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“Dunno, master.”

“You don’t know! But when you shipped you shipped for a destination, didn’t you?”

“I shipped for that there cabin,” said the youth, pointing backward over his shoulder with an immense thumb.

I finished the wine, handed down the decanter and bowl, and asked the youth to procure me a pipe of tobacco. This he did, and I lay smoking and musing upon the object of the voyage of the Black Watch. The vessel was being thrashed through the water. It was blowing fresh, and she hummed in every plank as she swept through the sea. The foam roared like a cataract past the scuttle, but her heel was moderate; the wind was evidently abaft the beam, the sea was deep and regular in its swing, and the heave and hurl of the brig as rhythmic in pulse as the melody of a waltz.

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Presently it fell dark; but hardly had the last of the red, wet light faded off the scuttle when the youth Jim re-entered the berth and lighted the coffee-pot-shaped lamp, and as he went out Captain Greaves came in.