A schoolmate of mine dwelling at Yokohama tells us of the fate of the ship Lagoda.  This is the vessel that Captain Thompson of the Pilgrim came aboard and ``brought his brig with him’’ (page 137), and to which poor Foster fled (page 154), in fear of being flogged.  The Lagoda was under three hundred and forty tons, built at Scituate, Mass., in 1826, of oak with ``bluff bows and square stern.’’ Later she was sold to a New Bedford owner, converted into a bark and turned into a whaler.  In 1890, she came to Yokohama much damaged, was officially surveyed and pronounced not worth repair, was sold at auction and bought as a coal hulk for the Canadian Pacific Company’s steamers at that port, and in 1899 was sold to the Japanese, burned and broken up at Kanagawa.  The fate of these vessels, with that of the Alert burned at sea by the Alabama, illustrates how vessels, as Ernest Thompson Seton says of wild animals, seldom fail to have a hard, if not a tragic, ending.

It may be interesting to state that the Ayacucho (pronounced I-ah-coo-tsho) was named after the battle fought December 9, 1824, in Peru, South America, in which the Spaniards were defeated by the armies of Columbia and Peru, which battle ended the Spanish rule in America.  What became of her after she was sold to the Chilian government as a vessel of war, we do not know.

The Loriotte, we learn, was built at Plymouth, Mass., in 1828, was ninety-two tons, originally a schooner and later changed into an hermaphrodite brig.  Gorham H. Nye, her captain and part owner, was born in Nantucket, Mass.

As to persons, there is little to add about Captain Thompson.  Captain Faucon gave it as his opinion that Thompson was not a good navigator and that Thompson knew his sailors knew it, and to this cause he attributed in some measure Thompson’s hard treatment of the men.  His navigation of the Alert some twelve or fifteen hundred miles westward of the usual course around Cape Horn on the return passage was an instance.  It was much criticised by his sailors and officers.  It not only greatly lengthened the total distance but brought the vessel into currents that were more antarctic and more frequented with ice than those currents nearer the southwest coast of South America, usually taken advantage of on the trip west to east.  In 1880, on my visit to the scenes of ``Two Years Before the Mast,’’ I met a nephew of Captain Thompson at Santa Barbara.  He was then the proprietor of the hotel at which I stayed.  He invited me to walk with him Sunday afternoon.  When we started out together I noticed he had a large, thick cane, while I had none.  Could it be he was to wreak vengeance on the son of the man who had exposed his uncle?  I was strong and athletic after a year as stroke of the Freshman crew and three years as stroke of the University crew at Harvard.  I kept my weather eye open and took care to be a little behind rather than ahead of my companion.  At last he began on my father’s story, ``Two Years Before