“Here’s where Johnson stayed,” proffered Selover.  “You can bunk here, or you can go in the foc’sle with the men.  They’s more room there.  We’ll get under way with the turn of the tide.”

He left me.  I examined the cabin.  It was just a trifle larger than its single berth, and the berth was just a trifle larger than myself.  My chest would have to be left outside.  I strongly suspected that my lungs would have to be left outside also; for the life of me I could not see where the air was to come from.  With a mental reservation in favour of investigating the forecastle, I went on deck.

The Laughing Lass was one of the prettiest little schooners I ever saw.  Were it not for the lines of her bilges and the internal arrangement of her hold, it might be imagined she had been built originally as a pleasure yacht.  Even the rake of her masts, a little forward of the plumb, bore out this impression, which a comparatively new suit of canvas, well stopped down, brass stanchions forward, and two little guns under tarpaulins, almost confirmed.  One thing struck me as peculiar.  Her complement of boats was ample enough.  She had two surf boats, a dingy, and a dory slung to the davits.  In addition another dory,—­the one you picked me up in—­was lashed to the top of the deck house.

“They’d mighty near have a boat apiece,” I thought, and went forward.

Just outside the forecastle hatch I paused.  Someone below was singing in a voice singularly rich in quality.  The words and the quaintness of the minor air struck me immensely and have clung to my memory like a burr ever since.

  “‘Are you a man-o’-war or a privateer,’ said he.
    Blow high, blow low, what care we!
  ‘Oh, I am a jolly pirate, and I’m sailing for my fee.’
    Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e."

I stepped to the companion.  The voice at once ceased.  I descended.

A glimmer of late afternoon struggled through the deadlights.  I found myself in a really commodious space,—­extending far back of where the forward bulk-heads are usually placed,—­accommodating rows and row of bunks—­eighteen of them, in fact.  The unlighted lamp cast its shadow on wood stained black by much use, but polished like ebony from the continued friction of men’s garments.  I wish I could convey to you the uncanny effect, this—­of dropping from the decks of a miniature craft to the internal arrangements of a square-rigged ship.  It was as though, entering a cottage door, you were to discover yourself on the floor of Madison Square Garden.  A fresh sweet breeze of evening sucked down the hatch.  I immediately decided on the forecastle.  Already it was being borne in on me that I was little more than a glorified bo’s’n’s mate.  The situation suited me, however.  It enabled me to watch the course of events more safely, less exposed to the danger of recognition.