ggar," Image mused, "'tisn't hard to guess what he's thinking
about. I wonder if I could fix it for him to take her home. It might set
him on his legs again, and he's come low enough, Lord knows. If I hadn't
given him a room in the first-class for old times' sake, he'd have had
to go home, after his trouble on the West Coast, as a distressed seaman,
and touch his cap to me when I passed. I've not done badly by him, but I
shall have to pay for that room in the first-class out of my own pocket,
and if he was to take that old wind-jammer in somewhere, he'd fork out,
and very like give me a dash besides.

"Yes, I will say that about Kettle; he's honest as a barkeeper, and
generous besides. He's a steamer sailor, of course, and has been most of
these years, and how he'll do the white wings business again, Lord only
knows. Forget he hasn't got engines till it's too late, and then drown
himself probably. However, that's his palaver. Where we're going to
scratch him up a crew from's the thing that bothers me. Well, we'll
see." He leaned down over the bridge rail, and called.

Kettle looked up.

"Here a minute, Captain."

Poor Kettle's eye lit, and he came up the ladders with a boy's
quickness.

Image nodded toward the deserted vessel. "Fine full-rigger, hasn't she
been? What do you make her out for?"

"'Frisco grain ship. Stuff in bulk. And it's shifted."

"Looks that way. Have you forgotten all your 'mainsail haul' and the
square-rig gymnastics?"

"I'm hard enough pushed now to remember even the theory-sums they taught
at navigation school if I thought they would serve me."

"I know. And I'm as sorry for you, Captain, as I can hold. But you see,
it's this: I'm short of sailormen; I've barely enough to steer and keep
the decks clean; anyway I've none to spare."

"I don't ask for fancy goods," said Kettle eagerly. "Give me anything
with hands on it--apes, niggers, stokers, what you like, and I'll soon
teach them their dancing steps."

Captain Image pulled at his moustache. "The trouble of it is, we are
short everywhere. It's been a sickly voyage, this. I couldn't let you
have more than two out of the stokehold, and even if we take those, the
old Chief will be fit to eat me. You could do nothing with that big
vessel with only two beside yourself."

"Let me go round and see. I believe I can rake up enough hands somehow."

"Well, you must be quick about it," said Image. "I've wasted more than
enough time already. I