It was a strange, gloomy interior. The swing of the lamp kept the shadows on the wing, and oilskins and coats swayed upon the ship's wall to the solemn plunge of the bows, and you heard the roar of the smitten and recoiling surge in a low thunder, like the sound of a railway train striking through the soil into a vault. Some bunks went curving into the gloom past the light which fell through the hatch, and a few hammocks stretched their pale, bale-like lengths under the upper deck. Here, too, were sea-chests--a few only--and odds and ends of sea-boots, and the raffle of the sailor's ocean home. "Where's my son? Is he down here?" exclaimed the captain, haggard, and with something dreadful in his looks in that light, uttering the words as peremptorily as ever he delivered an order on the quarter-deck. The young fellow gazed aghast at him in silence. The captain, who did not seem to heed whether he was answered or not, went to the bunks and examined them one by one, knelt and looked under them, felt the sagged canvas of the hammocks. Oh, it was pitiful! "He's not here," he exclaimed, turning to the young sailor. "Have you got your whistle handy? Pull it out and pipe. The music will bring him with his drum." The young man went to his bunk and took the whistle from the head of it. His face was full of awe and wonder; it was a bit of psychology, a trick or two above all _his_ art of seamanship. "What shall I play, sir?" he asked, in a shaking voice, with a glance up through the scuttle at the men gathered near and listening. "What's his favourite tune?" said the captain. The young fellow reflected, and answered, "'Sally come up,' sir. It runs well with the drum." "Play it," said the captain. The young fellow put the whistle to his lips and blew. The contrast between the merry air, shrilling in the forecastle and out through the hatch into the bright wind, and the captain's half-triumphant face of expectancy would have melted a heart of steel. The poor man stepped under the little hatch and shouted up, "On deck there!" "Sir," answered the boatswain, showing himself. "Can this whistle be heard aft?" "Yes, sir." "Watch a bit, and report if he's coming." The young seaman, who was nearly heartbroken with his obligation of playing, continued to pipe, and you beheld a vision of dancing sailors, and swelling canvas reverberating the rattle of the drum. The captain waited under the hatch, his poor face charged with ardent expectation. He might have overheard a gruff voice say, "It oughtn't to be allowed to go on. He'd get all right if he'd go to his cabin, where it 'ud come to him." But he paid no heed. Suddenly the whistling ceased, and the young fellow, flinging his whistle into his bunk, cried, "It's choking me, sir." The captain looked at him, and saying, "Where is Johnny?" climbed through the hatch and, without a word to the sailors, walked slowly aft.