The Volendam mate accompanied him to the gang-plank, shaking a size
eleven fist: "Now yous, get, see?... an' iv yous gome bag...!" He
ground his horse-teeth and made unpleasant noises in his throat.

"Shouldn't dream of risking it, old dear," replied John Fanshawe
pleasantly, "not on your venerable coffee-grinder anyhow--not until
she gets a navigator." He kissed his nicotined fingers to the
exploding Hollander and strolled off down the wharf, whistling "_Nun
trink ich Schnapps_."

Arrived in the European quarter he smoothed what creases he could out
of his sole suit of drills, whitened his soggy topee and frayed canvas
shoes with a piece of chalk purloined from a billiard saloon, bluffed
a drink out of an inebriated ship's engineer and snatched a free lunch
on the strength of it. Thus fortified he visited the British Consul,
and by means of somewhat soiled letters proved that he really was a
Dawnay-Devenish of the Dorset Dawnay-Devenishes (who should be in no
way confused with the Devenish-Dawnays of Chipping-Banbury or the
Devenishe d'Awnay-Dawnays of Upper Tooting; the Dorset branch alone
possessing the privilege, granted by letters patent of ETHELRED the
Unready, of drinking the King's bathwater every Maunday Tuesday of
Leap Year).

Awed by the name--was there not a Dawnay-Devenish occupying a plump
armchair in the Colonial Office at the time?--the Consul parted
with five hundred dollars (Mex.). Next time the yield was not so
satisfactory, not by two hundred and fifty dollars. At the end of
a month, the Consul having proved a broken reed only good for
five-dollar touches at considerable intervals, it behoved our hero to
seek some fresh source of income. He cast up-river in search of it and