“We finished the distribution before dark.  It was rather a sight:  the sea running high, the ship a wreck to look at, these Chinamen staggering up on the bridge one by one for their share, and the old man still booted, and in his shirt-sleeves, busy paying out at the chartroom door, perspiring like anything, and now and then coming down sharp on myself or Father Rout about one thing or another not quite to his mind.  He took the share of those who were disabled himself to them on the No. 2 hatch.  There were three dollars left over, and these went to the three most damaged coolies, one to each.  We turned-to afterwards, and shovelled out on deck heaps of wet rags, all sorts of fragments of things without shape, and that you couldn’t give a name to, and let them settle the ownership themselves.

“This certainly is coming as near as can be to keeping the thing quiet for the benefit of all concerned.  What’s your opinion, you pampered mail-boat swell?  The old chief says that this was plainly the only thing that could be done.  The skipper remarked to me the other day, ’There are things you find nothing about in books.’  I think that he got out of it very well for such a stupid man.”

[The other stories included in this volume ("Amy Foster,” “Falk:  A Reminiscence,” and “To-morrow”) being already available in another volume, have not been entered here.]