lazy lot,' he said; 'that's wot you are. For two pins I'd

cut the galley-fire and your afternoon watch below!'

And next day he raised their wages. A week later he cut them down

again. The skipper had a hard job to keep track of what the ship

owed them.

'I wish we was home,' groaned old Smith. 'Oh, he'll be a hell of an

owner.'

'I'll murder him,' said Brose.

'Wot did I tell you, chaps, about the 'orrid effec's of sudden

richness in a man?' asked the old fo'c'sle man for'ard. 'Geordie

Potts was a good sort, but Mr. George Potts, Esquire, is an 'oly

terror. 'E raises hus hup an' cuts hus down like grass.'

And it presently came about that the only time they had any peace was

when Geordie was very much intoxicated. But when they got into the

calms of Capricorn on the home stretch to the north he developed a

taste for gambling, and made the old skipper sit up all night playing

'brag' for huge sums of money.

'I lends you the dibs, and, win or lose, it's all hunky for you,'

said Geordie. He wrote out orders to pay the 'old man' several

thousand pounds, and Smith began to feel rich. Then Geordie raked

Ware into the game. At last even Brose succumbed to the lure of 'I

promises to pay Mr. Brose five hundred on the nail,' and joined the

gamble.

'This is a dash comfortable ship,' said Geordie. 'What's a few

thousands to me? I don't mind losin'. Stoo'ard, bring rum.'

By the time they picked up the north-east trader, old Smith owed the

'owner' ten thousand pounds. Ware was five thousand to the good, and

Brose, who had played poker in California, was worth fifteen thousand

in strange paper. He began to dream of a row of houses with a

public-house at each end. He and Geordie grew quite thick, and

compared public-house ideals.

'I'm goin' to buy a hotel,' said Geordie; 'there's one in Trafalgar

Square, London, as I've in my mind. I'll fit up the bar till it fair

blazes with golden bottles.'

He borrowed the mate's clothes, and had a roaring time. And then

they came into the Channel, picked up a tug, and went round the

Foreland into London River.

'I'll bet lawyers and so on will be down to meet me,' said Geordie.

'They'll be full up with gold. To think of it! And to think I hit

my poor old uncle with a brick.'

He mourned over his brutality.

'He wasn't half a bad chap,' he said, 'and I don't see what call my

dad had to call him a blood-sucker, after all.'

They docked in the South-West dock, and sure enough they had not been

alongside their berth five minutes before old Tyser's usual London

agent and a very legal-looking person came on board.

'Let me interduce you to the new owner,' said the obsequious skipper,

as he led up Geordie, who had a smile on him large enough to cut a

mainsail out of.

'Oh,' said the lawyer, 'then this is Mr. Potts?'

'That's me,' said Geordie. 'Have you brought any money with you? I

owes Mr. Ware five thousand and Mr. Brose fifteen.'

The lawyer smiled.

'I'm afraid there's some mistake, Mr. Potts. Your uncle left a will

after all.'

Geordie's jaw dropped, and so did Ware's. But Brose's fell as falls

the barometer in the centre of a cyclone.

'And me--did he leave me nothin'?' roared Geordie.

'Oh yes,' said the solicitor. 'Mr. Gray, will you kindly give me

that cash-box you are carrying?'

And the agent handed him the cash-box.

'He left you this,' said the lawyer. 'And in this sealed envelope is

the key.'

And Geordie grabbed the box eagerly.

'It's heavy,' he said, 'it's tolerable heavy.'

And putting it on the rail, he opened it with the key.

There was half a brick in it.