"She's all right, your honor."
"Nothing more gone?"
"No, sir."
"I thought I heard a crash last night in the gale."
"Not last night, sir. Everything's all ship-shape, leastways just as it was since that last piece of the to'gallant fo'k'sl was carried away last week."
"That's good, Barry. I suppose she's rotting though, still rotting."
"Ay, ay, sir, she is; an' some of the timbers you can stick your finger into."
"But she's sound at the heart, Captain Barry," broke in Emily, cheerily.
"Sound at the heart, Miss Emily, and always will be, I trust."
"Ay, lassie," said the old admiral, "we be all sound at the heart, we three; but when the dry rot gets into the timber, sooner or later the heart is bound to go. Now, to-night, see yonder, the storm is approaching. How the wind will rack the old timbers! I lie awake o' nights and hear it howling around the corners of the house and wait for the sound of the crashing of the old ship. I've heard the singing of the breeze through the top-hamper many a time, and have gone to sleep under it when a boy; but the wind here, blowing through the trees and about the ship, gets into my very vitals. Some of it will go to-night, and I shall be nearer the snug harbor aloft in the morning."