At supper call he moved, but not to go below and eat--only to shift to walking the quarter, and walking the quarter he stayed until near midnight. He went below then after giving a few words of instruction to the watch--went below and got out his pipe. From my bunk, the middle port bunk in the cabin, I watched him rummaging for tobacco in his stateroom and then his coming out with his pipe and his filling and lighting it slowly and thoughtfully, and then his sitting and smoking under the cabin lamp. Looking over when he had finished that pipeful--I had not drawn my curtain--he caught my eyes on him. He smiled, but said nothing--only lit another pipeful, and kept on smoking. I fell asleep watching him--fell asleep and woke again. He must have been watching me, for his eyes were on mine when I looked for him again. He smiled and shook his pipe out, and made as though to turn in. But he didn't turn in. He took off his jersey, loosened the collar of his flannel shirt, cast off his slip-shods--stopped--looked into his bunk, came back, filled and lit another pipeful and began to talk to me. I thought I was sleepy, but in five minutes I didn't think so. Joking, laughing, telling stories--in ten minutes he had me roaring. Before long he had everybody in the cabin awake and roaring, too. Men, coming off watch and into the cabin to warm up, or for one thing or another, listened and stayed. He kept that up all the rest of the night--until after six o'clock in the morning, and only the cook called to breakfast there's no telling when he would have stopped. And not until he was going for'ard to eat did I get a glimpse of what it was he had been thinking of during all those earlier hours of the night. The sun, I remember, was streaking the sky ahead of us--he stopped just as he was about to drop into the forec's'le and pointed it out. "A sunrise, Joe, on a fine October morning out to sea--beautiful--beautiful--but just one thing wrong about it. And what is it?--you don't see? Well, Joe, it's over the bow. A sunrise, Joe, is most beautiful when it's over the stern--and why? 'Cause then you're going home--of course. Going home, Joe--if you've got a home to go to. Look to it, Joe, that you've got a home of your own to go to before you're much older. Somebody to work for--somebody waiting for you--a wife, Joe--wife and children--or you're in for some awful lonesome times." That was Clancy--watch-mate, bunk-mate, dory-mate once, and now my skipper--Clancy, who could be any man's friend, the man that everybody jumped to shake hands with, and yet never a bit of use to himself. And I couldn't but half wonder at that, and kept my eyes on him when, with one foot on the top step of the companionway, he turned and looked around again. "And if you can't get anybody, skipper?" "Then it's hard--though most likely you've deserved it." "But you haven't deserved it?" "Deserved it? Yes, and ten times over." "That's pretty rough."