Do so by all means," answered Mr. Powers; and Harry leaned forward
attentively, because he perceived that a yarn of the sea was
forth-coming. Captain Ferris settled himself comfortably in his chair,
cast a look around the horizon, and then launched into his story.

"Three years ago," he said, "I was in Hamburg in command of the
steamship _Bristow_. She is a vessel of about 1200 tons, and is in the
carrying trade, though she occasionally takes half a dozen passengers at
low rates. I was ready to get under way for New York when a man,
accompanied by a boy about the age of your grandson there, came aboard
and applied for passage. He said that he had come to Europe on business,
and had received word that his wife was very sick in New York. He was
anxious to get home and my ship was the first that was going. I advised
him to wait three days and take the Hamburg-American liner, which would
arrive fully five days before us; but he said he had not money enough to
go that way except in the steerage, and he could not think of doing that
because his boy's health was none too good. So, of course, I agreed to
take the two. The boy looked up at me and said,

"'Thank you, sir; and please make the ship hurry, because mamma is
waiting for us.'

"I promised him I'd do my best, and, indeed, I did make up my mind to
push the ship as she'd never been pushed before. We sailed at three
o'clock on June 28th--I remember that date well enough. It was a
lowering damp afternoon, with a brisk southwesterly wind, and as soon as
we got fairly out into the North Sea the ship began to butt into a nasty
chop that sent the spray flying over her bows. But I was able to escape
the worst of it by hugging the Holland coast, and so got down into the
English Channel in some comfort. But now it was no longer possible to
hug the coast, for that would have carried me too far out of my course.
However, the _Bristow_ made good progress till we passed Fastnet Rock
and got well out into the Atlantic. And there our troubles began. The
morning of our third day out dawned with a hard low sky, a dead calm,
and a deep, long, oily swell underrunning the ship. She rolled pitiably
indeed. The barometer began to fall, and the wind rose and became very
unsettled. I think that before noon it blew from every point of the
compass, and some of the gusts were regular white squalls. The swell was
running from the south, but the wind was chiefly from the west,
southwest, and northw