“Oh, I guess it ain’t been too bad a trip,” he was saying.  “Takin’ the ‘ins’ with the ‘outs,’ I’d say it was a fairish passage, which is mostly as it should be, seein’ it’s my last voyage in the old barge.  Y’see, you folks are kind of robbing me of this blessed old kettle,” he explained, with a grin that lit up the whole of his mahogany features.  “Y’see we’re loaded well-nigh rail under with stuff for your mill, which don’t leave a dog’s chance for the other folks along the coast.  The Company guesses they got to put on a two thousand tonner.  The Myra.  I haven’t a kick comin’.  She’s all a seaboat.  Still, I’m kind of sorry, don’t you know.  I’ve known the Lizzie since she came off the stocks, which is mostly forty years, and we’re mighty good friends, which ain’t allus the way.  I’d say, too, I’m getting old for a change.  Still—.”

Standing shook his head.

“What do they say?  ‘Hardy’ by name, ‘Hardy’ by nature.  The toughest and best sailorman on the Labrador coast!  Well, I’m sorry you don’t feel good about it.  But,” he added with a smile, “it means a good deal to us getting a bigger packet.”

Captain Hardy nodded.

“Thankee kindly.  It’s good to know folks reckon a fellow something more than just part of a kettle of scrap like this old packet.  But I’d have been glad to finish my job with her.  Still, times don’t stand around even in Labrador.”  He finished up with something in the nature of a sigh.

The work going forward was full of interest.  But it was not the work that held Standing, or the watchful eyes of Bat Harker.  Their sole interest was in the personality of the crew and the five passengers, mostly “drummers,” from the great business houses of Quebec and Montreal, who were struggling to land their trunks of samples and get them off to the offices of the mill so as to complete their trade before the Lizzie put to sea again.  Not one of these escaped their observation.

“You seem to keep much the same crew right along, Hardy,” Standing said pleasantly.  “I suppose they like shipping with a good skipper.  I seem to recognise most of their faces.”

“Oh, yes.  They’re mostly the same boys,” Hardy agreed, obviously appreciating the compliment.  “But I guess I lost four boys this trip.  They skipped half an hour before putting to sea.  It happens that way now and then, if they’re only soused enough when they get aboard.  They’re a crazy lot with rye under their belts.  I just had to replace ’em with some dockside loafers, or lie alongside another day.”

Standing nodded.  A man was moving down the gangway bearing a large, grey, official-looking sack on his shoulders.  He was a slight, dark man with a curiously foreign cast about his features.

“The mail?” he enquired.  And a curious sharpness flavoured his demand.  Then he added, with studied indifference.  “One of your—­dockside loafers?”

Captain Hardy laughed.  He continued to laugh as he watched the unhandiness of the man staggering down the gangway under his burden.