le angel. Between me and him, he was good
enough to say, we ought to have a very pleasant trip, what with ladies
on board, what? And Mr. Bloom, settling his dirty collar and concealing
a brilliant smile behind a hairy, ringed hand, walked off to superintend
his neglected work.

"I was not such a fool as to assume that I could any longer stroll into
Jack's room and have a chat. I am not afraid of women, but I regard
their lairs with considerable trepidation. On board an old tramp steamer
a woman is nothing less than a scourge. There is no place for her, and
consequently you never know where you may find her. If you walk to and
fro on the deck, you are probably keeping her awake. If you go out on
deck in your shirt-sleeves, or come from a bath with a towel round you,
you are outraging her modesty. If you use the ordinary jargon of the
sea, she writes home that the engineers are awfully coarse on her
husband's ship. You moon about in a furtive fashion, closing doors and
ventilators when you converse with one another, and pray for the day
when she will quit the ship and return to the semi-detached mansion in
the suburbs where she reigns as queen, Captain So-and-So's wife. I felt
sadly, as I sat in my room, that my friendship with Jack would remain
for a few weeks in a state of suspended animation. I got up several
times, unconsciously, to go along, and had to sit down again. And as I
sat there, the alleyway was darkened and the familiar stout figure and
short red neck appeared. I had a little table in my room and as a rule
sat behind it on the settee, while Jack sprawled in an old easy chair I
had bought in Savannah, a chair out of an old plantation mansion. Jack
sank into it and remained silent while I poured out two pegs and
squirted some soda-water into them. I knew perfectly well, or thought I
did, that he needed some restorative after his recent adventures. He
drank it thirstily and set the glass on the table.

"'Fred,' he said, in the cautious whisper which, as I have said,
becomes second nature when there is a woman on board, 'Fred, I've made
an infernal fool of meself. They've let me in at the office.'

"'Why,' I said, 'I thought they did you rather well, giving you
permission to take Mrs. Evans _and_ the youngster. You know how they
wired Tompkins once: '_No children_'?'

"'You don't know nothing about it,' says Jack, who was invariably hard
on English when he was moved. 'It's a case of wheels within wheels. The