when the captain told what
had brought these past events back to his recollection.

"I'm not going to tell you the port of discharge," said Captain Cable,
"because in doing that I should run foul of other people who acted
square by me, and I'll act square by them. I'll tell you one thing,
though, I sighted the Scaw light on that voyage. You can have that bit
of information--you, that's half a sailor. You can put that in your pipe
and smoke it."

And he glanced at Cartoner's cigarette with the satisfaction of a
conversationalist who has pulled off a good simile.

"'Safternoon," he continued, "I went to see some people about a little
job for the _Minnie_. She'll be out of dock in a fortnight. You will not
forget to come down and see her?"

"I should like to see her," said Cartoner. "Go on with your story."

"Well, this afternoon I went to see some parties that had a charter to
offer me. Foreigners--every man Jack of them. Spoke in German, out of
politeness to me. The Lord knows what they would have spoken if I hadn't
been there. It was bad enough as it was. But it wasn't the lingo that
got me; it was the voice. 'Where have I heard that voice?' thinks I.
And then I remembered. It was at the Seemannshaus, at Hamburg, one dark
night. 'You're a pretty government official,' I says to myself, sitting
quiet all the time, like a cat in the engine-room. I wouldn't have taken
the job at any rate, owing to that voice, which I have never forgotten,
and yet never thought to hear again. But while the parley voo was still
going on, up jumps a man--the only man I knew there--name beginning with
a K--don't quite remember it. At any rate, up he jumps, and says that
that room was no place for me nor yet for him. Dare say you know the
man, if I could remember his name. Sort of thin, dark man, with a way
of carrying his head--quarter-deck fashion--as if he was a king or a
Hooghly pilot. Well, we gets up and walks out, proudlike, as if we had
been insulted. But blessed if I knew what it was all about. 'Who's that
man!' I asks when we were in the street. And the other chap turns and
makes a mark upon the door, which he rubs out afterwards as if it was a
hanging matter. 'That's who that is,' he says."

Cartoner turned, and with one finger made an imaginary design on the
soft pile of the table-cloth. Captain Cable looked at it critically, and
after a moment's reflection admitted in an absent voice that his hopes
for eternity were exceeding