end of the quarter
when I'm busy with my accounts?" grumbled Augustus Shilling, the
assistant paymaster, blinking behind his spectacles. "I know jolly
well what it'll be. For the next week I shan't be able to call my soul
my own, and he'll be sending for me morning, noon, and night to explain
things. The writer's gone sick, too. Oh, it IS the limit!"

"It is, indeed," echoed the doctor despondently. "Farewell to a quiet
life. By George! I haven't written up the wine books for the last
fortnight. Have I got time to do 'em before he comes?"

The first lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. "You'd better make an
effort, old man," he said. "He's a rabid teetotaler, and he's sure to
ask to see 'em first thing."

"Heaven help us!" cried the medical officer, rising hastily from his
chair and disappearing into his cabin.

"What sort of a chap did you say he was, Number One?" Falland queried,
with traces of anxiety in his voice.

"I only know him by reputation," the first lieutenant answered
lugubriously. "But he's got the name of being rather ... er, peculiar.
At any rate, he hates navigators, so you'd better mind your P's and
Q's, my giddy young friend."

"And I haven't corrected my charts for three weeks or written up the
compass journal for a month!" Falland wailed. "Oh, Lor!"

From all of which it will be understood that the wardroom officers of
H.M. Gunboat _Puffin_ were not overjoyed at the advent of their new
Captain.[1]

The date was some time during the last five years of the reign of Queen
Victoria; the month, September, and though at this season of the year
the climate of Hong-Kong is far too moist and too steamy to be
pleasant, the _Puffin's_ officers, adapting themselves to
circumstances, had had plenty of shore leave and had managed to enjoy
themselves. So had the men.

Their ship, an ancient, barque-rigged vessel of 1,000 odd tons;
auxiliary engines capable of pushing her along at 9.35 knots with the
safety valves lifting; and armed with I forget how many bottle-nosed,
5-inch, B.-L. guns and a Nordenfeldt or two, was swinging peacefully
round her buoy in the harbour. She had swung there for precisely two
months without raising steam, ever since her late commander had been
promoted and had gone home to England, leaving the ship in temporary
charge of Pardoe, the first lieutenant.

Captain Prato had been an easy-going man of serene disposition who
allowed little or nothing to worry him, not e