pretty hard in the time that's ahead of us, it won't
mean that I ain't feeling things at the back of it.'

"'Thank you, Captain Macnaughten,' said I, pretty earnestly.
'The best I can answer is the simplest--that you're doing me much
honour.'

"'That's all right,' he said lightly: 'all right and understood.
One man often helps another in funny little ways in this funny old
world.' After a pause he went on yet more lightly and cheerfully,
'Well--and I've noticed you've a trick of beginning your sentences on
that word 'well': it's a habit of mine too, they tell me--as the
ladies say ashore, we're going to be worse before we are better, so
we'll call those fellows aft a bit and ease the steering. . . . Stay
a minute, though, before I call to them. . . . A clever man like you
ought to be able to pick up a bit of navigation in a few lessons.
While our boats keep together (as, please God, they will to the end)
it wouldn't be a bad notion if you dropped alongside just before
midday for a morning call, and I'll learn you how to handle a sextant
and prick down a reckoning. . . . It'll be sociable, too. . . . Yes,
I'll signal the time to you: but, to be ready for it, you might set
your watch by my chronometer here. . . . I wonder, now,' he inquired
oddly, 'if you've forgot to wind yours up to-night?'

"Well, Roddy, it's the truth that I had forgotten. I looked at him,
pretty foolish, and with that we both laughed--yes, there and then, a
sort of laugh, low and quiet, like well-water bubbling.

"'Now I'll tell _you_,' said the skipper, 'I caught myself winding up
mine the moment after the ship went down . . . that's funny, eh?
Five minutes to nine was the hour. . . . I'd hooked the old timepiece
out of my fob, and there I was, winding, for all the world as if
ashore and going to bed. . . . See here--three turns of the winch and
she's chock-a-block again, if you ever! . . . And, come to think, I
may as well correct _her_ by the chronometer, too.'

"So we solemnly set our watches together, there by the binnacle
light. A queer fancy took me that the act was a sort of ritual, not
devised by either of us--a setting and sealing of friendship. . . .
Ought a fellow, Roddy, shipwrecked in the South Pacific, to complain
while he has these three stand-by's--a woman to love, a man to
admire, and a man to hate?"

"The engineer died just before dawn. Indeed, the day broke of a
sudden as I finished straightening his body and wrapping