I accompanied my father to a seamen’s outfitting place, and he spent a good part of his two hundred buying needful things for me ... shirts of strong material ... heavy underwear ... oilskins ... boots ... strong thread and needles ... and a dunnage bag to pack it all away in....

* * * * *

We stood together on the after-deck again, my father and I.

“Now I must be going,” he remarked, trying to be casual.  He put a ten dollar bill in my hand.

“—­to give the boys a treat with,” he explained ... “there’s nothing like standing in good with an outfit you’re to travel with ... and here,” he was rummaging in his inside pocket ... “put these in your pocket and keep them there ... a bunch of Masonic cards of the lodge your daddy belongs to ... if you ever get into straits, you’ll stand a better chance of being helped, as son of a Mason.”

“No, Father,” I replied, seriously and unhumorously, “I can’t keep them.”

“I’d like to know why not?”

“I want to belong to the brotherhood of man, not the brotherhood of the Masons.”

He looked puzzled for a moment, then his countenance cleared.

“That’s all right, Son ... you just keep those cards.  They might come in handy if you find yourself stranded anywhere.”

When my father turned his back, with a thought almost prayerful to the spirit of Shelley, I flung the Masonic cards overboard.

* * * * *

After dusk, the crew poured en masse to the nearest waterfront saloon with me.  The ten dollars didn’t last long.

* * * * *

“His old man has lots of money.”

* * * * *

Our last night at the pier was a night of a million stars.

The sailmaker, with whom I had become well acquainted, waddled up to me.  He was bow-legged.  He waddled instead of walked.  We sat talking on the foreward hatch....

“I’m glad we’re getting off to-morrow,” I remarked.

“—­we might not.  We lack a man for the crew yet.”

“—­thought we had the full number?”

“We did.  But one of the boys in your party strayed away ... went to another saloon and had a few more drinks ... and someone stuck him with a knife in the short ribs ... he’s in the hospital.”

“But can’t Captain Schantze pick up another man right away?”

“The consulate’s closed till ten to-morrow morning.  We’re to sail at five ... so he can’t sign on a new sailor before ... of course he might shanghai someone ... but the law’s too severe these days ... and the Sailors’ Aid Society is always on the job ... it isn’t like it used to be.”

* * * * *

But in spite of what the sailmaker had told me, the captain decided to take his chance, rather than delay the time of putting forth to sea.  Around ten o’clock, in the full of the moon, a night-hawk cab drew up alongside the ship where she lay docked, and out of it jumped the first mate and the captain with a lad who was so drunk or drugged, or both, that his legs went down under him when they tried to set him on his feet.