ain--Captain Jabez Williams--a younger man, with an
intelligent, self-respecting manner, somewhat non-committal,
business-like, evidently not particularly anxious as to whether he
pleased or not, but looking competent, and civil enough, without being
sympathetic.

Next came the engineer, a young hulking bronze giant, a splendid
physical specimen, but rather heavy and sullen and not over-intelligent
to look at. A slow-witted young animal, not suggesting any great love of
work, and rather loutish in his manners. But, he knew his engine, said
Charlie. And that was the main thing. The deck-hand proved to be a
shackly, rather silly effeminate fellow, suggesting idiocy, but
doubtless wiry and good enough for the purpose.

While they were busy getting up the anchor of the _Maggie Darling,_ I
went down into my cabin, to arrange various odds and ends, and presently
came the captain, touching his hat.

"There's a party," he said, "outside here, wants to know if you'll take
him as passenger to Spanish Wells."

"We're not taking passengers," I answered, "but I'll come and look him
over."

A man was standing up in a rowboat, leaning against the ship's side.

"You'd do me a great favour, sir," he began to say in a soft,
ingratiating voice.

I looked at him, with a start of recognition. He was my pock-marked
friend, who had made such an unpleasant impression on me, at John
Saunders's office. He was rather more gentlemanly looking than he had
seemed at the first view, and I saw that, though he was a half-breed,
the white blood predominated.

"I don't want to intrude," he said, "but I have urgent need of getting
to Spanish Wells, and there's no boat going that way for a week. I've
just missed the mail."

I looked at him, and, though I liked his looks no more than ever, I was
averse from being disobliging, and the favour asked was one often asked
and granted in those islands, where communication is difficult and
infrequent.

"I didn't think of taking any passengers," I said.

"I know," he said. "I know it's a great favour I ask." He spoke with a
certain cultivation of manner. "But I am willing, of course, to pay
anything you think well, for my food and my passage."

I waived that suggestion aside, and stood irresolutely looking at him,
with no very hospitable expression in my eyes, I dare say. But really my
distaste for him was an unreasoning prejudice, and Charlie Webster's
phrase came to my mind--"His face is against hi