He looked at me inquisitively.  But, of course, I couldn’t admit that a ship could be mad.

“In the ports where she was known,” he went on,’ “they dreaded the sight of her.  She thought nothing of knocking away twenty feet or so of solid stone facing off a quay or wiping off the end of a wooden wharf.  She must have lost miles of chain and hundreds of tons of anchors in her time.  When she fell aboard some poor unoffending ship it was the very devil of a job to haul her off again.  And she never got hurt herself—­just a few scratches or so, perhaps.  They had wanted to have her strong.  And so she was.  Strong enough to ram Polar ice with.  And as she began so she went on.  From the day she was launched she never let a year pass without murdering somebody.  I think the owners got very worried about it.  But they were a stiff-necked generation all these Apses; they wouldn’t admit there could be anything wrong with the Apse Family.  They wouldn’t even change her name.  ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ as Mrs. Colchester used to say.  They ought at least to have shut her up for life in some dry dock or other, away up the river, and never let her smell salt water again.  I assure you, my dear sir, that she invariably did kill someone every voyage she made.  It was perfectly well-known.  She got a name for it, far and wide.”

I expressed my surprise that a ship with such a deadly reputation could ever get a crew.

“Then, you don’t know what sailors are, my dear sir.  Let me just show you by an instance.  One day in dock at home, while loafing on the forecastle head, I noticed two respectable salts come along, one a middle-aged, competent, steady man, evidently, the other a smart, youngish chap.  They read the name on the bows and stopped to look at her.  Says the elder man:  ‘Apse Family.  That’s the sanguinary female dog’ (I’m putting it in that way) ’of a ship, Jack, that kills a man every voyage.  I wouldn’t sign in her—­not for Joe, I wouldn’t.’  And the other says:  ’If she were mine, I’d have her towed on the mud and set on fire, blame if I wouldn’t.’  Then the first man chimes in:  ’Much do they care!  Men are cheap, God knows.’  The younger one spat in the water alongside.  ‘They won’t have me—­not for double wages.’

“They hung about for some time and then walked up the dock.  Half an hour later I saw them both on our deck looking about for the mate, and apparently very anxious to be taken on.  And they were.”

“How do you account for this?” I asked.

“What would you say?” he retorted.  “Recklessness!  The vanity of boasting in the evening to all their chums:  ’We’ve just shipped in that there Apse Family.  Blow her.  She ain’t going to scare us.’  Sheer sailorlike perversity!  A sort of curiosity.  Well—­a little of all that, no doubt.  I put the question to them in the course of the voyage.  The answer of the elderly chap was: 

“‘A man can die but once.’  The younger assured me in a mocking tone that he wanted to see ‘how she would do it this time.’  But I tell you what; there was a sort of fascination about the brute.”