y profits and drinking
my champagne that I gave my honour for? and that you'll attend to your
duties, and stand watch and watch, and bear your proper share of the
ship's work, instead of leaving it all on the shoulders of a landsman,
and making yourself the butt and scoff of native seamen? Is that what
you mean? If it is, be so good as to say it categorically."

"You put these things in a way hard for a gentleman to swallow," said
the captain. "You wouldn't have me say I was ashamed of myself? Trust me
this once; I'll do the square thing, and there's my hand on it."

"Well, I'll try it once," said Herrick. "Fail me again...."

"No more now!" interrupted Davis. "No more, old man! Enough said. You've
a riling tongue when your back's up, Herrick. Just be glad we're friends
again, the same as what I am; and go tender on the raws; I'll see as
you don't repent it. We've been mighty near death this day--don't say
whose fault it was!--pretty near hell, too, I guess. We're in a mighty
bad line of life, us two, and ought to go easy with each other."

He was maundering; yet it seemed as if he were maundering with some
design, beating about the bush of some communication that he feared to
make, or perhaps only talking against time in terror of what Herrick
might say next. But Herrick had now spat his venom; his was a kindly
nature, and, content with his triumph, he had now begun to pity. With a
few soothing words he sought to conclude the interview, and proposed
that they should change their clothes.

"Not right yet," said Davis. "There's another thing I want to tell you
first. You know what you said about my children? I want to tell you why
it hit me so hard; I kind of think you'll feel bad about it too. It's
about my little Adar. You hadn't ought to have quite said that--but of
course I know you didn't know. She--she's dead, you see."

"Why, Davis!" cried Herrick. "You've told me a dozen times she was
alive! Clear your head, man! This must be the drink."

"No, _sir_," said Davis. "She's dead. Died of a bowel complaint. That
was when I was away in the brig _Oregon_. She lies in Portland, Maine.
'Adar, only daughter of Captain John Davis and Mariar his wife, aged
five.' I had a doll for her on board. I never took the paper off'n that
doll, Herrick; it went down the way it was with the _Sea Ranger_, that
day I was damned."

The captain's eyes were fixed on the horizon; he talked with an
extraordinary softness, but a complete