His death brought the superstitious members of the crew to the front again. Pessimistically they prophesied all sorts of evils, and Sam, the chief authority, openly proclaimed that Black Davis, with the death of the ship's cat upon his soul, would be the next victim of the ghostly avenger. In the south-east trades easy times reigned in the starboard watch. For nearly a week not a sheet, brace, or halliard was touched, except for the usual pull on the braces and general "freshening of the nip" every evening. In the second dog-watch the men would collect on the foc's'le head, and exchange yarns with eager faces and vehement gestures. Every man forward had seen life in its more unusual phases. Paddy, Hank, Jack, and the cockney had all been shipwrecked more than once; and even Jim had had a strange crop of experiences crowded into his short life. One evening Jack had just related a yarn of how he had been wounded in an affray in the New Hebrides, when mate of a "blackbirder," as the schooners recruiting Kanaka labour for the Queensland plantations were called. "Any money in thet layout?" inquired the gambler. "Used to be," returned Jack, "till the missionaries and opposition in Australia broke it up." "Thar's many a cinch in the South Seas," observed Hank. "Copra an' curios ain't bad, nor yet pearls, speshully if yew kin strike a preserved patch when thar ain't no gunboat knockin' around." "Smuggling opium's good, too," reflected Jack musingly. "Yew bet! Ever tried it?" "Aye." "How did it pan out?" inquired Bedrock Ben, somewhat eagerly. "So-so!" grunted the rover. "Did three good trips. Then we got caught napping in a typhoon, and the old junk went to the bottom." "Close call, eh?" "Yes; only three of us saved--two Chins and myself." "H'I tell ye, byes, smugglin's good gear h'all round," broke in the cockney. "Begorra, an' I'm after knowin' that same. Weren't I in the _Admiral Tronde_, a bruck-up little one-gunned stame-kettle runnin' guns fur them Urriguay sports," cried Paddy excitedly. "Were ye, Pat? Bully for you," went on the cockney. "I done some gun-runnin' too up the Persian Gulf; but h'I 'ad ter quit--the screw were good enuff, but the 'eat wos a knock-out. Lord love ye! W'y, we biled our cauffee on the shanks o' the anchors; s'elp me, but they wos allers red 'ot. An' th' ole man, 'e don' ever wear nuffin' but a bloomin' gal's night-gownd----" "Heat don't worry me," interrupted Hank. "It's cold calls the turn on me. I was up the Behring once sealin' an' got my bellyful." "Much ice?" inquired Jack casually. "A pretty considerable mush of it." "I was two months in the ice to the south'ard once in the _Cairngorm_," declared the rover.