"Qualifications? For pump-man on an oil-tanker?" "Pump-man--yes. And on an oil-tanker. I'm not hiring a rough rider, or a policeman, or an aeroplanist--just a pump-man." Through his open door the new superintendent caught the wink which his head clerk directed at the second clerk. And caught it so easily that the thought came to him that to share in the humor of the head clerk may have been one of the recreations of his predecessor. "What has been your experience with marine machinery? What were your last three or four places?" "My last three or four? Well, one was being second-assistant engineer on a government collier from the Philippines with a denaturalized skipper, and for purser a slick up-state New Yorker; and both of 'em at the old game--grafting off the grub allowance. And that's bad." "Eh--what's bad?" "Grafting off the grub. Men quit a ship for poor grub quicker than they do for poor pay. For a week after we hit San Francisco I didn't get any further away from the dining-room of the nearest hotel--well, than"--he turned suddenly--"than that fellow there is from here--that fat, knock-kneed chap there who seems to have so much to say about me." The second clerk, who was also the second head wit, yelped like a suddenly squelched concertina and was quiet. The new-comer, after a grave study of the knock-kneed one's person, resumed his narrative. "Then oiler on a cattle steamer. Ever been on a cattleman?" "Huh!" The head clerk was scowling tremendously. "No? You ought to try one sometime. Some are all right, but some are"--he looked sidewise at the stenographer--"well, no matter. One night two sweet-tempered, light-complexioned coal-passers hit me together, one with a shovel, the other with a slice-bar. It was the slice-bar, I think, that got me. I didn't see it coming--or going either--but probably it was the slice-bar." He bent his neck and parted the heavy black hair. A white welt showed through the hair. The head clerk flashed an enlightening wink toward the second head clerk; but the second clerk, seeming to be less interested than formerly, the wink was flashed over to the stenographer; but as she, too, seemed preoccupied, the head clerk, rather less buoyantly, inquired, "And what did you do to the two coal-passers?" "For what I did to them--after I came to--I had to jump into the Mersey and swim ashore. British justice, you know. Inflexible!--especially to a foreigner who cracks a couple of domestic skulls." "And then?" "English navy." The head clerk began to flash again. "And what, may I arsk, was wrong--haw, haw!--wrong with the sair-vice?"