Page:White and Hopkins--The mystery.djvu/91



every reason to be satisfied with my disguise,—if such it could be called. Captain Selover at first failed to recognise me. Then he burst into his shrill cackle.

"Didn't know you," he trebled. "But you look shipshape. Come, I'll show you your quarters."

Immediately I discovered what I had suspected before; that on so small a schooner the mate took rank with the men rather than the afterguard. Cabin accommodations were of course very limited. My own lurked in the waist of the ship—a tiny little airless hole.

"Here's where Johnson stayed," proffered Selover. "You can bunk here, or you can go in the foc'sle with the men. They's more room there. We'll get under way with the turn of the tide."

He left me. I examined the cabin. It was just a trifle larger than its single berth, and the berth was just a trifle larger than myself. My chest would have to be left outside. I strongly suspected that my lungs would have to be left outside also; for the life of me I could not see where the air was to come from. With a mental reservation in favour of investigating the forecastle, I went on deck.

The Laughing Lass was one of the prettiest little schooners I ever saw. Were it not for the lines of her