I knew by the captain's silent departure that I had made a break of some kind, but I could not locate it. Perhaps the first officer might explain. "Captain lost his wife, didn't he?" I asked, moving my chair to make room. "No--never had one." He leaned forward and filled one of the empty cups. "Why did you think so?" "Well, more from the tone of his voice than anything else. Some trouble about it, wasn't there?" "There was. His sweetheart was burned to death ten years ago--lamp got upset." These men are direct in their speech. It comes from their life-long habit of giving short, crisp, meaning orders. He had reached for the sugar now, and was dropping the lumps slowly into his cup. "That explains it, then," I answered. "We were talking about the bird over there, and he said a man must have something to love, being without wife or children, and then I told him a big man like himself, I should think, would rather have a dog--" The first officer put down his cup, jerked his body around, and said, his blue eyes looking into mine: "You didn't say that, did you?" I nodded my head. "Mighty sorry. Don't any of us talk to him of his dog. What did he say?" "Nothing. Turned a little pale, got up, and went out." "Too bad! You didn't know, of course--wish I'd posted you." "Then he DID have a dog?" "Yes, belonged to that poor girl." "What became of him?" The first officer leaned over the table and rested his elbows on the cloth, his chin in the palms of his hands. For some time he did not speak. Outside I could hear the thrash of the sea and the slosh of spent waves coursing through the deck gutters. "You want to hear about that dog, do you?" he asked, straightening up. "Well, I can tell you if any man can, but you're to keep mum about it to the captain." Again I nodded. He fumbled in his outside pocket, drew forth a short pipe, rapped out the dead ashes, refilled it slowly from a pouch on the table, lighted it, and settled himself in his chair. "I'll begin at the beginning, for then you'll understand how I came to be mixed up in it. I saw that dog when he first came aboard, and I want to say right here that the sight of him raised a lump in my throat big as your fist, for he was just the mate of the one I owned when I used to look after my father's sheep on the hills where we lived. Then, again, I took to him because he wasn't the kind of a pet I'd ever seen at sea before--we'd had monkeys and parrots and a bobtail cat, but never a dog--not a real, human dog.