sel
trembled as the chutes fed her through the three hatches. Sweating,
coal-blackened men toiled in the depths of her, revealed below hatches
by the electric lights, pecking at the avalanche with their shovels,
trimming cargo.

The young man exchanged a few listless words with the two negroes who
were on deck, his mates of the watch.

They were plainly not interested in him, and he avoided them.

The hours dragged. He helped to close and batten the fore-hatch,
and later performed similar service on the hatch aft. The main-hatch
continued to gulp the black food which the chute fed to it.

Suddenly a tall young man appeared to Mayo. The stranger was smartly
dressed, and his spick-and-span garb contrasted strangely with the
general riot of dirt aboard the schooner. He trod gingerly over the
dust-coated planks and carried two suit-cases.

"Here, George," he commanded. "Take these to my stateroom."

Mayo hesitated.

"I'm going as passenger," said the young man, impatiently, and Mayo
remembered what the captain had told the mate.

Passengers on coal-schooners, sailing as friends of the master, were not
unknown on the coast, but Mayo judged, from what he had heard, that this
person was not a friend, and had wondered a bit.

"I am not allowed to go aft, sir, without orders from the mate."

"Where is the mate?"

"I think he is below, sir."

"Asleep?"

"I wouldn't wonder."

Mayo did not trouble to use his dialect on this stranger, a mere
passenger, who spoke as if he were addressing a car-porter. The tone
produced instant irritation, resentment in the man who had so recently
been master of his ship.

The passenger set down his baggage and pondered a moment. He looked Mayo
over in calculating fashion; he stared up the wharf. Then he picked
up his bags and hurried along the port alley and disappeared down the
companionway.

He returned in a few moments, came into the waist of the vessel,
and made careful survey of all about him. There were two sailors far
forward, merely dim shadows. For some reason general conditions on the
schooner seemed to satisfy the stranger.

"The thing is breaking about right--about as I reckoned it would," he
said aloud. "Look here, George, how much talking do you do about things
you see?"

"Talking to who, sir?"

"Why, to your boss--the captain--the mate."

"A sailor before the mast is pretty careful not to say anything to a
captain or the mates unless they speak to him first,