e Board and that this fellow must be
connected in some way with ships and sailors and the sea, my
astonishment took my breath away. One couldn't imagine why the Marine
Board should keep that bald, fat creature slaving down there. For some
reason or other I felt sorry and ashamed to have found him out in his
wretched captivity. I asked gently and sorrowfully: `The Shipping
Office, please.'

"He piped up in a contemptuous squeaky voice which made me start: `Not
here. Try the passage on the other side. Street side. This is the
Dock side. You've lost your way...'

"He spoke in such a spiteful tone that I thought he was going to round
off with the words: `You fool' ... and perhaps he meant to. But what he
finished sharply with was: `Shut the door quietly after you.'

"And I did shut it quietly--you bet. Quick and quiet. The indomitable
spirit of that chap impressed me. I wonder sometimes whether he has
succeeded in writing himself into liberty and a pension at last, or had
to go out of his gas-lighted grave straight into that other dark one
where nobody would want to intrude. My humanity was pleased to discover
he had so much kick left in him, but I was not comforted in the least.
It occurred to me that if Mr Powell had the same sort of temper...
However, I didn't give myself time to think and scuttled across the
space at the foot of the stairs into the passage where I'd been told to
try. And I tried the first door I came to, right away, without any
hanging back, because coming loudly from the hall above an amazed and
scandalised voice wanted to know what sort of game I was up to down
there. `Don't you know there's no-admittance that way?' it roared. But
if there was anything more I shut it out of my hearing by means of a
door marked _Private_ on the outside. It let me into a six-feet wide
strip between a long counter and the wall, taken off a spacious, vaulted
room with a grated window and a glazed door giving daylight to the
further end. The first thing I saw right in front of me were three
middle-aged men having a sort of romp together round about another
fellow with a thin, long neck and sloping shoulders who stood up at a
desk writing on a large sheet of paper and taking no notice except that
he grinned quietly to himself. They turned very sour at once when they
saw me. I heard one of them mutter: `Hullo! What have we here?'

"`I want to see Mr Powell, please,' I said, very civil but firm; I
woul