so long he
feared I'd come to harm below.

When I found myself better I made ready to go down again, for once
you've promised to do a thing there's nothin' but to do it. But just as
they were about to slip my helmet on, me with my foot on the ladder,
the chain that was holding her slipped again, and into two hundred
fathoms she went--too deep for any diver in this world ever to raise
her.

I thought of his mother and I grieved for her, and it was the first job,
too, that ever I'd messed.

"Never mind," says my son. "Twas me, not you. Nobody that knows you,
father, will blame you." A great lad that, and his brother, too--off
their mother's model--both of 'em. Sarah said I'd never have to worry
about them, and I haven't, but I wish she'd lived to have the joy of
them.

I don't remember much more of that, but when I got back to the office
there was a letter from her. But I never read it. Nothing it could tell
me then that I hadn't already guessed.

'Isn't often now it comes so to me, things being' generally dim in my
mind, as I say, slipping away and drawing nigh, like ships in a lifting
fog-but to-day--like that day--a winter's day and sunny and cold--with
the seas running like white-maned ponies before the gale in the bay
below there--as it is now--always on a day like this it comes clearer to
me.

LAYING THE HOSE-PIPE GHOST

Sometimes, for one reason or another, or perhaps without reason at all,
it just happens. So, say a handful of gossiping yeomen find themselves
together, and when that comes about, from some member (if the session
stretches to any length at all) is sure to come a story of particular
interest to the guild; and perhaps it ought to be explained that a
yeoman's story is never mistaken in the Navy for a stoker's, a gunner's,
a quartermaster's; never for anybody's but a yeoman's.

One night, a pleasant-enough night topside, but an even pleasanter night
below, at least in our part of the ship below. A few of us were gathered
in the flag office, where Dalton, the flag yeoman, sometimes allowed us
to call when his admiral was ashore. Getting on toward middle-age was
Dalton, with a head of gray-flecked hair and an old-time school-master's
face. A great fellow for books.

In the flag office store-room, which to get into he had only to lift a
hatch in the deck under his revolving chair and let himself drop, he had
a young library, which after-hours he, used to delve into for anybody's
or ev