He dropped the nozzle from his
nerveless hands--and such hands, too! I happened along, and he said to
me in a distracted whisper: "Look at that, sir, look." "Take them back
aft at once yourself," I said, very amazed, too. As we approached the
quarterdeck we perceived the steward, a prey to a sort of sacred horror,
holding up before us the captain's trousers.
Bronzed men with brooms and buckets in their hands stood about with open
mouths. "I have found them lying in the passage outside the captain's
door," the steward declared faintly. The additional statement that the
captain's watch was gone from its hook by the bedside raised the painful
sensation to the highest pitch. We knew then we had a thief amongst us.
Our thief! Behold the solidarity of a ship's company. He couldn't be to
us like any other thief. We all had to live under the shadow of his
crime for days; but the police kept on investigating, and one morning a
young woman appeared on board swinging a parasol, attended by two
policemen, and identified the culprit. She was a barmaid of some bar
near the Circular Quay, and knew really nothing of our man except that he
looked like a respectable sailor.
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