She was a beast of a brig, all hold and
dirty framework, and they had ballasted her with old iron and old
rails and iron sleepers, and got a miscellaneous lot of spades and iron
wheelbarrows against the loading of the quap. I thought her over with
Pollack, one of those tall blond young men who smoke pipes and don't
help much, and then by myself, and as a result I did my best to sweep
Gravesend clean of wheeling planks, and got in as much cord and small
rope as I could for lashing. I had an idea we might need to run up a
jetty. In addition to much ballast she held, remotely hidden in a sort
of inadvertent way a certain number of ambiguous cases which I didn't
examine, but which I gathered were a provision against the need of a
trade.
The captain was a most extraordinary creature, under the impression we
were after copper ore; he was a Roumanian Jew, with twitching, excitable
features, who had made his way to a certificate after some preliminary
naval experiences in the Black Sea. The mate was an Essex man of
impenetrable reserve.
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