you off your head like this! She's probably hiding out
below this minute, on affairs of her own."

"Hiding?" He regarded me for a moment with the queer superiority of
the damned. "I guess you don't realize how many times I've been over
this hulk, from decks to keelson, with a mallet and a foot-rule."

"Or fallen overboard," I shifted, with less assurance. "Like this fellow
Bjoernsen. By the way, McCord--". I stopped there on account of the look
in his eyes.

He reached out, poured himself a shot, swallowed it, and got up to
shuffle about the confined quarters. I watched their restless
circuit--my friend and his jumping shadow. He stopped and bent forward
to examine a Sunday-supplement chromo tacked on the wall, and the two
heads drew together, as though there were something to whisper. Of a
sudden I seemed to hear the old gnome croaking, "Now that story sounds
to me kind of--"

McCord straightened up and turned to face me.

"What do you know about Bjoernsen?" he demanded.

"Well--only what they had you saying in the papers," I told him.

"Pshaw!" He snapped his fingers, tossing the affair aside. "I found her
log," he announced in quite another voice.

"You did, eh? I judged, from what I read in the paper, that there was't
a sign."

"No, no; I happened on this the other night, under the mattress in
there." He jerked his head toward the state-room. "Wait!" I heard him
knocking things over in the dark and mumbling at them. After a moment
he came out and threw on the table a long, cloth-covered ledger, of
the common commercial sort. It lay open at about the middle, showing
close script running indiscriminately across the column ruling.

"When I said 'log,'" he went on, "I guess I was going it a little
strong. At least, I wouldn't want that sort of log found around _my_
vessel. Let's call it a personal record. Here's his picture,
somewhere--". He shook the book by its back and a common kodak blueprint
fluttered to the table. It was the likeness of a solid man with a
paunch, a huge square beard, small squinting eyes, and a bald head.
"What do you make of him--a writing chap?"

"From the nose down, yes," I estimated. "From the nose up, he will 'tend
to his own business if you will 'tend to yours, strictly."

McCord slapped his thigh. "By gracious! that's the fellow! He hates the
Chinaman. He knows as well as anything he ought not to put down in black
and white how intolerably he hates the Chinaman, and yet he mus