and subdued as though they had learned life had nothing more to offer them, and they were present only because they might as well use up the salvage of their days.  The clerk raised his head and questioned the men before him with a quick, inclusive glance.  “Any men here of the Cygnet?” he demanded.  His voice, raised in certainty above the casual murmuring of the repressed, made them all as self-conscious and furtive as though discovered in guilt.  Hanson’s head appeared above the crowd, as he rose from a bench and went to the official.  “I’m the engineer of the Cygnet.  We’re waiting for Captain Purdy.”

The clerk complained.  He pulled out his watch.  “He said he would be ready for me at ten this morning.  Now you’ve lost your turn, and there are three other ships.”  He turned away in a manner which told every one that Hanson had now become non-existent, pushed aside the Cygnet’s papers, and searched the room once more.  “Ah, good morning, Captain Hudson.  You ready for me?  Then I’ll take you next.”  The captain went around to stand beside the official, and his crew clustered on their side of the bars, with their caps in their hands.

“A good start that,” said Hanson to me.  “Perhaps, after all, we never shall start.  Must be a rum chap, that Purdy.”

He told me the Medea’s crowd was there, but perhaps Macandrew had already signed, and so would not appear.  That meant I might not see him for another year; but as I left the office I found him coming up its steps outside, and not as though there were the affairs of a month to be got into two days, but in leisurely abstraction.  He might have been making up his mind that, after all, there was no need to call there, for he was studying each step as if he were looking for the bottom of a mystery.  His fingers were twirling the little ivory pig he carries as a charm on his watchguard.  The pig is supposed to assist him when he is in a difficulty.  He raised his eyes.

“Anyhow,” he despaired to me with irrelevance, “I can’t do anything for him.”

I waited for the chance of a clue.  “I thought,” Macandrew quietly soliloquized, “he knew better than that.  He’s been a failure, but all the same, he’s got a better head than most of us.  She’s sure to bring him to grief.”

“What’s all this about?” I ventured.

“I’ve just been talking to Purdy.  You remember what Hanson said of that voyage he’s making?  Purdy is taking Jessie with him.  You don’t know Purdy, but I do.  And I know Jessie; but that’s nothing.”

“Taking her with him?” I asked; “but how. . . .”

“Oh, cook, of course.  That’ll be it.  She’ll be steward, naturally.  That’s reasonable.  You’ve seen her.  Jessie’s the sort of woman would jump at the chance of such a pleasant trip, as cook.”

“I don’t understand. . . .”

“Who said you did?  Nobody does but the pair of them.  I know what another man might see in Purdy.  But a woman!  He’s middle-aged, quiet, and looks tired.  That woman is young and lively, and she’ll be bored to death with him on such a trip.”