"He twisted his knee yesterday playing football. The Fleet Surgeon has
made him lie up."

The Captain nodded. "All right; I'll read them." As the Commander
turned to go he spoke again: "By the way, that fellow I gave ninety
days to yesterday--was there a woman in the case, d'you happen to know?
There was nothing in the evidence, of course, but I wondered----"

The Commander paused while the busy brain searched among its dockets.
The man whose business it is as Executive Officer to control the
affairs of close on a thousand of his fellow men must of necessity
sometimes learn curiously intimate details of their lives.

"Yes; the Master-at-Arms mentioned to me that a woman was at the bottom
of it. She's a wrong 'un, I understand."

"Thank you."

The Commander went out, and a moment later the bugle overhead blazed
forth "Divisions."

"I thought it was a woman's writing," added the Captain musingly.

"Divisions correct, sir!" The Commander saluted and made his report.

The Captain returned the salute briskly. "Sound the 'Close.'"

The bugle sounded again, the bell began to toll for prayers, and the
band on the after shelter-deck struck up a lively march as the men came
aft.

Anyone interested in the study called physiognomy might with advantage
have taken his stand at this moment on the after part of the
quarter-deck, where the shadow of the White Ensign curved and flickered
across the planking. Perhaps the Captain, who stood there, was himself
a student of the art. At any rate, as the men marched aft through the
screen doors his level eyes passed from face to face, reflective,
observant, intensely alert.

The last division reached its allotted position on the quarter-deck,
turned inboard, and stood easy. The band stopped abruptly. The bell
ceased tolling. In the brief ensuing silence the Commander's voice was
clearly audible as he made his report.

"Everybody aft, sir."

The Captain slipped a small prayer-book out of a side pocket. The
Commander gave a curt order, and five hundred heads bared to the
sunlight.

"Stand easy!"

There is much beauty in the sonorous periods of the English Rubric.
Read in the strong, clear voice of a man who for thirty years had known
calm and tempest, sunset and dawn at sea, the familiar words--of appeal
and praise alike--assumed somehow an unwonted significance; and when he
closed the book, slipped it back into his pocket, and looked up, the
face he raised wa