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“They’ve sighted us,” said Davis.

“Seems so,” replied Harman, running forward to superintend the fellows who were getting the anchor ready, while the Douro, shaking the wind out of her sails, lost way, and the hook fell in ten-fathom water, the rumble of the chain coming back in faintest echoes from the painted shore.

The boat drew on. It was manned by Kanakas naked as Noah, and steered by a white man. A huge man with a broad and red and bulbous face, who came on board leg over rail without a word of greeting, gazed around him with a pair of protruding light-blue eyes, and, then, finding his voice, addressed Harman:

“Where the blazes have you blown in from?” asked the stranger.

“Gentlemen,” said Clayton, for Clayton was his name, and they were all down below sampling a bottle of rum wangled by the genius of Harman out of the purser of the freighter, “Gentlemen, I’m not divin’ into your business. A ship in ballast without charts or chronometer, not knowing where she is, and not willin’ to say where she comes from, may be on the square and may be not.”