Captain Johns, after looking up credulously as usual, wrinkled his brow, and said placidly that the man had seen better days.  His name was Bunter.

“He’s had command of a Liverpool ship, the Samaria, some years ago.  He lost her in the Indian Ocean, and had his certificate suspended for a year.  Ever since then he has not been able to get another command.  He’s been knocking about in the Western Ocean trade lately.”

“That accounts for him being a stranger to everybody about the Docks,” Captain Ashton concluded as they rose from table.

Captain Johns walked down to the Dock after lunch.  He was short of stature and slightly bandy.  His appearance did not inspire the generality of mankind with esteem; but it must have been otherwise with his employers.  He had the reputation of being an uncomfortable commander, meticulous in trifles, always nursing a grievance of some sort and incessantly nagging.  He was not a man to kick up a row with you and be done with it, but to say nasty things in a whining voice; a man capable of making one’s life a perfect misery if he took a dislike to an officer.

That very evening I went to see Bunter on board, and sympathized with him on his prospects for the voyage.  He was subdued.  I suppose a man with a secret locked up in his breast loses his buoyancy.  And there was another reason why I could not expect Bunter to show a great elasticity of spirits.  For one thing he had been very seedy lately, and besides—­but of that later.

Captain Johns had been on board that afternoon and had loitered and dodged about his chief mate in a manner which had annoyed Bunter exceedingly.

“What could he mean?” he asked with calm exasperation.  “One would think he suspected I had stolen something and tried to see in what pocket I had stowed it away; or that somebody told him I had a tail and he wanted to find out how I managed to conceal it.  I don’t like to be approached from behind several times in one afternoon in that creepy way and then to be looked up at suddenly in front from under my elbow.  Is it a new sort of peep-bo game?  It doesn’t amuse me.  I am no longer a baby.”

I assured him that if anyone were to tell Captain Johns that he—­Bunter—­had a tail, Johns would manage to get himself to believe the story in some mysterious manner.  He would.  He was suspicious and credulous to an inconceivable degree.  He would believe any silly tale, suspect any man of anything, and crawl about with it and ruminate the stuff, and turn it over and over in his mind in the most miserable, inwardly whining perplexity.  He would take the meanest possible view in the end, and discover the meanest possible course of action by a sort of natural genius for that sort of thing.

Bunter also told me that the mean creature had crept all over the ship on his little, bandy legs, taking him along to grumble and whine to about a lot of trifles.  Crept about the decks like a wretched insect—­like a cockroach, only not so lively.