, and would have gone to the dogs then, if his
skipper hadn't taken the trouble to find him and lug him by the ears out
of some house of perdition or other.

"It was said that one of the firm had been heard once to express a hope
that this brute of a ship would get lost soon. I can hardly credit the
tale, unless it might have been Mr. Alfred Apse, whom the family didn't
think much of. They had him in the office, but he was considered a
bad egg altogether, always flying off to race meetings and coming home
drunk. You would have thought that a ship so full of deadly tricks would
run herself ashore some day out of sheer cussedness. But not she! She
was going to last for ever. She had a nose to keep off the bottom."

Jermyn made a grunt of approval.

"A ship after a pilot's own heart, eh?" jeered the man in tweeds. "Well,
Wilmot managed it. He was the man for it, but even he, perhaps, couldn't
have done the trick without the green-eyed governess, or nurse, or
whatever she was to the children of Mr. and Mrs. Pamphilius.

"Those people were passengers in her from Port Adelaide to the
Cape. Well, the ship went out and anchored outside for the day. The
skipper--hospitable soul--had a lot of guests from town to a farewell
lunch--as usual with him. It was five in the evening before the last
shore boat left the side, and the weather looked ugly and dark in the
gulf. There was no reason for him to get under way. However, as he had
told everybody he was going that day, he imagined it was proper to do so
anyhow. But as he had no mind after all these festivities to tackle the
straits in the dark, with a scant wind, he gave orders to keep the ship
under lower topsails and foresail as close as she would lie, dodging
along the land till the morning. Then he sought his virtuous couch.
The mate was on deck, having his face washed very clean with hard rain
squalls. Wilmot relieved him at midnight.

"The Apse Family had, as you observed, a house on her poop . . ."

"A big, ugly white thing, sticking up," Jermyn murmured, sadly, at the
fire.

"That's it: a companion for the cabin stairs and a sort of chart-room
combined. The rain drove in gusts on the sleepy Wilmot. The ship was
then surging slowly to the southward, close hauled, with the coast
within three miles or so to windward. There was nothing to look out for
in that part of the gulf, and Wilmot went round to dodge the squalls
under the lee of that chart-room, whose door on that