The captain did not seem to heed Hardy's silence and manner. He looked with great eagerness and a certain wildness along the decks, and then putting his hand to the side of his mouth, with his face turned forward, where the men stood watching him, he shouted in an imperious voice as though he would frighten an answer from the concealed child: "Johnny!--It is strange," said he, in a low voice, turning and looking at Hardy, "Is he aloft?" And he turned his eyes up and scrutinised the rigging, the tops, the crosstrees, the yards, stepping to the rail so as to obtain a view past the leaches of the canvas. "Shall I order those yards to be swung, sir, and way got upon the ship?" said Hardy, speaking with difficulty. "I want Johnny," was the captain's answer, and he walked slowly forward, looking to right and left of him, as though the little lad must be in hiding somewhere, flat beside a forward coaming or behind a hencoop, or under the long-boat, for his figure had been small, and he could have concealed himself within the flakes of the halliards coiled down upon a pin. The men drew back, scattered in a kind of dissolving way, gazed with sheepish looks of sympathy, one rugged man with damp eyes, for he too had lost a son beloved with the rough love of a heart unhardened by salt and toil. "Has any man among you," said the captain, bringing his head out of the galley door--for the child had been a frequent guest of the cooks of the ships he had sailed in: they would make him jam tarts and little cakes, and his prattle to the fellows was as cheering to them as the song of a canary--"has any man among you," he said, "seen my little boy?" "I don't think you'll find him forward, sir," answered the boatswain. "Jim, jump below and see if he's in the fok'sle." The sailors exchanged looks which seemed to suggest that they thought it kind and wise in the boatswain to humour the captain, whose mind, to them, appeared a little shaken and made uncertain by the shock of his loss. "No, I'll trust no man's eyes but mine," exclaimed the captain, with a lofty expression of face, and, going to the scuttle, which is the little hatch through which the seamen drop into their parlour, he put his legs over and descended. One man only was in this forecastle. He was the young seaman who had played the whistle whilst Johnny beat the drum. He started up at the sight of the captain, amazed by a visit that was unparalleled in his experience or recollection of forecastle story. His face showed marks of unaffected distress, and indeed this rude but sympathetic heart had been seated for some minutes prior to the captain's entrance, with bowed head resting in his wart-toughened palms, thinking of the child and his sudden death.