That was my first meeting with Clyde. I know now that my coming from
Connecticut was a point in my favour; still I judge he must have
taken to me from the start. He surely was good to me always, and that
curiously.

"You want a job," he says. "You've sailed a bit on fishing smacks in
the Sound. But more'n that, the point with you is you're ambitious,
and not above turning a penny or two in an odd way."

"That depends on the way," I says pretty uppish, and thinking I
wasn't to be inveigled into piracy that way.

"Just so?"

"Maybe I've got scruples," I says, and not a bit did I know what I
was talking about. Captain Clyde rapped the table with his knuckles.

"I'm glad to hear you say it. Scruples! That's the word, and a right
word and a good word. I don't allow any vicious goings-on aboard this
ship. Wherever we go we carry the laws of the United States, and we
stand by them laws. We're decent and we stick to our country's laws
as duty is. Why now, I'm thinking of taking you, for I see you're a
likely lad, and one that will argue for his principles. Good wages,
good food, good treatment; will you go?" The last was shot out and
cut off close behind, his lips shutting like a pair of scissors. I
says, "That's what I'll do," and didn't know there was anything odd
about it. It might have been the average way a shipmaster picked up a
man for aught I knew. I shipped on the bark _Hebe Maitland_ as
ordinary seaman.