Which is all a rather groping attempt to explain a curious fact: that Emily appeared--indeed _was_ rather young for her age: and that this was due to, not in spite of, the adventures she had been through. But this youngness, it burnt with an intenser flame. She had never yelled so loud at Ferndale, for sheer pleasure in her own voice, as now she yelled in the schooner’s cabin, carolling like a larger, fiercer lark. Neither Jonsen nor Otto were nervous men: but the din she made sometimes drove them almost distracted. It was very little use telling her to shut up: she only remembered for such a short time. In a minute she was whispering, in two she was talking, in five her voice was in full blast. Jonsen was himself a man who seldom spoke to any one. His companionship with Otto, though devoted, was a singularly silent one. But when he did speak, he hated not to be able to make himself heard at all: even when, as was usual, it was himself he was talking to. iii Otto was at the wheel (there was hardly one of the crew fit to steer). His lively mind was occupied with Santa Lucia, and his young lady there. Jonsen slipper-sloppered up and down his side of the deck. Presently, his interest in his subject waning, Otto’s eye was caught by the ship’s monkey, which was sporting on its back on the cabin skylight. That animal, with the same ingenious adaptability to circumstance which has produced the human race, had now solved the playmate question. As a gambler will play left hand against right, so he fought back legs against front. His extraordinary lissomness made the dissociation most lifelike: he might not have been joined at the waist at all, for all the junction discommoded him. The battle, if good-tempered on both sides, was quite a serious one: now, while his hind feet were doing their best to pick out his eyes, his sharp little teeth closed viciously on his own private parts. From below the skylight, too, came tears and cries for help that one might easily have taken for real if they had not been occasionally interrupted by such phrases as ‘It’s no good: I shall cut off your head just the same!’ Captain Jonsen was thinking about a little house in far-off, shadowy Lübeck--with a china stove ... it didn’t do to talk about retiring: above all, one must never say aloud ‘This is my last voyage,’ even addressing oneself. The sea has an ironic way of interpreting it in her own fashion, if you do. Jonsen had seen too many skippers sail on their ‘last voyage’--and never return. He felt acutely melancholy, not very far from tears: and presently he went below. He wanted to be alone.