ing back. They didn't get any geese, because geese, wild
geese, anyway, aren't near so foolish as a lot of people think. They
were hungry and sat right down to supper.

Among them, as I looked, was one I knew for Peter Lawson, an old
shipmate. A warrant officer I saw he was now, but when I knew him he was
a chief carpenter's mate on the old _Missalama_. We kept eying each
other, and by and by he remembered, and we stood up and shook hands
across the fire. In half a minute we were talking of old days in the
navy.

By this time it was late day, with the sun going down below the hills on
the other side of Pouvenir Bay. I remember it went down red as the heart
of the fire we were sitting by. Through the little thin whiffs of the
smoke of the fire it looked like that--all hot color and no flame.
Nothing to that, of course, only pictures like that do start your brain
to going. The little bay was there at our feet and the wide straits off
to our elbow, and the water of that bay was smooth green where it
shoaled on the pebbly spit; but the straits, as far as we could see
them, were one long roll of tossing ridges and scooping hollows, and
they were all black except where the williwaws, cutting across the tide,
would whip the ridges to a marble white.

I saw the sun set red through the thin blue smoke of the fire, and
almost in line with the sun and the smoke was the stranded bark with her
deckload of lumber. A little farther off was my own little _Svend Foyn_.
It was coming on dark by then and I could see them making ready the
anchor light on the _Svend Foyn_. And it was coming colder, too, for the
broad, warm north wind had changed to a thin little icy wind from the
south.

And now the fiery-red reflection of the sun was gone from above the
hills across the bay, and when that went all warmth went with it.
Everybody drew nearer to the fire except the two apprentice boys, who
were cleaning up the mess gear in water made hot at a little fire of
their own. One of them was singing to himself little jiggly, ragtime
songs while he wiped the dishes:

"Oh-h, ahm gwine down to Macon town
Ter buy mah 'Liza Jane a gown--
Ah feel so happy 'n' ah don' know why,
Mah bai-bie, mah hon-ie!"

Every time he stacked up a few plates he would stop to roll a few more
cake-walk steps.

"I wish I was feeling as good as you!" I said to myself while I watched
him.

And, watching him, I got to thinking of Hilda in the big fro