to be wanting to get together. Their crews used to say of them that if
left anchored at all near each other in the stream, they would start
right away to swing toward each other. Even if it was slack water they
would. Yes, sir.

I can't speak from personal knowledge of that tide-swinging trick, but I
do know that I saw them a few hours after they had twice smashed into
each other--once under sail off the Capes and once in tow up Boston
Harbor; and it was not to be doubted that in both cases they had more
than drifted into each other. And of their near-collisions! A day's loaf
along the water-front would yield gossip of a dozen or more.

Now, these next few lines are from out of the sailors' book of gossip of
mysterious happenings at sea; and it is true that the more sailorly the
gossip, the more likely will it be to try to account for unusual
accidents at sea in a natural way; and the most usual reason given is
inefficiency--lack of seamanship. As to that, it is true that lack of
seamanship or of sea instinct has accounted for many calamities at sea,
and the same lack would probably account for many another not so set
down on the public tablets; but lack of seamanship won't account for all
the queer happenings at sea. Every now and then comes a ship which no
earthly power seems able to keep up with. From out of our superior shore
knowledge we may deduce that the builder or designer was in fault, that
there must have been an asymmetry in her hull, or that her rigging
lacked balance, such defects tending to render her uncontrollable under
certain conditions. Maybe; but there she is, as she is, with the malign
fates seeming to be working double tides to get her.

"Hoodoo ships," sailors term such, and "Hoo-doos, both of 'em," the
crews of the collier fleet early labelled the _Orion_ and the _Sirius_.
Yes, _sir_. And some day the pair of them were going up--or down--in a
whirl of glory. If only they would smash only each other, and not go to
putting poor innocent outsiders out of commission when they did
go!--that was all they'd ask of _them_.

The master of the _Orion_ was Oliver Sickles; of the _Sirius_, Norman
Sickles; and they were from the same little hamlet in that Cape Shore
region whence come so many capable sailormen. Each was named for his
father, and their fathers were brothers who hated each other and brought
up their children to hate each other.

It was curious to see them--two master mariners commanding