The Munity of the Elsinore

unable to concede what you

ters were made comfortable. For that matter he had already dispatched orders to Mr. Pike, the first mate of the Elsinore, to knock out the partition between my state room and the spare state-room adjoin

ot yet met, who had now kept me freezing on pier ends through four miserable hours. The less I saw of him on the voyage the better, was my decision; and it was with a litt

knew that he was no more a sea captain than the pilot was a pilot. I had seen the best of the breed, the captains of the liners, and he no more resembled them than did he resemble the bluff faced, gruff voiced

in a whisper at the pilot.

uld not possibly consider was the skipper of the Elsinoretaking his wife on the voyage. And

to see him off, I fancy. His wife died over a year ago. They

nly sense, he was as cool as the day was cold, as poised as a king or emperor, as remote as the farthest fixed star, as neutral as a proposition of Euclid. And then, just ere our hands met, a twinkle of oh such distant and controlled geniality quickened the many t

t words of untold beneficence and wisdom? Yet he uttered most commonplace regrets at the delay in a voice provocative of fresh surpr

the delay," he concluded my introduction to hi

e. It was not that it was challenging, but that it was so insolently business-like. It was much in the very way one would look at a new coachman he was about to engage. I did not know then that she was to go on

of my little automatic rifle. I was startled by the mountain of luggage around which mine was no more than a fringe. Ship's stores, was my first thought, until I noted the number of trunks, boxes, suitcases, and parcels and bundles of all sorts. The initial

th the agents that no captain's wife was to come along. The last thing under the sun I desired in the pet quarters of a ship was a woman.