“It happened four years ago. I had no moustache then, was fat like a whale, and first mate on the ‘Dancing Kate’, a pearler in the Indian Ocean, between Java and Australia. That was sailing, mind you--real seamanship, no bally nonsense; a fight every weather, interesting all round. If it wasn’t a deadly calm, it was a typhoon; if it wasn’t either, it was want of food and water. I’ve seen us with pearls on board worth a thousand quid, and not a drop of water nor three square meals in the caboose. But that was life for men and not Miss Nancys. If they weren’t saints, they were sailors, afraid of nothing but God Almighty--and they do respect Him, even when they curse the winds and the sea. Well, one day we were lying in the open sea, about two hundred and fifty miles from Port Darwin. There wasn’t a breath of air. The sea was like glass; the sun was drawing turpentine out of every inch of the ‘Dancing Kate’. The world was one wild blister. There wasn’t a comfortable spot in the craft, and all round us was that staring, oily sea. It was too hot to smoke, and I used to make a Sede boy do my smoking for me. I got the benefit of the smell without any work. I was lying under the droop of a dingey, making the Sede boy call on all his gods for wind, with interludes of smoke, when he chucked his deities and tobacco, and, pointing, shouted, ‘Man! man!’ “I snatched a spy-glass. Sure enough, there was a boat on the water. It was moving ever so slowly. It seemed to stop, and we saw something lifted and waved, and then all was still again. I got a boat’s crew together, and away we went in that deadly smother. An hour’s row and we got within hail of the derelict--as one of the crew said, ‘feelin’ as if the immortal life was jerked out of us.’ The dingey lay there on the glassy surface, not a sign of life about her. Yet I had, as I said, seen something waved. The water didn’t even lap its sides. It was ghostly, I can tell you. Our oars licked the water; they didn’t attack it. Now, I’m going to tell you something, Marmion, that’ll make you laugh. I don’t think I’ve got any poetry in me, but just then I thought of some verses I learned when I was a little cove at Wellington--a devilishly weird thing. It came to me at that moment like a word in my ear. It made me feel awkward for a second. All sailors are superstitious, you know. I’m superstitious about this ship. Never mind; I’ll tell you the verses, to show you what a queer thing memory is. The thing was called ‘No Man’s Sea’: “‘The days are dead in the No Man’s Sea, And God has left it alone; The angels cover their heads and flee, And the wild four winds have flown. “‘There’s never a ripple upon the tide, There’s never a word or sound; But over the waste the white wraiths glide, To look for the souls of the drowned.