"Rather not, sir, thanks. You see, the longer it takes me to earn another stake, the longer it'll be before—"
"I see. Thanks, anyway, for us all," and captain and mate helped the derelict embark. They scarcely looked at him, scarcely dared look at each other, but—
Kinnison, for his part, was almost content. This story, too, would get around. It would be in Miners' Rest before he got back there, and it would help—help a lot.
He did not see how he could possibly, or ever, let those officers know the truth, even though he realized full well that at that very moment they were thinking, pityingly:
"The poor devil—the poor, brave devil!"
XIII.
The Gray Lensman went back to his mining with a will and with unimpaired vigor, for his distress aboard the ship he had rescued had been sheerest acting. One small bottle of good brandy was scarcely a cocktail to the physique that had stood up under quart after quart of the crudest, wickedest, fieriest beverage known to space; that tiny morsel of bentlam—scarcely half a unit—affected him no more than a lozenge of licorice.
