'What is a log?' inquired Miss Vanderholt. 'A book, my dear, in which the chief mate of a ship enters daily her situation, the state of the weather, and such observations as he is capable of making.' 'They are not many, or of a poetical order,' said Glew, with his faint taut smile. 'The nearest romantic stroke that I can recollect was this entry: "A dreadful day. At noon precisely the ship blew up, and nobody was left but William Gibson."' 'I suspect, captain,' said Mr. Vanderholt, 'that you will have met with some romantic traverses in your time?' 'I don't recall any,' answered the captain. 'Why, to put one instance as delicately as I can,' said Mr. Vanderholt, filling a silver tankard till it foamed over with India pale ale; 'that extraordinary affair of some early love.' Miss Vi looked extremely confused, and gazed with entreaty at her father. 'The remarkable story, I mean,' continued Vanderholt, bringing out his mouth and nose covered with froth, 'that Mr. Fairbanks told me.' 'And what might the story be, sir?' said Captain Glew, looking blankly. Miss Vanderholt continued to gaze with entreaty, whilst her father repeated the story. Captain Glew drained his wine-glass, and uttered a dismal laugh, in which his face bore no part. 'Why,' said he, 'that yarn's told of old Jim Dyson, old Captain Dyson, who was found dead in his bed three years ago at the sign of the Sot's Hole, down Limehouse way.' Miss Vanderholt burst out laughing. 'I wonder Mr. Fairbanks should tell that yarn of me,' continued Captain Glew. 'If my wife gets to hear of it--and there's trouble enough in married life without lies----' 'So the bubbles break as quickly as they are blown,' said Mr. Vanderholt. 'But I confess I never would have thought it of you, Captain Glew.' After dinner the father and daughter patrolled the deck, warmly wrapped. Mr. Vanderholt smoked an immense pipe that curled from an amber tip at his lips into a richly-bronzed and glowing bowl in his hand. It was early night. The wind was gone, the stream of tide softly shaled along the bends of the schooner in the note of surf washing on shingle heard at a distance. How dismal, flat and gaunt looked the treeless Tilbury shore in that sad light! The very stars shining over it seemed to tremble with the spirit of mud and cold desolation. Shadowy shapes of ships went by, sometimes to a sound of music, as of concertinas and the like; tall phantasmal shapes, lifting spires as delicate as needles to the stars, loomed anear and afar. In the main, silence lay upon that river, with its burden of living freights.