During the next week the ship held her course to the eastward, carrying all sail, and as the lumpy gulf clouds disappeared on the western horizon, we hauled to the southward to pick up the northeast trade. The effects of the storm were no longer visible. The dead sailor we buried the day after we ran out of it. The loss of this man and the one who was swept overboard by the sea that pooped us caused every one to be depressed in spirit for several days. But a man is soon forgotten when he loses the number of his mess. Great and small they drop out, and are never missed long afterward. In a little while the songs and croakings that accompanied an accordion belonging to the starboard watch told plainly that the few tears shed for a lost shipmate among our men were soon dried and forgotten. Miss Waters repeated her visits to the sick sailor when his watch were on deck, and several times I saw her going forward with the third mate, carrying some gruel she had made for him. Since her remarks to me about having been a sailor and living in a black hole of a fo’castle, she had said little to me. Her mother still kept to her bunk during meal hours, and I had escaped facing her, but the girl’s studied coldness more than outweighed this pleasure. I could hardly understand why she should object to a man who was a sailor, when her father and grandfather had both worked their way from the fo’castle to the quarter-deck. But, then, the woman’s reasoning, I argued, was peculiar to herself and none the less obstinate for being illogical. Although I was at first put out of temper by her remarks, I now saw that she devoted her attention almost entirely to young Brown when we were at meals together. This attachment appeared much more fitting for a girl of her years and position. I cursed myself heartily for being such a fool as to allow her a moment in my thought. What was I but a mate and a man nearly twice her age? In any case, I had no right to expect her to be more than half-civil to me. As the weather grew warmer, after we picked up the northeast trade, it was pleasant on deck during the hours of the evening dog-watch. Captain Crojack was easy enough on his mates during good weather, so Brown and I got in the habit of sitting on the combings of the after hatch in the evenings smoking and spinning yarns while waiting for eight bells to strike. Supper always took up nearly half of the two hours, and it was hardly worth while to turn in for the remainder of the watch if the weather was good. O’Toole thought as the rest of us did upon this subject, for he invariably came on deck after his supper at the second table and smoked a short, black pipe while he spun his yarns. People often wonder why sailors find it necessary to smoke and lie, after eating a hearty meal of salt junk and hardtack.