time, be sure of that.  And if ever I did look and looked long enough, be sure the earth would look like it was rolling by too slow and I’d want to get out and give it a push to speed it up.  No, no.  That”—­he looked up at the serene blue—­“for my ceiling.  And that”—­he pointed to the dimpling green sea—­“for my office floor.  And that”—­he waved a hand to space—­“for a window.  And let all the bruising bosuns and bucko ship’s officers afloat jump on me, but give me that and I’ll take a chance.  And—­”

He stopped short and sighed.  “I do get going sometimes, don’t I?” He looked around the deck.  In a bucket of water by the rail the bosun was bathing his battered features.  “The bosun reminds me.  To-day I promised him I’d finish my Flying Walrus song.”

“Go ahead and finish it—­that first verse was pretty good.”

“The second’s better—­or I think so.  And”—­he grinned at the passenger—­“I composed it myself, too, to an air running in my head.  And I suppose I ought to finish it.  And yet”—­the bosun was pouring, very quietly, his bucket of wash water into the scuppers—­“that would be sort of rubbing it in, wouldn’t it?”

“What of it?  It will do them all good.”

“I don’t know about that.  If it”—­and just then three bells struck, and three bells on the Rapidan meant supper for the watch below.

Kieran left to go to supper, and the passenger noted the deference of the crew toward him.  Not one who found himself in his way but hopped swiftly aside to give him gangway.

“How conducive to high judgment, how accelerating to respect is success,” mused the passenger.  “Two hours ago hardly one of them who did not set him down for a half-crazy, or, at least, an over-sanguine visionary—­but now—­they bound like stags before him, and none more propitiatingly agile than the former satellites of our deposed bosun.  A Don Quixote”—­murmured the passenger—­“maybe, but a 20th century Don Quixote—­with a wallop in each hand.  If the Don Quixotes generally had his equipment, it would not be windmills alone which would suffer, and some joy then for honest men to watch the tilting.”

Jan Tingloff

THE LODGING HOUSE

Jan Tingloff, not wishing to get too far away from the dry dock, turned up a side street near the water-front, and there, in a basement window of a narrow four-story brick building, he saw the sign “Furnished Room to Rent.”

A second look showed Jan that the basement also afforded an entrance to a not too well lit pool-room and that a not overclean alley ran up one side of the building.  Jan, with no prejudices against alleys or pool-rooms, entered the pool-room to inquire.  “Yeh,” said the man behind the cigar-case—­“second floor—­a week in advance—­ring the front-door bell—­a woman will come and show you.”