As I passed the galley the cook stopped me. "You ain't gwine far, sah, praise de Lo'd!" he said. "Dah's a hot time ahead and we gotta stand one by anotheh. Ah's gwine keep my eye on dat yeh man f'om Boston. Yass, sah! Ah's gwine keep mah eye on him." Now what did the cook mean by that, I wondered. But no answer suggested itself to me, and when I entered the cabin I heard things that drove the cook and the man from Boston far out of my mind. "Kipping!" Mr. Cledd, the new chief mate was saying. "Not _William_ Kipping?" Roger got down the attested copy of the articles and pointed at the neatly written name: "William Kipping." Mr. Cledd looked very grave indeed. "I've heard of Falk--he's a vicious scoundrel in some ways, although too weak to be dangerous of his own devices But I _know_ Kipping." "Tell me about him,' said Roger. "Kipping is the meanest, doggonedest, low-down wharf-runner that ever robbed poor Jack of his wages. That's Kipping. Furthermore, he never signed a ship's articles unless he thought there was considerable money in it somewhere. I tell you, Captain Hamlin, he's an angry, disappointed man at this very minute. If you want to know what I think, he's out somewhere on those seas yonder--_just_--_waiting_. We've not seen the last of Kipping." Roger got up, and walking over to the chest of ammunition, thoughtfully regarded it. "No, sir!" Mr. Cledd reiterated, "if Kipping's Kipping, we've not seen the last of him." [Illustration:] VII OLD SCORES AND NEW AND A DOUBTFUL WELCOME [Illustration] CHAPTER XXVIII A MYSTERY IS SOLVED, AND A THIEF GETS AWAY Innumerable sampans were plying up and down the river, some with masts and some without, and great junks with carved sterns lay side by side so closely that their sails formed a patchwork as many-colored as Joseph's coat. There were West River small craft with arched deck-houses, which had beaten their way precariously far up and down the coast; tall, narrow sails from the north, and web-peaked sails on curved yards from the south; Hainan and Kwangtung trawlers working upstream with staysails set, and a few storm-tossed craft with great holes gaping between their battens. All were nameless when I saw them for the first time, and strange; but in the days that followed I learned them rope and spar. Vessels from almost every western nation were there, too--bluff-bowed Dutch craft with square-headed crews, brigantines from the Levant, and ships from Spain, England, and America.