d enough to
drown conversation, and the grass grows man-high between the road and
the sidewalk. And there the woman lived a while and died. I was never in
the house, but young Strellett, the second steward, who was lost when
the _Toro_ turned over in the Yucatan channel, was married and lived
not far from Macedoine's _menage_, and I can imagine the place.
Strellett had a little three-roomed box where he lived with his big
rosy-cheeked Irish wife, and there was something very homelike about it,
for all the carpets and curtains and a good deal of the table-linen had
come from the Maracaibo Line's cabins. Sent ashore to be cleaned, you
know, and didn't get back. I dare say Macedoine's place was even more
completely furnished at the company's expense. They all did it. Perhaps
that was one of the reasons we all had to come home. That was ... yes,
more than twenty years ago.

"I'm afraid, though, there were not many of us like Macedoine. We didn't
come home to retire on a competency. New Orleans used to be what they
called 'a wide-open little town' and there were plenty of ways of
getting rid of our wages, good as they were. However, that's a detail.
We came home, except one or two youngsters who struck west and got into
Nevada mining plants or San Francisco lumber ships. I was glad to come.
I had a few shots in the locker and I went down into Hampshire to see my
people. I didn't stay as long as I intended. Who of us ever does? After
the first glow of welcome dies away, we have to depend on our personal
attractions to keep people interested. We may keep the ball rolling a
little longer if we get married or even engaged; but it is a sorry
business after all. You fellows are for ever wanting the ship to go
home. Well, you wait and see. You'll be glad to be back. When a man has
got the sea-habit, his relations always regard him as a bit of a
nuisance.

"I went to sea again. I joined a London Company which I always call now
'my old company' because I was so long with them, and have for them a
peculiar sort of cantankerous affection. They paid infernally poor
wages, they were always in a hole financially until the war made them
multi-millionaires, and their accommodation was pretty poor. But for
some reason or other men stayed with them. I believe it was because we
were working for a private firm and not for one of those gigantic
corporations without soul to be damned or body to be kicked, as the
saying is. The firm were real pe