Legs wide apart, hands thrust deep into his pockets, he puffed fiercely at his pipe and surveyed the scene before him. He stood on the gigantic quay overlooking the seething activity of the inner Tandjong Priok harbor, and beyond this stretched the two monster jetties and the outer port. Eyeing the trading craft that lined the quays, Barry frowned and cursed his luck afresh.
He did not notice a man coming up behind him, who now stood scrutinizing him admiringly from top to toe.
"Hullo, my noble American sailorman!" The voice at his back brought Barry around with a jerk. He glimpsed a figure which might have stepped direct from Bond Street or Fifth Avenue,—natty, trim, wide-shouldered. Under a soft panama hat a keen, shrewd face smiled so infectiously that the disgruntled seaman smiled back in spite of his grouch.
"Well, what of it?" he demanded. "Might as well be a wooden Indian in this one-hoss town."
The other advanced with extended hand. His eyes narrowed in appreciation of Barry's sturdy, powerful frame and clean-cut face.
"Spotted you right off the bat, hey? My name's Tom Little. Glad to know you," he greeted.
"Barry—Jack Barry," returned the sailor.
Their hands met, and in the grip each recognized in the other no mere wastrel of Eastern ports, but a man of energy, virility.
"Sailor from sailortown, I'll bet," smiled Little. "Hey? Splice th' mainbrace!—Heave-ho, me bullies!—all that stuff, hey? How about it?"
"You win," laughed Barry, amused at his new acquaintance's conversational powers. "But I'm a rat in a strange garret here. Nothing doing. Can't get a ship for love or lucre."