he setting up of the new boom the Old Man
was anxious to get under weigh. The to'gallant mast could wait till
the fine weather of the 'trades.' We were sound and seaworthy again!
Outside the winds were fair and southerly. We had no excuse to lie
swinging at single anchor. Jock Steel and his mates got their
blessing, our 'lawin'' was paid and acquitted, and on a clear November
morning we shook out the topsails and left Port William to the circling
sea-birds.

XX

UNDER THE FLAG

A black, threatening sky, with heavy banks of indigo-tinted clouds
massed about the sea-line. A sickly, greenish light high up in the
zenith. Elsewhere the gloom of warring elements broken only by flashes
of sheet lightning, vivid but noiseless. The sea, rolling up from the
sou'-west in a long glassy swell, was ruffled here and there by the
checks of a fitful breeze. It needed not a deadly low barometer to
tell us of a coming storm; we saw it in the tiers of hard-edged
fearsome clouds, breaking up and re-forming, bank upon bank, in endless
figurations. Some opposing force was keeping the wind in check; there
was conflict up there, for, though masses of detached cloud were
breaking away and racing o'er the zenith, we held but a fitful gusty
breeze, and our barque, under low sail, was lurching uneasily for want
of a steadying wind.

It was a morning of ill-omen, and the darkling sky but reflected the
gloom of our faces; our thoughts were in keeping with the day, for we
had lost a shipmate, one among us was gone, Old Martin was dead.

He died sometime in the middle watch, no one knew when. He was awake
when the watch came below at midnight, for Welsh John had given him
matches for his pipe before turning in. That was the last, for when
they were called at four, Martin was cold and quiet. There was no
trouble on his face, no sign of pain or suffering. Belike the old man
had put his pipe aside, and finding no shipmate awake to 'pass the
word,' had gently claimed his Pilot.

There was no great show of grief when it was known. Perhaps a bit
catch in the voice when speaking of it, an unusual gentleness in our
manner towards one another, but no resemblance of mourning, no shadow
of woe. His was no young life untimely ended, there was no accident to
be discussed, no blame to be apportioned. It was just that old lamp
had flickered out at last. Ours was a sense of loss, we had lost a
shipmate. There would be another empty bunk