"It will help them to keep from gloomy thoughts," said Mrs. Ryder. "The _Star of the South_ is a home for our men." "And two run in Valparaiso," retorted Watchett. "And I on'y lost one." He took a drink with his cousin and went back on board the _Battle-Axe_, and spent the torrid day in getting a deal of unnecessary work done. And still no flaw of lightest air marred the awful mirror of the quiet seas. Early in the first watch the boats were lowered again to tow the vessels apart. At midnight, when the watch below came aft and answered to their names in the deep shadow of the moonless tropic night, Ned Tidewell did not answer to his name. "Tidewell!" cried Thoms, angrily and anxiously. And still there was no answer, but a groan from old Brooks. "Wot did I tell you?" he demanded. "I seed it in 'is eye." They searched the _Battle-Axe_ from stem to stern; they overhauled the sails in the sail-lockers; they hunted with a lantern in the forepeak; they even went aloft to the fore and main tops, where once or twice someone who sought for coolness where no coolness could be found went up into what they jocosely called the "attic." But Ned had lost the number of his mess. "More clothes for sale," said the melancholy crew, as they looked at each other suspiciously. "'Oo'll be the next?" Brooks declared to the other fo'c's'le men that the next would be Wat Crampe, or Taffy, as they called the Welshman. "There's an awful 'orrid look o' the deep, dark knowledge of death in their faces," declared old Brooks. "They thinks of the peace of it and the quiet, and smiles secret!" Next morning Watchett hailed the _Star_ and told the latest dreadful news. And at the end he added, in a truly pathetic roar, "Send me them tins o' marmalade aboard, and the butter." And when Mrs. Ryder superintended the steward's work getting these stores out of the lazaret, she smiled very strangely. She said to her husband: "If he loses another hand or two the _Battle-Axe_ will be no easy ship to work, Will." "I wouldn't have believed the matter of a hundred pounds would have made you so hard," said Ryder. And Connie Ryder pouted mutinously, and her pout ran off into a wicked and most charming smile. "I'm not thinking so much of the money as of our ship being beaten," she said.