crutinizing, as
she passed me my cup; then laughter welled up in her eyes, and she shook
her head reprovingly.

"Now please don't begin the voyage by being shocked, Mr. Pathurst. Such
things are very ordinary occurrences. You'll get used to them. You must
remember some queer creatures go down to the sea in ships. The man is
safe. Trust Mr. Pike to attend to his wounds. I've never sailed with
Mr. Pike, but I've heard enough about him. Mr. Pike is quite a surgeon.
Last voyage, they say, he performed a successful amputation, and so
elated was he that he turned his attention on the carpenter, who happened
to be suffering from some sort of indigestion. Mr. Pike was so convinced
of the correctness of his diagnosis that he tried to bribe the carpenter
into having his appendix removed." She broke off to laugh heartily, then
added: "They say he offered the poor man just pounds and pounds of
tobacco to consent to the operation."

"But is it safe . . . for the . . . the working of the ship," I urged,
"to take such a lunatic along?"

She shrugged her shoulders, as if not intending to reply, then said:

"This incident is nothing. There are always several lunatics or idiots
in every ship's company. And they always come aboard filled with whiskey
and raving. I remember, once, when we sailed from Seattle, a long time
ago, one such madman. He showed no signs of madness at all; just calmly
seized two boarding-house runners and sprang overboard with them. We
sailed the same day, before the bodies were recovered."

Again she shrugged her shoulders.

"What would you? The sea is hard, Mr. Pathurst. And for our sailors we
get the worst type of men. I sometimes wonder where they find them. And
we do our best with them, and somehow manage to make them help us carry
on our work in the world. But they are low . . . low."

As I listened, and studied her face, contrasting her woman's sensitivity
and her soft pretty dress with the brute faces and rags of the men I had
noticed, I could not help being convinced intellectually of the rightness
of her position. Nevertheless, I was hurt sentimentally,--chiefly, I do
believe, because of the very hardness and unconcern with which she
enunciated her view. It was because she was a woman, and so different
from the sea-creatures, that I resented her having received such harsh
education in the school of the sea.

"I could not help remarking your father's--er, er _sang froid_ during