or A.M., log-book style.) "Smart work that. Man's always in a state of
hurry. He's a regular chucker-out, ain't he, sir? There's a few pubs I
know of in the East-end of London that would be all the better for
one of his sort around the bar." He chuckled at his joke. "A regular
chucker-out. Now he has fired out that Dutchman head over heels, I
suppose our turn's coming to-morrow morning."

We were all on deck at break of day (even the sick--poor devils--had
crawled out) ready to cast off in the twinkling of an eye. Nothing
came. Falk did not come. At last, when I began to think that probably
something had gone wrong in his engine-room, we perceived the tug going
by, full pelt, down the river, as if we hadn't existed. For a moment I
entertained the wild notion that he was going to turn round in the next
reach. Afterwards I watched his smoke appear above the plain, now here,
now there, according to the windings of the river. It disappeared. Then
without a word I went down to breakfast. I just simply went down to
breakfast.

Not one of us uttered a sound till the mate, after imbibing--by means
of suction out of a saucer--his second cup of tea, exclaimed: "Where the
devil is the man gone to?"

"Courting!" I shouted, with such a fiendish laugh that the old chap
didn't venture to open his lips any more.

I started to the office perfectly calm. Calm with excessive rage.
Evidently they knew all about it already, and they treated me to a
show of consternation. The manager, a soft-footed, immensely obese man,
breathing short, got up to meet me, while all round the room the young
clerks, bending over the papers on their desks, cast upward glances in