of false pride
you and I could never have been friends--for I hate it!"

Shank Leather, in saying this, had hit the nail fairly on the head,
although he had not intelligently probed the truth to the bottom. In
fact a great deal of the friendship which drew these young men together
was the result of their great dissimilarity of character. They acted on
each other somewhat after the fashion of a well-adjusted piece of
mechanism, the ratchets of selfishness and cog-wheels of vanity in Shank
fitting easily into the pinions of good-will and modesty which
characterised his friend, so that there was no jarring in their
intercourse. This alone would not, perhaps, have induced the strong
friendship that existed if it had not been coupled with their intimacy
from childhood, and if Brooke had not been particularly fond of Shank's
invalid mother, and recognised a few of her good characteristics faintly
reproduced in her son, while Shank fully appreciated in Charlie that
amiable temperament which inclines its happy possessor to sympathise
much with others, to talk little of self, to believe all things and to
hope all things, to the verge almost of infantine credulity.

"Well, well," resumed Charlie, with a laugh, "however that may be, I
_did_ decline Mr Crossley's offers, but it does not matter much now,
for that same worthy captain who bothered you so much has told me of a
situation of which he has the gift, and has offered it to me."

"You don't say so! Is it a good one?"

"Yes, and well paid, I'm told, though I don't know the exact amount of
the salary yet."

"And have you accepted?"

"I have. Mother agreed, after some demur, that it is better than
nothing, so, like you, I begin work in a few days."

"Well now, how strangely things do happen sometimes!" said Leather,
stopping and looking out seaward, where the remains of the brig could
still be distinguished on the rocks that had fixed her doom. "But for
that fortunate wreck and our saving the people in her, you and I might
still have been whistling in the ranks of the Great Unemployed--And what
sort of a situation is it, Charlie?"

"You will smile, perhaps, when I tell you. It is to act as supercargo
of the _Walrus_, which is commanded by Captain Stride himself."

Young Leather's countenance fell. "Why, Charlie," he said, "that means
that you're going away to sea!"

"I fear it does."

"Soon?"

"In a week or two."

For some little time Leather did not sp