re's a queer story about her. She
carried an extra hand. I'll tell you. It's a queer yarn. She had one
man at a muster more than signed for her. At night, you couldn't get
into the rigging ahead of that chap. There you'd find him just too much
ahead of the first lad who had jumped at the call to be properly seen,
you know. You could see him, but you couldn't make him out. So the chap
behind him was in no hurry, after the first rush. Well, it made it
pretty hard for her old man to round up a crew. He had to find men who
didn't know her. Men in Poplar who didn't know her, those days, were
scarce. She was a London clipper and she carried a famous flag.
Everybody knew her but men who weren't sailors.

"Well, the boys said she had a bit of gibbet-post about her somewhere.
Ah! maybe. I don't know. Anyway, I say she was a fine clipper. I knew
her. She was the pick of the bunch, to my eye. But she was full of
trouble. I must say that. When she was launched she killed a man. First
she stuck on the ways, and then she went off all unexpected, like a
bird. That was always a trick of hers. You never knew her. And when she
was tired of headwinds, she'd find a dead calm. That was the kind of
ship she was. A skipper would look at her, and swear she was the ship
for him. The other chaps didn't understand her, he'd say. A ship like
that's sure to be good, he'd tell you. But when he'd got her she'd turn
his hair grey. She was that sort.

"One voyage she was six weeks beating to westward round Cape Horn. We
had a bad time. I'd never seen such seas. We could do no good there. It
was a voyage and a half. She lost the second mate overboard, and she
lost gear. So the old man put back to the Plate. And, of course, all
her crowd deserted, to a man. They said they wanted to see their homes
again before they died. They said there was something wrong about that
ship, and they left all their truck aboard, and made themselves scarce.
The old man scraped up a new crowd. They came aboard at dusk, one day,
and they stared about them. 'Look, sir,' said one of them, 'what's that
up there? What's that figgerhead in y'r main to'gallan' cross-tree?' I
was the mate, you know. I talked to that chap. He learned something
about getting the booze out of him before he came aboard. He got a move
on.

"We were over four months making 'Frisco that voyage, and she the
sailer she was. Why, she's logged thirteen knots. But she could get
nothing right, not for long. S