He had come in with the Fair Maid in ballast to look for a freight in the Sofala’s port of registry, and her letter met him there.  Its tenor was that it was no use mincing matters.  Her only resource was in opening a boarding-house, for which the prospects, she judged, were good.  Good enough, at any rate, to make her tell him frankly that with two hundred pounds she could make a start.  He had torn the envelope open, hastily, on deck, where it was handed to him by the ship-chandler’s runner, who had brought his mail at the moment of anchoring.  For the second time in his life he was appalled, and remained stock-still at the cabin door with the paper trembling between his fingers.  Open a boarding-house!  Two hundred pounds for a start!  The only resource!  And he did not know where to lay his hands on two hundred pence.

All that night Captain Whalley walked the poop of his anchored ship, as though he had been about to close with the land in thick weather, and uncertain of his position after a run of many gray days without a sight of sun, moon, or stars.  The black night twinkled with the guiding lights of seamen and the steady straight lines of lights on shore; and all around the Fair Maid the riding lights of ships cast trembling trails upon the water of the roadstead.  Captain Whalley saw not a gleam anywhere till the dawn broke and he found out that his clothing was soaked through with the heavy dew.

His ship was awake.  He stopped short, stroked his wet beard, and descended the poop ladder backwards, with tired feet.  At the sight of him the chief officer, lounging about sleepily on the quarterdeck, remained open-mouthed in the middle of a great early-morning yawn.

“Good morning to you,” pronounced Captain Whalley solemnly, passing into the cabin.  But he checked himself in the doorway, and without looking back, “By the bye,” he said, “there should be an empty wooden case put away in the lazarette.  It has not been broken up—­has it?”

The mate shut his mouth, and then asked as if dazed, “What empty case, sir?”

“A big flat packing-case belonging to that painting in my room.  Let it be taken up on deck and tell the carpenter to look it over.  I may want to use it before long.”

The chief officer did not stir a limb till he had heard the door of the captain’s state-room slam within the cuddy.  Then he beckoned aft the second mate with his forefinger to tell him that there was something “in the wind.”

When the bell rang Captain Whalley’s authoritative voice boomed out through a closed door, “Sit down and don’t wait for me.”  And his impressed officers took their places, exchanging looks and whispers across the table.  What!  No breakfast?  And after apparently knocking about all night on deck, too!  Clearly, there was something in the wind.  In the skylight above their heads, bowed earnestly over the plates, three wire cages rocked and rattled to the restless jumping of the