“Surely,” his father agreed, “and I hope you will remember always to treat ’em as carefully as I have done. They’ve got fine lenses in them, and I don’t know that I ever handled a better pair of binoculars in my life. There’s many a sea-captain tramping round the ocean who’d give a whole lot to own a pair of glasses like them, so you’ll have to be careful or they will get stolen. Not that stealing is common on board ship. It’s the unforgivable sin at sea. I have seen a man thrown overboard and near drowned for taking what wasn’t his. All the same you’ll have to keep your eyes open, but if you’ve still got them when the time comes for you to be pacing the bridge they’ll be worth a sight more to you than the junk you can pick up for good money at most stores. When there’s a thick haze and you’re driving down on a vessel that’s blowing her buzzer fit to wake the dead, you can’t tell which direction the sound is coming from. The lives of everybody on board may depend on your being able to spot the other boat. That’s when you want a good pair of binoculars to see through.” “Can I use them now just as if they were mine?” Dave put in anxiously. He had a nice sense of honor. Nothing would have induced him to take them on the _Pacific Queen_ without a favorable reply to this question. “Why, I don’t see any objection,” Captain Hallard replied good-naturedly, puffing away at his pipe. “Only, as I say, take care of them, and mind you don’t scratch the lenses. They were given to me nigh on thirty years ago by an old deep-sea pilot once when we were in the North Sea, making Flushing on the Dutch coast. I was second mate at the time. It had been blowing a regular gale, and we’d got to the lightship where the pilot cutter was generally hanging around. Dark! You couldn’t see your hand before you, away from a lamp; and there was a heavy ground swell running. All of a sudden we saw the flare off the cutter, signalling that a pilot was coming to us. It means fifty dollars at least for a few hours’ work, so they’ll board you in a mighty bad sea if their small boat can stand it. Our skipper didn’t reckon they could make it, but he sent up a flare in answer, and pretty soon the dory bumped alongside with two men at the oars besides the pilot. I’d slung a rope ladder over and was standing by. The pilot got ready to catch hold of the ladder when the ship wasn’t rolling extra hard. The dory was bobbing up and down and I felt kind of nervous for the old man. He had boarded hundreds of ships in the dark, but the sea is a queer thing, my lad. She’s always waiting. You never know when she’s going to get you. Just as the pilot was reaching out for the ladder a big wave caught us on the starboard quarter and rolled us right over on top of the dory. It crumpled up like an egg, and I made sure all three men in her must have been killed.