eet is cotched fast somewheres long about the
straits. An' a bottle o' rum for a cold night! Well, well! I bet ye,
Dannie," says he, "that the _Likely Lass_ is gripped by this time. An'
ye got a bottle o' rum!" cries he, in a beaming fidget. "Rum's a
wonderful thing on a cold night, lad. Nothin' like it. I've tried it.
Was a time," he confided, "when I was sort o' give t' usin' of it."

I made to pour him a dram.

"Leave me hold that there bottle," says he. "I wants t' smell of it."

'Twas an eager sniff.

"_'Tis_ rum," says he, simply.

I raised the bottle above the glass.

"Come t' think of it, Dannie," says he, with a wistful little smile,
"that there bottle o' rum will do more good where you had it than
where I'd put it."

I corked the bottle and returned it to my bag.

"That's good," he sighed; "that's very good!"

I made him a cup o' tea....

When I got the wheel, with Moses Shoos forward and my uncle gone
asleep below, 'twas near dawn. We were under reasonable sail, running
blindly through the night: there were no heroics of carrying-on--my
uncle was not the man to bear them. But we were frozen stiff--every
block and rope of us. And 'twas then blowing up with angrier
intention; and 'twas dark and very cold, I recall--and the air was
thick with the dust of snow, so that 'twas hard to breathe. Congealing
drops of spray came like bullets: I recall that they hurt me. I
recall, too, that I was presently frozen to the deck, and that my
mitts were stuck to the wheel--that I became fixed and heavy. The old
craft had lost her buoyant will: she labored through the shadowy,
ghostly crested seas, in a fashion the most weary and hopeless. I
fancied I knew why: I fancied, indeed, that she had come close to her
last harbor. And of this I soon made sure: I felt of her, just before
the break of day, discovering, but with no selfish perturbation, that
she was exhausted. I felt of her tired plunges, of the stagger of
her, of her failing strength and will; and I perceived--by way of the
wheel in my understanding hands--that she would be glad to abandon
this unequal struggle of the eternal youth of the sea against her age
and mortality. And the day broke; and with the gray light came the
fool of Twist Tickle over the deck. 'Twas a sinister dawn: no land in
sight--but a waste of raging sea to view--and the ship laden forward
with a shameful burden of ice.

Moses spoke: I did not hear him in the wind, because, I fancy, of