hadn't a pleasant look about the eyes either, when he said it.

Fact was, that first month on the Madonna had done the lad no good. He
had a surly, sullen way with him, some'at like what I've seen about a
chained dog. At the first, his talk had been clean as my baby's, and he
would blush like any girl at Bob Smart's stories; but he got used to
Bob, and pretty good, in time, at small swearing.

I don't think I should have noticed it so much if it had not been for
seeming to see Molly, and the sun, and the knitting-needles, and the
child upon the deck, and hearing of it over, "Think if it was _him_!"
Sometimes on a Sunday night I used to think it was a pity. Not that I
was any better than the rest, except so far as the married men are
always steadier. Go through any crew the sea over, and it is the lads
who have homes of their own and little children in 'em as keep the
straightest.

Sometimes, too, I used to take a fancy that I could have listened to a
word from a parson, or a good brisk psalm-tune, and taken it in very
good part. A year is a long pull for twenty-five men to be becalmed with
each other and the devil. I don't set up to be pious myself, but I'm
not a fool, and I know that if we'd had so much as one officer aboard
who feared God and kept his commandments, we should have been the better
men for it. It's very much with religion as it is with cayenne
pepper,--if it's there, you know it.

If you had your ships on the sea by the dozen, you'd bethink you of
that? Bless you, Tom! if you were in Rome you'd do as the Romans do.
You'd have your ledgers, and your children, and your churches and Sunday
schools, and freed niggers, and 'lections, and what not, and never stop
to think whether the lads that sailed your ships across the world had
souls, or not,--and be a good sort of man too. That's the way of the
world. Take it easy, Tom,--take it easy.

Well, things went along just about so with us till we neared the Cape.
It's not a pretty place, the Cape, on a winter's voyage. I can't say as
I ever was what you may call scar't after the first time rounding it,
but it's not a pretty place.

I don't seem to remember much about Kent along there till there come a
Friday at the first of December. It was a still day, with a little haze,
like white sand sifted across a sunbeam on a kitchen table. The lad was
quiet-like all day, chasing me about with his eyes.

"Sick?" says I.

"No," says he.

"Whitmarsh drunk?" says