But with familiarity, though I never lost my enthusiasm, I had leisure to return upon myself and take measure of the calamity which had befallen me. The fumes had cleared from my mind by now, and I began to understand that I should never see my father again. "He is dead, dead, dead!" was no longer an ominous knocking from without; it was a sorrow that had come to live with me for ever. My father, who had been my whole world to me! He had gone. And I had been longing to see him, counting the days, in an agony when the misadventure of the officers and the later misadventure at Sunset Towers had threatened to hold us apart. And yet, so malignant was the fate that had dogged us, it was at the very moment of reunion that the blow had been struck. It was an added pain to know that I hadn't even heard the last words of his love. They had been spoken to another, while I, blind in my rage, had forgotten him and left him to lie there, not even staying to staunch his wound. I had leisure to think of all this, and it was agony unspeakable while the mood lasted; but with the first of the morning, for it was usually at night-time that the dark humour caught me, I was out on deck and glorying in the shifting splendours of the dawn; for I was still a boy, eager, romantic and leaping to the call of beauty with an ardent and I think a poetic nature. So the days passed. I took no heed of where we were steering. At this time Dirk gave me a free hand, not attempting so soon to break me in to the stern discipline of the sea, consequently I wasn't called upon to take note of our course. So I was surprised one day when dropping anchor off shore Dirk lowered a boat, and getting in said to me, "Wull, you'd better keep close, kiddy. If they catch you hereabouts they mightn't be kind to you." I looked questionably at the land, and asked, "Why, where are we?" "Ho," he laughed, "you're a fine sailor, Tommy, my lad. I'd a thought you'd a known the Rancey." "The Rancey!" I exclaimed. And sure enough there was the channel running into the land. But I had never been as far as the mouth before. A sudden desire set my heart thumping. I had hardly given a thought to Jenny during the whole of the voyage. But I knew now by the uneasy catching of my breath that a strange longing for her had suddenly possessed me. "Dirk," I cried, "take me with you." "Orders!" he said sharply. "You stay here." "Dirk," I cried again coaxingly. He merely looked at me, and I knew I mustn't argue with him. So I watched him lower away with a couple of hands and row off to shore.