as made easy for him by the friendly character of
his immediate superior--the chief. Powell could not defend himself from
some sympathy for that thick, bald man, comically shaped, with his
crimson complexion and something pathetic in the rolling of his very
movable black eyes in an apparently immovable head, who was so tactfully
ready to take his competency for granted.

There can be nothing more reassuring to a young man tackling his life's
work for the first time. Mr Powell, his mind at ease about himself,
had time to observe the people around with friendly interest. Very
early in the beginning of the passage, he had discovered with some
amusement that the marriage of Captain Anthony was resented by those to
whom Powell (conscious of being looked upon as something of an outsider)
referred in his mind as `the old lot.'

They had the funny, regretful glances, intonations, nods of men who had
seen other, better times. What difference it could have made to the
bo'sun, and the carpenter Powell could not very well understand. Yet
these two pulled long faces and even gave hostile glances to the poop.
The cook and the steward might have been more directly concerned. But
the steward used to remark on occasion, `Oh, she gives no extra
trouble,' with scrupulous fairness of the most gloomy kind. He was
rather a silent man with a great sense of his personal worth which made
his speeches guarded. The cook, a neat man with fair side whiskers, who
had been only three years in the ship, seemed the least concerned. He
was even known to have inquired once or twice as to the success of some
of his dishes with the captain's wife. This was considered a sort of
disloyal falling away from the ruling feeling.

The mate's annoyance was yet the easiest to understand. As he let it
out to Powell before the first week of the passage was over: `You can't
expect me to be pleased at being chucked out of the saloon as if I
weren't good enough to sit down to meat with that woman.' But he
hastened to add: `Don't you think I'm blaming the captain. He isn't a
man to be found fault with. You, Mr Powell, are too young yet to
understand such matters.'

Some considerable time afterwards, at the end of a conversation of that
aggrieved sort, he enlarged a little more by repeating: `Yes! You are
too young to understand these things. I don't say you haven't plenty of
sense. You are doing very well here. Jolly sight better than I
expected, th