"Well, I've said enough to give you an idea of the sudden turn in my fortunes. A week ago I was in love, and comfortably tucked away inside a cozy corner of the professional class. My brother was a mysterious prodigal. Suddenly he butts in, and all is changed. He's snug and safe in a good berth, he's taken up the tale of his girls just where he left off, and I'm out at sea, Fourth Engineer of a rusty old freighter bound for a place I'd never heard of: Port Duluth, British Namaqualand. Well, let him marry her and be hanged! I thought; I'm out of that world. I was resolved not to go near London town till I'd worked out my probation on the _Corydon_. I saw that I was back in the Third Form at school again. I saw that my shipmates knew nothing about culture or public schools or art or gentility. I saw they knew their business, and if I would be willing and quick to jump, they would teach it to me. My only real trouble was that old Third. If he'd only been a little cleaner in his habits! He would lie on the settee when he was off watch, the creases in his cheeks twisting, his bloodshot old eyes fixed on the toes of his red slippers and then--biff!--he would spit on the floor. But even that I could have stood if he'd been more cheerful. He never smiled, only creased his cheeks a little deeper. In time I learned why the last Fourth, a gay young spark of twenty-two, had fled out of the ship. This old Third, old Croasan his name was, didn't care what happened to him. His children were grown up and run away; he was too ignorant to get a certificate, and he was just waiting for a ship to go to the bottom and take him with her. When the Second told me that I didn't believe him. I held, as most people hold, that even a man a hundred years of age will fight like a tom-cat for his life. But I found that the Second was right! "We struck bad weather as soon as we got into the Bay. The _Corydon_ was loaded to her summer draught and here was a westerly gale coming on her bow, and later on her beam. She rolled day and night, shipping big seas all the time. This rolling washed the bilge water up on the plates in the stoke hold and lifted them, so that the small Welsh coal, like the Lehigh stuff you get here, was washed into the limber and choked the pump suctions. Very soon the bilge began to fill. The old ship was leaking like a basket any way, and she took a heavy list to port. All my watch that night, from eight o'clock till twelve, I was on those bilge-pumps trying to make them draw, while the Chief looked after the engines. It was no joke, with her listed over like that, the platform under water and green seas coming down through the skylights. I thought of my pleasant home at Oakleigh Park then, the quiet autumn streets, the bright fire in the dining-room and the cosy warm bed. Oh yes, I thought of it, but not with regret. I was out to win through, and all hell wouldn't have made me desert!