"Now, Captain Riggs," I began, "I know you have been a fighter all your
life, and I know you can suggest something better than--"

"That's right," he broke in, raising his hand to stop me. "I've lived too
long, and my fighting days are over. My years have come upon me all at
once, and they are a burden--too much of a burden to bear and fight, too.
I am weary from fighting. I'm older than I thought I was. I have been in
these waters too long, and these latitudes take the mettle out of a man
when he has reached my age.

"I never felt it as I do now, and I guess the owners knew it, and that's
why I didn't get one of their new boats. But this ain't my fault, Mr.
Trenholm. Don't you see it ain't my fault? I should have known what was
aboard, and then I could have been prepared. As it is, this thing is too
big for me now, and I'm ready to strike my colours. It's my honour that
frets me now."

"Your honour! It wouldn't be the first ship that's been lost, captain,
even if it is the first one you have lost, and--"

"I know what you are thinking of, boy. You think I'm afraid. Well, I'm
ready to die--that's nothing. If I thought I could save you and Rajah
here, I'd do it--it is my duty. I've been in harder places than this, and
I was a hard man to handle; and I've had my battles and mutinies and
worse, some of 'em before ye were born, lad. They all weigh me down now,
and it's not what's ahead of me that's fretting me now; but what's after
me--the things they'll say, some of 'em who don't know me well. Don't you
see, they'll think I made off with the gold?"

I hadn't considered the case in that light; but now I saw that he was
worrying of what would be said, while I was thinking only of my life--he
considered that he would lose life and honour; and, as he still had his
New England conscience, honour weighed deeper in his scales. I felt
ashamed that I had planned to make his last hours harder.

"I know how it will go," he said. "It's been done and told of before, and
the master is always blamed; and this is no decent end for me. I'm known
from Saddle Rocks to Kennebunkport as a brave man and a capable master,
even if old.

"I stayed out here because I had a good billet with the Red Funnel people
up to the time the Japs bought their ships. Then I took the _Kut Sang_,
only for a year it was to be; but I held on longer, waiting to get a big
ship to take back home, and then quit.

"My boy is a lawyer in Bangor--and smart, to