this information was an unexpected warning of our advance in years, we
were amused, and we congratulated him. Naturally he had got his
certificate as master mariner. Why not? Nearly all the mates we knew
got it, sooner or later. That was bound to come. But very soon after
that he gave us a genuine surprise, and made us anxious. He informed
us, as casually, that he had been appointed master to a ship; a very
different matter from merely possessing the licence to command.

We were even alarmed. This was serious. He could not do it. He was
not the man to make a command for anything. A fellow who, not so long
ago, used to walk a mile with a telegram because he had not the
strength of character to face the lady clerk in the post office round
the corner, was hardly the man to overawe a crowd of hard characters
gathered by chance from Tower Hill, socialize them, and direct them
successfully in subduing the conflicting elements of a difficult
enterprise. Not he. But we said nothing to discourage him.

Of course, he was a delightful fellow. He often amused us, and he did
not always know why. He was frank, he was gentle, but that large
vacancy, the sea, where he had spent most of his young life, had made
him--well, slow. You know what I mean. He was curiously innocent of
those dangers of great cities which are nothing to us because we know
they are there. Yet he was always on the alert for thieves and
parasites. I think he enjoyed his belief in their crafty omnipresence
ashore. Proud of his alert and knowing intelligence, he would relate a
long story of the way he had not only frustrated an artful shark, but
had enjoyed the process in perfect safety. That we, who rarely went
out of London, never had such adventures, did not strike him as worth a
thought or two. He never paused in his merriment to consider the
strange fact that to him, alone of our household, such wayside