owing thanks as well as
speaking them, he returns to the wharf. But, still under the influence
of gratitude, he glances back over the barque's counter, to see on her
quarter-deck what intensifies his desire to become one of her crew. A
fair vision it is--a slip of a girl, sweet-faced and of graceful form,
who has just come out of the cabin and joined the youth, to all
appearance asking some question about Chester himself, as her eyes are
turned shoreward after him. At the same time a middle-aged ladylike
woman shows herself at the head of the companion-ladder, and seems
interested in him also.

"The woman must be the captain's wife and the girl his daughter,"
surmises the English youth, and correctly. "But I never knew that
ladies lived on board ships, as they seem to be doing. An American
fashion, I suppose. How different from all the other vessels I've
visited! Come back to-morrow morning? No, not a bit of it. I'll hang
about here, and wait the captain's return. That will I, if it be till
midnight."

So resolving, he looks around for a place where he may rest himself.
After his thirty miles' trudge along the king's highway, with quite ten
more back and forth on the wharves, to say nought of the many ships
boarded, he needs rest badly. A pile of timber here, with some loose
planks alongside it, offers the thing he is in search of; and on the
latter he seats himself, leaning his back against the boards in such a
position as to be screened from the sight of those on the barque, while
he himself commands a view of the approaches to her gangway-plank.

For a time he keeps intently on the watch, wondering what sort of man
the _Calypso's_ captain may be, and whether he will recognise him amidst
the moving throng. Not likely, since most of those passing by are men
of the sea, as their garb betokens. There are sailors in blue jackets
and trousers that are tight at the hip and loose around the ankles, with
straw-plaited or glazed hats, bright-ribboned, and set far back on the
head; other seamen in heavy pilot-cloth coats and sou'-westers; still
others wearing Guernsey frocks and worsted caps, with long points
drooping down over their ears. Now, a staid naval officer passes along
in gold-laced uniform, and sword slung in black leathern belt; now, a
party of rollicking midshipmen, full of romp and mischief.

Not all who pass him are English: there are men loosely robed and
wearing turbans, whom he takes to be Tu