At times memories crowded so that they became confused. I was not sure, for instance, whether it was T----, of the _Eimoo_, or P----, of the _Levuka_, whom I had seen go over the rail into shark-infested Rotrura Lagoon to jerk the kink out of an air-hose before his diver strangled; or which of two otherwise well-remembered “B.I.” skippers it was that waded in, barehanded, and floored every one of a bunch of Lascars who were fighting with their knives; or whether it was the mate or the skipper of the East African coaster who, with one of his thighs being torn to ribbons by the beast’s hind claws, kept his grip on the throat of a young leopard that had slipped from its cage, and which he was afraid might become panic-stricken and jump overboard before it could be recaptured; or whether it was the captain of a “Burns, Philips” or a “Union” steamer that I had seen put out through the tortuous passage of Suva Bay when the wind was snapping the tops from the coconut palms, and the barometer was at 28.50 and still falling, just because the wife of the missionary on some obscure little bit of the Fijian Archipelago to the north was expecting to become a mother and needed the attention of the ship’s doctor. I would have gone on to the end of my “watch” thinking of the bravery--moral and physical--the ready nerve and the general “sufficiency unto occasion” of my old friends, but most that had been brave had also been kind and considerate, and every now and then I found my mind occupied with recollections of the little things they had done for me, or that I had seen them do for others. There was B----, of the old _Changsha_, running from Yokohama to Sydney, who went miles off his course just to satisfy my whim to pass over the spot where _Mary Gloster_ was buried at sea. What an afternoon that was! The Straits of Macassar “oily and treacly,” just as Kipling had described them, and the milk-warm land breeze wafting the odours of the spice groves of Celebes. B---- had his volume of Kipling and I had mine, and between us was the reef-freckled chart of Macassar Straits with Borneo to starboard, Celebes to port, and a thousand dotted lines indicating islets and reefs and rocks--mostly lurking, half-submerged--in between. “By the Little Paternosters, as you come to the Union Bank, We dropped her--I think I told you--and I pricked it off where she sank-- (Tiny she looked on the grating--that oily, treacly sea--) Hundred and eighteen East, remember, and South just three. Easy bearings to carry....” read B----, running his finger along the chart.