“No?” replied the diver questioningly. “Not in miles perhaps, but where? Did she sail north, east, south or west? The sea’s a mighty big place and a ship’s a mighty small thing to find on it--especially when she don’t want to be found. And what’s her name now? You can bet your bottom dollar she isn’t the Devon any longer.”
“But really, really, my good man, I’m not accustomed to being addressed in that manner, Sir!” burst out the inspector. “I’d have you understand I’m the Inspector of Police, Sir. Why, who under the sun are you anyway, Sir?”
“I’m a poor boob that thought you fellows down here had common sense!” retorted Rawlins hotly. “Why the dickens didn’t they have brains enough to think of Devon and Devonshire being too blamed much alike?”
“Come, come, Rawlins!” exclaimed Mr. Pauling in mollifying tones. “Major May is not to blame and I suppose there really was no reason for suspecting the Devon to be the Devonshire.”
Then, turning to the purple-faced officer. “Major,” he said, “let me introduce Mr. Rawlins. He’s our guide, philosopher, and friend, if I may quote a hackneyed saying. I don’t know what we’d do without him. He and the boys are really responsible for all we’ve accomplished and he’s famous for his hunches.”
Rawlins grinned and grasped the inspector’s hand and the latter, as quick to recover his temper as to lose it, smiled under his bristling white mustache. “Jolly glad to know you!” he declared. “Sorry if I offended you and all that. Bit peppery I expect--India and liver, you know. Curry, and all that sort of thing. Ah, yes--and the hunches--’pon my word, never heard of them. Sort of cocktail, are they not?”
The diver could not restrain his merriment and Mr. Pauling and the others grew scarlet.
“Not quite, Major,” Rawlins managed to reply. “Don’t know if I can explain it--Yankee term, sort of slang, meaning a premonition or something like it, a--well a hunch you know.”
But the splenetic old veteran could take a joke even if on himself and roared with laughter at his own error.
“Jolly good thing, that about the Devon,” he declared when all were on good terms once more. “Now we have a proper charge against these rascals you have. Couldn’t see my way before--with no such ship as the bally old Devonshire. Couldn’t accuse them of doing away with a ship that didn’t exist, you know. All different now, though. Well, I must be off. Anything I can do, just call on me. Any plans in view?”