Bronzed men with brooms and buckets in their hands stood about with open mouths.  “I have found them lying in the passage outside the captain’s door,” the steward declared faintly.  The additional statement that the captain’s watch was gone from its hook by the bedside raised the painful sensation to the highest pitch.  We knew then we had a thief amongst us.  Our thief!  Behold the solidarity of a ship’s company.  He couldn’t be to us like any other thief.  We all had to live under the shadow of his crime for days; but the police kept on investigating, and one morning a young woman appeared on board swinging a parasol, attended by two policemen, and identified the culprit.  She was a barmaid of some bar near the Circular Quay, and knew really nothing of our man except that he looked like a respectable sailor.  She had seen him only twice in her life.  On the second occasion he begged her nicely as a great favour to take care for him of a small solidly tied-up paper parcel for a day or two.  But he never came near her again.  At the end of three weeks she opened it, and, of course, seeing the contents, was much alarmed, and went to the nearest police-station for advice.  The police took her at once on board our ship, where all hands were mustered on the quarterdeck.  She stared wildly at all our faces, pointed suddenly a finger with a shriek, “That’s the man,” and incontinently went off into a fit of hysterics in front of thirty-six seamen.  I must say that never in my life did I see a ship’s company look so frightened.  Yes, in this tale of guilt, there was a curious absence of mere criminality, and a touch of that fantasy which is often a part of a seaman’s character.  It wasn’t greed that moved him, I think.  It was something much less simple:  boredom, perhaps, or a bet, or the pleasure of defiance.

And now for the point of view.  It was given to me by a short, black-bearded A.B. of the crew, who on sea passages washed my flannel shirts, mended my clothes and, generally, looked after my room.  He was an excellent needleman and washerman, and a very good sailor.  Standing in this peculiar relation to me, he considered himself privileged to open his mind on the matter one evening when he brought back to my cabin three clean and neatly folded shirts.  He was profoundly pained.  He said:  “What a ship’s company!  Never seen such a crowd!  Liars, cheats, thieves. . . "

It was a needlessly jaundiced view.  There were in that ship’s company three or four fellows who dealt in tall yarns, and I knew that on the passage out there had been a dispute over a game in the foc’sle once or twice of a rather acute kind, so that all card-playing had to be abandoned.  In regard to thieves, as we know, there was only one, and he, I am convinced, came out of his reserve to perform an exploit rather than to commit a crime.  But my black-bearded friend’s indignation had its special morality, for he added, with a burst of passion:  “And on board our ship, too—­a ship like this. . .”