--all so cozy and secure in the dirty night: so
strange to our bleak coast!

At the head of the ladder the purser stood waiting to know about landing
the freight.

"Is you goin' on?" my father asked.

"Ay--t' Wayfarer's Tickle, when we load your skiff."

"'Twill be alongside in a trice. But my wife's sick. I'm wantin' t' take
the doctor ashore."

"He's aft in the smokin'-room. You'd best speak t' the captain first.
Hold her? Oh, sure, _he'll_ hold her all night, for sickness!"

They moved off forward. Then Skipper Tommy took my hand--or, rather, I
took his; for I was made ill at ease by the great, wet sweep of the
deck, glistening with reflections of bright lights, and by the throng
of strange men, and by the hiss of steam and the clank of iron coming
from the mysterious depths below. He would show me the cabin, said he,
where there was unexampled splendour to delight in; but when we came to
a little house on the after deck, where men were lounging in a thick fog
of tobacco smoke, I would go no further (though Skipper Tommy said that
words were spoken not meet for the ears of lads to hear); for my
interest was caught by a giant pup, which was not like the pups of our
harbour but a lean, long-limbed, short-haired dog, with heavy jaws and
sagging, blood-red eyelids. At a round table, whereon there lay a short
dog-whip, his master sat at cards with a stout little man in a
pea-jacket--a loose-lipped, blear-eyed, flabby little fellow, but,
withal, hearty in his own way--and himself cut a curious figure, being
grotesquely ill-featured and ill-fashioned, so that one rebelled against
the sight of him.

A gust of rain beat viciously upon the windows and the wind ran swishing
past.

"'Tis a dirty night," said the dog's master, shuffling nervously in his
seat.

At this the dog lifted his head with a sharp snarl: whereupon, in a
flash, the man struck him on the snout with the butt of the whip.

"That's for you!" he growled.

The dog regarded him sullenly--his upper lip still lifted from his
teeth.

"Eh?" the man taunted. "Will you have another?"

The dog's head subsided upon his paws; but his eyes never once left his
master's face--and the eyes were alert, steady, hard as steel.

"You're l'arnin'," the man drawled.

But the dog had learned no submission, but, if anything, only craft, as
even I, a child, could perceive; and I marvelled that the man could
conceive himself to be winning the mastery of that splendid