After some Niggling and sharp bargaining the money was paid, and John bade his brother good night and took his leave.  There was silence for some moments; then a soft chuckle welled up from the lonely William, and he muttered:  “I declare for ’t, if I haven’t made a mistake!  It’s D that’s mostly loom, not E. And John’s booked for a sandy site after all.”

There was another soft chuckle, and William departed to his rest also.

The next day, in New York, was a hot one.  Still we managed to get more or less entertainment out of it.  Toward the middle of the afternoon we arrived on board the stanch steamship Bermuda, with bag and baggage, and hunted for a shady place.  It was blazing summer weather, until we were half-way down the harbor.  Then I buttoned my coat closely; half an hour later I put on a spring overcoat and buttoned that.  As we passed the light-ship I added an ulster and tied a handkerchief around the collar to hold it snug to my neck.  So rapidly had the summer gone and winter come again?

By nightfall we were far out at sea, with no land in sight.  No telegrams could come here, no letters, no news.  This was an uplifting thought.  It was still more uplifting to reflect that the millions of harassed people on shore behind us were suffering just as usual.

The next day brought us into the midst of the Atlantic solitudes—­out of smoke-colored sounding into fathomless deep blue; no ships visible anywhere over the wide ocean; no company but Mother Carey’s chickens wheeling, darting, skimming the waves in the sun.  There were some seafaring men among the passengers, and conversation drifted into matter concerning ships and sailors.  One said that “true as the needle to the pole” was a bad figure, since the needle seldom pointed to the pole.  He said a ship’s compass was not faithful to any particular point, but was the most fickle and treacherous of the servants of man.  It was forever changing.  It changed every day in the year; consequently the amount of the daily variation had to be ciphered out and allowance made for it, else the mariner would go utterly astray.  Another said there was a vast fortune waiting for the genius who should invent a compass that would not be affected by the local influences of an iron ship.  He said there was only one creature more fickle than a wooden ship’s compass, and that was the compass of an iron ship.  Then came reference to the well known fact that an experienced mariner can look at the compass of a new iron vessel, thousands of mile from her birthplace, and tell which way her head was pointing when she was in process of building.

Now an ancient whale-ship master fell to talking about the sort of crews they used to have in his early days.  Said he: