ocket. Of course, any officer who respects
himself will do what he can to pick a man up, if the weather is
not so heavy that he would have to risk his ship; but I don't
think I remember seeing a man come back when he was once fairly
gone more than two or three times in all my life, though we have
often picked up the life-buoy, and sometimes the fellow's cap.
Stokers and passengers jump over; I never knew a sailor to do
that, drunk or sober. Yes, they say it has happened on hard
ships, but I never knew a case myself. Once in a long time a man
is fished out when it is just too late, and dies in the boat
before you can get him aboard, and--well, I don't know that I
ever told that story since it happened--I knew a fellow who went
over, and came back dead. I didn't see him after he came back;
only one of us did, but we all knew he was there.

No, I am not giving you "sharks." There isn't a shark in this
story, and I don't know that I would tell it at all if we weren't
alone, just you and I. But you and I have seen things in various
parts, and maybe you will understand. Anyhow, you know that I am
telling what I know about, and nothing else; and it has been on
my mind to tell you ever since it happened, only there hasn't
been a chance.

It's a long story, and it took some time to happen; and it began
a good many years ago, in October, as well as I can remember. I
was mate then; I passed the local Marine Board for master about
three years later. She was the _Helen B. Jackson_, of New York,
with lumber for the West Indies, four-masted schooner, Captain
Hackstaff. She was an old-fashioned one, even then--no steam
donkey, and all to do by hand. There were still sailors in the
coasting trade in those days, you remember. She wasn't a hard
ship, for the old man was better than most of them, though he
kept to himself and had a face like a monkey-wrench. We were
thirteen, all told, in the ship's company; and some of them
afterwards thought that might have had something to do with it,
but I had all that nonsense knocked out of me when I was a boy. I
don't mean to say that I like to go to sea on a Friday, but I
_have_ gone to sea on a Friday, and nothing has happened; and
twice before that we have been thirteen, because one of the hands
didn't turn up at the last minute, and nothing ever happened
either--nothing worse than the loss of a light spar or two, or a
little canvas. Whenever I have been wrecked, we had sailed as
cheerily as