command of a scow," he declared, quivering
with passion, while the other looked about listlessly.

"Is there?"

But he caught sight on the quay of a heavy seaman's chest, painted brown
under a fringed sailcloth cover, and lashed with new manila line. He
eyed it with awakened interest.

"I would talk and raise trouble if it wasn't for that damned Siamese
flag. Nobody to go to--or I would make it hot for him. The fraud! Told
his chief engineer--that's another fraud for you--I had lost my nerve.
The greatest lot of ignorant fools that ever sailed the seas. No! You
can't think . . ."

"Got your money all right?" inquired his seedy acquaintance suddenly.

"Yes. Paid me off on board," raged the second mate. "'Get your breakfast
on shore,' says he."

"Mean skunk!" commented the tall man, vaguely, and passed his tongue on
his lips. "What about having a drink of some sort?"

"He struck me," hissed the second mate.

"No! Struck! You don't say?" The man in blue began to bustle about
sympathetically. "Can't possibly talk here. I want to know all about it.
Struck--eh? Let's get a fellow to carry your chest. I know a quiet place
where they have some bottled beer. . . ."

Mr. Jukes, who had been scanning the shore through a pair of glasses,
informed the chief engineer afterwards that "our late second mate hasn't
been long in finding a friend. A chap looking uncommonly like a bummer.
I saw them walk away together from the quay."

The hammering and banging of the needful repairs did not disturb
Captain MacWhirr. The steward found in the letter he wrote, in a tidy
chart-room, passages of such absorbing interest that twice he was
nearly caught in the act. But Mrs. MacWhirr, in the drawing-room of the
forty-pound house, stifled a yawn--perhaps out of self-respect--for she
was alone.

She reclined in a plush-bottomed and gilt hammock-chair near a tiled
fireplace, with Japanese fans on the mantel and a glow of coals in the
grate. Lifting her hands, she glanced wearily here and there into the
many pages. It was not her fault they were so prosy, so completely
uninteresting--from "My darling wife" at the beginning, to "Your loving
husband" at the end. She couldn't be really expected to understand all
these ship affairs. She was glad, of course, to hear from him, but she
had never asked herself why, precisely.

". . . They are called typhoons . . . The mate did not seem to like it
. . . Not in books . . . Couldn't think of letting