a smoke will help a fellow at times.
What business is this you're in here?"

"Cow-punching--riding out after cattle."

"Hard to learn?"

"Easy for a sailor. I'm only hanging on until pay-day, then I make for
'Frisco to ship."

"And someone will take your place, I suppose. I'll work for my grub if
you'll break me in so that I can get the job. I'm through with going to
sea."

"Certainly. All I need is to tell the boss. I've an extra saddle."

So I tutored him in the tricks of cow-punching, and found him an apt
pupil. But he was heavy and depressed, seeming to be burdened with some
terrible experience, or memory, that he was trying to shake off. It was
not until the evening before my departure, when I had secured him the
job and we sat smoking before the mesquite-root fire, that he took me
into his confidence. The friendly rat had again appeared, and he sprang
up, backed away, and sat down again, trembling violently.

"It was that rat that brought you to yourself that evening," I
ventured. "Rats must have had something to do with your past life."

"Right, they did," he answered, puffing fiercely. "I didn't know you
had rats here, though."

"A whole herd of them under the floor. But they're harmless. I found
them good company."

"I found them bad company. I was shipmates with thousands of rats on
that last passage. Want the yarn? It'll raise your hair."

I was willing, and he reeled it off. His strong self-control never left
him from the beginning to the end, though the effect upon me was not
only to raise my hair, but at times to stop the beating of my heart. I
left him next morning, and have never seen or heard of him since; but
there is strong reason to believe that he never went to sea again, or
told that yarn in shipping circles. And it is because I have not seen
that old Commodore since the evening in the restaurant, and because I
cannot recall the name of the ship, or secure full data of marine
happenings of the year 1875, that I am giving that story to the world
in this form, hoping it will reach the right quarters and explain to
those interested the mystery of the grain ship, found in good shape,
but abandoned by all but the dead rats.

* * * * *

"I shipped in her at 'Frisco," began Draper. "She was a big,
skysail-yarder loading grain at Oakland, and as the skipper had offered
me second mate's berth, I went over and sized her up. She seemed all
right, as f