Macandrew frowned at his junior, and his curiously pale eyes became distinctly inhuman.  I believe he thought his counsel was being laughed at.  But the door opened, and he touched Hanson’s arm.  A little man of middle age stood there, who turned, and actually prevented the doors from swinging together with their usual announcement of another customer.  For only a moment he raised his downcast eyes to see who was there, and then nodded sadly to Macandrew.  His drooping moustache conformed to the downward lines of his face, which was that of a man who had been long observing life with understanding, and had not a lively opinion of it.

Macandrew’s demeanour changed.  It was now mild and almost affectionate as he greeted the little man.  “Come over here, Purdy, and tell us what you’ve been doing.  Here’s Hanson, this young fellow.  I hear he’s sailing with you.  He’s your Chief.  You’d better know him.”

Purdy raised his eyes in a grave and momentary survey, made to shake hands with Hanson, but hesitated, and did so only because Hanson put out his own great fist with decision.  Purdy did not speak, except to say to Hanson:  “We’re signing-on tomorrow.  I’ll meet you at the shipping office then.”  He seemed to forget the pair of them, paused, and went to a far vacant corner of the bar.  The barmaid, as he got there, returned, and stopped to say something to him.

“Well, I’m damned,” muttered Macandrew.  “Look here, Jessie,” he cried, “here’s all us young men been waiting for nearly twenty minutes, and you take no notice of us, but as soon as a captain looks across the counter, there you are.  But how did you know he was a captain?  That’s what I’d like to know.  He’s only wearing a bowler hat.”

2

The Medea had been ordered unexpectedly to Barry for loading, to take the place of an unready sister-ship; and Macandrew, of whom I have had much experience, would be active, critical of what a dog must put up with in life, and altogether unfit for intimate, amiable, and reminiscent conversation.  Yet I wanted to see him again before he left, and went past the Board of Trade Office hoping for signs of the Medea, for I had heard she was assembling a crew that morning.  But the marine-store shops, with their tarpaulin suits hanging outside open-armed and oscillating, looked across to the men lounging against the shipping-office railings, and the idlers stared across at the tarpaulins.  It did not appear to be a place where anything was destined to happen.  It merely looked like rain.

Macandrew might be inside with his crowd of firemen and greasers.  Behind the brass grille there a clerk, solitary and absorbed in his duties, bent over a pile of ships’ articles, and presented to the seamen in the public space beyond him only the featureless shine of a bald head.  The seamen, scattered about in groups, shabby and listless, with a few of their officers among them, were as sombre