"And not a bad best eether, as I know," came the squeezed voice. "And when you've won through to Nelson, as win through it's my firm faith you will—and laid that there in his hand"—his voice came in pants, and pauses, and with little runs—"tell him I sarved him all I was able and give him—my kind dooty—old Ding-dong's dooty."
There was a gasping silence.
"That's my revenge. He'll understand."
CHAPTER XIX
OLD DING-DONG HOMEWARD-BOUND
The light was ebbing fast, and old Ding-dong with it.
All was silence and a few pale stars.
The old seaman began to wander.
Scenes near, scenes far, drifted across his fading mind. Now he was a tiny lad babbling in broadest dialect to his mother at the washing-tub; now he was a pit boy yelling at Susannah, the one-eyed pit pony; anon he was on the spar-deck of the Don, holding by the hand the father of the boy who now held his.
Then there came a silence, and out of it the words, clean and quiet: