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Forty-eight hours later I had said good-bye to Sydney friends, and was installed at a desk in the purser's office on board the Orimba. I had twenty-two pounds and ten shillings in my trunk, and the promise of a five-pound note when the steamer should reach London. It was a kind of outsetting upon my great adventure quite different from that which I had planned.

But now the tailor has found out the articles ar'n't seaworthy, and we have got your lower stanchions cased in a pair of purser's slops, I am puzzled often to tell your heels from those of a maintopman!" "I have good reason to be thankful for the change," said the humbled priest, "if the resemblance you mention existed, while I was clad in the usual garb of one of my calling."

Bless my soul you know, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I forget how the lines run. Don't you recollect, O'Keefe?" continued Price, speaking loud in the purser's ear. "No, I never collect. I don't understand these things," replied the purser, taking his seat by Macallan, and addressing him "I cannot think what pleasure there can be in poking about the rocks as you do."

I alone had seen him invoking strange gods in the moonlight, I alone knew of the devilry in his heart, and I could not but believe that some day or other there might be virtue in that knowledge. The second engineer and I had made friends, so I got him to consult the purser's list for the name of my acquaintance. He was down as the Rev. John Laputa, and his destination was Durban.

The purser's steward lay on the ground and screamed the boatswain spit his double teeth and two or three mouthfuls of blood out, and then threw down his pistols in a rage. "A pretty business, by God," sputtered he; "he's put my pipe out. How the devil am I to pipe to dinner when I'm ordered, all my wind 'scaping through the cheeks?"

"Parrot & Co.? Yes. Will you show him off to-morrow?" "I shall be very happy to." But all the while he was puzzling over the purser's unaccountable action in deliberately introducing him to this brown-eyed, golden-skinned young woman. Never before had such a thing occurred upon these boats. True, he had occasionally been spoken to; an idle question flung at him, like a bare bone to a dog.

He always managed to draw for us the very worst rations, and to lay the blame on the purser's steward. In bringing aft our miserable dinners, his foot would slip, or a man would run against him or somebody had taken it off the galley-fire, and thrown it in the manger.

He was shipped off with just enough money in his pocket no, in the purser's pocket for the needs of the voyage and when he reached his destined port he would find a remittance awaiting him there. Not a large one, but just enough to keep him a month. A similar remittance would come monthly thereafter.

She was thinking of the entrance to the stokehole, where one crouched under the bellies of furnaces, and where the engineer on duty stood on a pile of hot cinders. Toward morning her room grew very close: the air from the ventilator seemed to have ceased. Far down in the ship, in a breathless little cabin far aft, the Red Un kicked the Purser's boy and cried himself to sleep.

The captain's reasons for a change in my identity were powerful. Besides, a "purser's name" was a common thing among sailors. And although I felt unwilling to forego my claim to American citizenship, even for a brief period, I convinced myself that no evil to anyone, but much good to myself, would be likely to result from such a course.