With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.
Ho, the bully Rover Jack,
Waiting with his yard aback
Out upon the Lowland sea."
The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from the shot-rack behind him.
"Captain Sharkey," said Copley Banks, "do you remember the 'Duchess of Cornwall,' hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago off the Statira shoal?"
"Curse me if I can bear their names in mind," said Sharkey. "We did as many as ten ships a week about that time."
"There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. Maybe that will bring it back to your mind."
Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose jutting upwards. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it.
"But burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!" he cried. "How came you to think of it?"