d worn away, was more transparent than ever; and yet never was
he more serene, never more the master absolute of our tiny, fragile
world. The age that showed in him was not a matter of terrestrial years.
It was ageless, passionless, beyond human. Never had he appeared so
great to me, so far remote, so much a spirit visitant.

And he cautioned and advised me, in silver-mellow beneficent voice, as I
essayed the venture of opening the chart-house door to gain outside. He
knew the moment, although I never could have guessed it for myself, and
gave the word that enabled me to win the poop.

Water was everywhere. The _Elsinore_ was rushing through a blurring
whirr of water. Seas creamed and licked the poop-deck edge, now to
starboard, now to port. High in the air, over-towering and perilously
down-toppling, following-seas pursued our stern. The air was filled with
spindrift like a fog or spray. No officer of the watch was in sight. The
poop was deserted, save for two helmsmen in streaming oilskins under the
half-shelter of the open wheel-house. I nodded good morning to them.

One was Tom Spink, the elderly but keen and dependable English sailor.
The other was Bill Quigley, one of a forecastle group of three that
herded uniquely together, though the other two, Frank Fitzgibbon and
Richard Oiler, were in the second mate's watch. The three had proved
handy with their fists, and clannish; they had fought pitched forecastle
battles with the gangster clique and won a sort of neutrality of
independence for themselves. They were not exactly sailors--Mr. Mellaire
sneeringly called them the "bricklayers"--but they had successfully
refused subservience to the gangster crowd.

To cross the deck from the chart-house to the break of the poop was no
slight feat, but I managed it and hung on to the railing while the wind
stung my flesh with the flappings of my pyjamas. At this moment, and for
the moment, the _Elsinore_ righted to an even keel, and dashed along and
down the avalanching face of a wave. And as she thus righted her deck
was filled with water level from rail to rail. Above this flood, or knee-
deep in it, Mr. Pike and half-a-dozen sailors were bunched on the fife-
rail of the mizzen-mast. The carpenter, too, was there, with a couple of
assistants.

The next roll spilled half a thousand tons of water outboard sheer over
the starboard-rail, while all the starboard ports opened automatically
and gushed huge strea