"What right have we--poor wretched human souls!--to say that we will do this or that thing, that we will strive and succeed, when there are forces within us past our understanding, that decide the matter for us? I loved that little girl Zenie. She made me a plucky, ambitious boy. She died, and I became a wreck, a tramp, a scrubwoman on a liner. I saw you, and went to work; and here I am--as a sailor a practical success. I once read a poem that I liked. I forget the title and the author; but one verse ran like this: "'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit--'" A heavy cane came down on his head, and an angry voice broke in, "Damn you! Is this what I shipped a first mate for? To keep my daughter up till near midnight, and wake me up making love to her over my window? Zaza, go below at once!" The captain had rounded the corner of the house in his pajamas. The girl screamed as the cane was poised for a second blow; but Bridge said nothing, nor did the cane descend again. The mate raised his two arms high above his head, leaned backward over the low poop-rail, sagged down, and slid headlong over it into the sea. Again the girl screamed, and the captain, shouting "Man overboard!" sprang to a life-buoy fastened to the taffrail, tore it loose, and threw it. "My God! what have I done?" he said chokingly. "I did not mean to knock him overboard." No one heard this. The girl had swooned in the alley, and the man at the wheel was snugly ensconced in a warm, sound-proof wheelhouse, with but one window open. "Put your wheel down!" ordered the captain through the window. "Bring her up till she shakes. All hands forward, there! Come aft four men and clear away this quarter-boat. Weather main-brace the rest of you!" They did all that men may do. They hove the ship to, lowered a boat, and searched till daylight. But Bridge, who could not swim, was not found; and the ship went on, with a remorseful captain trying to comfort a frantic girl, who in two days was down with brain-fever. Zaza was a troublesome patient, and as the captain had now to stand watch with his second mate he could give her little of the attention she needed--he could spend with her only an hour or so from each watch below, and, if all was well with the ship, a few minutes from the watch on deck. In her lucid moments there was small comfort for the unhappy man. Not a drop of medicine would she take from his hand, nor a morsel of food, and not a word would she speak to him; but in the steady, scornful, unforgiving look in her dark blue eyes was a world of reproach.