"To think of Dicky bunking it among a crowd of merchant Jacks," said the crew. "We'd give a lot to 'ave seen him shinning up aloft for dear life."
But all the same, they loved him dearly, and when he came alongside five days later, not all their sense of discipline prevented their breaking into a storm of cheers that rang out across the bay and was almost heard at Oakland. Hard as Dicky Dunn was, he went to his cabin rather in a hurry. For once in his life he could hardly trust himself to speak. But he received the congratulations of the captain and officers, including young Selwyn, who had been with him when he had been kidnapped, with the greatest calm.
"Yes, I've had some experience," he said, "and I don't know that it has done me any harm. I know more of the conditions on board merchant vessels than I did before."
"And what do you propose to do, Sir Richard?" asked Selwyn an hour later. "The authorities and the police seemed very anxious to do what they could."
The admiral lighted one of his own cigars, and found it more to his taste than the ship's tobacco of the California.
"I don't propose to trouble the police," he said, "nor need there be any international correspondence so far as I'm concerned. I'll play my own game. I think, Selwyn, that I know who laid for us that night. And from what I learnt in the California (I learnt a lot, by the way) I've a notion that ordinary justice would never get hold of the man, at least not in San Francisco, not even if I paid for it."
"Then what——"
But Dicky Dunn interrupted him.
"I've a notion," he said significantly.
And that afternoon he sent Selwyn ashore with a very polite note to the chief of the San Francisco police, saying that Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Dunn would be very glad to see that gentleman on board the Triumphant late that evening, if he could make it convenient to come.