I only smiled kindly down on him, and he seemed to recollect himself, and asked me to take a seat. He explained that the master of a British ship having died in Bangkok the Consul-General had cabled to him a request for a competent man to be sent out to take command.

Apparently, in his mind, I was the man from the first, though for the looks of the thing the notification addressed to the Sailors’ Home was general. An agreement had already been prepared. He gave it to me to read, and when I handed it back to him with the remark that I accepted its terms, the deputy-Neptune signed it, stamped it with his own exalted hand, folded it in four (it was a sheet of blue foolscap) and presented it to me⁠—a gift of extraordinary potency, for, as I put it in my pocket, my head swam a little.

“This is your appointment to the command,” he said with a certain gravity. “An official appointment binding the owners to conditions which you have accepted. Now⁠—when will you be ready to go?”