advice about saving his money, where to get cheap lodgings in Brooklyn,
and not to fall into the common error of sailors in thinking that
Hoboken and Passyunk Avenue are all America. And Tommy went back to his
yacht chuckling with delight, with a copy of "Casuals of the Sea" under
his arm.

Here my share in the adventure begins. The bookseller, knowing my
interest in the book, hastened to tell me the next time I saw him that
one of the characters in the story was in New York. I wrote to Tommy
asking him to come to see me. He wrote that the _Alvina_ was to sail the
next day, and he could not get away. I supposed the incident was closed.

Then I saw in the papers that the _Alvina_ had been halted in the
Narrows by a United States destroyer, the Government having suspected
that her errand was not wholly neutral. Rumour had it that she was on
her way to the Azores, there to take on armament for the house of
Romanoff. She was halted at the Quarantine Station at Staten Island,
pending an investigation.

Then enters the elbow of coincidence. Looking over some books in the
very same bookshop where Tommy had bought his friend's novel, I
overheard another member of the _Alvina's_ crew asking about "Casuals
of the Sea." His chum Tommy had told him about his adventure, and he,
too, was there to buy one. (Not every day does one meet one's friends
walking in a 500-page novel!) By the never-to-be-sufficiently-admired
hand of chance I was standing at Joe Hogan's very elbow when he began
explaining to the book clerk that he was a friend of the Dutch sailor
who had been there a few days before.

So a few days later, behold me on the Staten Island ferry, on my way to