When everybody had done laughing, and after two or three had told how they felt when they were on the bottom of a dory, the persistent one asked again, “Martin, but you must’ve had some close calls in your time?” “My share--no more.” He was taking a look around the table as he spoke--a lingering, regretful look--and then he gave up any further thought of it. “Ah-h,” he sighed, “but I cert’nly took the good out of that meal,” and leaning against the nearest bunk-board--his own--drew out his pipe from beneath the mattress. “My share and no more,” he repeated, and reached across to the shelf in his bunk and drew forth a plug of tobacco. He cut off the proper quantity and rolled it around between his palms the proper length of time before he spoke again. With the pipe between his teeth he had to speak more slowly. “Any man that’s been thirty years trawling will nat’rally have a few things happen to him. To-day makes the third time I’ve been on the bottom of a dory, and cold weather each time--just my blessed luck--cold weather each time”--three times he blew through the stem of his pipe--“and I don’t want to be there the fourth. Eddie-boy, hand me a wisp out of the broom at your elbow.” While Martin was cleaning out his pipe somebody put the question generally. Would they rather be on the bottom of a dory out to sea, or on a vessel piled up on the rocky shore somewhere? “On the rocks for me.” “And for me.” “Yes, a chance to get ashore from a wreck, but the bottom of a dory with the sea breaking over you, and it cold maybe--cert’nly it’s never any too warm--wr-r-h!” There seemed to be no doubt of what they would take for their choice. “And yet,” commented Martin when the last word had been said, “I dunno but the closest call ever I had was when the _Oliver Cromwell_ went ashore and was lost off Whitehead.” “Cripes, but I’m glad I warn’t on her. A bad business that--a bad business. Hand me that plate, will you, Martin”--this from the cook. “Sure, boy--here y’are--an armful of plates. Cook on a fisherman’s the last job I’d want--you’re never done. And you’re right it was a bad business, cook. When you’ve seen nineteen men washed over one after the other, every man--every man but one, that is--putting up the divil’s own fight for his life before he went-- I dunno but what it must be worse than going down at sea altogether, all hands in one second, with no chance at all--though that must be hard enough, too.” Silence for a while, and then Martin continued: “If I had it to do over again”--two long puffs--“to do it over and be lost instead of saved, I dunno but what I’d rather founder at sea myself. Nineteen men lost--eighteen good men-- Lord, but ’twas cruel!” Martin, with his head back, was gazing thoughtfully up at the deck-beams. A gentle leading question, and he resumed. “We left Gloucester that trip with the Skipper’s-- But to tell that story right a man ought to begin away back. But will you give me a match, somebody?”