tisfied my suspicion
of a previous acquaintance. Yet how one could have set eyes on
so singular a face and yet have forgotten the precise occasion,
passed my imagination.

Montgomery's movement to follow me released my attention, and I
turned and looked about me at the flush deck of the little schooner.
I was already half prepared by the sounds I had heard for what I saw.
Certainly I never beheld a deck so dirty. It was littered with
scraps of carrot, shreds of green stuff, and indescribable filth.
Fastened by chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds,
who now began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen a huge puma was
cramped in a little iron cage far too small even to give it turning room.
Farther under the starboard bulwark were some big hutches containing
a number of rabbits, and a solitary llama was squeezed in a mere
box of a cage forward. The dogs were muzzled by leather straps.
The only human being on deck was a gaunt and silent sailor at
the wheel.

The patched and dirty spankers were tense before the wind,
and up aloft the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had.
The sky was clear, the sun midway down the western sky;
long waves, capped by the breeze with froth, were running with us.
We went past the steersman to the taffrail, and saw the water come
foaming under the stern and the bubbles go dancing and vanishing
in her wake. I turned and surveyed the unsavoury length of
the ship.

"Is this an ocean menagerie?" said I.

"Looks like it," said Montgomery.

"What are these beasts for? Merchandise, curios? Does the captain
think he is going to sell them somewhere in the South Seas?"

"It looks like it, doesn't it?" said Montgomery, and turned towards
the wake again.

Suddenly we heard a yelp and a volley of furious blasphemy
from the companion hatchway, and the deformed man with the black
face came up hurriedly. He was immediately followed by a heavy
red-haired man in a white cap. At the sight of the former
the staghounds, who had all tired of barking at me by this time,
became furiously excited, howling and leaping against their chains.
The black hesitated before them, and this gave the red-haired man
time to come up with him and deliver a tremendous blow between
the shoulder-blades. The poor devil went down like a felled ox,
and rolled in the dirt among the furiously excited dogs.
It was lucky for him that they were muzzled. The red-haired man gave
a yawp of exu