The Blue Peter: Sea comedies

by Morley Roberts

THE OVERCROWDED ICEBERG

There was a deal of ice about, and it came streaming south, in all kinds of shapes, right into the track of ships. There were flat-topped bergs and ice-fields, and there were all kinds of pinnacled danger-traps which were obviously ready to turn turtle and load up any unwary steamer with more ice than she would ever require to make cocktails with. That year ice was reported in great quantities as far south as latitude 40°, and there is every reason to believe that there was more ice run into than was ever reported by one unlucky liner and five tramps which were posted at Lloyd's as 'Missing.' The Western Ocean is no-peace-at-any-price body of water, and it tries those who sail it as high as any sea in the world, but when the Arctic turns itself loose and empties its refrigerator into the ocean fairway it becomes what seamen call 'a holy terror.' For ice brings fog, and fog is the real sea-devil, worse than any wind that blows. It was a remarkable thing in such circumstances that Captain Harry Sharpness Spink of Glo'ster preserved his equanimity. As Ward, the mate of the Swan of Avon, said, he wasn't likely to preserve the Swan.

"Dry up, Ward," said his commanding officer, "be so good as to dry up. When I require your advice to run the Swan I'll let you know, but in the meantime any uncalled-for jaw on that or any other subject will make me very cross."

"Do you think you can lick me since you went to see that swab at the Foreign Office?" asked Ward, as he edged towards Spink. "Don't you savvy, Spink, that I'm just as able as I was before to pick you up and sling you off of this bridge on to the main-deck?"

"That's as may be," said Spink, "and I don't deny by any means that you are a truculent and insubordinate beast. That's why I shipped you. But it don't follow by no means that because my unfortunate disposition compels me to have officers that can lick me, that I should let 'em navigate the Swan on the high lonesome principle. As I said before, you will be so good as to shut your head. Ice or no ice, I'm going at my speed, not yours. Do you think you are out yachting that I should look after your precious carcase?"

"I believe you are ready to cast her away," said Ward. "Are the bally owners going shares with you?"

Spink shook his bullet head.

"They ain't, and you know it, Ward. There are men would take such an insinuation as an insult, and if I could lick you perhaps I would. But you know as well as I do that if I wanted to cast her away I'd not do it here. There's no kind of fun that I so despise as open boats in cold weather, and the Western Ocean in ice-time isn't my market for a regatta. I ain't called on to explain to a subordinate my idea in running full speed through this fog and ice, but out of more regard for your feelings than you ever show for mine I don't mind revealing to you that I'm trusting to my luck."

"Your luck!"

"Yes, my luck," replied Spink with great firmness; "for luck I have and no fatal error. I've been thinking of it a lot this trip, and come to the conclusion that I've more solid luck than any man I know intimate. To say nothing of my commanding a rust and putty kerosine can like this old tramp at the age of thirty, when you, that can lick me in a scrap, have to be my mate though you're older, didn't I come out of that little affair at Aguilas with flying colours?"

"You came out with a hole in the funnel that you had to pay for yourself," said Ward. "I don't see where your luck came in."

"Don't you see it might have been worse, you ass?" cried Spink irritably. "But that's nothing. What I've been pondering over chiefly is my very remarkable luck in never having been caught, for a permanency, by any of the ladies that have been after me."

"They haven't lost much," said Ward discourteously. "And I reckon that you are mistook when you think you're that enticing that women hankers to drag you in by the hair of your head and kiss you by force."

"I never said so," replied Spink; "but the fact remains that I'm not married."

"You're a selfish beast, Spink, and I sincerely hope you'll be married before you're through," said Ward.

"You are the most insolent mate I ever had," replied Spink, "and the most unfeeling. Did you hear a fog-horn?"

Though it was in the middle of the forenoon watch it was pretty nearly as dark off the Banks as it would have been inside a dock warehouse, for the fog was as thick as a blanket. The rail and the decks were slimy with it, and the skipper and his mate were as wet as if it had been raining. The fog came swirling in thick wreaths, and sometimes half choked them. The wind from the north-east was light but very cold, as if it blew off the face of an iceberg, as it probably did. The Swan had an air of thorough discomfort, and in spite of it was steaming into the west at her best speed of nine knots an hour.

It is no wonder that Spink and Ward quarrelled; there was hardly a soul on board who was not in a bad temper. Nothing disturbs seamen as much as fog, and the fact that Spink refused to be disturbed by it made it all the worse for the others. Ward was distinctly nervous, and let the fog play on his nerves. He saw steamers ahead that had no existence, and heard fog-horns that were nothing but the sound of his own blood in his ears.

"Yes, I do hear a fog-horn. It's on the starboard bow," he said anxiously.

"Not a bit of it, Ward, it's on the port bow. It's some darned old wind-jammer. I'll give her a friendly hoot."

He made the whistle give a melancholy wail, which was not answered by the ship for which it was intended, but by a gigantic liner which burst through the fog looking like high land, and booming at the rate of at least twenty knots. She loomed over them in the obscurity, and Ward gave an involuntary howl which fetched the Swan's crowd out on deck in time to see that there was no need to kick their boots off and swim for it. They were also in time to answer the insulting remarks of the liner's two officers on the bridge, as she scraped past them with about the length of a handspike to spare.

"You miserable, condemned tramp," said the liner as she swept by.

"Oh, you man-drowning dogs," replied the crowd of the Swan.

And everything else that was said never reached its mark. The liner was swallowed up, and resumed her attempt to make a good passage in spite of what she logged as 'hazy' weather.

"What did I tell you about my luck?" asked Spink coolly, and Ward very naturally had nothing to say till he got his breath. What he said then could only have been said to a skipper who had so unfortunate a disposition towards violence that he had to ship officers who could lick him.

"You are a wonder," said Ward, "and I wish you had been dead before I saw you. Ain't you thinking of others' lives if you ain't of your own?"

"What's the use of arguing with a thick-head like you, Ward?" asked Spink. "If that blamed express packet slowed down to our jog-trot her skipper would feel as sick as if he had anchored, and he'd log it 'dead slow,' and the rotters that judge divorces and collisions would call him the most praiseworthy swine that ever ran another ship down. What's the logic of it? Why should I daunder along at five knots? I might be lingering just where I'd be caught by such another or by a berg. I trust in Providence and my luck, and if you don't like it you can get out and walk."

At this moment a bellow was heard for'ard, 'Ice on the starboard bow,' and Spink, who for all his talk had the eyes of a cat, motioned to the man at the wheel to starboard the helm a few spokes. The Swan ground past a small berg, and had a narrower shave than with the liner.

"If we'd been going a trifle slower, Ward," said the skipper, "I might have plugged that lump plump in the middle, and you would have been down on the main-deck seeing the boats put over the side."

"There's no arguing with you," growled the mate, "you'd sicken a hog, and I wish it was Day's watch instead of mine. If he has the same temper when he wakes that he went below with, you'll have a dandy time with him."

He relapsed into a silence which Spink found more trying than open insubordination, for Spink was a cheerful soul.

"Here, I can't stand this, Ward——"

"What can't you stand?" asked Ward sulkily.

"Not being spoken to, of course," replied the skipper. "I order you to be more cheerful. I don't ask you to be polite, for I know you can't be; but you can talk when you aren't wanted to, so you just talk now."

"I won't unless you slow down," said Ward. "I don't see why I should talk and be cheerful with a sea-lunatic."

"Well," said Spink, "I'll slow her down to half speed to please you, for the Lord knows there's enough ice about without my having a lump of it for a mate. Ring her down to half speed, and be damned to you!"

Ward rang her to half speed without any second order.

"And I sincerely hope I shan't regret bein' weak enough to give way," said Spink, "for I'm a deal too easy-going and reasonable."

He lighted his pipe and smoked steadily. As both Ward and Day admitted, he might be hard to get along with, but he had nerves which would have done credit to a bull. Most skippers in the Western Ocean get into the state of mind which sees disaster before it is in sight, and if they don't take to drink it is because they die of continued scares. Spink feared nothing under heaven, and though he sometimes drank more than was good for him, it was not because he wanted it, but because he liked it. There is a great distinction between these two ways of drinking. After a few minutes of silence he turned to Ward.

"Do you feel easier in your mind, Ward?"

"I do," said Ward. "I own it freely."

Spink snorted.

"As sure as ice is ice when you get a command of your own you'll take to drink," said Spink. "And now, as you're satisfied at getting your own way, I'll go below and have a snooze."

About six bells in the forenoon watch the Swan ran out of 'Bank weather' into beautiful sunlight, and Ward rang her up to full speed. All about them were icebergs small and large, which sparkled like jewels in the sun. There was one long, low berg right ahead of them, there was one to the south'ard which was peaked and scarped and pinnacled into the semblance of a mediaeval castle. Ward, as Spink said, had no soul for beauty unless it wore petticoats, and to him, as to all seamen, ice in any shape was ugly.

"If he'd had his way she'd have come a mucker on that beggar ahead," said Ward, as he passed to windward of the big, table-topped berg. "I wish we was out of it. This fine spell won't last long, and there is more thick weather ahead of us or I'm a Dago."

He gave her up to Day at noon with pleasure, and took his grub alone as the skipper was fast asleep. When he turned out again at four o'clock he found the fog as thick as ever, and Bill Day as cross as he could stick at having to yank the whistle laniard every minute or so. As soon as Ward showed his nose on the bridge Bill let out at him.

"What kind of a relief do you call this?" he demanded savagely. "I wish I'd had this laniard round your neck, I'd have had you out of your bunk in good time, I swear."

As a matter of fact, Ward was only three minutes behind time, and always prided himself on giving a good relief.

"Has Double Glo'ster been worrying you that you're so sick?" he asked. "You know damn well that you owe me hours. Oh, don't talk, go below and die, as you always do when you see blankets. Has there been much ice?"

"It's blinking all round the bally shop," returned the second mate. "Didn't you wake when I stopped her dead?"

"No," said Ward.

"And you talk of my dying when I get below," retorted Day. He slid off the bridge, and proceeded to justify the mate's accusation by falling asleep before his head touched the pillow, in spite of the melancholy hootings of the Swan as she picked her way delicately in the fog and ice. It was very nearly eight bells again before Captain Harry Sharpness Spink of Glo'ster showed on deck. As he meant to stay on deck all night he had really been very moderate.

"So I've missed Newcastle?" he said.

"Lucky for you," returned Ward; "his temper was horrid."

Spink sighed.

"I'm the most unfortunate man that ever commanded any blasted hooker that ever sailed the seas," he said. "Day tries me more than you do, Ward. There are times I regret I ever knew him. I must have been brought up badly to have such a disposition as I have. Well, well, it can't be helped, a man is what he was meant to be, there is no get-away from that. But I should admire to see you plug him. Oh, I say, it's fairly thick, ain't it?"

It was a deal thicker than much of the pea-soup served up in the Swan, though Spink rather prided himself on the way the men were fed in her.

"Are you nervous?" asked Spink.

"I ain't by any means happy," said Ward; "and no seaman worthy of the name can be happy on the Banks in weather like this."

"That's a slur on me, I know," said Spink, "but I look over it."

"What would you do if you didn't?" asked Ward.

Spink did not reply to this challenge, and inside of a minute both he and Ward had something to think of besides quarrelling about nothing. The fog lifted for a moment, and showed ice all about them. The air grew bitterly cold, and was soon close on the freezing point, Spink slowed her down again, and almost literally felt his way through the obstacles. Once he touched a small berg, but when he did so he was going dead slow. Ward stood by and saw the 'old man' handle the Swan with admiration. When they were once more through the thick of it he spoke.

"I wish I could understand you, Spink," he said, with far more respect than he often showed. "You're the most reckless skipper I ever sailed with, and now you're more careful than I should be."

"I don't trust in my luck till I can't see," said Spink, and he turned her over to Ward, saying, "Go your own pace, my son. It's most agreeable when you are civil."

And next minute the catastrophe happened, for at half speed the old Swan bunted her nose into a low but very solid berg, and the result was very much the same as if she had tried conclusions head on with a dock wall. She crumpled up like a bandbox when it is inadvertently sat on, and it would have been obvious to the least instructed observer that her chance of going much farther was a very small one indeed. She trembled and was jarred to her vitals, her iron decks lifted up like a carpet with the wind underneath it, one of the funnel stays parted with a loud twang, and the crowd forward came out on deck as if the devil was behind them. And the fog was still so thick that it was impossible to see them from the bridge. But they soon saw Bill Day, for even his ability to sleep through most things could not stand being thrown out of his bunk.

"What's up now?" roared the second mate. And the skipper showed at his very best.

"Ward would have her at half speed," said Spink coolly, "and that gave the southerly drift time to bring that blasted berg just where it could do its work."

And poor Ward hadn't a word to say. Spink had plenty. He spoke to the crew below.

"Keep quiet there you," he snapped, without the least sign of a disturbed mind. And up came the chief engineer, M'Pherson, in pyjamas and a blue funk.

"What's happened, captain? Oh, what's gone wrang the noo?" he cried.

"She's hit more than a penn'orth of ice, Mr. M'Pherson," replied the skipper, "and if I were you I'd get my clothes on. Tell me what water she is making, and look slippy. Mr. Ward, see to the boats. Mr. Day, take the steward and a couple of hands and get some stores up on deck."

He was so cool that he inspired unlimited confidence, although it was now obvious to them all that the Swan's very minutes were numbered. It did not require old Mac's report that the water was coming on board like a millstream to show them that. The engineers and firemen came on deck, and Spink addressed them in what he considered suitable and encouraging terms.

"Now then, you stokehold scum, less jaw there, you won't get drowned this trip."

They were exceedingly glad to hear it, for a lot of them were of a different opinion and said so. There was no time to waste, and indeed none was lost. The real trouble began when it was found that one boat wouldn't swim, after the manner and custom of boats in the Mercantile Marine, and when another was staved in by a swinging lump of ice the moment it took the water. This lump was a small 'calf' of the larger berg which they had struck on, and the next moment the original obstacle swung alongside and ground heavily against the steamer.

"There ain't enough boats," said the skipper. "Mr. Ward, d'ye think you could hook on to that berg? We'll have to board it and make out as best we can."

As the Swan was a vessel of close on fourteen hundred tons, her kedge anchor ought to have weighed something like four and a half hundredweight. As a matter of fact it had once belonged to something in the shape of a tug, and it weighed barely two. Ward picked it up as if it was a toy and hove it on the berg, and followed it with a warp.

"Bully for you," said the skipper, and as he spoke the Swan gave forth a noise very much like a hiccup. "Down on the ice the port watch, and the others get the stores over the side. Steward, all the blankets you can get. Mr. Day, put over the side anything to make a raft of; we may want one if the berg melts."

Spars and hencoops and everything that would float went over the side, some of it on the ice and some of it into the water. A couple of hands in the only sound boat kept her clear of the berg and the Swan, and shoved the floating dunnage to those on the new vessel, which had promptly been christened 'The Sailors' Home.' Their late home was about to disappear, and said so in terms that were quite unmistakable by the initiated.

"Now then," said Spink, "when the rest of you are over the side I'm ready. Ward, take the chronometer as I lower it down. And be careful with this bag, there's the ship's papers and my sextant in it."

"Now boom her off," said Spink, "for the Swan's going."

There was a tremendous crack on board.

"The fore bulkhead," said Spink, and then the poor old Swan cocked her stern in the air. A furious gush of steam came up from the engine-room and all the stokehold ventilators, until the sea came almost level with the after hatch.

"She's going down head-foremost," said the crew, "poor old Swan."

And then there was a mighty shivaree on board. The whole of the cargo in No. 1 and No. 2 holds fetched away, and evidently shot right out at the bows. All this mixture of cargo must have been followed by the engines slipping from their beds, for instead of doing a dive head-foremost, the Swan's stern, which had been high in air, went under with a big splash, and she lifted her ragged bows in the fog before she went down with a long-drawn, melancholy gurgle.

