that can sing? Come on, now! It's a topsail-yard--"

He broke off to leap in to the pin-rail and get the wrong ropes out of
the men's hands to put into them the right rope.

"Come on, bosun! Break her out!"

Then out of the gloom arose Sundry Buyers' voice, cracked and crazy and
even more lugubrious than Nancy's:

"Then up aloft that yard must go,
Whiskey for my Johnny."

The second line was supposed to be the chorus, but not more than two men
feebly mumbled it. Sundry Buyers quavered the next line:

"Oh, whiskey killed my sister Sue."

Then Mr. Pike took a hand, seizing the hauling-part next to the pin and
lifting his voice with a rare snap and devilishness:

"And whiskey killed the old man, too,
Whiskey for my Johnny."

He sang the devil-may-care lines on and on, lifting the crew to the work
and to the chorused emphasis of "Whiskey for my Johnny."

And to his voice they pulled, they moved, they sang, and were alive,
until he interrupted the song to cry "Belay!"

And then all the life and lilt went out of them, and they were again
maundering and futile things, getting in one another's way, stumbling and
shuffling through the darkness, hesitating to grasp ropes, and, when they
did take hold, invariably taking hold of the wrong rope first. Skulkers
there were among them, too; and once, from for'ard of the 'midship house,
I heard smacks, and curses, and groans, and out of the darkness hurriedly
emerged two men, on their heels Mr. Pike, who chanted a recital of the
distressing things that would befall them if he caught them at such
tricks again.

The whole thing was too depressing for me to care to watch further, so I
strolled aft and climbed the poop. In the lee of the chart-house Captain
West and the pilot were pacing slowly up and down. Passing on aft, I saw
steering at the wheel the weazened little old man I had noted earlier in
the day. In the light of the binnacle his small blue eyes looked more
malevolent than ever. So weazened and tiny was he, and so large was the
brass-studded wheel, that they seemed of a height. His face was
withered, scorched, and wrinkled, and in all seeming he was fifty years
older than Mr. Pike. He was the most remarkable figure of a burnt-out,
aged man one would expect to find able seaman on one of the proudest
sailing-ships afloat. Later, through Wada, I was to learn that his name
was Andy Fay and that he claimed no more years than sixty-three.

I