r that he was not
successful in his paramount business. Meanwhile he pretended to be,
hoping that on some miraculous day a sudden test would prove the straw
man he was to have become real flesh and blood. A visit to a surgeon
and the flick of a knife quite shattered that illusion. He went
down to Yarmouth afterwards, fairly disheartened. The test had been
applied, and he had failed.

Now, Weeks was a particular friend of Duncan's. They had chummed
together on Gorleston Quay some years before, perhaps because they
were so dissimilar. Weeks had taught Duncan to sail a boat, and had
once or twice taken him for a short trip on his smack; so that the
first thing that Duncan did on his arrival at Yarmouth was to take the
tram to Gorleston and to make inquiries.

A fisherman lounging against a winch replied to them---

"If Weeks is a friend o' yours I should get used to missin' 'im, as I
tell his wife."

There was at that time an ingenious system by which the skipper might
buy his smack from the owner on the instalment plan--as people buy
their furniture--only with a difference: for people sometimes get
their furniture. The instalments had to be completed within a certain
period. The skipper could do it--he could just do it; but he couldn't
do it without running up one little bill here for stores, and another
little bill there for sail-mending. The owner worked in with the
sail-maker, and just as the skipper was putting out to earn his last
instalment, he would find the bailiffs on board, his cruise would be
delayed, he would be, consequently, behindhand with his instalment and
back would go the smack to the owner with a present of four-fifths of
its price. Weeks had to pay two hundred pounds, and had eight weeks to
earn it in. But he got the straight tip that his sail-maker would stop
him; and getting together any sort of crew he could, he slipped out at
night with half his stores.

"Now the No'th Sea," concluded the fisherman, "in November and
December ain't a bobby's job."

Duncan walked forward to the pier-head. He looked out at a grey
tumbled sky shutting down on a grey tumbled sea. There were flecks of
white cloud in the sky, flecks of white breakers on the sea, and it
was all most dreary. He stood at the end of the jetty, and his great
possibility came out of the grey to him. Weeks was shorthanded.
Cribbed within a few feet of the smack's deck, there would be no
chance for any man to shirk. Duncan acted on the i