then changed his mind, as from the foregone conclusion that there
was nothing there to probe.

"Hump," he said to me, elaborately polite, "kindly take Mr.
Mugridge's arm and help him up on deck. He is not feeling very
well."

"And tell Johnson to douse him with a few buckets of salt water,"
he added, in a lower tone for my ear alone.

I left Mr. Mugridge on deck, in the hands of a couple of grinning
sailors who had been told off for the purpose. Mr. Mugridge was
sleepily spluttering that he was a gentleman's son. But as I
descended the companion stairs to clear the table I heard him
shriek as the first bucket of water struck him.

Wolf Larsen was counting his winnings.

"One hundred and eighty-five dollars even," he said aloud. "Just
as I thought. "The beggar came aboard without a cent."

"And what you have won is mine, sir," I said boldly.

He favoured me with a quizzical smile. "Hump, I have studied some
grammar in my time, and I think your tenses are tangled. 'Was
mine,' you should have said, not 'is mine.'"

"It is a question, not of grammar, but of ethics," I answered.

It was possibly a minute before he spoke.