“But I thought you said . . .”

“What have I said?  I’ve said nothing.  Jessie’s away to sea as cook.  Why not?  I’m going inside.  Are you coming in?”

Crossing the floor of the office, Hanson caught Macandrew’s arm.  “Your lot are signing-on now.”  The master of the Medea was round with the official tallying the men by the ship’s papers.  “I see it,” Macandrew answered.  “I’ve signed.  I wanted to catch the old man before he began that job.”

“We’re hung up for Purdy,” Hanson told him.  “Nobody seems to know where he is.”  Hanson was amused.

“Yes.  Well . . . he’ll be here all right . . . and now this new job which you think so funny, young Hanson.  See it goes through.  Presently it won’t be so funny.  Hang on to it then.”

Hanson was surprised by this, and a trifle hurt.  He was beginning to speak, making the usual preliminary adjustment of his spectacles, when a movement near the door checked him.  His hands remained at his glasses, as if aiding his sight to certify the unbelievable.

“What’s this?” he murmured.  “Here’s Purdy.  Isn’t that the Negro Boy’s barmaid with him . . . is she with him?” He continued to watch, apparently for some sign that this coincidence of his captain and a barmaid in a public office was designed.

The bent gaze of the master of the Cygnet might have noticed the boots of his engineer, for he took in the room no higher than that.  Then he came forward with his umbrella, still in contemplation.  It might have been no more than a coincidence.  She, too, approached, a little behind him, but obscuring his dull meagreness, for she was a head taller, and a bold and challenging figure.  Her blond hair distinguished her even more than the emphasis of her florid hat.  Her pallor that morning refined the indubious coarseness of her face, and changed vulgarity into the attractive originality of a spirited character.  Many there knew her, but she recognized nobody.  She yawned once, in a fair piece of acting, and in her movements and the poise of her head there was a disdain almost plain enough to be insolence.  Purdy turned to her, and the strange pair conferred.  I heard Hanson say to himself:  “What on earth.”  She left Purdy, bent her head with a gracious but stressed smile to Macandrew, and went to the bench by the wall, where she sat, waiting, with her legs crossed in a way that was a defiance and an attraction in such a place, where a woman is rarely seen.  She read a newspaper, perhaps because that acted as a screen, though she turned its pages with a nervous abruptness which betrayed her imitation of indifference.

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