me to a London firm, who loaded me with real gunpowder and sent me out,
six months later, to the same river, but with a new skipper and a
different crew. The natives knew me at once, and came swarming out in
canoes as soon as we dropped anchor. The captain, who of course
suspected nothing, allowed them to crowd on board; and I declare that
within five minutes they had clubbed him and every man of the crew and
tossed their bodies to the sharks. Then they cut my hawsers and towed
me over the river-bar; and, having landed a good half of my barrels,
they built and lit a fire around them in derision. I can hear the
explosion still; my poor upper-works have been crazy ever since.
It destroyed almost all the fighters of the tribe, who had formed a ring
to dance around the fire. The rest fled inland, and I never saw them
again, but lay abandoned for months as they had anchored me, between the
ruined huts and a sandy spit alive with mosquitoes--until somehow a
British tramp-steamer heard of me at one of the trading stations up the
coast. She brought down a crew to man and work me home. But my owner
could not pay the salvage; so the parties who owned the steamer--
a Runcorn firm--paid him fifty pounds and kept me for their services.
A surveyor examined me, and reported that I should never be fit for
much: the explosion had shaken me to pieces. I might do for the
coasting trade--that was all; and in that I've remained."

"Owners are rogues, for the most part," commented the Danish
barquentine, rubbing against the _Touch-me-nots_ fender as if to nudge
her. "There's the _Maria Stella Maris_ yonder can tell us a tale of the
food they store us with. She went through a mutiny once, I've heard."

"I'd rather not talk of it," put in the Italian hastily, and a shudder
ran through her timbers. "It's a dreadful recollection, and I have that
by my mizzen-mast which all the holystone in the world can never scour."