“Well, sir, don’t you be afeard I’m going to be troublesome.  Don’t think I want to get aboard your ship, except you fling me a rope.  There’s a many things you mun ha’ to think about that an ignorant man like me couldn’t take up if you was to let ’em drop.  And being a gentleman, I do believe, makes the matter worse betuxt us.  And there’s many a thing that no man can go talkin’ about to any but only the Lord himself.  Still you can’t help us poor folks seeing when there’s summat amiss, and we can’t help havin’ our own thoughts any more than the sailor’s jackdaw that couldn’t speak.  And sometimes we may be nearer the mark than you would suppose, for God has made us all of one blood, you know.”

“What are you driving at, Old Rogers?” I said with a smile, which was none the less true that I suspected he had read some of the worst trouble of my heart.  For why should I mind an honourable man like him knowing what oppressed me, though, as things went, I certainly should not, as he said, choose to tell it to any but one?

“I don’t want to say what I was driving at, if it was anything but this—­that I want to put to the clumsy hand of a rough old tar, with a heart as soft as the pitch that makes his hand hard—­to trim your sails a bit, sir, and help you to lie a point closer to the wind.  You’re not just close-hauled, sir.”

“Say on, Old Rogers.  I understand you, and I will listen with all my heart, for you have a good right to speak.”

And Old Rogers spoke thus:—­

“Oncet upon a time, I made a voyage in a merchant barque.  We were becalmed in the South Seas.  And weary work it wur, a doin’ of nothin’ from day to day.  But when the water began to come up thick from the bottom of the water-casks, it was wearier a deal.  Then a thick fog came on, as white as snow a’most, and we couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead or on any side of us.  But the fog didn’t keep the heat off; it only made it worse, and the water was fast going done.  The short allowance grew shorter and shorter, and the men, some of them, were half-mad with thirst, and began to look bad at one another.  I kept up my heart by looking ahead inside me.  For days and days the fog hung about us as if the air had been made o’ flocks o’ wool.  The captain took to his berth, and several of the crew to their hammocks, for it was just as hot on deck as anywhere else.  The mate lay on a sparesail on the quarter-deck, groaning.  I had a strong suspicion that the schooner was drifting, and hove the lead again and again, but could find no bottom.  Some of the men got hold of the spirits, and that didn’t quench their thirst.  It drove them clean mad.  I had to knock one of them down myself with a capstan bar, for he ran at the mate with his knife.  At last I began to lose all hope.  And still I was sure the schooner was slowly drifting.  My head was like to burst, and my tongue was like a lump of holystone in my mouth.  Well, one morning, I had just, as I thought, lain down