of the family--you
know," added the man in tweeds, stroking his moustache with an ingenuous
smile.

I acknowledged this interesting communication by a sympathetic murmur.
He waved his hand carelessly.

"This might have utterly spoiled a chap's nerve for going aloft, you
know--utterly. He fell within two feet of me, cracking his head on a
mooring-bitt. Never moved. Stone dead. Nice looking little fellow, he
was. I had just been thinking we would be great chums. However, that
wasn't yet the worst that brute of a ship could do. I served in her
three years of my time, and then I got transferred to the Lucy Apse, for
a year. The sailmaker we had in the Apse Family turned up there, too,
and I remember him saying to me one evening, after we had been a week at
sea: Isn't she a meek little ship?' No wonder we thought the Lucy Apse
a dear, meek, little ship after getting clear of that big, rampaging
savage brute. It was like heaven. Her officers seemed to me the
restfullest lot of men on earth. To me who had known no ship but the
Apse Family, the Lucy was like a sort of magic craft that did what you
wanted her to do of her own accord. One evening we got caught aback
pretty sharply from right ahead. In about ten minutes we had her full
again, sheets aft, tacks down, decks cleared, and the officer of the
watch leaning against the weather rail peacefully. It seemed simply
marvellous to me. The other would have stuck for half-an-hour in irons,
rolling her decks full of water, knocking the men about--spars cracking,
braces snapping, yards taking charge, and a confounded scare going on
aft because of her beastly rudder, which she had a way of flapping about
fit to raise your hair on end. I couldn't get over my wonder for days.

"Well, I finished my last year of apprenticeship in that jolly little
ship--she wasn't so little either, but after that other heavy devil she
seemed but a plaything to handle. I finished my time and passed; and
then just as I was thinking of having three weeks of real good time on
shore I got at breakfast a letter asking me the earliest day I could
be ready to join the Apse Family as third mate. I gave my plate a shove
that shot it into the middle of the table; dad looked up over his paper;
mother raised her hands in astonishment, and I went out bare-headed into
our bit of garden, where I walked round and round for an hour.

"When I came in again mother was out of the dining-room, and dad
had shifted berth i