ade a speech in
Welsh; Minnie glowed and blossomed; Arthur was everybody's friend.
The old Captain, seated at the bottom of the table with an iron-clad
matron on one side and a bored reporter on the other, watched him
with a groan. The man who was to take the Burdock out of dock was
drinking. Even one glass at such a time would have breached the old
man's code; it was a crime against shipmastership. But Arthur, with
his bride beside him, her brown eyes alight, her shoulder against his
shoulder, had gone much further than the one glass. The exhilaration
of the day dazzled him; a waiter with a bottle to refill his glass
was ever at his shoulder. His voice rattled on untiringly; already
the old man saw how the muscles or the jaw were slack and the eyes
moved loosely. The young Captain hid a toast to respond to; he swayed
as he stood up to speak, and his tongue stumbled on his consonants.
The reporter on Captain Price's left offered him champagne at the
moment.

"Take it away," rumbled the old man. "Swill it yourself."

The pressman nodded. "It is pretty shocking stuff," he agreed. "I'm
going nap on the coffee myself."

It came to a finish at last. The bride went up to change, and old
Captain Price took a cab to the docks. The Burdock was smart in new
paint, and even the deck hands had been washed for the occasion.

"I'll go down with you a bit," he explained to Sewell, the chief
mate. "The pilot'll bring me back. I suppose I can go up to the
chart-house?"

"Of course, sir," said Sewell. "If you can't go where you like aboard
of us, who can?"

The old man smiled. "That'll be for the Captain to say," he answered,
and went up the ladder.

She was very smart, the old Burdock, and Arthur had made changes in
the chart-house, but she had the same feel for her old Captain. Under
her paint and frills, the steel of her structure was unaltered; the
old engines would heave her along; the old seas conspire against her.
Shift and bedeck and bedrape her as they might, she was yet the
Burdock; her lights would run down the Channel with no new
consciousness in their stare, and there was work and peril for men
aboard of her as of old.

"Ah, father," said Arthur Price, as he came on the bridge. "Come to
shee me chase her roun' the d-dock, eh?" Even as he spoke he
tottered. "Damn shiip-pery deck, eh!" he said. "Well, you'll shee
shome shteering, 'tanyrate."

He wiped his forehead and his cap fell off. The old man stooped
hurried