From the first the voyage was going wrong.

Routed out of my hotel on a bitter March morning, I had crossed Baltimore and reached the pier-end precisely on time.

At nine o'clock the tug was to have taken me down the bay and put me on board the _Elsinore_, and with growing irritation I sat frozen inside my taxicab and waited.

On the seat, outside, the driver and Wada sat hunched in a temperature perhaps half a degree colder than mine.

And there was no tug.
Possum, the fox-terrier puppy Galbraith had so inconsiderately foisted upon me, whimpered and shivered on my lap inside my greatcoat and under the fur robe.