e
he must have been over seventy years. Sometimes, but only to favoured
shipmates, he would tell of his service aboard a Yankee cruiser when
Fort Sumter fell, but he took greater pride in having been bo'sun of
the famous _Sovereign of the Seas_.

"Three hundred an' seventy miles," he would say; "that wos 'er day's
travellin'! That's wot Ah calls sailin' a ship. None o' yer damn
'clew up an' clew down,' but give 'er th' ruddy canvas an'--let 'er go,
boys!"

He was of the old type, bred in a hard sea-school. One of his boasts
was that he had sailed for five years in packet ships, 'an' never saw
th' pay table.' He would 'sign on' at Liverpool, giving his
boarding-master a month's advance note for quittance. At New York he
would desert, and after a bout ashore would sail for Liverpool in a new
ship. There was a reason for this seeming foolish way of doing.

"None o' yer slavin' at harbour jobs an' cargo work; not fer me, me
sons! Ah wos a sailorman an' did only sailorin' jobs. Them wos th'
days w'en sailormen wos men, an' no ruddy cargo-wrastlin', coal-diggin'
scallywags, wot they be now!"

A great upholder of the rights of the fo'cas'le, he looked on the Mates
as his natural enemies, and though he did his work, and did it well, he
never let pass an opportunity of trying a Mate's temper by outspoken
criticism of the Officers' way of handling ship or sail. Apprentices
he bore with, though he was always suspicious of a cabin influence.

That was Martin, our gallantly truculent, overbearing Old Martin; and,
as we looked on the motionless figure outlined by folds of the Flag, we
thought with regret of the time we took a pleasure in rousing him to a
burst of sailorly invective. Whistling about the decks, or flying past
him in the rigging with a great shaking of the shrouds when the 'crowd'
was laying aloft to hand sail. "Come on, old 'has-been'!" Jones once
shouted to him as he clambered over the futtock shrouds. Martin was
furious.

"Has-been," he shouted in reply. "Aye, mebbe a 'has-been,' but w'en ye
comes to my time o' life, young cock, ye can call yerself a
'never-bloody-wos'!"

Well! His watch was up, and when the black, ragged clouds broke away
from the sou'-west and roused the sea against us, we would be one less
to face it, and he would have rest till the great call of 'all hands';
rest below the heaving water that had borne him so long.

* * * * *

Surely there is no