arm. Strong fingers, almost vibrant with a force manifest
through serge and linen. Fingers that could grip like steel upon
occasion.

Rainey wonderingly sized up his consort. The stranger's bulk was
enormous. Rainey was well over the average himself, but he was only a
stripling beside this hulk, this stranded hulk, of manhood. And, for all
the spectacled eyes and shuffling feet, there was a stamp of coordinated
strength about the giant that bespoke the blind Samson. Given eyes,
Rainey could imagine him agile as a panther, strong as a bear.

His weight was made up of thews and sinews, spare and solid flesh
without an ounce of waste, upon a mighty skeleton. His face was
heavy-bearded in hair of flaming, curling red, from high cheek-bones
down out of sight below the soft loose collar of his shirt. The bridge
of his glasses rested on the outcurve of a nose like the beak of an
osprey, the ends of the wires looped about ears that lay close to the
head, hairy about the inner-curves, lobeless, the tips suggesting the
ear-tips of a satyr.

Mouth and jaw were hidden, but the beard could not deny the bold
projection of the latter. About thirty, Rainey judged him. Buffeted by
time and weather, but in the prime of his strength.

"Snow-blinded, matey," said the man. "North o' Point Barrow, a year an'
more ago. Brought me up all standin'. What are you? Steamer man? Purser,
maybe?"

"Newspaperman," answered Rainey. "Water-front detail. For the _Times_."

"You don't say so, matey? A writer, eh?"

Again Rainey felt the tug of that something back of the dark lenses,
some speculation going on in the man's mind concerning him. And he felt
the firm fingers contract ever so slightly, sinking into the muscles of
his forearm for a second with a hint of how they could bruise and
paralyze at will. Once more a faint sense of revulsion fought with his
natural inclination to aid the handicapped mariner, and he shook it off.

"The _Karluk_ sails to-morrow," he said.

"Aye, so--so they told me, matey. You've bin aboard?"

"I had a short talk with Captain Simms when she docked. Not much of a
yarn. She didn't have a good trip, you know."

"Why, I didn't know. But--hold hard a minnit, will ye? You see, Simms is
an old shipmate of mine. He don't dream I'm within a hundred miles o'
here. Aye, or a thousand." He gave a deep-chested chuckle. "Now, then,
matey, look here."

Rainey was anchored by the compelling grip. They stood next to the slip