ee boats and see that each
has her share fairly apportioned.'

"I tell you, Roddy, that this Macnaughten, who aboard the _Eurotas_
had been an ordinary skipper conning his ship, and nowise hearty or
communicative, of a sudden proved himself as great as any man I've
read of in history. . . . You may smile if you will. But here was a
man abandoned by Heaven in the waste of the South Pacific, with all
his prospects blasted and all the hopes built on the _Eurotas_ line
(in which, I learned, he had piled his money); with a wife at home,
moreover, and a daughter. Yet for the seven days we kept company he
stood up to duty, fathered us all, never showed sick or sorry.
He had a fairish baritone voice, and it was he that started us
singing to fill up the endless time. How does it go?--"

Thus sang they in an English boat,
A holy and a cheerful note--

God! I can hear his voice now, trolling _Nancy Lee_ back across the
waters, defying them, until the night quenched it.

"Through these seven days, regularly and towards noon, he signalled
and I went aboard No. 3 for a lesson in navigation. It was the third
day that, returning, I found Grimalson didn't stomach these visits.
Grimalson was a mean man, and incompetent; the sort that knows he's
not trusted, knows there's good reason for it, and resents it all the
time. I thought him just a sulky brute, and noted that on some
excuse or other it was always inconvenient to be close up with No. 3
boat as it drew towards midday and my time (as he put it, growling)
for 'taking the Old Man's temperature.' He was misguided enough, on
the fourth day, to let off a part of this rather feeble joke upon the
captain himself, and found his bearings pretty smartly. He had so
managed things that at ten minutes to noon it became pretty clear I
must miss my appointment. All three boats carried sail now: the
weather being perfect, with a nor'-westerly breeze, light but steady:
and the three were running before it pretty well abreast like three
tiny butterflies on the waste of water--for I should tell you that
all three were twenty-four footers, built to one whale-boat model on
the same moulds, and carried small Bermuda, or leg-of-mutton sails,
cut to one pattern--when Grimalson took it into his head that our
down-haul should be tautened in, cursed the man who was doing his
best to execute a silly order, ran forward, and so messed matters
that the sail had to be three-parts lowered an