I was awakened by something rattling outside my open window-port, wakened to a small tragedy. A circular wire rat-trap, depending from a line held by someone on the poop, and containing two frantic rats, dangled against the opening. Alas! how they ran round and round and round! The cause of all their agony, a piece of decayed fish and a fragment of mouldy cheese, was left untouched as they dangled before me. The voice of my friend the Mate is audible down my ventilator. He is arguing with the Steward, one Nicholas, of whom you have heard. Said Nicholas is protesting in his clickety Graeco-English fashion, that the pelt of a drowned rat (dronded raht, Nicholas loquitur) is worth less than that of one skinned alive. To which horrible doctrine my friend the Mate opposes a blustering Irish humaneness issuing in “Dammit, ye shan’t!” Rats, meanwhile dangling, they as well as their fate hanging uncertain. At last they are lowered. (The Mate talking, I think, over his shoulder at Nicholas, who stands, probably in contemplative fashion, legs apart, face serious, brain calculating income derivable from rats skinned alive.) The line rising in a minute, I turn on my elbow to witness the end. Alas! HÉlas!! Ach Himmel!!! How are the mighty fallen! Two grey shining lumps, each with tapering tail dropped limply through the bottom; fish, cheese, and rodents all on one dead level now, given over to corruption. Up, up—I hear the trap grounded on the poop over my head. I sigh as I climb out and wash. I rather like rats. The Grey One in the tunnel is an old chum of mine. I have never killed one yet, though often even Grey One has been chased up and down, in fun. He, sitting on a stringer and twirling his whiskers, has “views,” I think, about Men with Sticks, his conception of the Devil and all his angels.

John Thomas, bursting in with hot water for shaving and information concerning breakfast in the cabin, interrupts my rat-reverie. It is Sunday morning.

“Eight o’clock, sir. Steward say, sir, will you have breakfast with the Chief Officer?”

“No one else aboard?”

“Second Officer’s in the galley, sir.”

“Where?”

“Galley, sir.” A snigger from John Thomas. “Come aboard early, sir.”

“Oh! Tell the Steward ‘Yes, with pleasure.’”

So! I finish dressing leisurely, donning patrol-jacket and uniform cap, and “turn out.” It is a calm Sabbath morning. Not yet have the mists rolled from the heights which frown upon us all around, but the sun glitters on the docked shipping, silent save for the flapping of sea gulls and the clank of some fresh-water pump. With a glance of homage towards the sun, I go below for my inspection. Boilers, fires banked in the donkey-boilers over weekend, bilges, sea-cocks all in order; I am at liberty to enjoy my day of rest. Nicholas, in white drill coat, shining silver buttons, and shore-boots of burnished bronze hue, glides aft with a dish (held high, in the professional manner) covered with a dome of gleaming pewter. Two youths on the quay, fishing hopelessly for insignificant dock carp, watch with open-mouthed awe. My own buttons of yellow metal, linen collar, and badge de rigueur, pass a similar scrutiny as I follow him to the saloon.

The saloon, compared with our own quarters, is sumptuously furnished. Panelled in hard woods, white ceiling with shining nickel rods and brackets, carpeted floor and ruby-plush upholstering—into such a palace I step to take breakfast with my friend the Mate. He is already entrenched behind the pewter dome, Nicholas gliding round giving the final touch of art to the preparations. The subject of skinned rats has vanished to make room for the serious business of his life.

“Good-mornin’, Mr. McAlnwick. Sit there! We are alone to-day, as ye see. Nicholas!”

Nicholas is a believer in ritual. He is tolling his little brass hand-bell just as though everyone was here. In a minute he reappears.

“Sir?”

“Is Mr. Hammerton aboard?” A snigger from John Thomas, installed pro tem. in the pantry as the Steward’s aide-de-camp.

“’S in de galley, mister.”

“Does he want any breakfast?”

“No, sir. ’S ’sleep in de galley.” Another snigger.

“What’s the matter with that boy?” thunders my friend the Mate, lifting the dome from ham and eggs.

“He is merely cursed with a sense of humour, Mr. Honna,” I observe, and we avoid conversational rock and shoals until we are ensconced in his private berth.

“The fact is, Mr. McAlnwick, Mr. Hammerton’s a very foolish young feller. Help yourself to some tobacco. Knowin’ as I do that when he went ashore last night he had twenty-six pounds ten in his cash pocket, I wonder he isn’t lyin’ at the bottom o’ the dock instead of in the galley. He will not bank his surplus. And he will get drunk.”

