, was seated beside
him with her head on his shoulder.

"Oh, father!" I heard Susan say, as I walked along the passage between
the rows of sleeping berths that lined each side of the principal
dormitory of our Home; "I shall lose you some day, I fear. How was it
that you came so near bein' wrecked?"

Before the skipper could reply I stood in the doorway of his berth.

"Good-day, Haco," said I; "glad to see you safe back once more."

"Thankee, Cap'n Bingley--same to you, sir," said Haco, rising hastily
from the bed and seizing my hand, which he shook warmly, and, I must
add, painfully; for the skipper was a hearty, impulsive fellow, apt to
forget his strength of body in the strength of his feelings, and given
to grasp his male friends with a gripe that would, I verily believe,
have drawn a roar from Hercules.

"I've come back to the old bunk, you see," he continued, while I sat
down on a chest which served for a chair. "I likes the Home better an'
better every time I comes to it, and I've brought all my crew with me;
for you see, sir, the `Coffin's' a'most fallin' to pieces, and will have
to go into dock for a riglar overhaul."

"The Coffin?" said Susan, interrogatively.

"Yes, lass; it's only a nickname the old tub got in the north, where
they call the colliers coal-coffins, 'cause it's ten to one you'll go to
the bottom in 'em every time ye go to sea."

"Are they _all_ so bad as to deserve the name?" inquired Susan.

"No, not 'xactly all of 'em; but there's a good lot as are not half so
fit for sea as a washin' tub. You see, they ain't worth repairin', and
owners sometimes just take their chance o' makin' a safe run by keepin'
the pumps goin' the whole time."

I informed Haco that I had called for the purpose of telling him that I
had applied to Mr Stuart, who owned his little coal sloop, to give a
few wrecked Russians a passage to London, in order that they might be
handed over to the care of their consul; but that I would have to find a
passage for them in some other vessel, as the "Coffin" was so
unseaworthy.

"Don't be in too great a hurry, sir," said Haco, with a peculiar smile
and twinkle in his eye; "I'm inclined to think that Mr Stuart will send
her back to London to be repaired there--"

"What!" exclaimed Susan, with a flush of indignation, "an' risk your
life, father?"

"As to that, lass, my life has got to be risked anyhow, and it ain't
much worth, to say the truth; so you needn't trouble