"She warn't such a bad old packet after all," said the sad crew. And for at least a minute no one said another word. Then Ward spoke.

"Where the hell's your luck now, Spink?"

"What's become of your theory that half speed in a fog is any better than going at it at my rate?" asked Spink. "You haven't a leg to stand on, and I don't propose to take advice from you again. You've disappointed me sadly! My luck is where it was, except in the matter of my officers, and it's notorious that I have no luck with them. We're out of the Swan without a life lost, we've got heaps of grub, plenty of blankets, and a fine comfortable iceberg under us. There's many this hour in the Western Ocean that might envy us, and don't you make any error about that. I come from Glo'ster, and my name is Captain Harry Sharpness Spink, and drunk or sober it's as good as havin' your life insured to sail with me. Oh, I'm all right, and I propose to plug the first man that growls, if he's as big as the side of a house."

None of them was in trim to take up the challenge, and Spink lighted his pipe.

"Three cheers for the captain," said the crew; and they cheered him heartily, for which he thanked them almost regally, though he somewhat spoilt the effect of it afterwards by telling them to go to hell out of that and pick a place to camp in at a little distance.

"So far as I can see in this fog there's plenty of room for everyone," said Spink, as the night grew dark. That was where he was wrong, for they soon discovered, by falling into the water on the far side, that they were on no great ice island, but had picked a very small berg indeed. Spink consoled them by telling them that they wouldn't be on it long, and they could hardly help believing him as he seemed so certain of it.

"And after all," he said to Day and Ward, "the old Swan was insured for more than she was worth, and I shouldn't be surprised if the owners were pleased with the catastrophe."

He wrapped himself in blankets and lay down. In five minutes he was breathing like a child.

"I tell you," said the second mate, "the 'old man' is a wonder, for all we have to treat him like a kid. I say, Ward, let's be kind to him to-morrow and say Glo'ster is just as good as any other county."

"I don't mind," said Ward; "but if we do he'll take advantage of it."

"Oh, let him," said Day. "He's a fair scorcher, and if he gets too rowdy we can always put him down. On my soul I'm gettin' to like him. He's got the pluck of a bull-dog. Where's old Mac?"

They found Mac sitting in a puddle of melting ice-water, weeping about his family at Glasgow. The second engineer, whose name was Calder, was trying to console his chief by saying it might have been worse.

"It canna be waur, man," said old Mac. "What can be waur than bein' wreckit, and on a wee sma' bit o' ice that's veesibly meltin' as I sit on it? The cauld is strikin' through to my very banes, and in the hurry I've had the sair misfortune to come away wi'out the medicine for my rheumatics. To-morrow I'll be i' a knot wi' 'em, and nothing for it but cauld water, which I couldna abide sin' I was a bairn. And all my work on the engines wasted. I'm a mournful man this hour."

He drank something out of a bottle. As he had left his medicine behind it could not have been that. It certainly did him no good, for he wept all the more after taking it, and throwing himself in Calder's arms he insisted that the second engineer was his mother, and begged her not to insist on his having a cold bath.

"He's a puir silly buddy," said Calder, "and I've no great opeenion of him as an engineer, though he's no' the fool he seems the noo."

And the night wore away while Mac wept and Spink slept the sleep of the righteous, and Ward and Day smoked in silence. As for the crew, they lay huddled up together, and only woke to swear at the new kind of 'doss.' On the whole, everyone but the chief engineer was not unhappy, and even he, by reason of the attention he paid to the bottle which did not contain medicine, fell fast asleep and snored like a very appropriate fog-horn. The dawn broke very early, at about three, and it found most of the inhabitants of the berg still unconscious. In the night the fog had lifted, and the sea was almost as calm as a duck-pond. What wind there was now blew from the west, and was much warmer than it had been. Within a mile there were two or three other small bergs, but when Spink grunted and yawned and crawled out of his blankets there was nothing else in sight.

"Humph," said Spink, "this is a rummy go, and if I didn't come from Glo'ster I should be in a blue funk. I must keep up my spirits, and show 'em what my luck's like. I've been in worse fixes than this many a time, and after all, with a good seaworthy berg underfoot, and lashings of grub, I don't see why anyone should growl. If anyone does I'll knock his head off. Now, which of these jokers is the cook?"

He found the steward, and booted him gently in the ribs. At least he said it was gently, whatever the aggrieved steward thought of it.

"Now then, Cox," said the skipper, "turn out and find me the cook,—he's one of this pile of snorin' hogs,—and let's have some breakfast."

By the time the grub was ready, Ward and Day were 'on deck,' and the sun was beginning to think of doing the same. The two mates looked round the horizon and saw nothing to comfort them. The only cheerful thing in sight was the skipper, and for very shame the more pessimistic Ward screwed up a smile.

"Not so bad, is it?" asked Spink.

"It might be worse, I own," replied the mate. "What course are you steerin', Spink?"

"Straight for Glo'ster," replied Spink cheerfully. "How did you chaps sleep?"

Ward said he hadn't slept at all, but Day averred that he had dreamt he had been locked in a refrigerator belonging to some cold-meat steamer from Australia. And just then the steward said that breakfast was ready. It consisted of cold tinned beef, iced biscuit, and melted berg. There were signs of a mutiny among the crew at once.

"Say, cook, where's the cawfy?" they asked, and they were only reduced to a proper sense of the situation by a few strong remarks from Captain Spink. The riot subsided before it really began, and all the 'slop-built, greedy sons of corby crows,' as Spink called them, sat down meekly and ate what they were given. And then the sun came up and warmed them, and they soon began to feel well and happy. But now the real trouble of the situation began to develop. The heat of the summer sun when it once got high enough to do some work began to melt the berg. It was rather higher in the middle than it was on the edges, and it was most amazingly slippery. The water ran off it in streams, and as it was barely big enough to start with, it looked as if they would shortly be crowded.

"I never thought of this," said Spink. "I tell you, Ward, she'll turn turtle before we know where we are. We must put all the stores in the boat, and have a man in her to keep her clear if the berg capsizes."

"Your luck ain't what you let on," said Ward gloomily; "the thing fair melts under us, and we'll have to swim."

"To thunder with your croaking," said Spink. "Oh, do dry up."

"I wish the berg would," said Ward, as he superintended the shipment of the stores. When it was done he put a cockney deck-hand into her and made him shove off.

"Blimy," said Lim'us, "I'm likely to be the on'y dry of the 'ole shoot."

The word 'shoot' soon threatened to become highly appropriate, for about noon the berg was distinctly cranky. However fast it melted above, it was obviously melting much faster down below, for they had apparently struck a streak of comparatively warm water, and when ice does go it goes fast. The 'crowd' got very uneasy, and Spink got very cross as he arranged them so as to trim his craft.

"Sit still, you swine," said Spink. "Do you want to capsize us?"

"But we're so cold be'ind, sittin' still, sir," said one bolder than the rest.

"I'll warm you if I have to come over and speak to you," said Spink, and he presently undertook to do it. The moment he rose to carry out his threat the iceberg wobbled in the most dreadful manner, and so encouraged the offender that he laughed.

"If you come to 'it me, captain, she'll go over," he said with a malicious grin.

"So she will," said Ward, laying hold of the skipper to prevent his moving. But Spink was not to be baulked. He spoke to another of the men sitting near the mutineer.

"Jackson, you come here while I go over there and dress Billings down."

"Don't you go, Jackson, for if you do I'll dress you down to a proper tune arterwards," said the insubordinate Billings, as he grabbed hold of Jackson, who looked at the skipper appealingly.

"What am I to do, sir?" he asked.

"You're to obey orders," said Spink.

"Don't you forgit I'll plug you if you do," said Billings.

Poor Jackson was obviously in serious difficulties, for Billings was the boss and bully of the fo'c'sle. He could even lick any of the firemen, and there were some very tough gentry among that gang.

"If I don't come over to you, sir, what will you do?" Jackson asked the skipper nervously.

"I'll come over to you, if we're in the drink the next moment," replied Spink firmly. "Don't any of you Johnnies think you can best me. Are you coming or are you not?"

Jackson shook his shock head.

"This is very hard lines on a peaceable cove like me," said Jackson; "but if I am to catch toko, I'd much rather take it from Billings than from you, sir."

And as he spoke, he smote Billings very violently on the nose. Billings, who expected nothing less, let a horrid bellow out of him and promptly slipped on the ice. He fell, and slid overboard with a howl, and the berg came near to capsizing then and there.

"Well done, Jackson," said Spink approvingly, as Billings disappeared in the sea, "very well done indeed." And then Billings rose to the surface.

"Can you swim, Billings?" asked Spink with an air of kindly curiosity. "Oh, yes, I see you can, so keep on doing it till you feel a little less mutinous."

It took Billings rather less than a minute to become obedient, for though the sea was warm enough to melt the berg it was by no means so warm as a swimming bath, and he presently howled for mercy and was dragged upon the ice once more.

It was lucky for Billings that the sun by now was really hot. He stripped off his clothes and squeezed them as dry as he could, while he threatened to kill Jackson as soon as he could. His threats were interrupted by the sound of a large crack, and presently there were obvious signs that the berg was about to capsize. Lim'us got quite excited as they discussed the situation, and came in close, till Ward ordered him to get farther away. As he rowed off reluctantly he encouraged them by yelling, "She's goin' over! May the Lord look sideways at me if she ain't."

"Oh, oh!" said poor old Mac, "I'm a puir meeserable sinner wi' a sore head and no medicine, and I'll be wet in a crack, and I'll die wi'out a wee drappie. Oh, oh, oh!"

And the berg stopped cracking but took on an ugly cant. A big lump of ice broke off it down below and came up to the surface with a leap.

"Steady, you swine," said Spink politely to his unhappy crew; and Ward asked him where his luck was. Whatever answer he was to get he never knew, for with a curious heave the berg started on a roll, and with a suddenness which took them all with surprise she bucked them into the Atlantic, together with what materials they had for a raft. It was a lucky thing for at least half of them that there had been time to save such dunnage from the Swan, for half the crowd, including M'Pherson and Day, could not swim a stroke. Ward grabbed Day and helped him to a spar, and Spink did the same for old Mac. And in the meantime Lim'us made everyone furious by squealing with laughter in the boat. Billings threatened him with death when he got hold of him, and Spink had no mind or breath to rebuke the horrid and bloodthirsty language with which the late mutineer reinforced his threats.

"Oh, oh!" squealed old Mac when the skipper laid hold of him; "oh, oh, I'm drooned, I'm drooned! and I've the rheumatism bad in a' my joints."

And Spink said he was the howling and illegitimate descendant of three generations without any character whatever, as he dragged him to a floating oar alongside the capsized berg. Now it was not so high out of water, and there was far more space on it. For some time it would be comparatively stable, and when Spink scrambled on it the first of anyone he congratulated himself on his never failing luck. He helped the rest on board, and the whole space was soon occupied by an unclad crowd wringing the Atlantic out of their clothes, and trying to get warm in the sun. It was quite astonishing how cheerful everyone was, with the single exception of that confirmed pessimist the chief engineer. At their end of the berg the men took to skylarking, and Billings actually forgave Jackson.

"You done what I'd ha' done myself," said Billings, "for I owns now I'd a'most as soon take on that big brute Ward as 'ave the skipper get about me. But when I give 'im that back-talk I was that icy be'ind that I was like froze Haustralian mutting, and as cross as if my old woman 'ad been relatin' what 'er mother thought of me. I furgives you, Jackson, I furgives you this once. But don't you hever 'it me on the smeller agin, or a penny peep-show won't be in it for the sight you'll be."

It was considered by the crowd that Billings by this act of nobility had shown himself a 'gent,' and Billings swaggered greatly on the strength of it.

The crew, of course, did not think. They were not paid to do so. All that was the officers' business. It hardly occurred to them that the ice on which they stood wasn't likely to last for ever. In the warmth of the sun they forgot the discomforts of the past night, and did not think of the night to come. But Ward did, and he was still very gloomy on the situation.

"Just as she spilt us," said Ward, "I was askin' you your opinion of your luck. What do you think of it now? Perhaps you'll use that regal authority of a skipper to get us out of the hole you've got us in."

If ever any skipper had the right to be justly indignant, Spink thought he was that man.

"The hole I got you in! I like that, oh, I do like that. Who was it, I ask, that pestered me to go half speed, and almost wept till I said 'Have your own way, you cross-eyed swine'?"

"You never addressed them words to me," said Ward truculently, "or I'd have given you what for, and well you know it."

Spink shook his head.

"I ain't sayin' that I used them very words," he urged, "all I mean is that that was what I meant when I let you have your own silly way, which has landed me and Day, to say nothin' of the rest, on a penn'orth of ice in mid-Atlantic, more or less."

"Don't bring me into the argument," said Day. "You're a cunning sort of a chap, Spink, but you needn't try to raise ructions between me and Ward, for I won't have it. I know you, Spink."

"I'm a very unfortunate man," said poor Spink, "for at this very moment I'd give three months' pay to be able to lick the pair of you. I did think after what the Chief Foreign Officer said of my authority that I should be more civilly treated by my officers, even if I have an unfortunate disposition which compels me to lick them if I can. I shipped you two because I can't, but that ain't any reason for makin' me miserable, or at anyrate more miserable than bein' in the position of not bein' able to."

"Oh, all right," said Day, "go ahead and moan. Nobody's stoppin' you, is he? Let him alone, Ward. He's all right; and as for fightin', I believe I could teach him to be too much for myself in a month with the boxin' gloves."

"I wish you would," said Spink. "Oh, Day, you've no notion how I should enjoy pastin' you."

He fell into contemplation of such a joy, and did not speak till Ward clapped him on the back and said he was a very good sort after all.

"And if it's any use to you, I own that my havin' gone half speed that time may have put us here. But sayin' so much don't mean that I now approve of buttin' headlong into an ice-pack at twenty knots an hour. But to go back to what I was sayin' before you started this row, where's your luck, Spink? To my mind it don't look so healthy a breed of luck as you let on, and it's my notion that old Mac is of my opinion, to judge by the sad expression of his countenance."

"To blazes with the old fool!" said Spink. "Who cares what he thinks? My luck is where it was, and I reckon to get out of this with flyin' colours, and never a man short, and nothin' against the certificates of any of us. I've noticed all my life that I seem to be under the especial care of Providence, and I don't believe Providence will go back on me after plantin' me here all safe and sound on an iceberg. Day, rake up that cook, and give the cockney in the boat a hail. We'll have some grub. I've a twist on me like a machine-made hawser."

They went to dinner, and the sun did something of the same sort. At anyrate it went out of sight, and a thick fog came down on the castaways.

"We 'opes no bloomin' packet 'll come and run us pore blighters down," said the men as they fell to work on the grub, "for accordin' to the 'old man,' who is the cheerfulest bloke in difficulties we ever struck, we're right in the track of the ole shoot of 'em, and may be picked up or scooted into the sea again any minute."

As a matter of fact, they were then on the southern tail of the Bank, for when the Swan bunted her nose into the berg, she was pretty well at the locality on the Grand Bank where the usual 'lane' to New York is left for the lane to Halifax. The very watch before the collision they had verified their position by flying the 'blue pigeon,' as seamen call the deep-sea lead, and ever since then they had been floating in the Labrador current to the south and east. To locate them exactly, they were just about where the Great Circle Track of steamers from the English Channel to the Gulf of Mexico crosses the tail of the Bank. There was every chance of something coming along there, even if it was getting late enough in the season for the big liners to take the route to the south'ard for fear of the very ice which had brought them to grief.

"Oh, yes," said the crowd, when they were full up with food, "we're all right."

