He had admitted me to a close view of some secret treasured charms of
his memory, and believing that I was not uninterested, now, of course,
he would be always displaying, for the ease of his soul, supposing we
had a fellowship and a bond, his fascinating quetzals and Toltecs. Yet
I never heard any more about them. There was another subject though,
quite homely, seeing where we both lived, and equally absorbing for us
both. He knew our local history, as far as our ships and house-flags
were concerned, from John Company's fleet to the _Macquarie_. He knew,
by reputation, many of our contemporary master mariners. He knew, and
how he had learned it was as great a wonder as though he spoke Chinese,
a fair measure of naval architecture. He could discuss ships' models
as some men would Greek drama. He would enter into the comparative
merits of rig suitable for small cruising craft with a particularity
which, now and then, gave me a feeling almost akin to alarm; because in
a man of Pascoe's years this fond insistence on the best furniture for
one's own little ship went beyond fair interest, and became the
day-dreaming of romantic and rebellious youth. At that point he was
beyond my depth. I had forgotten long ago, though but half Pascoe's
age, what my ship was to be like, when I got her at last. Knowing she
would never be seen at her moorings, I had, in a manner of speaking,
posted her as a missing ship.

One day I met at his door the barge-builder into whose cavernous loft I
had stumbled on my first visit to Pascoe. He said it was a fine
afternoon. He invited me in to inspect a figure-head he had purchased.
"How's the old 'un?" he asked, jerking a thumb towards the bootmaker's.
Then, with some amused winking and crafty tilting of his chin, he
signed to me to follow him along his loft. He led me clean through the
port-light of his cave, and down a length of steps outside to his yard
on the foreshore of the Thames, where, among his barges hauled up for
repairs, he paused by a formless shape covered by tarpaulins.

"I've seen a few things in the way of boats, but this 'ere's a--well,
what do you make of it?" He pulled the tarpaulin back, and disclosed a
vessel whose hull was nearing completion. I did not ask if it was
Pascoe's work. It was such an amusing and pathetic surprise, that,
with the barge-builder's leering face turned to me waiting for my
guess, there was no need to answer. "He reckons," said the
ba