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 people will carry them out. Don't disturb yourself in the least. Send the stuff alongside and we'll attend to it.'

And when the stuff comes alongside in charge of a slow-minded understrapper they do attend to it. They talk the man blind and dumb, sack his cargoes, and turn him adrift to study vouchers at his leisure. Then the First Lieutenant grins like a Cheshire cat; the carpenter, so called because he very rarely deals with wood, the armourer and the first-class artificers sweat with joy, and the workshop lathes buzz and hum. But the understrapper gets particular beans because a great part of his stuff was meant for another ship, and she is very angry about it.

Late in the afternoon the defrauded vessel sends over a boat to the Early Bird, and wants to know if she has seen or heard anything of some oak baulks, a new gangway grating, some brass-work, and a few drums of white paint.

'Why, was that yours?' says the First Lieutenant. 'We thought it was ours.'

'Well, it isn't. It's ours. Where is it?'

'I'm awfully sorry, but—I say, won't you come and have a drink?'

They come—just in time to see the brass rods in position, the oak baulks converted into some sort of boat-furniture; the gangway platform receives their weary feet, and a fine flavour of paint from a flat forward tells them all they will ever know of the missing drums.