“I might ask, sir,” Dag Daughtry brazened it, “for your own papers.  This ain’t no regular cargo-carrier or passenger-carrier, no more than you gentlemen are a regular company of ship-owners, with regular offices, doin’ business in a regular way.  How do I know if you own the ship even, or that the charter ain’t busted long ago, or that you’re being libelled ashore right now, or that you won’t dump me on any old beach anywheres without a soo-markee of what’s comin’ to me?  Howsoever”—­he anticipated by a bluff of his own the show of wrath from the Jew that he knew would be wind and bluff—­“howsoever, here’s my papers . . . "

With a swift dip of his hand into his inside coat-pocket he scattered out in a wealth of profusion on the cabin table all the papers, sealed and stamped, that he had collected in forty-five years of voyaging, the latest date of which was five years back.

“I don’t ask your papers,” he went on.  “What I ask is, cash payment in full the first of each month, sixty dollars a month gold—­”

“Oodles and oodles of it, gold and gold and better than gold, in cask and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom under the sand,” the Ancient Mariner assured him in beneficent cackles.  “Kings, principalities and powers!—­all of us, the least of us.  And plenty more, my gentlemen, plenty more.  The latitude and longitude are mine, and the bearings from the oak ribs on the shoal to Lion’s Head, and the cross-bearings from the points unnamable, I only know.  I only still live of all that brave, mad, scallywag ship’s company . . . "

“Will you sign the articles to that?” the Jew demanded, cutting in on the ancient’s maunderings.

“What port do you wind up the cruise in?” Daughtry asked.

“San Francisco.”

“I’ll sign the articles that I’m to sign off in San Francisco then.”

The Jew, the captain, and the farmer nodded.

“But there’s several other things to be agreed upon,” Daughtry continued.  “In the first place, I want my six quarts a day.  I’m used to it, and I’m too old a stager to change my habits.”

“Of spirits, I suppose?” the Jew asked sarcastically.

“No; of beer, good English beer.  It must be understood beforehand, no matter what long stretches we may be at sea, that a sufficient supply is taken along.”

“Anything else?” the captain queried.

“Yes, sir,” Daughtry answered.  “I got a dog that must come along.”

“Anything else?—­a wife or family maybe?” the farmer asked.

“No wife or family, sir.  But I got a nigger, a perfectly good nigger, that’s got to come along.  He can sign on for ten dollars a month if he works for the ship all his time.  But if he works for me all the time, I’ll let him sign on for two an’ a half a month.”

“Eighteen days in the longboat,” the Ancient Mariner shrilled, to Daughtry’s startlement.  “Eighteen days in the longboat, eighteen days of scorching hell.”