is back against the bulwarks and blown upon
by the spill of the wind from the head sails.

An old shell-back by name of Ponting was holding the floor.

"We're comin' up to Kerguelen," he was saying. "Should think I did know
it. Put in there in a sealer out of New Bedford in '82. I wasn't more'n
a boy then. The Yanks used to use that place a lot in those days. The
blackest blastedest hole I ever struck. Christmas Island was where we
lay mostly, for two months, the chaps huntin' the wal'uses and killin'
more than they could carry. The blastedest hole I ever struck."

"I was there in a Dane once," began another of the crew. "It was time of
year the sea cows was matin' and you could hear the roarin' of them ten
mile off."

"Dane," said Ponting, "what made you ship a'board a Dane--I've heard
tell of Danes. Knew a chap signed on in one of them Leith boots out of
Copenhagen runnin' north, one of them old North Sea cattle trucks turned
into a passenger tramp, passengers and ponies with a hundred ton of hay
stowed forward and the passengers lyin' on their backs on it smokin'
their pipes, and the bridge crawled over with passengers, girls and
children, and the chap at the wheel havin' to push 'em out of the way,
kept hittin' reefs all the run from Leith to God knows where, and the
Old Man playin' the fiddle most of the time."

"That chap said the Danes was a d----d lot too sociable for him."

Raft listened without entirely comprehending. He had always been a
fore-mast hand. He knew practically nothing of steam and he would just
as soon have fancied himself a railway porter as a hand on a passenger
ship. He was one of the old school of merchant seamen and the idea of a
cargo of girls and children and general passengers, not to speak of
ponies, was beyond him.

The girls he had mostly known were of the wharf-side. He finished his
pipe and went down below--and turned in.

He was rousted out by the voice of the Bo'sw'n calling for all hands on
deck and slipping into his oilskins he came up, receiving a smack of sea
in his face as he emerged from the fo'c'sle hatch. The wind had shifted
and a black squall coming up from astern had hit the ship. More was
coming and through the sheeting rain and spindrift the voice of the
Bo'sw'n was roaring to let go the fore top-gallant halyards.

Next moment Raft was in the rigging followed by others. The sail had to
be stowed. The wind tried to tear him loose and the sheeting rain to
drown