“Yes.  Well, I’ve been with him ten years.  I am his right-hand man.  All his business I transact down to the last penny.  I even order his meals.  His discoveries have taken shape in my hands.  Suddenly he gets a freak.  He will go on a voyage.  Where?  I shall know in good time.  For how long?  I shall know in good time.  For what purpose?  Same answer.  What accommodations shall I engage?  I experience the worst shock of my life;—­he will engage them himself.  What scientific apparatus?  Shock number two;—­he will attend to that.  Is there anything I can do?  What do you suppose he says?”

“How should I know?” I asked.

“You should know in the course of intelligent conversation with me,” he drawled.  “Well, he, good old staid Schermie with the vertebrated thoughts gets kittenish.  He says to me, ’Joost imachin, Percy, you are all-alone-on-a-desert-island placed; and that you will sit on those sands and wish within yourself all you would buy to be comfortable.  Go out and buy me those things—­in abundance.’  Those were my directions.”

He puffed.

“What does he pay you?” he asked.

“Enough,” I replied.

“More than enough, by a good deal, I’ll bet,” he rejoined.  “The old fool!  He ought to have left it to me.  What is this craft?  Have you ever sailed on her before?”

“No.”

“Have any of the crew?”

I replied that I believed all of them were Selover’s men.  He threw the cigarette butt into the sea and turned back.

“Well, I wish you joy of your double wages,” he mocked.

So he knew that, after all!  How much more of his ignorance was pretended I had no means of guessing.  His eye gleamed sarcastically as he sauntered toward the companion-way.  Handy Solomon was at the wheel, steering easily with one foot and an elbow.  His steel hook lay fully exposed, glittering in the sunlight.  Darrow glanced at it curiously, and at the man’s headgear.

“Well, my genial pirate,” he drawled, “if you had a line to fit that hook, you’d be equipped for fishing.”  The man’s teeth bared like an animal’s, but Darrow went on easily as though unconscious of giving offence.  “If I were you, I’d have it arranged so the hook would turn backward as well as forward.  It would be handier for some things,—­fighting, for instance.”

He passed on down the companion.  Handy Solomon glared after him, then down at his hook.  He bent his arm this way and that, drawing the hook toward him softly, as a cat does her claws.  His eyes cleared and a look of admiration crept into them.

“By God, he’s right!” he muttered, and after a moment; “I’ve wore that ten year and never thought of it.  The little son of a gun!”

He remained staring for a moment at the hook.  Then he looked up and caught my eye.  His own turned quizzical.  He shifted his quid and began to hum: 

  “The bos’n laid aloft, aloft laid he,
    Blow high, blow low!  What care we?
  ‘There’s a ship upon the wind’ard, a wreck upon the lee,’
    Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e."