tickets. The Captain's Clerk became
interested in the progress of work in an ammunition lighter alongside.

The Captain, with knitted brows, was reading a letter that had been
handed to him across the table. He folded it up when read, and handed
it back to the recipient; then, holding his chin in his fist and
supporting the elbow with the other hand, he listened to the tale the
small man with the crumpled ears had to unfold. It was an old
tale--old when Helen first met the eyes of Paris. But there was no
veil of romance to soften the outline of its crude tragedy. It was
just sordid and pitiful.

For five minutes, perhaps, the two men faced each other. At the end of
that time the Captain was leaning forward resting both hands on the
table, talking in grave, kindly tones. He talked, not as Captains
commonly talk to Leading Stokers, but as one man might talk to another
who turned to him for advice in the bitter hour of need, drawing on the
deep well of his experience, education, and kindly judgment.

"Troubles shared are troubles halved." The Captain had said so, and
the tot of rum served out at one-bell to the little man with the
crumpled ears went some way to complete the conviction.

* * * * *

Jeremiah Casey, Petty Officer and Captain's Coxswain, hauled himself
nimbly up the Jacob's ladder to the quarter-boom and came inboard. The
Captain was walking up and down, deep in thought, with his hands linked
behind his back. Casey pattered up and saluted.

"I've bent on that noo mainsail, sir. . . . There's a nice li'l
sailin' breeze, sir." Casey, hinting at a spin in the galley, somehow
reminded one of a spaniel when he sees the gun-case opened. Had he
been blessed with a tail, he would most certainly have wagged it.

The Captain walked slowly aft and looked down into the galley lying at
the quarter-boom. Few men could have resisted the appeal of that long
slim boat with the water lapping invitingly against her clinker-built
sides. The brasswork in her gleamed in the sun like jewels set in
ivory, for the woodwork was as near the whiteness of ivory as holystone
and sharkskin could make it. She had little white mats with blue
borders on the thwarts and in the sternsheets, and her yoke, of curious
Chinese design, had a history as mysterious and legendary as the
diamonds of Marie Antoinette.

"Get her alongside," said the Captain. "I want to try that mainsail."

Five minutes