Nevertheless the fog did not cheer them up to any great extent, and when it showed signs of lasting all day they grew less happy.

"A hundred vessels might pass us in this," said Ward, who for all his bigness had much less endurance than the skipper, and was now hardly more cheerful than old Mac. "I wish I was out of it."

"Oh, wish again," retorted Spink contemptuously. "Do you know, Ward, that you make me tired? What do you get by howlin' and growlin'? I know this is goin' to come out all right, and I won't be discouraged by any silly jaw of a man that ought to know better. Shut up."

And to Day's surprise Ward shut up. At that very moment there came a bellow from Billings, who had relieved Lim'us in the boat.

"Berg, ahoy!" roared Billings.

"Hallo!" replied the skipper. "What's the matter now?"

"I 'ears a steamer, so help me Dick!" bellowed Billings joyfully. "I 'ears 'er plain. Don't none of you blokes 'ear 'er too?"

There was such a buzz among the crowd that it would have been hard to hear a fog-horn, and it was not until Spink had hit three, kicked half a dozen, and used at least ten pounds worth of bad language, according to 19 Geo. II. cap. 21, that anything like silence was restored. Then it was obvious that Billings had made no mistake. The sea was fairly calm, the breeze from the west was light, and any sound carried long and far.

"She's coming from the westward," said Spink, as he consulted a toy compass on his watch-chain.

"No," said Day, "she's bound west, or I'm a Dutchman."

"Then you come from Amsterdam for a certainty," said the 'old man' crossly. "Now, men, shout all together when I say three. One, two, three."

And just as the men yelled there was a hoot-too-oot from the steamship, which for a moment made them believe she had heard them. But Spink knew better, and when there was another hoot he grabbed Day by the arm.

"By Jemima," said Spink, "we're both right, Day. There are two of 'em; that second squeal never came out of the same whistle that the first one did!"

Now the nature of fog is something that no fellow can understand. Seamen must not think they are a long way off if they hear a sound faintly, or even if they do not hear it at all. That's bad enough, but there is worse behind. They are not to reckon they are near because they hear it plainly, or that it isn't to be heard farther away at some other spot if they cease to hear it at all. And, furthermore, any notion that a sound comes from any particular direction is the biggest trap of the lot. Now the uninitiated can understand that they do not understand, and that seamen are in the same awkward fix whenever a fog comes down to cheer them on their weary way. The two steamers coming out of nothingness and butting into it were commanded by men who trusted to the evidence of their senses, as if they were police magistrates trusting to policemen. They hooted and bellowed in the most wonderful manner, and said with one short blast that they were directing their course to starboard. And as neither knew where the other was, or where he was himself, they directed their courses with the most marvellous precision to the exact spot on the tail of the Grand Bank in the Western Ocean where they could collide. And they did so with a most horrid grinding crash, and with one long, last, fearful and hopeless wail on their steam-whistles.

"Holy sailor," said the iceberg's crew, "this time they've been and gone and done it!"

Ward asked Spink sickly if he had any remarks to make about his luck. Spink hadn't, but he had some remarks to make about Ward, which in other circumstances would have led to war. While he was relieving his overcharged mind there was a horrid uproar coming out of the fog, for both the steamships were blowing off steam, and everyone on board of them appeared to be running the entire show at the top of his voice. And just as it was all at its extreme point of interest the fog played one of its commonest tricks, and with an anacoustic wall shut off the whole dreadful play in one single moment.

The castaways turned to each other in alarm, and Billings, who had nearly lost himself in the fog, rowed in close.

"I think they've both foundered," said Billings, and it certainly looked as if he were right, in spite of what Spink said to him.

"I believe the josser is right," said Day; and old Mac wept and said he was sure of it, and that he had the rheumatics badly, and that he was very cold. And to add to Spink's joy, once more Ward asked if he still thought he was under the especial protection of Providence. Then for the first time Spink lost his temper and went for Ward, and by dint of taking him by surprise served him as Jackson had served Billings.

"Take that, you swab," said the enraged skipper. "I'll teach you to be so discouraging and so blasphemous as to cast a slur on Providence."

And when Ward climbed upon the ice again all he said was—

"All right, Spink, you wait till we're on board that beastly packet you and Providence have up your sleeves."

And everyone sat down and smoked, and said how grieved they were for the poor unfortunate beggars who had been drowned through having no nice comfortable iceberg to take refuge on. Then they had their supper and went to sleep, leaving all their cares in the faithful hands of poor Spink.

"Ah," he sighed, "my unfortunate disposition cuts me off from all real sympathy. I've no one to confide in at sea or ashore, and as if bein' a ship-master wasn't solitary enough I must plug Ward and make him hostile. I wish I'd been brought up better and licked more before I got into this fatal habit of fighting."

He couldn't go to sleep, and took to walking as far as the narrow limits at his disposal would allow him. When he found that he was in for a restless night he told the man on the lookout that he could turn in. Jackson, who happened to be the look-out, lingered a little before he did as he was told.

"Do you think, sir," he asked with some trepidation at his daring to speak to the skipper, "do you think, sir, that we shall ever get out o' this?"

"Of course we shall," said Spink. "What do you suppose I'm here for? Go to sleep, Jackson, and mind your own business. You'll be all right."

And Jackson, who was a simple-minded seaman of the real old sort, fell asleep feeling that the 'old man' was to be relied on even on an iceberg in the Western Ocean and in a fog as thick as number one canvas.

For by now the fog was thick and no mistake. As Spink walked the ice, and squelched with his sea-boots in the melted puddles, he could hardly see his hand before his face, and more than once he nearly walked overboard. At midnight it was even thicker, and he was obliged to give up walking and come to an anchor on a tin of corned beef, and though he was on watch it has to be owned that he dozed for a few minutes, just as Lim'us did in the boat which lay a little way off the berg. When Spink woke he found it just about as dark as their prospects. When his eyes cleared, he sighed and looked about him, with a mind which took some of its tone from the fog and from the dull dead hour of two o'clock in the morning.

"I wonder if my luck is out," he sighed, and he stared solidly into the solidest darkness. It was certainly monstrously dark in one direction. He rubbed his eyes and grunted. Then he lighted a match and looked at his little compass. His mind went back to the lady in Bristol who had given it to him.

"She was a very pretty piece," said Spink thoughtfully. "But I'm damned if I can see why it should be darkest towards the east."

He rose up and peered into the fog. Again he rubbed his eyes, and then stood staring.

"Perhaps another berg," he said, "but——"

He stood as still as if his figure had been turned into stone, and presently he looked to the sleeping crowd, who were all as solid with sleep as if they were dead, and nodded in the strangest way.

"Oh, oh, if it is; if it only isn't a horrid delusion," he murmured. He turned to the darkness again and shook his fist at it and the fog. At that very moment the fog rolled up like a curtain. Right in front of Spink, and not farther than a man could chuck a biscuit, there lay the strange and almost monstrous apparition of a silent, lightless, and derelict steamer!

"What did I say to Ward about Providence?" asked Spink of the whole Atlantic Ocean. "Ward cast a nasty and uncalled-for slur on its ways when he said what he did. But now I've got the bulge on him, and no fatal error about it."

He rubbed his hands together and smiled very happily.

"There'll be fine pickings in this and no mistake," he murmured. "Oh, this'll be something like salvage. And I'll lay dollars to cents that I can tell how it ever happened. Ah, here comes the fog again!"

The fog dropped down in a thin veil, till the dim and ghostly derelict looked still less substantial than it had done. Then it heaved and rolled in, and the deserted packet could be seen no more. Spink sighed but was happy.

"I'll give Ward the biggest surprise he ever had in his life," he said, as he turned to the boat in which young Lim'us was doing a very solid caulk. Spink kicked some ice into small lumps, and at the third attempt he hit the sleeper on the side of his head. Lim'us woke with a start, and heard the captain's voice just in time to prevent him threatening to eviscerate the swab who was slinging things at him.

"Hold your infernal jaw," said Spink in a savage whisper, "and pull in here quiet, or I'll murder you."

Lim'us obeyed instantly, though he had doubts as to whether it was wise to come within arm's length of the skipper after having been caught asleep.

"I warn't asleep, sir; stri'my blind if I was," he began as he came up to the berg.

"Dry up and say nothin'," said Spink. "If you wake anyone I'll see you don't sleep again for a week. Hand up some of that truck and get the stern sheets clear, I want to get in myself."

There was more than a chance of not finding the derelict and of losing the iceberg, and Spink knew it. Just as he was about to chance it he remembered that he had a couple of balls of strong twine in the bag into which he had dumped all his belongings, including the precious ship's papers, when he left the Swan. As he recalled this lucky fact a heavenly smile overspread his handsome features.

"It's a splendid notion," said Spink. "I feel as proud of it as a dog with two tails! I wish those chaps at the Foreign Office were here now; they would enjoy it better than a play."

He stepped to his bag as lightly as a Polar bear after a sleeping seal, and when he found the twine he tied the end of it to Ward's leg.

"Ward at one end and Providence at the other," said Spink with a grin. "Oh, won't he be surprised!"

And the skipper went back to the boat, paying out the twine as he went. He was chuckling in the merriest way, and poor Lim'us, who was cold, and very sick of the whole affair, thought that the strain had been too much for him.

"'E's balmy on the crumpet, that's what's the matter wiv 'im," said Lim'us as he obeyed orders reluctantly, and pulled into the solid fog with a mad and grinning skipper, who would probably scupper him as soon as they were out of earshot of the crew.

"I wish I was in Lim'us," said he. "I'd give all my wyges to see Commercial Rowd agin."

And still Spink chuckled and paid out the twine, until suddenly the boat ran into a still deeper darkness.

"Easy, boy," said the skipper, with a strange note of exultation in his voice. "Easy, we're there now."

As he spoke the boat ground up against the side of the derelict, and Lim'us turned about on the thwart and touched the iron plates with his hand.

"If you let a yell out of you," said the captain, "I'll cut your throat from ear to ear."

But indeed Lim'us was incapable of yelling. All he could do was to gasp, and he did that as effectively as if he was a bonito with the grains in him. And the boat drifted towards the vessel's bows, while Spink looked for the easiest way on board.

"They ran like rats," said Spink. "Oh, I know the way they ran. They got on board the other boat, and think this one is now surprisin' the codfish."

They reached the bows at last, and came round on the port side, and there Spink found what he looked for. The vessel had been cut down to within six inches of the water's edge about forty feet aft from the bow.

"Just as I laid it out in my mind," said Spink. "Catch hold you, while I get on board."

He dropped about ten fathoms of the twine into the water, and with the rest of the ball in his pocket he scrambled up the horrid gash in the derelict's side and got on deck. He walked for'ard and got the twine clear out on the starboard side, pointing for the unconscious mate. Then he made it fast and took a look at his new command. In spite of the fog it was not difficult to see that she was a fine new boat of about two thousand tons, built and fitted, as was pretty obvious from her derricks, for a fast freight boat. It was equally obvious that the whole crew had evacuated her in a panic, for Spink found the skipper's berth with the bed-clothes on the floor, along with a sad and derelict pair of trousers. The 'old man' had evidently been in his bunk instead of being on the bridge, and, so far as Spink could see, he had stayed to grab nothing but the ship's papers, without which there can be no maritime salvation.

"This will be a very valuable salvage job," said Spink, as he licked his lips after taking a pull at a bottle of whisky which he found only too handy to the lips of the former skipper. "There's money in this, oh, lots of it. And now I'll show Ward where my luck comes in. And I'll have old Mac and Calder patch up that rent in her before it comes on to blow again."

He put the bottle in his pocket and went for'ard, feeling a deal more proud than if he owned a fleet. For the deserted steamer, the name of which was the Winchelsea of Liverpool, was a direct proof that his luck was still what it had been. He found the end of the twine, and hauled in the slack very cautiously.

"I wish I could see his face," said Spink, as he gave the twine a yank which made Ward sit up suddenly and wonder what had happened to him.

"Oh, oh, oh!" said Ward. The ice was nearer than it had been, and what he said was quite audible on board the Winchelsea.

"Eh, what?" said Ward. And then Spink gave the line another yank which almost started Ward on an ice run for the water. But this time he found out what was the matter, and laid hold of the twine.

"Who the devil's pulling my leg?" he roared in such stentorian tones that the whole crowd woke up instantly.

"I am," said Spink. "And I'll thank you to pay attention, and not lie there snoring while I do all the work."

"Where are you?" asked Ward. "I can't see you."

"Where d'ye think I am?" asked Spink. "While you were asleep I went out and looked for a new job and found it."

As he spoke there were sudden signs of dawn, and once more the curtain of the mist rolled away, and the late crew of the Swan saw a big steamer within fifty feet of them, with the late skipper of the Swan leaning over her side smoking his morning pipe.

"Jerusalem!" said the crew, and they shook their heads with amazement, while Ward scratched his. Day whistled, old Mac burst into joyful tears, and Billings used some awful language to show his gratitude. And Spink said—

"When you have washed and shaved and put on clean collars, I should be much obliged by your coming on board and doing enough work to melt the hoar-frost that's on you. Limehouse, scull over to the berg, and look slippy about it."

In ten minutes they all found themselves on board, and Mac and Calder set to work before breakfast to patch her up. The engines and furnaces were still warm, and it took little time to get up steam. But Ward took some to get up his. As he said, it was a fair knock-out, and it seemed like some black magic on the part of the skipper, who walked the bridge after breakfast as if he owned the whole North Atlantic.

"She was bound for England, and we'll go home," said Spink. "And as soon as may be we'll find out what's in her. This is my first salvage, and it's goin' to be a good one."

"You're a wonder," said Ward.

"Didn't I always say so?" replied Spink modestly. "And now I hope that you and Day will behave yourselves, and not trade on any weaknesses that I may have, for I won't put up with it if you do."

"How do you propose to stop it?" asked Day. "You can't plug me or Ward any better now than you could before. Why don't you behave? Then there would be no trouble. I'm fair sick of hearin' about your unfortunate disposition."

"So am I," said Ward.

Spink shook his head with disgust.

"And this kind of talk after what I've done," he said. "I wish you would read old Kelly's little book on the Mate and His Duties, Ward. It would teach you how to behave."

"I had it in the Swan," said Ward, "but though it had a lot in it about land-saints and sea-devils, there was nothin' in it that fitted a man like you."

"Perhaps not," said Spink thoughtfully. "I own I'm rare, I'm very rare."

The fog cleared right off, and the sun shone and the calm sea sparkled. In such circumstances everyone ought to have been happy, but Spink said he wasn't.

"I wish I wasn't so rare," said Spink.

THE REMARKABLE CONVERSION OF
THE REV. THOMAS RUDDLE

The passengers on board the s.s. Nantucket, bound from New York to Table Bay, were of a kind to make any old-fashioned seaman shake his head and talk dismally of Davy Jones. They were nearly all ministers and missionaries, and it is well known to all who follow the sea that gentlemen of that kind are unlucky to have on board. For Davy Jones is the very devil, and if he gets a chance to drown a minister he does it at once, so that he may do no more good. There can be no mistake about this, for every sailorman of great experience will endorse the theory with strange oaths. What all sailors say must be true, for they know their business.

One of these missionaries was the Reverend Mr. Ruddle, and he was the chief of all the others, who were going to South Africa to do it good. There were six of them all told. Thomas Ruddle had his wife with him, for he could not exist without her; and she, for her part, thought him a marvellous man and a darling. He had a beautiful smile, and a big black beard, and a voice like the bellow of an amiable bull. But Mrs. Ruddle was blue-eyed, with the complexion of a Californian peach and a voice like a flute. She would have followed him to Davy Jones' locker itself if he had asked her, and though he did not think of doing anything so unorthodox, they were not far from having to go there without the consent of anyone. For when the Nantucket was within two hundred miles of Capetown it came on to blow from the south-east as if the very devil was at the bellows, and after the old packet had proved that she hadn't sufficient power to make headway against the gale, she promptly cracked her shaft, and went drifting away to loo'ard like a Dutch schuyt on a lee tide.

