upon which I have already touched once or twice. The twelve
o'clock dinner was over, one day, and I had just finished putting
the cabin in order, when Wolf Larsen and Thomas Mugridge descended
the companion stairs. Though the cook had a cubby-hole of a state-
room opening off from the cabin, in the cabin itself he had never
dared to linger or to be seen, and he flitted to and fro, once or
twice a day, a timid spectre.

"So you know how to play 'Nap,'" Wolf Larsen was saying in a
pleased sort of voice. "I might have guessed an Englishman would
know. I learned it myself in English ships."

Thomas Mugridge was beside himself, a blithering imbecile, so
pleased was he at chumming thus with the captain. The little airs
he put on and the painful striving to assume the easy carriage of a
man born to a dignified place in life would have been sickening had
they not been ludicrous. He quite ignored my presence, though I
credited him with being simply unable to see me. His pale, wishy-
washy eyes were swimming like lazy summer seas, though what
blissful visions they beheld were beyond my imagination.

"Get the cards, Hump," Wolf Larsen ordered, as they took seats at
the table. "And bring out the cigars and the whisky you'll find in
my berth."

I returned with the articles in time to hear the Cockney hinting
broadly that there was a mystery about him, that he might be a
gentleman's son gone wrong or something or other; also, that he was
a remittance man and was paid to keep away from England--"p'yed
'ansomely, sir," was the way he put it; "p'yed 'ansomely to sling