Aft much the same feeling existed, though no one knew it for'ard. Yet Captain Rayner was a melancholy man, and seemed very soft to those whom luck had ever sent to sea with American ship-masters. He had sailed three voyages in the _Pandora_ and had read the burial service every passage. Once he had read it to the devouring sea as a grave, when five men had gone at once from the foc'sle head; but he never spoke of the ship and her ways, even if he always came on deck with the air of a man who expects bad news. Though he never knew it, his look at last got upon the men's nerves. But their nerve was shaken from the first; superstition had hold of them. They called him 'Jonah.' "It's a black look out with such a skipper," said some, and though the evil history of the _Pandora_ ran far back beyond Rayner's time, they attributed her present ill-luck to him. The mind of the seaman is a limited mind. He is a child, a creature of arrested development. The infinite sameness of the sea, its dull and at times appalling lack of interest, do not move him to growth. The romance of it is for those who know it not, or for those who pass beyond the borders of its great roads of travel. For the merchant seaman the ocean is a method of toil; only disaster or the fear of it gives it savour. And the work is the same for ever. They dwell on little things, are easily pleased, easily hurt. In such minds grows superstition, in such panic fears flourish if they are not held in a strong hand. Though both the mates were good men, they were young, and Rayner was weak. The very fairness of the weather, though fair weather is common enough off the Horn in summer, got on the crew's minds, when they came in sight of the Diego Ramirez Islands and presently hauled up for the north. "None of us ever passed these 'ere Daggarammarines in weather like this," they said, as they shook their heads. "Why, it might be a mill-pond!" And when, three days later, a change of weather sent a south-west gale howling after them, they shook their heads again. "Ah, she's goin' to get it now. This'll make up for it. Who's goin' first?"