“Good-night,” mumbled Jan.  He hurried out of the room and all but fell over the bell-boy in the hall.  “What you hanging round for?” Jan almost hissed.  “Go below.”

The bell-boy hurried downstairs and “Say, but that’s a new kind of an elopement for this shack!” he exploded to the clerk, and repeated what he had heard.

The clerk took a look at the register and read:  “’Mrs. H.G.  Goles, City.’  Now I didn’t notice that before.  ‘Mrs. Goles’ he registered, and not himself.  Goles?  I wonder if that’s Hen’s woman?  Well, if it is he’ll get his good and plenty before Hen’s done with him.”

“Yes, and the police’ll get Hen.  And, say, that Swede ain’t such a gink when yuh get a second look at him.”

“I don’t know.  I didn’t get a second look at him; but the way he pulled out that wad—­I charged him four bucks for a dollar-’n’-a-half room.  And—­”

“S-st!” warned the boy.

It was Jan re-entering the office.

“What’s wrong?” demanded the clerk.

“Paper and envelope, please,” said Jan.

“Oh!” The clerk looked relieved and passed them over.  Jan took out a carpenter’s thick-leaded pencil and wrote on the sheet of paper:  “You must buy some things for the trip on the boat.”  He looked at the clerk and then at the boy, and went out into the hall, folded one ten-dollar bill and two twenty-dollar bills inside the sheet, sealed and addressed the envelope, and brought it in to the boy.

“You take this up to the lady.  Give it to her and hurry away before she can open it.  And if you are back in two minutes—­”

The boy was back in less time.  Jan gave him half a dollar and passed out into the street.

THE PORT ROCK BOAT

The Port Rock boat was due to leave her dock.  The first mate made his way to the upper deck.  He found his captain in the pilot-house, studying the barometer.

“Freight all aboard, sir.”

“All right,” nodded the captain; “but did you hear about the storm flags being up?”

“So I heard, sir.”

“M-m!  Close that door.  It’s cold.”  The mate closed the door; but almost immediately the captain raised a window and gazed down the harbor.  “It looks bad to me,” he said after a while.

“It is a bad-looking night,” assented the mate.

“A wicked night!” barked the captain; and gathering one end of his moustache between his teeth, began to chew on it.

The mate pursed his lips.  “What will I do, sir?”

The captain stopped chewing his moustache.  “It all comes down to dollars and cents.  Use our judgment and stay tied up to the dock here and it’s go hunt another berth.  Do you want to hunt another job?”

“Not me.  I got a family to look after.”

“N’ me.  We’ll put out.”

“All right, sir.”  The mate descended to the wharf.  “In with that freight runway and plank!” he called out to the waiting longshoremen.  “And you”—­a colored steward was at his elbow—­“tell ’em all aboard on the dock and all ashore on the boat that’s goin’ ashore.”