“She was a ravening beast,” the man in tweeds started again.  “Old Colchester put his foot down and resigned.  And would you believe it?  Apse & Sons wrote to ask whether he wouldn’t reconsider his decision!  Anything to save the good name of the Apse Family.’  Old Colchester went to the office then and said that he would take charge again but only to sail her out into the North Sea and scuttle her there.  He was nearly off his chump.  He used to be darkish iron-grey, but his hair went snow-white in a fortnight.  And Mr. Lucian Apse (they had known each other as young men) pretended not to notice it.  Eh?  Here’s infatuation if you like!  Here’s pride for you!

“They jumped at the first man they could get to take her, for fear of the scandal of the Apse Family not being able to find a skipper.  He was a festive soul, I believe, but he stuck to her grim and hard.  Wilmot was his second mate.  A harum-scarum fellow, and pretending to a great scorn for all the girls.  The fact is he was really timid.  But let only one of them do as much as lift her little finger in encouragement, and there was nothing that could hold the beggar.  As apprentice, once, he deserted abroad after a petticoat, and would have gone to the dogs then, if his skipper hadn’t taken the trouble to find him and lug him by the ears out of some house of perdition or other.

“It was said that one of the firm had been heard once to express a hope that this brute of a ship would get lost soon.  I can hardly credit the tale, unless it might have been Mr. Alfred Apse, whom the family didn’t think much of.  They had him in the office, but he was considered a bad egg altogether, always flying off to race meetings and coming home drunk.  You would have thought that a ship so full of deadly tricks would run herself ashore some day out of sheer cussedness.  But not she!  She was going to last for ever.  She had a nose to keep off the bottom.”

Jermyn made a grunt of approval.

“A ship after a pilot’s own heart, eh?” jeered the man in tweeds.  “Well, Wilmot managed it.  He was the man for it, but even he, perhaps, couldn’t have done the trick without the green-eyed governess, or nurse, or whatever she was to the children of Mr. and Mrs. Pamphilius.

“Those people were passengers in her from Port Adelaide to the Cape.  Well, the ship went out and anchored outside for the day.  The skipper—­hospitable soul—­had a lot of guests from town to a farewell lunch—­as usual with him.  It was five in the evening before the last shore boat left the side, and the weather looked ugly and dark in the gulf.  There was no reason for him to get under way.  However, as he had told everybody he was going that day, he imagined it was proper to do so anyhow.  But as he had no mind after all these festivities to tackle the straits in the dark, with a scant wind, he gave orders to keep the ship under lower topsails and foresail as close as she would lie, dodging along the land till the morning.  Then he sought his virtuous couch.  The mate was on deck, having his face washed very clean with hard rain squalls.  Wilmot relieved him at midnight.