met if he knew of a craft bound for the West Coast--and especially for
having run me up against Captain Luke Chilton before my cruise had
lasted an hour.

The captain looked at his glass so sorrowfully when it was empty that
I begged him to have it filled again, and he did. But he took down his
arrack this time at a single gulp, and then got up briskly and said
that he must be off.

"We don't sail till to-morrow afternoon, on the half flood, Mr.
Stetworth," he said, "so you'll have lots of time to get your traps
aboard if you'll take a boat off from the Battery about noon. I
wouldn't come earlier than that, if I were you. Things are bound to be
in a mess aboard the brig to-morrow, and the less you have of it the
better. We lie well down the anchorage, you know, only a little this
side of Robbin's Reef. Your boatmen will know the place, and they'll
find the brig for you if you'll tell 'em where to look for her and
that she's painted green. Well, so long." And then Captain Luke shook
hands with me again, and so was off into the South Street crowd.

I hurried away too. My general outfit was bought and packed; but the
things lying around my lodgings had to be got together, and I had to
buy a few articles in the way of sea-stock for my voyage in a sailing
vessel that I should not have needed had I gone by the regular steam
lines. So I got some lunch inside of me, and after that I took a
cab--a bit of extravagance that my hurry justified--and bustled about
from shop to shop and got what I needed inside of an hour; and then I
told the man to drive me to my lodgings up-town.

It was while I was driving up Broadway--the first quiet moment for