homely soul that I could but regard him more kindly than I did some of our
keener-witted fellow seamen.

Now we heard faintly the bell as it struck, _clang-clang, clang-clang,
clang-clang_. Feet scuffled overhead, and some one called down the hatch,
"Eight bells, starbow-lines ahoy!"

Davie's deep voice replied sonorously, "Ay-ay!" And one after another we
climbed out on deck, where the wind from the sea blew cool on our faces.

I had mounted the first rung of the ladder, and was regularly signed as a
member of the crew of the Island Princess, bound for Canton with a cargo of
woolen goods and ginseng. There was much that puzzled me aboard-ship--the
discontent of the second mate, the perversity of the man Kipping (others
besides myself had seen that wink), and a certain undercurrent of
pessimism. But although I was separated a long, long way from my old
friends in the cabin, I felt that in Bill Hayden I had found a friend of a
sort; then, as I began my first real watch on deck at sea, I fell to
thinking of my sister and Roger Hamlin.



CHAPTER III

THE MAN OUTSIDE THE GALLEY


Strange events happened in our first month at sea--events so subtle as
perhaps to seem an unimportant part of this narrative of a strange voyage,
yet really as necessary to the foundation of the story as the single bricks