down and began feeling under the anchor for his pipe. We
had hardly shipped any water forward, and I suppose he had some
way of tucking the pipe in, so that the rain hadn't floated it
off. Presently he got on his legs again, and I saw that he had
two pipes in his hand. One of them had belonged to his brother,
and after looking at them a moment I suppose he recognised his
own, for he put it in his mouth, dripping with water. Then he
looked at the other fully a minute without moving. When he had
made up his mind, I suppose, he quietly chucked it over the lee
rail, without even looking round to see whether I was watching
him. I thought it was a pity, for it was a good wooden pipe, with
a nickel ferrule, and somebody would have been glad to have it.
But I didn't like to make any remark, for he had a right to do
what he pleased with what had belonged to his dead brother. He
blew the water out of his own pipe, and dried it against his
jacket, putting his hand inside his oilskin; he filled it,
standing under the lee of the foremast, got a light after wasting
two or three matches, and turned the pipe upside down in his
teeth, to keep the rain out of the bowl. I don't know why I
noticed everything he did, and remember it now; but somehow I
felt sorry for him, and I kept wondering whether there was
anything I could say that would make him feel better. But I
didn't think of anything, and as it was broad daylight I went aft
again, for I guessed that the old man would turn out before long
and order the spanker set and the helm up. But he didn't turn out
before seven bells, just as the clouds broke and showed blue sky
to leeward--"the Frenchman's barometer," you used to call it.

Some people don't seem to be so dead, when they are dead, as
others are. Jim Benton was like that. He had been on my watch,
and I couldn't get used to the idea that he wasn't about decks
with me. I was always expecting to see him, and his brother was
so exactly like him that I often felt as if I did see him and
forgot he was dead, and made the mistake of calling Jack by his
name; though I tried not to, because I knew it must hurt. If ever
Jack had been the cheerful one of the two, as I had always
supposed he had been, he had changed very much, for he grew to be
more silent than Jim had ever been.

One fine afternoon I was sitting on the main-hatch, overhauling
the clock-work of the taffrail-log, which hadn't been registering
very well of late, and I had