‘Don’t talk like a fool,’ said Will; ‘I’m not going to betray you. I want to go on helping you as I helped you from the start, but as I ought never to have helped you. How are you going to get any clothes? Think! Don’t talk of the slop-chest. You’re not on the articles. There’ll not be a farthing coming to you. You’ve been searched, and, as you said yourself, it’s out of the question you should produce money now. Will the captain trust a stowaway? Of course not. So there’s no slop-chest so far as you’re concerned. Yet how long d’ye think those clothes of yours are going to hang upon your body, scrubbing and messing about in them as you are all day long? And when wear has turned them into Irish pennants, what are you going to do for a shift of duds? Why, you must come to me, of course. But how can I help you if I don’t know you in some such a way as to justify me in taking an interest in you? Now do you see what I would be at?’ cried he, giving me a soft, playful chuck under the chin. ‘Yes, I understand now. I ask your pardon. You are clever and look ahead.’ ‘Well, that’s all right,’ said he; ‘and now I shall be able to give you a shift of linen and to mostly rig you out. Most of what’s in my chest was given to me by you. Nobody can say a word when it’s understood that your father was a client of the old man’s. It’ll raise you in the general esteem, also. So, say what you will, I’ve done you a good turn this blessed night. And now get to bed away out of this filthy yowling. Look how sweetly it rains! And I’ve still three hours to stand!’ With that he made a spring on to the poop-ladder and disappeared. CHAPTER XXIII SHE VISITS THE BARRACKS I have said that this passage of wet, violent weather lasted about four days. On the morning of the fourth day of it the steward sent me to the galley on some errand I forget the nature of. The cook was wild with temper. Everything seemed to have gone wrong with him. The baker had offered to fight him for his day’s allowance of rum. He had scalded himself, besides, during an unusually heavy lurch. When I looked in on him he swore and told me to wait. It was all the same to me. It had ceased to rain, and I stood under the lee of the galley for shelter from the wind.