uest
the cabin was invaded by the crew that evening, cannot be put into
words.

For three nights they had what Mr. Hutchins described as love-feasts,
and the mate as blamed bear-gardens. The crew were not particularly
partial to hymns, considered as such, but hymns shouted out with the
full force of their lungs while sharing the skipper's hymn book appealed
to them strongly. Besides, it maddened the mate, and to know that they
were defying their superior, and at the same time doing good to their
own souls, was very sweet. The boy, whose voice was just breaking, got
off some surprising effects, and seemed to compass about five octaves
without distress.

When they were exhausted with singing Mr. Hutchins would give them
a short address, generally choosing as his subject a strong,
violent-tempered man given to drink and coarse language. The speaker
proved conclusively that a man who drank would do other things in
secret, and he pictured this man going home and beating his wife because
she reproached him for breaking open the children's money-box to spend
the savings on Irish whisky. At every point he made he groaned, and
the crew, as soon as they found they might groan too, did so with
extraordinary gusto, the boy's groans being weird beyond conception.

They reached Plymouth where they had to put out a few cases of goods,
just in time to save the mate's reason, for the whole ship, owing to
Mr. Hutchins' zeal was topsy turvy. The ship's cat sat up all one night
cursing him and a blue ribbon he had tied round her neck, and even the
battered old tea-pot came down to meals bedizened with bows of the same
proselytising hue.

By the time they had got to their moorings it was too late to take the
hatches off, and the crew sat gazing longingly at the lights ashore.
Their delight when the visitor obtained permission for them to go
ashore with him for a little stroll was unbounded, and they set off like
schoolboys.

"They couldn't be with a better man," said the skipper, as the party
moved off; "when I think of the good that man's done in under four days
it makes me ashamed of myself."

"You had better ship 'im as mate," said George. "There'd be a pair of
you then."

"There's greater work for 'im to do," said the skipper solemnly.

He saw the mate's face in the waning light and moved off with a sigh.
The mate, for his part, leaned against the side smoking, and as the
skipper declined to talk on any subject but Mr. Hutchi