heel
and start making noises to himself. He'd sit there with his old chin
drooping and say, '... I knew it.... Haw, haw.... The silly old b----....
Bless my soul....' for twenty minutes. I'd go away from the wheel for
fear of laughing out--and then he'd go somewhere else and do it."

"Davy Jones got him at the finish, didn't he?"

"--And a dam'd fine ship too."

"It was her maiden trip."

"What happened to her?"

"Ran ashore."

"Both the boats capsized."

"She had the most valuable cargo I ever heard of." A pause.

"Old Shank used to ask for it, though. Once in the Gulf of Mexico he was
down below, and the ship was on the course he'd given. (He never used
to take any notice of deviation.) The second mate heard breakers, you
could hear them quite plain, and not very far off; so he turns the ship
a little, and goes down to tell Shank. Old Shank jumped up and stormed
and stamped, and rushed up on the bridge roaring, '_Am I to be taught
after forty-eight years at sea by a set of b---- schoolboys?_' and had
her put back to the old course again. And then he walked off. You could
hear him snapping his teeth. Presently he stopped. You could see the
breakers now, the phosphorescence of them. '_What's that?_' he whipped
out, '_What's that?_ My God.'"

"He was one of the white-haired boys in the office, what's more."

"His officers saved him."

"Well, one night he gave me a course, and the last thing he said to me
on the bridge was, 'It's up to you to keep her there.' I soon found we
were going to fall on land, and I changed the course. And as it was, we
passed three-quarters of a mile inside the lightship. I went down to his
room and told him. 'Why, you damn'd fool,' he started off; he nearly
went mad. 'But I've hauled her out,' I said, 'I hauled her out.' And
then he yelled, 'Changed her course without orders, did you?' and so on."

"Well, the office made a pet of him. Some people get away with it."

"After my trip with him, the whole crew refused to sail with him again.
And the mate went up to Shields to join a new ship. And when he got there,
he found Shank had joined her as skipper!"

We came into the Doldrums, and I felt none too well. "Cold, worse; heat,
worse," became my diary's keynote. The steward also complained of a
persistent cold. Six bottles--six--of his own medicine since we left Barry
had not cured him. This notable Cardiff Irishman was always pleased to
answer questions about this cold of his, an