Later on he returned to his rooms in Pall Mall.  He was a great reader, and was forced to follow the daily events in a dozen different countries in a dozen different languages.  He was surrounded by newspapers, in a deep arm-chair by the table, when that came for which he was waiting.  It came in the form of Captain Cable in his shore-going clothes.  The little sailor was ushered in by the well-trained servant of this bachelor household without surprise or comment.

Cartoner made him welcome with a cigar and an offer of refreshment, which was refused.  Captain Cable knew that as you progress upward in the social scale the refusal of refreshment becomes an easier matter until at last you can really do as you like and not as etiquette dictates, while to decline the beggar’s pint of beer is absolute rudeness.

“We’ve always dealt square by each other, you and I,” said the captain, when he had lighted his cigar.  Then he fell into a reminiscent humor, and presently broke into a chuckling laugh.

“If it hadn’t been for you, them Dons would have had me up against the wall and shot me, sure as fate,” he said, bringing his hand down on his knee with a keen sense of enjoyment.  “That was ten years ago last November, when the Minnie had been out of the builder’s yard a matter of six months.”

“Yes,” said Cartoner, putting the dates carefully together in his mind.  It seemed that the building of the Minnie was not the epoch upon which he reckoned his periods.

“She’s in Morrison’s dry-dock now,” said the captain, who in a certain way was like a young mother.  For him all the topics were but a number of by-ways leading ultimately to the same centre.  “You should go down and see her, Mr. Cartoner.  It’s a big dock.  You can walk right round her in the mud at the bottom of the dock and see her finely.”

Cartoner said he would.  They even arranged a date on which to carry out this plan, and included in it an inspection of the Minnie’s new boiler.  Then Captain Cable remembered what he had come for, and the plan was never carried out after all.

“Yes,” he said, “you’ve a reckoning against me, Mr. Cartoner.  I have never done you a good turn that I know of, and you saved my life, I believe, that time—­you and that Frenchman who talks so quick, Moonseer Deulin—­that time, over yonder.”

And he nodded his head towards the southwest with the accuracy of one who never loses his bearings.  For there are some people who always know which is the north; and others who, if asked suddenly, do not know their left hand from their right; and others, again, who say—­or shout—­that all men are created equal.

“I’ve been done, Mr. Cartoner—­that is what I’ve come to tell you.  Me that has always been so smart and has dealt straight by other men.  Done, hoodwinked, tricked—­same as a Sunday-school teacher.  And I can do you a good turn by telling you about it; and I can do the other man a bad turn, which is what I want to do.  Besides, it’s dirty work.  Me, that has always kept my hands——­”