"It is a very sad misfortune, and I do not know now when we shall be in Africa," said Tom Ruddle. "I regret to say, my dear, that the captain is on the main-deck using very bad language to the chief engineer, who is replying to him in a way that I cannot approve. Indeed, I think he swears worse than Captain Stokes, if it is possible, which I doubt."

The other gentlemen in black mostly kept to their cabins, but Ruddle went about in the most astonishing way. If the Nantucket stood on her head Ruddle never lost his feet, and when she stood on her tail he was quite at his ease. When she indulged in a wild compound wallow in those delightful cross pyramidal seas which are the peculiar attribute of the South Atlantic in the neighbourhood of the Cape, all that Tom Ruddle said was 'Dear me.' He even said it when Captain Stokes did a flying scoot on the main-deck, and brought up against the rail with a crash that almost unshipped his teeth. What Stokes said was not 'Dear me.' And the old Nantucket went drifting west-nor'-west on the branch of the current, coming round the Cape, which runs far to the north of Tristan d'Acunha, as if she had put Africa out of her mind. Down below the engineers were trying very hard to fake up something to brace round the shaft, so that they could at least turn the engines ahead when the weather let up a little. It seemed a hopeless job, and to none so hopeless as to the engine-room crowd. And just as perseverance with the impossible seemed about to be rewarded, the Nantucket gave a wallow in an awful sea, and quietly dropped her propeller as a scared lizard drops its tail. Then very naturally the wind took off, and the sea went down and smoothed itself out, and looked quite pretty to those who had been watching the grey waste in despair.

"We're done," said the skipper. For the idea of sailing her into Table Bay was as feasible as sailing her to the moon. The wind, although it had fallen light, was still in the east, and it threatened to stay so till it blew another gale, after the fashion of Cape weather, where fifty per cent. of all winds that blow are gales.

"It is exceedingly unfortunate," said Ruddle.

"What will happen to us?" asked his fellows in deep melancholy.

"Something must," said their brave leader, and sure enough it did. A sailing ship hove in sight to loo'ard. The skipper, as soon as he heard of the stranger, made up his mind what to do. He hoisted the signal 'In distress—want assistance,' and presently the sailing ship came up under her lee within hailing distance, and backed her main-topsail.

"Are you bound for Table Bay?" asked Captain Stokes, and the obliging stranger said he was. In ten minutes it was all arranged, and the Nantucket's passengers were being transhipped to the Ocean Wave of a thousand tons register, belonging to London. Stokes went on board with the last boat, and shook hands with the master of the Ocean Wave.

"When you get in send a tug out to find us," said Stokes; "it's goin' to blow heavy in a while."

"I'll do it," said Captain Gray; "but are you sure that you won't come along?"

"I'd go under first," said Stokes; "I'll stick by her till I'm as old as the Flying Dutchman, and my beard is down to my knees."

It was very rash to say such things in the very cruising ground of Vanderdecken, and some of the crew of the Wave that heard it shivered. But Stokes was a hard case, and believed in nothing. He said good-bye to his passengers and went on board the Nantucket. The Ocean Wave boarded her maintack and stood on her course with her new crowd of passengers, who were very much delighted to be on board something that did not go to leeward like a butter-cask.

"How strange to be on board a sailing ship," said Ruddle, as he stood on the poop with the skipper, who was a genial old chap with a white beard, and a figure as square as a four-hundred gallon tank.

"Why strange, Mr. Ruddle?" asked Captain Gray. "Barring your rig-out you look a deal more like a seaman than a parson, at least you do to my eye."

"Your eye is right, captain," said Ruddle with a sigh. "But it is a very remarkable thing that though I have been a sailor I know nothing about the sea that I have not picked up on board the unlucky steamer we have just left."

"That's a very strange thing to say, sir," said the skipper, as he eyed Ruddle from head to foot. "May I ask how you make that out? Once a seaman always a seaman, I should say. I can't imagine my forgetting anything. I never could."

"It's a very strange story," said Ruddle; "and if there wasn't evidence for it I shouldn't believe it myself. But in my pocket-book below I have my old discharges as mate, and yet at the present moment there is no one on board who knows less about the sea than I do, though I hold a master's certificate."

"Spin us the yarn," said the skipper, and Ruddle told him the strange tale.

"I am informed," said the minister, "that I was, at the time I am about to mention, mate in a ship belonging to Dundee. I say I am told, because I have not the least recollection of it. To put it shortly, I may tell you that I had an accident, and when I became sensible again I was in hospital in Liverpool."

"But what was your accident?" asked Captain Gray.

"Something that I am told you call a shearpole came down from aloft and struck me on the head, and I knew no more," said Ruddle, who was evidently a very poor hand at a yarn.

"Well, well, go on," said the skipper. "What happened then?"

"How do I know?" asked Ruddle in his turn. "I was knocked silly while the crew were taking in sail in a very great storm to the south of Ireland, and they say I was very angry with the poor fellows up aloft and was using dreadful language to them. I was struck down, and when I came to myself I was not myself at all but another,—if I do not sadly confuse you by putting it that way,—and I had forgotten all that had happened since I went to sea, and I did not want to go again. I became a minister instead and a missionary."

"Well, I'm jiggered," said Gray, "but that's a corker of a yarn. Were you married when you were a seaman?"

"No," replied Ruddle; "I met my wife soon after I became my second and present self, and my remarkable story so interested her that we got married. It is interesting, isn't it?"

"And do you mean to say that you remember nothing whatever of the sea? Could you go aloft, for instance?"

Mr. Ruddle looked up aloft and shivered.

"Oh, I couldn't," he said. "The very look of the complicated apparatus with which I must have been once only too familiar fills me with peculiar horror."

"Well, I'm damned," said Gray. "What's the opposite point of the compass to sou'-east-by-sou'-half sou'-southerly?"

"I give it up. Tell me," said the minister simply.

Gray shook his head.

"You surprise me, sir. Can you tell when there is a mighty strong likelihoods of bad weather comin' along?"

"I'm not at all bad at guessing when it's likely to rain," said the former mate modestly. "I'm never caught in a shower without my umbrella."

And Gray shook his head again, and confided to the sea and air that Ruddle was a red wonder.

"If you don't know more about weather than that, you are going to have a fine chance to learn, Mr. Ruddle," said the skipper. "I smell a howling gale or I'm a double-distilled Dutchman. If it don't come out of nor'-east like a rampin', ragin', snortin' devil, call me no sailor, but the reddest kind of sojer."

There were many signs of it, and the fall of the glass was only one. The swell that had been coming in from the south-east now began to come more from the north, and the whole of the horizon was in a kind of smoke. The wind, which had fallen so light, now began to puff a little, and though it was no more than a breeze that any man's t'gallan's'ls could look at comfortably, there were odd sighs in the wind, sighs which had a rising tendency to become wails. Before long they would be wailings and no mistake, for these sounds are the real voice of a hurricane, and foretell it. The skipper looked up to windward and spoke to his mate.

"Mr. Dixon, I think we had better snug her down a bit before it gets dark, so clew up the t'gallan's'ls, and then we'll take the mainsail off her. And after that you can reef the foresail. While the breeze holds in the nor'-east we'll make all we can. But I reckon we'll be hove to by the morning."

There wasn't much doubt of that to those who knew something of Cape weather. The Cape pigeons as they wheeled and whistled about the Ocean Wave said 'clew up and clew down.' At anyrate, the crew for'ard said so as they turned out to shorten sail. Mr. Ruddle went below to encourage his companions and his wife. By the time it was as dark as the bottom of a tar-barrel they wanted encouragement, for the Wave began to pitch in a manner that the Nantucket had not accustomed them to, and as the wind increased the song of the gale in the rigging got on their nerves sadly.

"What do you think of it, Brother Ruddle?" asked his friend Chadwick, a little butter-tub of a man with the courage of a lion among the heathen or the denizens of a New York slum, but without as much spirit when the wind blew as would enable a school-girl to face a cow in a lane. "What does Brother Ruddle think of it?"

Ruddle said that he did not think much of it, for he thought the skipper was not frightened.

"Although the sea threatens to rage, my friends," said the chief, "he shows no signs of unseemly terror, but with calm confidence bids his brave crew haste up aloft and reduce the mighty spread of canvas. They are even now engaged in the task. Hear with what strange music, which somehow begins to have a familiar ring in my ears, they encourage each other in their arduous duties. Oh, my friends, we little think when we are safe in the heart of Africa, or in the back parts of the Bowery, how seamen encounter dangers on our behalf."

"Ah, and you were a sailor once, Tom," said his wife.

"I do not praise myself, dear, in praising them, for now I dare not face those dangers with which at one time I must have been familiar. It is wonderful, all life is wonderful. If I had not been smitten upon the head by a shearpole, whatever a shearpole may be, I might never have known any of you, my dear friends; and I might never have married you, my dear. Ah, it is a wonderful world, and they are making a very remarkable noise upstairs."

They certainly were making a noise, and so was the wind, and Mr. Dixon was saying very unorthodox things, and so was Smith the second mate. And every now and again the skipper could be heard in exhortation, so that Susan Ruddle snugged up alongside her husband, and said that she was glad he was not a seaman, though that she was sure that if he were one now he would never employ such language. Ruddle comforted her, and said it would fill him with horror to know that he had ever used any of that kind of talk. He felt sure in his mind that the report of his having ever done so must have been a malicious invention of some enemy. Since he had borne up for the Church he had been, as all men knew, of a scrupulousness which was extra Puritanical even for a minister. He never said 'damn' unless he had to in the course of his duty.

Presently the Ocean Wave began to behave herself a little better under shortened canvas, and the old skipper came into the cabin with his face shining with spray, and a good-natured grin on him which would have encouraged the biggest coward at sea in a cyclone. Little Mrs. Ruddle cheered up on sight of him, and so did all but the Reverend Mr. Blithers, who was in a state of terror that was sheer lunacy.

"Is it a great storm? Are we going down?" asked Blithers. He was so far encouraged that he could speak.

"Bless my heart," replied the skipper, "what are you thinking of, in a nice breeze like this, and in a sailin' ship too? If you was in an old smokestack like the one I took you gents out of you might howl, but here you are in a fine tight ship, the real genuine article, and are a deal safer than if you was ashore."

"Oh, do you say so?" asked Blithers. "Oh, is it possible that you can say so with the wind howling like this?"

And indeed the gale began to pipe as if it meant business.

"Hold your tongue, Blithers," said Ruddle; "be a man and a missionary, and do not howl."

Blithers said his brother was unkind, and ought to be more gentle with a weak vessel. And at that the skipper put in his oar, and suggested that so weak a vessel should not carry sail but retire to his cabin. At this Ruddle laughed jovially, and Blithers said he was hard and cruel, and devoid of all real religious feelings.

"Don't be a fool, my dear man," said Ruddle, "but go to bed. It is perhaps natural to be upset by the strange uproar, and the noise of the wind, and the trampling of the men on deck, but that is no reason why you should say I am not religious. If I were not I should be angry with you and say regrettable things, such as I am informed, on very good authority, that I said when I was a seaman."

"I don't believe you ever were one," said the sad and angry Blithers. "And if you were, it is a pity you did not stay one, for you are a very unkind man, and not good to me in my sad state of mind."

It took five missionaries to get Blithers into bed, but he went at last, and when he was gone Ruddle beamed on the rest, and said—

"Our poor brother is sadly upset by the weather. It is difficult to understand how he can be such a coward on the water when he is a real hero on the dry land, and has an especial gift of management with backsliding cannibals. But anything can be believed when you remember that I was once in the position of Mr. Dixon, whose voice I now hear saying something about the lee-braces, and knew all about everything on board a ship. And now, my friends, all things here are mystery to me, and I do not know what the lee-braces are, and cannot distinguish with accuracy between a binnacle and a bull-whanger, if indeed there is such a thing as I was told by one of the seamen on the Nantucket. Ah, hold tight, dear, she is rocking to and fro with ever increasing velocity. I fear that Blithers will never forget this night."

And they all had supper. The 'old man' sat it out with them, and put on his oilskins again and went on the poop. There was no mistake about it now. The Ocean Wave was in for a Cape stinger, and Gray, who was of the old-fashioned, bull-headed sort, rammed her along on the very path the cyclonic disturbance was taking. If he had been thoroughly acquainted with the nature of all cyclones wherever they are bred, he would have turned tail to the blast, and have run into fairer weather towards the south; or, as the Wave was in the southern semi-circle of the storm, he might have hove her to on the coming up or starboard tack. Instead of that he hung on all through the night. When the dawn came it was a fair howler and no mistake. Mr. Blithers and not a few of the others stayed in their bunks. It was blowing hard enough to make almost anyone ill, and the sea was very high. But Thomas Ruddle and his wife and Chadwick turned out to breakfast.

If Ruddle trusted to Providence, Susan Ruddle trusted to him, and hardly thought it possible that any disaster could happen to her while he was to the fore. Mr. Chadwick was brave enough to hide his terror, though he was in a horrid funk. They hung on to the tables and ate some breakfast as best they could, and after eating, Ruddle and Mrs. Ruddle and Chadwick ventured on deck, in time to see the reefed foresail taken off her. Just as they got the weather clew-garnet chock up, the gale came screaming across the waste of grey sea to such a tune that the skipper altered his mind there and then.

"Hold on with the lee gear of the foresail, Mr. Dixon," he bellowed, and then he signed to the mate to come aft.

"We'll wear her now and heave her to on the starboard tack," said the 'old man.' "This is going to be a fair perisher."

As Dixon had been throwing out hints all night that he ought to do that or run, he was glad to hear it. They waited for a smooth, and put the helm up.

"Square the after yards!" roared the skipper; and they squared away, keeping the sails lifting.

"Isn't it wonderful?" said Ruddle. "I do wish I understood it. I wonder what they are doing it for?"

"Square the foreyard!" yelled the captain; and they did so, and got the staysail sheet over, and by proper management she came up on the other tack with her nose pointing N.N.E. They hauled up what was now the weather clew of the foresail, and the second mate and the men jumped aloft and furled it.

"Oh, dear," said Mr. Ruddle, "how dreadful to see them up there! I can't believe that I ever did it, Chadwick."

But the Wave was carrying her topsails, and though they were reefed she was scooting with her lee-rail awash. As soon as the foresail was stowed, both topsail halliards were let go and the sails partly smothered by the spilling lines. When they were furled, the lower foretopsail was clewed up, and Ruddle, who got much excited, went down on the main-deck in spite of the seas which came over right for'ard by the galley. Mrs. Ruddle said, 'Oh, don't,' but Ruddle said, 'My dear, it is so interesting, and I must.' And there he was staring up at the crowd on the topsail-yard who were fighting the bellying canvas like heroes.

"Bless my soul, how very remarkable, and even terrible," said Ruddle. "How very extraordinary. I wonder if I ever did that, I'll ask Mr. Dixon if the manoeuvre is often performed."

He fell upon the busy and very cross mate with this inquiry, and though Dixon had heard the tale about him he did not credit it, and put it down to some hallucination.

"Do I do it often? Do what often?" asked Dixon scornfully.

"Why, tie those sails up like that when it blows so hard?" asked Ruddle innocently. "Why don't you tie them up when it is fine? It would be much easier I should think."

"Oh, go home and die," said the mate savagely.

"That's very rude," said Ruddle, "and I don't like it."

"If you don't like it you can lump it," said the mate. "Haven't you more sense than to come worrying here in a gale of wind?"

