"These men are accustomed to such incidents; there is hardly a voyage without one or more of them. To me it was but the opening of another crack in one of my brick walls.
"'What of?' I asked.
"'Exhaustion; want of food, perhaps, and the heat. The heart gave out,' answered the Doctor in a perfunctory tone.
"'Do many of them go that way?' I asked.
"'Yes, when they strike the furnaces for the first time. This man was too old—over fifty, I should say—and should never have been taken on,' and he glanced reprovingly at Hunter.
"'He begged so hard,' interrupted the Second Engineer, 'I let him on. We are short of men, too, on account of the strike—'He spoke as if in defence of his Chief. 'Didn't look to me to be so old till he caved in. Shall I make a box for him, sir?' and he turned to Hunter.
"'Yes, and paint it.'
"The Chief slipped his arm through mine, led me to a seat on the sofa beside his desk, and continued:
"'He came aboard the day before we left New York. It was about seven o'clock at night, and I had changed my clothes and was going uptown to the theatre. I stood at the end of the gang-plank for a minute looking up the dock, pretty clean of freight by that time, and this man came creeping down along the side of the ship, looking about him in a way I didn't like. As he got nearer he stopped under a dock light, fumbled in his pocket and brought out a letter. He wasn't ten feet from me, and so I could see his face. He read it two or three times over, turning the leaves, and then he slipped it back into his pocket again and looked up at the ship's side; then he saw me and came straight for me.
"'"I must go home," he said; "can you take me on?"