I had every reason to be satisfied with my disguise,--if such it could be called. Captain Selover at first failed to recognise me. Then he burst into his shrill cackle.

"Didn't know you," he trebled. "But you look shipshape. Come, I'll show you your quarters."

Immediately I discovered what I had suspected before; that on so small a schooner the mate took rank with the men rather than the afterguard. Cabin accommodations were of course very limited. My own lurked in the waist of the ship--a tiny little airless hole.

"Here's where Johnson stayed," proffered Selover. "You can bunk here, or you can go in the foc'sle with the men. They's more room there. We'll get under way with the turn of the tide."

He left me. I examined the cabin. It was just a trifle larger than its single berth, and the berth was just a trifle larger than myself. My chest would have to be left outside. I strongly suspected that my lungs would have to be left outside also; for the life of me I could not see where the air was to come from. With a mental reservation in favour of investigating the forecastle, I went on deck.

The _Laughing Lass_ was one of the prettiest little schooners I ever saw. Were it not for the lines of her bilges and the internal arrangement of her hold, it might be imagined she had been built originally as a pleasure yacht. Even the rake of her masts, a little forward of the plumb, bore out this impression, which a comparatively new suit of canvas, well stopped down, brass stanchions forward, and two little guns under tarpaulins, almost confirmed. One thing struck me as peculiar. Her complement of boats was ample enough. She had two surf boats, a dingy, and a dory slung to the davits. In addition another dory,--the one you picked me up in--was lashed to the top of the deck house.

"They'd mighty near have a boat apiece," I thought, and went forward.

Just outside the forecastle hatch I paused. Someone below was singing in a voice singularly rich in quality. The words and the quaintness of the minor air struck me immensely and have clung to my memory like a burr ever since.

"'Are you a man-o'-war or a privateer,' said he.
_Blow high, blow low, what care we!_
'Oh, I am a jolly pirate, and I'm sailing for my fee.'
_Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e."_

I stepped to the companion. The voice at once ceased. I descended.

A glimmer of late afternoon struggled through the deadlights. I found myself in a really commodious space,--extending far back of where the forward bulk-heads are usually placed,--accommodating rows and row of bunks--eighteen of them, in fact. The unlighted lamp cast its shadow on wood stained black by much use, but polished like ebony from the continued friction of men's garments. I wish I could convey to you the uncanny effect, this--of dropping from the decks of a miniature craft to the internal arrangements of a square-rigged ship. It was as though, entering a cottage door, you were to discover yourself on the floor of Madison Square Garden. A fresh sweet breeze of evening sucked down the hatch. I immediately decided on the forecastle. Already it was being borne in on me that I was little more than a glorified bo's'n's mate. The situation suited me, however. It enabled me to watch the course of events more safely, less exposed to the danger of recognition.

I stood for a moment at the foot of the companion accustoming my eyes to the gloom. After a moment, with a shock of surprise, I made out a shining pair of bead-points gazing at me unblinkingly from the shadow under the bitts. Slowly the man defined himself, as a shape takes form in a fog. He was leaning forward in an attitude of attention, his elbows resting on his knees, his forearms depending between them, his head thrust out. I could detect no faintest movement of eyelash, no faintest sound of breathing. The stillness was portentous. The creature was exactly like a wax figure, one of the sort you meet in corridors of cheap museums and for a moment mistake for living beings. Almost I thought to make out the customary grey dust lying on the wax of his features.

I am going to tell you more of this man, because, as you shall see, he was destined to have much to do with my life, the fate of Dr. Karl Augustus Schermerhorn, and the doom of the _Laughing Lass_.

He wore on his head a red bandana handkerchief. I never saw him with other covering. From beneath It straggled oily and tangled locks of glossy black. His face was long, narrow, hook-nosed and sinister; his eyes, as I have described them, a steady and beady black. I could at first glance ascribe great activity, but only moderate strength to his slender, wiry figure. In this I was mistaken. His sheer physical power was second only to that of Captain Selover. One of his forearms ended in a steel hook. At the moment I could not understand this; could not see how a man so maimed could be useful aboard a ship. Later I wished we had more as handy. He knew a jam hitch which he caught over and under his hook quicker than most men can grasp a line with the naked hand. It would render one way, but held fast the other. He told me it was a cinch-hook hitch employed by mule packers in the mountains, and that he had used it on swamp-hooks in the lumber woods of Michigan. I shouldn't wonder. He was a Wandering Jew.--His name was Anderson, but I never heard him called that. It was always "Handy Solomon" with men and masters.

We stared at each other, I fascinated by something, some spell of the ship, which I have never been able to explain to myself--nor even describe. It was a mystery, a portent, a premonition such as overtakes a man sometimes in the dark passageways of life. I cannot tell you of it, nor make you believe--let it pass----

Then by a slow process of successive perceptions I became aware that I was watched by other eyes, other wax figures, other human beings with unwavering gaze. They seemed to the sense of mystic apprehension that for the moment held possession of me, to be everywhere--in the bunks, on the floor, back in the shadows, watching, watching, watching from the advantage of another world.

I don't know why I tell you this; why I lay so much stress on the first weird impression I got of the forecastle. It means something to me now--in view of all that happened subsequently. Almost can I look back and see, in that moment of occultism, a warning, an enlightenment----But the point is, it meant something to me then. I stood there fascinated, unable t............