“What’s at the bottom of it all, Mr. Honna?”

“I’ll show ye!” With a hoarse whisper he rises, tip-toes swiftly along the corridor to the Second Officer’s room, and returns with a photograph.

Baby! Is she another milestone nearer to Alsatia, then? My pipe remains unlit as I gaze at the cheap provincial photograph of a girl with large eyes and a sensuous mouth.

Mr. Honna pushes his cap back and stares at me.

“What! D’ye know her?”

“It’s Baby,” I answer, laying the thing down. “Baby!”

“He’s engaged to her.”

“Since when?”

“Since—Gawd knows—last Monday, I believe.”

I reach for the matches, and recount to the Mate my knowledge of Baby. His nose wrinkles up, his eyes diminish to steel-blue points of fire, and he nods his head slowly to my tale.

“Same old yarn. Oh, Mr. McAlnwick, are there not queer things come in with the tide? Now listen, while I tell ye. ’Tis what they all do. They dangle round bars, all at loose ends, they get their master’s tickets, and they marry barmaids. Then when the command comes along, the woman keeps the man down in the mud. ’Twas with me, too. I was engaged to a Nova Scotia girl—two Nova Scotia girls—different times. I’d roll round town, givin’ ’em to understand I was master, take ’em out drivin’ in a buggy Sunday evenin’, makin’ a fool o’ meself fine. When the crash came—oh, Mr. McAlnwick, make use of your advantages now yer’re at sea!—when the crash came, we were just ready to sail, an’ I stayed by the ship. But next time ’twould be the same. I couldn’t be acquainted with a girl for a week without proposin’ matrimony! Mr. McAlnwick, ye mustn’t laugh. ’Tis the truth. Even now—but why talk? Ye know my sympathetic nature. But this seems to be serious. So she’s the barmaid at the Stormy Petrel, is she? Humph!”

“His brains must be addled,” I observe, “not to see——”

“Ah! but ye’re young, Mr. McAlnwick! That’s no hindrance in the worrld to—to such as him. Oh, dear no!”

“Then such as he have a very low standard of morality.”

“Mr. McAlnwick, now listen. When ye’ve been sent to sea at twelve year old as apprentice, an’ ploughed the oceans of the worrld for five years in the foc’sle, when ye’ve been bullied an’ damned by fifty different skippers on fifty different trades as third and second mate, when ye’ve split yer head studyin’ for yer ticket, when ye’ve got it and ye’re glad to go second mate at seven pounds ten a month, when ye see men o’ less merit promoted because they marry skippers’ daughters while you are walkin’ the bridge—what ’ud ye do?”

“I don’t know, mister.” I am taken aback by the velocity of the question, by the Mate’s earnestness.

“Ye’d turn callous or religious, or go mad! Ye see, Mr. McAlnwick, there’s a lot ye miss, though ye won’t admit it. Ye come to sea and ye meet the cloth, but ye don’t realise their trainin’. Ye laugh at us for our queer ways, such as never walkin’ on the poop over the Skipper’s head, never askin’ for another helpin’, never arguin’ the point, an’ such like. But consider that man’s trainin’! Ye cannot? Ye’ve been brought up ashore, ye’ve had opportunities for studyin’ and conversin’ with edyecated people, an’ ye’re frettin’ for some young lady, as I can see—don’t deny it, I saw Postie bring the letter—and ye wouldn’t touch the likes o’ this with a pair o’ tongs. But with Mr. Hammerton ’tis different, do ye not see?”

“Yes, I see, a little. But you yourself, now——”

“Me? Oh, ’twas a special providence preserved me, Mr. McAlnwick. I was waitin’ for a command at the time, and I was unable to get out o’ the bargain. But ye know my wife.”

Now, there is no doubt in my mind, after some thought, that the Chief Officer was right in insisting on the unspanned gulf between the old style officer and the men of our sphere. Heavenly powers! What have I not seen, now that the Mate has reminded me? The fatuous ignorance, the bigoted conceit, the nauseous truckling to “the Old Man,” the debased intellect. And yet the Second Officer does not always lie in drunken stupor on the galley bench. I call to mind a time when he took a violin and played to me as the sun went down across the foam-flecked sea. Let us remember him by that rather than by his present state, and leave the rest to God.