formidable
mallet. I observed that either his face was unnaturally white or the
rims of his eyes were unnaturally red, and that sawdust besprinkled
his hair and collar. I recalled the tavern sawdust which had
bepowdered his hat on the night of our first meeting, and jumped to a
wrong conclusion.

"Eh? It's Brooks--the boy Brooks! Glad to see you, Brooks!
Come inside."

"Thank you, sir," said I, feeling a strong impulse to bolt as he
shook me by the hand, so hot was his and so dry, and so feverishly
it gripped me.

"You're sure no one tracked ye here?" he asked, as he closed the door
behind us.

"There was a barber, sir, at the head of the passage. I stopped to
ask him the way."

"_He's_ all right, or would be but for that cursed bird of his.
How a man can keep such a bird--" Captain Coffin broke off.
"I had a two-three nails in my mouth when you knocked. Nearly made
me swallow 'em, you did. They was copper nails, too."

I suppose I must have stared at this, for he paused and peered at me,
drawing me over to the window, through which--so thickly grimed it
was--a very little light dribbled from the courtyard into the room.
Yet the room itself was clean, almost spick and span, with a
seaman-like tidiness in all its arrangements--a small room, crowded
with foreign odds-and-ends, among which I remember a walking-stick
even more singular than the one Captain Coffin carried on his walks
abroad (it was white in colour, with lines of small grey
indentations, and he afterwards told me it was a shark's backbone);
a corner-cupboard, too, painted over with green-and-yellow tulips.

"Copper nails, I tell you. Nothing but the best'll do for your
friend Coffin." He leaned back, still eyeing me, and tapped me twice
on the chest. "You heard me say that? 'Your friend' was my words."

"Thank you, sir."

"But you made me jump, you did--me being that way given when off the
liquor." He hesitated a moment, with a glance over his shoulder at
the tulip-painted cupboard. "Brooks," he went on earnestly, "you and
me being met on a matter of business, and the same needin'
steadiness--head and hand, my boy, if ever business did--what d'ye
say to a tot of rum apiece?"

Without waiting for my answer, he hobbled off to the cupboard, and
had set two glasses on the table and brimmed them with neat spirit
before I had finished protesting. The bottle-neck trembled on the
rims of the glasses and struck out a sort of chime as he