that this ship had never had a chance
since he had been on board of her. Not that he could remember. The last
captain. . . . He paused.

"Has he been so very unlucky?" I asked with frank incredulity. Mr. Burns
turned his eyes away from me. No, the late captain was not an unlucky
man. One couldn't say that. But he had not seemed to want to make use of
his luck.

Mr. Burns--man of enigmatic moods--made this statement with an inanimate
face and staring wilfully at the rudder casing. The statement itself was
obscurely suggestive. I asked quietly:

"Where did he die?"

"In this saloon. Just where you are sitting now," answered Mr. Burns.

I repressed a silly impulse to jump up; but upon the whole I was
relieved to hear that he had not died in the bed which was now to be
mine. I pointed out to the chief mate that what I really wanted to know
was where he had buried his late captain.

Mr. Burns said that it was at the entrance to the gulf. A roomy grave; a
sufficient answer. But the mate, overcoming visibly something within
him--something like a curious reluctance to believe in my advent (as an
irrevocable fact, at any rate), did not stop at that--though, indeed, he
may have wished to do so.

As a compromise with his feelings, I believe, he addressed himself
persistently to the rudder-casing, so that to me he had the appearance
of a man talking in solitude, a little unconsciously, however.

His tale was that at seven bells in the forenoon watch he had all hands
mustered on the quarterdeck and told them they had better go down to say
good-bye to the captain.

Those words, as if grudged to an intruding personage, were enough for
me to evoke vividly that strange ceremony: The bare-footed, bare-headed
seamen crowding shyly into that cabin, a small mob pressed against that
sideboard, uncomfortable rather than moved, shirts open on sunburnt
chests, weather-beaten faces, and all staring at the dying man with the
same grave and expectant expression.

"Was he conscious?" I asked.

"He didn't speak, but he moved his eyes to look at them," said the mate.

After waiting a moment, Mr. Burns motioned the crew to leave the cabin,
but he detained the two eldest men to stay with the captain while he
went on deck with his sextant to "take the sun." It was getting toward
noon and he was anxious to obtain a good observation for latitude. When
he returned below to put his sextant away he found that the two men had
retreated out into