"The 'Arrow' has come in, sir, from the Coast of Africa, under charge of Mr Godfrey Magor, the second mate," I heard Harry Bracewell, one of our shipping clerks, say, as I was seated on a high stool, pen in hand, leaning over my desk in the office of Messrs Crank, Trunnion & Swab, general merchants, of Liverpool Harry addressed the senior partner, Mr Peter Crank, who had just then stepped out of his private room with a bundle of papers in his hand into the counting-house, where I, with a dozen other clerks, senior and junior, were driving our quills as fast as we could move them over the paper, or adding up columns of figures, or making calculations, as the case might be.