met him and made much of him. Old Davis was a man who had built up
his own fortune, scraping tonnage together bit by bit, from the time
when, as a captain, he had salved a crazy derelict and had her turned
over to him by the underwriters in quittance of his claims. Now he
owned a little fleet of good steamships of respectable burthen, and
was an esteemed owner. He did not press the Stormberg on Captain
Price. The two old men understood each other.

"I don't want her," Captain Price told him. "There's a time for
nursin' tender engines and a time for scrappin' them. I'm for the
scrap heap, David. I'm not the man I was. I don't put faith in myself
no more. It's Arthur's turn now."

David Davis nodded. "Yes, then. Well, well, now! It's a pity, too,
John. But you know what's best, to be sure. I don't want you to go
without a ship while I've got a bottom afloat, but I don't want you
to put the Stormberg to roost on the rocks of Lundy neither. So you
wouldn't put faith in yourself no more!"

"No," said Captain Price, frowning reflectively "I wouldn't, and
that's the truth." He was seated in a plush-covered arm-chair in
Davis's parlour, and now he leaned forward. "It's this arm of mine.
It isn't there, but I can't get rid of the feeling of it. I'm always
reachin' for things with it. I'd be reachin' for the telegraph in a
hurry, I make no doubt."

"That's funny," said Davis, in sympathy. "Well, then, you just stop
visiting with me. I've no mind to be alone in the house when your
Arthur's gone off with my Minnie. He'll push the Burdock back an'
fore for us, and we'll sit ashore like gentlemen. He makes a good
figure of a skipper, don't he, John?"

Old Captain Price sighed. "Aye, he looks well on the bridge," he
said. "I hope he'll watch the ship, though; she's a big old tub to
handle."

He saw the Burdock into dry dock and strolled down each day to look
at her. Minnie and Arthur were busy with preparations for the
wedding. But the girl found time to go down once with the old man,
and he took her into the dock under the steamship.

"A big thing she looks from here," he said, half to himself.

The girl looked forward. Over them the bottom plates of the Burdock
made a great sloping roof; her rolling chocks stood out like
galleries. Her lines bulged heavily out, and the girl saw the
immensity of the great fabric, the power of the tool her husband
should wield.

"She's big, indeed," she answered. "Five thousand tons and fo