conception of one's own personality every man sets up for himself
secretly.


Meantime the chief mate, with an almost visible effect of
collaboration on the part of his round eyes and frightful whiskers,
was trying to evolve a theory of the anchored ship. His dominant
trait was to take all things into earnest consideration. He was of
a painstaking turn of mind. As he used to say, he "liked to
account to himself" for practically everything that came in his
way, down to a miserable scorpion he had found in his cabin a week
before. The why and the wherefore of that scorpion--how it got on
board and came to select his room rather than the pantry (which was
a dark place and more what a scorpion would be partial to), and how
on earth it managed to drown itself in the inkwell of his writing-
desk--had exercised him infinitely. The ship within the islands
was much more easily accounted for; and just as we were about to
rise from table he made his pronouncement. She was, he doubted
not, a ship from home lately arrived. Probably she drew too much
water to cross the bar except at the top of spring tides.
Therefore she went into that natural harbour to wait for a few days
in preference to remaining in an open roadstead.

"That's so," confirmed the second mate, suddenly, in his slightly
hoarse voice. "She draws over twenty feet. She's the Liverpool
ship Sephora with a cargo of coal. Hundred and twenty-three days
from Cardiff."

We looked at him in surprise.