buttons on his pilot-cloth jacket, hurried up along the quay hailing my ship by name.  He was one of those officials called berthing-masters—­ not the one who had berthed us, but another, who, apparently, had been busy securing a steamer at the other end of the dock.  I could see from afar his hard blue eyes staring at us, as if fascinated, with a queer sort of absorption.  I wondered what that worthy sea-dog had found to criticise in my ship’s rigging.  And I, too, glanced aloft anxiously.  I could see nothing wrong there.  But perhaps that superannuated fellow-craftsman was simply admiring the ship’s perfect order aloft, I thought, with some secret pride; for the chief officer is responsible for his ship’s appearance, and as to her outward condition, he is the man open to praise or blame.  Meantime the old salt ("ex-coasting skipper” was writ large all over his person) had hobbled up alongside in his bumpy, shiny boots, and, waving an arm, short and thick like the flipper of a seal, terminated by a paw red as an uncooked beef-steak, addressed the poop in a muffled, faint, roaring voice, as if a sample of every North-Sea fog of his life had been permanently lodged in his throat:  “Haul ’em round, Mr. Mate!” were his words.  “If you don’t look sharp, you’ll have your topgallant yards through the windows of that ’ere warehouse presently!” This was the only cause of his interest in the ship’s beautiful spars.  I own that for a time I was struck dumb by the bizarre associations of yard-arms and window-panes.  To break windows is the last thing one would think of in connection with a ship’s topgallant yard, unless, indeed, one were an experienced berthing-master in one of the London docks.  This old chap was doing his little share of the world’s work with proper efficiency.  His little blue eyes had made out the danger many hundred yards off.  His rheumaticky feet, tired with balancing that squat body for many years upon the decks of small coasters, and made sore by miles of tramping upon the flagstones of the dock side, had hurried up in time to avert a ridiculous catastrophe.  I answered him pettishly, I fear, and as if I had known all about it before.

“All right, all right! can’t do everything at once.”

He remained near by, muttering to himself till the yards had been hauled round at my order, and then raised again his foggy, thick voice: 

“None too soon,” he observed, with a critical glance up at the towering side of the warehouse.  “That’s a half-sovereign in your pocket, Mr. Mate.  You should always look first how you are for them windows before you begin to breast in your ship to the quay.”

It was good advice.  But one cannot think of everything or foresee contacts of things apparently as remote as stars and hop-poles.

XXXII.