at their lives and memories were mine, and that all this
vexation of the sea and air and labouring ship was of old time and a
thousand times before.

CHAPTER XXXIV

"How are you for a climb?" Margaret asked me, shortly after we had left
the table.

She stood challengingly at my open door, in oilskins, sou'wester, and sea-
boots.

"I've never seen you with a foot above the deck since we sailed," she
went on. "Have you a good head?"

I marked my book, rolled out of my bunk in which I had been wedged, and
clapped my hands for Wada.

"Will you?" she cried eagerly.

"If you let me lead," I answered airily, "and if you will promise to hold
on tight. Whither away?"

"Into the top of the jigger. It's the easiest. As for holding on,
please remember that I have often done it. It is with you the doubt
rests."

"Very well," I retorted; "do you lead then. I shall hold on tight."

"I have seen many a landsman funk it," she teased. "There are no lubber-
holes in our tops."

"And most likely I shall," I agreed. "I've never been aloft in my life,
and since there is no hole for a lubber."

She looked at me, half believing my confession of weakness, while I
extended my arms for the oilskin which Wada struggled on to me.

On the poop it was magnificent, and terrible, and sombre. The universe
was very immediately about us. It blanketed us in storming wind and
flying spray and grayness. Our main deck was impassable, and the relief
of the wheel came aft along the bridge. It was two o'clock, and for over
two hours the frozen wretches had laid out upon the fore-yard. They were
still there, weak, feeble, hopeless. Captain West, stepping out in the
lee of the chart-house, gazed at them for several minutes.

"We'll have to give up that reef," he said to Mr. Pike. "Just make the
sail fast. Better put on double gaskets."

And with lagging feet, from time to time pausing and holding on as spray
and the tops of waves swept over him, the mate went for'ard along the
bridge to vent his scorn on the two watches of a four-masted ship that
could not reef a foresail.

It is true. They could not do it, despite their willingness, for this I
have learned: _the men do their weak best whenever the order is given to
shorten sail_. It must be that they are afraid. They lack the iron of
Mr. Pike, the wisdom and the iron of Captain West. Always, have I
noticed, with all the alacrity of which they are capable, do they r