"You're condoning an offence, Staggles," said the commander in an undertone, with a humorous gleam in his eye.
Another coin tinkled on the deck. The commander promptly placed his foot on it to check its career towards the side.
"Where did that go?" asked the staff-paymaster, who, curiously enough, had a miserly regard for any money except his own, which he spent liberally.
The commander shifted his foot and pointed to the retrieved coin; as he did so, another penny, hurtling through the air, hit him smartly on his bent neck and promptly slithered inside his collar and down his back.
Unfortunately the commander was a man of a most ticklish temperament. The contact of the metal disc with his back caused him to writhe like a lost soul in torment. He had recently unflinchingly faced death in a hotly-contested engagement in the North Sea, but this rear attack completely unnerved him. His grotesque efforts to capture the elusive coin was too much for the rest of the officers and men. They were unable to conceal their amusement. Finally the commander dived down below and divested himself of his uniform.
Just then the ship's steward appeared with the tin of condensed milk, and handed the unopened can to a seaman. Away aloft the man made his way till he gained the cross-trees. Owing to the "Sunderland" altering her course she was swinging considerably to starboard, and the motion made the man advance cautiously, his feet sliding along the foot-ropes while he held on grimly with his free hand to the spar.
Mephisto eyed the approaching delicacy with marked approval. Letting the remaining coins drop, some of which tinkled on deck although most of them fell overboard, he whisked along the yard-arm, and before the seaman realized the brute's intention, snatched the can from his grasp.
A snarl warned the bluejacket that if he advanced it would be at his peril, and unwilling to risk an encounter with an agile monkey on the swaying yard, he followed the precept of discretion being the better part of valour, and regained the deck, leaving the spoils in the hands of the elated ape.
Presently the monkey had another disappointment. The intact tin baffled him. He tried his teeth upon it—but unavailingly, so he began to batter it upon the metal eye of a band encircling the spar.
"There'll be an unholy mess, by Jove!" ejaculated the commander, who had now reappeared upon the scene, for the tin showed signs of capitulating to the strenuous frontal attacks on the part of Mephisto.