The Skipper was alone at the wheel when she made her plunge, and defiantly clung to her till he was carried far under. He rose to the surface and caught his breath. And that breath he gave to the _Pantheon_ as he saw her mast-heads plunging. “You were a good vessel to me,” he murmured, even as the sea tossed him far away. He reached for something in the swash and found he had the wheel-box. He grasped it, but it was all smooth-sided--no place for his hands to get a grip, and the terrible tide rips tore him loose. One sea, and another, now high where the heavens touched the crests almost, and again in the depths and roarings he was cast like the flying spume itself. Enveloped in foam so thick that even when his head was above the surface he could not breathe fairly, he still tried to justify that last catastrophe. “And yet you were a good vessel to me.” There is always a last sea, and that last sea caught him fair and overbore him. He knew it when it came. The physical agony was by then and the soul surmounting all. Not till then did he indulge himself so far as to let his heart dwell on the memory of her as he last saw her, standing in the doorway when he turned the corner. For the last time he had turned that corner. Ah, but she was beautiful--and was it to lose her he came to sea? The roar of Georges Shoals was in his soul. He began to hear the voices then, voices of his own men--he knew them--and voices he had never heard before--voices, no doubt, of men lost in these long years of toil in waters where the sands below are white with lost men’s bones. Her voice he heard, too--heard it above all. “Dannie, Dannie,” it whispered, plain as could be. By that he knew that she needed no newspaper to tell her--even at that moment she knew--knew, and was suffering. And all her life she would have to suffer. And so it was “God help you, Katie Morrison!” that parted his foam-drenched lips at the last. * * * * * The _Katie Morrison_ was launched and rigged, but ’twas another young and hopeful skipper that sailed her out to sea. Patsie Oddie’s Black Night “To hell with them that’s saved,” said he-- “Here’s to them that died.” ’Twas Patsie Oddie said that--that is, said it first. Many people have repeated it since, but with Patsie Oddie it was born. He said a whole lot more--enough for somebody to make a song of--but the two lines quoted above serve to sum the matter up. It was a winter’s morning he said it. Cold? Oh, but it _was_ cold. Wind from the north-west and blowing hard--a sort of dry blizzard. Every vessel coming in had stories to tell of what a time they had to get home and how long it took them. “It’s been tack, tack, tack from St. Peter’s Bank, till we fair chafed the jaws off the boom of her,” said Crump Taylor.