or our Parsee owners, because he
always had commanded for them and never expected to do anything else,
soberly and carefully--a man of simple vision, incapable of vain hopes
and imaginings. Myself, I was following up a long run of ill health,
glad enough of the sure berth and good food. And the only obvious fault
with Sutton--though the same can be serious too--was youth....

Here we were, then, on the old _Moung Poh_. From the chart-room port we
could see the low-lying haze of lights beyond Principe Ghat and hear the
lash of rain down the Hooghly and smell the sickly mixture of
twenty-four different smells that make the breath of that city built on
a sink. We had been coaling and hard at it all day in a grime that
turned to paste upon us. What with heat and weariness, our minds were
pasted as well, you might say. The captain and I were grubbing among
indents over a matter of annas and pice, when along comes Sutton, back
from shore leave, to spring a wondrous tale--ending in Shakespeare! If I
remind you further that there is more truth than poetry about the
mercantile marine, perhaps you may glimpse the net effect.

Sutton doubled the volume hastily between his hands and ruffled its worn
pages. He seemed quite familiar with it. How it had ever reached the
_Moung Poh_ we could not guess, nor did he give us time to inquire.
"I'll show you, sir," he continued in the same nervous key. "These
Johnnies, you should know, they found this old bargee dead drunk. And so
they made out to gammon him for his own good, to practice on him, as
they put it. 'Sirs,' says one of 'em--'sirs, I will practice on this
drunken man.' Here's the place ready marked, d'y'see?"

_Sirs, I will practice on this drunken man,
What think you, if he were convey'd to bed,
Wrapp'd in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers,
A most delicious banquet by his bed,
And brave attendants near him when he wakes:
Would not the beggar then forget himself?_

"That was their little game--to make the beggar forget himself. And
they did--by jing, they played him proper! He _did_ forget himself, all
his low habits and such." He hammered the book for emphasis. "Soon as I
saw Wickwire it come to me like that. There's the thing we'd ought to do
for him!"

"'Rings on his fingers--?'" The captain turned a dumb appeal toward me.

"Mr. Sutton says he's found the chief, sir," I suggested, for I had
begun to understand, a little. "He's found Chris Wickwire."