says. I said, 'I've got nothing except an extra suit
and some pyjamas.'

"He told me to get washed and go ashore and buy some bedding. 'I don't
know how you'll get on with that old Third,' he says. 'The last Fourth
left because of him.'

"'I'm not going to leave, sir,' I said. I wasn't going back for anybody.
I was going to find out something about life, right away from everybody
I'd ever known.

"'Bully for you,' says he, and with that he went away. I went ashore and
bought myself some gear, and by the time I got back it was eight
o'clock by my watch.

"Never shall I forget that night. I'd meant to write my mother and uncle
and tell them I was all right, but I was too tired and worried. The old
Third came aboard at ten o'clock with a skinful, and the Second was
rushing round cursing me because there was nobody else to curse. The
firemen were drunk and the donkey-man was drunk. And at eleven-fifteen
the gong sounded for slow-astern. I stood by the telegraph and worked
the handle, and do what I would I kept shutting my eyes. My God! I
thought, shall I ever sleep again? The old Third stood near me, his eyes
all bloodshot, the crease in his cheek working, his dyed moustache all
draggled, his breath--Humph! He was cunning enough to pretend he was all
right, helping the Second with the reversing gear. Now and again the
Chief would come down and give an order, his glass eye fixing me in a
queer way. I never got used to that glass eye. It wasn't part of him, so
to speak, and it distracted one's attention. The Chief himself would be
talking quite friendly to you, when you would suddenly catch sight of
that glass eye glaring at you, full of undying and unreasonable hate. He
would be roaring with laughter at some joke, while all the time the
glass eye seemed to be calculating a cold-blooded murder. It was strange
enough in its socket; but I tell you, when I ran up to call him for a
hot bearing one night and he looked across at me with one bright blue
eye and the other bloody-red and sunken, and I saw the glass thing
staring at me from the dressing table--Humph!

"At last, about one o'clock in the morning, we were outside, and he sent
me up to see if the pilot had gone. Just as I stumbled up on the
bridge-deck I saw the pilot going over the side, down a rope ladder. Oh,
didn't I wish I was going with him! She was beginning to roll, you see.

"And yet, though I was in the depths, so to speak, up to the eyes in it,
as I stoo