The last good-bye to the wife had been at Cardiff, twenty-eight months before, when he sailed for Valparaiso with coals—­nine thousand tons and down to his marks.  From Valparaiso he had gone to Australia, light, a matter of six thousand miles on end with a stormy passage and running short of bunker coal.  Coals again to Oregon, seven thousand miles, and nigh as many more with general cargo for Japan and China.  Thence to Java, loading sugar for Marseilles, and back along the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, and on to Baltimore, down to her marks with crome ore, buffeted by hurricanes, short again of bunker coal and calling at Bermuda to replenish.  Then a time charter, Norfolk, Virginia, loading mysterious contraband coal and sailing for South Africa under orders of the mysterious German supercargo put on board by the charterers.  On to Madagascar, steaming four knots by the supercargo’s orders, and the suspicion forming that the Russian fleet might want the coal.  Confusion and delays, long waits at sea, international complications, the whole world excited over the old Tryapsic and her cargo of contraband, and then on to Japan and the naval port of Sassebo.  Back to Australia, another time charter and general merchandise picked up at Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, and carried on to Mauritius, Lourenco Marques, Durban, Algoa Bay, and Cape Town.  To Ceylon for orders, and from Ceylon to Rangoon to load rice for Rio Janeiro.  Thence to Buenos Aires and loading maize for the United Kingdom or the Continent, stopping at St. Vincent, to receive orders to proceed to Dublin.  Two years and four months, eight hundred and fifty days by the log, steaming up and down the thousand-league-long sea-lanes and back again to Dublin town.  And he was well aweary.

A little tug had laid hold of the Tryapsic, and with clang and clatter and shouted command, with engines half-ahead, slow-speed, or half-astern, the battered old sea-tramp was nudged and nosed and shouldered through the dock-gates into Ring’s End Basin.  Lines were flung ashore, fore and aft, and a ’midship spring got out.  Already a small group of the happy shore-staying folk had clustered on the dock.

“Ring off,” Captain MacElrath commanded in his slow thick voice; and the third officer worked the lever of the engine-room telegraph.

“Gangway out!” called the second officer; and when this was accomplished, “That will do.”

It was the last task of all, gangway out.  “That will do” was the dismissal.  The voyage was ended, and the crew shambled eagerly forward across the rusty decks to where their sea-bags were packed and ready for the shore.  The taste of the land was strong in the men’s mouths, and strong it was in the skipper’s mouth as he muttered a gruff good day to the departing pilot, and himself went down to his cabin.  Up the gangway were trooping the customs officers, the surveyor, the agent’s clerk, and the stevedores.  Quick work disposed of these and cleared his cabin, the agent waiting to take him to the office.