He pushed back the thick hair from his forehead and revealed an ugly-looking scar of a peculiar reddish-brown color. “Now you know why I wear my hair long even in the tropics,” he said. “I’ve not got much beauty to boast of, maybe, but I’m a little sensitive about that cursed mark all the same. I hate to think of it!” The steward seemed astonished. “The _St. Lawrence_! You were on that ship, Mr. Morgan?” he exclaimed, in accents that betrayed his incredulity. “I was mate of her on her last four voyages.” “We were in Antwerp at the time, but I always understood that all hands were lost with her.” “All but the carpenter and me.” He rose, emptied his pipe, and appeared anxious to drop the subject, but the curiosity of the steward led him to ask how those two had managed to escape. The bo’s’un seconded the request, so Morgan again seated himself, and after a short silence related the affair in these words: The _St. Lawrence_ was a neat little ship—you may have seen her,—and Captain Fairley was one of the finest men I ever met,—quiet, and a man of few words, but when he said a thing he meant it. I didn’t like his wife so well, but his daughter, Miss Marion,—oh, she was a lovely girl. She’d never lived on shore much, and had that shy, retiring disposition that you often see in such cases, where the captain’s children always go with him and have nobody of their own age to associate with. She never hankered after shore life though, and seemed perfectly happy to be always at sea. Miss Marion had quite a liking for me, and many and many an evening would she pace the deck in my watch, telling me the names of the different stars and how far off some of them were, and all such things. That was her favorite study—astronomy. Then she read a great deal and used to tell me about her books. All the tidies for the cabin chairs were made by her hands. You remember that silk handkerchief I showed you,—that one with the _M_ embroidered on it? She worked that letter and gave me the handkerchief on my birthday. It was the first birthday present I ever got, and I guess it’ll be the last. Poor girl! she wasn’t quite seventeen when the accident happened. We came across from Hong Kong to San Francisco and found that the ship had been chartered to load coal on Puget Sound. We arrived at Nanaimo near the end of March. In those days there were no stevedores at most of the coal ports on the Sound, and it was the captain’s or mate’s business to superintend the work of the crew in loading the vessel. Captain Fairley had to go to Tacoma on some business matter, and as ill-luck would have it, I was taken sick the day after we got to Nanaimo, and the doctor made me turn in. I wasn’t able to get out of that bunk for ten days, with the result that the second mate had charge of loading the ship.