be no end of fuss and complications if the ship didn't turn
up in time . . . I couldn't help hearing all this, while wishing him to
take himself off, because I wanted to know why Mr. Powell had told me to
wait. After what he had been saying there didn't seem any object in my
hanging about. If I had had my certificate in my pocket I should have
tried to slip away quietly; but Mr. Powell had turned about into the same
position I found him in at first and was again swinging his leg. My
certificate open on the desk was under his left elbow and I couldn't very
well go up and jerk it away.

"I don't know," says he carelessly, addressing the helpless captain but
looking fixedly at me with an expression as if I hadn't been there. "I
don't know whether I ought to tell you that I know of a disengaged second
mate at hand."

"Do you mean you've got him here?" shouts the other looking all over the
empty public part of the office as if he were ready to fling himself
bodily upon anything resembling a second mate. He had been so full of
his difficulty that I verify believe he had never noticed me. Or perhaps
seeing me inside he may have thought I was some understrapper belonging
to the place. But when Mr. Powell nodded in my direction he became very
quiet and gave me a long stare. Then he stooped to Mr. Powell's ear--I
suppose he imagined he was whispering, but I heard him well enough.

"Looks very respectable."

"Certainly," says the shipping-master quite calm and staring all the time
at me. "His name's Powell."

"Oh, I see!" says the skipper as if struck all of a heap. "But is he
ready to join at once?"

"I had a sort of vision of my lodgings--in the North of London, too,
beyond Dalston, away to the devil--and all my gear scattered about, and
my empty sea-chest somewhere in an outhouse the good people I was staying
with had at the end of their sooty strip of garden. I heard the Shipping
Master say in the coolest sort of way:

"He'll sleep on board to-night."

"He had better," says the Captain of the _Ferndale_ very businesslike, as
if the whole thing were settled. I can't say I was dumb for joy as you
may suppose. It wasn't exactly that. I was more by way of being out of
breath with the quickness of it. It didn't seem possible that this was
happening to me. But the skipper, after he had talked for a while with
Mr. Powell, too low for me to hear became visibly perplexed.

"I suppose he had heard I was freshl