I came to a pier where two three-masted barks lay, one on either side. First I turned to the one on the right because I saw two men up aloft. And there was a boy passing down the deck, carrying a pot of coffee aft. I could smell the good aroma of that coffee. Ever since, the smell of coffee makes me wish to set out on a trip somewhere. "Hey, Jimmy," I shouted to the boy. "Hey, yourself!" he replied, coming belligerently to the side. Then, "what do ye want?" "To go to sea. Do you need anybody aboard for the voyage?" He looked scornfully at me, as I stood there, skinny, shadow-thin. "You go to hell!" he cried. Then he resumed his way to the cabin, whistling. The ship opposite, I inspected her next. It was grand with the figurehead of a long, wooden lady leaning out obliquely with ever-staring eyes, her hands crossed over her breasts. Aboard I went, down the solitude of the deck. I stopped at the cook's galley. I had gone there because I had seen smoke coming out of the little crooked pipe that stood akimbo. I looked in at the door. A dim figure developed within, moving about among pots and pans. It was the cook, I could tell by the white cap he wore ... an old, very old man. He wore a sleeveless shirt. His long skinny, hairy arms were bare. His long silvery-grey beard gave him an appearance like an ancient prophet. But where the beard left off there was the anomaly of an almost smooth, ruddy face, and very young, straight-seeing, blue eyes. When I told the old cook what I wanted, he invited me in to the galley and reached me a stool to sit on. "The captain isn't up yet. He was ashore on a jamboree last night. You'll see him walking up and down the poop when he's hopped out of his bunk and eaten his breakfast." The cook talked about himself, while I waited there. I helped him peel a pail of potatoes.... Though I heard much of strange lands and far-away ports, he talked mostly of the women who had been in love with him ... slews of them ... "and even yet, sixty-five years old, I can make a good impression when I want to ... I had a girl not yet twenty down in Buenos Ayres. She was crazy about me ... that was only two years ago." He showed me pictures of the various women, in all parts of the world, that had "gone mad about him" ... obviously, they were all prostitutes. He brought out a batch of obscene photographs, chuckling over them. It was a German ship--the _Valkyrie_. But the cook spoke excellent English, as did, I later found out, the captain, both the mates, and all but one or two of the crew. Before the captain came up from below the cook changed the subject from women to history. In senile fashion, to show off, he recited the names of the Roman emperors, in chronological sequence. And, drawing a curtain aside from a shelf he himself had built over his bunk, he showed me Momsen's complete history of Rome, in a row of formidable volumes. * * * * * "There's the captain now!"