Why, indeed, should Kipping or any one else molest good, dull old Bill Hayden? "I'm a family man, I am," Bill continued, "with a little girl at home. I ain't a-bothering no one. I'm sure all I want is to be left alone." For a time we sat in silence, watching the succession of blue waves through which the Island Princess cut her swift and almost silent passage. A man must have been a cowardly bully to annoy harmless old Bill. Yet even then, young though I was, I realized that sometimes there is no more dangerous man than a coward and a bully, "He's great friends with the second mate," Bill remarked at last. "And the second mate has got no use at all for Mr. Thomas because he thought he was going to get Mr. Thomas's berth and didn't; and for the same reason he don't like the captain. Well, I'm glad he's only _second mate_. He ain't got his hands out of the tar-bucket yet, my boy." "How do you know he expected to get the mate's berth?" I asked. "It's common talk, my boy. The supercargo's the only man aft he's got any manner of use for, and cook says the steward says Mr. Hamlin ain't got no manner of use for him. There you are." "No," I thought,--though I discreetly said nothing,--"Roger Hamlin is not the man to be on friendly terms with a fellow of the second mate's calibre." And from that time on I watched Mr. Falk, the second mate, and the mild-voiced Kipping more closely than ever--so closely that one night I stumbled on a surprising discovery. Ours was the middle watch, and Mr. Falk as usual was on the quarter-deck. By moonlight I saw him leaning on the weather rail as haughtily as if he were the master. His slim, slightly stooped figure, silhouetted against the moonlit sea, was unmistakable. But the winds were inconstant and drifting clouds occasionally obscured the moon. Watching, I saw him distinctly; then, as the moonlight darkened, the after part of the ship became as a single shadow against a sea almost as black. While I still watched, there came through a small fissure in the clouds a single moonbeam that swept from the sea across the quarter-deck and on over the sea again. By that momentary light I saw that Mr. Falk had left the weather rail. Certainly it was a trifling thing to consider twice, but you must remember, in the first place, that I was only a boy, with all a boy's curiosity about trifles, and in the second place that of the four men in the cabin no other derived such obvious satisfaction from the minor prerogatives of office as Mr. Falk. He fairly swelled like a frog in the sun as he basked in the prestige that he attributed to himself when, left in command, he occupied the captain's place at the weather rail.