is poetry more times than he cared to count. With
passengers especially he kept it scrupulously in the background, even as
he did his talent for making sweet music on the accordion.

But somehow he and Hamilton, after a few days' acquaintance, seemed to
glide into the subject imperceptibly. Mutual confidences followed in the
course of nature. It seemed that Hamilton too, like Kettle, was a
devotee of the stiller forms of verse.

"You see, Skipper," he said, "I've been a pretty bad lot, and I've made
things hum most of my time, and so I suppose I get my hankerings after
restfulness as the natural result of contrast."

"Same here, sir. Ashore I can respect myself, and in our chapel circle,
though I say it myself, you'll find few more respected men. But at sea I
shouldn't like to tell you what I've done; I shouldn't like to tell any
one. If a saint has to come down and skipper the brutes we have to ship
as sailormen nowadays, he'd wear out his halo flinging it at them. And
when matters have been worst, and I've been bashing the hands about, or
doing things to carry out an owner's order that I'd blush even to think
of ashore, why then, sir, gentle verse, to tunes I know, seems to
bubble up inside me like springs in a barren land."

"Well, I don't know about that," said Hamilton doubtfully, "but when I
get thoroughly sick of myself, and wish I was dead, I sometimes stave
off putting a shot through my silly head by getting a pencil and paper,
and shifting my thoughts out of the beastly world I know, into--well,
it's hard to explain. But I get sort of notions, don't you see, and they
seem to run best in verse. I write 'em when the fit's on me, and I burn
'em when the fit's through; and you'll hardly think it, but I never told
a living soul I ever did such a thing till I told you this minute. My
set--I mean, I couldn't bear to be laughed at. But you seem to be a
fellow that's been in much the same sort of box yourself."

"I don't know quite that. At any rate, I've never thought of shooting
myself."

"Oh, I didn't mean to suggest we were alike at all in detail. I was only
thinking we had both seen rough times. Lord forbid that any man should
ever be half the fool that I have been." He sighed heavily.--"However,
sufficient for the day. Look out over yonder; there's a bit of color
for you."

A shoal of flying-fish got up out of the warm, shining water and ran
away over the ripples like so many silver rats; yellow tangles of