had never
encountered. Possibly I can give a better idea of them by describing
what occurred.

As they passed before us they favoured Mr. Pike with the same
indifferent, keen glances they gave me.

"What's your name--you?" Mr. Pike barked at the first of the trio,
evidently a hybrid Irish-Jew. Jewish his nose unmistakably was. Equally
unmistakable was the Irish of his eyes, and jaw, and upper lip.

The three had immediately stopped, and, though they did not look directly
at one another, they seemed to be holding a silent conference. Another
of the trio, in whose veins ran God alone knows what Semitic, Babylonish
and Latin strains, gave a warning signal. Oh, nothing so crass as a wink
or a nod. I almost doubted that I had intercepted it, and yet I knew he
had communicated a warning to his fellows. More a shade of expression
that had crossed his eyes, or a glint in them of sudden light--or
whatever it was, it carried the message.

"Murphy," the other answered the mate.

"Sir!" Mr. Pike snarled at him.

Murphy shrugged his shoulders in token that he did not understand. It
was the poise of the man, of the three of them, the cool poise that
impressed me.

"When you address any officer on this ship you'll say 'sir,'" Mr. Pike
explained, his voice as harsh as his face was forbidding. "Did you get
_that_?"

"Yes . . . sir," Murphy drawled with deliberate slowness. "I gotcha."

"Sir!" Mr. Pike roared.

"Sir," Murphy answered, so softly and carelessly that it irritated the
mate to further bullyragging.

"Well, Murphy's too long," he announced. "Nosey'll do you aboard this
craft. Got _that_?"

"I gotcha . . . sir," came the reply, insolent in its very softness and
unconcern. "Nosey Murphy goes . . . sir."

And then he laughed--the three of them laughed, if laughter it might be
called that was laughter without sound or facial movement. The eyes
alone laughed, mirthlessly and cold-bloodedly.

Certainly Mr. Pike was not enjoying himself with these baffling
personalities. He turned upon the leader, the one who had given the
warning and who looked the admixture of all that was Mediterranean and
Semitic.

"What's _your_ name?"

"Bert Rhine . . . sir," was the reply, in tones as soft and careless and
silkily irritating as the other's.

"And _you_?"--this to the remaining one, the youngest of the trio, a dark-
eyed, olive-skinned fellow with a face most striking in its cameo-like
beauty. American-bo