, where they
paled and vanished in the light of the rising moon. Then he became
aware of a figure promenading the quarterdeck. It was the "Old Man."

A sea captain is always the "old man," be his age what it may. Captain
Le Farges' age might have been forty-five. He was a sailor of the Jean
Bart type, of French descent, but a naturalised American.

"I don't know where the wind's gone," said the captain as he drew near
the man in the deck chair. "I guess it's blown a hole in the firmament,
and escaped somewheres to the back of beyond."

"It's been a long voyage," said Lestrange; "and I'm thinking, Captain,
it will be a very long voyage for me. My port's not 'Frisco; I feel it."

"Don't you be thinking that sort of thing," said the other, taking his
seat in a chair close by. "There's no manner of use forecastin' the
weather a month ahead. Now we're in warm latitoods, your glass will
rise steady, and you'll be as right and spry as any one of us, before
we fetch the Golden Gates."

"I'm thinking about the children," said Lestrange, seeming not to hear
the captain's words. "Should anything happen to me before we reach
port, I should like you to do something for me. It's only this: dispose
of my body without--without the children knowing. It has been in my
mind to ask you this for some days. Captain, those children know
nothing of death."

Le Farge moved uneasily in his chair.

"Little Emmeline's mother died when she was two. Her father--my
brother--died before she was born. Dicky never knew a mother; she died
giving him birth. My God, Captain, death has laid a heavy hand on my
family; can you wonder that I have hid his very name from those two
creatures that I love!"

"Ay, ay," said Le Farge, "it's sad! it's sad!"

"When I was quite a child," went on Lestrange, "a child no older than
Dicky, my nurse used to terrify me with tales about dead people. I was
told I'd go to hell when I died if I wasn't a good child. I cannot tell
you how much that has poisoned my life, for the thoughts we think in
childhood, Captain, are the fathers of the thoughts we think when we
are grown up. And can a diseased father have healthy children?"

"I guess not."

"So I just said, when these two tiny creatures came into my care, that
I would do all in my power to protect them from the terrors of life--or
rather, I should say, from the terror of death. I don't know whether I
have done right, but I have done it for the best. They had a