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steel-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose. A book lay open on a pile of chopped-up meat on the table at his elbow and a tortoise-shell cat lay curled up in his lap. He had been dozing. He took off his glasses as I entered the galley and rubbed his eyes. “Help yourself,” he said.
    The dixie of cocoa stood in its usual place. I dipped my mug into it. My body absorbed gratefully the warmth of the galley and the thick liquid scalded my throat as I drank. He began gently stroking the cat. It woke, blinked its green eyes and stretched. Then it began to purr, the sound blending into the roar of the galley stove and the distant pulsing of the ship’s engines.
    The cook tilted his chair back and fetched down a bottle of whisky from a shelf. “There’s a couple of tooth glasses over there, Corporal,” he said. He poured out two stiff tots and began to talk. He had a deep, rich voice, and its mellow tones took me on a cook’s tour of the world. He’d been twenty-two years at sea, always cooking, shifting from ship to ship as the fancy took him. He’d a wife in Sydney and another in Hull and claimed a nodding acquaintance with the population of practically every port in the Seven Seas. Half an hour of listening to him left me with the impression of a dirty-minded old rapscallion who’d gone his own way through life and had got a lot of fun out of it. When he paused for a time staring into the fire, his thick fleshy fingers automatically strokingthe back of the purring cat, I said, “Have you done many trips with Captain Halsey? What’s he like?” I was still thinking of Rankin’s decision to report the opening of that case to the Captain.
    “Five trips I’ve done with him,” he replied, still staring into the fire. “But I wouldn’t say I know much about him. I never seen him before I shipped on the Trikkala in ’42. The only men on this ship who really know ’im are Hendrik, the first mate, a seaman called Jukes and a little Welsh stoker by the name of Evans. They were all with him when he skippered the old Penang in the China Sea. But they don’t talk much. An’ I don’t blame ’em.”
    “Why?” I asked.
    “Well, it’s only hearsay, so don’t you go opening yer trap saying I bin telling you things.” He turned his sharp little brown eyes on me. “But I heard things. So’ve others who bin out in China ports. Mind you, I ain’t sayin’ they’re true. But I never known port gossip that hadn’t some truth in it.”
    “Well, what was the gossip?” I asked as he fell to staring at the fire again.”
    “Oh, it’s a long story,” he said. “But to put it briefly—it was piracy.” And then he swung quickly round on me again. “Look here, me lad,” he said, “you keep your mouth shut, see. I’m a garrulous old fool to be telling you anything at all. But I don’t talk to me shipmates about it. I ain’t aimin’ to start any trouble. But you’re different. You’re only a visitor so to speak.” He turned to the fire again then and, after a moment, he said, “It was in Shangai I first heard of Captain Halsey, and I never thought then to be serving on a ship of which he was Captain. Piracy, did I say? Piracy and murder, that’s what I heard of him in Shanghai. Have you ever heard him rantin’ and ravin’? No, I don’t reckon you bin on board long enough. But you will—you will.”
    “I’ve heard he declaims long speeches from Shakespeare,” I said. “Is that what you mean?”
    “That’s it—Shakespeare. It’s ’is Bible. He’s at it all day long, rantin’ and ravin’—up on the bridge, down inhis cabin. Flings quotations at his crew all mixed up with the orders so that a newcomer to the ship don’t know whether he’s coming or going. But you listen to the passages he picks. I’ve read Shakespeare. I take one around with me ’cos it’s a good, fat, meaty book to read when the company’s dull an’ the voyage a long one. Well, you just listen and you’ll find it’s