“Well, certainly. Don’t think me ungrateful, Captain Morrissey; but this will mean a lot to me. I shall lose my berth, for one thing.”
“Even that isn’t worse than losing your life, and you had a narrow squeak of that. By the way, were you sculling across the Channel for a bet?”
“Haw, haw, haw!” rumbled the broad red man, who had rolled in in time to catch this question.
I joined in the laugh, and told them how I came to be found in such a precarious plight. Then I learned how my rescue had been effected, and indeed miraculous hardly seemed the word for it. But that the steamer was going dead slow in the fog, and I had clung to her straight stern with the grip of death, I should have been crushed down beneath her and cut to pieces by the propeller. Even then they had hauled me on board with difficulty. The boat, of course, had been knocked to matchwood.
“You had a gold watch and chain upon you, a pocket-book, and some money?” said the captain. “How much was there?”
“Let me see; five pounds and some change. I forget how much.”
The captain disappeared through a door, and immediately re-entered.
“Count that,” he said.
I picked up a five-pound note, two sovereigns, and some silver change.
“Seven pounds, nine and a halfpenny,” I said. “Yes, that’s about what it was.”