a puzzle, nevertheless, to work out exactly.

"I must have missed you when you came aboard," said he, "and yet in your
usual get-up I don't see how I could very well. You look as if you had
just stepped out of a band-box, except for the dampness, of course."

"Oh, you were busy when I joined you," said John, evidently pleased with
the captain's remarks about his appearance. "I had to jump for it. But
you haven't answered my question. How are you?"

"Tol'able, thank'e. And your folks--how are they? I need not ask how
_you_ are," and, while John answered him, he placed camp-stools for us,
and said to Syd and me, "Sit down, gentlemen; and excuse me if I address
myself mainly to this eccentric cousin of mine, and, I am sure, your
very good friend. I do not see him often, and he never will let me know
when he is coming my way"--a statement which Syd and I could easily
believe. For, with all John's faults, and he had many of them, he was
one of the least obtrusive of men where hospitality came in, and one of
the most reticent about himself and his own affairs; and we, who worked
with him, knew him almost exclusively as a good fellow in the
department, and a capital companion for a holiday.

The captain placed John's camp-stool on the starboard side of the
binnacle. Their conversation was broken into snatches by the captain's
movements. As he paced the bridge, backwards and forwards, he halted
each time just for a moment when he came to where John had propped his
back against the binnacle and tilted his stool at an angle that
threatened collapse. Syd and I sat quite apart, and left them alone to
their semi-private conversation. We noticed, however, that the captain
appeared to be uneasy about the vessel's course and progress; he glanced
more than once at the compass-card, and several times, in his
perambulations, he lingered over the paddle-boxes, and intently watched
the water as it slipped by. So that his conversation with the Honourable
John became more fragmentary, and was more frequently interrupted the
nearer we approached the land.

After some time the captain came to a sudden stand over the port
paddle-box, and curved his left hand round his ear. For a minute or more
he stood like a statue, perfectly motionless, and with his whole being
absorbed in an effort to catch a faint and expected sound across the
water. Satisfied with the effort, he stepped briskly to the indicator,
and signalled to the engineer to increas