"Is it a real gale?" asked Ruddle. "A very hard one?"

It certainly looked like one, for every squall came harder and harder, so that the topsail when it was once smothered was blown out of the men's grip, and was all abroad and bellying once more.

"Damn your eyes, hold on to it or you'll lose the sail after all!" yelled Dixon. But no one heard him on the yard, they were at grips with the canvas again, and the second mate and the bo'son at the bunt were doing all the cursing that was necessary for a task like that.

"They seem to be working very courageously, and I think it wrong of you to swear at them," said Ruddle severely; and then Dixon turned on him as if he were going to hit him. At that moment a fresh squall struck the Wave and almost laid her on her beam ends, though she was practically hove to under the lower maintopsail.

"I never swear," said Ruddle, as the mate lifted his fist. Then the squall shrieked, and as the Wave laid over to it both Ruddle and the mate lost their footing, and slid between the fo'castle and the fore part of the deck-house as if they were on an ice toboggan run. The mate said some awful things, and Ruddle gasped, 'You shouldn't, oh, you really shouldn't.' And then they fetched up against the lee-rail with a thump that caused a common accident and wrought a very uncommon miracle. Mr. Dixon snapped his arm like a carrot, and let a yell out of him that reached the crowd on the yard.

"By crimes!" said the men up aloft, "when old Dickie squeals like that he means comin' aloft himself to talk to hus like a father. Now then, boys, grab again and 'old 'er!"

As they tackled the topsail for the third time the cook came out of the lee door of the galley and picked the mate out of the swamped scuppers.

"Easy, easy, you swab," said Dixon. "My arm's broke."

With the cook's help he got aft, and when he did he promptly sat down in the cabin and fainted right off with the pain. And Ruddle still wallowed in the scuppers, for he had hit the rail with his head and given it a most tremendous and effectual thump. After a minute or two he stirred and spat out a mouthful of salt water. He also shook his head and rubbed it. Then he sat up and said—

"Well, I'm damned! What has happened?"

He shook his head again, and suddenly jumped to his feet. The miracle happened, and they all heard it. Tom Ruddle in the old days had the very finest foretopsail-yard ahoy voice that ever rang across the wastes of ocean. It came back to him now.

"Ain't you dogs got that topsail stowed yet?" he roared in accents that made the second mate on the yard shake in his rubber boots. "Oh, you slabsided gang of loafers, oh, you sojers, dig in and do somethin', or before you know I'll be up there and boot you off the yard."

The entire crowd on the yard was so paralysed by what they heard that they turned and looked at him, and very promptly lost all that they had gained the last bout. To see a minister suddenly become a seaman and use such language was enough to scare them into loosing the jack-stay and tumbling overboard.

"Jehoshaphat!" said they, "what's gone wrong with him?"

And the second greaser was just as much surprised as any of them; so much so, indeed, that he could not swear. Ruddle did it for him, and his language was awful, full, abundant, brilliant and biting. He told the second mate what he thought of him, and what he thought of all his relations; and he confided to the storm what his opinion of the crew was and always had been; and of a sudden he made a bound, and jumping on the rail ran up the rigging like a monkey, and before they could gasp he was right in among them at the bunt, exhorting them as if they were impenitent mules.

"Now, now, up with it, you no sailors, you!" he roared, as his long black coat flapped in the wind like Irish pennants. He dug into the bellying canvas with the clutch of a devil's claw, and the crew sighed and were subdued to the strange facts, and did as he told them like the best. There was now a sudden scream from aft. Mrs. Ruddle caught sight of him on the yard, and Chadwick cried out—

"Oh, it was your husband that was swearing so."

"Oh, Tom, Tom," screamed his wife, "come down, come down!"

And she screamed again, and Ruddle heard it and swore vigorously.

"What's a woman doin' on deck in such weather?" he cried, as he clawed at the sail and held it with his stomach, and yelled in unison with the second mate, who now began to see the joke of it.

"Where does he think he is?" he said; and at that moment the last great fold of the top-sail rose in the air like a breaking wave, and with one yell of triumph the whole of the crowd threw themselves on it and smothered its life out.

"Sock it to her!" roared Ruddle triumphantly, as he dropped the gathered bunt into the skin of the sail and reached for the bunt gasket.

"There you are," said Ruddle; and then for the first time he looked at the second mate, and an expression of the blankest amazement passed across his face.

"Who the devil are you?" he asked. "I never saw you before."

It was almost impossible to make one's self heard in the howl of the gale, but Ruddle did it, and the crowd, with a grin on all their weather-beaten and hairy countenances, waited to hear Mr. Smith's answering yell.

"Who the devil do you think you are?" he asked.

"I'm the mate of this ship," said Ruddle, "but, but I don't think I ever saw any of you before?"

"How do you come to be togged up like you are, if you are mate?" asked Smith, as he made the bunt gasket fast. "Don't you think you look a hell of a sailor in that rig?"

"I don't understand it," said Ruddle blankly. "Where did I get these clothes?"

"You'd better ask the 'old man,'" said the second mate. "You're a clergyman, and you ain't a sailor at all."

"You're a liar," said Ruddle. "But I don't understand it. I don't know any of you. Where are we?"

"Off the Cape, to be sure," said Smith.

Ruddle shook his head.

"There is something very horrid about this," he said, with an awe-stricken expression of countenance, "for when we clewed up this topsail we were off the Head of Kinsale."

"Holy Moses," said the crowd, "'ow she must have scooted in 'alf a watch!"

"Well, we're off the Cape now," said Smith impatiently; "and if you don't believe it, you can ask the captain."

And they all came down on deck. Ruddle walked like a man in a dream, and as he walked he rubbed the spot that had been bruised. When his wife saw him coming she screamed again, and called out to him—

"Oh, Tom, Tom! how could you do it?"

And Tom grasped the second mate by the arm.

"Who's that woman calling 'Tom'?"

The second mate stopped as if he had been shot, and whistled.

"D'ye mean to say you don't know?" he asked.

"Confound you, I wouldn't ask if I did," said Ruddle savagely. "It ain't me, surely?"

It was Smith's turn to grab hold of him.

"Don't you know her?" he asked in tones of positive alarm.

"No!" roared the unfortunate Ruddle. "No more than I know you or any of 'em."

Smith nearly fell down.

"Man, she's your wife," said Smith; and once more Susan Ruddle said—

"Oh, Tom, how could you do it and me here?"

Then Chadwick spoke and rebuked Ruddle very strongly for having done it, and Ruddle shook his head and scratched it and shook it again, and then burst out with dreadful language against Chadwick for interfering with a stranger.

"He don't know any of you," said Smith, as Chadwick fell into a cold perspiration to hear his chief use such awful language. "He don't know any of you. And he lets on that he is the mate of this ship, and that we are off the Old Head of Kinsale."

And Susan Ruddle fainted dead away.

"Take the poor silly woman down below," said Ruddle. "She must be mad. I don't know where I am, or how I got here, but I do know jolly well that I ain't married, and that a girl in London that I ain't by no means stuck on thinks I'm going to marry her this very year. But I ain't goin' to, by a dern sight. Not me."

They carried her down below just as the 'old man' came on deck after setting the mate's arm. Smith told him what had happened.

The skipper shook his head.

"This is very remarkable and tryin'," said the skipper. "For Mr. Dixon's arm is broken through this Ruddle barrackin' him and askin' him why he did not take in sail when it was calm, as it would be easier. Oh, this is very wonderful, and I makes very little of it. And now he says he ain't married. He brought her here as his wife, and you are all witnesses to that. Oh, it is very remarkable, and I make nothin' of it in spite of his havin' been a sailor before, as looks likely as he went aloft. Is it true he swore?"

"Most awful and hair-raisin' and blasphemous," replied the second mate, who was a very good judge of swearing.

"Did he now, and him a minister? It's very remarkable, and I makes nothin' of it," said the skipper, and he ran up the poop and right into the arms of Ruddle.

"Who are you? Are you the captain? I want to see the captain before I go ragin' luny," said Ruddle.

"Steady," said the old skipper, grasping him tightly by the arm, "steady, my son. Don't you know me?"

"Never saw you before that I know of," groaned Ruddle. "And there's no one here that I know; and I don't know where I am or what I am, or where I got these disgusting clothes from, or where we are, or anything about anythin' whatsoever."

The skipper gasped.

"You don't remember bein' a minister, and tellin' me that you had been a seaman and had had a bash on the crust with a shearpole from aloft that laid you out stiff, and when you come to you didn't rek'lect havin' bin a sailor at all, and that you then bore up for the Church and became a missionary? Oh, say you rek'lect, for if you don't I makes nothin' of it, and am most confused; and there is your wife in a dead faint down below."

But Ruddle shook his head.

"I don't believe I ever was a missionary, for I always allowed they were a scaly lot. And I ain't married, and the girl that thinks I'll marry her is away off her true course by points. But I say, how long do you reckon I was minister?"

He held on to the 'old man' as if he was holding on to sanity, and implored an answer.

"We'll ask your pal," said Gray, and he bellowed down the companion for Chadwick, who came on deck with his eyes bolting.

"Is that my pal?" asked Ruddle in great disappointment. "Why, I never saw him either."

Poor Chadwick burst into tears.

"Oh, this is dreadful, this is very dreadful," said poor Chadwick. "What shall we do? Our chief stay and strength is gone from us, and doesn't know even me that married him."

Ruddle stared, and then rushed at him and held him in the grip of a bear.

"Steady, mister, are you speakin' truth or are you gettin' at me?"

"It's the truth," said Chadwick.

"Then how long was I in your business? Tell me straight, or I'll sling you overboard right now."

"Eight years," squealed Chadwick; "and there's all of us downstairs can testify to the same."

Ruddle sighed, and looked at the raging sea and at the skipper and at Chadwick, and up aloft. After a long silence he spoke.

"If I'm right the year's eighteen-ninety, and if you are right it must be ninety-eight or more, accordin' to the time it took me to get my certificate as missionary. What year is it?"

"Nineteen hundred, so 'elp me," said the skipper; "and I'll have up the Nautical Almanac to show you."

But Ruddle took their word for it, and sniffed a little, and then remarked—

"I do think my beard wants trimmin'. And am I mad now?"

"No, no," said the faithful Chadwick, "you aren't mad, and in a little while it will all come back to you, and you will come back to us, and we'll all be happy, even Blithers."

"Who's Blithers?" asked Ruddle sadly. Yet he did not wait for an answer. Though the Wave was now hove to under her main-topsail, with the fore-yards checked in, and was fairly comfortable, the gale instead of moderating let another reef out, so to speak, and was a regular sizzler.

"I should like to see that main-topsail goose-winged, sir," said Ruddle suddenly, "for if we are off the Cape, as you all seem to think, this is by no means the worst of it, and it will be a real old-fashioned scorcher."

The 'old man' looked at him.

"Do you know the mate's arm is broke?"

"No," said Ruddle.

"Well, it is, and he ain't fit to do a thing, naturally, and that means I haven't a mate."

Ruddle looked pleased for the first time since he came back to his old sea-self.

"You don't say so. Well, that is fortunate," he said with a happy smile. "This is what I call real luck. I'll be the mate, sir, till you can get another."

"Right," said the skipper. "And if you like you can goose-wing the topsail, Mr. Ruddle. I reckon you're right about the weather. We have enough parsons aboard to make old Davy Jones do his best."

And Ruddle, with a happy flush on his face, bellowed from the break of the poop for the watch to lay aft. They heard his voice with amazement and came very lively.

"Haul up the lee clew of the lower main-topsail," said the new mate, and going down on the main-deck he saw the gear manned, and started the sheet, and then lent his gigantic strength to get the clew chock up.

"Jump aloft and goose-wing it," said Ruddle to the bo'son, and the men jumped and did as they were told with extraordinary agility. They said it was a miracle, and so it was. But Ruddle was quite happy for a moment, and when they were down on deck again he turned to the skipper and laughed, positively laughed.

But the 'old man' did not even smile.

"I'm thinking of the poor little lady down below, Mr. Ruddle," he said with a sigh. "What are you goin' to do about her?"

A look of great determination came over Ruddle's face, and the smile died out of it.

"If I married, and I don't believe I did, when I was dotty through bein' hit on the crust, I ain't goin' to acknowledge it," said he with firmness. "I ain't the same man, that's obvious. And as I don't know the lady, the situation would be uncommon awkward for her and for me, and I think the best thing is for nothin' further to be said."

The skipper was very doubtful as to whether this was the proper way to look at it, and he expressed a very decided opinion on what the lady would say.

"I'm a married man myself," said Gray, "and I own I have a wife that is a jewel, but what she would say if I said I didn't know her, owing to some accident at sea, fair inspires me with dread. I don't believe Mrs. Ruddle will put up with it, and you'll have a holy time in front of you if she as much as hears that you think of trying it on."

But Ruddle said he didn't care, and that he wasn't going to have a wife foisted on him, so there. And down below Chadwick was breaking the dreadful news to Susan Ruddle that her husband did not know her or anyone else, and that he had become a sailor with a remarkably unorthodox vocabulary, and when this was driven into the poor woman's mind she screamed, and almost fainted again.

"Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do!" she cried. And then Mr. Blithers, who had never liked Ruddle, said that he would put it right.

"I don't believe a word he says if he says he doesn't know us," said Blithers angrily. "I always thought he was not the man he wanted us to think. And as for that story of his, I never believed that either. I shall go on deck and tell him that he is a scoundrel."

He did so. He crawled to the poop and emerged into the gale in which Ruddle was fairly revelling.

"Ruddle, you are a scoundrel," said Blithers. "I always thought so, and now I know it."

Ruddle inspected him with great curiosity.

"I'm a scoundrel, am I?" asked the new mate. "And what may you be?"

"Don't you dare say you don't know me, Ruddle," said Blithers.

"I know you," said Ruddle. "I can tell by the cut of your jib that you are an infernal humbug of the first water. Get out of this before I hurt you!"

"I won't," said Blithers furiously. "I won't till you say what you are going to do about your wife, who is weeping about you now, and crying to you to come to her."

"If you don't stop tellin' lies about me and ladies I'll throw you down into the cabin," said Ruddle.

"Hypocrite, liar, and man of sin, I defy you!" said Blithers; and the next minute Ruddle had him by the neck and threw him into the cabin.

"Stand from under," said Ruddle, and Blithers howled and fell, and turned over and over as he went, and at last came to a stop at the feet of Chadwick and the disconsolate wife.

"He threw me down, and he knew me," screamed Blithers. "He said, 'I know you, and you are a humbug.' He's just pretending."

"I don't believe it, Mr. Blithers," wailed the unhappy woman. "He was always a good judge of character even when he was at sea before. But I want to see him myself. I must, and I will. He'll know me. Oh, he must know me or I shall die!"

The skipper came down below.

"Oh, captain," said Susan Ruddle, "I want to see him. If he is the mate now, as you say, you must order him to come to me at once."

"I will," said the skipper. "It's odd I never thought of that before, when he as good as said he declined to hear any more argument about wives and women, and let on that the girl that reckoned to marry him was likely to be disapp'inted. You cheer up, ma'am. I'll send him down sharp."

"Leave me here alone," said the discarded wife, who in spite of her grief looked as pretty as a picture. "Leave me alone, please."

Chadwick withdrew, and dragged the raging Blithers with him. As Chadwick said, if anyone could bring Ruddle back to a sense of the lost period of his youth, it was his wife, and if she failed it was likely to be a very remarkable business and no mistake about it. He told Blithers of other cases of the kind of which he had heard. On the whole, Chadwick was optimistic. But Blithers shook his head, and rather hoped that Ruddle would remain a sailor for the rest of his life.

"I never thought he was fit to be a missionary," said Blithers. "And instead of him, I ought to be looked on as the chief here."

