“_Golden Cloud_, sir; boat Cap’n Flower is on,” said Joe, slowly. Fraser regarded him sternly. “What do you know about it?” he asked. Joe looked round helplessly. At such moments Willyum Green was a tower of strength, but at the present time he was fooling about helping the ship’s cat to wash itself. “What do you know about it?” repeated Fraser. “Will-yum told me, sir,” said Joe, hastily. Mr. Green being summoned, hastily put down the cat and came aft, while Joe, with a full confidence in his friend’s powers, edged a few feet away, and listened expectantly as the skipper interrogated him. “Yes, sir, I did tell Joe, sir,” he answered, with a reproachful glance at that amateur. “I met Cap’n Flower that evening again, late, an’ he told me himself. I’m sorry to see by this morning’s paper that his ship is overdue.” “That’ll do,” said Fraser, turning away. The men moved off slowly, Mr. Green’s reproaches being forestalled by the evidently genuine compliments of Joe. “If I’d got a ’ead like you, Will-yum,” he said, enviously, “I’d be a loryer or a serlicitor, or some-think o’ the kind.” Days passed and ran into weeks, but the _Golden Cloud_ was still unspoken. Fraser got a paper every day when ashore, but in vain, until at length one morning, at Bittlesea, in the news columns of the _Daily Telegraph_, the name of the missing ship caught his eye. He folded the paper hurriedly, and breathed hard as he read:— “Missing ship, _Golden Cloud_. “Rio Janeiro, Thursday. “The barque _Foxglove_, from Melbourne to Rio Janeiro, has just arrived with five men, sole survivors of the ship _Golden Cloud_, which they report as sunk in collision with a steamer, name unknown, ten weeks out from London. Their names are Smith, Larsen, Petersen, Collins and Gooch. No others saved.” In a dazed fashion he read the paragraph over and over again, closely scanning the names of the rescued men. Then he went up on deck, and beckoning to Joe, pointed with a trembling finger to the fatal paragraph. Joe read it slowly. “And Cap’n Flower wasn’t one o’ them, sir?” he asked, pointing to the names. Fraser shook his head, and both men stood for some time in silence. “He’s done it this time, and no mistake,” said Joe, at last. “Well, ’e was a good sailorman and a kind master.” He handed the paper back, and returned to his work and to confer in a low voice with Green, who had been watching them. Fraser went back to the cabin, and after sitting for some time in a brown study, wrote off to Poppy Tyrell and enclosed the cutting. He saw her three days later, and was dismayed and surprised to find her taxing herself with being the cause of the adventurous mariner’s death. “He would never have heard of the _Golden Cloud_ if it hadn’t been for me,” she said, trembling. “His death is at my door.”