“I’ve just told you her name, my dear sir,” he replied.  “The Apse Family.  Surely you’ve heard of the great firm of Apse & Sons, shipowners.  They had a pretty big fleet.  There was the Lucy Apse, and the Harold Apse, and Anne, John, Malcolm, Clara, Juliet, and so on—­no end of Apses.  Every brother, sister, aunt, cousin, wife—­and grandmother, too, for all I know—­of the firm had a ship named after them.  Good, solid, old-fashioned craft they were, too, built to carry and to last.  None of your new-fangled, labour-saving appliances in them, but plenty of men and plenty of good salt beef and hard tack put aboard—­and off you go to fight your way out and home again.”

The miserable Jermyn made a sound of approval, which sounded like a groan of pain.  Those were the ships for him.  He pointed out in doleful tones that you couldn’t say to labour-saving appliances:  “Jump lively now, my hearties.”  No labour-saving appliance would go aloft on a dirty night with the sands under your lee.

“No,” assented the stranger, with a wink at me.  “The Apses didn’t believe in them either, apparently.  They treated their people well—­as people don’t get treated nowadays, and they were awfully proud of their ships.  Nothing ever happened to them.  This last one, the Apse Family, was to be like the others, only she was to be still stronger, still safer, still more roomy and comfortable.  I believe they meant her to last for ever.  They had her built composite—­iron, teak-wood, and greenheart, and her scantling was something fabulous.  If ever an order was given for a ship in a spirit of pride this one was.  Everything of the best.  The commodore captain of the employ was to command her, and they planned the accommodation for him like a house on shore under a big, tall poop that went nearly to the mainmast.  No wonder Mrs. Colchester wouldn’t let the old man give her up.  Why, it was the best home she ever had in all her married days.  She had a nerve, that woman.

“The fuss that was made while that ship was building!  Let’s have this a little stronger, and that a little heavier; and hadn’t that other thing better be changed for something a little thicker.  The builders entered into the spirit of the game, and there she was, growing into the clumsiest, heaviest ship of her size right before all their eyes, without anybody becoming aware of it somehow.  She was to be 2,000 tons register, or a little over; no less on any account.  But see what happens.  When they came to measure her she turned out 1,999 tons and a fraction.  General consternation!  And they say old Mr. Apse was so annoyed when they told him that he took to his bed and died.  The old gentleman had retired from the firm twenty-five years before, and was ninety-six years old if a day, so his death wasn’t, perhaps, so surprising.  Still Mr. Lucian Apse was convinced that his father would have lived to a hundred.  So we may put him at the head of the list.  Next comes the poor