The _Good Intent_ was a fine three-masted vessel of nearly 400 tons, large for those days, though the new East Indiamen approached 500 tons. When her keel was laid for the Honourable East India Company some twenty years earlier, she had been looked on as one of the finest merchant vessels afloat; but the buffeting of wind and wave in a dozen voyages to the eastern seas, and the more insidious and equally destructive attacks of worms and dry-rot, had told upon her timbers. She had been sold off and purchased by Captain Barker, who was one of the class known as "interlopers," men who made trading voyages to the East Indies on their own account, running the risk of their vessels being seized and themselves penalized for infringing the Company’s monopoly. She was now filled with a miscellaneous cargo: wine in chests, beer and cider in bottles, hats, worsted stockings, wigs, small shot, lead, iron, knives, glass, hubble-bubbles, cochineal, sword-blades, toys, coarse cloth, woollen goods--anything that would find a market among the European merchants, the native princes, or the trading classes of India. There was also a large consignment of muskets and ammunition. When Desmond asked the second mate where they were going, the reply was that if he asked no questions he would be told no lies. On this sultry afternoon a group of seamen, clad in nothing but shirt and breeches, were lolling, lying, crouching on the deck forward, circled around Bulger. Seated on an upturned tub, he was busily engaged in baiting a hook. Tired of the "Irish horse" and salt pork that formed the staple of the sailors’ food, he was taking advantage of the calm to fish for bonitos, a large fish over two feet long, the deadly enemy of the beautiful flying-fish that every now and then fell panting upon the deck in their mad flight from marine foes. The bait was made to resemble the flying-fish itself, the hook being hidden by white rag-stuffing, with feathers pricked-in to counterfeit spiked fins. As the big seaman deftly worked with iron hook and right hand, he spun yarns for the delectation of his mates. They chewed tobacco, listened, laughed, sneered, as their temper inclined them. Only one of the group gave him rapt and undivided attention--a slim youth, with hollow sunburnt cheeks, long bleached hair, and large gleaming eyes. His neck and arms were bare, and the colour of boiled lobsters; but, unlike the rest, he had no tattoo-marks pricked into his skin. His breeches were tatters, his striped shirt was covered with parti-coloured darns.