-some name like that; but he has
been bankrupt and dead these twenty years or more, and his name don't
matter. She had been laid up in Shadwell basin for ever so long. You may
imagine her state. She was all rust, dust, grime--soot aloft, dirt on
deck. To me it was like coming out of a palace into a ruined cottage.
She was about 400 tons, had a primitive windlass, wooden latches to the
doors, not a bit of brass about her, and a big square stern. There was
on it, below her name in big letters, a lot of scroll work, with the
gilt off, and some sort of a coat of arms, with the motto 'Do or Die'
underneath. I remember it took my fancy immensely. There was a touch of
romance in it, something that made me love the old thing--something that
appealed to my youth!

"We left London in ballast--sand ballast--to load a cargo of coal in a
northern port for Bankok. Bankok! I thrilled. I had been six years at
sea, but had only seen Melbourne and Sydney, very good places, charming
places in their way--but Bankok!

"We worked out of the Thames under canvas, with a North Sea pilot on
board. His name was Jermyn, and he dodged all day long about the galley
drying his handkerchief before the stove. Apparently he never slept.
He was a dismal man, with a perpetual tear sparkling at the end of his
nose, who either had been in trouble, or was in trouble, or expected
to be in trouble--couldn't be happy unless something went wrong. He
mistrusted my youth, my common-sense, and my seamanship, and made a
point of showing it in a hundred little ways. I dare say he was right.
It seems to me I knew very little then, and I know not much more now;
but I cherish a hate for that Jermyn to this day.

"We were a week working up as far as Yarmouth Roads, and then we got
into a gale--the famous October gale of twenty-two years ago. It was
wind, lightning, sleet, snow, and a terrific sea. We were flying light,
and you may imagine how bad it was when I tell you we had smashed
bulwarks and a flooded deck. On the second night she shifted her ballast
into the lee bow, and by that time we had been blown off somewhere on
the Dogger Bank. There was nothing for it but go below with shovels and
try to right her, and there we were in that vast hold, gloomy like a
cavern, the tallow dips stuck and flickering on the beams, the gale
howling above, the ship tossing about like mad on her side; there we
all were, Jermyn, the captain, everyone, hardly able to keep our feet,
e