There was a sharp argument going on on deck in the meantime.

"I'll take charge of her, Mr. Ruddle," said the skipper, "and you can go below and see your wife, who is naturally anxious to see you."

"I ain't in the least anxious to go below," said Ruddle. "In fact, if it's all the same to you I'd rather stay here till she's out of the way."

"I don't like to think that you are a coward," observed the skipper severely, "but I'll be compelled to think so if you don't go at once and square things up in some sort of shape."

"Well," said Ruddle, "that's all very well for you, sir, that ain't caught in the same nip. But I don't want to go. I don't know the lady, and I'm naturally shy, and the cold perspiration pours off me at the thought of it."

"I order you to do your duty," said the 'old man.' "I order you to go below and soothe the lady."

"Oh Lord, oh, I say, I won't," stammered Ruddle. "I'd rather stay on deck all night."

"You won't? That's mutiny, Mr. Ruddle. It is disobeyin' orders, it is refusing duty. I'd be very sorry to use severe measures with you, but if you don't go I'll have you put in irons and carried to her."

"You don't mean that, sir, do you?"

"I mean it," said the skipper. "But I never did see such a man. I never knew anyone so unwillin' to see a pretty woman before."

"Oh, is she pretty?" asked Ruddle anxiously.

"Rather," said the 'old man.' "Oh, a regular beauty, and no fatal error. Dixon and Smith were both off their nuts about her when you came on board."

"What's she like?" asked Ruddle. "Tell me what she is like."

"Well, for one thing, she has got the most beautiful golden hair," said the skipper; "and from the way it's coiled, tier on tier on her head, I should reckon she can sit on it easy."

Ruddle sighed.

"Well, that seems all right," he said. "I was afraid I might have landed one of the half-bald kind I hate. I like 'em fair too. But go on, sir."

"Her eyes are a very superior kind of blue," said the poetical skipper; "and in my judgment they don't stay the same kind of blue all the time, but changes like the sea when clouds obscure the heavens in a squall. I reckon she's mostly sweet tempered, but if you riled her it would not surprise me to learn that she could stand up for herself."

"That's the way I like 'em," said Ruddle. "I never could abide the milk-and-water woman. But is she big or little?"

"Neither one nor the other," returned the skipper. "Speaking as a judge of them, I should say she is as she should be, not too little, not too big, but what you might call sizeable. And her complexion, of which I'm a judge, is quite remarkable. Oh, on consideration I should state with some firmness that she's very pretty."

"You comfort me a good deal," said Ruddle; "and if you still insist on my seein' her, I'll do it at once."

"It's my duty to insist, Ruddle," said the 'old man.' "So down you go, and mind you behave. And don't be too stand-offish, for I can't abide to see tears, and never could, and as a result I've had much trouble in my life. And when it's fixed up, come and tell me all about it."

And Ruddle started to see his wife with slow, reluctant steps.

"It's my firm belief that nothin' of this nature ever happened before," said Ruddle, "and my bein' nervous seems tolerable natural. I wonder, oh, I do wonder, if I shall like her!"

He descended the companion as slowly as if he were going to execution.

"Oh, Tom, Tom," cried the lady who was, they said, his wife, and a cold shiver ran down Ruddle's back. He did not dare to lift his eyes, and stood there like a big schoolboy who has got into sad trouble and is much ashamed of himself.

"Oh, Tom, don't you know me?" cried Susan. She made an attempt to rise, which was very promptly frustrated by the gale. Ruddle lifted his eyes at last.

"If you please, ma'am, I don't think I do," said he. Then he added in desperation—"At least, not well, ma'am."

The situation was too desperate for screaming, and Susan accordingly did not scream. She became dignified.

"I have been your wife for three years, and now you say you don't know me. If you don't know me, who am I, and what am I? Tom, sir, Mr. Ruddle, I pause for a reply."

Poor Ruddle shook his head very sadly.

"It's mighty awkward, I own," he said after some reflection; "and I don't know what to do about it. I'm very sorry I don't know you, but I can't say I do, much as I'd like to oblige a lady that I'm bound to respect, as, according to the other gents in long-tailed coats, I'm married to her. But they say I was a missionary, and now I'm a seaman again, and maybe you don't care for those that follow the sea."

"I don't mind anything," sobbed Susan, who was wondering if she might tell her husband that she loved him and would not care if he were a dustman. But somehow it did not seem quite proper to speak in that way to a man who didn't know her.

"Oh, please, don't cry," said Ruddle in great distress. "When a lady cries I never know what to do."

"I think I'm almost glad you d-don't," said Susan, and she smiled on him through her tears, and looked very beautiful.

"The 'old man' was right," said Tom Ruddle, "she's as beautiful as a picture, and just the kind I like. I don't think I could have bin' very dotty when I married her, and I wish I remembered somethin' about it. If I say I think she is pretty, I wonder whether she will be mad and think it a liberty. I think I'll try. They mostly like it."

He approached her slowly.

"If I don't know you, what may I call you?" he asked diffidently.

Mrs. Ruddle gave a gasp.

"Don't you know my name? Oh, how very dreadful! I'm Susan, and you used to call me Dilly Duck."

"Did I?" asked Ruddle. "And why did I do that?"

Susan said she didn't know, but supposed that it was because he liked her very much.

"But I like you very much now," said Ruddle, "I really do; and I think you are very pretty, ma'am, if I may say so, and the situation is very awkward. I hope I ain't too forward, which has never been my way with ladies, I assure you."

As it had taken Susan over a year to encourage him to the point of proposing, she felt sure that he was speaking the solid truth, and it touched her deeply.

"I'm very glad you think I'm pretty," she said with the most charming modesty. "If—oh, if you think so, perhaps you are not sorry that you are married."

"But I don't feel married," urged Ruddle desperately, "and I don't know what to do about it. It's by far the awkwardest situation I was ever in by long chalks, and it beats me, it fair beats me."

But surely there was a way out, thought Susan, and she wondered whether as his wife she might not suggest it.

"But you like me?"

"Oh, yes, to be sure," said Ruddle, "and I quite understand how I came to marry you. That is, I can understand how I wanted to, but what fair licks me is what you saw in me. Perhaps it was my bein' a long-tailed parson. Was it, now?"

"Not in the least," said Susan stoutly, "it was because you were you."

"But now I ain't what I was, and you must find it very embarrassing, ma'am."

"What I find embarrassing is your calling me 'ma'am,'" said Susan, with a snap that made Ruddle see that the skipper was right in other ways than his judgment of the lady's beauty.

"Very well," said Tom Ruddle in a great hurry, "I'll call you Susan if you like."

"Of course I like," said Susan; "and if you like you can call me Dilly Duck too."

But though Ruddle was much encouraged, he could not go so far as that all at once.

"If you won't, you might at anyrate sit down near me," said the fair Circe with the golden hair. And Tom sat down gingerly.

"I don't know what is to be done," said he in a melancholy way. "I suppose you agree with me, ma'am,—Susan, I mean,—that it is very awkward and most unusual? Looking it fair and square, I don't see a way out, unless——"

"Unless what?" asked Susan, with her eyes on the deck. She herself had an idea of the way out, but she wanted him to find it.

"It's very odd that I should feel as I do, as we have been married," said Ruddle; "but I'm that took aback by the facts as they show up against my present lights, that I seem in a dream, like as if I had sternway on me and was in a regular tangle. Tell me, when I was a missionary was I much afraid of you?"

Susan sighed and took him by the arm.

"I think you were a little afraid sometimes, Tom, especially if I was cross with you."

"Ah, I dessay," said her husband. "And if I was scared of you at times when I knew you, it seems natural, don't it, that I should be worse scared of you now that I don't?"

"But you aren't really frightened of me, darling, are you?" asked Susan, once more turning on the water-works.

"When you cry and call me that," said Ruddle, "I don't know where I am, and I want to——"

"You want to what?" asked Susan in the sweetest voice.

"I—I don't quite know," stammered Ruddle.

"I know," said Susan triumphantly.

"Oh, no, you can't," said Ruddle in great haste. "I'm certain you can't, for it ain't possible."

But Susan lifted her sea-blue eyes to his and shook her head.

"I do know, Tom. You want to kiss me."

Tom gasped and stared at her. "Well, you are clever," he said, with the greatest air of admiration. "I don't believe that any other woman would have guessed it."

And Susan sat waiting.

"Well?" she said at last.

"Oh, may I?" asked Tom.

"Of course you may," said Susan, once more looking at the deck. And he kissed her, and then took her in his arms while she wept.

"And you are sure you love me again?" she asked.

"It's most wonderful," said Tom, "but now I come to think of it, I feel as if I had always loved you, and no other woman can as much as get a look in. There was a girl in London that thought I was goin' to tie up alongside, but she's away off it, and I'll never marry anyone but you."

Susan wisely forbore at that moment to make any inquiries about this other girl, of whom she had never heard till that moment, and she put her golden head against her husband's shoulder.

"I think I am quite happy, Tom," she said, "though I am very sorry you don't remember how happy we were when we were first married."

Tom shook his head.

"I'm sorry for that too," he replied, "but it can't be helped, and we'll be happy yet if you really love me enough to marry me again."

"But we are married, Tom," said Susan.

"You may be," said Tom, "but I haven't the feelings of it, and I mean to ask that long-tail to tie us up again, so that there can be no mistake about it. What do you say?"

Susan said he was a darling, and that she loved him more than ever, and was willing to be married to him a thousand times if he wanted it.

"And you don't mind my bein' a sailor instead of a missionary?" asked Tom.

"I much prefer it, so long as you don't go to sea," said Susan; and leaving that to be arranged later, Tom Ruddle called the curious Chadwick from his cabin.

"I've fixed it up," said Tom triumphantly. "I've fixed it to rights, sir. My wife is goin' to marry me again, and we'd be much obliged if you would perform the ceremony."

"It seems very irregular," said Chadwick, "but considering the very peculiar circumstances I've no objection to make. It is really very wonderful. I congratulate you both. I must call the captain and tell him about it."

When the second mate came on deck the 'old man' went below. As soon as he grasped the situation he turned to Susan with a grin.

"You brought him to his bearings pretty quick, ma'am, and I congratulate you. But then a pretty woman like you ain't the sort to go long a-beggin'. I knew you'd fetch him! When I described you to him, me bein' a judge of female beauty, I saw how it would be. Who's goin' to do the new hitching?"

Mr. Chadwick said he was going to do it.

"It's the first time I ever married the same couple twice," he said; and Brother Blithers sat in the background and said it was uncanonical. But no one paid any attention to Blithers. The other missionaries chipped in with their congratulations, and said that they hoped Ruddle would still be one of them.

"Thank you, gentlemen," said Ruddle, "but I have too much admiration for you to think I can be one of you again. I have a cousin that's a shipowner, and when he finds that I'm alive and in my right sea senses, he'll give me a ship, for though I've never been skipper of anythin' yet, I hold a master's certificate. And my wife will go to sea with me."

"Darling, I'll go anywhere with you," whispered Susan. And then they were married, while the gale roared about them, and the good old Ocean Wave rode it out under a goose-winged main-topsail as comfortably as a duck in a puddle.

"It's all very wonderful," said Ruddle, as he went on deck at four o'clock to keep his watch. The 'old man' said that it was.

"All the same I knew she'd fetch you," said Gray. "I think the worst of it is over. We'll be makin' sail in the mornin'. As this is your weddin'-day, Mr. Ruddle, I'll keep your watch to-night."

"Thank you, sir," said Ruddle. "Lord, what a wonderful world it is."

Mrs. Ruddle said so too.

THE CAPTAIN OF THE ULLSWATER

There were enemies of Captain Amos Brown who said that he was a liar. He certainly had a vivid imagination, or a memory for a more romantic career than falls to the lot of most at sea or ashore.

"By the time we make Callao, Mr. Wardle," said the skipper to his new mate, as they lay in Prince's Dock, Liverpool, "I expect to be able to tell you something of my life, which has been a very remarkable one."

"You don't say so, sir," said Mr. Wardle, who, as it happened, had heard nothing about the skipper, and was innocently prepared to swallow quite a deal. "You don't say so, sir."

"I do say so," replied the skipper. "It has been a most remarkable career from first to last. Wonders happen to me, Mr. Wardle, so that when I am at sea I just know that something will occur that is strange. I have a collection of binoculars, with inscriptions on them for saving lives at sea, that would surprise you. They have been given me by almost every Government of any importance under the sun."

"That must be very gratifyin', sir," said the mate.

"It gets monotonous," said the skipper with a yawn. "At times I wish foreign Governments had more imagination. They never seem to think two pair of glasses enough for any man. And the silver-mounted sextants I possess are difficult to stow away in my house. If you don't mind the inscription to me on it, I'll give you a sextant presented to me by France, Mr. Wardle, if I can remember to bring it with me from home next time."

Mr. Wardle said he should be delighted to own it, and said, further, that the inscription would naturally give it an added interest. At this the skipper yawned again, and said that he was tired of inscriptions.

"The next lot I pick up I'll request not to give my name," he said. "My wife, Mr. Wardle, gets tired of keeping a servant specially to polish 'to Captain Brown,' with a lot of complimentary jaw to follow that makes her tired. She knows what I am, Mr. Wardle, and doesn't require to be reminded of it by falling over a gold-mounted sextant every time she turns round. A woman even of a greedy mind can easily get palled with sextants, and a woman sees no particular use in them when they take up room that she wants to devote to heirlooms in her family. Before we get to Callao I'll tell you all about my wife, and how I came to marry her. It is a romantic story. She belongs to a noble family. She is the most beautiful woman that you ever set eyes on. I'll tell you all about it before we get to Callao. I've always been a very attractive man to the other sex, Mr. Wardle. She's rather jealous, too, though she belongs to a noble family. I understand in noble families it isn't good taste to be jealous, but she is. However, I must write to her now, or I shall have a letter from her at Callao that would surprise you, if by that time I know you well enough to show it to you. And now, what were you saying about those three cases marked P.D., and consigned to Manuel Garcia?"

Mr. Wardle told him what he had been saying about the cases marked P.D. and consigned to Manuel Garcia, and it was settled what was to be done with them. The skipper said that he wished they were full of his binoculars and diamond-mounted sextants, and also his gold watches with fulsome inscriptions on them, and that they were consigned to Davy Jones.

"And this is a letter for you, sir," said the mate. The skipper opened it.

"From my wife," he said, and then he swore.

"Another pair of binoculars from the Swedish Government," he groaned. "I shall write and say that I would rather have a suit of clothes, and that if there must be an inscription on them will they put it where it can't be seen. The German Government once did that for me, but they put the inscription in good English on the collar, and I found it very inconvenient, for strangers would come and breathe in my neck while they read it."

Mr. Wardle went away to ask the second mate what he thought of the skipper. He sighed, and the second mate laughed. The second mate was an unbelieving dog and a merry one. When it came six o'clock they had a wash, and put on clean clothes, and went up town together, and had a friendly drink at a well-known public-house which was a great resort for mates and second mates, though a skipper rarely put his nose inside it.

"I wonder what kind of a chap the skipper is, after all," said Humphries the second mate. "It seems to me, sir, that he is a holy terror of a liar, and no mistake."

"Oh, I shouldn't like to say that," replied Wardle. "I do, however, think he exaggerates and puts it on a bit thick. That isn't bein' a liar. I daresay he has saved life at sea. He wouldn't have offered me a silver-mounted sextant if he hadn't several."

"I shall believe you will get it when I see you with it," said Jack Humphries. "In my opinion Captain Amos Brown is a first-class liar."

Perhaps he spoke a little too loudly for a public place, though that public place was a billiard-room with four second mates playing a four-handed game, and making as much row over it as if they were picking up the bunt of the fore-sail in a gale of wind. He was overheard by the only old man in the room.

