'Sorry there ain't many lights,' he apologized over his shoulder. 'But the engineers has got the jennies stripped to-night.'

'Oh, really?'

That sounded more alarming than ever.

He came to a cabin door and opened it.

'The new Doctor,' he announced, as if he had just materialized me out of a hat.

There were three men in the cabin-the Mate, Archer the Second, and Trail the Third. Hornbeam was sitting in the only chair with his reefer unbuttoned and his stockinged feet on the washbasin. It was a small cabin, designed like a crossword puzzle, and the visitors had to adapt themselves to the interlocking pieces. Archer, who was a tall, pale man with an expression like a curate just beginning to have doubts, had wedged himself between the bunk and the bookcase above it with his legs dangling on to the deck, like a human question mark. Trail, squatting between the locker and the desk, was a fat youth going through a florid attack of _acne vulgaris._

'Talk of the devil!' Hornbeam said immediately.

'We wondered when you were going to turn up,' Archer said. 'Have a bottle of beer.'

'Move over, Second, and let the Doctor park his fanny,' Hornbeam said. He introduced himself and the others. 'Give us another bottle, Third. Do you mind drinking out of a tooth-glass?'

'No, not at all.'

The welcome was cordial enough, but it disturbed me. It is a habit among seafarers to accept every newcomer on terms of intimacy, but I was a fairly new doctor and stood on my professional dignity like a girl with her first pair of high heels.

'I hope I'm not butting in,' I said stiffly.

'Not a bit of it! Throw your coat on the hook there. We were only having a quick peg.'

I climbed up on the bunk next to Archer without enthusiasm. It seemed as comfortable as trying to drink on a bus in the rush hour.

'You just passed out of medical school?' Archer asked.