ams" in
eight different keys at four in the morning would call the ship's
company of that schooner soft. There are opinions and opinions. At any
rate the hours passed softly away until the yacht ran clean into the
thick of the fleet, and the merry, eldritch exchange of salutes began.

The second breeze had been worse than the first, and many men had gone;
but the smacksmen, by a special mercy, have no time for morbid brooding.
They will risk their lives with the most incredible dauntlessness to
save a comrade. The Albert Medal is, I make bold to say, deserved by a
score of men in the North Sea every year. The fellows will talk with
grave pity about Jim or Jack, who were lost twenty years ago; they
remember all his ways, his last words, his very relatives; but, when a
breeze is over, they make no moan over the lost ones until they gather
in prayer-meetings.

"Watch now, and you'll soon see something," said Blair to Ferrier.

The boats began to flit round on the quiet sea, and the lines of them
converged towards the schooner or towards a certain smart smack, which
Fullerton eyed with a queer sort of paternal and proprietary interest.
The men knew that the yacht was free to them as a dispensary, and the
care they took to avoid doing unnecessary damage was touching. When you
are wearing a pair of boots weighing jointly about three stone, you
cannot tread like a fairy. Blair knew this, and, though his boat was
scrupulously clean, he did not care for the lady's boudoir and oak floor
business.

Lewis had his hands full--so full that the ladies went below. The great
scholar's mind was almost paralyzed by the phenomena before him. Could
it be possible that, in wealthy, Christian England there ever was a
time when no man knew or cared about this saddening condition of
affairs? The light failed soon, and the boats durst not hang about after
the fleet began to sail; but, until the last minute, one long, slow,
drizzle of misery seemed to fall like a dreary litany on the surgeon's
nerves. The smashed fingers alone were painful to see, but there were
other accidents much worse. Every man in the fleet had been compelled to
fight desperately for life, and you cannot go through such a battle
without risks. There were no malingerers; the bald, brutal facts of
crushed bones, or flayed scalp, or broken leg, or poisoned hand were
there in evidence, and the men used no extra words after they had
modestly described the time and circumstanc