nt to prejudice you against him."

We found Snip--by the way, that was the tailor's actual name, and not a
nickname, as I had at first imagined--comfortably ensconced in a little,
well-lighted workroom under the topgallant forecastle. He quickly took
my measure, promising, somewhat to my amazement, to have my working
uniform ready for me to try on as early on the following morning as I
chose to come aboard--the earlier the better, he assured me. This
matter settled, the purser--to whom I took an immediate liking--led me
aft and down below to the wardroom, where we found Mr Neil Kennedy, the
chief officer, Mr Alexander Mackenzie, the chief engineer, and Doctor
Stephen Harper, the ship's medico, chatting and smoking together. To
these I was introduced by Grimwood; and I was at once admitted as a
member of the fraternity with much cordiality.

I liked those three men immensely. Neil Kennedy was a huge man,
standing six feet three in his socks, as I afterwards learned, and being
bulky in proportion, was the sort of man that a "hazing" skipper would
at once have singled out as eminently suited to keep a refractory crew
in order and get the last ounce of work out of the laziest skulker. But
it happened that Kennedy was not that sort of man at all. Although
admirably fitted by Nature for the part, he was not the typical
quarterdeck tyrant and bully, but a genial, merry, great-hearted
Irish-American of the very best stamp. He could, however, if occasion
demanded it, display a sternness and severity of manner well calculated
to subdue the most recklessly insubordinate of mariners. His voice was
like the bellow of a bull, and could be heard from the taffrail to the
flying jib-boom end in anything short of a full-grown hurricane.

The doctor was quite another type of man--tall, lean, clean-shaven,
slightly bald, with a pair of piercing black eyes that seemed to look a
man through and through. Possessed of a quiet, well-modulated and
cultured voice, and a deliberate yet firm manner of speaking, he was
apparently a man of high attainments, and unmistakably a gentleman.

As for Mackenzie, the chief engineer, he was but a trifle less
formidable in appearance than Kennedy--red-haired, with a shaggy red
beard and moustache, the former of which he had a trick of pushing up
over his mouth and nose when he was meditating deeply, and immense hands
as hairy as a monkey's. He was apparently between forty and fifty years
of age, a