ved in an
off-hand manner that grated on my feelings, making me wish I had not
spoken so gushingly. "I think that sky shows signs of a blow before the
night is over, which will give you something better to do than star-
gazing!"

"I can't very well do that now, sir," said I slily, with a grin at
catching him tripping. "Why, the stars aren't out yet."

"That may be, Master Impudence," replied Mr Fosset, all genial again
and laughing too; "but they'll soon be popping out overhead."

"But, sir, it is quite light still," I persisted. "See, it is as bright
as day all round, just as at noontide!"

"Aye, but it'll be precious dark soon! It grows dusk in less than a
jiffey after the sun dips in these latitudes at this time o' year," said
he. "Hullo! I say, though, that reminds me, Haldane--"

"Of what, sir?" I asked as he stopped abruptly at this point.
"Anything I can do for you, Mr Fosset?"

"No, my boy, nothing," he replied reflectively, and looking for the
moment to be in as deep a brown study as he accused me of being just
now. "Stop, though, I tell you what you can do. Run forwards and see
what that lazy lubber of a lamp-trimmer is about. He's always half an
hour or so behind time, and seems to get later every day. Wake him up
and make him hoist our masthead lantern and fix the side lights in
position, for it'll soon be dark, I bet 'ee, in spite of all that flare-
up aloft over there, and we're now getting in the track of the homeward-
bounders crossing the Banks, and have to keep a sharp look-out and let
'em know where we are, to avoid any chance of collision."

"Aye, aye, sir," I cried, making my way along the gangway by the side of
the deckhouse towards the fo'c's'le, which was still lit up by the
afterglow as if on fire. "I'll see to it all right, and get our steam
lights rigged up at once, sir."

So saying, in another minute or so, scrambling over a lot of empty coal
sacks and other loose gear that littered the deck, besides getting
tripped up by the tackle of the ash hoist, which I did not see in time
from the glare of the sky coming right in my eyes, I gained the lee side
of the cook's galley at the forward end of the deckhouse. Here, as I
conjectured, I found old Greazer, our lamp-trimmer. This worthy, who
was quite a character in his way, was a superannuated fireman belonging
to the line, whom age and long years of toil had unfitted for the
rougher and more arduous duties of his vocation in