There was never any doubt, though, that the past was full and alive to him.  There was only the past.  And what a memory was his!  He would look at the portrait of his old clipper, the Oberon—­it was central over the mantel-shelf—­and recall her voyages, and the days in each voyage, and just how the weather was, what canvas she carried, and how things happened.  Malabar Street vanished.  We would go, when he was in that mood, and live for the evening in another year, with men who have gone, among strange affairs forgotten.

Mrs. Williams would be in her dream, too, with her work-basket in her lap, absently picking the table-cloth with her needle.  But for us, all we knew was that the Cinderella had a day’s start of us, and the weather in the Southern Ocean, when we got there, was like the death of the world.  I was aware that we were under foresail, lower topsails, and stay-sails only, and they were too much.  They were driving us under, and the Oberon was tender.  Yes, she was very tricky.  But where was the Cinderella?  Anyhow, she had a day’s start of us.  Captain Williams would rise then, and stand before his ship’s picture, pointing into her rigging.

“I must go in and see that girl,” said the captain’s wife once, when we were in the middle of one of our voyages.

“Eh?” questioned her husband, instantly bending to her, but keeping his forefinger pointing to his old ship; thinking, perhaps, his wife was adding something to his narrative he had forgotten.

“Yes,” she said, and did not meet his face.  “I must go in and see her.  He’s been gone a week now.  He must be crossing the Bay, and look at the weather we’ve had.  I know what it is.”

I did then leave our voyage in the past for a moment, to listen to the immediate weather without.  It was certainly a wild night.  I should get wet when I left for home.

“Ah!” exclaimed the puzzled captain, suddenly enlightened, with his finger still addressing the picture on the wall.  “She means the man down the street.  An engineer, isn’t he?  The missis calls him a sailor.”  He continued that voyage, made in 1862.

There was one evening when, on the home run, we had overhauled and passed our rivals in the race, and were off the Start.  Captain Williams was serving a tot all round, in a propitiatory act, hoping to lower the masts of the next astern deeper beneath the horizon, and to keep them there till he was off Blackwall Point.  He then found he wanted to show me a letter, testimony to the work of his ship, which he had received that voyage from his owners.  Where was it?  The missis knew, and he looked over his shoulder for her.  But she was not there.