tirrin' now!"

The lank form on the bunk had moved. The bandaged head turned, and Chris
Wickwire looked up from his pillow. His gaze traveled slowly over the
bare, familiar details of the cabin, the racks and lockers, the deck
beams above, the panels on the bulkhead, his own spare garments on their
hooks--passed over our huddled group by the door and rested at the open
port, its brass rim shining with the new daylight. He lay so for a time,
tossed a little restlessly, and seemed to seek something. And then--

"Whaur's that pipe?" he muttered.

Our hearts stood still....

"Whaur's that blisterin' pipe?" he demanded, and raised himself with an
effort, groped along the shelf beside him, found what he wanted by the
tobacco jar, and proceeded leisurely to ram and to charge--his old clay
cutty!

Raff had dragged Sutton and his tatters into the thwart-ship passage,
out of sight, but I was clinging in the doorway when the dour old eye
nailed me.

"Feeling better, chief?" I managed somehow to gulp. "You got quite a
bump last night. Your head'll be sore for a bit--and--and the captain
will want to know right away if the bandage is comfortable."

He considered me a space.

"Whaur's the mate?" he asked, and added quickly: "Did he go ashore?"

"No, sir. He stayed to tend you. He says he's lost his taste for shore
leave, anyhow." I gasped, for Sutton's hand had caught mine in the
passage, and it nearly crushed my fingers. "He says--he says he'll wait
till you can go with him if you like."

Wickwire paused as he was lighting his pipe.

"Does he say that?" he queried, in a tone you would never have thought
possible on those grim lips. "Fetch him here to me, will ye now?"

I stumbled away blindly. When I returned some minutes later he was
propped quite comfortably at the end of the bunk.

"Beg pardon, chief--" I began.

"Hey?"

"Mr. Sutton can't come just now. I--I didn't care to disturb him--"

"How's that?"

"Well, it seems--the fact is--I--I left him in his cabin on his knees,
and it looked--anyway it seemed to me as if he might, perhaps,
be--praying!"

For the first time in my knowledge of him, his normal self, the chief
smiled, and it was like the struggling ray of early sun that pierces the
gray dawn. I should have left him then with that last glint of a picture
to close the affair, and with Sutton's last word of it in my mind.
"He's forgotten!" he had cried to me, in a clear bell note. "We did make
him for