gossip.”

“Luckily, we’ve got a full week before we leaves ’ere again,” remarked the skipper. “That’ll give you time to keep your ears open, and, if any of you finds anything to suit you meantime, I shan’t stand in the way of you leaving when you want to. And it’ll be about p. 5two months before the ‘Jane Gladys’ is put up for auction, so you’ll ’ave plenty of time to go on looking round.”

p. 5

“And so we shall after them two months,” dismally foretold Mr. Samuel Clark. “When first I come on this boat, twenty-seven years ago,” he told the skipper, reproachfully, “I was given to understand it was a permanent job. If I’d known—”

“Well, there it is,” said Captain Dutt, again rather lamely, “and it can’t be helped.”

He waited a little while, uncomfortably conscious of the unhappy visages of his crew. Then, with symptoms of commendable emotion, he scuttled to his cabin. The mate, hitherto silent, addressed to the crew a few words of sympathy with himself, and followed his superior.

The four sailormen of the “Jane Gladys,” bleakly regarding each other, expressed their feelings in this crisis in a sort of forceful, rumbling fugue. This done, they sulkily retired to their bunks, to lie down and meditate over the impending upheaval in their affairs.

But before long Mr. Clark began to snore challengingly, while Mr. Lock sought distraction of mind by rising and performing a number of arias on his melodeon, whereat Mr. Tridge, a slave to music, sat up and joined his voice to the harmony in a melancholy wail which he called “tenor.”

Mr. Horace Dobb, the cook, was a man of temperament, and he found himself keenly resenting these encroachments on his ruminations. A person who openly plumed himself on the possession of superior brain power, he now desired opportunity to explore this gift to the fullest. Also, he had in his pocket a shilling which he preferred to spend privily, rather than in the company of Mr. Clark, who had but ninepence, or p. 6of Mr. Lock, whose sole wealth was fourpence, or of Mr. Tridge, who had nothing at all.

p. 6

Wherefore, then, Mr. Horace Dobb, crying aloud his utmost annoyance at this disturbal of his peace, bounced from his bunk and repaired to the bar-parlour of the “Jolly Sailors,” a discreet inn on the quayside which gave promise of being an excellent refuge 

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