Mr. Matthew Wesley, as host, sat at the head of his table and puffed at a churchwarden pipe; a small, narrow-featured man, in a chocolate-coloured suit, with steel buttons, and a wig of professional amplitude.  On his right sat his sister-in-law, her bonnet replaced by a tall white cap:  on his left the Captain in his shore-going clothes.  He and the apothecary had mixed themselves a glass apiece of Jamaica rum, hot, with sugar and lemon-peel.  At the foot of the table, with his injured leg supported on a cushion, reclined the Reverend Samuel Wesley, Junior, Usher of Westminster School, his gaunt cheeks (he was the plainest-featured of the Wesleys) wan with recent illness, and his eyes fixed on Captain Bewes’s chubby face.

“Well, as I told you, Mr. Annesley’s cabin lay beside my state-room, with a window next to mine in the stern:  and, as I showed Mrs. Wesley to-day, my stateroom opens on the ‘captain’s cabin’ (as they call it), where I have dined as many as two dozen before now, and where I do the most of my work.  This has three windows directly under the big poop-lantern.  I was sitting, that afternoon, at the head of the mahogany swing table (just as you might be sitting now, sir) with my back to the light and the midmost of the three windows wide open behind me, for air.  I had the ship’s chart spread before me when my second mate, Mr. Orchard, knocked at the door with word that all was ready to cast off.  I asked him a few necessary questions, and while he stood there chatting I heard a splash just under my window.  Well, that might have been anything—­a warp cast off and the slack of it striking the water, we’ll say.  Whatever it was, I heard it, turned about, and with one knee on the window-locker (I remember it perfectly) took a glance out astern.  I saw nothing to account for the sound:  but I knew of a dozen things which might account for it—­ anything, in fact, down to some lazy cabin-boy heaving the dinner-scraps overboard:  and having, as you’ll understand, a dozen matters on my mind at the moment, I thought no more of it, but turned to Mr. Orchard again and picked up our talk.  To this day I don’t know that there was anything in the sound, but ’tis fair to tell you all I can.”—­Captain Bewes took a sip at his grog, and over the rim looked down the table towards Samuel, who nodded.

The Captain nodded back, set down his glass, and resumed.  “Quite so.  The next thing is that Mr. Orchard, returning to deck two minutes later and having to pass the door of Mr. Annesley’s cabin on his way, ran against an old Hindu beggar crouching there, fingering the door-handle and about to enter—­or so Orchard supposed, and kicked him up the companion.  He told me about it himself, next day, when we found the cabin empty and I began to make inquiries.  ‘Now here,’ says you, ‘here’s a clue,’ and I’m not denying but it may be one.  Only when you look into it, what does it amount to?  Mr. Annesley—­ saving your presence—­was known for a stern man: