t, a notable figure of seamanlike
respectability and efficiency. Upon his big, shaven face a rather
stolid tranquility reigned. Bill, leaning against a corner of the
galley, looked up at him carelessly.

"'Ullo, Dan," he greeted him.

"Hullo, Bill," responded Dan. "I bin talkin' to the Dago."

"Oh, 'ave yer?" said Bill.

"Yes," said Dan, in the same conversational tone. "I have. An' now
I'm goin' to have a word with you. Stand clear of that deckhouse!"

"Eh?" cried Bill. "Say, Dan--"

That was all. Dan's fist, the right one, of the hue and hardness of
teak, with Dan's arm behind it, arrived just under his eye, and the
rest of the conversation was yelps. No one attempted to interrupt;
even the captain and mate, who watched from the poop, made no motion
to interfere; Dan's reputation for uprightness stood him in good
stead.

"There, now," he said, when it was over, and he allowed the gasping,
bleeding Cockney to fall back on the hatch. "See what comes of not
takin' hints?"

They made Mozambique upon the morning of a day when the sun poured
from the heavens and the light wind came warm off the land. The old
Anna Maria, furling sail by sail, floated up to her anchorage and let
go her anchors just as a shore-boat, manned by big nearly naked
negroes, with a white man sitting in the stern, raced up alongside.
In less than an hour the hands were lifting the anchors again and
getting ready to go to sea once more. The cook, who had served the
captain and his visitor with breakfast, was able to explain the
mystery. He stood at his galley door, with his cloth cap cocked
sportively over one eye, and gave the facts to the inquisitive
sailors.

"That feller in the boat was th' agent," he said. "A Porchuguee, he
was. Wanted wine f'r 'is breakfus'. An' the orders is, we're to go
down the coast to a place called le'me see, now. What was it called?
Some Dago name that I can't call to mind."

Dan was among his hearers, and by some freak of memory the name of
the town of which the Dago had been used to speak, the town which was
now a dream to be forgotten, came to his lips. He spoke it aloud.

"It wasn't that, I s'pose?" he suggested.

"You've got it," cried the cook. "That was it, Dan; the very place.
Fancy you knowin' it. Well, we got to go down there and get in across
a sort of bar what's there an' discharge into lighters. Seems it's a
bit out o' the way o' shippin'. The skipper said that the charterers
seemed to think t