Captain Josh Carlton, who was pacing the deck with a huge cigar between his teeth, suddenly became conscious of the presence of somebody beside himself upon the quarter, by a shrill voice, which piped out: “Mister, I say!” “Who the dickens are you?” demanded the captain in surprise, gazing down upon young Terry from his height of six foot four. “Terrence Carson.” “Well, you little sawed-off, what d’ye want here?” Terry drew himself up to his full height. His “stubbedness” was the tender point. “I want to ship,” he declared. “You want to ship! Haw, haw, haw!” Captain Carlton fairly shook with laughter. “Why, your head hardly reaches the rail,” he said, taking the boy by the arm and twisting him about with his face to the shore. “Now, sonny, that’s the way ashore. You git!” Poor Terry, urged by the captain’s vigorous shove, walked slowly back to the wharf, and thence to the street. Once outside the gate, he stamped his ill-shod foot determinedly upon the rough pavement. “I just will do it!” he declared. “They can’t keep me off their old vessel, however hard they try. I’m going to sea in the _Calypso_, I am!” Thus it happened that, half an hour later, when Captain Carlton left the _Calypso_ and went uptown to look over the men whom the shipping agent had gotten together for him, leaving the vessel in sole charge of the steward, a ragged figure, sneaking along beside the piled-up cases on the dock, darted across the gangplank and onto the _Calypso’s_ deck. Neither the steward nor Bill Bronson, the burly dock watchman, saw him, for they were conversing very earnestly together forward. Terry was totally unfamiliar with a ship, having always lived back in the country; so he made the mistake of entering the cabin for concealment. It was a nicely furnished apartment, for Captain Carlton was quite a fastidious man, and at one end a heavy curtain hung before a small lavatory. Behind this curtain Terry darted. He had heard Bill say that the _Calypso_ would sail early the next morning, and he believed that once the vessel got out of the harbor, she would not be put about for the sake of landing him again. Hardly had he ensconced himself behind this drapery, when he detected the sound of a footstep softly descending the companion stairs. A moment later, the steward, a low-browed, snaky-looking Italian, appeared. It struck Terry at once that the man’s manner seemed odd. He appeared to be fearful of the presence of some unknown person, and glanced apprehensively around him as he stepped into the center of the room under the swinging lamp. And what followed made the boy’s suspicions a surety. The Italian had not entered the cabin during the absence of the captain and officers for any legitimate purpose.