f biscuits, a few tins of meat, and a breaker of
water. I was ordered to keep close to the long-boat, that in case of bad
weather we might be taken into her.

"And do you know what I thought? I thought I would part company as soon
as I could. I wanted to have my first command all to myself. I wasn't
going to sail in a squadron if there were a chance for independent
cruising. I would make land by myself. I would beat the other boats.
Youth! All youth! The silly, charming, beautiful youth.

"But we did not make a start at once. We must see the last of the ship.
And so the boats drifted about that night, heaving and setting on the
swell. The men dozed, waked, sighed, groaned. I looked at the burning
ship.

"Between the darkness of earth and heaven she was burning fiercely upon
a disc of purple sea shot by the blood-red play of gleams; upon a disc
of water glittering and sinister. A high, clear flame, an immense and
lonely flame, ascended from the ocean, and from its summit the black
smoke poured continuously at the sky. She burned furiously, mournful
and imposing like a funeral pile kindled in the night, surrounded by
the sea, watched over by the stars. A magnificent death had come like
a grace, like a gift, like a reward to that old ship at the end of her
laborious days. The surrender of her weary ghost to the keeping of stars
and sea was stirring like the sight of a glorious triumph. The masts
fell just before daybreak, and for a moment there was a burst and
turmoil of sparks that seemed to fill with flying fire the night patient
and watchful, the vast night lying silent upon the sea. At daylight
she was only a charred shell, floating still under a cloud of smoke and
bearing a glowing mass of coal within.

"Then the oars were got out, and the boats forming in a line moved round
her remains as if in procession--the long-boat leading. As we pulled
across her stern a slim dart of fire shot out viciously at us, and
suddenly she went down, head first, in a great hiss of steam. The
unconsumed stern was the last to sink; but the paint had gone, had
cracked, had peeled off, and there were no letters, there was no word,
no stubborn device that was like her soul, to flash at the rising sun
her creed and her name.

"We made our way north. A breeze sprang up, and about noon all the boats
came together for the last time. I had no mast or sail in mine, but I
made a mast out of a spare oar and hoisted a boat-awning for a sail,
wi