"Aye, aye, Skipper. It's in your cabin, ain't it?"
"Yes, in the first locker."
The mate descended the companion-steps, with a mysterious smile on his face, and his dexter optic closed. The casual observer might have thought that Mr. Topper was actually indulging in a wink.
After a time, he reappeared on deck, walked aft, and said:
"Fog-horn don't seem nowheres about, Skipper. Thought you always kept her in your charge."
Cap'n Pigg whisked the wheel round just in time to escape a tug, fussing up-stream, and feeling her way through the fog at half-speed, and then he grunted sourly:
"So I do. What the d—delay in findin' it is, I can't understand. 'Ere, ketch 'old o' the spokes, and I'll go; always got to do everything myself on this old tank, seems to me."
And thus grumbling, Cap'n Pigg went below—not altogether unwillingly, as, being a man who understood the importance of economizing time, he combined his search for the fog-horn with the quenching of a highly useful thirst. But when he came on deck again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he was unaccompanied by the fog-horn.
"Where the blamed thing's got to, I dunno, more'n the dead. I see it there, myself, not two days ago, but it ain't nowheres to be found now."
"Rather orkard, Skipper, ain't it, in all this maze o' shippin'?" returned Mr. Topper with a half turn at the wheel.