The following story is absolutely true, and shows how circumstances at times seem to try and assist the hangman to put the rope round the victim’s neck. It was my custom when in command to sleep in the afternoon, and then remain about well into the middle watch. In the _Asiatic_ my cabin was at the fore end of the saloon on the starboard side. One night, about half-past twelve, I was sitting up with a Captain Le Breton, smoking and yarning. The door was open, windows and ports also, for the night was very warm. This was before the time of electric lamps, and my cabin was lit by a moderator lamp, and another one hung in the saloon, for ordinary cabin lights were extinguished at 11 p.m. save when by the doctor’s orders they were kept burning. Suddenly in rushed a girl, yelling that some one was looking into her cabin through the porthole, and asking to be saved, flung herself down in a chair, and went off into a faint. Just at that moment a puff of wind blew my lamp out, a thing that had not happened before to my knowledge. Then I went for the lamp in the saloon, which also went out, after which I got the quartermaster’s bull’s-eye, and went and called the stewardess, who took the frightened girl back to her cabin and put things straight once more. When I and my companion were alone again I asked him, if he was on a jury, would he believe in such a combination of circumstances, and he gave an unhesitating No, and I can certainly say, Neither would I. The _Asiatic_ got back to Southampton looking so smart that she hardly knew herself. It’s really wrong to make fun of my ship, but on her first voyage, when she was commanded by Captain Coxwell, the commodore, on her arrival in Algoa Bay he was chaffed by his acquaintances upon his skill in bringing in his ship stern first, for they pretended to believe that no vessel in existence could have a bow like the _Asiatic_. They might almost have been forgiven for the belief.