I took the hint, and with our cups replenished, she bit thoughtfully into her fourteenth macaroon and continued. "There's one voyage I'm not likely to forget, though I live to be as old as Cap'n Mary Barnacle, of the _Shouter_. 'Twas aboard the old _Shouter_ that this here voyage occurred, and it was her last and likewise Cap'n Mary's. Cap'n Mary, she was then that decrepit, it seemed a mercy that she should go to her rest, and in good salt water at that. "I remember the voyage for Cap'n Mary's sake, but most I remember it because 'twas then that I come the nighest in my life to committin' matrimony. For a man, the man had nerve; he was nearer bein' companionable than any other man I ever seed; and if it hadn't been for just one little event that showed up the--the _mannishness_ of him, in a way I couldn't abide, I reckon he'd be keepin' house for me this minute." * * * * * "We cleared from Frisco with a cargo of silkateen petticoats for Brisbane. Cap'n Mary was always strong on petticoats. Leather breeches or even half-skirts would ha' paid far better, they being more in demand like, but Cap'n Mary was three-quarters owner, and says she, land women should buy petticoats, and if they didn't it wouldn't be the Lord's fault nor hers for not providing 'em. "We cleared on a fine day, which is an all sign--or was, then when the weather and the seas o' God still counted in the trafficking of the humankind. Not two days out we met a whirling, mucking bouncer of a gale that well nigh threw the old _Shouter_ a full point off her course in the first wallop. She was a stout craft, though. None of your featherweight, gas-lightened, paper-thin alloy shells, but toughened aluminum from stern to stern. Her turbine drove her through the combers at a forty-five knot clip, which named her a speedy craft for a freighter in them days. "But this night, as we tore along through the creaming green billows, something unknown went 'way wrong down below.