t and wiping it with his handkerchief. He peered into it and
pushed out a dent with his thumb. "The way this harbour's allowed to
shoal is nothing short of a national disgrace!"

He improved on this condemnation as, having pushed clear and brought his
boat safely alongside, he climbed the steps and met the Quaymaster, who
advanced to greet him with an ingratiating smile.

"--A scandal to the civilised world! _There's_ a way to stack ballast,
now! Look at it, sproiled about the quay-edge like a skittle-alley in a
cyclone! But that has been your fashion, Peter Bussa, ever since I
knowed 'ee, and 'Nigh enough' your motto."

"You've no idea, Cap'n Cai, the hard I work to keep this blessed quay
tidy."

"Work? Ay--like a pig's tail, I believe: goin' all day, and still in a
twist come night."

"Chide away--chide away, now! But you're welcome home for all that,
Cap'n Cai,--welcome as a man's heart to his body."

Captain Cai relaxed his frown. After all, 'twas good to return and find
the little town running on just as he left it, even down to Quaymaster
Bussa and his dandering ways. Yes, there stood the ancient crane with
its broken-cogged winch--his own initials, carved with his first
clasp-knife, would be somewhere on the beam; and the heap of sand beside
it differed nothing from the heap on which he and his fellows had pelted
one another forty years ago. Certainly the two bollards--the one
broken, the other leaning aslant--were the same over which he and they
had played leap-frog. Yes, and yonder, in the arcade supporting the
front of the "King of Prussia," was Long Mitchell leaning against his
usual pillar; and there, on the bench before the Working Men's
Institute, sat the trio of septuagenarians--Un' Barnicoat, Roper Vine,
Old Cap'n Tom--and sunned themselves; inseparables, who seldom exchanged
a remark, and never but in terms and tones of inveterate contempt.
Facing them in his doorway lounged the town barber, under his striped
pole and sign-board--"_Simeon Toy, Hairdresser_," with the s's still
twiddling the wrong way; and beyond, outside the corner-shop, Mr Rogers,
ship-broker and ship-chandler--half paralytic but cunning yet,--sat
hunched in his invalid chair, blinking; for all the world like a wicked
old spider on the watch for flies.

"Ahoy, there!" Captain Cai hailed, and made across at once for the
invalid chair: for Mr Rogers was his man of business. "Lost no time in
reportin' myself, you see."