I assure you, my dear sir, that she invariably did kill someone every voyage she made. It was perfectly well-known. She got a name for it, far and wide.&rdquo; </p> <p> I expressed my surprise that a ship with such a deadly reputation could ever get a crew. </p> <p> &ldquo;Then, you don&rsquo;t know what sailors are, my dear sir. Let me just show you by an instance. One day in dock at home, while loafing on the forecastle head, I noticed two respectable salts come along, one a middle-aged, competent, steady man, evidently, the other a smart, youngish chap. They read the name on the bows and stopped to look at her. Says the elder man: &lsquo;Apse Family. That&rsquo;s the sanguinary female dog&rsquo; (I&rsquo;m putting it in that way) &lsquo;of a ship, Jack, that kills a man every voyage. I wouldn&rsquo;t sign in her&mdash;not for Joe, I wouldn&rsquo;t.&rsquo; And the other says: &lsquo;If she were mine, I&rsquo;d have her towed on the mud and set on fire, blame if I wouldn&rsquo;t.&rsquo; Then the first man chimes in: &lsquo;Much do they care! Men are cheap, God knows.&rsquo; The younger one spat in the water alongside. &lsquo;They won&rsquo;t have me&mdash;not for double wages.&rsquo; </p> <p> &ldquo;They hung about for some time and then walked up the dock. Half an hour later I saw them both on our deck looking about for the mate, and apparently very anxious to be taken on. And they were.&rdquo; </p> <p> &ldquo;How do you account for this?&rdquo; I asked. </p> <p> &ldquo;What would you say?&rdquo; he retorted. &ldquo;Recklessness! The vanity of boasting in the evening to all their chums: &lsquo;We&rsquo;ve just shipped in that there Apse Family. Blow her. She ain&rsquo;t going to scare us.&rsquo; Sheer sailorlike perversity! A sort of curiosity. Well&mdash;a little of all that, no doubt. I put the question to them in the course of the voyage. The answer of the elderly chap was: </p> <p> &ldquo;&lsquo;A man can die but once.&rsquo; The younger assured me in a mocking tone that he wanted to see &lsquo;how she would do it this time.&rsquo; But I tell you what; there was a sort of fascination about the brute.&rdquo; </p> <p> Jermyn, who seemed to have seen every ship in the world, broke in sulkily: </p> <p> &ldquo;I saw her once out of this very window towing up the river; a great black ugly thing, going along like a big hearse.&rdquo; </p> <p> &ldquo;Something sinister about her looks, wasn&rsquo;t there?&rdquo; said the man in tweeds, looking down at old Jermyn with a friendly eye. &ldquo;I always had a sort of horror of her. She gave me a beastly shock when I was no more than fourteen, the very first day&mdash;nay, hour&mdash;I joined her. Father