h everything happening from Galveston to Biloxi and from Tampa
to Boston. Did I remember So-and-so--chap with a squint, or a mole, or
a broken finger, as the case might be. Cotter always emphasized a man's
physical defects in alluding to him. And so the talk came round to 'Oh,
did I remember that chap with the solemn face and the big stomach?
Captain Macedoine we used to call him? Why, didn't you hear? Extradition
order. Yes! The cunning old guy had a dozen opium dives off Rampart
Street in full swing. Must have been coining money. No, they never got
him. He had left England by that time. Nobody knows where he is now, I
suppose. Smart, eh?' Such was Captain Macedoine to me as I sat listening
to the good Jack sputtering in his cabin:

"'Great Christopher! And who in thunder gave you a name like that. What
is it, again?' And then Mrs. Evans interposing with 'That will do, dear.
She can't help her name.'

"'A h--l of a name for a servant,' muttered Jack.

"Well, poor Jack found that taking his family to sea was a more
formidable affair than he had imagined. The fact was, Jack, although he
had been married six years, knew no more about married life than a
bachelor. He hadn't spent more than a week at one time alongside of his
wife. Many sea-faring men are like this. The very routine of ordinary
household existence is novel to them. They live voyage after voyage at
sea, dreaming of an impossibly perfect existence ashore, and their brief
holidays, in their wives' houses only confirm them in the delusion that
shore life is heaven, and life on board ship hell. Whereas, you know, it
is really the other way round."

"Oh, I say!" said Inness, who, in spite of Oxford, retained his
illusions.

"What rot, Spenlove!" said the First Lieutenant, a gentleman still
unmarried, but rigidly engaged.

"Ah, but you forget," retorted Mr. Spenlove, laughing softly as he gazed
up at the moon now high over the cliff. He looked very like a benevolent
satyr as he sat leaning forward in his chair, his chin on his hands, his
trim gray beard pushed out, and his curiously slanted black eyebrows
raised--"You forget that I am dealing with basic realities. You forget
that ninety-nine sailor-men out of each hundred feed themselves
exclusively on dreams. You are like the donkey who imagines he sees a
resplendent carrot hung in front of him. It is not only that he never
gets the carrot. There never was any carrot for him to get. I
repeat--dear old Jack