rned in him the fires of anger.

"Shanghaied!" he repeated as he reeled to the rail and caught at a
backstay to steady himself. "Well, the man that did it wants to hide
when I get ashore again."

He cast his eyes aft over the ship on which he found himself, summing
her up with an automatic expertness. An American ship, it was plain,
and a three-skysail-yarder at that, with a magnificent stature and
spread of spars. Abeam of her San Francisco basked along its shore;
she was at an anchor well out in the bay. What ship was it that he
had viewed from a dock-head lying just there? The answer was on his
lips even before his eyes discovered the boat she carried on top of
the fo'c'sle, with her name lettered upon it. Tom Mowbray had proved
his power by shanghaiing him aboard the Etna!

He said nothing: the situation was beyond mere oaths, but wrath
surged in him like a flood.

Around the for'ard house, walking with measured steps, came Mr. Fant,
the mate of the Etna, and accosted him.

"Sobered up, have ye?" said Mr. Fant.

"Yes, sir," said Goodwin.

"That's right," said Mr. Fant, smiling, surveying him with an
appearance of gentle interest. "Knock-out drops?" he inquired.

"Yes, sir," answered Goodwin again, watching him.

"Ah!" Mr. Fant shook his head. "Well, you're all right now," he said.
"Stick yer head in a bucket an' ye'll be ready to turn to."

Mr. Fant had his share in the fame of the Etna; he was a part of her
character. Goodwin, though his mind still moved slowly, eyed him
intently, gauging the man's strange and masked quality, probing the
mildness of his address for the thing it veiled. He saw the mate of
the Etna as a spare man of middle-age, who would have been tall but
for the stoop of his shoulders. His shaven face was constricted
primly; he had the mouth of an old maid, and stood slack-bodied with
his hands sunk in the pockets of his jacket. Only the tightness of
his clothes across his chest and something sure and restrained in his
gait as he walked hinted of the iron thews that governed his lean
body; and, while he spoke in the accents of an easy civility, his
stony eyes looked on Goodwin with an unblinking and remorseless
aloofness. It was not hard to imagine him, when the Etna, with her
crew seduced or drugged to man her, should be clear of soundings and
the business of the voyage put in shape, when every watch on deck
would be a quaking ordeal of fear and pain, and every watch below an
interval