sted you."

"Then he DID have a dog?"

"Yes, belonged to that poor girl."

"What became of him?"

The first officer leaned over the table and rested his elbows on the
cloth, his chin in the palms of his hands. For some time he did not
speak. Outside I could hear the thrash of the sea and the slosh of
spent waves coursing through the deck gutters.

"You want to hear about that dog, do you?" he asked, straightening up.
"Well, I can tell you if any man can, but you're to keep mum about it
to the captain."

Again I nodded.

He fumbled in his outside pocket, drew forth a short pipe, rapped out
the dead ashes, refilled it slowly from a pouch on the table, lighted
it, and settled himself in his chair.

"I'll begin at the beginning, for then you'll understand how I came to
be mixed up in it. I saw that dog when he first came aboard, and I want
to say right here that the sight of him raised a lump in my throat big
as your fist, for he was just the mate of the one I owned when I used
to look after my father's sheep on the hills where we lived. Then,
again, I took to him because he wasn't the kind of a pet I'd ever seen
at sea before--we'd had monkeys and parrots and a bobtail cat, but
never a dog--not a real, human dog.

"He was one of those brown-and-white combed-out collies we have up in
my country, with a long, pointed nose that could smell a mile and eyes
like your mother's--they were so soft and tender. One of those dogs
that when he put his cold nose alongside your cheek and snuffed around
your whiskers you loved him--you couldn't help it--and you knew he
loved you. As for the captain--the dog was never three feet from his
heels. Night or day, it was just the same--up on the bridge, followin'
him with his eyes every time he turned, or stretched out beside his
berth when he was asleep. Hard to understand how such a man can love a
dog until you saw that one. Then, again, this dog had another hold upon
the captain, for the girl had loved him just the same way.

"And he had the best nose in a fog--seemed as if he could sniff things
as they went by or came on dead ahead. After a while the captain would
send him out with the bow-watch in thick weather, and there he'd
crouch, his nose restin' on the rail, his eyes peerin' ahead. Once he
got on to a brigantine comin' bow on minutes before the lookout could
see her--smelt her, the men said, just as he used to smell the sheep
lost on the hillside at home. It was thick as