CHAPTER THREE.
HOW FIRST-MATE GREGORY DID NOT LIKE DOGS.
"Hullo! whose dog's that ?" It was a hoarse gruff voice, which made Mark Strong turn sharply round just as he had crossed the gangway and stepped from the quay at the East India Dock on board the _Black Petrel_, or Mother Carey's Chicken, as the sailors often called her, a large ship conspicuous among the forest of masts rising from the basin.
The speaker was a tall angular-looking man with a pimply face and a red nose, at the top of which he seemed to be frowning angrily as if annoyed with the colour which he could not help.

He had turned sharply round from where he was giving orders to some sailors who were busily lowering great bales and packages into the hold; and as Mark faced the tall thin man, whose hands were tucked deep down in the pockets of his pea-jacket, the lad thought he had never seen a more sour-looking personage in his life.
"Hullo, I say!" he cried again, "whose dog's that ?" "Mine, sir." "Then just take him ashore.

I don't allow dogs on my deck.

Here, I say, you sir," he roared, turning to where the men were making fast the hooks of a kind of derrick to a great package, protected by an open-work lattice of deal, "hadn't you better take that crate of pottery first, and put at the bottom, and then stow that portable steam-engine on the top." The man addressed--a red-faced, good-humoured-looking sailor, whose bare arms formed a sort of picture-gallery of subjects tattooed in blue-- rubbed his ear and stared.
"Why, the ironwork's heavy and might break the pottery," he said at last.
"Well, won't it break that light carriage, you double-distilled, round-headed wise man of the west, you! Put the heavy goods at the bottom and the light at the top." "Ay, ay, sir!" shouted the man.

"Bear a hand, lads.