face as if by magic. "At last, I hear the cranes aworking on the quay."

The purser had come to the bridge, and now approached Cornish.

"Are you going to land them at the Hook or take them on to Rotterdam,
sir?" he asked.

"Oh, land 'em at the Hook," replied Cornish, readily. "Have you fed
them?"

"Yes, sir. They have had their breakfast--such as it is. Poor eaters I
call them, sir."

"Yes." said Cornish, turning and looking at his burly interlocutor.
"Yes, I do not suppose they eat much."

The purser shrugged his shoulders, and turned his attention to other
affairs, thoughtfully. The little, beacon at the head of the pier had
suddenly loomed out of the fog not fifty yards away--a very needle in a
pottle of hay, which the cunning of the pilot had found.

"Who are they, at any rate--these hundred and twenty ghosts of men?"
asked the sailor, abruptly.

"They are malgamite workers," answered Cornish, cheerily. "And I am
going to make men of them--not ghosts."

The purser looked at him, laughed in rather a puzzled way, and quitted
the bridge. Cornish remained there, taking a quick, intelligent
interest in the manoeuvres by which the great steamer was being brought