. When it gets dark,
I'll slip over the stern into the dingy and bring her round to the side
for you; then we'll sail away for parts unknown."

"Corry, I am ashamed of you for imagining that I would lend myself to
base treachery, and robbery, or piracy rather, on the high seas, laying
us open, as you, a lawyer, must know, to penalties that would blast our
reputations and ruin our lives. No, sir, we must face our misfortune
like men. In the meanwhile, I will find out, from the captain, where his
niece and her friend are likely to be."

Coristine walked aft to The Crew, and served his apprenticeship to
sitting on the tiller and propelling the rudder thereby in the desired
direction. When he went wrong, while The Crew was lighting his pipe, the
flapping of the sails warned him to back the tiller to its proper place.
When hauling at the halliards, he had sung to his admiring companion in
toil the "Sailor's Shanty":--

My Polly said she'd marry me when I came home,
Yo hee, yo ho, haul all together;
But when I came I found she'd been and took my messmate Tom,
Yo hee, yo ho, haul all together.

Now, therefore, The Crew was urgent for a song to cheer up the
lonesomeness a bit, and the lawyer, nothing loath, sang with genuine
pathos:--

A baby was sleeping;
Its mother was weeping.
For her husband was far on the wide rolling sea.

When he came to the sea-ee-ee-ee-ee at the end of the third line, The
Crew, who had been keeping time with one foot on the deck and with one
hand on the tiller, aided him in rolling it forth, and, when the singing
was over, he characterized it as "pooty and suitin' like," by which he
meant that the references to the howling tempest and the raging billow
were appropriate to the present nautical circumstances. After much
persuasion The Crew was induced to add to the harmony of the evening.
His voice was strong, but, like many strong things, under imperfect
control; his tune was nowhere, and his intended pathetic unction was
simply maudlin. Coristine could recall but little of the long ballad to
which he listened, the story of a niggardly and irate father, who
followed and fought with the young knight that had carried off his
daughter. Two verses, however, could not escape his memory, on account
of the disinterested and filial light in which they made the young lady
appear:--

"O stay your hand," the old man cried,
A-lying on