“Lord! Lord! I sailed third mate in the little _Vampire_ before you were born. Fifty-six men before the mast, and the last Jack of ’em an able seaman. And there were eight boys, an’ bosuns that was bosuns, an’ sail-makers an’ carpenters an’ stewards an’ passengers to jam the decks. An’ three driving mates of us, an’ Captain Brown, the Little Wonder. He didn’t weigh a hundredweight, an’ he drove us—he drove _us_, three drivin’ mates that learned from him what drivin’ was. “It was knock down and drag out from the start. The first hour of puttin’ the men to fair perished our knuckles. I’ve got the smashed joints yet to show. Every sea-chest broke open, every sea-bag turned out, and whiskey bottles, knuckle-dusters, sling-shots, bowie-knives, an’ guns chucked overside by the armful. An’ when we chose the watches, each man of fifty-six of ’em laid his knife on the main-hatch an’ the carpenter broke the point square off.—Yes, an’ the little _Vampire_ only eight hundred tons. The _Elsinore_ could carry her on her deck. But she was ship, all ship, an’ them was men’s days.” Margaret, save for inability to sleep, did not mind the driving, although Mr. Mellaire, on the other hand, admitted apprehension. “He’s got my goat,” he confided to me. “It isn’t right to drive a cargo-carrier this way. This isn’t a ballasted yacht. It’s a coal-hulk. I know what driving was, but it was in ships made to drive. Our iron-work aloft won’t stand it. Mr. Pathurst, I tell you frankly that it is criminal, it is sheer murder, to run the _Elsinore_ with that crojack on her. You can see yourself, sir. It’s an after-sail. All its tendency is to throw her stern off and her bow up to it. And if it ever happens, sir, if she ever gets away from the wheel for two seconds and broaches to . . . ” “Then what?” I asked, or, rather, shouted; for all conversation had to be shouted close to ear in that blast of gale. He shrugged his shoulders, and all of him was eloquent with the unuttered, unmistakable word—“finish.” At eight this morning Margaret and I struggled up to the poop. And there was that indomitable, iron old man. He had never left the deck all night. His eyes were bright, and he appeared in the pink of well-being. He rubbed his hands and chuckled greeting to us, and took up his reminiscences. “In ’51, on this same stretch, Miss West, the _Flying Cloud_, in twenty-four hours, logged three hundred and seventy-four miles under her topgallant-sails. That was sailing. She broke the record, that day, for sail an’ steam.” “And what are we averaging, Mr. Pike?” Margaret queried, while her eyes were fixed on the main deck, where continually one rail and then the other dipped under the ocean and filled across from rail to rail, only to spill out and take in on the next roll. “Thirteen for a fair average since five o’clock yesterday afternoon,” he exulted. “In the squalls she makes all of sixteen, which is going some, for the _Elsinore_.”