The Flamingo picked up the landmarks of the Southern Irish coast, and made her number to Lloyd's station on Brow Head, stood across for the Tuskar, and so on up St. George's Channel for Holyhead. She flew a pilot jack there, and off Point Lynus picked up a pilot, who, after the custom of his class, stepped up over the side with a hard felt hat on his head, and a complete wardrobe, and a selection of daily papers in his pocket.
"Well, pilot, what's the news?" said Kettle, as the man of narrow waters swung himself up on to the bridge, and his boat swirled away astern.
"You are," said the pilot. "The papers are just full of you, Captain, all of them, from the Shipping Telegraph to the London Times. The Cunard boat brought in the yarn. A pilot out of my schooner took her up."
"How do they spell the name? Cuttle?"
"Well, I think it's 'Kattle' mostly, though one paper has it 'Kelly.'"
"Curse their cheek," said the little sailor, flushing. "I'd like to get hold of some of those blowsy editors that come smelling round the dock after yarns and drink, and wring their necks."
"Starboard a point," said the pilot, and when the quartermaster at the wheel had duly repeated the course, he turned to Kettle with some amusement. "Blowsy or not, they don't seem to have done you much harm this journey, Captain. Why, they're getting up subscriptions for you all round. Shouldn't wonder but what the Board of Trade even stands you a pair of binoculars."
"I'm not a blessed mendicant," said Kettle stiffly, "and as for the Board of Trade, they can stick their binoculars up their trousers." He walked to the other end of the bridge, and stood there chewing savagely at the butt end of his cigar.
"Rum bloke," commented the pilot to himself, though aloud he offered no comment, being a man whose business it was to keep on good terms with everybody. So he dropped his newspapers to one of the mates, and applied himself to the details of the pilotage.
Still, the pilot was right in saying that England was ringing with the news of Kettle's feat. The passengers of the Cunarder, with nothing much else to interest them, had come home thrilled and ringing with it. A smart New Yorker had got a "scoop" by slipping ashore at Queenstown and cabling a lavish account to the American Press Association, so that the first news reached London from the States. Followed Reuter's man and the Liverpool reporters on Prince's landing-stage, who came to glean copy as in the ordinary course of events, and they being spurred on by wires from London for full details, got down all the facts available, and imagined others. Parliament was not sitting, and there had been no newspaper sensation for a week, and, as a natural consequence, the papers came out next morning with accounts of the rescue varying from two columns to a page in length.