captain's state-room slam within the cuddy. Then he beckoned aft the
second mate with his forefinger to tell him that there was something "in
the wind."

When the bell rang Captain Whalley's authoritative voice boomed out
through a closed door, "Sit down and don't wait for me." And his
impressed officers took their places, exchanging looks and whispers
across the table. What! No breakfast? And after apparently knocking
about all night on deck, too! Clearly, there was something in the wind.
In the skylight above their heads, bowed earnestly over the plates,
three wire cages rocked and rattled to the restless jumping of the
hungry canaries; and they could detect the sounds of their "old
man's" deliberate movements within his state-room. Captain Whalley was
methodically winding up the chronometers, dusting the portrait of
his late wife, getting a clean white shirt out of the drawers, making
himself ready in his punctilious unhurried manner to go ashore. He could
not have swallowed a single mouthful of food that morning. He had made
up his mind to sell the Fair Maid.


III


Just at that time the Japanese were casting far and wide for ships
of European build, and he had no difficulty in finding a purchaser, a
speculator who drove a hard bargain, but paid cash down for the Fair
Maid, with a view to a profitable resale. Thus it came about that
Captain Whalley found himself on a certain afternoon descending the
steps of one of the most important post-offices of the East with a slip
of bluish paper in his hand. This was the receipt of a registered letter