“And still no more dead men,” I twitted Louis, when Smoke and Henderson, side by side, in friendly conversation, took their first exercise on deck.

Louis surveyed me with his shrewd grey eyes, and shook his head portentously. “She’s a-comin’, I tell you, and it’ll be sheets and halyards, stand by all hands, when she begins to howl. I’ve had the feel iv it this long time, and I can feel it now as plainly as I feel the rigging iv a dark night. She’s close, she’s close.”

“Who goes first?” I queried.

“Not fat old Louis, I promise you,” he laughed. “For ’tis in the bones iv me I know that come this time next year I’ll be gazin’ in the old mother’s eyes, weary with watchin’ iv the sea for the five sons she gave to it.”

“Wot’s ’e been s’yin’ to yer?” Thomas Mugridge demanded a moment later.

“That he’s going home some day to see his mother,” I answered diplomatically.

“I never ’ad none,” was the Cockney’s comment, as he gazed with lustreless, hopeless eyes into mine.