Johnny Kent crooked a finger at the bar-maid and sought consolation in another mug of bitter, while Captain O’Shea turned to a morning newspaper and ran his eye down the ship-news column to note the arrivals and departures. Then he cast a cursory glance at the foreign despatches, which might, perchance, disclose some disturbance of the world’s peace and an opportunity for venturesome men used to alarms and stratagems.
Johnny Kent was moved to begin an aimless yarn about a certain wicked skipper of Yankee clipper fame who fetched his second mate all the way home from Cape Town doubled up in a hen-coop as a punishment for impertinence. O’Shea listened politely, but with a manner slightly absent-minded, having heard the tale of the unfortunate second mate and the hen-coop in at least five different ports.
The yarn was cut short, and the two men screwed around in their chairs to stare at a visitor whose presence in the humble longshore tavern of the Jolly Mermaid was most extraordinary.
He was an elderly and very dignified gentleman, of a spare figure and the stiffly erect carriage of an army officer. His features, thin and rather refined than forceful, were given an air of distinction by a white mustache and imperial. From the silk hat and frock-coat, with the ribbon of an order in the lapel, to the tan gaiters and patent-leather shoes, he was dressed with fastidious nicety. In the dingy tap-room of the Jolly Mermaid he was startlingly incongruous.
The stranger had the grand manner and it fitted him like a glove. He was not offensively self-important, but one conjectured him to be a personage who expected the world to show him deference. The bar-maid, who was no dunce at reading human nature, bobbed a courtesy and withheld the flippant persiflage which was wont to delight the nautical patrons of the place.
A moment later there entered the tavern a brisk young man with a sandy complexion and a roving eye, who was smartly but showily attired, a keen, up-to-snuff young man who knew his way about. With a respectful bow he addressed the impressive elderly gentleman.
“I told him to meet us here, if Your Majesty pleases.”
The apple-cheeked bar-maid was threatened with a fainting spell at the intimation that royalty stood within the tavern walls, but rallied bravely to suggest in a fluttered voice:
“There’s a tidy little back room, your royal ’ighness, where you can set down private-like without common folks starin’ and gawkin’ at your Worship.”
“Thanks. I am rather tired after tramping about the docks,” amiably replied the personage in the pleasantly modulated accents of the cultivated Englishman. To the brisk young man he said: