“Of course, there were numbers drowned, but by keeping his hands in his pockets and his head cool he saved hundreds of lives. Not until the last person was off the steamboat—he sent men aboard to make sure—did he take off the press of sail. And the steamboat sank at once.” She ceased, and looked at me with shining eyes for approbation. “It was splendid,” I acknowledged. “I admire the quiet man of power, though I confess that such quietness under stress seems to me almost unearthly and beyond human. I can’t conceive of myself acting that way, and I am confident that I was suffering more while that poor devil was in the water than all the rest of the onlookers put together.” “Father suffers!” she defended loyally. “Only he does not show it.” I bowed, for I felt she had missed my point. CHAPTER V. I came out from tea in the cabin to find the tug _Britannia_ in sight. She was the craft that was to tow us down Chesapeake Bay to sea. Strolling for’ard I noted the sailors being routed out of the forecastle by Sundry Buyers, forever tenderly pressing his abdomen with his hands. Another man was helping Sundry Buyers at routing out the sailors. I asked Mr. Pike who the man was. “Nancy—my bosun; ain’t he a peach?” was the answer I got, and from the mate’s manner of enunciation I was quite aware that “Nancy” had been used derisively. Nancy could not have been more than thirty, though he looked as if he had lived a very long time. He was toothless and sad and weary of movement. His eyes were slate-coloured and muddy, his shaven face was sickly yellow. Narrow-shouldered, sunken-chested, with cheeks cavernously hollow, he looked like a man in the last stages of consumption. Little life as Sundry Buyers showed, Nancy showed even less life. And these were bosuns!—bosuns of the fine American sailing-ship _Elsinore_! Never had any illusion of mine taken a more distressing cropper. It was plain to me that the pair of them, spineless and spunkless, were afraid of the men they were supposed to boss. And the men! Doré could never have conjured a more delectable hell’s broth. For the first time I saw them all, and I could not blame the two bosuns for being afraid of them. They did not walk. They slouched and shambled, some even tottered, as from weakness or drink.