"Yes; there was nothin' else to do. It's against orders to take animals into life-boats. They take room and must be fed, and we hadn't a foot of space or an ounce of grub and water to spare, and we had two hundred miles to go. I begged the captain. 'I'll give Bayard my place,' I said. I knew he was right; but I couldn't help it. 'Let me go back and get him.' I know now it would have been foolish; but I'd have done it all the same. So would you, maybe, if you'd known that dog and seen his trusting eyes lookin' out of his scorched face and remembered what he'd just done.
"The captain never looked at me when he answered. He couldn't; his eyes were too full.
"'Your place is where you are, sir,' he said, short and crisp. 'Shove off, men.'
"He will never get over it. That dog stood for the girl he'd lost, somehow. That's the captain's bell. I'm wanted on the bridge. Good-night."
Again the cabin door swung free, letting in a blast of raw ice-house air, the kind that chills you to the bone. The gale had increased. Through the opening I could hear the combers sweeping the bow and the down-swash of the overflow striking the deck below.
With the outside roar came the captain, his tarpaulins glistening with spray, his cap pulled tight down to his ears, his storm-beaten face ruddy with the dash and cut of the wind. He looked like a sea Titan that had stepped aboard from the crest of a wave.
If he saw me—I was stretched out on the sofa by this time—he gave no sign. Opening his tarpaulins and thrashing the water from his cap, he walked straight to the cage, peered in, and said softly:
"Ah, my little man! Asleep, are you? I just came down to take a look at the chart and see how you were getting on. We're having some weather on the bridge."