"I—I don't understand," said Brogger to Eales, who was sitting on the stage with him.
"It's a good sea compliment to them that's gone," said Eales. "Paint, you beggar, paint."
The bo'son put his head over the rail.
"If you don't get to work, Juggins, I'll have to come down there and talk with you."
And the man who was spoken to knew of old what a terror the bo'son could be if he liked. He shivered and dipped his brush in paint. After he had made a few feeble strokes, the bo'son's head disappeared, and Brogger whispered to Eales—
"Who's it for?"
"It's for poor old Brogger," said Eales.
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.