Once, when two little girls--evidently the wharfinger's daughters--
went by, my hand reached out to the door to open it so that I might
call to them and present them with the puling little wretch.

A farewell surprise package from Galbraith, he had arrived at the
hotel the night before, by express from New York. It was Galbraith's
way. Yet he might so easily have been decently like other folk and
sent fruit . . . or flowers, even. But no; his affectionate
inspiration had to take the form of a yelping, yapping two months'
old puppy. And with the advent of the terrier the trouble had begun.
The hotel clerk judged me a criminal before the act I had not even
had time to meditate. And then Wada, on his own initiative and out
of his own foolish stupidity, had attempted to smuggle the puppy into
his room and been caught by a house detective. Promptly Wada had
forgotten all his English and lapsed into hysterical Japanese, and
the house detective remembered only his Irish; while the hotel clerk
had given me to understand in no uncertain terms that it was only
what he had expected of me.

Damn the dog, anyway! And damn Galbraith too! And as I froze on in
the cab on that bleak pier-end, I damned myself as well, and the mad
freak that had started me voyaging on a sailing-ship around the Horn.

By ten o'clock a nondescript youth arrived on foot, carrying a suit-
case, which was turned over to me a few minutes later by the
wharfinger. It belonged to the pilot, he said, and gave instructions
to the chauffeur how to find some other pier from which, at some
indeterminate time, I should be taken aboard the Elsinore by some
other tug. This served to increase my irritation. Why should I not
have been informed as well as the pilot?