Mr. Baker, in the sudden peace of the ship, moved about solitary and
grunting, trying door-handles, peering into dark places, never done--a
model chief mate! No one waited for him ashore. Mother dead; father and
two brothers, Yarmouth fishermen, drowned together on the Dogger Bank;
sister married and unfriendly. Quite a lady. Married to the leading
tailor of a little town, and its leading politician, who did not think
his sailor brother-in-law quite respectable enough for him. Quite a
lady, quite a lady, he thought, sitting down for a moment's rest on the
quarter-hatch. Time enough to go ashore and get a bite and sup, and a
bed somewhere. He didn't like to part with a ship. No one to think about
then. The darkness of a misty evening fell, cold and damp, upon the
deserted deck; and Mr. Baker sat smoking, thinking of all the successive
ships to whom through many long years he had given the best of a
seaman's care. And never a command in sight. Not once!--"I haven't
somehow the cut of a skipper about me," he meditated, placidly, while
the shipkeeper (who had taken possession of the galley), a wizened
old man with bleared eyes, cursed him in whispers for "hanging about
so.
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