I'm wit' youse. I'm wit' youse the whole way. Any
friend of the little dame is a friend of mine. She's a square little
dame. D' youse get me?"

"Thank you," said Cleggett, more affected than he would have cared to
own. "Thank you, my loyal fellow."

Cleggett established a watch on deck that night, with a relief every
two hours. Towards morning George returned, with Dr. Farnsworth and a
nurse. This nurse, Miss Antoinette Medley, was a black-eyed, slender
girl with pretty hands and white teeth; she gestured a great deal and
smiled often. She and Dr. Farnsworth devoted themselves at once to the
young anarchist poet, who had come out of his stupor, indeed, but was
now babbling weakly in the delirium of fever.

The night was not a cheerful one, and morning came gloomily out of a
gray bank of mist. Cleggett, as he looked about the boat in the first
pale light, could not resist a slight feeling of depression, courageous
as he was. The wounded man gibbered in a bunk in the forecastle. The
box of Reginald Maltravers stood on one end, leaning against the port
side of the cabin, and dripped steadily. Elmer, wrapped in blankets,
lay on the deck near the box of Reginald Maltravers, looking even more
dejected in slumber than when his eyes were open. Teddy, the
Pomeranian, was snuggled against Elmer's feet, but, as if a prey to
frightful nightmares, the little dog twitched and whined in his sleep
from time to time. These were the apparent facts, and these facts were
set to a melancholy tune by the long-drawn, dismal snores of Cap'n
Abernethy, which rose and fell, and rose and fell, and rose again like
the sad and wailing song of some strange bird bereft of a beloved mate.
They were the music for, and the commentary on, what Cleggett beheld;
Cap'n Abernethy seemed to be saying, with these snores: "If you was to
ask me, I'd say it ain't a cheerful ship this mornin', Mr. Cleggett, it
ain't a cheerful ship."

But Cleggett's nature was too lively and vigorous to remain clouded for
long. By the time the red disk of the sun had crept above the eastern
horizon he had shaken off his fit of the blues.

The sun looked large and bland and friendly, and, somehow, the partisan
of integrity and honor. He drew strength from it. Cleggett, like all
poetic souls, was responsive to these familiar recurrent phenomena of
nature.

The sun did him another office. It showed him a peculiar tableau
vivant on the eastern bank of the cana