the
glass as he rehearsed imaginary scenes with the rabble outside. In a few
moments Mr. Spokesly's eyes, grown accustomed to the sombre twilight of
the blue curtains of the scuttles, would be wandering round the cabin,
noting things Captain Rannie showed to no one. No one. He grew fierce as
he thought of his outraged privacy. He must get this man out of the room
quickly. He slopped friars' balsam on some cotton wool, and fixing his
pale, exasperated gaze upon Mr. Spokesly's thumb, began to bind it up.
Mr. Spokesly felt an urgent need for a smoke. He reached out and drew a
cigarette from a box on the table and Captain Rannie's head bent lower
as he flushed with a renewed sense of outrage. Nothing sacred! Without
the slightest hint of a request.

"We may have a passenger, I hear," said the oblivious Mr. Spokesly as he
managed to get the cigarette alight.

"Oh, dear me, no!" retorted Captain Rannie, with a sort of despairing
chuckle. "Quite impossible, quite. I shouldn't dream of allowing
anything of the sort."

"Not if the boss wanted it?"

"Oh, no doubt, in that case, the master of the vessel would be the last
to hear of it." He returned to the cabinet to cut some plaster. Captain
Rannie had not a bedside manner. His method of affixing the plaster made
his patient grunt. Gazing over the upraised arm of the captain, Mr.
Spokesly suddenly fixed his eyes with attention on the pictures round
the bunk. They were pictures of people who were, so to say, the
antithesis of his new commander, pugilists and wrestlers and dancers,
men and women of exaggerated physical development. Some of them were so
stark in their emphasis on the muscles that they resembled anatomical
diagrams. There were photographs, too, of sculptures--sharp, white, and
beautiful against black velvet backgrounds; boys wrestling, girls
dancing, a naked youth striving with a leopard. And on a hook near the
door was a set of those elastic cords and pulleys whereby athletic
prowess is developed. Mr. Spokesly suddenly lost his belligerent mood.
He had encountered something he did not quite understand. He turned as
the captain finished and his eye fell on shelves packed with books. And
outside the winch groaned and squeaked, down below the pump thumped and
bucketed.

"I'll go," said Mr. Spokesly. "I must find the bosun...." And he went
out, eager to go at the job and get rid of this dreadful grime on the
unhappy old ship. As he went the captain stood in front o