"Did I hear you mention someone called Amos Brown?" asked the old chap sitting next to him.

"I did, sir," said the second mate of the Ullswater. "Do you know him?"

"I had an Amos Brown as an apprentice with me when I commanded the Samuel Plimsoll," replied the old gentleman, "and he was a very remarkable lad. I think I heard you say that this one was a liar?"

"I did," said Humphries; "though perhaps I shouldn't have done so, as I'm second mate with him now, sir."

The old boy shook his head.

"I won't tell him. But it surely must be the same. The Brown I knew was an awful liar, and I've seen many in my time, gentlemen."

He asked them to drink with him, and they did it willingly. To know the one-time skipper of the old Samuel Plimsoll was something worth while, seeing that she had once held the record for a day's run. And if his Brown was theirs it was a chance not to be missed. They took their drinks, and asked him to tell them all about Amos Brown.

"He went overboard in a gale of wind and saved another boy who couldn't swim," said the stranger, "and when we got them back on board, and he could speak, the very first thing he said was that he had seventeen medals from the Royal Humane Society for saving other lives. Does that sound like your man?"

Wardle told him about the binoculars and gold watches and silver-mounted sextants.

"Ah, he's the man," said the old skipper. "Don't you think because he gasses that he hasn't pluck. I'd not be surprised to hear that there is some truth in what he says. I've known one man with four pairs of inscribed binoculars. I daresay Captain Brown has a pair or two. When you see him, tell him that you met Captain Gleeson, who used to command the Samuel Plimsoll. And as I'm goin' now, I don't mind owning that I'm the man that has the four pairs of binoculars, gentlemen."

He bade them good-night, and Humphries said when he had gone that he was probably as big a liar as the skipper, and had never seen the Samuel Plimsoll.

"And as for Brown bein' a hero," added the second mate, "I simply don't believe it. A liar can't be brave."

This was a large and youthful saying, and Wardle, who was not so young as his subordinate, had his doubts of it.

"I rather think the captain is all right," he said. "I'll ask him to-morrow if he was ever in the Samuel Plimsoll."

They were at sea before he got a chance to do so.

"The Samuel Plimsoll? well, I should say so!" said the skipper. "And you actually met dear old Gleeson! Why, Mr. Wardle, he was the man that set me on makin' this collection of inscribed articles. Bar myself he is the one man in the whole merchant service with more than he can do with. His native town has a department in its museum especially devoted to what he has given them in that way. His wife refused to give them house-room, and I don't blame her. I saved most of the crew in that dear old hooker at one time or another, went overboard after them in gales of wind. They got to rely on me and grew very careless. I often told them that I wouldn't go after any more, but when you see a poor chap drownin' it is difficult to stay in the dry and let him."

"Ah," said Wardle, "he did speak about your savin' one."

The skipper cast a quick look at him, and then laughed.

"One, indeed," he said contemptuously. "Why I saved the whole of the mate's watch, the mate included; and on three other occasions I was hauled out of my bunk to go after one of the starboard watch. The only thing I have against old Gleeson is that he was jealous when he saw I was likely to knock his collection of medals and binoculars into a cocked-hat. One, indeed! I've saved seventy men, boys, and women, by goin' in after 'em myself; and somethin' like forty-five crews by skilful seamanship in the face of unparalleled difficulties. I wish I could have a talk with Gleeson."

"He said you were one of the bravest lads he ever met, sir," said Wardle.

The skipper's face softened.

"Did he now? Well, that was nice of him, but I think he might have told you about more than one I saved."

"And he said he had only four pairs of binoculars given him by foreign Governments," added Wardle.

"That is his false modesty," said Captain Brown. "He has an idea that if he told the truth he would not be believed. I don't care who doesn't believe me, Mr. Wardle. If surprisin' things occur to a man why should he not relate them? There's my wife, for instance, one of the nobility, a knight's daughter! I know men that wouldn't mention it for fear of not bein' believed they had married so far above them. She is the most beautiful woman in the three kingdoms, to say nothin' of Europe. I know men that it would seem like braggin' in to say that, but when you get to know me, and know that speakin' the truth isn't out of gear with my natural modesty, you will see why I mention it so freely."

In the course of the next few days Captain Amos Brown mentioned a good many things freely that redounded to the credit of himself and his family, and he did it so nicely, with such an engaging air of innocent and delightful candour, that poor Wardle did not know whether he was shipmates with the most wonderful man on earth or the most magnificent liar.

"I don't know where I am," he confided in his junior.

"I know where I am," said the graceless second greaser. "I am with a skipper with as much jaw as a sheep's head, and if he said it was raining I should take off my oilskins. He's the biggest braggart and liar I ever met, sir."

"I cannot listen to you sayin' such things," said the mate.

"I beg your pardon for doin' so," replied Humphries, "but the 'old man' is a scorcher, and I can't help seein' it."

To a less prejudiced observer it must have been obvious that there were many fine qualities in Captain Amos Brown. He inspected the cooking of the men's food at intervals which annoyed the cook and kept him up to his work. When he went his rounds he saw that things were shipshape even in the deckhouse. The men for'ard said he might be a notorious liar, as they heard from the steward, but they said he looked like a man and a seaman. Mr. Wardle found him as smart a navigator as he had ever sailed with, and before long was learning mathematics from him.

"No officer need be ashamed of takin' a wrinkle from me, Mr. Wardle," said the skipper, after giving him a lesson in star observations that made the mate sit up. "The Astronomer Royal himself owned to me that I could give him pounds and a beating at a great deal of mathematics. I love it, there is something so fine and free about it. I go sailin' over the sea of the calculus with both sheets aft. He is goin' to publish some observations of mine about the imperfections of the sextant. They were brought to my notice by my series of silver-mounted ones. I'm inventin' a new one compensated for all different temperatures."

And yet it was quite true that, as far as Wardle went with him, a better and clearer-headed teacher could not be found.

"I shall end in believing every word he says," thought the mate.

And if the mate found him his master in navigation, Humphries found that there wasn't a trick of practical seamanship that wasn't at his finger-ends, from cutting out a jib to a double Matthew Walker on a four-stranded rope, which the skipper could almost do with his eyes shut.

"Everything is all the same to me, Mr. Humphries," said the skipper calmly. "I'm a born pilot, and I can handle every rig as easy as if I'd been born in 'em. I can sail a scow or a schooner, and every kind of sailing-boat from a catamaran to an Arab dhow. And at steam I'm just as good."

Humphries did not believe a word of it, and used to read up old-fashioned seamanship in order to pose him. He never did, and the most out-of-date sea-riddle was to the skipper as easy as slinging a nun-buoy.

"He beats me, I own," said the second mate. "He's the best at all-round sailorizin' that I ever sailed with."

The men for'ard said the same. And the bo'son, who was a very crusty beast from Newcastle, was of opinion that what the 'old man' did not know about ships was not worth knowing.

"I'm goin' to believe 'im hif so be 'e says 'e's bin to the moon," said one cockney. "But for hall we knows the 'old man' may not show hup and shine as 'e does now w'en it's 'ard weather. I was shipmet wiv a skipper once that was wonderful gassy so long's it was topmast stuns'l weather, but when it blew a gale 'e crawled into 'is bunk like a sick stooard, and there 'e stayed till the sun shone."

They soon had a chance of seeing whether the skipper was a fair-weather sailor or not. They had taken an almighty time to get to the south'ard of the Bay of Biscay, for it had been almost as calm as a pond all the way from the Tuscar. Now the barometer began to fall in a steady, business-like way that looked as if it meant work, while a heavy swell came rolling up from the south. The dawn next morning was what ladies would have called beautiful, for it was full of wonderful colour, and reached in a strange glory right to the zenith. It afforded no joy, artistic or otherwise, to anyone on board the Ullswater, as she rolled in the swell with too little wind to steady her. The watch below came out before breakfast, and looked at the scarlet and gold uneasily. There was a tremendously dark cloud on the horizon, and the high dawn above it was alone a threat of wind. The clouds, that were lighted by the hidden sun, were hard and oily; they had no loose edges, the colour was brilliant but opaque. To anyone who could read the book of the sky the signs were as easy as the south cone. They meant 'very heavy weather from the south and west.' The skipper looked a deal more happy than he had done before. His eyes were clear and bright; there was a ring in his voice which encouraged everybody; he walked the poop rubbing his hands as if he was enjoying himself, as he undoubtedly was. He shortened the Ullswater down in good time, but set his three t'gallan's'ls over the reefed topsails, and hung on to them until squalls began to come out of the south which threatened to save all trouble of furling them. By noon the sun was out of sight under a heavy grey pall, and the sea got up rapidly as the wind veered into the west of south. An hour later it was blowing enough to make it hard to hear anyone speak, and he roared the most dreadful and awe-inspiring lies into the ear of his mate.

"This is goin' to be quite a breeze, Mr. Wardle," he shouted joyously, "but I don't think the weather nowadays is ever what it was when I was young. I've been hove to in the Bay for three weeks at a time. And once we were on our beam ends for a fortnight, and all we ate all that time was one biscuit each. I was so thin at the finish that I had to carry weights in my pocket to keep myself from bein' blown overboard. Oh, this is nothin'! We can hang on to this till the wind is sou'-west, and then maybe we'll heave to."

By the middle of the afternoon watch the Ullswater was hanging on to a gale on the port-tack with her main hatch awash, and the crowd for'ard had come to the conclusion that for carrying sail the 'old man' beat any American Scotchman they had ever heard of. When he at last condescended to heave her to, all hands, after wearing her, had a job with the fore and mizzen-topsails that almost knocked the stuffing out of them, as they phrased it. The skipper, however, told them that they had done very well, and told the steward to serve out grog. As the owners of the Ullswater were teetotallers, and about as economical as owners are made, this grog was at the skipper's own expense. When they had got it down, the entire crowd said that they would believe anything the skipper said henceforth. They went for'ard and enjoyed themselves, while the old hooker lay to with a grummet on her wheel, and the great south-wester howled across the Bay. If the main-topsail hadn't been as strong as the grog and the skipper's yarns, it would have been blown out of the bolt-ropes before dark, for the way the wind blew then made the 'old man' own at supper-time that it reminded him of the days of his youth.

"But you never will catch me heavin' to under anythin' so measly as a tarpaulin' in the rigging," said Captain Amos Brown, with his mouth full of beef and his leg round the leg of the table, as the Ullswater climbed the rising seas and dived again like a swooping frigate-bird. "I like to have my ship under some kind of command however it blows. One can never tell, Mr. Humphries, when one may need to make sail to save some of our fellow-creatures. As yet neither of you two gentlemen have got as much as the cheapest pair of binoculars out of our own Board of Trade or a foreign Government. With me you'll have your chance to go home to your girl and chuck somethin' of that sort into her lap, and make her cry with joy. I saved my own wife, who is the most beautiful woman in the world, and weighs eleven stone, and has for years, and I got a sextant and a nobleman's daughter at one fell swoop. Oh, I've been a lucky man."

"How did you save your wife, sir?" asked Humphries, who was almost beginning to believe what the skipper said.

"You may well ask, and I can't tell," replied the skipper proudly. "I hardly remember how it was, for when I get excited I do things which kind friends of mine say are heroic, and I can't remember 'em. But so far as I can recall it, I swam near a mile in a sea like this, and took command of a dismasted barque with most of the crew disabled through havin' their left legs broke, a most remarkable fact. There wasn't a sound left leg in the whole crowd except my wife's, and the only thing out of order was that the captain's left leg was broke in two places. I took charge of her, and put splints on their legs, and we were picked up by a tug from Queenstown and towed in there, and the doctors all said I was the neatest hand with splints they had ever seen. And I married my wife then and there with a special license, and I've never regretted it from that day to this. By Jove, though, doesn't it blow!"

How the "nobleman's" daughter came to be on board the dismasted barque he did not explain, and he shortly afterwards turned in, leaving orders to be called if it blew much harder.

"And when I say much harder, Mr. Wardle, I mean much harder. Please don't disturb me for a potty squall."

As a result of these orders he was not called till the early dawn, when it was blowing nearly hard enough to unship the main capstan. Even then Wardle would not have ventured to rouse him if he had not fancied that he saw some dismasted vessel far to leeward in the mirk and smother of the storm.

"I think I saw a vessel just now down to loo'ard," screamed the mate as the skipper made a bolt for him under the weather cloth on the mizzen rigging. "Dismasted I think, sir."

He saw the 'old man's' eye brighten and snap.

"Where did you say?" he roared; and before he could hear they had to wait till a singing squall went over.

"To loo'ard," said the mate again; and the next moment the skipper saw what he looked for.

"Not dismasted, on her beam ends," he shouted. And in a few more minutes, as the grey dawn poured across the waste of howling seas, Wardle saw that the 'old man' was right.

"Poor devils," he said, "it's all over with them."

The word that there was a vessel in difficulties soon brought out the watch on deck, who were taking shelter in the deckhouse. As it was close on four o'clock the watch below soon joined them, and presently Humphries came up on the poop.

"Ah!" said the second mate, "they are done for, poor chaps."

This the skipper heard, and he turned round sharply and roared, "What, with me here? Oh, not much!"

He turned to Wardle.

"Here's your chance for a pair of inscribed binoculars," he said. "I believe she's French, and the French Government have generous minds in the way of fittings and inscriptions, Mr. Wardle."

"But in this sea, sir?" stammered the mate. "Why, a boat couldn't live in it for a second, even if we launched one safe, sir."

"I've launched boats in seas to which this was a mere calm," said the skipper ardently. "And if I can't get you or Humphries to go I shall go myself."

"You don't mean it, sir," said the mate; and then the skipper swore many powerful oaths that he did mean it.

"In the meantime we're driftin' down to her," said Captain Brown, "for she is light and high out of the water and we are as deep as we can be."

It soon got all over the ship that the 'old man' meant to attempt a rescue of those in distress, and there was a furious argument for'ard as to whether it could be done, and whether any captain was justified in asking his crew to man a boat in such a sea. The unanimous opinion of all the older men was that it couldn't be done. The equally unanimous opinion of all the younger ones was that if the skipper said it could be done he would go in the first boat himself rather than be beaten.

"Well, it will be a case for volunteers," said one old fo'c'sle man, "and when I volunteer to drown my wife's husband I'll let all you chaps know."

And that was very much the opinion of Wardle, who was a married man too. As for Humphries, he was naturally reckless, and was now ready to do almost anything the skipper asked.

"He may be a liar," said the second mate, "but I think he's all right, and I like him."

Now it was broad daylight, and the vessel was within a mile of them. Sometimes she was quite hidden, and sometimes she was flung up high on the crest of a wave. Heavy green seas broke over her as she lay with her starboard yardarms dipping. She had been running under a heavy press of canvas when she broached to, and went over on her beam ends, for even yet the sheets of the upper main-topsail were out to the lower yardarm, and though the starboard half of the sail had blown out of the bolt ropes, the upper or port yardarm still was sound and as tight as a drum with the wind.

"If she hasn't sunk yet she'll swim a while longer," said the skipper of the Ullswater, as the day grew lighter and lighter still. "Show the British ensign, Mr. Humphries, and cheer them up if they're alive. I wish I could tell them that I am here. I'll bet they know me. I'm famous with the French from Dunkirk to Toulon. At Marseilles they call me Mounseer Binoculaire, and stand in rows to see me pass."

The lies that he told now no one had any ears for. Wardle owned afterwards that he was afraid that the 'old man' would ask him to go in command of a boat, and, like the old fo'c'sle man, he was thinking a good deal of his wife's husband. But all the while Captain Amos Brown was telling whackers that would have done credit to Baron Munchausen, he was really thinking of how he was to save those whose passage to a port not named in any bills of lading looked almost certain. By this time the foreigner was not far to leeward of them.

