Macandrew might be inside with his crowd of firemen and greasers. Behind
the brass grille there a clerk, solitary and absorbed in his duties, bent
over a pile of ships' articles, and presented to the seamen in the public
space beyond him only the featureless shine of a bald head. The seamen,
scattered about in groups, shabby and listless, with a few of their
officers among them, were as sombre and subdued as though they had
learned life had nothing more to offer them, and they were present only
because they might as well use up the salvage of their days. The clerk
raised his head and questioned the men before him with a quick, inclusive
glance. "Any men here of the _Cygnet_?" he demanded. His voice, raised
in certainty above the casual murmuring of the repressed, made them all
as self-conscious and furtive as though discovered in guilt. Hanson's
head appeared above the crowd, as he rose from a bench and went to the
official. "I'm the engineer of the _Cygnet_. We're waiting for Captain
Purdy."

The clerk complained. He pulled out his watch. "He said he would be
ready for me at ten this morning. Now you've lost your turn, and there
are three other ships." He turned away in a manner which told every one
that Hanson had now become non-existent, pushed aside the _Cygnet's_
papers, and searched the room once more. "Ah, good morning, Captain
Hudson. You ready for me? Then I'll take you next." The captain went
around to stand beside the official, and his crew clustered on their side
of the bars, with their caps in their hands.

"A good start that," said Hanson to me. "Perhaps, after all, we never
shall start. Must be a rum chap, that Purdy."

He told me the _Medea's_ crowd was there, but perhaps Macandrew had
already signed, and so would not appear. That meant I might not see him