poop. At the foot of
the card was written "Brig Flying Scud, Rangoon," and a date; and above
or below each individual figure the name had been carefully noted.

As I continued to gaze, a shock went through me; the dimness of sleep
and fatigue lifted from my eyes, as fog lifts in the channel; and I
beheld with startled clearness the photographic presentment of a crowd
of strangers. "J. Trent, Master" at the top of the card directed me to
a smallish, weazened man, with bushy eyebrows and full white beard,
dressed in a frock coat and white trousers; a flower stuck in his
button-hole, his bearded chin set forward, his mouth clenched with
habitual determination. There was not much of the sailor in his looks,
but plenty of the martinet: a dry, precise man, who might pass for a
preacher in some rigid sect; and whatever he was, not the Captain
Trent of San Francisco. The men, too, were all new to me: the cook, an
unmistakable Chinaman, in his characteristic dress, standing apart on
the poop steps. But perhaps I turned on the whole with the greatest
curiosity to the figure labelled "E. Goddedaal, 1st off." He whom I had
never seen, he might be the identical; he might be the clue and spring
of all this mystery; and I scanned his features with the eye of a
detective. He was of great stature, seemingly blonde as a viking,
his hair clustering round his head in frowsy curls, and two enormous
whiskers, like the tusks of some strange animal, jutting from his
cheeks. With these virile appendages and the defiant attitude in which
he stood, the expression of his face only imperfectly harmonised. It was
wild, heroic, and womanish looking; and I felt I was prepared to hear he
was a sentimentalist, and to see him weep.

For some while I digested my discovery in private, reflecting how best,
and how with most of drama, I might share it with the captain. Then my
sketch-book came in my head; and I fished it out from where it lay, with
other miscellaneous possessions, at the foot of my bunk and turned to
my sketch of Captain Trent and the survivors of the British brig Flying
Scud in the San Francisco bar-room.

"Nares," said I, "I've told you how I first saw Captain Trent in that
saloon in 'Frisco? how he came with his men, one of them a Kanaka with
a canary-bird in a cage? and how I saw him afterwards at the auction,
frightened to death, and as much surprised at how the figures skipped up
as anybody there? Well," said I, "there's the man I s