The captain stared a moment at the dirty and tattered visitor.
"Who the devil are you?" he demanded, at last.
"Me name's McCarthy, sir. I'm a pilot, sir."
"A pilot!" and the captain looked at McCarthy again. "I don't believe it."
"'Tis the truth I'm tellin' you, sir," protested McCarthy.
"Well," said the captain, "if it's the truth, you can easily prove it. Let me hear you box the compass."
McCarthy was nonplussed. More than once, sitting over a pot of ale in some public house, he had heard old sailors proudly rattle off the points of the compass, but, though he remembered how the rigmarole sounded, he had no idea how to do it, nor even any very clear idea of what it meant.
"Faith, I can't do it, sir," he admitted.
"Can't do it?" roared the captain. "Can't box the compass! And yet you call yourself a pilot."
McCarthy did some rapid thinking, for he saw a good job, which he could ill afford to lose, slipping through his fingers.