“Experience!  Been forty years at sea.”

“Some of them pretty exciting, I suppose.”

“Yes.  Half a dozen of ’em.”

He emptied his cup, rose from his seat, and pushing back his chair, began pacing the floor, stepping into the connecting chart-room, bending for an instant over the map, and stepping back again, peering through the small window a-grime with the spray of a north-easter.

My question, I could see, had either revived some unpleasant memory or the anxiety due to the sudden shift of wind—­it had been blowing south-west all day —­had made him restless.

As my eyes followed his movements I began to realize the enormous size of the man.  Walking the deck, head up, body erect, his broad shoulders pulled back, his round, solid girth tightly confined in his simple uniform, he looked the brawny, dominant, forceful commander that he was—­big among the biggest passengers.  Here, pacing the small cabin, his head almost touching the ceiling, his great frame filled the small narrow room as an elephant would fill a boudoir.  Everything seemed too small for him —­the table, even the chair which he had now regained, the tiny egg-shell cup which he was still grasping.

Looking closer—­his head in full profile against the glow of the electric light—­I caught the straight line of the ruddy, seamed neck—­a bull’s neck in strength, a Greek athlete’s in refinement of line—­ sweeping up into the close-cropped, iron-gray hair.  Then came the round of the head; the massive forehead, strong, straight nose; thin, compressed lips, moulded thin and kept compressed by a life of determined effort; square-cut chin and the iron jaw that held the lips and chin in place.

When he rose to his feet again I had another surprise.  To my astonishment he was not a Colossus at all—­not in pounds and inches.  On the contrary, he was but little above the average size.  What had impressed me had not been his bulk, but his reserve force.  Tigers stretched out in cages produce this effect; so do powerful machines that dig, crunch, or pound—­dormant until their life-steam sets them going.

The gale increased in violence.  We got now the lift of the steamer’s bow, staggering under tons of water, and the whir of the screw in mid-air.  The captain glanced at the barometer, drew his body to its full height, reached for his storm-coat, slipped it on, and was about to swing back the door opening on the deck, when the chirp of a canary rang through the room.  At the sound he turned quickly and walked back to where the cage hung.

“Ho, little man!” he cried in the same tone of voice in which he would have addressed a child; “woke you up, did we?  Sorry, old fellow; tuck your head down again and take another nap.”

The bird stretched out its bill, fluttered its wings, pecked at the captain’s outstretched finger, and burst into song.

“Yours, captain?” I had not noticed the bird before.