er great nor
little--not a thing in the world--not even marry an old maid, or get a
wretched 600-ton cargo of coal to its port of destination.

"It was altogether a memorable affair. It was my first voyage to the
East, and my first voyage as second mate; it was also my skipper's first
command. You'll admit it was time. He was sixty if a day; a little man,
with a broad, not very straight back, with bowed shoulders and one leg
more bandy than the other, he had that queer twisted-about appearance
you see so often in men who work in the fields. He had a nut-cracker
face--chin and nose trying to come together over a sunken mouth--and it
was framed in iron-grey fluffy hair, that looked like a chin strap of
cotton-wool sprinkled with coal-dust. And he had blue eyes in that
old face of his, which were amazingly like a boy's, with that candid
expression some quite common men preserve to the end of their days by
a rare internal gift of simplicity of heart and rectitude of soul.
What induced him to accept me was a wonder. I had come out of a crack
Australian clipper, where I had been third officer, and he seemed to
have a prejudice against crack clippers as aristocratic and high-toned.
He said to me, 'You know, in this ship you will have to work.' I said
I had to work in every ship I had ever been in. 'Ah, but this is
different, and you gentlemen out of them big ships;... but there! I
dare say you will do. Join to-morrow.'

"I joined to-morrow. It was twenty-two years ago; and I was just twenty.
How time passes! It was one of the happiest days of my life. Fancy!
Second mate for the first time--a really responsible officer! I wouldn't
have thrown up my new billet for a fortune. The mate looked me over
carefully. He was also an old chap, but of another stamp. He had a Roman
nose, a snow-white, long beard, and his name was Mahon, but he insisted
that it should be pronounced Mann. He was well connected; yet there was
something wrong with his luck, and he had never got on.

"As to the captain, he had been for years in coasters, then in the
Mediterranean, and last in the West Indian trade. He had never been
round the Capes. He could just write a kind of sketchy hand, and didn't
care for writing at all. Both were thorough good seamen of course,
and between those two old chaps I felt like a small boy between two
grandfathers.

"The ship also was old. Her name was the _Judea_. Queer name, isn't it?
She belonged to a man Wilmer, Wilcox-