sometimes in an empty truck on a siding near the
station, sometimes in a cart behind a warehouse; but it was
bitterly cold, and after an hour or two of uneasy dozing they
would tramp the streets again. What they felt the lack of
most bitterly was tobacco, and Captain Nichols, for his part,
could not do without it; he took to hunting the "Can o' Beer,"
for cigarette-ends and the butt-end of cigars which the
promenaders of the night before had thrown away.

"I've tasted worse smoking mixtures in a pipe," he added,
with a philosophic shrug of his shoulders, as he took a couple
of cigars from the case I offered him, putting one in his mouth
and the other in his pocket.

Now and then they made a bit of money. Sometimes a mail
steamer would come in, and Captain Nichols, having scraped
acquaintance with the timekeeper, would succeed in getting the
pair of them a job as stevedores. When it was an English boat,
they would dodge into the forecastle and get a hearty
breakfast from the crew. They took the risk of running
against one of the ship's officers and being hustled down the
gangway with the toe of a boot to speed their going.

"There's no harm in a kick in the hindquarters when your
belly's full," said Captain Nichols, "and personally I never
take it in bad part. An officer's got to think about discipline."

I had a lively picture of Captain Nichols flying headlong down
a narrow gangway before the uplifted foot of an angry mate,
and, like a true Englishman, rejoicing in the spirit of the
Mercantile Marine.

There were often odd jobs to be got about the fish-market.
Once they each of them earned a franc by loading trucks with
innumerable boxes of oranges that had been dumped down on the quay.
One day they had a stroke of luck: one of the boarding-masters
got a contract to paint a tramp that had come in
from Madagascar round the Cape of Good Hope, and they spent
several days on a plank hanging over the side, covering the
rusty hull with paint. It was a situation that must have
appealed to Strickland's sardonic humour. I asked Captain
Nichols how he bore himself during these hardships.

"Never knew him say a cross word," answered the Captain.
"He'd be a bit surly sometimes, but when we hadn't had a bite
since morning, and we hadn't even got the price of a lie down
at the Chink's, he'd be as lively as a cricket."

I was not surprised at this. Strickland was just the man to
rise superior to circumstances, wh