“Nothing, inquisitive child.  But there’s an old flat-footed friend of mine in the department—­and he, whenever he writes me, never forgets to mention that every once in a while the chief clerk, or somebody or other in his division, is sure to look out the window and across the street at the White House grounds, as if trying to remember something; and whenever he takes a particularly long look he is always sure to turn around and say to the man at the nearest desk, ‘What d’ y’ s’pose ever became of that hose-pipe spook used to haunt this place?’ And the man at the nearest desk he’ll look up and nibble at the end of his pen-holder, or maybe he’ll get up and have a look out of the window at the Cabinet playing tennis, and after a while he’ll say:  ’That’s so; I wonder what ever did become of that?  But’—­maybe another look across at the tennis court—­’that’ll turn up again, no fear.’

“But it won’t,” concluded the flag yeoman, with a smile we could have buried one of his tin letter-files in; “for we were two hundred miles out of Hong-kong at that time, steaming 14.6 miles an hour through the China Sea, and you know it’s good and deep there.  And now”—­he rolled flat on his back, balanced his neck on the head-rest under the bulkhead light, and his fat book on his chest—­“now I’m not advising anybody, and particularly not you, Fatty, but that’s the way a competent yeoman, with a little advice from a couple of old shipmates, laid that hose-pipe ghost of other days.  But mind, I’m not telling you to go and do anything like that.”

“No, of course not,” says our captain’s yeoman, and rubs his fat chin.  “Of course not.”

“But if you do,” says Dalton, and sets his head sideways to see how Reginald was taking it—­“if you do, you’d make a hit with your skipper, you betcher—­only he’d never tell you.”

“Why wouldn’t he, if he liked it?”

“Why?  ’Twouldn’t be regulations.  And now, you fellows, beat it.  Seven bells gone and the Old Man is due aboard at twelve o’clock.  And sometimes he takes a notion to go cruising around the cabin country before he turns in.  Besides, I want a chance to peruse a little improving literature before I turn in myself.  So beat it, all of you.”

And out into the passageways and up the hatchways we beat it; all but our captain’s fat yeoman, who went back to his office at a grave thoughtful pace.

The Seizure of the “Aurora Borealis”

I had no notion in the beginning of going anywhere near Newfoundland that winter, but the word was passed to me from old John Rose of Folly Cove that if I thought of running down for a load of herrin’, then he’d ought to have a couple o’ thousand barrels, by the looks o’ things, fine and fat in pickle, against Christmas Day, and old John Rose being a great friend of mine, and the market away up, I kissed the wife and baby good-by and put out for Placentia Bay in the Aurora.