udied the patient figure of the blind man with a
new interest. What a pity, that hale, active man caged in darkness!
What misery, what despair, thought he, might lurk behind those fine,
unmarred eyes! Yet the face was happy enough. Indeed, it was serene,
unscarred by impatience or passion; the race of one who awaits Fate
fearlessly. Martin had difficulty in connecting that kindly and
peaceful figure with the "Old Man" of the boatswain's talk.

What stirring adventures the boatswain's casual words had hinted at!
In what a bald, matter-of-fact manner had the _Cohasset's_ various
activities been mentioned! Pearl shell and island trade; "a bit o'
filibustering now and then," to Mexico and South America; seal and fur
poaching on the Siberian coast, in open defiance of the Czar's mandates!

Square Jim Dabney, might be the captain's name from the Arctic to
Hobart Town, but some of the exploits the boatswain had boasted of
suggested "Freebooter Jim" Dabney to Martin's mind. How about that
affair where the captain had lost his eyesight? Raiding a gold-bearing
reef in the Louisiades with dynamite, the boatswain had said, in
derisive revolt against the Australian mining laws.

It had happened but a few months before, and a premature explosion of a
dynamite charge had been the unusual fruit of the raid--unusual because
when the boatswain and others had rushed to recover what they thought
was their captain's mangled body, they discovered their leader unmarred
by the blast but stone-blind from the shock. An injured optic nerve,
the San Francisco specialists had said, a hopeless case.

Yet even permanent blindness did not place a period to the career of
this venerable Pacific freelance. Was he not engaged in some wild
venture even now? Some mysterious business that had begun with
bloodshed, and would end--how? What had Little Billy said? "Bound for
the End o' the World!" And what, pray, would they find at the End o'
the World?

Well, he didn't care what they found there, but he was very glad to be
able to voyage to the world's end with this company. He was glad he
had been pitched head foremost into the affair, little as he yet
understood of it all; he was glad to be at sea and shipmates with the
"happy family." No longer was he a despised quill-pusher.

Just what he was at present, Martin could not decide, but he was
determined to become a valued and accomplished member of this
adventuring household. He was dete