“Th’ Lord’s ways be past findin’ out,” he said, passing a hand over his eyes.

“That’s so:  that’s what I say mysel’,” the other assented cheerfully, as if glad to find their wits jumping together.

“Man!” William rounded on him fiercely.  “What’s kept ’ee, all these years?  Aw, man, man! do ’ee know what you’ve done?”

“I’d a sun-stroke,” said the wanderer, tapping his head and still wearing his deprecatory smile; “a very bad sun-stroke.  I sailed in the John S. Hancock.  I dessay Na’mi told you about that, eh?”

“Get on wi’ your tale.”

“Pete Hancock was cap’n.  The vessel was called after his uncle, you know, an’ the Hancocks had a-bought up most o’ the shares in her.  That’s how Pete came to be cap’n.  We sailed on a Friday—­unlucky, I’ve heard that is.  But Pete said them that laid th’ Atlantic cable had started that day an’ broke the spell.  Pete had a lot o’ tales, but he made a poor cap’n; no head.”

“Look here,” put in “William with desperate calm,” I don’t want to know about Peter Hancock.”

“There’s not much to know if you did.  He made a very poor cap’n, though it don’t become one to say so, now he’s gone.  An affectionate man, though, for all his short-comin’s.  The last time he brought his vessel home from New Orleans he was in that pore to get back to his wife an’ childer, he ripped along the Gulf Stream and pretty well ribbed the keelson out of her.  Thought, I reckon, that since all the shareholders belonged to his family th’ expense wouldn’ be grudged.  But I guess it made her tender.  That’s how she came to go down so suddent.”

“She foundered?”

“I’m comin’ to that.  We’d just run our nose into the tropics an’ was headin’ down for Kingston Harbour—­slippin’ along at five knots easy an’ steady, an’ not a sign of trouble.  The time, so far as I can tell, was somewhere near five bells in the middle watch.  I’d turned in, leavin’ Pete on deck, an’ was fast asleep; when all of a suddent a great jolt sent me flyin’ out o’ the berth.  As soon as I got my legs an’ wits again I was up on deck, and already the barque was settlin’ by the head like a burst crock.  She’d crushed her breastbone in on a sunken tramp of a derelict—­a dismasted water-logged lump, that maybe had been washin’ about the Atlantic for twenty year’ an’ more before her app’inted time came to drift across our fair-way an’ settle the hash o’ the John S. Hancock.  Sir, I reckon she went down inside o’ five minutes.  We’d but bare time to get out one boat and push clear o’ the whirl of her.  All hands jumped in; she was but a sixteen foot boat, an’ we loaded her down to the gun’l a’most.  There was a brave star-shine, but no moon.  Cruel things happen ’pon the sea.”

He passed a hand over his eyes, as if to brush off the film his sufferings had drawn across them.  Then he pursued: