th
Denboro--better write it down--called and will be back about half past
twelve or thereabouts. Got it, have you? Hum! is that Elisha? You don't
tell me! I've been spellin' it for sixty years, more or less, and never
realized it had such possibilities. Lend me your pencil. There! you give
Mr. Sylvester that and tell him I'll see him later. So long, Son."

He departed, smiling. The indignant office boy threw the card on the
table.

Captain Elisha strolled down Pine Street, looking about him with
interest. It had been years since he visited this locality, and the
changes were many. Soon, however, he began to recognize familiar
landmarks. He was approaching the water front, and there were fewer new
buildings. When he reached South Street he was thoroughly at home.

The docks were crowded. The river was alive with small craft of all
kinds. Steamers and schooners were plenty, but the captain missed the
old square-riggers, the clipper ships and barks, such as he had sailed
in as cabin boy, as foremast hand, and, later, commanded on many seas.

At length, however, he saw four masts towering above the roof of a
freight house. They were not schooner rigged, those masts. The yards
were set square across, and along them were furled royals and upper
topsails. Here, at last, was a craft worth looking at. Captain Elisha
crossed the street, hurried past the covered freight house, and saw a
magnificent great ship lying beside a broad open wharf. Down the wharf
he walked, joyfully, as one who greets an old friend.

The wharf was practically deserted. An ancient watchman was dozing in
a sort of sentry box, but he did not wake. There was a pile of
foreign-looking crates and boxes at the further end of the pier,
evidently the last bit of cargo waiting to be carted away. The captain
inspected the pile, recognized the goods as Chinese and Japanese, then
read the name on the big ship's stern. She was the _Empress of the
Ocean_, and her home port was Liverpool.

Captain Elisha, as a free-born Yankee skipper, had an inherited and
cherished contempt for British "lime-juicers," but he could not help
admiring this one. To begin with, her size and tonnage were enormous.
Also, she was four-masted, instead of the usual three, and her hull and
lower spars were of steel instead of wood. A steel sailing vessel was
something of a novelty to the captain, and he was seized with a desire
to go aboard and inspect.

The ladder from ship to wharf was