"No one could blame us if we let 'em go," shrieked the 'old man' in his mate's ear as the wind lulled for one brief moment. "But I never think of what other men would do, Mr. Wardle. I remember once in a cyclone in the Formosa Channel——"

What dreadful deed of inspired heroism he had performed in a cyclone in the Formosa Channel Wardle never knew, for the wind cut the words from the skipper's lips and sent them in a howling shower of spray far to loo'ard. But his last words became audible.

"I was insensible for the best part of a month after it," screamed Amos Brown. "The usual ... silver-mounted ... sickened ... wife as I said."

Then he caught the mate by the arm.

"We'll stand by 'em, Mr. Wardle. If I get another sextant, as I suspect, I must put up with it. Get the lifeboat ready, Mr. Wardle, and get all the empty small casks and oil-drums that you can and lash them under the thwarts fore and aft. Make her so that she can't sink and I'll go in her myself."

This fetched the blood into Wardle's face.

"That's my job, sir," he said shortly, for he forgot all about his wife's husband at that moment.

"I know it," said the skipper, "but with your permission I'll take it on myself, as I've had so much experience in this sort of thing and you've had none. And I tell you you'll have to handle the Ullswater so as to pick us up as we go to loo'ard, and it will be a job for a seaman and no fatal error."

The mate swore softly and went away and did as he was told. The men hung back a little when he told them to get the boat ready for launching, though they followed him when they saw him begin to cast off the gear by which she was made fast. But the old fo'c'sle man had something to say.

"The captain ain't goin' to put a boat over the side in a sea like this, is he, sir?"

Wardle snorted.

"You had better ask him," he replied savagely, and then there was no more talk. He went back to the poop and reported that the boat was ready. He also reported that the men were very unlikely to volunteer.

"They'll volunteer fast enough when they know I'm goin' to ask nothin' of them that I don't ask of myself," said the captain. "I really think the wind is takin' off a little, Mr. Wardle."

Perhaps it was, but if so the sea was a trifle worse. But it seemed to the skipper and the two mates that the French vessel was lower in the water than she had been. She was getting a pounding that nothing built by human hands could stand for long.

"There's not much time to lose," said the skipper.

Captain Amos Brown apparently knew his business, and knew it, as far as boats were concerned, in a way to make half the merchant skippers at sea blush for their ignorance of one of the finest points of seamanship. The skipper had the crew aft under the break of the poop, and came down to them himself. They huddled in the space between the two poop-ladders and looked very uneasy.

"Do any of you volunteer to try and save those poor fellows to loo'ard of us?" asked the 'old man.' And no one said a word. They looked at the sea and at each other with shifty eyes, but not at him.

"Why, sir, 'tis our opinion that no boat can't live in this sea," said the bo'son.

"I think it can," said the captain, "and I'm goin' to try. Do any of you volunteer to come with your captain? I ask no man to do what I won't do myself."

There was something very fine about the liar of the Ullswater as he spoke, and everyone knew that now at least he was telling no lies.

"I'm wiv you, sir," said a young cockney, who was the foulest mouthed young ruffian in the ship, and had been talked to very severely by his mates on that very point. It is not good form for a youngster to use worse language than his elders at sea. Some of the others looked at him angrily, as if they felt that they had to go now. A red-headed Irishman followed the cockney, just as he had followed him into horrid dens down by Tiger Bay.

"I'm with ye, too, sorr," said Mike.

"I'm only askin' for six," said the skipper. Then the old fo'c'sle man, who had been so anxious about his wife's husband, hooked a black quid out of his back teeth and threw it overboard.

"I'll come, sir."

But now all the other young men spoke together. The skipper had his choice, and he took the unmarried ones.

He gave his orders now to the mate without a touch of braggadocio.

"We'll run her off before the wind, Mr. Wardle, and then quarter the sea and lower away on the lee quarter. See that there is a man on the weather quarter with oil, so as to give us all the smooth you can. When we are safe afloat give us your lee to work in all you can, and hang her up in the wind to windward of the wreck all you know. While you are there don't spare oil; let it come down to her and us. It is possible that we may not be able to get a line to the wreck, but we'll go under her stern and try. With all her yards and gear in the sea it won't be possible to get right in her lee, so we may have to call to them to jump. My reckonin' is that we may pick up some that way before we get too far to loo'ard. When we get down close to her, fire the signal-gun to rouse them up to try and help us. When you see us well to loo'ard of the wreck, put your helm up, and run down and give us your lee again. If we miss her and have to try again, we must beat to windward once more. But that's anticipatin', ain't it? You can put your helm up now, Mr. Wardle. Shake hands."

And they shook hands. Then the skipper and his men took to the boat, which was ready to lower in patent gear, with Humphries in charge of it, and the Ullswater went off before the wind. Then at a nod from the captain she came up a little, till she quartered the sea with very little way on her.

"Now, Mr. Humphries," said the skipper. In ten seconds they hit the water fair and the hooks disengaged. The oil that was being poured over on the weather quarter helped them for a moment, and even when they got beyond its immediate influence they kept some of the lee of the ship. They drifted down upon the wreck, and rode the seas by pulling ahead or giving her sternway till they were within half a cable's length of the doomed vessel. At that moment they fired the signal-gun on board the Ullswater, and they saw some of the poor chaps to loo'ard of them show their heads above the rail. Then the full sweep of the storm struck them. But the liar of the Ullswater, who had saved more crews in worse circumstances than he could count, actually whistled as he sat in the stern-sheets with a steering oar in his hands. To handle a boat in a heavy sea, with the wind blowing a real gale, is a thing that mighty few deepwater seamen are good at. But the skipper of the Ullswater knew his business even then as if he had been a Deal puntman, a North Sea trawler, or a Grand Bank fisherman all his life. The boat in which he made his desperate and humane venture was double-ended like a whale-boat, and she rode the seas for the most part like a cork. In such a situation the great thing is to avoid a sea breaking inboard, and sometimes they pulled ahead, and sometimes backed astern, so that when a heavy sea did break it did so to windward or to loo'ard of them. And yet a hundred times in the dreadful full minutes that it took them to get down to the wreck there were moments when those in the boat and those in the Ullswater thought that it was all over with them. Once a sea that no one could have avoided broke over them, and it was desperate work to bale her out. And the roar of the wind deafened them; the seas raced and hissed; they pulled or backed water with their teeth clenched. Some of them thought of nothing; others were sorry they had volunteered, and looked at the captain furiously while he whistled through his clenched teeth. One cockney swore at him horribly in a thin piping scream, and called him horrid names. For this is the strange nature of man. But he pulled as well as the others, and the skipper smiled at him as his blasphemies cut the wind. For the skipper saw a head over the rail of the wreck, and he knew that there was work to be done and that he was doing it, and that the brave fool that cursed him was a man and was doing his best. The words he spoke were such as come out of a desperate mind, and out of a man that can do things. They towed an oil-bag to windward, but there was no oil to calm the movements of the soul at such a time.

"Oh, damn you, pull!" said Amos Brown. He ceased to whistle, and cursed with a sudden and tremendous frenzy that was appalling. The cursing cockney looked up at him with open mouth.

By the 'old man's' side in the stern-sheets there was a coil of rope attached to a little grapnel. If the men still alive on board the French barque were capable of motion they might be able to make a rope fast, but after hours of such a storm, while they were lashed under the weather bulwarks, it was possible that they were almost numb and helpless. Now the boat came sweeping down by the stern of the barque; they saw her smashed rudder beating to and fro, and heard the battering-ram of the south-west seas strike on her weather side.

"Back water!" roared the skipper, for astern of them a big sea roared and began to lift a dreadful lip. They held the boat, and the 'old man' kept it straight on the roaring crest, and at that moment they were lifted high, and saw beyond the hull of the barque the white waste of driven seas. Then they went down, down, down; and when they were flung up again the skipper screamed to those on board, and as he screamed he threw the grapnel at the gear of the spanker, and as they surged past her stern the hooks caught in the bight of her loosened vangs. For all her gear was in a coil and tangle, and the topping lifts of the gaff had parted. The men backed water hard, and the boat hung half in the lee of the wreck, but dangerously near the wreck of the mizzen-topmast, which had gone at the cap and swayed in the swash of the seas. Now they saw the seamen whom they had come to save, and no man of the boat's crew could hereafter agree as to what happened or the order of events. The skipper called to the poor wretches, and one cut himself adrift and slid down the sloping deck and struck the lower rail with horrible force. They heard him squeal, and then a sea washed him over to them. He was insensible, and that was lucky, for his leg was broken. Then they made out that one of the survivors was the captain, and they saw that he was speaking, though they heard nothing. There were, it seemed, no more than ten of the crew left, for they counted ten with the one man that they had. But it seemed that they moved slow, and the sea was worse than ever. It boiled over the weather-rail and then came over green, and all the men in the boats yelled filthy oaths at the poor numb wretches, and called them horrible names. The Irishman prayed aloud to heaven and to all the saints and to the Virgin, and then cursed so awfully that the others fell into silence.

"Jump, jump!" screamed the skipper, and another man slid down the deck and came overboard for them. He went under, and got his head cut open on a swaying block, and knew nothing of it till he was dragged on board. Then he wiped the blood from his eyes and fell to weeping, whereon the swearing cockney, who had been oddly silent since his eyes had met the skipper's, cuffed him hard on the side of the head, and said, "'Old your bloody row, you bleedin' 'owler!" And then three of his mates laughed as they watched their boat and fended if off the wreck of the mizzen-mast with deadly and preoccupied energy. The cockney took out a foul handkerchief and dabbed it on the bleeding man's head, and then threw the rag at him with an oath, saying that a little blood was nothing, and that he was a blasted Dago, and, further, he'd feel sorry for him when he was on board the Ullswater. Then another man jumped and was swept under and past them, and just as he was going the skipper reached over and, grabbing him by the hair, got him on board in a state of unconsciousness. Then three of the poor fellows jumped at once, two being saved and the third never showing above the water again.

"As well now as wiv the rest of hus," said the cockney, who had give the Dago his 'wipe,' and he snivelled a little. "Hif I gets hout of this I'm for stayin' in Rovver'ive all the rest of my life."

Then they got another, and there were only the French skipper and one more man left. It was probably his mate, but he had a broken arm and moved slow. The French captain got a rope round him and slid him down to loo'ard. But when he was half-way down the old chap (he was at anyrate white-haired) lost his own hold, and came down into the swash of the lee scuppers with a run. He fell overboard, and the Irishman got him by the collar. He was lugged on board with difficulty, and lay down on the bottom boards absolutely done for. The other man didn't show up, and the men said that he must be dead. They began talking all at once, and the skipper, who was now up at the bows of the boat, turned suddenly and cuffed the Irishman hard, whereupon Mike drew his sheath-knife, saying in a squeal, "You swine, I'll kill you!" But the bo'son struck him with the loom of his oar under the jaw, and nearly broke it. He snatched his knife from him and threw it overboard.

Now they saw the Ullswater right to windward of the sinking barque, and some oil that they poured into the sea came down to them, so that the hiss of the sea was so much less that it seemed as if silence fell on them. They heard the Irishman say with difficulty as he held his jaw—

"All right, my puggy, I'll have your blood."

He had lost his oar, and the other men were wild with him. What they might have said no one knows, but the skipper turned to them, saying that he would go on board after the last man. They all said at once that he shouldn't. They gave him orders not to do it, and their eyes were wild and fierce, for they were strained and tired, and fear got hold of them, making them feel chilly in the fierce wind. They clung to the captain in their minds. If he did not come back they would never be saved, for now the boat was heavily laden. They opened their mouths and said 'Oh, please, sir,' and then he jumped overboard and went hand over hand along the grapnel line and the tangle of the vangs. They groaned, and the Irishman wagged his head savagely, though no one knew what he meant, least of all himself. They saw the 'old man' clamber on board as a big sea broke over her, and they lost sight of him in the smother of it. They sat in the heaving boat as if they were turned into stone, and then the Irishman saw something in the sea and grabbed for it. He hauled hard, and they cried out that the skipper mustn't try it again. But as the drowning man came to the surface they saw that it was not the skipper after all, but the French mate, and they said 'Oh, hell!' being of half a mind to let him go. But the bo'son screamed out something, and they hung on to a dead man's legs, for to the dead man's hands the skipper was clinging. They got him on board not quite insensible, and the Irishman fell to weeping over him.

"Oh, it's the brave bhoy you are," he said; and then the skipper came to and vomited some water.

"Hold on, what are you doin'?" he asked, as he saw the two cockneys trying to heave the dead man back in the sea. They said that he was dead. The bo'son said that the deader had only half a head, and couldn't be alive in that condition. So they let the body go, and the skipper woke right up and was a man again. They hauled up to the grapnel or near it, for they were strained enough to do foolish things. Then they saw it was silly and cut the line. They drifted to loo'ard fast, and got out into the full force of the gale, which howled horribly. They saw the Ullswater lying to under her sturdy old maintop-sail, and as soon as they saw her they were seen by the second mate, who was up aloft with his coat half torn off him. To get her off before the wind quick they showed the head of the foretopmast-staysail, which was promptly blown out of the bolt ropes with a report they heard in the boat like the dull sound of a far-off gun. She squared away and came to the nor'-east, and presently was to windward of them, and in her lee they felt very warm and almost safe, though they went up to the sky like a lark and then down as if into a grave. And then they saw their shipmates' faces, and the skipper laughed oddly. The strain had told on him, as it had on all of them, not least perhaps on some of those who had not faced the greater risks. And it seemed to the skipper that there was something very absurd in Wardle's whiskers as the wind caught them and wrapped them in a kind of hairy smear across one weather-beaten cheek. All those in the boat were now quite calm; the excitement was on board the Ullswater, and when the gale let them catch a word of what the mate said, as he stood on the rail with his arm about a backstay, they caught the quality of strain.

"Ould Wardle is as fidgety as a fool," said Mike the Irishman, as he still held on to his jaw. "He'll be givin' someone the oncivil word for knockin' the oar out o' me hand."

He sat with one hand to his face, with the other, as he had turned round, he helped the bo'son.

"What about your pullin' your knife on the captain?" asked the bo'son.

Then Micky shook his head.

"Did I now? And he struck me, and he's a brave lad," he said simply. But the hook of the davit tackle dangled overhead as they were flung skyward on a sea. There were davit ropes fitted, and one slapped the Irishman across the face.

"It's in the wars I am," he said; and then there was a wind flurry that bore the Ullswater almost over on them. The way was nearly off her, and in another minute she would be drifting and coming down on them.

"Now!" screamed the skipper, and they hooked on and were hauled out and up.

"Holy Mother," said Mike, "and I'm not drowned this trip!"

The boat was hauled on board, and when the skipper's foot touched the deck he reeled. Humphries caught him.

"Oh, steady, sir," said Humphries, as Mike came up to them.

The captain stared at him, for he did not remember striking him.

"It's the brrave man you are," said Mike simply; "and you're the firrst man that I've tuk a blow from since I was the length of my arm. Oh, bhoys, it's the brrave man the skipper is."

The second mate pushed him away, and he went like a child and lent a hand to help the poor 'divils of Dagoes,' as he called those who had been saved. The mate came and shook hands with the captain. The tears ran down Wardle's hairy face, and he could not speak.

"I shall have another pair of binoculars over this," said Captain Amos Brown with quivering lips.

"You are a hero," bawled the mate as the wind roared again in a blinding squall with rain in it. The skipper flushed.

"Oh, it's nothin', this," he said. "Now in the Bay of Bengal——"

The wind took that story to loo'ard, and no one heard it. But they heard him wind up with 'gold-mounted binoculars.'

* * * * * * *

A year later he got a pair from the great French Republic. They were the first he ever got.

THE END

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