litician, who did not think
his sailor brother-in-law quite respectable enough for him. Quite a
lady, quite a lady, he thought, sitting down for a moment's rest on the
quarter-hatch. Time enough to go ashore and get a bite and sup, and a
bed somewhere. He didn't like to part with a ship. No one to think about
then. The darkness of a misty evening fell, cold and damp, upon the
deserted deck; and Mr. Baker sat smoking, thinking of all the successive
ships to whom through many long years he had given the best of a
seaman's care. And never a command in sight. Not once!--"I haven't
somehow the cut of a skipper about me," he meditated, placidly, while
the shipkeeper (who had taken possession of the galley), a wizened
old man with bleared eyes, cursed him in whispers for "hanging about
so."--"Now, Creighton," he pursued the unenvious train of thought, "quite
a gentleman... swell friends... will get on. Fine young fellow... a
little more experience." He got up and shook himself. "I'll be back
first thing to-morrow morning for the hatches. Don't you let them touch
anything before I come, shipkeeper," he called out. Then, at last, he
also went ashore--a model chief mate!

The men scattered by the dissolving contact of the land came together
once more in the shipping office.---"The Narcissus pays off," shouted
outside a glazed door a brass-bound old fellow with a crown and the
capitals B. T. on his cap. A lot trooped in at once but many were late.
The room was large, white-washed, and bare; a counter surmounted by a
brass-wire grating fenced off a third of the dusty space, and behind the
grating a pasty-faced clerk, with his hair parted in the middle, had
the quick, glittering eyes and the vivacious, jerky movements of a caged
bird. Poor Captain Allistoun also in there, and sitting before a little
table with piles of gold and notes on it, appeared subdued by his
captivity. Another Board of Trade bird was perching on a high stool near
the door: an old bird that did not mind the chaff of elated sailors. The
crew of the Narcissus, broken up into knots, pushed in the corners. They
had new shore togs, smart jackets that looked as if they had been shaped
with an axe, glossy trousers that seemed made of crumpled sheet-iron,
collarless flannel shirts, shiny new boots. They tapped on shoulders,
button-holed one another, asked:--> "Where did you sleep last night?"
whispered gaily, slapped their thighs with bursts of subdued laughter.
Most h