fy the confidence reposed in him. But he cannot be
trusted to be a corner-man, "gagging" with a black face and a pair of
bones. The Musical Coons dissolved after one performance, during which
the Captain's brow grew black and the Chaplain turned faint, and an
ecstatic ship's company shouted itself hoarse with delirious enjoyment.

Thereafter, for a period, the breath of rebuke and disrepute clung to
the songsters; but a ship without a sing-song party is like a dog
without a tail. A committee of Petty Officers waited upon the First
Lieutenant, as men once proffered Cromwell the Protectorship of
England, lest a worse thing befell them. The First Lieutenant, with a
reluctance and a full sense of the responsibilities involved, that was
also Cromwellian, finally consented to become the titular head of the
sing-song party.

He it was, then, who rose from his chair, holding a slip of paper, and
faced the great bank of faces with one hand raised to enjoin silence.
The cheering redoubled.

For perhaps fifteen seconds he stood with raised hand, then he lowered
it and the smile left his eyes. His brows lowered too. The cheering
wavered, faltered, died away. They knew what Number One meant when he
looked like that.

"The first item on the programme," he said in his clear voice, "is a
song by Petty Officer Dawson, entitled, 'The Fireman's Daughter,'" and
sat down again amid loud applause.

The A.P. rose, hopped on to the stage, and sat down at the piano that
occupied one wing of the stage. Petty Officer Dawson, who was also the
ship's painter, emerged from behind the canvas screen, coyly wiping his
mouth on the back of his hand. The piano tinkled out the opening bars
of the song, and the concert began.

It was a sad song; the very first verse found the fireman's daughter on
her death-bed. But the tune was familiar and pleasantly mournful, and,
as the piano thumped the opening bars of the refrain for the second
time, the hundreds of waiting men took it up readily. The melody
swelled and rose, till the sadness of the theme was somehow overwhelmed
by the sadness that is in the harmony of men's voices singing in the
open air.

Petty Officer Dawson was a stout man addicted in daily life to the
inexplicable habit of drying his gold-leaf brush in the few wisps of
hair Nature had left him with. His role on the occasion of a concert
was usually confined to painting the scenery. The nation being at war,
and this particul