"Never mind, I'll go and sit down till dinnertime," I thought. "I suppose there will be some dinner some time." I went along by the row of cabin doors, and found that I was on the port instead of the starboard side; and, crossing over, I found the right cabin at last, seized the handle sharply, for a man was coming along with more luggage, and, turning the fastening, I was about to dive in, but the door was fast, and a quick, authoritative voice cried from within-- "Well, what is it?" "Open this door," I said as sharply, for I felt irritated at being shut out of my place of refuge from the noise and misery of the deck. There was the sound of a bolt shooting back, the door was thrown open, and I was face to face in the dim light with a tall, dark, youngish man, whose expression was stern and severe in the extreme. "Well, sir," he said shortly, "what is it?" "What is it?" I cried angrily, with a sharp look at my luggage. "What are you doing here? Why is this door fastened?" He looked at me quite fiercely for a few moments, and then his face softened a little, and he smiled, but it was a cold, wintry sort of facial sunshine. "Ah, I see," he said, "you are Mr Vincent, I suppose?" "Yes, I am, sir, and that is my luggage. What then?" "Only that my name is Brace, and I suppose we are to be fellow-passengers." "I--I--beg your pardon," I stammered, with my face turning scarlet. "There is no need," he said coldly. "Perhaps it was my fault for fastening the door." He turned away, stooped down to a trunk in which glistened a bunch of keys, turned the lock, and then altered his mind and unlocked the trunk, and took out his keys. "No," he said rising, "there will be no need for that." He turned coldly, and went out of the cabin, leaving me with the sensation that I had behaved rudely and insolently to an officer who was my superior, and under whose orders I supposed I was to be. "Nice beginning," I said to myself, and I sat down on one of my own trunks, feeling anything but comfortable, as I came to the conclusion that I had made an enemy who would pay me handsomely during the voyage. "This is a happy sort of place," I muttered, as I sat listening to the banging of cabin doors and shouting of people for stewards and others, and angry complaints about being kept waiting; and all the time there was a stamping, tramping, and rattling going on overhead that was maddening. And there I sat, gazing dreamily at the little round pane of glass which lit the cabin, till I grew so hot and weary of the stuffy little cupboard of a place, that I got up and went on deck again, to find that the great vessel had been cast loose, and that hawsers and capstans were being used to work us out of the dock.