I felt glad and flattered that a personage so romantic should deem me a
fit companion for himself. He went forward as if with some purpose.

Some days afterwards the second mate sent for me to his cabin. He had
been on the sick list, and he was lying in his bunk, stripped to the
waist, one arm and one leg touching the floor. He raised himself slowly
when I came in, and spat. He had in a pronounced degree the Nova Scotian
peculiarities and accent, and after he had shaved, his face shone like
polished leather.

"Hallo!" he said. "See heeyur, young Kemp, does your neck just _itch_ to
be stretched?"

I looked at him with mouth and eyes agape.

He spat again, and waved a claw towards the forward bulkhead.

"They'll do it for yeh," he said. "You're such a green goose, it makes
me sick a bit. You hevn't reckoned out the chances, not quite. It's a
kind of dead reckoning yeh hevn't had call to make. Eh?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, bewildered.

He looked at me, grinning, half naked, with amused contempt, for quite a
long time, and at last offered sardonically to open my eyes for me.

I said nothing.

"Do you know what will happen to you," he asked, "ef yeh don't get quit