The man killed in the fight had not been a sailor but a landsman, that was evident, and he had had something to do with a woman--no, a girl. Then came the words, “Six years old,” and the keeper suddenly realized that all this might relate to the child sleeping in his bed. He bent down and waited for her name, but it never came. Most likely the speaker did not know it. There was something about a “Captain King,” but the name of the _Mermaid’s_ captain had been Jackson.... This Captain King had had something to do with the six-year-old girl.... She was not his child but another’s.... He had arranged to send her back ... keeping himself out of it.... Child ... Cap’n Smiley’s thoughts travelled to the letter found with the body of the _Mermaid’s_ skipper. It must have been from this Captain King. But to whom was he returning this child who was not his? And who were her parents? All this sick man knew he had learned from an agent of Captain King who had brought the child to the master of the _Mermaid_, and who had been drinking with the money someone, presumably King, had paid him.... The keeper, with a beating heart, gave heed to the sailor’s talking. Much of it was irrelevant and not a little was unclean; once the man sang part of a chantey, and once he cursed a fellow working beside him aloft on a yard. It was a long and strained vigil that the Coast Guardsman kept, and when, toward morning, the poor wretch on the floor sank into a coma and died, he had an intolerable sense of being cheated, first by a dead man who should have kept his papers in oilskin packets, and then by a dying man whose tongue should either have wagged a few hours longer or never have wagged at all. V