In a little while the complaining whine of a woman’s voice came up the companionway again. The captain impatiently twitched at a leather chain and flipped a big silver watch out of his pocket. “Ten minits arter twelve, if ye’ve got to know,” he grumbled. “And it was eight minits arter twelve when you asked before. Now I ain’t no town clock to set here passin’ down time to ye ev’ry second or two. I say you’ll get to that deppo. So set quiet.” But in a little while the complaining voice came up once more--the voice of a woman who was hoarse with much weeping. “It ain’t no time now to be wishin’ that,” he snapped impatiently. “Your wishin’ wants to be all done up ahead when you make up your mind to run away from your husband. It’s all been fixed and arranged and you’ve agreed to do thus and so, and now there ain’t nothin’ to do but set quiet, set quiet, I tell you.” Rather abstractedly he fingered in his waistcoat pocket and pulled the corner of a bill above its edge. He noted with fresh satisfaction, though he had looked at that bill at least a dozen times during the forenoon, that the figures in the corner were “20.” “Yes, it’s all been fixed and arranged,” he repeated with additional firmness, “and you said you’d go and you’ve gone, so now what is the use of cry-babyin’?” He craned his neck and looked up the long alley that led from the wharf to the street. “Hack will prob’ly git here a little ahead of time,” he muttered, “and I’ll be blamenation glad if it does. There’s nothin’ so cussed aggravatin’ to have ’round as a woman that can’t keep her mind set on one thing more’n fourteen seconds at a time. It will be good riddance when her gown-tail goes over the rail.” Again the voice complained below. “Now I want a puffick understandin’ about this thing,” snarled Captain Bodfish. “You want to stop whifflin’ back and forth, like a sheet at come-about, and fill full on one tack or t’other. When that hack comes you want to be ready to step into it, free will and no caterwaulin’s. I don’t propose to lug you out. It’s your own bus’ness and ’tain’t mine. But I’ve contracted to git you to that deppo and you’ve taken par-sage with that understandin’--and it’s to that deppo that I deliver you. Then you can go to Tophet, home or Hackenny so soon’s you’re off’n my hands.” The voice came promptly when he finished. There was a question. “No, s’r! Not a dum word of advice from me,” barked the skipper. “You’ve rooted your own hole and now you lay in it. I don’t never advise folks about their own business. If I said to go back to Wat Mayo or said to run away to where King Bradish is sendin’ you, you’d wish you’d done t’other, whatever one you done, and then I’d get the blame.” He half rose and craned his neck again. It was at the noon hour and the drays were silent and the hum of business had ceased in the storehouses along the wharf. In the stillness he heard the rapid roll of some heavy vehicle on the stones of the street to which the alley admitted.