Tom could not refrain from laughing at the last expression.  “That’s a new word,” he said.

“Ha!” his companion cried with great satisfaction, “it is, is it?  Then we are quits now on the hypochondriacal.”  He was so pleased that he chuckled to himself for some minutes in the depths of his tawny beard.  “Yes,” he continued at last, “he is dangerous to us at times, and he is dangerous to you.  This is atween oorsels, as man to man, and is said withoot prejudice, but he do go on when he is in they fits aboot the firm, and aboot insurances, and rotten ships, and ither such things, which is all vera well when sequestrated amang gentlemen like oorsels, but sounds awfu’ bad when it fa’s on the ignorant tympanums of common seamen.”

“It’s scandalous,” Tom said gravely, “that he should spread such reports about his employer.  Our ships are old, and some of them, in my opinion, hardly safe, but that’s a very different thing from implying, as you hint, that Mr. Girdlestone wishes them to go down.”

“We’ll no argue aboot that,” said the canny Scot.  “Muster Girdlestone kens on which side his bread is buttered.  He may wish ’em to sink or he may wish ’em to swim.  That’s no for us to judge.  You’ll hear him speak o’t to-night as like as not, for he’s aye on it when he’s half over.  Here we are, sir.  The corner edifice wi’ the red blinds in the window.”

During this conversation the two had been threading their way through the intricate and dirty lanes which lead up from the water side to the outskirts of Stepney.  It was quite dark by the time that they reached a long thoroughfare, lined by numerous shops, with great gas flares outside them.  Many of these belonged to dealers in marine stores, and the numerous suits of oil-skin, hung up for exhibition, swung to and fro in the uncertain light, like rows of attenuated pirates.  At every corner was a great public-house with glittering windows, and a crowd of slatternly women and jersey-clad men elbowing each other at the door.  At the largest and most imposing of these gin-palaces the mate and Dimsdale now pulled up.

“Come in this way,” said McPherson, who had evidently paid many a visit there before.  Pushing open a swinging door, he made his way into the crowded bar, where the reek of bad spirits and the smell of squalid humanity seemed to Tom to be even more horrible than the effluvium of the grease-laden hold.

“Captain Miggs in?” asked McPherson of a rubicund, white-aproned personage behind the bar.

“Yes, sir.  He’s in his room, sir, and expectin’ you.  There’s a gent with him, sir, but he told me to send you up.  This way, sir.”

They were pushing their way through the crowd to reach the door which led behind the bar, when Tom’s attention was arrested by the conversation of a very seedy-looking individual who was leaning with his elbows upon the zinc-covered counter.