His
shoulders are very broad, and his muscles bulge under his shirt; and
yet he is slender-waisted, lean-limbed, and hollow-cheeked. This
last, however, is not due to sickness or ill-health. Tyro as he is
on the sea, Steve Roberts is keen and intelligent . . . yes, and
crooked. He has a way of looking straight at one with utmost
frankness while he talks, and yet it is at such moments I get most
strongly the impression of crookedness. But he is a man, if trouble
should arise, to be reckoned with. In ways he suggests a kinship
with the three men Mr. Pike took so instant a prejudice against--Kid
Twist, Nosey Murphy, and Bert Rhine. And I have already noticed, in
the dog-watches, that it is with this trio that Steve Roberts chums.
The second sailor Miss West rejected, after silently watching him
work for five minutes, was Mulligan Jacobs, the wisp of a man with
curvature of the spine. But before she sent him packing other things
occurred in which I was concerned. I was in the room when Mulligan
Jacobs first came in to go to work, and I could not help observing
the startled, avid glance he threw at my big shelves of books.
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