to me the restfullest lot of men on earth.  To me who had known no ship but the Apse Family, the Lucy was like a sort of magic craft that did what you wanted her to do of her own accord.  One evening we got caught aback pretty sharply from right ahead.  In about ten minutes we had her full again, sheets aft, tacks down, decks cleared, and the officer of the watch leaning against the weather rail peacefully.  It seemed simply marvellous to me.  The other would have stuck for half-an-hour in irons, rolling her decks full of water, knocking the men about—­spars cracking, braces snapping, yards taking charge, and a confounded scare going on aft because of her beastly rudder, which she had a way of flapping about fit to raise your hair on end.  I couldn’t get over my wonder for days.

“Well, I finished my last year of apprenticeship in that jolly little ship—­she wasn’t so little either, but after that other heavy devil she seemed but a plaything to handle.  I finished my time and passed; and then just as I was thinking of having three weeks of real good time on shore I got at breakfast a letter asking me the earliest day I could be ready to join the Apse Family as third mate.  I gave my plate a shove that shot it into the middle of the table; dad looked up over his paper; mother raised her hands in astonishment, and I went out bare-headed into our bit of garden, where I walked round and round for an hour.

“When I came in again mother was out of the dining-room, and dad had shifted berth into his big armchair.  The letter was lying on the mantelpiece.

“’It’s very creditable to you to get the offer, and very kind of them to make it,’ he said.  ’And I see also that Charles has been appointed chief mate of that ship for one voyage.’

“There was, over leaf, a P.S. to that effect in Mr. Apse’s own handwriting, which I had overlooked.  Charley was my big brother.

“I don’t like very much to have two of my boys together in one ship,’ father goes on, in his deliberate, solemn way.  ’And I may tell you that I would not mind writing Mr. Apse a letter to that effect.’

“Dear old dad!  He was a wonderful father.  What would you have done?  The mere notion of going back (and as an officer, too), to be worried and bothered, and kept on the jump night and day by that brute, made me feel sick.  But she wasn’t a ship you could afford to fight shy of.  Besides, the most genuine excuse could not be given without mortally offending Apse & Sons.  The firm, and I believe the whole family down to the old unmarried aunts in Lancashire, had grown desperately touchy about that accursed ship’s character.  This was the case for answering ‘Ready now’ from your very death-bed if you wished to die in their good graces.  And that’s precisely what I did answer—­by wire, to have it over and done with at once.